A Bay Area festival that explores the relationship between people, pictures, and places brought to you by Books in Browsers, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the Goethe-Institut San Francisco, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, swissnex San Francisco, and the UC Berkeley Center for New Media.

Our planet is wrapped in images. From stratospheric satellite stills to disembodied medical x-rays, we use pictures to describe our environment with unprecedented frequency. Images have become the common language that allows us to not only understand our present landscape, but also access the inaccessible.

At Image as Location, an international group of experts discuss and visualize how images define locations. Through exhibitions, conferences and workshops, artists, theorists, and technologists from Europe and the Americas will question how we are shaped by the images of our world.

The Conferences:

October 22nd, Image as Location conference, hosted at UC Berkeley, brings together the artists, technologists, and theorists at the heart of our Bay area festival to discuss how images define our understanding of our environment, by allowing us to access the inaccessible.

Beginning at the microscopic scale and moving through our human dimensions into planetary orbits, we will discover what it means to wrap our world in visual artifacts both from a cultural and public policy perspective.

October 23 & 24, 2014, Books in Browser Conference, hosted at Gray Area, is a small summit for the new generation of internet publishing companies, focusing on developers and designers who are building and launching tools for online storytelling, expression, and art.

The Exhibitions:

Virtual Relocation at Goethe-Institut San Francisco (October 16 – 24)
The act of rearranging, deconstructing and reframing images previously viewed as static raises questions about object permanence, locational context, the mutability of art and the internet as place. NewHive–a digital multimedia publisher–and the Goethe-Institut San Francisco are currently accepting entries for a collaborative exhibition between the public and the artists featured in Image as Location to create virtual remixes of their favorite works of art, both from each other and the world at large. The top selections submitted will be featured as installations in this exhibit at the Goethe-Institut San Francisco in both physical and digital formats. Submissions close on Friday, October 3rd, 2014.
The top selections submitted will be featured as installations in this exhibit at the ART-Lounge of the Goethe-Institut San Francisco. In addition to having your art included in the exhibition, winners receive additional prizes and the large format print of their artwork after the show.

Submission instructions: Create a NewHive account if you don’t already have one. Click the create button and upload or create your artwork. Save your creation and tag it #VIRTUALRELOCATION. Online Login & Submission: newhive.com

Opening Reception: Thursday October 16, 6:30pm | RSVP to:
[email protected]
Exhibition hours:
Mo-Thu, 10:00am – 1:00pm and 2:00pm – 6:00pm
Fri, 10:00am – 4:00pm
Free and open to the public

Xavier Lucchesi at Gray Area (October 17 – 26)
Artist talk: Monday, October 20, 6:30pm
Opening reception: Friday, October 17, 2014, 5:30 pm – 10:30 pm
French artist Xavier Lucchesi uses X-rays and scanners to create images, allowing him to transcend opacity and peek inside the unknown with a very graphic rendering.
For more information click here: grayarea.org/event/glance-inside-the-body-xavier-lucchesi/
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, 2665 Mission St., San Francisco

PLACEMAKERS Exhibition at swissnex San Francisco (October 21 – Nov 14)
Opening reception: Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 6:30pm
This exhibition steps inside the world of the MAPs, Moments in Algorithmic Places, to discover the surreal yet familiar landscapes of three placemakers who use 3D mapping software as their muse: Swiss artist Regula Bochsler, San Francisco-based artist Jenny Odell, and Brooklyn-based artist Clement Valla.
For more info click here:
swissnexsf.org
swissnex San Francisco, 730 Montgomery St, San Francisco

Join us for a festival that will change how you see your environment — and don’t forget to bring your camera!

Media sponsorship provided by KQED and NewHive.com