Hek Residency Open Call

The SPATIAL AFFAIRS. Extended Reality Experiences project invites artists or choreographers for a residency at the three participating cultural institutions to develop prototypes for performances in physical space that interweaves body, space, technology in synergetic ways to foster collective lived experiences.

The project is a two-year, joint program between the cultural institutions HEK (House of Electronic Arts) in Basel, Switzerland, MAP – Museum of Art & Photography in Bangalore, India, Tabakalera International Center for Contemporary Culture in San Sebastián, Spain, in collaboration with the technological and research partners iart, studio for media architectures, and metaLAB (at) Basel, Switzerland, and technological research center TEKNIKER in Eibar in the Basque Country in Spain.

A substantial part of the project will be to support the creation of prototypes that will be developed in the residencies in the three cultural institutions named above. The artists for the residencies will be selected by open call. The residencies will last six weeks, and will take place between June and July 2024. The duration of the residencies will be agreed with the committee and will be subject to the cultural institutions availability and its commitments with regard to its programming.

Developing prototypes will either be based on the new XR (extended reality) platform AIRE, developed by iart, a platform based on a game engine that uses location tracking to design hybrid experiences in real time, supporting the residencies in Basel and Bangalore. Tech partner TEKNIKER supports projects that are exploring contexts of collaboration between physical non-human agents in confined spaces and the humans that also inhabit those spaces (including collaborative robots, machine vision, AI, XR).

During the residencies, the residency artists will be involved in internal and public workshops at the venue of the location to present their work/process to the group as well as to local artistic communities. The technological development will be shared as well. Participating artists will be asked to do presentations with a focus on their research. More information about the open call can be found here.