Projekt Atol Institute

Makrolab at Isola di Campalto in the Venice Lagoon as part of the Biennale di Venezia 2003

Projekt Atol is a non-profit cultural institution founded in 1992 by Slovene conceptual and new media artist Marko Peljhan and officially registered in 1994. Its activities range from art production to scientific research and technological prototype development and production. The technological arm of Projekt Atol, called PACT Systems (Projekt Atol Communication Technologies), was founded in 1995, and the flight operations branch, Projekt Atol Flight Operations, was founded in 1999 to support art and cultural activities in the atmosphere, in orbit, and beyond.

Projekt Atol serves as the institutional, financial and logistics support frame for several projects and initiatives, such as its Makrolab project and the recent Arctic Perspective Initiative.

Marko Peljhan represented Slovenia at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.

Projects

As of 2012, Projekt Atol Institute runs a joint programme of regular artists residencies, workshops and new media art projects together with the Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory. Since 2015, Projekt Atol and Ljudmila have been also responsible for the week-long 'hack-camp', called PIFcamp.

In 2018 Projekt Atol Institute initiated the Feral Labs Network, in partnership with Makery/Digital Art International (FR), Catch/Helsingør Kommune (DK), SCHMIEDE HALLEIN – Verein zur Förderung der digitalen Kultur (AT), Bioart Society (FI) and Radiona (HR). The programme is co-funded by the EU Creative Europe Programme.

Makrolab

Projekt Atol is probably best known for its Makrolab project which in the period 1994–2007 grew into a complex set of technological, political and environmental activities and researches. The project has won its initiator, Marko Peljhan, a UNESCO Digital Media Prize in 2004 and a Prešeren Foundation Award in 2007, and has been recognized in worldwide media art textbooks and survey literature.

In 1994 the project Makrolab was developed as an ongoing mobile laboratory set-up for open and integral research and the common work of artists, scientists, and tactical media workers in the fields of telecommunications, migrations research, weather and climate. First set up in 1997 during the documenta X exhibition in Kassel, Germany, it subsequently operated in Western Australia (Rottnest Island), Slovenia (Veliki Kras), in the Scottish Highlands (Atholl Estates) on the island of Campalto (Isola di Campalto), and (as part of the 2003 Biennale di Venezia art exhibition and the TEMPUS PHARE CBC Interreg IIIA programme) in the Venice Lagoon.

During 2007–08, the International Polar Year, the Makrolab project produced installations in Antarctica and Nunavut. This mission involved a conceptual and practical linkage of both polar regions. In this transnational spirit, Makrolab was managed by I-TASC, the Interpolar Transnational Ars Science Constellation.

Arctic Perspective Initative

Arctic Perspective exhibition by Projekt Atol Institute at the Phoenix Halle, Mainz, June-October 2010

Following Makrolab and a direct descendant of I-TASC, the Arctic Perspective Initiative is another long term project, one of the main focuses of the Projekt Atol’s recent work. It focuses on the empowerment of the Arctic people through open source technologies and applied education and training, but also serves as one of the focusing points for promotion of contemporary art and science of the circumpolar region on the "global south". The project is aimed to last at least 10 years and is based on various themes, such as traditional and contemporary conceptual art practices, architecture, geopolitics, autonomy and technology. Hatje Cantz Verlag has already published two Arctic Perspective Cahiers and two more are about to follow in 2011. A renowned Argentinian curator Victoria Noorthoorn listed the Arctic Perspective exhibition among the top ten in 2010 in the December issue of the Art Forum Magazine.

polar (2000) and polar^m [mirrored] (2010)

polar (2000), a project by artist Carsten Nicolai and Marko Peljhan, was commissioned by ICC NTT Tokyo and was concerned with the assumption of the global communications networks as an intelligent matrix. The main thesis of the polar was that the human created networks are beginning to mimic indeterminate phenomena as we find them in nature itself. The project won the Golden Nica Prix for Digital Media Arts at the Ars Electronica Festival.

