Visual Art

Brooklyn-based artists Zach Lieberman and Molmol Kuo use technology to create moments of wonder, augmenting the body and exploring the poetics of space. Lieberman, named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People, is a co-creator of openFrameworks and a co-founder of the School for Poetic Computation. Kuo is an artist-in-residence at Google Art and Culture Institute. Her work has been featured on National Geographic’s Tech + Art, Vice’s The Creators Project, TED Talks, and Brooklyn Free Speech.

McLarena is a large-scale interactive installation by Montreal-based interaction design and art studio Daily tous les jours. Drawing on the principle of a canon (a compositional fragment in music and dance, performed in regular intervals by several dancers), the work invites participants to step into a recording booth to reenact choreography from the animated film Canon. Their movement is then projected onto the lobby wall, where bystanders can sit and witness this form of impromptu theater and communally created spectacle.

Cabbibo, aka Isaac Cohen, is a triptastic, experimental, audiovisual adventurer who produces audiovisual fact-learning apps, interactive experiences made from recursive algorithms, and real-time procedural music blogs where users traverse a universe of sound. In addition to creating a wide-ranging plethora of experiences, Cabbibo also develops open source tools to help others create stunning real-time graphics.

Geometric Music is an interactive installation that allows users to create non-stop collaborative music. In this collaboration by digital creative agency Dogstudio and design agency Superbe, geometry is used to edit, craft, and loop a colorful masterpiece based on personal sounds. Users record a sound, organize the rhythm with the sound, manipulate the direction, speed, and tone, and link it to one of the available shapes: circle, triangle, square, and hexagon. All four shapes are synchronized together to produce an experimental rhythmic masterpiece.

This year’s lineup: Sonaria, about two ever-changing creatures flowing from one life-form to another; Sanctuaries of Silence, a journey to one of the quietest places in North America; Look but with Love: A Story of Dance and A Story of Music, celebrations of Pakistani song and dance; Crow: The Legend, visionary VR animation featuring an all-star cast; A Classic Circus Folds Its Tent, which goes backstage for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus; and Man on Spire, a journey to the 408-foot-tall spire of 1 World Trade Center.

VR_I is an immersive, contemporary dance experience that plays with perceptions of identity, space, and scale. Choreographed by Gilles Jobin, the installation combines dance with cutting-edge VR technology that allows five spectators to inhabit full-body avatars. Users interact with each other and engage a troupe of giant and tiny dancers in various landscapes. VR_I was an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival, and the Lyon Dance Biennale.

FLARMINGOS is an augmented reality experience where users can create a virtual habitat and populate it with dancing life-size flamingos. The flamingos are animated by human motion capture and a dynamic flocking algorithm that influences their collective behavior. Artist and director Kristin Lucas created this experience through the tech residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, and made in partnership with French research institute Tour du Valat.