Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) is an annual International Festival that takes place every May in Athens with the aim to bring together the digital arts community with a broader audience. The festival was established in 2005, under the title Athens Video Art Festival, as an initiative of the non-profit organization Multitrab Productions.
Dive into the whirlwind of the modern world, where reality is ever-changing! Experience the thrilling combination of technology, science, and art at the
21st Athens Digital Arts Festival
Simulacra
In the age of Chat GPT and artificial intelligence, Greece's international digital arts festival, Athens Digital Arts Festival, chooses Simulacra as the most current topic concerning technology. How do we perceive, critique, engage with, and present the hyperreality of technology today in contemporary digital art?
Simulacra refers to copies and representations that no longer have an original, leading to a world where reality and simulation intertwine. According to philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the condition of Simulacra has four stages:
Stage 1: A faithful copy of the original.
Stage 2: A distortion of reality.
Stage 3: A pretense of reality, claiming to describe reality without an original.
Stage 4: Pure simulation, where the copy has no relation to any reality.
This theme confronts us with a paradox: while we seek authenticity and connection, we simultaneously create a complex web of simulations that reshape our understanding of the world. How do these digital replicas affect our sense of identity, culture, and nature? What truths and illusions arise from this endless cycle of replication? Are we in the era where simulations reign supreme, where images precede reality? Are we reaching the point where everything becomes so saturated that it becomes infinitely mutable?
From spatial immersive illusions and artificial intelligence to green technology, virtual worlds, and the pervasive filters of our digital lives that inundate our social media, the 21st ADAF | Simulacra invites you to explore and express how the lines between reality and representation blur. Join us in creating a festival experience—a deep immersion into the magical edge of the fusion of science, technology, and creativity, exploring constructed realities and digital marvels at the cutting edge of technology in art.
For our 21st event, we invite artists to push the boundaries of digital creativity, exploring hyperreality, virtuality, and the uncanny. This theme encourages us to think about how digital constructs influence our social interactions, self-perception, and collective memory. We are looking for works that explore the space between the original and the replica, the physical and the digital, the authentic and the artificial. We would like to explore the confluence of synthetic environments and ecological consciousness, envisioning sustainable futures and ecological solutions, as well as the magnificence of digital spatial illusion in 360° environments.
ADAF Simulacra is not just about imitation but about creating new realities through digital art. It is a celebration of the power of art to reshape and reinvent our world.
Artists, scholars, creators, and tech enthusiasts are invited to submit visually stunning and thought-provoking works in the 12 categories of our festival: Video Art, Animation, Installations, Performances, Music, AR/VR/XR, Workshops, Talks, Webart, Digital Image, Games, and ADAF Kids until the 15 December 2024.
Join us in exploring the digital simulacra, where art reflects not just the world as it is, but the world as it could be.
Detailed information about the submission process and the call for entries is available at the following link: www.2025.adaf.gr
#ADAF2025 #Simulacra #ADAFgreece
The 20th Athens Digital Arts Festival is co-financed by the Hellenic Republic and the European Union through the Regional Operational Programme of “Attica” in the framework of NSRF 2014-2020.
The festival offers non-monetary awards for the 3 first places of each of its categories for the online presentation of the festival. During the online exhibition, the audience will be able to vote for their favorite artworks and choose winners. The nomination will happen in a beautiful award ceremony. During the ceremony, artists will be called to speak about their work and present themselves, while they will receive a unique trophy, mentioning the artwork, the place the work received and the name of the artist. Additionally artists will receive, special stickers and laurels of the festival to add in their website, artwork e.t.c. as they choose. Winning artworks will be featured in parallel activities of the festival with mention of their winning place.