Bucharest City Hall, through Creart – Center for Creation, Art and Tradition of Bucharest Municipality, organizes since 2014 iMapp Bucharest – one of the biggest international 3D video mapping competitions, that brings design, contemporary art and ab unforgettable show directly on the 23,000 square meters façade of the Parliament’s Palace (the second largest administrative building in the world), in Bucharest, Romania.
Throughout five editions, the festival brought together audiences of over 300,000 spectators and has become a reference subject for the international audiovisual industry specialists.
Starting this year, iMapp Bucharest becomes the International Video Mapping Competition – Winners League, inviting in the Capital, in September, some of the best video mapping artists in the world who are the winners of the last edition of these famous international festivals: Borealis (U.S.A.), Genius Loci Weimar (Germany), Kyiv Light Festival (Ukraine), 1minute projection mapping competition (Japan), as well as the winners of the 2019 edition of Zsolnay Light Festival (Hungary) and Luz y Vanguardias (Spain) who are about to be announced soon. These 6 teams will be joined by the winners of iMapp Bucharest 2018 edition – Jury Award and Public Award.
Thus, with the 6th edition, iMapp Bucharest becomes the binder of the video mapping scene across the world, creating, together with the 6 partner festivals, a community of those who have transformed video mapping into a form of emerging visual art, which at this moment enjoys a real success in various fields of activity. At the same time, through this collaboration arises an international platform that encourages artists to participate in many video mapping competitions and to present their work in as many corners of the world as possible. Starting this year, winning a prize at one of the international festivals of this genre, brings the video mapping artists closer to Winners League – iMapp Bucharest qualification.
The 8 artworks of the participants will be analysed, in the evening of the event, by a specialized jury, consisting of important representatives of the 6 partner festivals. At the end of the evening, they will decide the winner of the Jury Award and the public will be able to choose the winner of the Audience Award by voting via sms.
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PARTNER FESTIVALS
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BOREALIS (U.S.A.)
www.borealisfestivaloflight.com
BOREALIS – Festival of Light is a competition and exhibition of technology and light art that takes place each year, in October, in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. The festival is free to the public and features a unique combination of live music, street art performance, lighting art installations and multimedia video mapping, designed to transform landmark buildings and façades into a virtual reality extravaganza – an urban canvas for unconventional storytelling by artists from around the globe. Within the 4-day-long event, more than 120.000 people admired the artworks on site in 2018.
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GENIUS LOCI WEIMAR FESTIVAL (GERMANY)
https://www.genius-loci-weimar.org
The international GENIUS LOCI WEIMAR Festival for audiovisual projections was launched in 2012 as part of the ”Weimar Summer” initiative. Optimally located in this city of poets, musicians and thinkers, as well as the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement, the festival has become an important cultural event for Thuringia and is now in its seventh edition. Throughout, the festival is distinguished by the interplay of a broad range of artistic genres, the event reuniting the widely appreciated façade projections, the Genius Loci LAB stage featuring up-and-coming artists, as well as music events and the light installations in public spaces.
The GENIUS LOCI WEIMAR Festival is the realisation of a concept that is unique worldwide, combining digital technology with artistic expression and historical heritage. Today, the festival represents an international platform in the field of video mapping, through the competition organized at each edition: annually three façades of heritage buildings are chosen, the artists who create artworks that transform these façades being selected after an open call.
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KYIV LIGHTS FESTIVAL (UKRAINE)
KYIV LIGHTS FESTIVAL stands for three days of unforgettable atmosphere created by an international festival of light and media arts in the Ukrainian capital. The stunning possibilities of advanced technologies turn the city into an open-air art gallery with colourful light sculptures, installations, and projections. Media artists from different countries are invited to transform the River Port building on Poshtova square into a huge screen with spectacular video projections. The Kyiv Lights Festival follows the traditions of famous light festivals that are held annually in many capitals of the world. Admission is free to all festival venues.
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1MINUTE PROJECTION MAPPING COMPETITION (JAPAN)
1minute Projection Mapping Competition is an international competition and one of the biggest mapping contests in the Asian area. The ”1minute Projection Mapping Competition” started in 2012, many great artworks from different corners of world being presented during each edition.
This competition has two unique features. One is the length of content, being the shortest video mapping competition in the world, where each creator is expected to demonstrate originality, visual techniques, attractive stories and innovative ideas within a less than 2 minutes video-artwork.
Another feature of this competition is the fact that the venue and the theme are different each year, which represents a challenge for creative participants worldwide, the number of participants increasing annualy. 125 entries from 42 countries and different areas joined the last competition in Miyazaki, the southern part of Japan.
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ZSOLNAY LIGHT FESTIVAL (HUNGARY)
https://www.zsolnayfenyfesztival.hu/en
In mere three years, the Zsolnay Light Festival from Pécs has grown to become one of the most attractive events in Hungary. In 2019, the event will take place between 27th and 30th of June. Hungary’s first and still only light festival was a huge success in 2018, enjoying more than 75,000 visitors. Also this year the event will organically combine the world of light festivals with street art productions, concerts, theatre and contemporary-circus performances.
The main attraction of the festival is the Zsolnay Light Art Mapping Competition, where visitors can enjoy three-dimensional, moving light designs on the monumental façade of the Cathedral from the city, creating a world where the imagination of the public is the best guide and the curiosity – the best travel companion.
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LUZ Y VANGUARDIAS (SPAIN)
Every year in June, the festival Luz y Vanguardias places the Spanish city of Salamanca in the spotlight of the national and international art scene by bringing together an international video mapping contest and the creations of renowned artists that use the light as the raw material of their works. The event overlays the streets and the most emblematic buildings of this UNESCO World Heritage Site with art and light projections during four nights. Visitors and residents can walk around the city and learn about the latest artistic trends while enjoying the history and universal legacy of Salamanca from a different angle. The festival was organized for the first time in 2016 and it has grown significantly every year. In 2018, the festival Luz y Vanguardias gathered more than 366,000 people and 38 participants from ten different nationalities.
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iMapp Bucharest is organized by Bucharest City Hall, through Creart – Center for Creation, Art and Tradition of Bucharest Municipality.
Throughout five editions, the festival has enjoyed the participation of outstanding finalist teams from: Canada, Spain, China, Mexico, Austria, Portugal, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Japan, Turkey, Germany, Montenegro, Russia, Belgium, France, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.
Prior to the 3D video mapping competition, local and international renowned artists perform on the stage in Constituției Square, marking the offical opening of the event with electrifying concerts.
In 2016, iMapp Bucharest was nominated in the Live Event of the Year section of the AV Awards from London – a well-known international competition meant to recognize and award excellence across the audiovisual industry, organized by the AV Magazine from the UK, a publication that has been the authority in the field of audiovisual review for more than 40 years and enjoys recognition in Europe and beyond.
https://www.facebook.com/iMappBucharest
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