“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
Zakros Commons (opening Spring 2024) is conceived as a global online arts complex that seeks to create an unparalleled Internet-based environment for digital art, social engagement, and collaborative innovation. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Randall Packer, Zakros Commons aims to go beyond traditional physical boundaries of theater and exhibition space by using the Internet to bring together artists, technologists, and audiences to create and experience new online artistic forms.
The Commons will house the following key features:
(1) Telematic Theater: an online tele-laboratory, virtual theater and exhibition environment for artistic collaboration, specifically designed for the creation and presentation of experimental online performance and interdisciplinary art.
(2) Open Source Studio (OSS): for artists, engineers, digital architects and curators, OSS will provide virtual studios and software tools for sharing the collaborative process of research, design, and production.
(3) Zakros FORUM: members will interface with the Commons through an alternative social networking platform aimed at expanding artistic discourse in the media arts with a focus on digital culture, technological innovation, and civic participation.
Zakros Commons will be an important international hub for the networked media arts, a place to make connections, see the latest online performance art, and be part of a virtual community focused on art, technology and culture.
Let’s heed the words of Gene Youngblood:
“We must grant ourselves the utopian audacity to demand the impossible.”