Blackbox Whitecube XR (BBWCXR)

25.10. Opening / Intro / Panel / Workshop

At the end of the HYBRID Biennale, the two-day symposium ‘Blackbox Whitecube XR’ (BBWCXR), curated by Maria Chatzichristodoulou and Bika Rebek, will focus on how spatial concepts for music and the performing arts can be newly and further developed in the age of radical digital transformations. The symposium brings together numerous artists, researchers and architects who, in panel discussions, workshops and lecture performances, will examine the relationships between technology, space, human and non-human bodies as well as the opportunities and risks of ‘Extended Reality’ (XR), also with regard to a new audience. 

Bika Rebek: “We set out to explore complex and contrasting themes in a building that opened in 1911 and was originally designed to promote the reformist spirit of early modernism through music and rhythm. The performance space, designed by Adolphe Appia, is a modernist cube with diffused lighting that creates a strangely detached, almost virtual space. This stage forms an abstract framework for our symposium and a series of experiments that question these purist paradigms.”

Maria Chatzichristodoulou: “We draw our attention to the living, breathing bodies with all their weaknesses, vulnerabilities and limitations – as places where systems of power cease to be merely abstract. From the impact of digital technologies on the development of human brains to our relationship with prosthetics, avatars and intelligent machines, technologies are increasingly mediating our relationship with ourselves, others and the world around us; shaping who we are and how we live our lives.”

The symposium will open with the workshop ‘Finding Digital Me’, which aims to discover the individual aesthetics and characteristics of objects, artefacts, creatures and people in our everyday environment and at the same time explore how these can be transformed into digital 3D sculptures or creatures.

Before the concert project ‘SHIRO’ by the Japanese-French duo NONOTAK in the Great Hall of the Festspielhaus, curator Marlies Wirth and artists Andric Spaeth, Andrea Khôras and Letta Shtohryn will critically discuss established perceptions of space, experience and the sublime in today’s digitally mediated world in the BBWCXR opening panel: how do world-building processes and the creation of hybrid environments change our understanding of lived experiences; what happens when analogue and digital spaces converge with physical bodies in hybrid realities?

Duration: 14:00 – 20:30 h
Language: English with German simultaneous translation