What is mediapoetry?
«Mediapoetry» – may sound like a spelling mistake, but it is a new genre, a new poetic language. It is a new modern and young art form emerging at the intersection and synthesis of a variety of media spaces: visual, textual, audio, virtual, multi-dimensional, interactive, and multimedia.... Despite their differences, all these diverse forms are united and governed by Poetry. We do not even attempt to precisely define mediapoetry and all its possible formats, but can already confidently claim its existence.
Lyrical digression 
"on the past"
As with any phenomenon in a state of early development, mediapoetry is syncretic, eclectic, bright and vivid, yet has no clear boundaries defining the forms or laws of neither its mixing, nor the semantics and syntax of this new language. At earlier stages of development of human culture, poetry, rhythm, music, song and dance were inseparable. Such a syncretic, undivided, holistic, coherent state is a characteristic of early thought, speech and creativity in young children or in ancient peoples. Such blurred boundaries allow unlimited freedom in creating various formats, mixing and changing rules, blending play and reality. Similarly, at later stages of any development, that usually follow the stage of deliberate practice in formal rules, after precise defining their boundaries and limitations, after the achievement of technical excellence in art, - Gesse’s masters of the "Glass Bead Game" (Glasperlenspiel) create a synthesis of all branches of art in a single, universal art, indeed reach a new level of creative freedom. Similarly, mediapoetry might be a new historical cycle in the development of poetry. From a scientific viewpoint, the existence of mediapoetry could be another proof of the cyclical nature of development. From a religious viewpoint, such natural diversity of living forms of mediapoetry could prove the existence of God.
As anything new, mediapoetry neither has established rules or traditional forms, nor recognized authorities or considerable public impact, however, it attracts young, lively, creative movement, and those who grope and create a new language of expression in these new forms or their combinations, and those who are not afraid to seek and try, and to experiment, overturning horizons and looking into new dimensions.
Lyrical digression "on the present and future"
Converging different media forms and their synthesis is happening everywhere in the modern world. Telephones not just call, but they can take pictures, shoot video, draw pictures, and even send them to Internet.... Everything is fast, multidimensional, and multimedia. Pictures, sounds, and movement mix, blend, intertwine, amplified, argue, reflect each other and multiply... Creativity in these new formats becomes more and more available to anyone, and almost everything becomes possible. Today, virtually every PC user could easily make a video or write music. Any owner of cell phone with video recording can make a film. It is easy to predict that technological progress will not stop, and very soon it will be possible, in three, four, or in all dimensions, in reality or in the Internet, to embody any thought and phanasy, easily turning the truth into lie and lie into truth.
Why Poetry needs these new forms?
Someone may say “why does Poetry need all these innovations”? Poetry has been proved to self-sufficiently exist simply on paper.... Why complicate and invent something artificial? There could be a drawback of this availability of new media forms. There may be a great temptation to lose the essence, the true lively feeling, ones’ own clean vision and hot heart, to lose the true Poetry...
Nevertheless, these new forms are not artificial and do not necessarily contradict the Art. They naturally evolve with time, together with modern technology. Life itself, as it has been at all times, fills new environmental niches and rapidly expands into new forms of existence, emerging in a variety of possible and impossible conditions, despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles. So, regardless of expediency and practicability, science is developing in all directions, so the grass sprouted through the asphalt, so bacteria begin to live in boiling lava or increased radiation, so art comes to life anywhere, even where it is completely not expected.
While theorists argue what it mediapoetry, and whether or not mediapoetry can exist as a true poetic art, and not just as experimental and blank format of the game with - life shows that, in fact, this art has long been there altogether blooms. So at the time happened to the Well-Tempered Clavier by JS Bach, who made an invaluable contribution to establishing a new system of musical structure.
Lyrical digression "about Bach"
So at the time happened to the Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach, who made an invaluable contribution to establishing a new system of musical structure. At the time of Bach's, in the widespread musical harmonical system, the musical peace, performed in different keys, sounded somewhat differently, and leads to a feeling of dissonance and detuned of instruments. Bach wanted to overcome these limitations of the existing music system, and to show all the benefits of new musical system. The "Well-Tempered Clavier" was the first complete collection of works for all commonly used tonalities, written in the new half-tone system, with an evenly tempered scale, which allows music to sound equally well in different keys. The work of Bach that was very innovative and gave the world beautiful, vivid and lively works in the form of grout, and became the best known and most persuasive argument of transition to a new system of musical structure. This pioneering work of Bach, novel for his time, consequently led to changes in the laws of harmony of classical music.
Why our festival is needed?
One of the goals of the festival is to prove the existence of mediapoetry as a full-fledged genre of art, by simply showing that this genre already exists and has developed in a variety of forms. More and more often, it is not professionals, but rather laypeople with a passion for making videos, who shoot amateur movies and spread them through the Internet, show them to their friends and present them to loved ones. Poets perform in houses and at street concerts, and share their unknown, never published poems. Musicians play on the streets and write music in their kitchens. For the first time in the history of publishing, self-publishing unexpectedly exceeded traditional publishers in the number of published titles per year. People write poems and music, make movies, spread them through the Internet, send mobile messages, paint and write poetry on wallpaper, on walls, on roads, on fences, on backpacks, on themselves, in the sky ... And it's great that all this exists, just like that, for no reason. Just for celebrating the existence and vibrancy of life!
