Pixels Fest - International Festival and Contest of Digital Video Art

Pixels Fest - International Festival and Contest of Digital Video Art now is over!

Pixels Fest - International Festival and Contest of Digital Video Art is calling for entries inviting all artists, artistic groups and designers from all over the world to paticipate.

About Competition

PIXELS FEST is a new initiative aimed at broadening the frameworks of digital media art in urban environment of Yekaterinburg and creating a communication field for which the Yeltsin Center media façade will be a gigantic screen for up to date video-art works of artists from around the world.

The Yeltsin Center was opened in 2015 and has become an important cultural and public place for the citizens of Yekaterinburg. One of the main goals of the Center is to enlighten people and promote democratic values in Russia. The Yeltsin Center media façade is one of the biggest in Russia and it gives the artists a unique chance to show their works on a more that 2000 qm public space. The theme of the festival and of the art works for the open call is ’Digital Utopias’. Global technologization of the planet, introduction of algorithms and machines at all levels of our everyday life is often perceived pessimistically, and further scenarios of the evolution of human lives, society and planet in general, proposed by philosophers and journalists, often look horrendous.
But there may be another, utopian, alternative and imaginary vision of the future. The word “Utopia” in our case means that we encourage the artists to reflect both on “positive” ideas and speculative theories related to technological future. Categories are:

• Generative video-art
• 2D and 3D animation made by digital/mostly digital means
• Other types of animation/video-art (frame-by-frame, classical, collage etc.)

There are two round of the contest:

In the 1st round (05.09.19 – 05.12.19) of the contest partecipants need to submit the Teaser (not less than 15 seconds). The international jury forms the long-list of the participants based on the results of Round 1. The contestants selected for the 2nd round, will be informed via email. In the 2nd round (20.12.19–31.01.20) you need to send the full-length artworks (not less than 30 seconds and up to 10 minutes).
The international jury will choos the winners of the Round 2 who will receive cash prizes, and finalizes the list of artworks to be demonstrated on the media façade during the festival. Conditions:

• use of specific shape of the buildings as part of artistic concept
• the submitted artworks must reflect the theme of the contest or to be in dialogue with the related topics
• more than 70% of the work is to contain animated elements (non-static)
• submitted artworks may have sound components
• submitted artworks should not contain subtitles
• the submitted artworks must meet the technical requirements
• each participant can send up to 3 artwork for the contest

Technical requirements:

• Submitted artworks should be integrated into the screen mask
• Video format - MP4 (H.264)
• Bitrate - up to 10 Mbit
• Frame rate - 25 fps
• Color depth - 16 Bit

Evalutation Criteria:

• proficiency in modern visual art language
• use of digital means techniques
• high quality of the artwork
• high aesthetical value of the work
• use of specific shape of the building as a part of artistic concept
• meeting technical requirements
• reflecting the theme of the festival

The international jury will select 15 works from the open call, and these works will be included in the main program of the Festival (taking place in Russia, Yekaterinburg) and will be presented at the media facade of the Yeltsin Center from March 7th to 15th, 2020. Media façades (the area of which is 2,200 square meters) in urban environment will become an exhibition space, a large-scale canvas will transform the space via media artt.

There is no entry fee to participate!

Eligibility

Artists, artistic groups and designers from all over the world are invited to participate in the contest of digital video-art on the media façade of Yeltsin Center.

Entry fees

Tags

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