This year the Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF), titled FutuRetro, celebratets its 18th edition and a five-day gathering in the heart of Athens at the historical landmark of Kotzia Square, in the building complex of notoshome featuring Video Art, Animation, Interactive Installations, Virtual and Augmented reality (VR/AR), Games, Digital Image, Web Art, Live Performances, Workshops, Talks and ADAF KIDS, a mini digital arts festival dedicated to children, and this year a curated program for the ADAF MUSIC category.
The theme, FutuRetro, focuses on science fiction, retrofuturism and futurology and aims to present the technological milestones of today through the eyes of the past and as a foreshadowing means for the future. Marking its third year as a Hybrid Festival, the online edition of the festival, ADAF ONLINE, will be launched in the fall of 2022 as an extension to the physical edition and in an effort to make the festival and its works accessible to a truly limitless, global audience.
The Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) is an annual international festival dedicated to exploring the relationship between art, science, and technology. Showcasing contemporary digital art forms from a diverse global community of artists and scientists, ADAF has been representing Greece internationally in digital arts since 2005 and is the first institution of its kind to be established in the region.
The Festival was originally founded as the Athens Video Art Festival but gradually began to include new art forms and constantly expands as global art and technology evolve.
The Athens Digital Arts Festival traditionally takes place during spring in the historic city center of Athens, each time activating and reinventing city landmarks and spaces, engaging the local community and creating new paths where one can explore and experience the city in a new and unique way.
For this edition, Athens Digital Arts Festival has chosen the theme FutuRetro, with a retrospective mood for its coming of age 18th edition ADAF 2022, shaping from the contemporary discomfort and scepticism over the present time, especially after the pandemic and economic crisis, the climate change.
What was the past speculating about the technology of the present? How is retro technology being reused today in the section of art – technology and science? Will the contemporary cutting edge technology e.g. NFTs, AI, Contemporary Robotics, Biotechnology e.t.c be considered the retro of tomorrow? Are the current tech speculations such as superintelligence, 3D bioprinting, mind uploading, singularity, transhumanism e.t.c. the actual future? What will that mean for humankind? If art is not able to answer these questions by giving certainties it can certainly provide imagination and inspiration, two important components for the shaping of current reality of any time.
ADAF – Athens Digital Art Festival, Athens, 25 – 29.05.2022
images: (cover 1) ADAF poster 2022 (2) Lukas Truniger, «Distributive intelligence | A group mind is an immersive», 2022 (3) Angelina Papachatzaki,«Interpolate», 2022 (4) Cristian Rizzuti, «Amnesia», 2022 (5) IP Group (Jakub Lech, Bogumił Misala, Dominika Kluszczyk), Ania Haudek – Lumen
