German musician The Unik performs a short set at a workshop with local musicians on October 26. The embassies of France and Germany are hosting a digital art festival that will bring local and foreign creative talents together to participate in workshops, eventually culminating in a concert on November 14.

THE embassies of France and Germany will host a digital art festival on November 14 as part of their respective cultural programs.

The first such digital festival in Myanmar has brought eight musicians and artists from France, Germany and Myanmar together to workshop ideas in electronic music, graphic art and video art.

The artists include Pablito Zago and The Unik from France, Doshy and Raspel from Germany, and DJ Jay, Na Gyi, Ko Toe (Two Twenty) and Ku Kue from Myanmar.

The final evening of the festival on November 14 will be the result of a three week long workshop that began on October 26 at 340 Pyay Road, Yangon. The lead artists will work on ideas with the other creative artists.

Video artist Raspel from Germany described the feeling of working together with local musicians as “incredible”.

“I love it, it’s really great. In this workshop, I want to be open to all and create things using the artists’ own ideas. I’ll help them and show them what I do and the technology. I really want to see the ideas of Myanmar people,” said Raspel, 32, who experiments with motion graphics and abstract real-time visuals.

French electro musician The Unik will focus his workshops on the process of creating computer generated music.

“With a lot of computers one computer can be used for the drum part and another one for the bass part. Everyone can turn around all the computers and play, it’ll be great,” he said. The Unik works with drum and bass music.
Nonetheless, he believes there will be some barriers.

“The main difficulty is to find people who are able to manage to get on (with) the computers and software parts and also the musical parts. Maybe everybody is as good with the computer as playing the instruments. Maybe we have to deal with some difficulties here,” he said.

The electronic musicians have tailored their teaching to make the workshops as accessible as possible.

“I think it’s really to easy to introduce this kind of music. We show the people a really easy, good and creative way and have prepared a fast means to get into it so you only need to have some basic computer knowledge,” said Doshy, who started working with digital music back in 1999 and finds his influences in sciene fiction books, 80s movies and 90s electro.

The artists are also treating the festival as an opportunity to exchanges knowledge and ideas with each other.

“I’m really excited to be invited to this event because we can meet artists from different countries. This is my second trip and I’m really pleased to come back here. On my first trip two years ago, I met with Ko Toe (Two Twenty) and a lot of young people who make graffiti works in a hip-hop style. It was really good for me. This time, I have already been to New Zero Art Space and saw their preparation for their exhibition. I’m really fond of their creation,” said French graphic artist Pablito Zago. His workshops will discuss the use of lighting techniques in photography as well as graffiti and Photoshop software techniques.

Local director Na Gyi also expects to learn from the workshops.
“I didn’t know what video art is even though I’m a director. It sounded quite strange to me. But I participated in a workshop about it two months ago and found that there are many things we don’t know so it’s an opportunity for local artists I think,” said Na Gyi, 28, who studied digital film-making in London.
The event will start at 6pm on November 14 at 340 Pyay Road. Entry is free of charge.