Luminous Visions: Where Art Meets Technology at Signal Festival 2024

Signal Festival will light up the grounds of Prague Castle, offering two video mappings and an extensive Gallery Zone.

Signal Festival will offer four days full of audiovisual art not only in public space from October 10 to 13, every day from 7:00 p.m. to midnight. This year’s edition will bring two routes – Hradčany and Centrum, will present 22 art installations and for the first time will also light up the grounds of Prague Castle.

The routes will include 7 paid Gallery Zone stops and 2 video mappings. The program also includes the first annual Signal Forum networking conference, which will fill CAMP on October 11 and 12 with lectures by experts in the fields of technology, new media and science. Here is a summary of the biggest highlights of the festival.

Festival tickets you buy online. Entrance to the Gallery Zone for the entire duration of the festival is possible with a Signal Plus ticket. The Signal VIP ticket is for those who want to experience the Signal Festival without queues, waiting, with entrance to the zone one hour earlier, with a welcome drink, the possibility of Mercedes-Benz shuttle transport to the Kunsthalle Prague and with a guided tour.

1. Ceremonial opening with video mapping on Hradčanské náměstí

The twelfth year will start on October 10 from 19:00 with a ceremonial opening in front of the Archbishop’s Palace on Hradčanské náměstí. It is accessible for free to all who want to see the video mapping of Eternal Recurrence by digital creator Filip Hodas for the first time. This Czech and internationally recognized artist, whose works become viral, masterfully plays with the border between fiction and reality. The art projection will be accompanied by the music of one of the most successful producers and DJs in the Czech Republic, Pavel Ridoška alias Rida.

Source: Signal Festival

2. The grounds of Prague Castle in a new light

This year Hradčany will be led by one of two routes that will show 7 installations over 2 kilometers. The first stop is the Riding Hall of the Prague Castle, where the Korean artist Seohyo created a colorful projection made up of elements of Prague architecture. Further along the route, the mentioned video mapping of Filip Hodas on the Archbishop’s Palace awaits you.

In the Gallery Zone, it is possible to visit the Prague National Gallery – the building of the Šternber Palace with monumental objects by Jiří Příhoda, as well as the interactive projection of Michael Bielický and Kamila B. Richter in the Schwarzenberg Palace of the National Gallery Prague. Their work can be controlled by the audience themselves thanks to the rudder in the middle of the courtyard and thus change the elements on the walls. Thanks to the cooperation with Prague Castle, people will also get free access to the South Gardens of Prague Castle, where they will see an object mirroring their surroundings by the Spanish studio SpY. The route ends at the Kunsthalle Prague gallery. An exhibition of the British group UVA, which is known, for example, for its collaboration with the music group Massive Attack, will be on display here.

3. The city library will be transformed into an artistic area of ​​visual projections

This year, the festival will bring video mapping to two historic buildings in Prague. In addition to the Archbishop’s Palace, the audience can also look forward to a projection on the Municipal Library building on Mariánské náměstí. Its facade inspired the video mapping show of the Spanish-Danish visual duo Desilence. His projection of The Rhythm of the Ocean transports the audience into the depths of the mighty element with musical accompaniment by five-time Grammy Award winner Suzanne Ciani.

Both video mappings will be free and run every 15 minutes from 19:00 to 24:00. You can shorten the wait between screenings with interactive video mapping of the national brewery Budějovický Budvar in cooperation with TMBK.

4. Get closer, experience more. The gallery zone promises a unique experience

This year, Signal Festival once again cooperates with leading cultural institutions and offers visitors the opportunity to see installations at prestigious locations in Prague. The works of prominent artists will be on display in the Riding Hall of the Prague Castle, in the Šternber and Schwarzenberg Palaces, which are managed by the National Gallery Prague, in the Kunsthalle Prague, the Clam-Gallas Palace with a performance of Laterna Magica of the National Theatre, the Baroque Refectory of the Dominican Monastery with an installation created in collaboration with the Ars Electronica festival and the Center for Architecture and Urban Planning (CAMP).

