Nova Gorica - The 22nd Pixxelpoint international festival of new media art is getting under way in Nova Gorica on Thursday, offering a glimpse at projects at the crossroads of art, science and modern technologies. Over the past two decades, the festival has developed into one of the main new media festivals in Slovenia and beyond.

Running under the headlined Deep Deep Forest until 18 November, the festival has invited eleven artists or artistic groups to explore the phenomenon of forest.

The organiser, the Nova Gorica Culture Centre, has announced that the artists come mostly from Slovenia, but also from Russia, Ukraine and South Korea.

It has been curated by Ukraine's Olena Kasperovych, who was selected to curate last year's edition but could not do her job due to coronavirus travel restrictions.

She sees forest as a symbol of initiation, as a point of transition into adulthood, something dark and scary but at the same time a symbol of change. The curator is also interested in the relationship between nature and artificial as expressed in art.

"Carl Jung considered forest as an archetype of the unconscious, which is in itself deep, unreachable and unfathomable," she said at a recent news conference in Nova Gorica at which the festival was presented.

The exhibition she put up together with the artists will open tonight at the Nova Gorica City Art Gallery, to be followed by the opening ceremony at the culture centre, featuring an audio improvisation by Zergon, the stage name of Slovenia's Aleš Hieng.

The festival also brings several discussions and some events for children, while concluding with the curator's guided tour of the exhibition next Thursday. Due to the coronavirus restrictions, some events have moved online.