In 2010 the Peljhan and Nicolai project polar^m [mirrored] was commissioned by the Yamaguchi Center for Art and Media (YCAM) as a follow-up to the award-winning polar in 2000. While in residency at YCAM, the two artists explored the the earth's radiation and electromagnetic ecosystems in an attempt to understand these phenomena as a method of environmental exploration that is deeply rooted in physical nature. Ten years after the first polar project, technology and measuring devices are even more precise. But what do they bring us closer to?

Other projects

Projekt Atol's other projects in the field of technology and communications research include the Resolution series projects, the Trust-System series projects, the Insular technologies initiative, the Wardenclyffe series projects, the Signal-Sever! series of performances, the Egoritmi-Egorhythms performances, the Ladomir-faktura series of situations, the Slovene Space Agency in Constitution initiative. In addition, Projekt Atol has produced music and sound related projects such as the Rx-tx music label and the Re-lax event series.

In 2001, together with the Baterija group of architects, it co-ordinated and lead the production of the mobile media lab Transhub, realised as Mobilatorij for the Mobitel company and managed by Ljudmila, Cyberpipe and Mobitel.

Projekt Atol collaborates with the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Moscow and between 1999 and 2003 co-ordinated seven parabolic flights in microgravity for different artistic projects, the first of these involving the Noordung Cosmokinetic Cabinet (1999); Projekt Atol subsequently produced three other Noordung Cosmokinetic Cabinet performance events prior to 2003 and continued to collaborate with Dragan Živadinov on the Three Elizabethan Tragedies [Tri elizabetinske tragedije] trilogy by the Croatian playwright Vladimir Stojsavljević. The trilogy discusses the relation between theatre and the state in the period of Renaissance through its main protagonists, namely Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The first two parts were co-produced with the Delak Institute - The Forbidden Theatre [Prepovedano gledališče] premièred in 2008 and Marlowe in 2009.

Territory 1995 is a project dealing with the Srebrenica genocide. It was presented at the Istanbul Biennial in 2009 and in 2010 at the group exhibition Serbia - Frequently Asked Questions in New York and at Museum of Contemporary art in Belgrade.

International profile

Productions of Projekt Atol have been presented at the documenta X, the Johannesburg Biennale, the third Manifesta European Biennial of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana (2000), the Gwangju Biennale, ISEA, CanonARTLAB, Ars Electronica, and at other venues around the world, such as P.S.1 MOMA, New Museum of Contemporary Art, ICC NTT Tokyo, and YCAM Yamaguchi.

Projekt Atol Institute regularly participates as a producer or production partner in various performing and new media arts projects. One such project, a recipient of funding from the European Commission's Culture Programme, was entitled IMMEDIATE: Immersive Media Dance Integrating in Telematic Environments. Together with co-organising partners Ciant (CZ), Laboratory for Mixed Realities-LMR (DE), Amber (TR), and A4 (SK), with the participation of artists and researchers from Dardex and Mort2Faim collective (FR), the project sought to develop high-quality creative workshops resulting in mixed-reality choreographic performances.

Projekt Atol Institute is partner to the following initiatives: Arctic Perspective Initiative (API), world-information.org (WIO), the MIR network (Arts Catalyst, Leonardo/Olats, V2, and Multimedia Complex of Actual Arts), Acoustic Space Lab, and AUVSI.

External links

Projects

Texts

Brian Holmes: Coded Utopia. Macrolab or the Art of Transition, 2007

Gallery

Nevromat [Neur-O-Matic], an installation by Lenka Đorojević & Matej Stupica that got the OHO Group Award in 2015

Peter Edwards (aka casparelectronics), one of the artists invited to lead workshops at PIFcamp, 2015

The Austrian musician Sebastian Frisch (on the left) was researching the accoustic potentials of wood at PIFcamp, 2015

Tilen Sepič preparing a light installation at PIFcamp, 2015

Hacking electronic circuits at PIFcamp, 2015

Egorhythms by Marko Peljhan, Museum of Modern Art

Makrolab at Isola di Campalto in the Venice Lagoon as part of the Biennale di Venezia 2003

Arctic Perspective exhibition by Projekt Atol Institute at the Phoenix Halle, Mainz, June-October 2010

Cover of Aint a Dream album by Oknai, published by Rx:tx, 2011

Cover of What Sticks upcoming EP by Borka, published by Rx:tx, 2012

Projekt Atol Institute

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