Diriyah Art Futures proclaims an open name for the third Emerging New Media Artists Programme 2026-2027.
5 May 2026
Diriyah Art Futures (DAF) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has opened purposes for its Emerging New Media Artists Programme 2026–2027, a one-year, absolutely supported programme devoted to inventive manufacturing on the intersection of artwork, science, and know-how.
Diriyah Art Futures invitations participation from artists and students by way of upcoming public actions, academic programming, inventive and analysis residencies and grant alternatives. It goals to determine Saudi Arabia as a world centre for New Media and Digital Art, whereas amplifying the voices of the area in its engagement with artwork, science, and know-how.
Set within the UNESCO World Heritage web site of Diriyah, DAF displays the Ministry of Culture’s dedication to preserving the nation’s distinctive heritage whereas enjoying a pioneering position in creating and main new artwork practices that may form the way forward for artwork and humanity.
Emerging New Media Artists Programme
The Emerging New Media Artists Programme is a supported one-year programme of inventive manufacturing coaching.
Developed by DAF in collaboration with Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France, it gives rising artists with entry to cutting-edge skilled tools and a manufacturing price range, in addition to a variety of multidisciplinary studying alternatives.
The programme consists of theoretical, conceptual and technical studying seminars, in addition to private mentorship by distinguished worldwide digital artists.
Applicants can even count on an accessible house with exhibitions, screenings and devoted technical labs for skilled creation and modern digital improvement. Throughout the 12 months, the centre will host prestigious artists and worldwide establishments participating in new media and know-how arts.
Important Dates:
The 2026 – 2027 Programme (not together with Dec / Jan breaok
Application Deadline: May 31, 2026
The time period will start in October 2026
Thematic Exploration, Pre-Production & Testing: October – December 2026
Track, Tools, Mentorship & Validation Jury: November 2026 – January 2027
Production, Mentorship, Scenography & Curation: February – August 2027
Exhibition & Jury: September – October 2027
Diriyah Art Futures Campus © Schiattarella Associates. Photo credit Hassan Ali Al-Shatti
Who is the programme for?
The Emerging New Media Artists programme has been developed with rising inventive practitioners from everywhere in the world in thoughts, with a selected deal with these from the Middle East and North Africa. Applicants ought to be 35 years or youthful, on the stage of finishing a graduate or postgraduate diploma, and have expertise in creating and creating New Media and Digital Art.
Successful candidates will probably be offered an accessible house with exhibitions, screenings, and devoted technical labs for skilled creation and modern digital improvement. Throughout the 12 months, the Diriyah Art Futures hub will host prestigious artists and worldwide establishments engaged in New Media and Digital Art varieties.
The One-Year Emerging New Media Artists Programme
Phase 1: Thematic Exploration (Three Months)
The first three months of the educational 12 months will probably be a collection of thematic and conceptual explorations supplied by artists and theorists by way of seminars, lectures, screenings and workshops. Thematic subjects will embody:
TECHNOLOGY, DIGITALLY AND MATERIALITY
Making artwork in a technological period places us ready that not solely permits us to have interaction with digital applied sciences but in addition advances science and know-how by way of materials experimentation and our social and cultural understanding of know-how and science. New Media Art making has the chance to answer the disaster by addressing the results we’re observing immediately, each from an environmental and a techno-material perspective. A deeper investigation of what materials engagements provide us not solely in making but in addition in additional critiques of participating science and its affect on our cultures and societies.
INTERNET, DATA AND POST INTERNET
Addressing the Internet and information assortment as a cultural phenomenon that has not solely impacted the best way we dwell but in addition opened avenues for critically questioning large tech’s motives. We additional handle “Post-Internet” motion is distinct from the “Net Art” motion, which appeared through the 1990’s. “Post-Internet” artwork typically takes its inspiration from this motion however goes past it, questioning notions of the community, immateriality, and materiality. It questions the rise in connectivity, data overload, and so-called ideas of group. Indeed, the amount of digital information produced, mixed with exponential will increase in storage capability and real-time evaluation instruments, now gives extra prospects for exploring, exploiting, and visualising data than ever earlier than.
THE BODY & TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Effects of digital applied sciences on corporality and bodily representations. Understanding the self, others, or the surroundings with or by way of know-how. Studies and experiments across the metamorphosis of the physique –the “featured “, transformed or masked body (avatar, filter, mask), the “calculated” physique (tracker), the “augmented” physique, the “dispersed” or “displaced” physique (linked objects, video).
NATURE, CLIMATE, ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATION
What position does artwork, notably digital artwork, play in all the present transitions in vitality, society, local weather, and ecology? Artists are exploring new territories as numerous as city planning and biology by taking a inventive have a look at science and know-how. They get entangled as social actors in public areas, typically as collectives. New representations and imagery are explored, each utopian and dystopian.
HUMAN, NATURE, NON-HUMAN
In gentle of the upheavals affecting our surroundings, the separation that society has wrought between the non-human world and humanity is being referred to as into query: the concept that there’s nature on the one hand, humanity on the opposite, as separate entities. Artists are referred to as to query the character of each know-how and our world, and query the resonance between them.
MAPPING MEMORY IN THE ARAB WORLD
The use or creation of archives by artists (particularly artists from the Arab world) has intensified due to the potential of recent digital instruments. This development is especially related in work which questions reminiscence and cultural heritage, with a view to transmission to future generations.
Phase 2: Production & Mentorship (Six Months)
Over the subsequent six months, rising artists will obtain personalised mentorship from distinguished artists whereas producing their paintings utilizing the applied sciences supplied by the Diriyah Art Futures labs. Artists could have entry to cutting-edge applied sciences, together with superior audio-visual strategies, immersive actuality, coding, sensing, machine studying, and spatial audio-visual environments. The paintings produced will probably be exhibited with Diriyah at Futures as a ultimate curated and juried consequence of the one-year programme.
Artists are invited to discover a variety of up to date fields in New Media Arts, together with:
REALITY AND ARTIFICIAL REALITY
An invitation to discover the intersection between the bodily and digital worlds, inside a variety of technical engagements from immersive worlds to bio or artificial materials. Questions on this observe embody how digital areas embed themselves within the corporal or how they have interaction non-visual sensory experiences. Lastly, the subject explores how artists can subvert this actuality utilizing applied sciences that at present affect human engagement
SOUND, CINEMA AND IMMERSIVE CREATION
An invitation to look at the methods during which artists push the boundaries of cinema, archive and documentary. A key query is how artists can broaden the cinematic and spatial sound expertise by way of digital means, set up or new cinematic immersive experiences. Additionally, the subject explores how artists envision an expansive and narrative-led digital encounter.
HUMANS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE An invitation to look at the intersection of people and machines, with a selected emphasis on the position of artists inside this framework. This observe focuses on computational creativity, code, machine studying and AI (picture, textual content, speech), robotics, code artwork, interactivity, and residing in information. A key query that arises inside this subject is what position artists can play in providing distinctive views on the social and technical occasions reshaping our period, and on the totally different views on the difficulty of recent intelligences.
For extra particulars and to use, click on https://engage.moc.gov.sa/reg_forms/tracks/250/?lang=en&utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAdGRleARlq3VleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAacjcbqsIgCpO3ibks9c2Bg0kU2LpCPh-FN0UDNEcGBXCIKUz5Na0nDj1i3EDQ_aem_0tzVNoI7YmxyGBqu0Bp0JQ