Madrid Digital Art Urban Festival, I edition of MMMAD

Description of project by MMMAD

The first edition of MMMAD, the Madrid Digital Art Urban Festival, turns the capital into the epicenter of digital art throughout the month of May. From days 1 to 31, the festival unfolds throughout the city with an extensive program that includes exhibitions of national and international artists in the digital marquees of JCDecaux, the screens of Roca Madrid Gallery, the screen of Super 8 in Palacio de la Press or the Sala Equis; immersive installations on the giant curved screen of Taller de Ideas or the geodesic dome of the new DOMO360 space, where pieces by Peru Medem or Daniel Canogar are shown; as well as a program of workshops and digital meetings at La Casa Encendida and Espacio Fundación Telefónica.
 
The program is completed with the visual scketches that will be projected on the digital façade of Medialab Prado, selected in the call for its La Plaza Program; another international call for artists through Instagram filters, where the winning projects will be part of an interactive exhibition that will take place in the garden of the Goethe-Institut in Madrid and the LABA School of Art, Design & New Media, in Valencia; complementary online programming that is broadcast through the festival's Twitch channel; and the activation of two artistic spaces in Carabanchel: Casa Antillón with the exhibition Rebel Soft and a performance in Room Number 34 that connects physical and digital spaces.
 
In total, 54 artists of 15 nationalities - with an average age of 33 years and a total of five million followers - exhibit their work on screens throughout the city, transforming the urban space into a large window to digital art to bring closer this discipline to the general public and place Madrid on the international map of digital creation.

Pol, the first Spanish virtual influencer (CGI), is in charge of opening the festival on Monday, May 3 from the Sala Equis –which participates in the festival with its interior screen– and through the MMMAD Twitch channel. In addition to launching a digital manifesto on the identity and ambiguity of what is real and what is not, he presents his new video clip, directed by digital artist Andrei Warren. At this event, the sound artist ALV Adina presents her new EP La Cuerpa, and the audience will witness an appearance by Onyx, an interdimensional being with iridescent skin and variable morphologies.

The directors of MMMAD, Aida Salán, Cristóbal Baños and Diego Iglesias –who are part of the creative studio HYPER STUDIO and the contemporary art platform Finding Art Madrid– propose that the festival explore the intersection between digital culture and public space, innovating in formats and converting urban supports for advertising use into cultural spaces.

An example of this is Social Motion, an exhibition that is on display from May 1 to 15 in the JCDecaux digital marquees located on the axis of Fuencarral, Goya and Cibeles streets. Throughout this tour you can enjoy this collective exhibition of international artists and creators from the HARDDISKMUSEUM, a digital art museum stored on a 2TB hard drive and created by the Spanish Solimán López. In this exhibition you can see the works of 15 international artists, including Ines.Alpha, Claudia Maté, Exitsimulation, Esteban Deácono or Cool3DWorld. In addition, the project can be studied in depth through the meeting Los new spaces for digital art, which takes place at Espacio Fundación Telefónica.

Another innovative example in format and space for art is Roca Madrid Gallery. During the month of May, this space transforms its screens into cultural devices –both the eight-meter urban one as well as the indoor ones– to host Fluids, an international collective exhibition, and site-specific, with works by digital artists Andrei Warren, Digo Digital, Rachel Lamot, Harriet Davey and Yilmaz Sen, curated by Lola Zoido, Mit Borrás and Yosi Negrín.

The MMMAD festival seeks to support emerging talent, programming young artists and creators such as Teresa Rofer, The Rodina or Andrei Warren, along with established artists such as Zach Lieberman, Daniel Canogar or Marina Núñez. Throughout the month, the huge Super 8 screens at Palacio de la Prensa become cultural devices to show the work of the Anglo-Spanish artist Natalia Stuyk.