We want to give another channel in which this life can continue by our festival, and to enable those engaged in creative poetry-related work to come and learn from each other, to share their work, to rejoice, to debate, and perhaps to start something new, something yet undiscovered.
What kind of works will be presented at the festival?
We are not afraid of the inevitable eclecticism and experimentation with a combination of media forms. Despite the wealth of possible forms at our festival, Poetry and the sincerity of creativity are the most important. That is why the works submitted for the festival will be evaluated primarily on the basis of quality of poetry, not on complexity and use of uncommon forms.
At the festival, Poetry may be in any language, in any format or combination of formats (video, sound, visual, performance, printed and other undiscovered). It is worth mentioning that our festival will not include traditional recitations of verses or just songs, video or sound by themselves, without poetry. The heart of the festival is VideoPoetry, the simultaneous combination of text, sound and video, which is a very complex, challenging and interesting art form. The quintessence of the festival is the PoetryMediaMix, an improvisational live poetry performance, immersed in a musical jam and accompanied by video.
Who will participate in the festival?
Our festival will become an experimental platform for experiments on the interaction not only a variety of forms and means of mediapoetry, but also a variety of authors. Often, those who write good poetry tend to not perform/recite their work very well. At the same time, it is possible that directors who do not write poetry will be happy to create a story and film poetry, actors - to act poetry, artists - to paint poetry, and musicians - to express a verse in music. At our festival, all of them will have the possibility to find each other, and their meeting may gave birth to new art and to variety of collaborative creative projects, which will eventually benefit the authors and the art of mediapoetry.
New art demands new sacrifices. We invite for participation in the festival authors from a variety of creative perspectives and types - poets, musicians, artists, actors, rope-walkers, directors, cameramen, animators ... and of course anyone who is simply interested in our festival. Also, we invite scientists to study us and our truly living mediapoetry.
Festival objectives:
The main objective of the festival is to create a unique, free, fantastic, above-the-horizon, antigravity, noncommercial space, which will let happily bloom all varieties of creative characters, mediapoetry forms, modes of expression and experiences of poetry, where all diverse poetry movements will be able to spin and play, where a wind or current of any kind could easily flow in all directions, dancing together and not impeding each other.
Lyrical digression "about Everetts' law"
Everett’s law (cited by A. Ocheretyansky in the report on the mixed media on April 23, 2002) states that: "The confusion in the art is constantly increasing. You can reduce it оnly by implementing very hard work. However, this attempt by itself would lead to an increase in total confusion." Paradoxically, one of the objectives of our festival is to increase the level of confusion in order to achieve harmony in art.
We believe that our festival will be able to expand horizons, discover new suns, open windows, turn the worlds upside down, unite the continents, ventilate heads, stir hearts, move the fixed "assemblage points", and nurture "hundred flowers- hundred winds" of diverse poetry movements!
Lyrical digression "about Mao Zedong"
The "Ventilator" Festival is held under a slogan “Let a hundred winds bloom!” The famous slogan, adapted from the classic poem "Let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend!" was used as a slogan during Mao Zedong’s 1957 campaign to promote publicity, proclaiming a new course of development of economic, scientific and creative activity. This sentence reflects the meaning of the Chinese character "hundred" as the set of all possible combinations: to portray something in one hundred ways means to exhaust all possible variations of forms and images. Subsequently, this expression has become a popular phrase, a kind of formula to promote diversity, freedom of creativity, finding one’s own ways, and harmony of coexistence of all forms of life.
New art needs new bright, free, happy, sad, brave, and true content. We will experiment with every form, since the soil is rich and yet not plowed. We will develop by rapid technological progress, and easily incorporate any and all media forms. We will grow our festival, while being unafraid of these new forms, by feeling and creating a new language, trying to catch the wind and disperse the clouds, and more importantly – always listening to our hearts.
Expected results of the festival:
development and popularization of mediapoetry in all its forms (video, audio, visual, live, and other "undiscovered” poetry)
increasing interest in mediapoetry in all its manifestations among professionals, amateurs and enthusiasts
discovery of new names in the fields of video, audio, visual, live poetry, and other “undiscovered” poetry
exchange of experiences and transfer of knowledge in the fields of multimedia technologies and practices in the field of mediapoetry
successful outcomes of experimentation on the combination and interaction of various forms and means of mediapoetry, as well as the combination of variety of authors’ perspectives
support and development of a culture of self-publishing mediapoetry
promotion and support of non-adaptive creative activities, as well as the development of world poetry movement
widespread media coverage of the festival
support the image of St. Petersburg as a cultural capital, as a city of freedom, love and creativity, the city of bright talents, city of new opportunities and open borders
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