What are the newest artistic practices and achievements in the dynamically developing sphere of digital arts? We can find out in the days before October 30 thanks to the events in the program of the eighth International Digital Art Festival – DA FEST, organized in Sofia by the National Academy of Arts and the DA Lab Foundation. Curators are Venelin Shurelov and Galina Dimitrova-Dimova.

The first edition of the festival took place back in 2009 as an initiative of the Master's program "Digital Arts" of the National Academy of Arts, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Venelin Shurelov recalls.

"We thought that this was a logical continuation of the processes that take place in the studio of digital arts of the Academy. Artists need some context; we need an environment. In order to create a community, it must be provided with examples and art from all over the world. And this is what we have been doing since 2009. We have been trying to synchronize some global processes that bring vitality to contemporary art and supply it with topics, techniques, and practices," Venelin Shurelov has told BNR-Radio Sofia.

After the first three editions of DA Fest, it has been transformed into a biennale and so far more than 400 artists from all over the world have participated in it. "Many international artists who take part in the festival say that the artistic spirit of Sofia is similar to that of Berlin 15-20 years ago. They notice the revival of the city, the circulation of new ideas, people and practices," Shurelov, who is a lecturer at the National Academy of Arts and one of the best Bulgarian set designers, says.

This year the event will bring together more than 30 prominent artists from the international art scene, as well as young artists and students from the National Academy of Arts. Exhibitions, audio-visual, theatrical and dance performances, video art, virtual reality, streaming, three-dimensional mapping, robotics and generative systems, lectures and presentations, creative workshops and concerts are all part of the festival’s program. "The digital arts are in this transition period, in which aesthetics is seen not so much as a visual event but as a social one and presents the processes that make us more real," Venelin Shurelov says. Technology has a very active part of our daily lives and maybe that's why artists resort to it to make communication with people more relevant and adequate, he adds.

The events in the DA Fest program are held in various locations in the capital city. The major exhibition that gives start to the 8th edition of the festival is located in the Academy Gallery of the National Academy of Arts.

Editor: Vessela Krasteva

English: Alexander Markov