At the beginning of this decade, as the era of augmented reality dawned upon us, India welcomed the first EyeMyth festival. It began in 2011 as a celebration of Visual Music at the Unbox Festival in Delhi, where it showcased experimental film and animation. Today, we’re already nearing the end of the 2010s, and technology has gotten more advanced and reality-defying than ever. EyeMyth, too, has grown along with it, eventually becoming what it is now: The premier media arts festival in India.
Eight years after its conception, EyeMyth is set to return for its 5th edition on November 29, 2019. It now moves its venue to Mumbai, where India's media and entertainment industry is thriving. Designed to be a safe playground for the next generation of creators, this year's theme seeks to provoke the thinking on Indian futures of technological creativity.
Held for three days, EyeMyth 2019 will be jam-packed with a 2-day conference, workshop, showcase and afterparties. To learn more about the program and the festival itself, we have reached out to Avinash Kumar, the creative director of EyeMyth Media Arts Festival and co-founder of Quicksand Design Studio.
Globetrotter Lab: What will be the highlights of this year's event? And how will they be different from the last one?
EyeMyth 2019 is an attempt to set the tone for the conversation on the future of everything.
This edition’s highlight is an un-serious conference titled Massive Mixer - a new addition to EyeMyth’s programming, which is a 2-day visual conference on the future of storytelling in India and beyond, featuring 50+ inspirational local (Indian) and international speakers sharing their approaches and techniques for crafting the future of creative technologies.
We have curated 10 themes framed around the “futures of…” - storytelling, art, music, gaming, transmedia, heritage, coding, etc. Speakers represent established and emergent voices from India, the UK, Australia, and Switzerland, curated to demonstrate a variety of creative strategies to media arts, with discourse in Indian realities and opportunities for media expressions in the Global South.
This year’s edition also brings to attendees - for the first time ever - a Speculative Sunday workshop - which is a day devoted to hands-on workshops that visualizes radical cultural futures for India while learning new skills in speculative design and design fiction. This high energy workshop on the future is a great place to seed future collaborations.
Some of the new media showcases such as the Indie Game Arcade brings to visitors video games from Switzerland and India - and is also a new addition to this year’s programming.
Globetrotter Lab: What's the art, especially the media art scene in Mumbai and/or India like?
The Indian digital arts scene is at the cusp of becoming exponentially more potent and diverse. The next decade of Indian creativity will hopefully create a distinct and powerful identity for its creators and their work globally. EyeMyth sees the need for entities like itself to articulate and expand on the emerging discourse around these new currents. There are very few safe spaces for these new communities to express their practice as well as build new creative networks. EyeMyth attempts to fill this space through its festival and its persistent program called Future Fiction, which has curated and organised a series of events across Mumbai addressing the future of Indian digital expressions.
Past Editions of EyeMyth Media Arts Festival
Globetrotter Lab: What would you want to achieve from this event? What is the end goal?
I think the biggest gap that exists today is between the emerging works and thoughts of creators and audience perceptions around new and experimental forms of media. A large mandate for EyeMyth is to articulate and broaden the understanding of Media Arts and move it beyond pure entertainment. The other large gap is between industry players/brands and creators - because of which funding is a huge constraint for creators today. EyeMyth tries to plug in both these gaps through its programming and experiences. The larger idea is for visitors to enjoy, learn and explore the endless possibilities of new media expressions and immersive storytelling.
EyeMyth Media Arts Festival will run from November 29 to December 1, 2019 at Deepak Cinema (Matterden / Lower Parel) || AntiSocial (Lower Parel)
Tickets are available on Insider. For more information, visit the official website here.
All images c/o EyeMyth Team
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