The international contemporary music festival "Gaida", which annually pays special attention to contemporary electronic music and audiovisual creativity, this year held the "Gaida Open Call" new project selection competition for the second time and selected the 3 most interesting audiovisual ideas from the 20 submitted creative applications. These are the "CON" project of Dutch artist Heidi Hörsturz, who works in the field of new media, "Postprocessed audiovisual impromptus 2023" (Finland) by light and sound installation creator Nik Tiainen, and "Aeterna" by the Italian duo Massimo D'Amato and Lorenzo Ballerini. The audience will be able to see and hear live performances of these intriguing projects at the festival's Open 3 event, which will take place on Saturday, October 21, at the Kablys+Kultūra event space.

Heidi Hörsturz from the Netherlands, who cultivates a bright creative image, offered the audiovisual performance "CON" to the festival. Rotterdam-based new media creator works with computer animation, creates sound art and multimedia installations. The artist consciously overloads her works with media stimuli to the point of absurdity, thus investigating the impact of new technologies on people and the social phenomena caused by the digital spurt. Heidi Hörsturz performs worldwide: her performances have taken place at the Institute of Contemporary Art London (ICA), GAS Festival Gothenburg, CultureHub New York, New Media and Audiovisual Arts Festivals FILE São Paulo, MADATAC Festival Madrid, European Media Arts Festival Osnabruck, Athens Digital Arts festival, Graz Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics IEM and elsewhere.

Heidi says that her project CON questions the increasingly blurred boundaries between original and copy, between what is real and what is virtual. The artist asks: "How does the development of virtual space and technology affect our (digital) identities?" What emotions can we trust? What makes a person human?” The fusion of audio and video in this piece shatters preconceived notions of reality and encourages viewers to question the authenticity of their sensory experiences. "CON" is a kind of pinnacle of craftsmanship, where different spheres of artistic expression will unite in an engaging - immersive - audiovisual experience that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional genre classification.

Another artist selected for the festival program is Niko Tiainen (or "tiainen.xyz"), a Finland-based interdisciplinary artist specializing in video, light and sound installations. He graduated in classical music, composition and graphic design. Nik Tiainen's works have been performed and shown in more than 20 countries: among others at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz (2020), Lightbox Gallery in New York (2020), Neo Shibuya Gallery in Tokyo (2021), Theater of Digital Art in Dubai (2022). Tiainen's new composition "Postprocessed audiovisual impromptus 2023", which the artist will perform at the Gaida festival's Open 3 event, will combine several music and audiovisual techniques, including piano improvisations, artificial intelligence-generated soundscapes, rational and irrational rhythmic patterns, procedural algorithm-based data visualization with real-time audio, code and video mixing and manipulation.

The third project selected for Open 3 is the work of Massimo D'Amato and Lorenzo Ballerini called Aeterna. The duo of Italian artists combines sound art with interactive multimedia creations. In this project, live electronics and LED visuals create a continuous interplay between lights and sounds. Light illuminates our biological connection with electricity, while ephemeral sound becomes a representation of change and a manifesto that moves into the present, but then returns and evolves to preserve memories, emotions through new bioelectrical connections. In these experiences, ephemerality does not disappear, but rather is preserved and transmitted.

The "Gaida" festival, which won the title of European festival laureate (EFFE Laureate) a few years ago, aims to give the audience the opportunity not only to admire the works of top-level performers and creators, but also to get acquainted with musical innovations, works inspired by this era, which reflect the spirit of the open festival. Therefore, for the second year in a row, creators of electronic music and audiovisual art were invited to propose new creative projects for the "Gaida Open Call" competition, from which three of the most interesting ideas entered the festival program - the works of artists from the Netherlands, Finland and Italy are presented here.

ATTENTION! Entry to the event is free upon presentation of a valid student ID. To get a ticket, register by e-mail. by email [email protected], attaching a photo of the student ID.