VCUQatar Presents ‘Craft for the Digital World’

The lecture will focus on knowing how to do or make something, which OFFF says, is as important as the idea behind the work. It will look at the union of digital tools and the knowledge of physical realities, a balancing of the virtual and the analog.

“These are exciting days, where we are exploring new ways to express human feelings,” say Ros and Garcia. “Many of us have suffered an education that placed too much importance on analysis; nowadays, young artists/students are falling into the hyper tech clutches; technology makes your life easier, but also makes you lazier. The ultimate remedy is to be innovative: getting our hands dirty, not denying the importance of the brand-new app or deluxe plugin but also convincing ourselves to do arts and crafts, motivating ourselves to enjoy all different artistic expressions, exploring new narrative territories. We have to teach everybody to use any tool available but not forget the ideas, the organic. Creating experiences that improve our everyday lives, interacting with people and spaces, that is design, that is OFFF,” they add.

OFFF is an entity in continuous transformation, alive and evolutionary. More than a decade ago, it was born as a post-digital culture festival; a meeting place to host contemporary creation through an in depth program of conferences, workshops and performances by the most relevant artists of our time.

These days, OFFF keeps being a reference event throughout the world – a festival hosted in Barcelona, New York, Lisbon and Paris which has featured renowned artists such as Joshua Davis, Stefan Sagmeister, John Maeda, Neville Brody, Kyle Cooper, The Mill, Digital Kitchen, Ben Fry & Casey Reas, Golan Levin, Chris Milk, Rob Chiu, Julien Vallée, Paula Scher, Rick Poynor, Erik Spiekermann, Dvein, Erik Natzke, Vincent Moon, Ze Frank, Alex Trochut, among hundreds of others.

The OFFF phenomenon has also produced the creation of an extensive international network of artists, developers, theorists and even more importantly, people who love art in all its multiple expressions: students, fans, professionals and the curious. People who want to show what they do, to discover what others do and, above all to share their knowledge and their desires to inspire and to be inspired. Once on stage, they share their work, visions and experiences, which merge the latest possibilities of technology with innovative concepts. Commonly they are not attached to just one platform; their outputs may overlap interaction, music, motion, biology and robotics among others.

Additionally, the OFFF network includes a teaching center, OFFF Atelier, a continuous presence on the web 2.0 and a permanent group of artists, organizers and producers ready to host OFFF events wherever they are in demand. More than a decade ago, OFFF was born as a festival. Today, OFFF is a way of understanding art. A way of life. Evolving and transforming.

VCUQatar’s Crossing Boundaries Lecture Series reflects the cross-disciplinary nature of the featured speakers who are representatives of excellence in creative and innovative thinking. ‘Craft for the Digital World’ is the third in the series of five lectures and will be presented on 9 December, 2012 at 6:00 pm at the atrium at VCUQatar. The lecture is open to the public.