CIANT (Czech Republic)

Ciant Mezinarodni Centrum Pro Umeni a Nove Technoligie v Praze

Profile of the organization

CIANT | International Centre for Art and New Technologies is the leading transdisciplinary organization in the Czech Republic (founded in 1998) that brings together scientists and cultural workers in ICT-related context of innovative research and development as well as production and dissemination projects. CIANT has earned an outstanding international reputation due to its large-scale networking initiatives and long-term focus on emerging technologies intersecting with artistic creativity. The projects of CIANT embrace, since the establishment, a participation of over 1000 researchers, artists and creative technologists gathering at various collaborative formats of laboratory-based exploratory research, in-formal learning workshops as well as art-and-academia context of events such as conferences, exhibitions and performances. CIANT has established long-term collaborations with research centres, universities as well as international research and culture bodies including e.g. UNESCO, European Space Agency or National Museums and Archives in several countries.

Role in the project

Since its beginning, CIANT has been active in producing, collecting, exhibiting, documenting, archiving and publicising new media art. EuropeanaSpace is a unique opportunity to make the large amount of material we have collected over the years available through Europeana to the broad and ever-growing audience for new media art. Organization of hackathon on digital arts and applications/services for creative content use and reuse.

Key Personnel

Pavel Smetana: Graduate of the Paris École Nationale Superieure des Arts Décoratifs with specialization in “Art-Espace”, he has been artistically experimenting in the field of digital interactive media since the beginning of the 1990s. In 1998, he founded a Prague-based organisation CIANT focusing on production and promotion of technological art and culture. Since 2003, he directed several multimedia performances, interconnecting science, contemporary dance and game technologies. During past years he also acted as Professor of 3D, VR and Art at the National Art Institute in Aix-en-Provence, France and as National coordinator of the International mobility program and expert in art/science programe in EU.

Pavel Kraus: Studies at Charles University in Prague, gained his bachelor’s degree in ethnomusicology and is currently finishing his master’s degree in media studies. In his research he focuses on independent musicians and processes of production of recordings with emphasis on the use of new media.  In CIANT, he is responsible for organisation’s financial management and is project manager of the Europeana Space project.

List of projects in which the institution has previously participated (selection)

  • OASIS, Connect databases with completely different content and render them      searchable by a common system, EU Culture 2000
  • GAMA, common platform as access point for facilities exposure, discovery and retrieval of the digital contents of media art archives, eContentplus
  • CASPAR, Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and      Retrieval, FP6: IST
  • CO-ME-DI-A, development of networked collaborations between European venues and      institutions active in the domain of digital performing arts, Culture 2007
  • TransISTor, training to European AV professionals within a series of trans-disciplinary workshops, MEDIA Training