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Who is the programme for?

The Emerging New Media Artist Programme is open to emerging creative practitioners from all over the world, with a focus on those from the Middle East and North Africa. Applicants should be 35 years or younger, at graduate or postgraduate completion stage and/or have experience in developing and creating digital and new media art.

Syllabus:

The first three months of the academic year span a series of thematic and conceptual explorations led by artists and theorists through seminars, lectures, screenings, and workshops.

Topics include:

Nature, human, non-human
In the era of the Anthropocene and in light of the upheavals affecting our environment, the separation that Western society has wreaked with the non-human world is being called into question. a
Nature, Climate, Environment and Societal Transformation
What role does art, particularly digital art, play in all of the current transitions in energy, society, climate and ecology?
The body and technological transformations of living beings:
From the digital body to the cyborg, what are the effects of digital technologies on corporality and bodily representations? How can we develop an understanding of the body and its relationship with self, others or its environment through technology?
Migration, post-colonialism and a critique of capitalism:
A critique of capitalism in crisis through the consequences we are observing today, both from an environmental and migratory point of view.
Mapping Memory, the relationships between digital practices and the archive:
The use or constitution of archives by artists (especially from the Arab World) has intensified thanks to the potential of new digital tools.
Internet and the post-internet era:
Post-Internet Art sometimes takes its inspiration from the Internet Art movement but goes beyond and challenges the notions of network immaterial and material concepts. It questions the increase in connectivity, information overload or so-called concepts of community.
Global Modern and Contemporary Art and Arabic Regionalism:
Reviews on the digital arts related histories of modern and contemporary art, and an additional focus on contemporary art practice from the MENA region and through the lens of the Arab region.

Over the following six months, participants will receive personalised mentorship from prominent artists, and will produce artworks using the technologies offered by the Diriyah Art Futures labs. They will enjoy unique access to innovative technologies such as advanced audio-visual, immersive reality, coding, sensing, machine learning and spatial audio-visual environments. The artwork they produce will be exhibited with Diriyah Art Futures as a final curated and juried outcome of the one-year programme.

Artists are invited to explore a range of contemporary fields in New Media Arts, including:

Reality and Artificial Reality:
An invitation to explore the intersection between the physical and virtual worlds, within a range of technical engagements, from immersive worlds to bio or synthetic material. Questions in this track include how virtual spaces embed themselves in corporality or how virtual spaces engage non-visual sensory experiences? Lastly, the topic explores how artists can subvert this reality using technologies that currently impact human engagement.
Sound and Cinema Creation:
An invitation to examine how artists can push the boundaries of cinema, archive and documentary. A key question is how artists can expand the cinematic and spatial sound experience through digital means, installation, or new cinematic immersive experiences. Additionally, the topic explores how artists envision an expansive and narrative-led digital encounter.
Humans and Artificial Intelligence
An invitation to examine the intersection of humans and machines, with a particular emphasis on the role of artists within this framework. This track focuses on computational creativity, code, machine learning & AI (image, text, speech), robotics, code art, interactivity, and living in data. A key question that arises is what role artists can play in offering a unique perspective on the social and technical events that are reshaping our era and the different perspectives on the issue of new intelligences.

Emerging New Media Artists Programme