festival tagged posts

In Asia, Thailand 2004 On  30/11/2004  No comments

We arrived in Chiang Mai during the Yi Peng Festival (also called Loy Kratong Festival). Before the trip I had read about the festival in the country, so we tried to schedule that in our itinerary. The festival is based on the lunar calendar; it is commemorated on the 12th full moon of the year.

The first day there we met a Thai family (Pracha, Jam e Gik) in the hotel. They took us for dinner and told us about their culture and the festival Together with them we bough “Krathong” (floating offerings made of flowers where in that top we put a candle and an incense). These are offerings to the mother water as an apology for polluting the waters. We put our offerings on the Ping River in front of the hotel and did same wishes. Another symbol of the festival are the hot air lanterns. Some say that when the lanterns go up they take with them our problems, bad luck, sins… Others say that they are an offering to the Buddha and the light represents illumination...

In Europe On  12/09/2003  One comment

I decided to go to Linz because of the Ars Electronica Festival. It was six days attending to lectures, performances, artists and seeing electronic art exhibitions. Yet on my first day, I visited the O.K. Centrum für Gegenwartskunst where it was the exhibition of the Golden Nica prize and honorary mentions. This years winners showed a commercial side of the electronic art. Maybe compared to years before when it was selected more critical works on activism and artificial life, this edition showed that electronic art it is already being incorporated to the big artistic market.

There were five days of symposium with lectures on mornings and afternoons. This year the theme was “Code: the language of our time”. There were lectures and presentations on code as language and art. Important names on art and technology such as Roy Ascott, Casey Reas, Roman Verostko, Florian Cramer, Howard Rheingold, Andreas Broeckmann and Christa Sommerer, participated on the conference...

In Europe, Eastern Europe 2002 On  27/07/2002  No comments

In Moscow I met a Spanish couple who told me they haven’t liked Warsaw. They said the city was too modern and the buildings weren’t attractive. I, on the contrary, liked the city. I think the reason for one to like or not depends a lot on his/her experience on the place. Even though the days were cloudy and I couldn’t photograph that much I had a good time in Warsaw. I thought people were very educated, many could speak English, I didn’t have communication problems and I found the old town really beautiful. For me there it was not modern, since I came from a city that it is a little more than one hundred years old. It was like a small town.

My first day I went to see the symphony from the Mozart Festival in the Royal Castle. It was worth it not only for the music but specially for the place, a room all decorated with golden motifs. It was like going back in time a few centuries. Another of my cultural programs was going to the movies...