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Five new art objects created by Latvian new media artists – Sabīne Šnē, Eltons Kūns, Miķelis Mūrnieks, Santa France and Ieva Vīksne – can be viewed at the festival with the options offered by the augmented reality app ART+. In cooperation with the students of the Valmiera Design and Art High School, under the guidance of the artist Karīna Vītiņa, a multimedia installation “Standing above water” was created, dedicated to the theme of mental health and introduced during the festival week in the former swimming pool of the Valmiera Pārgauja State Gymnasium.
The festival program is complemented by two more exhibitions specially created for this event. In the art project “Vibrations of the City”, which takes place in the exhibition hall of the Valmiera State Gymnasium “Ledus grabs”, the sounds of the city have turned into a spatial audio installation, the center of which is a person and his response to external vibrations. This unusual synergy of sound and image is created by sound artist Pēteris Pāss in collaboration with photographer Mareks Blūzmanis.
On the other hand, the series of video works “Divine Image”, created with the help of artificial intelligence, is presented to a wider audience for the first time by new media artist Jurģis Peters.
One of the long-term goals of the festival is to create a dialogue between the possibilities offered by technologists and various forms of art, so with the guest performance “Labra nams” and the research workshop “Location, microtones, choreography” the contemporary dance association “IevaKrish” is visiting Valmiera, while it will be possible to experience in virtual reality glasses the National Theater performance “Open your eyes” (director Valters Sílis) created especially for this technology.
The broadest target audience will be offered a light walk along the Dzirnava lake in the city center on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, created by the light artists “Those Guys Lighting”, while in Pārgauja (Amatnieku Park, Cēsu Street 20) it will be possible to experience an interactive sound projection made in cooperation with multimedia artist Mārtiņas Dāboliņas.
The Valmiera International Multimedia Festival is the first of the long-term initiatives of the Dynamic City Program, which continues the development directions of the city’s cultural life, which were marked when Valmiera was a candidate for the European Capital of Culture 2027 title. More information about the festival program is available Valmiera region municipality websiteand in social media – Facebook and Instagram accounts and on the festival event page.
