MULTIMEDIA
The purpose of the Multimedia elective laboratory course is to introduce students to contemporary digital spaces of artistic expression. The resources provided aim to support both the technological development of students’ digital interactive projects, and the acquisition of skills for engagement in the realm of so-called “creative digital technologies” (virtual and augmented reality, digital games, artistic works on the internet, interactive installations, multimedia spaces and communities, e-books, and applications for smart devices).
The course is designed addressing students familiar or unfamiliar with digital technology. Specifically, students who are not familiar with technology utilize the visual arts skills they acquire in the basic study cycle of the Athens School of Fine Arts (e.g., drawing, painting, sculpture, body movement, spatial installations) and, with the guidance of the instructors, integrate them into digital environments. Towards this direction, they are taught, at a basic level, digital tools of artistic expression (design in virtual reality environments, sound editing, multimedia tools for image-sound-action in real-time, etc.). Students who are familiar with technology are assigned, accordingly, to more specialized task groups.
Laboratory operating hours: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 14:00 – 20:00 p.m. and by appointment with students.
Course hours: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 17:00 – 20:00 p.m.
Specific course hours
Creative Techologies / Interactive Artworks / Virtual Reality: every Monday and Friday, 17:00-20:00 p.m.
Digital Sound: every Wednesday, 17:00-20:00 p.m.
Combined Courses and Special Seminars: scheduled according to educational needs.
Meeting hours with students:
Stavroula Zoi: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 14:00-17:00 p.m.
Taxiarchis Diamantopoulos: every Wednesday, 14:00-17:00 p.m.
Activities
Participation to the 20th Athens Digital Arts Festival, ADAF 2024 “Techno(s)cene”, 16-26/5/2024, Former Santaroza Courthouse and Justice Square, Athens. Multimedia Laboratory is participating to the 20th Athens Digital Arts Festival, ADAF 2024 “Techno(s)cene” with VR artworks by Katerina Korre, Dimitris Mantadakis, Panagiotis Porichis, Artemis Sartzetakis, John Stamatiou, Alexis Tetsis, and George Tsiakos.
Curation by: Stavroula Zoi, Taxiarchis Diamantopoulos.
Participation to the international event ΜΕΣΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΙΚΟΝΑ – INSIDE THE IMAGE – DANS L’IMAGE, Alphaville old cinema, 7-11/12/2023, organization by “Fournos” Multivalent Communication Network in collaboration with École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Paris). Projects by the students Katerina Korre and Lefteris Kontopidis were presented, as well as projects with participating collaborators Stavroula Zoi and Konstantina Vetsiou (PhD candidate at the Athens School of Fine Arts).
Exhibition entitled “Open Spaces” in the scope of 7th Chaniartoon Festival, Chania, Greece, 11-24/9/2023. Multimedia Laboratory, in collaboration with the TECHNO-LOGIA Hub, presented the exhibition “Open Spaces” featuring the participation of ASFA students Nikos Athanasakis, Dioni Diochnou, Lefteris Kontopodis, Katerina Korre, Dimitris Mantadakis, Irini Panagiotopoulou, Triantafyllia Douroupi, Artemis Sartzetakis, John Stamatiou, George Tsiakos as part of the Chaniartoon – International Comic & Animation Festival on the theme “Space”.
The students created artworks of virtual and augmented reality, games, digital books, and interactive installations, expanding traditional artistic realms of action as well as audience perception spaces. Through their works, they composed new potential spaces, open to intervention and interpretation, shaping “Open Spaces” of coexistence and collective action.
Exhibition Curators: Stavroula Zoi, Taxiarchis Diamantopoulos, Yiannis Koukoulas.
For the development of the works, collaboration was made with Konstantina Vetsiou, PhD candidate at ASFA, and Dr. Tasos Roussos, Principal Researcher at FORTH-Institute of Computer Science.
Participation to Athens Digital Arts Festival, ADAF 2023 Preview Edition, Stoa Korai, 12-14/5/2023. Multimedia Laboratory participated in ADAF 2023 (Preview Edition) with the theme “Welcome to the Uncanny”. VR 360° teasers were presented by students Nikos Athanasakis, Katerina Korre, Dimitris Mantadakis, Artemis Sartzetakis, John Stamatiou, George Tsiakos.
Curation by: Stavroula Zoi, Taxiarchis Diamantopoulos
Konstantina Vetsiou, Ph.D. Candidate ASFA collaborated for the development of the projects.
