The selection of the first round of EMARE (European Media Artists in Residence Exchange) artists of the new launched European Media Art Platform (EMAP) has taken place. With the generous support of EU’s Creative Europe programme EMAP will host eleven European media artists and groups in the eleven countries of the EMAP members this year. Impakt is one of the 11 organizations in the EMAP network.

We are pleased to welcome Anna Ridler, as our first resident artist in the EMAP programme. From April 3rd until the 8th of June 2018 Ridler will work on a new project called Mosaic Virus:

Drawing historical parallels from “tulip-mania” that swept across Netherlands/Europe in the 1630s to the speculation currently ongoing around crypto-currencies, I will create a video work generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) that will show a tulip blooming, an updated version of a Dutch still life for the 21st century. The appearance of the tulip would be controlled by bitcoin price. “Mosaic” is the name of the virus that causes the stripes in a petal which increased their desirability and helped cause the speculative prices during the time. In this piece, the stripes will depend on the value of bitcoin, changing over time to show how the market fluctuates.

Anna Ridler:

I am an artist and researcher whose practice brings together technology, literature and drawing to create both art and critical writing.  I am very interested in working with abstract collections of information or data, particularly self-generated data sets, to create new and unusual narratives in a variety of mediums, and how new technologies, such as machine learning, can be used to translate them clearly to an audience.  I work heavily with technology at both the front and back end of projects (what is exhibited as well as the research that goes into the piece). My intention is to make work that is not about technology for its own sake, but rather uses these technologies as a tool to talk about other things – memory, love, decay –  or to augment or change the story in a way in that otherwise would not happen. I am interested in the connections and spaces between the tangible and intangible world – for example, the connections between race and algorithms or love and emails.  I am currently working with and researching the creative potential of machine learning, and how it relates to drawing and painting.

In 2017 newly founded EMAP (European Media Art Platform), with the generous support of EU’s Creative Europe programme, has started to offer grants in 11 member institutions all over Europe. Check out the activities of EMAP/EMARE here.