Fellowship

2002

Ambiente de UnReal, 2002.
Ambient from UnReal, 2002.
Ambiente de UnReal, 2002.
Ambient from UnReal, 2002.

Fellowship awarded to Elga Ferreira for the project UnReal.
Jury: Phill Niblock, Reinhold Friedl, Manuel Costa Cabral, Rui Eduardo Paes, Emanuel Dimas Pimenta and Isabel Alves.


UnReal

This installation is a hibrid space, where there is a continuous passage between the physical and the digital space. In the digital space, there is a 3D virtual atmosphere with co-habiting water and fire elements with its real and physical reactions altered. As the visitor moves in the room, its physical space mutates in real time. Through this installation, it is possible to perceive a place where physical/digital, natural/artificial, organica/inorganic, mass/energy are merged, allowing one to think about an existence lived by a technological body. The body takes on a post-biological dimension. The idea of body and its actions are amplified. The capacities of this technological body 
enable life in a new nature, amplified to computer-inteligent digital worlds. The participant is invited to interact with a new world; a new birth in a new human condition: a post-biological one. 

Biography

Elga Ferreira was born in Lisbon, in 1974. Since 2000, she teaches the Design and Fine Arts courses in ESAD - Escola Sup. de Arte e Design in Caldas da Rainha. Nowadays, she is developing a PhD in Creative Technologies in London College of Music and Media, London. Elga concluded two master degrees, the first of Digital Arts (2002) in UCP - Univ. Católica do Porto, the second of Creative Technologies (2006) in the London College of Music and Media, and in 1998 graduated in Graphic Design in IADE-Instituto de Artes Visuais, Design e Marketing. Between 1996 and 2001 she worked as a freelance graphic designer. Afterwards, she focused her creative work mainly on the development of interactive installations. Since 2003, she has been a corresponded editor of international on-line journal Leonardo Electronic Almanac (Journal in domain of the application of Science and Technology to Contemporary Arts and Music), edited by MIT Press. In 1999, she was selected for the Jovens Criadores national exhibition in Video area. She was awarded with SPEED Scholarship (2006) by Higher Education Funding Council England. Recently, she has been awarded with the European funding NEOTEC for the “NearInteraction” project.