From the project publication:

"The curatorial organisation KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis form Zagreb, Croatia initiated Device_art in 2004 as triennial comparative research project focused on tracking, exploring and communicating art that integrates the technological device as an artistic medium in a critically potent, provocative or playful manner motivated by curiosity and by the unconventional, out-of-the-box viewpoints of the artists. Since then, a permanent partner in the project has been Slovenian curator Sandra Sajovic from Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, along with many international partners such as Communication Space Školská 28 and CIANT (Prague, Czech Republic); Praksa (Ljubljana, Slovenia); KIOSK (Belgrade, Serbia); sonic space labs (Berlin, Germany); Device Art Japan, SuperDeluxe, Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan) and blasthaus gallery (San Francisco, US).

The term “device art” relates to art production grounded in the use and creative tooling of analogue/digital, low/high technologies, including machines, gadgets and devices. The project aims at positioning works not so much as a high-tech artforms, but rather as the result of those creative tendencies that by their very nature are located on the borders of art-design, gadget-hack, etc. From conceptual provocations and innovative interfaces to utilitarian products and toy-hacking, the wide range of projects seems to help explain our relationship to technology and technology's relationship to art.

Starting off as a project that aimed at pushing the limits of the regional device art scene and, at the same time, continuously stimulating artists to deal with the contemporary technological context, Device_art has by the year 2013 grown into an exchange project with strong connections between different contexts, placing the regional scene in relation to similar trends and phenomena in other countires and emphasizing the similarities and influences between device art scenes and different cultural backgrounds, as well as between varieties of artistic approaches to the technology of the device and its creative potential. In its nine years of existence, the project has presented and theoretically contextualized very different forms of artistic activity: from devices that bashfully flirt with technology and science, to those that enter into a complex relationship with the issues of the contemporary sci-tech environment; from gadgets that deal with technology in a playful, teasing and humorous manner to those that approach it from a more serious point of view; from a high-tech approach to the materialization of the artistic concept to DIY, low-tech device improvisation that maximizes the usage of on-the-spot conditions, utilizing unusual technological means to achieve the desired goal. What is interesting in defining the outline of the Device_art project is that there is no rule connecting a certain formal (DIY or high-tech) technique to a specific conceptual framework – for example, DIY devices that have a funny, colourful, quaint appearance often deal with serious topics such as the problems of a society conditioned by the cash nexus or freedom to share information through informal education. On the other hand, a great deal of the sophisticated, high tech Japanese gadgets seem to have the sole mission of evoking and stimulating playfulness and a kind of curious, ludicrous behaviour in users exposed to the devices, since the gadgets, often mass produced, are designed for precisely for play and are meant for wide commercial distribution. In the terms of playfulness and seriousness, or in the terms of high-tech and low tech device art, what is intriguing is not the above defined framework itself, but everything that occurs in between – the numerous nuances and the variety of approaches to the creative usage of the devices in the field of contemporary investigative art. And that exact conceptual frame of reference is what constitutes the very nature of the Device_art project from its beginning.

After the first edition of the festival, dedicated to the regional art scene (Device_art 2004), the project presented the Californian art scene (Device_art 2006) and then the Japanese (Device_art 3.009). As an exchange project, international in character, it strongly emphasized festival outposts abroad, which resulted in successful production of Device_art events in Ljubljana, Slovenia (2006 and 2009), Belgrade, Serbia (2006), San Francisco, US (2006) and Tokyo, Japan (2010). The fourth edition of the Device_art international triennial festival is focused on an interchange between the Czech and the regional device art scene (Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia). It is effectuated through events in Zagreb, Croatia (October 2012) and Prague, the Czech Republic (February 2013), highlighting Czech artists and placing the focus on the concept of robot in order to map the traces and influences of the tradition of the robotic in their contemporary art. Defining the robot broadly, as an artificially generated and (more or less) autonomous mechanism that is able to establish a connection with the surrounding living world – either by direct contact with a living being, or via simulation and imitation of the behaviour that is characteristic of a certain living being – the project revealed the logic of the robot even in those art devices where its presence is not entirely obvious.

Device_art 4.013 in Prague is envisioned as an overview of current artistic tendencies that deal with the device, including recently produced artworks, documentation of artworks and artistic concepts, as well as those presented through the latest edition of the festival. Following the well established scheme of an international exhibition, a series of performances, round table artist presentations and a festival publication, Device_art 4.013 aims at introducing the project’s ideas, goals and outcomes to the Czech audience. Device_art 4.013 in that way parallels the successful presentation of the Czech device art scene to the regional public during the Zagreb edition of the event. The Device_art 4.013 exhibition accompanied by performances and round table artist presentations brings together artists from Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Japan. The exhibition thus features the self-regulating sound installation Bentronix by Marko Batista (SI), interactive anthropomorphic tech-utopian installation G8 by Martina Mezak (HR), Self-Sustaining System of Absurdity – an autonomous information cycle installation by Stevan Kojić (RS) and the mechanical illusionary image installation Pendulum by Sanela Jahić (SI). The latter artist also deals with the image in the video documentation of her cybernetic performance Fire painting. A second video documentation presented in the exhibition shows a device containing a sculpture of the circulation of matter and shape shifting named Furnace for the sublimation of spirits by Silvio Vujičić (HR). Accompanying the Maywa Denki (JP) musical devices and instruments, Hiroo Iwata (JP), Kazuhiko Hachiya (JP) and Ryota Kuwakubo (JP) present various devices that function as humorous body/machine modifying extensions. The device prototype Tateye by Anselmo Tumpić (HR) also deals with the possibilities of body bio-modification, while Saša Spačal (SI) in collaboration with Mirjan Švagelj (SI) and Anil Podgornig (SI) present a bio-hacked music box Mycophone and Zagreb’s I’MM_ Media lab will exhibit hacked devices such as Scanner Camera and SoundPlant2SoundBox. The performance program features I’MM_ Media Lab (HR) featuring i.m.klif (HR), Marko Batista (SI) and a guest performer, Milan Guštar (CZ).

The presentation of the ideas behind Device_art in Prague, the birthplace of the idea of the robot, and so fostering interchange and exploring connections of comparison and influence between scenes that both use the phenomenology of the device offers yet another exceptional opportunity to grasp the meaning of our technologically-defined environment, to make creative sense of the possibilities it offers, its constraints and imaginary and visionary potentials."