AND PRAXIS

Telematic art, interactive art, artificial life, bioart, virtual reality and generative art. The artists who invented these concepts come together at the NEWART Centre. More than thirty pioneers, authors of The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of New Media Art, Volume II: Artists and Practice, present a work they have chosen themselves.

They built a field without museums, without a market and without manuals, and turned it into an internationally recognised discipline. AND PRAXIS has no curatorial selection: the pioneers themselves decide how they wish to be remembered. Each artist has chosen a work that encapsulates their practice, sometimes remastered for the occasion, with just one condition: it had to work in a plug and play format and be able to travel through the cloud.

The works coexist in a large immersive environment of screens that functions as a contemporary picture gallery: a collective layer of image and sound experienced together. At the same time, each work can be seen and heard up close, on its own terms.

This generation’s legacy is at risk. The works that broke new ground depend on machines, software and formats that are disappearing. AND PRAXIS is therefore also the visible part of the creation of a living archive: identifying the works, documenting them and activating conservation protocols, just as artificial intelligence is transforming the field they founded once again.

A compendium exhibition initiated by Professor Paul Thomas, editor of the encyclopedia, in collaboration with Vicente Matallana and Jaime de los Ríos.

From 22 October, the NEWART Centre presents two exhibitions: AND PRAXIS and Hello World!.