Exhibition «Parallel Realities», Multimedia Laboratory, 13-16/10/2022. In the context of the “Open Studios” events of the Platforms Project 2022, the exhibition “Parallel Realities” was developed featuring student works of virtual reality and interactive installations by Nikos Athanasakis, Dioni Diochnou, Katerina Korre, Triantafyllia Douroupi, Thodoris Oikonomou, Angeliki Papadopoulou, Vasiliki Samiotaki, John Stamatiou, and George Tsiakos.
The exhibition was curated jointly by the students and the instructors of the laboratory.
ΦΑΡΜΑΚΟΝ (Farmakon), Multimedia Performance, BBQ Festival, ASFA, 2015. This is an improvisation that incorporates virtual reality techniques, digital games, and algorithmic music in combination with musicians, performers, and the audience. It was developed collaboratively by students and instructors of the Multimedia Laboratory and the Greek-French Master’s program “Art, Virtual Reality, and Multiuser Systems of Artistic Expression” between ASFA and University Paris-8. Specifically, the participants included students Georgios Apostolakos, Apostolos Kastritsis, Georgios Pinas, Konstantina Vetsiou, Nikos Papadopoulos, Thodoris Pistiolas, Dimitris Trakas, Irini Dimou, Alexandros Milkidis, instructors Manthos Santorineos, Vasilis Vlastaras, Taxiarchis Diamantopoulos, Nefeli Dimitriadi, performer Marita Vlasopoulou, dancer and choreographer Dimitris Karalis, musician and ASFA student Maria Louizou, and, of course, the audience.
Επιλογή In Crisis, 2013. This is an artistic game in a virtual environment. It was collaboratively developed by students and instructors of the Greek-French Master’s program and the Multimedia Laboratory in 2013. It pertains to the concept of “crisis” as an object that has a structure of interconnected choices. The visitor immerses themselves, through the Oculus Rift DK1 headset, into a system in crisis, artistically represented as a structure of interconnected choices. These choices are formulated as questions that the visitor must answer in real-time, based on the direction of their gaze, which is detected by the gyroscope of the headset. The implementation of the interconnected choices system was based on the structure of a directed graph.
Artistic Direction: Marie-Hélène Tramus, Manthos Santorineos.
Instructors: Stavroula Zoi, Nefeli Dimitriadi, Taxiarchis Diamantopoulos.
Students: John Bardakos, Christina Chrysanthopoulou, Ifigenia Mavridou, Anna Meli, Nikos Papadopoulos, Argyro Papathanasiou, Maria Velaora.
The curation of the questions was assisted by Vicky Tselepides (lawyer, writer) and Adamantia Giannakoura (psychologist).
VASSILIS VLASTARAS / Professor
Visual Artist, Professor ASFA, Director of studio11asfa
Vassilis Vlastaras born at Athens in 1963 and grow up at Argos GR.
In his visual practice, Vlastaras creates large-scale site-specific installations by experimenting with various media in painting, drawing, photography, video, artist books, real time video and sound performances and computer interactive installations. By producing various artwork, he examines the relationship between artwork and urban space, the notion of the ephemeral and the interrelation between spatial movement, material and sound, often mixing different media, actions, sound poetry, writings and several elements of a heterogeneous and scalable objects. In his work, where interactivity and multimedia are vital he is continually investigating the relationships between the appetite for life and the frenzy of death, the personal and social implications of loss, oblivion, history, memory and the subsequent acts of remembrance/memorialisation. Vlastaras is teaching in Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) from 1999.
As a director of studies in studio11asfa, he likes to provide an open and supportive environment for engagement with the process of art making at the highest level, attracting an activate community of students. He encourages and supports his students, to realise and strengthen their creative potential through experimentation, dialogue and fine art making in all its forms by working alongside each other in an open studio environment creating a crossover between all artistic areas. Vassilis Vlastaras was the co-founder of ΠLATFORMES (2002-2008), a collective of art professionals ranking from visual artists to art theorists, musicians and filmmakers in Athens. Between 2006 and 2010 he was the main coordinator of Utopia Project, an annual summer residency program for artists in collaboration with experienced International artists, theorists and political scientists. Utopia Workshops were hosted by ASFA in the annex of ASFA in Rethymno, Crete, where Vlastaras performed a series of lectures and seminars about each year’s utopia’s subject. From 2013 he has been a founder and artistic director of asfaBBQ an international meeting for practitioners, theorists, students and audiences of time-based arts. From 2019 he is a co-founder of ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture an always-evolving institution for the experimentation with the limits between artistic production, the public sphere, the experience of the city and contemporary art education.
