This year’s Ars Electronica festival took place in a massive old tobacco factory, much of it with an art deco feel, and all of it with the strong smells of tobacco still lingering in the air. It made for an interesting event. The enormous available floor area meant that each project and event on show could live and breathe in its own space; projects were generally unencumbered by anything else nearby. This, combined with the labyrinthine structure of the layout and warehouses meant that the overall experience was more like a treasure hunt – you wander around, usually hopelessly lost, down long corridors and empty spaces and then suddenly come across an unexpected gleaming treasure of media art. And then, of course, the challenge of trying to understand what it is you are looking at…
Images of some of the projects on show HERE
More images of Ocean of Light HERE
Ocean of Light moves to the main gallery at the Ars Electronica Centre itself in the next week, where it will be on show until 9th January 2010.
We will be heading out to Linz, Austria, soon to set up Ocean of Light for this year’s Ars Electronica Festival. After the festival, the project will be moved to the Ars Electronica Centre, where it will be shown in the main gallery until the new year. More info here.
Additionally, we are showing Glowing Pathfinder Bugs in Paris at Le Cube (22 September – 3 October), and in New Zealand at New Dowse Gallery, Wellington (6 Nov 2010 – 30 Jan 2011) – more details here.
Ocean of Light received an Honorary Mention at this year’s PRIX FILE LUX, held in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Many many thanks to them, we are delighted by the recognition, especially as so many highly respected and better known projects were in the short list.
Thanks also to all of you who voted for us in the popular vote (though we didn’t quite get that one).
We had fun at this year’s SIGGRAPH in Downtown LA. We showed Glowing Pathfinder Bugs in the Art Gallery – it was interesting to present a sandpit at a heavily tech-led event, and seemed to go down well. We also presented a conference paper on the project, published in a special issue of Leonardo (vol 43, issue 4). And we did an artists’ talk.
Pest Control got’em going at Glastonbury last week. More images here. Some of the subtleties were missed in the frenetic nighttime of Shangri-La, people generally opted for splatting the bugs rather than nurturing or controlling them, but revellers were intrigued, and certainly seemed to enjoy what they were doing.
Next outing is the Secret Garden Party, in Cambridgeshire (UK) and there is more in the pipeline.
BUGS GET A NEW LEASE OF LIFE AND HIT THE FESTIVALS CIRCUIT!
We are developing a new iteration of our Glowing Pathfinder Bugs project for this year’s Festival season, called Pest Control. Like the original piece, Pest Control consists of autonomous multi-legged virtual creatures that respond to each other, and any physical objects and real people in their way. But this time, the bugs get nasty…
Pest Control will be on show at the GLASTONBURY Festival, in the Shangri-La area, and also at the SECRET GARDEN PARTY Festival and WALTHAMSTOW Festival – with thanks to Up Projects and Arts Council England.
ALSO, the original Glowing Pathfinder Bugs is being shown in a few venues this Summer, including the SITE Festival (Stroud, late May, see previous post), SIGGRAPH (LA, in late July) and Le Cube (Paris, September). A fun Summer!
We’re very excited that Ocean of Light has been nominated for Brazil’s FILE PRIX LUX for Interactive Art. It’s an impressive list, with many high profile and excellent projects from across the globe. We would love your support! If you can, please vote for us.
Go here, select PAGE 4, then choose Ocean of Light and follow the instructions.
The SITE Festival, “a festival of artist led projects in stroud gloucestershire”, will be showing two of our pieces as part of a long list of interesting local, national and international artists’ work.
Glowing Pathfinder Bugs will be on show at SVA (Stroud Valley Arts), Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th May.
Freq2 will be on show on the 5th June (11-6) in Union Street. You might also catch it at Bar Nine a bit later in the week.
Kinetica has been good to us. In addition to the coverage on the BBC and Telegraph mentioned below, we were featured in numerous publications including DigiMag, UK Features, and this from BigShinyThing.
Thanks to James Lane for putting the video together.
ALSO, Glowing Pathfinder Bugs is still finding its way through customs to us, having spent a joyous week or so in Montreal, as part of Technofolies at the Montreal Science Museum. And Bugs is also being shown at Grizedale Forest (Cumbria) as part of Abandon Normal Devices. And we think that yet more outings for the Bugs will be announced soon.
