Situated formats around the science-art-technology debate: an introduction to European Digital Arts Festivals (DAF)

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José Luis Reyes-Criado
University of Granada (Spain) and University of Padova (Italy)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6651-4176

Digital Arts Festivals (DAF) are one of the most booming situated formats and performative experiences for debate, dissemination, exhibition and artistic practice around the science-art-technology intersection. From Ars Electronica or Transmediale and CTM in Berlin to the Spanish Sónar, L.E.V. or MIRA, more than 50 Digital Arts Festivals have appeared in Europe in the last few decades. Although the paradigm of the “festivalization of culture” has received a great deal of academic attention, DAFs have been minimally analysed. What are Digital Arts Festivals? How do they differ from other festivals? How can we define, categorize and analyse these festivals in depth in order to understand their role in cultural production and artistic creation today? In order to address these questions, this article presents the first results of an empirical study which began at the end of 2020 and is still ongoing and which concerns the paradigm of Digital Arts Festivals in Europe. Based on qualitative, multi-sited and wide-ranging research, and having generated a list of more than 50 DAFs in Europe and conducted a first round of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 10 festival directors, I introduce a starting definition of Digital Arts Festivals. Based on three case studies from Southern Europe – the Semibreve festival in Braga, the MIRA festival in Barcelona and the ROBOT festival in Bologna – I present a theoretical apparatus and an analytical approach in dialogue with the concept of festivalscape, that allows us to expand the study of Digital Arts Festivals, especially from the tools of cultural sociology.

Keywords
festivalization, post-traditional festival, digital art festival, electronic music, cultural production

Article Details

How to Cite
Reyes-Criado, José Luis. “Situated formats around the science-art-technology debate: an introduction to European Digital Arts Festivals (DAF)”. Artnodes, no. 32, pp. 1-9, doi:10.7238/artnodes.v0i32.412422.
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(c) José Luis Reyes-Criado, 2023


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Author Biography

José Luis Reyes-Criado, University of Granada (Spain) and University of Padova (Italy)

Degree in Scenography from ESAD in Cordoba with a double Master in Art History and New Media from the University of Pisa (IT), I am currently pursuing my PhD in international co-tutelage between the University of Granada and the University of Padova. My PhD project is situated as a humanistic and sociological study of European Digital Arts Festivals, with special reference to the fields of electronic music and digital arts. Specifically, my doctoral dissertation aims to analyse the functioning of such festivals from a symbolic, aesthetic and organizational point of view, in order to extend the research question to the role that festivals, as a cultural format, play in the evolution of the field of electronic music and digital arts at a European level. Since 2020, I have combined my academic life with my professional activity as a cultural manager and artistic director specializing in arts festivals and cultural mediation in rural areas.

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