Email: vvlastaras@asfa.gr
TAXIARCHIS DIAMANTOPOULOS / Laboratory Teaching Staff
Taxiarchis Diamantopoulos, Laboratory Teaching Staff
Sound composition & computer music: sound as an artistic expression, medium and form in contemporary visual arts
Born in 1965 in Athens Greece. First degree in Computer Science (TEI of Athens, 1989). MSc in Music Technology (University of York, 1990). In the 1990s he has been a member of the Computer Music group at the Athens CCMR (Center for Contemporary Music Research) contributing to several research and artistic projects. A foundation faculty member of the Music Technology and Acoustics Department (HMU – Crete), where he taught and organised Sound Synthesis and Music Programming subjects (2000-08). Since 2007 he teaches Sound Composition at the Athens School of Fine Arts.
In 2024 he completed his PhD thesis at the Athens School of Fine Arts, department of Art Theory and History. Thesis subject: “Sound Space. A methodological approach to 20th century New Music”.
Αs author and co-author he has published a number of text books in Greek on Sound Synthesis, Computer Music and Electronic Music,.
He has a major artistic and research interest in Sound Space.
email: tdiamantopoulos@asfa.gr
STAVROULA ZOI
ΦΕΚ 267/ΝΠΔΔ/03.11.2004
Stavroula Zoi, Laboratory Instructor (EDIP), Dr. Computer Engineering, specialized in Creative Technologies & eXtended Reality Technologies
Dr. Stavroula Zoi is a computer scientist and trans-disciplinary researcher in the field of creative technologies. In 2004 she was elected member of Laboratory Instructors (EDIP) of ASFA, where she has been conducting scientific and educational work at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in the scope of the Multimedia Laboratory (2004-present), Greek-French Master “Art, Virtual Reality and Multiuser Systems of Artistic Expression” between ASFA and Paris-8 University (2012-2020), and Master in Digital Arts of ASFA (2004 – 2013).
Since 2004 she has participated in the organization and development of various international educational activities of ASFA, in collaboration with Schools of Art from Europe, in the scope of Erasmus IP Programmes, Summer Universities and Erasmus+ Programmes.
In addition to her educational work, Dr. Stavroula Zoi has developed multi-level research within the framework of interdisciplinary collaborations and research programs. Many of these results have been presented at international conferences, exhibitions, and events as demos with real-time interaction with the audience. Furthermore, she has participated in interdisciplinary groups for the development of artistic productions (theatrical works, interactive installations, digital games).
She is a graduate of the Department of Computer Engineering of the Univeristy of Ioannina (1997) and obtained her Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 2003. At the NTUA, she conducted research across a wide range of interactive multimedia applications (1998-2004) and participated in organizing technology transfer workshops in Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia.
Since February 2023, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean.
Email: vzoi@asfa.gr
Student Works
“Space XOUTH, Social experiment in multiple dimensions”, digital game – real-time theatrical improvisation, collaborative student project. It was developed in December 2019 and presented in the scope of the Xouth Festival of ARTENS. Participating students: Panagiotis Rizakis, Eleni Aidonidou, Sofia Damala, Alexandra Damirali, Harris Kladis, Natalia Mantzari, Theodore Oikonomou, Dimitra Papadopoulou and Katerina Fragkou.
“Back to Crisis: The Origin”, Katerina Korre, virtual reality artwork, 2022-2023
"Dear Sylvia", John Stamatiou, virtual reality artwork, 2022-2023
"Organic forms", George Tsiakos, virtual reality artwork, 2022-2023
"Consciousless", Nikos Athanasakis, vitual reality game, 2022-2023
"I'll meet you over the rainbow bridge", Eirini Panagiotopoulou, 2D platform game, 2022-2024
"Knot world", Artemis Sartzetaki, virtual reality artwork, 2022-2023
"My Lizard Brain", Triantafyllia Ntouroupi, 3D animation, Augmented Reality, Generative AI,2022-2023
"The Exhibition", Dimitris Mantadakis, virtual reality artwork, 2022-2023
"Romeow, Little cat in the bookstore", Dioni Diochnou, 2D game, pixel art, 2022-2023
"Random Walk", Lefteris Kontopodis, interactive installation, computer vision, 3D real-time, 2022-2023
"The New Cookbook", John Stamatiou, artistic e-book, 2022-2023