- Immersive experiences: art in 360 degrees
 
From May 13 to 16, the new DOMO360 space, located in Ciudad Universitaria, will exhibit ARAN360, an immersive 50-minute projection in a geodesic dome measuring 22 meters in diameter where five works by Peru Medem + Alba del Castillo are shown. Marina Nuñez, Daniel Canogar, Amaya Hernández and Teresa Rofer. This project is a collaboration between ARAN Art Network and RTVE's Audiovisual Innovation Laboratory.

Also, the Taller de Ideas multimedia space opens its doors for the first time to digital art to show, every weekend in May, an immersive piece by an international artist of recognized prestige. Thus, the giant curved 10x3 meter screen hosts the interactive installation of Vitamin Studio (May 7-9) and the works of The Rodina (May 14-16), Estela Oliva (May 21-23), and Zach Lieberman ( May 28-30). Tickets for ARAN360 and Taller de Ideas screenings are available on the fever platform and have a 10% student discount until May 1.

MMMAD workshops take place at La Casa On, La Casa Encendida's online program. From May 4 to 21, three online workshops are held where topics such as defining what digital skin is like, how augmented reality is worked, or what impact Google Maps has on our cities are addressed. These courses are accompanied by three public online talks, broadcast by Zoom, given by international guests such as Keiken, Mario Santamaría, or Georg Fassl.

The festival is also proposed as a platform for the visibility of new spaces in the city. Thus, the programming accompanies the activation of space in Carabanchel: Casa Antillón, which opens its doors with the exhibition Rebel Soft, a dialogue of innocence and rebellion by the Salamanca artist amor.amor.amor.amor and the Marseillaise sltcamille ; and activates a performance by Jesu Moratiel on transfers between the physical and digital world in Room Number 34.

The festival is completed with an online program through its Twitch channel, where screenings, meetings, and conferences are broadcast; and an international call for AR art in Instagram filters, open during April. The winning proposals - which address topics such as cyborg organisms, mutant skins, or reality glitches - are part of an interactive exhibition of Instagram filters that takes place in the garden of the Goethe-Institut in Madrid and will then be shown at LABA School of Art, Design & New Media, in Valencia. Of the selected projects, three of them will obtain the LABA Valencia Awards.

The MMMAD festival has the support of the Ministry of Culture and INJUVE. The 2021 edition has been developed thanks to the artistic collaboration of HARDDISKMUSEUM, ARAN Art Network and RTVE's Audiovisual Laboratory, and of the spaces: JCDecaux, Roca Madrid Gallery, Sala Equis, Taller de Ideas, Casa Antillón, Room Number 34, DOMO360 , La Casa Encendida, Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Goethe-Institut Madrid, Super 8 and Medialab Prado.

- Collective exhibition ‘Social Motion’ curated by HARDDISKMUSEUM on the urban screens of JCDecaux

May 1 - 15. Various locations (15 screens on the Fuencarral, Goya, and Cibeles axes)

MMMAD partners with the HARDDISKMUSEUM digital art museum to present the exhibition ‘Social Motion’, curated by Solimán López, on the urban screens of JCDecaux.

15 JCDecaux screens across the city will become digital windows into the halls of the HARDDISKMUSEUM, displaying the works of a selection of international digital artists and creators. Each support will show the work of the 15 artists, a maximum of three works for each one and with a maximum duration of 3 minutes per work. The works will be shown on 15 JCDecaux screens on the Cibeles, Goya, and Fuencarral axes.

Also, the exhibition will have an online version on the museum's website HARDDISKMUSEUM that will be available throughout the festival.

Hours: Mon-Fri: 08: 00-10: 00h and 17: 00-20: 00h / Sat-Sun: 11: 00-14: 00 and 17: 00-20: 00h.

Confirmed artists: Claudia Maté, Cool 3D World, Esteban Deácono, exitsimulation, Fvck Render, Hamid Ebrahimnia, Ines.Alpha, Johwska, Klarens Malluta, Marco Mori, Morysetta, Nicole Ruggiero, Oliver Latta.

