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From
May 10th to 12th 2007, Barcelona’s CCCB will be the scene of a
congregation of important names from the national and international
design and digital creation scenes. OFFF
BCN 2007
is a forum that embraces post-digital creation, -music, conferences,
design, performance, installations- and seeks to provide a safe haven
for the less accommodating elements of the art and music scene in this
country. OFFF is an enthusiastic celebration of a new visual culture.
And in November of this year, OFFF NY will take place for the first
time in the Big Apple’s Tribeca Performing Arts Center.
John Maeda and Takagi Masakatsu defend
simplicity at OFFF BCN 2007
After six editions, OFFF has consolidated its position as one of the
European events of reference for cutting edge software art and digital
design. A precursor for cross-media events in Barcelona, with a
multidisciplinary content, the festival programme has always encouraged
artistic risk-taking and sound experimentation to converge and
interrelate. Its stages have hosted digital artists, creators of film
credits, graphic and web designers, experimental electronic musicians
and motion graphics studios.
OFFF'BCN 2007 returns to CCCB from 10-12 May with Re:Fresh, the most
ideological offering in the history of the festival, inviting us to
rethink the most fundamental concepts. John Maeda, the founding
figure of interaction design, visits OFFF for the first time to speak
about his fight for simplicity. Futurefarmers,
the team led by Amy Franchescini, will address their transformation
from a sought-after design studio to a collective of artists that
offers sustainable experimental solutions changing our relation with
the environment. Along with them, legendary talents like Neville Brody and
renovators of the graphic medium such as James Victore will explore
the political dimensions of design and its capacity to influence on the
world.
The recent revolutions in urban art will be another of the important
items discussed in the festival through the participation of Wooster
Collective, the preeminent online observatory of the global street
art scene, and the outstanding Graffiti Research Lab,
a New York R&D unit that is changing street aesthetics with cheap
technology and open knowledge. Graffiti Research Lab, one of the
emerging collectives in the international new media scene, will be
giving an urban guerrilla tactics workshop in collaboration with art
production centre Hangar. Digital Designers Erik Natzke and
Graphic Designer and Illustrator Scott Hansen will be the other
protagonists of the program of workshops at OFFF 2007.
The main
stage of the festival will be offering sophisticated audiovisual
experiences like the exciting pictorial world of musician and digital
video artist Takagi Masakatsu, a rising star of the live
global AV scene. Plus, on a rare occasion halfway between talk and
performance, iconic sound artist Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai)
will present, together with his associates from Raster Noton, Frank
Bretschneider and Olaf Bender, a journey through the
visual aspects of the mythical Berlin label they founded in 1999. Zachary
Lieberman,
one of the most internationally renowned interactive artists of the
moment, will premiere a surprising new live show in collaboration with Theo
Watson telling the story of a never-ending line on a screen.
Reinventing itself, OFFF proposes new formats and dynamics; we'll have
virtual Stefan Sagmeister,
in his office, coming in the shape of a Documentary/Interview made and
produced by Offfilms presented for the first time and exclusively for
this festival.
We will also feature a debate on the influence of motion graphics in
media with the most important agencies in this field: Buck, Stephen
Price, editor and founder of Stash Magazine, Justin Cone,
founder and editor of Motiongrapher.com and Carlos El Asmar,
Creative Director of ABC.
And, as is the case every year, OFFF presents the best
collectives and teams working in the Web and on the screen: Universal
Everything, the multidisciplinary project of ex-Designer's
Republic Matt Pyke; Californians Stamen, expanding the
possibilities of design for Web 2.0; the creative collaboration of
famed Motion Graphics studio Motion Theory and software artist Josh
Nimoy; Mario Klingemann, one of the modern masters of
Flash; The Barbarian Group, the latest project of Robert
Hodgin, one of our favourite artisans of code; Onionlab,
Bestiario and No-Domain, perhaps the most prominent of
young Spanish collectives; Promsite, the project created in
2004 by Cdmon and Anibla de la Fuente (Planilandia) aiming to
be the first hosting sponsor in Spain and many more.
OFFF
BCN 2007 opens its doors to a deluge of 80 international artists and
theorists from different creative fields. These are just some of them: John Maeda, Hillman Curtis, Joshua Davis, Mario Klingemann, Zachary Lieberman, Justin Cone, Takagi Masakatsu...
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