Source: Signal Festival

5. Modern objects by Jiří Příhoda with reference to Renaissance elements

Jiří Příhoda, one of the leading Czech artists, will exhibit three works of art in the Šternber Palace of the National Gallery Prague. His installations at the border between architecture and sculpture include the works Capriccio, the UAPs oval object using artificial intelligence and the experimental abode Karbola. Despite the static nature of the works, they create the illusion of movement thanks to precise work with geometry, light and shadow.

6. Combination of theatre, performance and audiovisual art

For the third time this year, Signal Festival continues its successful cooperation with the multimedia group Laterna magika. This time there is a theater and dance production by Miřenka Čechová on the program, which will take place in the courtyard of the historic Clam-Gallas Palace. During the performance called Iron Horse: Fractured, the audience will find themselves in the role of passengers waiting for the train and will watch the stories of the characters through the windows of passing trains.

7. A new dimension of reality on the Old Town Square

The dynamics of the Old Town Square area will be revived by an audiovisual installation by the Chinese artist Cao Yuxi. It is based on the totem motif, symbolizing belonging to the current digital society. Inspired by the QR code motif and the geometric shape of the monolith, the installation depicts the interface between parallel lived worlds. The audiovisual installation combines spatial sounds of the digital and real worlds. The patron of the installation is the ČEZ Group.

Source: Signal Festival

8. Conference with an astrobiologist from NASA and the artists who lit up the Empire State Building

In its twelfth year, the festival of digital and creative culture is expanding with a new European creative forum. Signal Forum was created in cooperation with the Slovak festival Sensorium and on October 11 and 12, 2024, it will offer lectures, workshops and accompanying activities that will connect professionals from the fields of art, science and technology. He will bring 15 internationally recognized speakers to Prague, including from NASA and CERN.

9. From the Matrix to the gallery. The exhibition in the Trafo Gallery accompanies the festival program

The exhibition The Red Pill in the Trafo Gallery connects technology with Czech constructivism. Artists like Pavel Korbička, Tereza Severová, Michal Pustějovský and others work with light, algorithms and codes to offer a new perspective on the harmony of the world, similar to the red pill from the Matrix. The exhibition will be accompanied by evening outdoor installations by authors Jan Poš, Lukáš Dřevjané, Pavel Holeček, Marek Čihara and Aleš Hvízdal, and will be open for free until midnight during the festival.

Source: Signal Festival

10. Partner installations and cooperation with institutions

The main partner of the festival, Mercedes-Benz, placed its cars in the Klementin courtyard, on which the animation of the award-winning studio Monument Office, led by Václav Mlynář, in cooperation with Signal Creative, will run.

The audiovisual object glo™ DIALOG, created by the artist Jan Hladil together with Jakub Strach aka DJ NobodyListen, will also attract the public’s attention. A ten-meter-high hexagon made of LED panels detects the movement of spectators with the help of infrared cameras. The musical scope of the festival will be expanded on Friday and Saturday by the Pražská plynárenská Stage on Karlov náměstí. Here, the audience can look forward to performances by the artists Lazer Viking, DJ Robot or the group Lišaj&RealityCongress.

Other useful tips

When planning routes, the festival map will provide the best orientation. For a convenient display of the map, but also the entire program and other necessary information on the mobile phone, it is enough download the festival app. You can also find the map at the lightpoints at each installation, on the route navigation or on the Signal Festival website.

Along the Hradčany route and the route through the center of Prague, it is best to use public transport, the Malostranská, Staroměstská and Karlovo náměstí metro stations serve as a good starting point.

However, you can best enjoy the Signal Festival at your own pace – and you can also contribute to a good cause by downloading the EPP Help with Movement application, through which the ČEZ Group will support a selected project.

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