#arts 12

Flutter (2011)

By Dominic Harris

Flutter  is an interactive installation project created by Dominic Harris and his fascination with butterflies and their intricate flight motions. Composed of 88 monitors coupled back-to-back and attached perpendicular onto a mirrored surface in a linear formation, Flutter gracefully interacts with the motions of a nearby participant. As motion is captured from the participant, the butterflies react in a wave-like motion. The more one ‘plays’ with the butterflies across the screens, the more interaction is experienced. Flutter represents the uniqueness and beauty of the butterflies’ patterns and motions, the same uniqueness and beauty found in the simplest of forms all around the world.   

curated by Paul Tiu

In order to have a new approach to new media or better curate and house new media with in the institution, New Media Artists, Curators and the institutions that show case New Media art should agree to first decide that any aesthetic is a good aesthetic. 

A New Media Art viewing should attempt to bring art to the people.  Bring it into the streets where they too can see.  Make New Media Art available to all.

Sabotage the streets b y inserting kinetic sculpture and creative technological peiecs that will not only attract attention but bring the message to the streets.  

New Media Art should incorporate a New Media understanding of art into its curatorial practice.

Showcase art that is not only interesting in its use of technology and media but that also creates a dialogue and engages the person who views it.

Museums should show anything by anyone that adds to the current art conversation and culture as a whole. 

New Media Museums should not be picky at all as they have the physical space and the endless virtual space to fill with New Media Art. 

For those who want to visit a New Media Museum, they should not be limited only by what can fit inside the walls of the museum.  Instead the museum should act as an interactive archive.  These interactive archives should be rooms in which people can view as much New Media art history as possible.  Then go into the museum to see them newest art being created.   

New Media Museums need to begin to create an art historic archive around Digital and New Media Arts.

MIDAS Project

A performance art piece in Dublin, the MIDAS Project intertwines the world of performance and digital art together. The dancer, Tom O’Donnell, improvises a dance routine, which demonstrates the stages of “man’s ever-changing relationship with technology” in five different movements. This space in which O’Donnell is dancing in allows him to create his own movements and how this space would react with these movements. This piece was made possible with light projection, sound, camera tracking, custom software called openFrameworks, and QuartzComposer, which created the illustrations. The dancer’s moves and sounds were captured from customizing technologies like Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Playstation 3 Eye. Currently MIDAS Spaces is also looking for more dancers to perform in their upcoming shows.

According to http://www.projectionfreak.com/the-midas-project,

These are the technical specs:

Hardware: 4 iMacs (3 for visuals, one for audio) 3 Projectors (1 x 8000 Lumen Sanyo, 1 x 3500 Lumen NEC and 1 x 5000 Lumen NEC) Microsoft Kinect Playstation 3 Eye (modified to an IR camera) RME Fireface 800 Network Switch Stage Lights (with all visible light filtered out)

Software: openFrameworks Syphon Madmapper Quartz Composer VDMX Ableton Live Synapse After Effects Google Sketchup

To learn more about the MIDAS Project, please visit: http://www.midaspaces.com/

The timeline of events that led to the materialization of new media and its manifestation around the world provides a taxonomy, and in a way a justification for what New Media Art is, what it does, what it can do now in the future, and why it can be considered art. If New Media is the Avante-Garde of the twentieth century then anything that is based on a certain creative aesthetic derived from such media could be considered art.   

The world of new media art began with the invention of the camera and the industrial revolution.  With mass production, technology and new possibilities a new kind of thinking took place around d the world.   Without the need for realism artists began thinking more conceptually and reacting these thoughts with new and spontaneous types of art.  Marcell Duchamp is thought of as the father of conceptual thinking and creation with in the world of art, including that of New Media Art.  Duchamp worked with other visionary artist in the field of music, dance and technology such as Merce Cunningham and John Cage in a time of new possibilities along with scholars of science, engineering, technology, philosophy and true visionaries such as Seymore Papert, Marchall McLuhan and Vannevar Bush who contributed to the conceptualization of the multitude of technological possibilities and their application in the realm of  in the military to business, to personal use and the arts.  The innovations of these visionaries and many others are the components which enabled New Media to exist as we know it today, and are what has presented New Media the option of taking so many diverse forms in today’s working definition of this new medium.   

From Google Books. Very Diebenkorn Ocean Park Series!

Location: London, England

Title: A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of  Sorcery and Witchcraft ...

Author: Francis Bragge

                   Guillermo Gómez-Peña is much better defined as a guerrilla philosopher whom spreads his word through a Mexican and American semiotic oversaturated aesthetic. Using archetypes and symbols that our minds associate with different cultures and gender cues in costume and props he has created a persona that as soon as you see it you understand what cannot be put in less than a 2000 word essay.

                                    Peña was born in Mexico but he came to the U.S. when he was about 23 years old in 1978. He lived in San Diego for a time. Through his experience of living on a physical and mental cultural divide he began his life long commitment to exploring and exposing issues of border politics, globalization, cultural identity crises, masculinity, gender and sex politics and the digital divide. One of Peña’s major occupations is as a journalistic writer. His work ranges from performance, poetry to video. He has written four published books. He has taken his different performances all around the world to Museums, galleries, International Art exhibitions and streets.

References:

http://www.pochanostra.com/antes/jazz_pocha2/mainpages/bios.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=C864b51uOAI

http://www.pochanostra.com/