PCD25@Porto invites artists, academics, researchers, professionals, and creators to submit individual or collective artworks that explore the Sense of Wonder.
Emerging from a broad scenario of technological development in scientific, artistic, and natural studies domains, the idea of wonder refers to a constructive mode of engagement, curiosity, or astonishment in the extraordinary revealed in the world or everyday life. Exploring the 'sense of wonder' mediated by machine technologies or by algorithmic and technical processes is nothing new in the post-digital era. However, in the growing relationship between humans, devices, and computer networks, algorithms, sensors, and interfaces have promoted phenomena and procedural aesthetics that are increasingly beyond the control or thorough comprehension of their creators and observers, whether they are human agents or not.
Faced with a computer culture marked by the hybridization and overlapping of languages, media, and agents, how can wonder be (re)imagined and subverted? How have the computational tools and media we create reconfigured our communication, perception of time, and the complexity of things? How can a sense of wonder be used to question technological saturation and digital consumerism?
Based on these (non-limiting) questions, we encourage submissions that explore the potential of algorithms, human-machine interactions, and/or digital systems to reflect on and provoke conceptual and sensory experiences of wonder.