- Online programming on Twitch

On-line. May 1 - 31.

Throughout May, MMMAD will schedule a series of screenings, meetings, and online conferences through its Twitch channel.

- Natalia Stuyk's exhibition on the screens of Super 8 Media

May 1 - 31. Palace of the Press (Plaza de Callao)

In May, the huge screens of Super 8 Media, located on the façade of the mythical Palacio de la Prensa building on Gran Vía, become innovative cultural devices showing the work of the Anglo-Spanish artist Natalia Stuyk.

Natalia Stuyk is a pioneering new media artist specializing in video and installations. Her work explores escapism, ritual behaviors, and impossible worlds. She is currently working on interactive projects and installations, creating a symbiosis between the real and the digital, that encompass new technologies and move away from conventional digital video.

This screen, the only screen that is visible from the Plaza de Callao and covers both directions of Madrid's Gran Vía, will house a series of works by the artist –among them an unpublished work– that can be seen at different times of the day. , from May 1 to 31.

- Kick-off of the MMMAD Festival at Sala Equis

May 3, 12.30pm. Sala Equis (C / Duque de Alba, 4) + online

MMMAD starts on Monday, May 3 at 7:00 p.m. in the Sala Equis in Madrid. For this, we will have the special collaboration of Pol (@ pol.songs), the first Spanish virtual influencer (CGI), who will open with the launch of his digital manifesto and his new video clip directed by digital artist Andrei Warren. In his digital manifesto, Pol talks about the idea of ​​identity, the ambiguity of what is real and what is not, what it means to be human and what social networks mean in the current context.

After that, the sound artist ALV Adina (@alv_adina) will perform ‘La Cuerpa’ life with visuals of Freno and prosthesis by Alicia Arévalo. ‘La Cuerpa’ is the artist's latest EP, which dematerializes and fragments the body into songs to give sound to pain, pleasure, discrimination, or vulnerability from a digital point of view.

To close, we will have an appearance by Onyx (@onyxunleashed), its materialization being a disruption of the parameters of reality. In his invocations, Onyx unleashes queer-magic interpretations of the body and speculative accounts of the possible.

The event will be broadcast online through the MMMAD Twitch channel.

- Workshops and conferences at La Casa Encendida

May 4 - May 21. La Casa Encendida, online format

La Casa Encendida joins the MMMAD programming with the development of three workshops that will be part of La Casa On, LCE's online programming. These workshops will be accompanied by three public lectures with prestigious international guests.

What is digital skin like? How do you work in augmented reality? What impact does Google Maps have on our cities? What are the references that motivate this generation? (...) These and more questions are the ones that will guide the three workshops and meetings that will address different scales of the daily digital experience:

1. ‘Naked and digital’. An augmented reality filter creation workshop in Spark AR taught by digital artists Andrea Muniaín and Pau Jiménez.
Dates: M4, J6, M11, J13. 18: 30–21: 00 (10 hours)

2. ‘Politics and digital’. A thinking workshop on criticism and theory in the digital context was given by researchers Cris Agüelles and Aida Salán.
Dates: X5, X12, X19. 18: 00–20: 00 (6 hours)

3. ‘Urban and digital’. A reflection workshop on the digital experience of the city through Google Maps given by the artistic and cultural mediation collective Desmusea (Clara Harguindey and Daniel Pecharromán).
Dates: V7, V14, V21. 18: 00–20: 00 (6 hours).

Public conferences:

1. M18, 19:00 - ‘Naked and digital’ with Keiken.
2. X19, 19:00 - ‘Politics and digital’ with Georg Fassl.
3. V21, 19:00 - ‘Urban and digital’ with Mario Santamaría.

Tickets can be purchased through the La Casa Encendida website. The public sessions will be carried out through zoom with a maximum capacity of 100 participants.

