http://www.irzu.org/festival/festival.html

In its second year, the EarZoom festival is being produced in collaboration with several governmental and non-governmental institutions, which are contributing individual program segments as well as the infrastructure for its realization. The aim of the festival is creating a referential international platform for discussing the latest developments within audio technology research and the artistic trends of sonic practices.

EarZoom 2010 is featuring around forty international artists and scientists presenting state of the art research in exciting disciplines like machine listening, algorithmic composition, new interfaces for musical expression, gesture recognition, ubiquitous computing, ambisonic systems for virtual sound environment synthesis, etc. In Slovenia, these research areas are not yet developed, which was also one of the main reasons for establishing an Institute for Sonic Arts Research.

Since IRZU is a private initiative, the successful implementation of   its program agenda as a research, production and education institute, relies strongly on the EarZoom festival, which has a crucial function in promoting the importance as well as creating an international context for IRZU's activities within the local environment. As a non governmental organization, IRZU is constantly required to legitimize its existence and fight for securing the financial means required for running its program. In order to operate, we needed to develop several different fund-raising strategies and after two years of existence, it can be said that the efforts towards keeping the institute alive and functioning are still exceeding the efforts towards developing professional contents. For this reason we decided to put these and other questions, concerning survival and identity creation within the institutional landscape, in the focus of this years festival edition. This kind of perspective extends the scope of the festival and opens a discussion concerning a broader range of cultural workers sharing a similar situation.

In collaboration with several European institutions we created a network project called T.R.A.C.E.S. - Trans-cultural Artist, Researcher, Curator Exchange Series - with the purpose of tracing and analyzing the balance between the amount of resistance of alternative institutions - proposing innovative contents - towards established institutions and the amount of adaptation of their original agendas in order to conform with the program directives set by the funding bodies. The core of EarZoom is a three-day symposium featuring artists, researchers and curators representing governmental- and non-governmental institutions from all over the world.

The main aim of the symposium is still the presentation of contemporary trends in technology based art practices, but furthermore, a critical reflection on how these particular contents are interwoven with local institutional systems is being encouraged. The task is to identify local political contexts that represent the basis on which the evolution of research and educational institutions, as well as production platforms was taking place throughout the years. The purpose of T.R.A.C.E.S. is to speak loud about the internal working concepts and questions which are usually unfolding behind the scenes. Nevertheless these survival strategies occupy a large portion of an organization's working resources and what is more, they even exhibit a strong correlation with its actual program/content outputs. Through exchange of individual experiences from local environments we would like to encourage the information flow on key strategies of establishing new / alternative institutions. In this way we can re-cycle information and consider the re-contextualization of successful solutions and development tactics in order to improve the sustainability of different local initiatives.

Festival EarZoom organiziramo že drugo leto zapored v sodelovanju z mnogimi vladnimi in nevladnimi organizacijami, ki so aktivno vpletene v produkcijo, tako da prispevajo posamezne vsebine ali infrastrukturo. Namen festivala je vzpostavitev referenčne mednarodne platforme za dialog o napredku tako v polju tehničnega razvoja kot tudi umetniških prijemov znotraj sodobnih zvočnih praks.

Festival predstavlja koli štirideset umetnikov in znanstvenikov - predstavnikov raziskovalnih inštitutov z vsega sveta - ki preko konkretnih primerov oz. lastnih projektov, ponazarjajo stanje razvoja na posameznih, trenutno aktualnih področjih kot so: strojno poslušanje, algoritmična kompozicija, novi vmesniki za glasbeno izražanje, kodiranje telesnih gest, ubikvitarno procesiranje, ambisonic sistemi za sintezo virtualnih zvočnih okolij, itd. Ker ta področja v Sloveniji še niso razvita in ker je IRZU ustanovljen prav s tem namenom, da prične z razvojem in promocijo teh vsebin v lokalnem okolju, je organizacija festivala kot je EarZoom za uspešno implementacijo naših idej v praksi ključnega pomena. S festivalom si ustvarjamo širši, mednarodni kontekst, ki je nujno potreben za prepoznavanje namena našega delovanja na lokalni ravni, kjer smo kot mlada nevladna organizacija - brez zagotovljenih finančnih sredstev - nenehno primorani argumentirati svoje programske cilje in se tako boriti za obstoj. Za zagotavljanje delovanja inštituta se poslužujemo številnih strategij, in ker po dveh letih delovanja ugotavljamo, da večino energije vlagamo prav v ohranjanje samega obstoja, namesto v programske vsebine, smo se odločili, da vpeljemo v letošnji festival tudi to problematiko. Vprašanja, ki določajo širši kontekst letošnjega festivala in ga umeščajo še v nekoliko širše polje sodobnih umetniških praks, so povezana s preživetvenimi strategijami in vzpostavljanjem identitete v sistemu nevladnega sektorja. S tem namenom smo se z vrsto evropskih institucij povezali v mrežo, oz. ustanovili projekt T.R.A.C.E.S., znotraj katerega raziskujemo in izpostavljamo razmerja med uporom, ki ga manjše organizacije v vsebinskem smislu gojimo do institucionaliziranih praks ter adaptacijo lastnih interesov oz. afirmacijo dominantnih programskih direktiv, nastavljenih s strani državnih in zasebnih teles, ki financirajo naše programe. Jedro festivala EarZoom je tri-dnevni simpozij, na katerega smo povabili predstavnike tako vladnih kot nevladnih organizacij ter inštitutov iz mednarodnega prostora. Primarni namen simpozija je sicer predstavitev raziskovalnih smernic v polju tehnoloških in umetniških praks, posebna pozornost pa je letos namenjena tudi umeščanju le-teh v sisteme delovanja institucij. Izpostavljeni so lokalni politični konteksti, kot pogoji na osnovi katerih so se skozi leta vzpostavljale različne oblike interdisciplinarnih inštitutov in produkcijskih platform. Cilj projekta T.R.A.C.E.S. je spregovoriti o problemih in vprašanjih, ki se običajno odvijajo v ozadju programskih vsebin, ki pa vendarle okupirajo dobršni del delovnih resursov posameznih organizacij. Z izmenjavo izkušenj iz različnih lokalnih kontekstov, želimo vzpodbuditi pretok informacij o ključnih strategijah pri vzpostavljanju in delovanju inštitucij, ki prinašajo alternativne in inovativne vsebine. Na tak način lahko recikliramo informacije ter razmislimo o možnostih prenosa in re-kontekstualizacije nekaterih uspešnih razvojnih taktik, kar bi v prihodnje lahko koristilo nadaljnjemu razvoju posameznih „neodvisnih“ iniciativ.