14.09.2012 - 04.11.2012

The Baltic Goes Digital - competition exhibition

The Baltic Goes Digital - competition exhibition

Within the framework of the international ART LINE project, the competition The Baltic Goes Digital has been announced by the Gdansk City Gallery and Nadbaltycke Centrum Kultury. The projects submitted are exhibited in both the virtual space and the real – the Gdansk City Gallery. The topic of the competition was to create a vision of a  nonexistent, imaginary Baltic City.
The international jury made up of: Iwona Bigos, Andreas Broegger, Ryszard Kluszczynski, Martin Koplin and Anna Zalewska has awarded three projects for their outstanding visionary ideas and their use of new media and the Internet.
The works created by the artists have transgressed the location of their presentation owing to the implementation of the locative media, thus bringing the seemingly remote Baltic countries closer.
The project aims at interactive involvement of the audience - the final forms of the exhibited works are shaped by their interventions.
The winning projects will be shown at the Gdansk City Gallery, on the website of the international ART LINE project (artline-southbaltic.eu) and on cell phones thanks to an application created uniquely for the Baltic Goes Digital competition.

Baltic Agora by Mateusz Pęk and Klaudia Wrzask
This project about an imagined Baltic City is based on a 3D topographic map of the Baltic sea bottom and works as the Internet platform.
Any website user can become a builder of the network agglomeration but their creative input into the city construction depends on their geographical location in relation to the centre – the agora of Baltic City.
The inverted image of the sea bottom reveals the optic centre, namely the Landsort depth (459m) situated in the North-West off the island of Gotland. The agora of Baltic City was located by Mateusz Pek and Klaudia Wrzask on its peak - or actually the lowest part.
The moment of logging in and entering the site starts the building process thanks to the commonly used IP data base. At this moment the location of the user is transmitted to the server. The application created uniquely for the project allows the sending of an impulse, that connects the user’s city with the agora by an axis. As a result the Baltic sea coastline will be covered with a multicolored mosaic of the “lynchpin arches” of the Baltic Sea Agora.

AudioElsewhere by Marek Dybuść
AudioElsewhere can be seen simply as a chair, earphones and a latest generation telephone locked in the space of the Gdansk City Gallery. But in fact the project enables the contemplation of sounds from the other side of the Baltic Sea. The robot installed at the Belkinge Institute of Technology transmits sounds from Karlskrona to the earphones used by the exhibition audience. Each head movement of the listener evokes the same movement of the robot’s head. The audience can undergo a realistic experience of the audio-sphere of a distant place by pricking up their ears at certain sounds. The project doesn’t leave space for any comments or discussions concerning the impressions evoked by the experience. This is because the authors are aiming to help the listener reach the highest possible concentration by focusing on the signals received by the sense of hearing alone.

Baltic Sea Radio by Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet Sola
Baltic Sea Radio is a sound installation that makes use of the sea traffic for artistic purposes in Baltic Sea and offers a novel sonic experience to the audience. The artwork reflects the local ships’ movements in real-time and applies marine traffic as a score of a sound composition. In short, the boats that can be reached by the AIS-receiver are affecting and determining the behavior of the artwork.

The ART LINE project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund within the framework of the International Cross-border Cooperation Program “South Baltic” 2007-2013.
Organizers: the Gdansk City Gallery and Nadbaltyckie Centrum Kultury
Opening: 14.09.2012, 7:30pm
Exhibition: 15.09 – 4.11. 2012
Venue: the Gdansk City Gallery 1, Piwna 27/29, Gdansk
free admission