SHAUNA JEAN DOHERTY

Vector Festival 2017
Curated by Skot Deeming and Martin Zeilinger
July 13 – 16, 2017

Vector Festival 2017 Artists

Peter Rahul (Canada), Marta Di Francesco (UK), Tillmann Ohm (Germany), Udit Mahajan (USA), Ben Bogart (Canada), Henry Driver (UK), Jordan Shaw (Canada), Samantha Fickel (Canada), Molleindustria (USA), Tasman Richardson (Canada), Foci+Loci (USA), Gabe Knox (Canada), Daniel Zabawa (Canada), Tanja Vujinovic (Slovenia), Hannah Epstein (Canada), Alex Myers (USA), Zev Farber (Canada), Sagan Yee (Canada), Jasmeet Sidhu (Canada), Jan Swinburne (Canada), Robert Seidel (Germany), Spaceballs, Trond Michelsen, Jan Kadlec, Cory Arcangel, Jacob Ciocci, Jessica Ciocci, Ben Jones, Niklas Ekman, Stewart Smith (USA), Racquel Meyers (Spain), Johan Kotlinski (Sweden), Anders Carlsson (Sweden), Hakon Repstad (Norway), Peter Burr (USA), Mark Fingerhut (USA), and Forma (USA).

Vector Festival 2017 entitled, Pattern Recognition: Five Years of Vector featured 30+ pioneering new media artists from Canada and abroad and included a multitude of performances, screenings, and workshops at sites across Toronto.

The full program can be found at vectorfestival.org.

Key Dates

Day Zero: Voight-Kampff | Pre-Festival Social and Screening
@Electric Perfume | July 12th 2017 | 8pm – 11pm | PWYC

VIP Party
@ InterAccess | July 13th 2017 | 6pm-7pm | INVITE ONLY

Vector Festival Launch Party and Exhibition Opening Reception
@InterAccess | July 13th 2017 | 7pm – 10pm | FREE

Pattern Recognition | Exhibition
With works by Ben Bogart, Henry Driver, Samantha Fickel, Molleindustria, and Jordan Shaw
@InterAccess | July 14th – August 12th 2017 | FREE

Execute! From Scene to Screen | Screening
@Artscape Youngplace | July 14th 2017 | 9pm – 11pm | $15

Signal / Space | Performance
With performances by foci + loci, Tasman Richardson, and Gabe Knox + Daniel Zabawa
@Artscape Youngplace | July 15th 2017 | 8pm – 11pm | $15

Making Virtual Instruments | Workshop
Led by New York based duo foci + loci
@InterAccess | July 15th 2017 | 11am – 3pm | $60 regular | $45 passholders

Performance Panel: Signal / Space
@InterAccess | July 16th 2017 | 2pm – 4pm | FREE

Local Host | Online Exhibition
With works by Hannah Epstein, Zev Farber, Alex Myers, Jasmeet Sidhu, Tanja Vujinović, and Sagan Yee
vectorfestival.org | July 13th – August 12th 2017

Local Host IRL | Exhibition
@Black Cat Artspace | July 13th – July 16th 2017 | 12pm – 6pm | FREE

Alex Myers at Loop Hole Gallery
@Loop Hole Gallery | July 1st – July 31st 2017 | Dusk till Dawn | FREE

 Art on the Screens | Screening
@Celebration Square Mississauga | July 24th 2017 | 8pm – 10pm | FREE

Project Highlights

1) Canadian media artist Ben Bogart’s Watching (Blade Runner) is the first installment of an ongoing experiment in computer vision and machine learning, which premiered at this year’s Berlin Transmediale. The single-channel video installation is the audiovisual creation of an artificial intelligence (AI) designed by the artist to watch, understand, and reconstitute the most recognizable films about AI – Ridley Scott’s adaptation of the famous Philip K. Dick novella. Watching (Blade Runner) will be featured in Vector Festival’s flagship exhibition at InterAccess, entitled Pattern Recognition.

2) This year, we are excited to add a new format to the festival: an online exhibition showcasing web-based experiments with game engines and interactive new media creations. The exhibition, which will bring Vector to the farthest fringes of the networked world, features playful new digital works that oscillate between 8bit nostalgia and post-Internet aesthetics, including contributions by artists such as Vector veteran Hannah Epstein (LA/Toronto) and Sagan Yee (Toronto).

3) Vector co-founder Clint Enns curates an extraordinary screening that pays homage to the extravagant, edgy, and plain crazy history of the demoscene, a loose international community of programmers, hackers, musicians, and designers (originally involved in cracking video game copy protection) who create self-contained, audio-visual code-based works that range from minuscule visual abstractions to over-the-top epics. The majority of the work will be screened from executable files, rather than video, reframing the demo as a micro-cinema format.