- Collective exhibition ‘Fluids’ at Roca Madrid Gallery

May 5 - 25. Roca Madrid Gallery (C / José Abascal 57)

‘Fluids’ is a site-specific exhibition for Roca Madrid Gallery curated by Lola Zoido, Mit Borrás, and Yosi Negrín with works by digital artists Andrei Warren, Digo Digital, Rachel Lamot, Harriet Davey, and Yilmaz Sen.

Fluids propose a sensory immersion in a new contemporary, diffuse, and changing materiality, through 5 digital artists from the national and international scene. The multiform visual tour will turn the twisting of space screens into a universe without contours or limits, exploring the increasingly amorphous relationship between the digital and physical bodies. The conception of the body, in this case, is scaled, stretched, and diluted, posing experimental visions about our surrounding reality.

Les artists will exhibit for the first time in the city of Madrid with unpublished 3D video pieces or adaptations for this exhibition.

- Immersive installations in Taller de Ideas

Weekends in May from 7 to 30. Ideas Workshop (C / Cardenal Cisneros, 74)

The multimedia space ‘Taller de Ideas’ opens its doors for the first time to digital art on the occasion of MMMAD, programming four immersive digital art installations on its set with a 10x3m screen. This space opens its doors to the public with four prestigious international artists.

During the four weekends of May (F, S, D) the works will be shown from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Friday and from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, in 45-minute passes (30 min of installation and 15 min of change between passes).

Every weekend the work of an artist will be shown:

May 7 - 9. ‘MATT3R Origin of Creation’ x Vitamin Studio (@vitamin_studio)
May 14 - 16. The Rodina (@therodina)
May 21 - 23. ‘Space Zero (0,0,0)’ x CLONE (@clonworks)
May 28 - 30. Zach Lieberman (@ zach.lieberman)

- Meeting ‘The new spaces of digital art’ in Espacio Fundación Telefónica

C / Fuencarral, 3. + online. May 7, 19: 00–20: 30. Registration in this link

On the occasion of the MMMAD Madrid Digital Art Urban Festival, the Fundación Telefónica Space organizes the meeting "The new spaces of digital art" with artists, curators, and experts from the sector on Friday, May 7 at 7:00 p.m. The meeting will be face-to-face, upon reservation of tickets on the Fundación Telefónica Space website, and can also be followed by streaming.

‘The new spaces of digital art’ raises as a starting point the experience granted by the Harddiskmuseum project in its more than 6 years of life, on the occupation of new environments that the already established digital art has developed throughout its history. From the occupation of net art, P2P transfer, or offline devices, to the current NFT's.

After the introduction and contextualization of Solimán López, artist, founder of the Harddiskmuseum and curator of the exhibition 'Social Motion' at MMMAD Festival, the artist and curator Mit Borrás will tell about his participation in the Harddiskmuseum and his experience as curator of the exhibition 'Fluids' within MMMAD Festival; the curator Aida Salán will tell about her experience as director of MMMAD Festival, and the curator and researcher Nekane Aramburu will present her own experiences to culminate with an open debate between the participants and the audience.

- Call for AR art in Instagram filters and Exhibition of the 20 best filters at the Goethe-Institut

Call 1 - 30 April
Exhibition 11 - 31 May, Goethe-Institut Madrid | 1–30 October at LABA Valencia

MMMAD Festival Urbano de Arte Digital de Madrid together with the Goethe-Institut Madrid and LABA School of Art, Design & New Media launch the First Public Call for artistic projects in AR through Instagram filters.

“From urban to domestic space, we look for WorldAR artistic proposals in Instagram filter format that propose new possible space-times based on the creation of digital objects or environments.

Within the context of WorldAR, possibilities are opened from which to transform the space in which we live: distortions, deformations, translations, defects, dissolutions, parodies, and effects with objects that transform reality in any of its possible variations. Original works that work from an artistic and contemporary perspective. "

The call will open on April 1 and end on April 30, when an international jury made up of AR creators Adrian Steckeweh (@ omega.c), Aaron Jablonski (@exitsimulation), and Lucía Tahan (@luciatahan) together with a representative of the organizing institutions will assess all the proposals received.

