“Listen to the world with us!” – this is the slogan of the Pandemic Media Space project, the presentation of the final stage of which took place on March 27. As befits a pandemic reality, the speakers met on the ZOOM platform with a parallel broadcast of the event on the official Facebook page of the project.
14 composers from Ukraine and Poland presented their own works, which they created within the project. The Claquers have already written about the details of each composition, so the main ideas of all participants can be found here and here.
Online space, of course, brings its own special charm to any event, so the presentation of the final stage of Pandemic Media Space is no exception. From the friendly conversation of the creators of the project with its participants, technical settings, there was a feeling of gathering like-minded people in a cozy living room, where parallel conversations on common topics are inevitably started and even a furry cat can come in handy.
The transition to the formal part of the presentation took place from the introductory words of the project mentors Alla Zagaykevych, Georgi Potopalsky, Marek Chołoniewski. According to the previously presented plan, the online presentation of the composers’ works was to be the final part of Pandemic Media Space, so the mentors mentioned the origin of the idea at the beginning of the pandemic, its ethical boundaries /the project is a tool for creating algorithmic compositions based on temperature, air quality, weather and statistics on COVID 19. Some composers deliberately bypassed pandemic data due to the existing mortality scale/ and the project planning process. Marek Chołoniewski noted:
“At the beginning of the project, I imagined that it would be a collection of works that would analyze a problem that has become history. But, as we can see, we are currently in the process of a pandemic and we do not know how it will all end. Therefore, the project is also in the process, because some works are multi-visual and constantly changing. So, we should expect the next presentations as well ”.
ZOOM-meeting showed that composers and media artists united by a common creative denominator are able not only to tell about their own work, but also to create full-fledged performances directly in the video window. For example, Yuriy Bulka limited himself to a concise post on an A4 sheet Consume the web / in habbit the web, and Artur Lis was traditionally present on the air with a distorted picture. Sometimes the actual result of the artist’s work served as a fascinating spectacle, such as a patch of Danylo Pertsov’s work, which captures the world’s climate change.
Most participants agreed that Pandemic Media Space is a new special environment that can unite artists from around the world with a common idea of transforming statistics into art projects. Polish composer and media artist Piotr Madej, whose project is based entirely on data on the disease at COVID-19, concluded that Pandemic Media Space is unique in that it allows you to transform negative information into positive, turning horrible numbers into works of art.
After the presentations of all works (some of which are in the active process due to constant updating of data) we managed to make sure that instead of the project result, we got a meeting, which actually gave a new start to further creativity based on the proposed tool. Marek Chołoniewski, as if continuing the performative component of the meeting, delivered the final speech through the image of Piotr Madej’s face, so the visual series complemented the verbal component, confirming the opinion of the previous speaker. Mr. Marek announced the upcoming events of the project: a Polish presentation on April 13, which will definitely take place, but its format is unknown, as well as plans for the participation of composers and Pandemic Media Space projects in music festivals this fall.
What versions and transformations the project undergoes, which de jure ended, but de facto is only gaining momentum and understanding – it remains to be seen. Or, if you understand the creation of media projects – to join the process of actively expanding this environment with their own works, using the tool of this platform.
The Pandemic Media Space project is supported by the European Union under the House of Europe program
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