Exhibition of Media Art and Technology "Sensorial Imagination" to Open in Liepāja

On Friday, November 22, at 16:00, the exhibition "Sensorial Imagination" will be opened at the Exhibition Hall of the Liepāja Music, Art, and Design Secondary School (Alejas Street 18). The exhibition will feature works of virtual and augmented reality, art installations, and results from workshops held as part of the UPDATE Media Art and Technology Festival. The exhibition will be open from November 25 to December 6, on weekdays from 08:00 to 19:00.

The exhibition will showcase four virtual reality works. Yekaterina Yevdokimova’s “I (Don’t) Remember” is an interpretation of the artist's childhood memories from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Kaspars Lēvalds’ “Mist” is based on the 1919 Latvian War of Independence in Liepāja after World War I. Elīna Dreimane’s “Lost in the Mist” explores Latvian sacred places described in traditions, folklore, and stories. Olga Barbina’s “Pneuma” experiments with human breath to navigate the virtual reality environment.

As part of the exhibition, ten new augmented reality works will be unveiled in the ART+ mobile app (https://artplus.app). These augmented reality artworks will be displayed in various locations around Liepāja. In the works, artists reflect on cultural heritage, modern global issues, the climate crisis, and pollution, experiment with technology, and express personal experiences and reflections on mental health. The works will be displayed on Liepāja beach, in Jūrmalas Park, in Karosta, and other city locations. To view the works, visitors will need a smartphone or tablet with GPS and an internet connection, the ART+ app must be downloaded or updated, and users should go to the specified location of the artwork. Currently, 50 augmented reality artworks are already on display in Liepāja.

The exhibition also features two international artists who took part in artist residencies organized by the Liepāja 2027 Foundation (Nodibinājums Liepāja 2027) from September to October this year. Spanish artist Carlos Munoz will present his social platform experiment and installation “Deficiencies of Utopia,” while Ukrainian artist Iryna Loskot will showcase a series of works titled “Invitations,” exploring the self-destructive and self-renewing nature of our planet.

The exhibition will also present the results of workshops from the annual UPDATE Media Art and Technology Festival – an interactive sound installation created in Tata Frenkel's workshop “Become an Antenna,” a tutorial on being an artist in a world without digital technologies from Vytautas Michelkevičius’ workshop “OFFLINE/OFF-GRID,” and an interactive work combining movement-capturing clothing and photogrammetry from Oleksandr Sirous' workshop “Experimental Movement Capture.”

The "Sensorial Imagination" exhibition is part of the UPDATE festival and is organized by the Liepāja Media Artists Association ASTE (https://aste.gallery), RTU Liepāja Academy’s Art Research Laboratory (MPLab, https://mplab.lv), and the ART+ Association (https://artplus.app). ASTE’s activities in 2024 are supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation (VKKF) for professional non-governmental cultural organizations. UPDATE has been supported by the Liepāja Culture Department, VKKF, and the RTU Liepāja Academy. The event is realized with co-funding from the Liepāja 2027 Foundation and the European Union program “Creative Europe” project “CreArt 3.0 #STRINGING_TOGETHER.”

For more information, visit the exhibition website: www.updatefestival.lv

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