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ArtFutura is a festival of digital culture and creativity that is celebrated annually in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Ibiza, London, Montevideo and several other cities worldwide. It came about from the confluence of interests of some of the pioneers of the Cyberculture movement from the 90s, among whom were, Rebecca Allen, William Gibson and Montxo Algora, who presently continues to direct the festival.
Contents
Throughout its more than 26 years of existence, ArtFutura has been responsible for introducing the latest advances in digital art and design, computer animation, video games and special effects and has invited a large number of thinkers from a diversity of disciplines to reflect on the social implications of the new technologies.
Among the guests who have visited the festival there have been names such as Rebecca Allen, Theo Jansen, Bruce Sterling, Laurie Anderson, Yoichiro Kawaguchi, Moebius, Derrick de Kerckhove, David Byrne, Howard Rheingold, Eduardo Kac, Kevin Kelly, Sherry Turkle, Toshio Iwai and Chris Cunningham.
Editions
Main venue and CircuitoFutura
Every edition of ArtFutura is dedicated to a central theme and includes a diversity of activities: conferences, workshops, exhibitions, live shows and an audiovisual program which includes the latest novelties in digital creativity.
The festival has a main venue, which started as being Barcelona, later moved to Madrid and Seville and then to a different city every year.
A large part of the content of each edition is developed in Barcelona and Madrid although connections by means of video conferences are established with other cities in which the festival is held.
Among the cities in which ArtFutura is presented are included Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Granada, Lisbon, London, Madrid, México DF, Montevideo, Palma de Mallorca, Paris, Punta del Este, São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, Torino, Tenerife, Vigo and Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Souls and Machines
GaleriaFutura is the division of ArtFutura destined to the exhibitions of digital art.
One of its most important projects was the "Souls and Machines" exhibit that was presented at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain and curated by Montxo Algora and José Luis de Vicente.
It included the works of Paul Friedlander, Sachiko Kodama, Theo Jansen, Daniel Rozin, Chico McMurtrie, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Daniel Canogar, Evru, David Byrne, David Hanson, Vuk Ćosić, Pierre Huyghe, Harun Farocki, Muntadas, Ben Rubin, Mark Hansen, Antoni Abad and Natalie Jeremijenko.
"Souls and Machines" was one of the digital art exhibitions most visited of all times with over 450.000 spectators.
Catalog
For each edition of the festival, ArtFutura edits a printed catalog which includes a selection of articles on digital art and culture. They also can be viewed online