International Teletext Art Festival 2013

Black & White by LIA

International Teletext Art Festival 2013 will end next September 15, it's being displayed in Berlin at ARD Hauptstadtstudiohttp://www.ard-hauptstadtstudio.de/ exhibition space, but it can be seen also though original teletext pages such as in ARD Text from page 850, ORF TELETEXT from page 470 and SWISS TELETEXT pages 750-764 on SRF 1, RTS 1 and RSI 1.
ITAF includes this year great works from Max Capacity, Cordula Ditz, Daniel Egg, Dragan Espenschied, Dan Farrimond, Goto80, Kathrin Günter, Juha van Ingen, Manuel Knapp, John Lawrence, Marc Lee, LIA, Raquel Meyers, Seppo Renvall, Jarkko Räsänen and UBERMORGEN, and a jury formed by Paul B. Davis, Voin de Voin and Rosa Menkman.
Into the post there are only two geometric and abstract based series I like from LIA and Juha van Ingen, but check out all the works at www.teletextart.com. See more;

"Considering that teletext has been used by millions of people daily during its 40 years of existence, it has so far remained a relatively unexplored territory for artistic creation. Ever since it was launched by the BBC in 1973, there have been several serious efforts to open up teletext for art but even if teletext has had a steady stream of fans within the artistic community, including some well-known names such as the Jodi artist collective, it has never gained the status it deserves as an art form. Now that High Definition has become established as a standard and the race towards crisp images has slowed down, a growing number of artists have returned to the basic structures of electronic art. This can be seen as the main reason for the revival of teletext in this context. Other phenomena explaining the sudden interest in teletext art, especially among young artists, is the retro factor. The minimal aesthetics and limited technical possibilities make teletext a unique medium and also an interesting challenge for artists: To make teletext pages a specific file format and editor are needed. A teletext page can be perceived as a grid of 24 rows and 40 columns. To change the colours of the graphics, text and background or to add a blink effect, a control character needs to be inserted. Each time a control character is placed it uses up one space in the grid, which then appears black. The artworks can be viewed with teletext editors or made into animated images but the true forum for teletext art is of course teletext itself. A group of experts (Paul B. Davis, Voin de Voin and Rosa Menkman) will select one of the participating artists to receive the Teletext Art Prize.You too can vote for your favourite artwork by SENDING A POSTCARD more info about voting here.

The festival opens on August 15th in Berlin at the ARD Hauptstadtstudio exhibition space were the ITAF works will be displayed untill the 15th September and continues in Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo with some program. The following day ITAF continues with a Teletext Cocktailparty in Musterzimmer Showroom for Contemporary Art. > info on opening program, schedule and locations ITAF2013 will also be in the program of Ars Electronica Festival , Linz, Austria, 5.9.-9.9.2013

The International Teletext Art Festival is a FixC cooperative project www.fixc.fi made in collaboration with ARD Text www.ard-text.de, ORF TELETEXT teletext.orf.at and Swiss TXT www.teletext.ch." - www.teletextart.com.

Black & White by LIA

www.liaworks.com

"In the five works that LIA created for the teletext art festival she uses the single pixel as basic building blocks. The images play on the one hand with the idea of algorithms, by varying the distances between lines and pixels following algorithmically defined patterns; and on the other hand with the intense contrast between black and white elements demanded by the limitations of the technology. In four of the five works the teletext "flash" command is used to provide a hierarchical order of the elements without using animation as such. A clear boundary is formed between the permanent (static) and impermanent (dynamic) elements; this boundary appears and disappears as the blinking effect plays out. If the entire image were always visible, ie if there was no blink effect, the dynamic elements would be lost amongst the static elements."