The jury will select the 20 best proposals, which will be part of an exhibition in the garden of the Goethe-Institut in Madrid from May 11 to 31 and at LABA Valencia from October 1 to 30. Also, the jury will award three ‘LABA Valencia Awards’ of € 500 to the three best works received, sponsored by LABA School of Art, Design & New Media.

The jury's decision will be announced on May 5 via MMMAD's Instagram and Twitch channel. The exhibition at the Goethe-Institut Madrid will open on May 11 with a round table in which the three members of the jury will participate.

- Immersive projections ‘ARAN360’ in DOMO360

May 13 - 16. DOMO360 (Av. Puerta de Hierro, 2)

MMMAD partners with ARAN Art Network and RTVE's Audiovisual Innovation Laboratory to present ‘ARAN360’ an immersive digital art session at DOMO360, a new immersive space located in Ciudad Universitaria de Madrid.

The 50-minute session includes the screening of five works by the artists Peru Medem + Alba del Castillo, Marina Nuñez, Daniel Canogar, Amaya Hernández and Teresa Rofer. The VR works will be displayed in DOMO360's 22m diameter geodesic dome.

The passes will be from May 13 to 16, at 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m., and 9:00 p.m.

- Exhibition 'Rebel Soft' at Casa Antillón

May 15 - 31. Casa Antillón (C / Chimbo, 12)

@casantillon transports us to our childhood through bright and dark memories in its new exhibition space: a dreamy basement secretly hidden under the floor of consciousness. A dialogue of innocence and rebellion by the artist from Salamanca @ amor.amor.amor.a.m.o.r and the Marseillaise @sltcamille.

- Performance by Jesu Moratiel in Room Number 34

May 18. Room Number 34 (Av. Cerro de los Ángeles, 34)
Exhibition and performance ‘The air that mediates’

In Room Number 34, Jesu Moratiel presents an installation that arises from a dialogue between the material and the digital. As a communicative intermediate between the virtual world and the physical world, Moratiel generates an intermediate, a liminal space in which the latter affects the former. In this case, the installation is made up of two separate pieces, one physical and one digital, but connected through performative action. The power of change that digital possesses is manifested in the impact it has on our environment: thus, the weight of “doing things with digital works” is also evident, by making visible the intermediate space that connects both planes.

- Call for ‘Program the square: Glitches and modifications of reality for the digital façade of Medialab Prado

Call for applications April 20 - May 18. Exhibition 20-30 May. Medialab Prado.

The Medialab Prado cultural center joins the MMMAD Festival with a new edition of Programa la Plaza, a call that invites the entire digital art community to submit their proposals to exhibit visual ‘sketches’, programmed for the digital façade of Medialab Prado. With the collaboration of Creative Coding Madrid.

Theme: Glitches and Reality Mods

Glitch and error are part of digital creation. From programming errors to visual artifacts generated during image transmission, glitch constitutes a digital aesthetic that tries to generate tension on the clean image. The medialab screen has physical glitches. Like any architectural element, it is affected by the passage of time. Many of your LEDs have died, and thus remain off or showing fixed or random colors. This call seeks pieces of digital art that work from glitch as aesthetics and concept. Taking advantage of the fact that the support itself generates a first approach towards error in the image, we invite artists to program the square with pieces that radicalize and dialogue with these new digital natures.

How does it work?

1. Design and schedule your project on the programalaplaza platform.
2. When ready, send it before May 18, 2021.
3. The creations will be displayed on the facade of Medialab Prado between May 20 and 30.

Project selection

A jury made up of a member of MMMAD, a member of Creative Coding Madrid and a member of Medialab Prado will select the best proposals received.