RADAR: the annual X-ray of the local new media art industry

RADAR is a bold initiative designed to support and empower the local new media art scene by providing a novel local context to bring talented upcoming artists and makers into the spotlight that will take place this weekend in Bucharest. Its goal is to seek out and help congregate creative studios and freelance artists that innovate in the artistic, cultural, scientific, and educational fields. BR sat down with Madalina Ivascu and Sorina Topceanu, the festival’s co-owners, to find out more about the event and what to expect this year.

By Romanita Oprea

As a talent-scouting platform, RADAR scans the market for emerging creative movements and trends, where new media plays a key role in refreshing the concept of art and its manifestations. Its main target is set on artistic opportunities and high quality projects that can be later displayed in a larger, collective context for art and tech aficionados to witness. RADAR will expose the Romanian public to an innovative, playground-style event format, one in which they can experience contemporary art interactively, to the point of breaking boundaries.

How is the new edition of RADAR different from previous ones in terms of concept?

With each edition we open up unconventional spaces that provide a different exhibition scenography altogether. From the Filaret Electrical Plant in 2019, we moved into a 2,500 sqm airplane shed at Romaero and made an art installation out of an old airplane. Then, last year, we changed the industrial approach for crystal chandeliers and ballrooms in some of Bucharest’s most beautiful buildings: Oscar Maugsch Palace, the Romanian Chamber of Commerce, and Ghica House. This year we are opening Magazinul Bucuresti, following its complete refurbishment—a landmark of the city centre, a place that we’re extremely happy to open uptemporarily and revive through art and technology.

This edition is a challenge that we’ve taken on together with the art community. The theme is LIVE and we are filling up the festival with a busy schedule of performances, one after the other, from different art fields.

Where does the main focus of the event lie, and why?

The concept behind LIVE is to explore the role of technology as a medium of creation and augmentation in relation to performing arts such as theatre, music, dance, and others. Our goal is to showcase an annual X-ray of the local new media art industry and to be a platform that promotes new digital mediums, emergent artists, as well as their collaborations with other art fields. We aim to discover and exercise ways in which technology creates a virtual scenography and allows artistic interpretation to expand and augment the way the audience engages and contributes by becoming performers themselves.

How is it evolving in terms of the number of works and artists you’re bringing on board?

The theme itself has definitely expanded the number of the artists we have on our RADAR, integrating new acts and performances and new guests and manners of expression. RADAR is short for Romanian Artists Developing Alternative Realities and from the start, the festival has been shaped by the community, not only through the projects we’ve exhibited, but through the fact that we’ve involved them in the concept and setup process. The LIVE theme is a result of last year’s roundtables with the artists, as well as putting the Audio-Visual Stage in focus.

What are your criteria for choosing works and artists? Will there be some pieces created exclusively for RADAR?

The 4th edition brings together a selection of multidisciplinary projects created by Romanian artists and developers from all over the country, curated by Alina Rizescu, Dilmana Yordanova, Alexandru Berceanu, and Mihai Cojocaru as Creative & Technical Director. The project is managed by Maria Mora, who is also a performer and a dancer and also acts as curator for the AV scene.

The digital art installations we’ll showcase use Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence or Video-mapping and the exhibition has several categories: Community (already developed projects), New Projects (those created for this edition in particular), and RADAR Kids, which is a very important part of the festival as we’ll have more than 2,000 children visiting us over the 3 days.

How have the changes and evolutions in technology impacted your exhibition this year?

We’re always keeping an eye out for new tech and creative ways of experimenting with it.

Last year we focused a lot on artificial intelligence and the main star was ANA, the Autonomous Neural Avatar, a digital AI oracle set as an interactive avatar that answered people’s curiosities from any field.

This year’s focus is more distributed towards ways of interactions, creating on the spot, reacting to technology or provoking a reaction. We’re seeking the digital mark that creates what we like to call mixed reality—and this is also emphasised in this year’s visual identity.

You said that you were aiming to discover how technology could create a virtual scenography and how artistic interpretation could be expanded and augmented. Please tell us more about that.

Perhaps talking about some of the selected installations will be the best explanation. Soundprintsby D.A.I is an audio-visual installation, a sound research project that exhibits the particular sounds made by different heritage buildings, recorded throughout many days and mounted together to what will afterwards become a soundscape marathon played by the artist and displayed with AI generated visuals.

Digital Heaven by Cristina Bodnarescu is a digital art installation in which the visceral human body is transferred into the digital space through body scanning. The digital double, newly born among pixels, learns to develop its own organicity, drawing inspiration from the movements of its analogue body. In a gestural dialogue between the dancer and her digital double, the two worlds intersect and metamorphose, constructing a narrative story that is enriched by the interaction between humans and computers, which adds complexity and unpredictability to the performance.

Another project is VIRTUALPSYCH[o]CAVE by NeoTectoniX Architects, an audiovisual immersive experience which is a participatory design experiment, that uses a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) that can conduct real-time analysis, using direct-contact dry electrodes embedded in the structure of the VR headset, of primary emotional responses, defined in the spectra:Attention-Distraction, Relaxation-Concentration, Activation of the Left Cerebral Hemisphere (Rationality) – Activation of the Right Cerebral Hemisphere (Creativity) as well as by the ratio between the activations of the two hemispheres. Based on these neural indicators, participants will be able to generate specific morphologies and patterns.

RADAR was the first festival of its kind in Romania. Now that Romanians are more connected to new media and technology and that more festivals are being held, what changes are you seeing in people’s reactions to the festival?

We’ve always wanted RADAR to be a festival for a broad audience, and the fact that new media art was a niche in Romania was something that we’ve managed to turn into our advantage, both in communicating the festival as well as in placing ourselves as top of mind when thinking about innovation and digital culture. That has helped us increase the number of visitors with every edition, last year having welcomed more than 10,600 people.

From a social point of view, we’ve presented the exhibition content as a context where the visitor not only an observer, but also a participant, which is a trend that is here to stay. Human connection and design experience is something that both partners and visitors seek out equally.

As noted previously, we also have the RADAR Kids component, which is bringing in more and more children with each edition—so we already have a great response from the young generation.

But getting back to our main audience, we can say it comes from different segments: from those who are interested in technology to those seeking to generate new content for their “virtual identities,” and, last but not least, the digital art afficionados. What they all have in common is a search for the NEW.

If you’re intrigued, get your tickets from the website radarnewmedia.art

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