
OPENING: 7 p.m., Friday, April 9th, 2010 through April 18th, 2010.
Multi-User Art reimagines the gallery for the age of the iPhone, with a set of installations that invite multiplayer action from showgoers’ own mobile devices. The show features artists at the forefront of establishing open standards by which mobile gadgets can interact creatively. Joshue Ott’s work translates user touch into meditational, abstract, three-dimensional drawings. Eric Redlinger places viewers as astronauts in a shimmering lunar landscape from the Apollo mission. Peter Kirn creates a ludic, interactive toy theater that challenges users with quirky, game-like interactions. Chris Jordan uses mechanically-controlled mirrors manipulated by the viewer to transform reflected light into a poetic examination of the relationship of the US with China. By harnessing the ability to use touch to tweak on-screen faders and push virtual buttons, Devotion Gallery becomes a space in which visitors can play with, and perform the art they see.
If you’re ready to learn how to make use of these emerging technologies, a beginner and advanced workshop will give you the skills you need to make your own art, music, visuals, and digital communications using your own computers and mobile devices, with free and open tools.
ARTISTS
Eric Redlinger, Small Steps (computer,projector)
Small Steps lets the viewer assume the role of an Apollo astronaut, exploring a shimmering, 3-dimensional lunar landscape by tilting and rotating their iPod. There are even controls to ‘space jump’ to get an eagle-eye perspective, and camera filters to better discern the terrain by applying color highlights to crevices and craters. Remarkably, the terrain is not just moon-like, it is the moon. Small Steps generates its environment not through traditional 3D modeling methods, but rather by presenting actual, ultra-high-resolution NASA lunar imagery from the Apollo 16 mission, and then applying technology that extrudes shaded areas using an analog video technology developed by Bill Etra and Steve Rutt in 1972, the same year as the Apollo.
BIO:
Eric Redlinger is a composer, sound designer and interactive media programmer.
His musical background includes significant research in both extremes of the western musical spectrum. A long-time composer and
performer of electronic music, Eric also plays lute and sings in the early music ensemble Asteria, putting him on an aesthetic map that
embraces both the mystical lushness of the former as well the exacting control over sonority and acoustics made possible by contemporary synthesis and audio processing techniques.
A research position at the Waag Society (Amsterdam) in 2003 marked the beginning of Eric’s exploration of interactive visuals where he worked on the Keyworx project, a software platform devoted to inter-media synthesis and networked-based collaboration.
Eric holds a Master of Science degree from the Integrated Digital Media Institute (IDMI) at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY. His audio/visual work has been presented across North America and Internationally at major European festivals including Ultrahang (Budapest, Hungary) and Transmediale (Berlin).
Joshue Ott, Superdraw/Multidraw:Guided1 (computer,projector,speakers)
multiDraw:guided1 (working title) promotes collaboration and interaction with a unique system of multi-sensory stimulation, involving visual and audible elements. It allows the participant to create their own space within the space of the piece, crossing the boundary from being a passive audience member into the realm of creating the art itself, while remaining within the framework of the project.
superDraw was originally conceived as a visual alternative to a musical instrument, and has developed into a live generative art system, which uses a computer to augment the simple act of drawing – transforming it into an evolving process whereby the user can watch their input shift in a careful balance of control and chance. multiDraw is the multi-user version of the instrument, and creates an immersive experience for multiple people to engage with and share, in a marriage of technology and interactive art.
BIO:
New York-based visualist Joshue Ott creates cinematic visual improvisations, performed live and projected in large scale. Working from hand-drawn forms manipulated in real-time with superDraw, a software instrument of his own design, Ott composes evolving images that reside somewhere between minimalism, psychedelia, and Cagean chance, delivered with an inescapably human touch. Supple yet digital, ephemeral but instantly memorable, Ott renders sound into vision, yielding an immersive multi-sensory experience that is at once immediate and synergistic, a unique visual narrative born in the moment.
Performing with musicians from all genres between classical and avant-electronica,
Ott’s visuals have been featured at Communikey, Mutek, the Plateaux festival in Poland, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Yuri’s Night Bay Area, Le Cube (Paris), the Playgrounds Audiovisual Art Festival (Netherlands), Boston Cyberarts, and the 2006 Ars Electronica Animation Festival. He has performed with the American Composer’s Orchestra at Carnegie Hall; with Son Lux at MASS MoCA; with Gina Gibney Dance at the Baryshnikov Arts Center; and frequently at venues throughout New York City, including Le Poisson Rouge, Monkey Town, Roulette, the Knitting Factory, and the Stone.
Peter Kirn, The Enigmatic Box (projector, computer, speakers, custom electronics)
Using an embedded computer system, The Enigmatic Box pokes fun at interaction by responding to user input in unexpected ways. On a display and in semaphore-like patterns of LEDs, the installation is an anti-game, responding in foreign languages and sounds as if a fragmented human memory is trapped in the computer. As the remnants of tangible, conventional interfaces sit inside shadow boxes like captured endangered species of the Amazon, the installation responds to and resists mobile input in novel sound and image. It’s a “Busy Box” for adults.
BIO:
PETER KIRN is a composer/musician, media artist, and technologist, as well as writer and editor of createdigitalmusic.com and createdigitalmotion.com. The Handmade Music event series he originated with Etsy.com and Make Magazine is now spreading to other corners of the globe, from Texas to Portugal. He has also written for Computer Music, MAKE, Keyboard, Macworld, and Wax Poetics. He is the author of Real World Digital Audio (Peachpit Press). His own work spans live visuals and computer music, collaborations with modern dance, music for early instruments and voice and ambient techno, working with original software in Processing/Java and other tools. He’s currently
teaching visual programming and sound and music design at Parsons The New School for Design and is a PhD candidate in music composition at The City University of New York Graduate Center.
Chris Jordan, Qu Yuan Goes West (mirror, motors, computer, projector)
“Qu Yuan Goes West” is an interactive light installation allowing for up to four people to control light and pattern using the iphone/touch interface. The installation utilizes computer, projector, mirrors, and motors. “Qu Yuan Goes West” examines the US/Chinese relationship; and how individual identity and capital (yuan) are transferred between nations. The title refers to the first ‘named’ Chinese poet Qu Yuan, as well as chinese currency (yuan).
BIO:
CHRIS JORDAN explores the medium of light, movement, and time through the use of technology. His installations have appeared at the Moma, The New Museum, The Whitney, The Museum of Natural History, The Chelsea Museum, Times Square, numerous galleries and clubs; and the incidental spaces inbetween.
The common elements that define Chris’ work include explorations into memory, photography, film, interactivity, and projections. By examining the political and social implications technology has on us through a diversity of media, his work challenges the viewer to redefine perceptions of audience and performer.
In addition Chris teaches interactive design at Baruch College and NYU; and organizes T-Minus, G33kXmas, rooftop movies, and visualist salons in New York City.