2nd Upgrade! International Meeting – Oklahoma City

In 1999, New York based media artist Yaek Kanarek and a group of new media related friends met in a bar in New York City. After this first meeting, they began gathering on a monthly basis. Those gatherings got more and more people and realizing the potential of these events, Eyebeam was approached in order to start hosting what became known as the Upgrade! New York. That was the beginning of what is now an international network of gatherings concerning art, technology and culture. Counting with twenty-two nodes, from all five continents, and still growing, the Upgrade! network (and maybe, most importantly, community) has a decentralized, non-hierarchical structure that allows local nodes to take action according to local interests and available resources. Last year, six years after the first meeting, the one that set everything into motion, Eyebeam hosted the First International Upgrade! Meeting, where all the active nodes (ten at the time) gathered, discussed the importance and goals for the future, and maybe most importantly, presented documentation of works by over one hundred artists who had participated at the Upgrade!’s local nodes.

This year, the Oklahoma City node will host the Second International Meeting. Having the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) ideology as its theme, as well as a metaphor for the functioning of the Upgrade! network, this city in the middle of the United States of America will witness, from November 30th to December 3rd, a worldwide meeting of new media artists, curators, critics and theoreticians. Over twenty nodes will be present and have been preparing specially for the occasion a program that will feature exhibitions, performances, lectures, workshops, screenings and debates. Spreading all over the city, in spaces like Untitled [ArtSpace], IAO Gallery or The Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the Second International Upgrade! Meeting will feature a wide variety of projects dealing with or exploring the concept of Do-It-Yourself.

To name just a few examples of what will be going on, from Berlin there will be a lecture about two projects aimed at turning visitors into active users. Boston is preparing a lecture on recent networked art projects engaging viewers with interplay of the physical and virtual world, as well as a net art show called DIY or Die. Chicago will be giving a workshop on investigating local water quality using artist-developed visualization software. Istanbul will be taking a screening of short videos by Turkish digital artists, a lecture about cultural technical, political and artistic systems of control dealt with in Istanbul and also a presentation about ctrl_alt_del, Turkey’s first sound art festival. Johannesburg will be addressing the issue of new media arts in Africa through a lecture and Lisbon will be showcasing a series of interactive installations and performances as well as a workshop on hacked turntables. Montreal is preparing a sound-listening lounge where participants can listen to experimental audio works from artists across the world.

These are only a few of the projects presented at the Upgrade! International. The list goes on and other nodes will have their own views on the concept of DIY and how it can be articulated within the frame of such an art event, organized by one node but closely helped by and featuring contributions from all the other ones, in what can be thought of a nomadic, global new media art festival.

For more information, please visit the Upgrade! International at http://www.theupgrade.net/
or Upgrade! Oklahoma City at http://www.1ne3.com/upgrade