SPAM New Media Festival

Friday, September 27, 2024 - 4:00pm to Sunday, September 29, 2024 - 7:00pm

SPAM New Media Festival September 27-29 at Georgetown Steam Plant

The Spam New Media Festival began in 2023 with activations at Freeway Park (and collaborating art institutions) by the University of Washington’s Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) Ph.D. candidates. DXARTS students aren't afraid to get weird with it, so the experience made the city a little more interesting with free sound performances, videos, and "sculptural interventions" inspired by the idea of salvage, data sets, collective memory, and archives. This year, the festival returns for three days, taking over the historic Georgetown Steam Plant with works by 36 wide-ranging new media artists. Expect explorations in "video game technologies, animatronics, radio interventions, e-textiles, audio-visual installations, and digitally mediated sculptural works," including brainwave-powered VR, a Chinese cyberfeminist archive, electromagnetic "ghost sensors," an inflatable Puerto Rican vejigante mask, and Fantastic Ingenuity, a "multifaceted conversation of Afrofuturism." by Lindsay Costello

Festival projects include:

* Brainwave-powered VR: Rose Ansari's technology that lets users “think out loud.”
* Chinese Cyberfeminism Archive: ephemeral:data’s Chinese cyberfeminist anthem derived from censored archives.
* Collaborative Extended Reality Performance brings to life an ambisonics archive realized in uniquely acoustical spaces in Washington State.
* Ghost Sensors: Brandon Dalmer uses electromagnetic sensors to detect unusual phenomena produced by entities residing within the Georgetown Steam Plant.
* Inflatable vejigante mask: Jo Cosme transforms this folkloric Puerto Rican colonial-era symbol of resistance into an inflatable object to highlight the power dynamics of cultural appropriation
* Machine Learning Encounters: Lauren Sarah Hayes' interactive musical improvisations. (Photo Credit:Tobias Feltus)
* Listening Space: Afroditi Psarra and Audrey Briot use NOAA weather satellite data as a raw material for poetic exploration and citizen science.

Exhibition Hours:

Friday & Saturday: 4:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Sunday: 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Performances:

Friday from 7:00-9:00PM
Saturday from 6:00-9:00PM
(Exhibition only on Sunday)

Performance Schedule:

Friday September 27th, 7pm-9pm:

Alemseged Bishu
Zeynep Özcan
Michael Bruner & Jeff Morris
Maria Thrän

Saturday September 28th, 6pm-9pm:

BLUES.WEAVE the INVENTOR
Michal Seta & Dirk Johan Stromberg
Lauren Sarah Hayes
St Celfer
Laura Luna Castillo & Ewa Trebacz & Daniel Peterson & Josiah Boothby & Leanna Keith & Ashley Menestrina