KP22-digital marks the second year of the juried exhibition for digital art. The very concept of creating an exhibition specifically for digital art raises many questions of our understanding of this type of structural definition, especially as digital technologies already play such a significant role in our everyday lives that pinpointing an incongruity between digital and non-digital is increasingly difficult.
We experienced that attempting to define what constitutes the digital in the submitted works was almost meaningless. The works challenged our interpretation of the digital in so many ways, through their numerous themes and unmediated connections with other fields. Art always shatters any framework imposed on it. Rather than the format of KP-digital delineating boundaries for the works, the works themselves form a volatile foundation under the format itself, which is precisely as it should be.
The diversity of works in this year's KP-digital bear witness to the many approaches to understanding the digital as material. During the selection process, it has been essential for us that not only is the material digital, but that the works also examine and reflect on this materiality, whether through VR, social platforms, open-source frameworks, browser aesthetics, online performance, generative art practices or something totally other. We were curious as to how the tools you work with seep in as an element in the work. And we have been conscious of how this exhibition can suggest how a digitally based art affects the viewer's senses, thoughts and judgements.
The works constantly transcend any dichotomy, operating in divergencies across several fields, in their in-betweenness with the digital. Digital is no longer some peculiar sub-genre, and although the concept of "new media" was meaningful in the past, it no longer makes sense as a label in our post-digital world. Every artist now engages with the digital when they conceptualise, produce and present their work, in one sense or another. Digital has become a part of everyday life, for everyone. KP-digital provides an opportunity to explore the sensibilities that arise in this terrain and examine how digital infrastructures affect our visual creation. And it is invigorating for us to see what unfolds in this unique space and context, in the realm of the digital.
/ Lone Koefoed Hansen, Anders Visti & Mark Tholander
KP22-digital Jury
