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interSpace Media Art Center

(Sofia, Bulgaria)

interSpace Media Art Center was founded in 1998 in Sofia, Bulgaria, to produce, develop and promote Bulgarian media art locally and internationally. Since its creation, interSpace has forged creative relationships with several international organizations such as The Kitchen, in New York, the Netherlands Media Art Institute - Montevideo/TBA, in Amsterdam, and Van Gogh TV, based in Austria and Germany. The centre also has several important local collaborative partners such as the International Youth Film Festival in Sofia, as well as the Soros Center for the Arts, with which it is working on www.cult.bg, a server for Bulgarian art and culture.

Since its inception, interSpace has been extremely active in disseminating Bulgarian media art locally. It produced several large-scale projects in Sofia during 1999 and 2000 including Project End (September 23 to October 23, 1999).

"The fall of 1999 turned out to be an extremely active cultural season, overwhelming with media art events. It was both interesting and especially significant that after a period of intense silence, sporadically interrupted by occasional events, Bulgaria witnessed a sudden boost of this new to our cultural environment art-form. The Media Art Forum Project End, organized by interSpace Media Art Center, aimed at presenting and discussing the cultural process in Bulgaria in the area of art and technology, communication and society. Another goal of the Forum was to seek opportunities for integration of this art-form within a larger European context. The event also aimed at establishing new and reviving existing networks and contacts, as well as generating a contemporary approach to the artist of the end of the millennium." (1)

This project encompassed workshops, training sessions in electronic media, and forums that followed interSpace’s participation in the 1999 International Youth Film Festival in Sofia. In this festival, organizers showcased works from the collections of Montevideo/TBA, and The Kitchen. Project End built on the momentum of these media art presentations and stimulated further discussion among artists in Bulgaria.

In 2000, interSpace continued its energetic program schedule by working on many diverse projects such as Schizoid Architecture. Schizoid Architecture is an Internet-based collaborative artwork in which artists and independent users are invited to submit digital conversations about their personal spaces.

"Schizoid Architecture is a net project, open for unlimited number of collaborators that will be involved in the creation of a virtual architectural model of shared personal spaces. The structure is simple-each one creates 360 degrees panorama of his/her interior/private space and places it within the virtual environment. The idea is to show the place you are connected with, giving individual values to the surrounding objects, which save you from the "other" world and could speak to you "a secret language" which only you can understand, or could represent your aura. This way, one’s pictured and made-as-multimedia-environment room is transferred to the net space and becomes one's personal art project. The panorama placed at the "schizoid architecture" world is connected with other interiors and thus creates specific type of communication and experience." (2)

And more recently, interSpace has been involved in the Designers Network, a project developed in collaboration with AMX in London, England. Funded by the EU Leonardo da Vinci program, this project arranges work experience in Britain for Bulgarian new media designers. These designers then return to Bulgaria and head workshops in which they share their knowledge with other local designers and programmers. The project is slated to run until January 2002. interSpace is also concentrating on enlarging its network and encouraging more artistic production through commissions and new dissemination programs, an endeavour supported by the Daniel Langlois Foundation.

Angela Plohman © 2001 FDL

(1) "Project End," interSpace Media Art Center, (accessed June 18, 2001):
http://www.i-space.org/end/engl_version/framespage_engl.htm

(2) "Schizoid Architecture," interSpace Media Art Center, (accessed June 18, 2001):
http://www.i-space.org/schizoid/en/index.html