Mission
While gratefully standing on the shoulders of art & tech giants, we, Denver Digital Land Grab, are probing the fissure between the IRL (in real life) & VR (virtual reality) & discovering uncharted territory, which we have carefully tagged for further exploration & exhibition until the Colorado Real Estate market loosens its death grip on the throats of Denver artists.
We have readied our AR (augmented reality) platform & are prepared to pepper the metropolis with color & digital manifestations of locally made artworks in all mediums. We are entranced in a fantastic dance with this auspicious technology, come learn the steps with us!
Digi Land Grab is an ambitious artist collective creating mixed reality exhibitions that seek to democratize augmented reality through an open source platform that will allow everyone to make meaningful contributions to the vast digital landscape that surrounds us.
Free from the constraints of data mining & privacy violating media conglomerates, Digi Land Grab offers a mechanism for artists, collectors, curators and spectators to engage with augmented and virtual spaces on their own terms.
While Digi Land Grab creates exhibitions, we are first and foremost interested in working towards equity through demonstration. Demonstrations of how communities, not companies, can define the look & feel of their own regional digital area. How local artists can claim their own space, without compromising values or releasing ownership to multi-billion dollar tech companies. How the public can interact with community art without being tracked or forfeiting privacy.
Digi Land Grab is taking space back for the people and we are not asking permission!
DIGILAND
Founded in 2022, Denver Digital Land Grab is an annual, open-call, city-wide, guerrilla-style, Augmented Reality exhibition, featuring artwork in all mediums from artists living & working in Colorado.
We believe that art is language & we want to have visual conversations with artists around topics that impact our community. Each year we will introduce a unique exhibition theme asking artists to respond to a specific topic with the hopes of having a real impact on the world we live in. Selected artworks will be exhibited digitally via AR throughout the metro Denver area.
2022.Exhibition
Manifest Dystopia is a creative prompt to stimulate an experiential conversation around our individual & collective experience of a system failing, as well as our role & responsibilities in perpetuating, accelerating or correcting it. During the last 3 years we saw cracks in the structures that both sustain & oppress us. We want to see what comes from artists pressing fingers into that crumbling brick & mortar, & then having a hand in building the hereafter.
What to Expect...
- 9/1/2022 - art submissions due by midnight
- 10/15/2022 - Exhibition Expected to Launch city-wide for 1 year
- Maps & details about locations/artists available close to launch.
- Art populated in small clusters across metro Denver encouraging viewers to get out & explore IRL!
- Artwork archived indefinitely in our web VR gallery.
- Please note: accepted artwork will be exhibited virtually, in a public space, via AR, which means it will only be visible through our platform on smart devices such as phones & tablets.
- We strive for inclusivity and are dedicated to providing a respectful and harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, place of origin, body size, religion, gender, gender identity & expression, class or race. We do not tolerate harassment of people at our events or on our platform.
- The future is now... it can be tricky. Please go forth with kindness.
Founders
David Hanan is a web designer & 360 photographer & Corrina Espinosa is a Denver based new media artist & curator interested in all things art & tech. Commonality of the metaphorical “head, heart & hand” are paramount in this collaboration. “Head” is their shared ideas & also their complimentary technical abilities– where one may lack, the other excels. “Heart” is their mutual passion for art, tech & community, & “hand” is their matching work ethic & dedication to the quality of their craft. Together, they are on a mission to help create space, opportunity & equity for all Colorado artists.
Corrina teaches digital art at CU, Boulder & has exhibited her art locally at the Denver Art Museum, Meow Wolf & BMoCA as well as internationally at venues in Barcelona & Bosnia. Along with a list of friends and collaborators she spent the last decade throwing Denver art shows with a zeal for community and inclusivity. David has 5 years experience working in Virtual & Augmented Reality. He is the head of XR at Spectra Art Space & has designed virtual experiences for the International Design Center, Lion Brand Yarn & was the world’s first virtual reality tour guide as the Travel Proxy.
digilandgrab@gmail.com Team
