Digital Solitude

Digital Solitude places its focus on the interrelationship of physical and digital space. Digital Solitude promotes the public visualization and communication of the themes of the Solitude network and digital cultures. Digital Solitude initiates innovative and alternative approaches in dealing with digital media and technologies in order to make these effective for transformation processes within our society. Through the fellowship, web residencies and alternating publication and mediation formats within the framework of this program, Akademie Schloss Solitude promotes the speculative and critical examination of artistic practice and media developments within digital culture. The application and transfer of knowledge about open source practices, the design of low-threshold access and the enabling of collaborative processes for participation in transformation developments play a decisive role in this process. The Digital Solitude program aims to combine artistic and scientific research with forward-looking technical developments. Digital practice fields are sustainably interwoven with values and methods of the arts. 

Fellowship DIGITAL field of practice

The DIGITAL field of practice is designed to be interdisciplinary and multi-actional. The program is open to artists, activists, experts and creative individuals, as well as coders, hackers and journalists who work and research in the digital field or understand it as an active space for action. The fellowships are awarded by two jurors within the framework of Akademie Schloss Solitude’s call for applications (every other year).

Digital Solitude offers great scope for different forms of participation and involvement, both online and offline. Fellows can contribute to the editing and publication of content for the Solitude Journal and the Solitude Blog and realize their own projects or workshops – for example in collaboration with Stuttgart universities.

 

Web Residencies

With its Web Residencies, Akademie Schloss Solitude has been supporting artists, designers, cyborgs, hackers and researchers who use digital space since 2016 (collaborating with the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe from 2017-2020). The program takes place exclusively online. Open calls take place three times a year, which are curated by invited experts or collectives. The curators select four people or collectives to participate a four-week web residency within the framework of each call. The work processes and results are presented online.

Akademie Schloss Solitude also awards the annual HASH Production Prize to an outstanding web residency project. The prize is endowed with 8,000 euros and supported by the foundation Stiftung Landesbank Baden-Württemberg.

 

Publishing – Journal and Blog

The publishing formats pursued by Akademie Schloss Solitude place a multi-perspective world and diverse forms of knowledge in the public sphere, and shape the digital space as a transcultural and transdisciplinary expanse of knowledge production.

The Solitude Journal communicates current topics at Akademie Schloss Solitude and appears several times a year as an online and print magazine. It presents a selection of contributions conceived specifically for this format, and enables a discursive and in-depth examination of specific theme clusters. It combines a wide range of diverse artistic and scientific approaches, and explores forms of publishing and writing as a collective and curatorial process.

The Solitude Blog is a transdisciplinary online platform for the publication and mediation of journalistic, literary and artistic work as well as artistic and scientific research. On the platform, fellows, web residents and members of the Solitude network discuss current topics from art, culture, society and science. The format Studio Visits offers insights into the studios and current work of international artists, curators and academics. The journal, blog and Studio Visits formats promote the visibility of the Solitude network of alumni, experts and friends from over 120 countries as well as endorsing new artistic and political voices and collective discourse.

Schlosspost, Akademie Schloss Solitude’s online platform from 2015 to 2020, remains freely accessible as an open archive with approximately 1,800 contributions.

 

Learning Units – Online Events and Workshops

Learning Units are loose clusters of online events, workshops and participatory formats initiated by Digital Solitude and the Solitude network. They demonstrate the necessity of developing alternative ways of acting and methods of application and sharing them. In this way, the format promotes collective participation and access to knowledge. Its focus is placed both on the technology-based establishment and maintenance of social relationships and spaces, as well as on the transfer of knowledge about digital cultures. In particular, Learning Units invite current and former fellowship holders, web residents and experts to discuss models that articulate new realities and encourage people to move in and between analog and digital territories, networks and worlds.