The love story between technology and art is not simple or sweet.
There is no bouquet of roses or shy smiles. Instead, it goes something like this: technology meets art. Technology brings art back to its work shop and technology and art ravage each other for hours between sheets of metal in an orgasmic creation of sound, software and light. Technology and art spawn a hacked and hybrid family, both intelligent and beautiful—and on stimulating display at the Yes Oui Si Space.
Amalgamate, curated by record label and artists’ collective Vermin Street, is an exhibition of what happens when software programmers and engineers create art from palettes of algorithms and formulas, an interactive show with work from nine artists.
“It ranges from packed and put together hardware to meticulously put together software,” says Nick Colangelo, owner and manager of Vermin Street.
As Boston’s newest DIY art space, the multisensory Yes Oui Si is the perfect home for a multidimensional show. Vermin Street, who incorporates interactive art at their No Tomorrow club nights, are of the same conceptual ilk. The space will transform into an interactive funhouse, with pieces vying for your attention and following you with sound and lasers.
From one corner will be Aurelio Czargb Ramos’s “Reflection,” a video screen displaying what will initially look like a tiled mirror. “What happens is as you move in front of it, the motions stimulate the mirrors to flick and as each mirror flicks it makes a tone and the tone will be harmonious to all of the other tones it will make,” explains Ramos, a video game software engineer and DJ.
“The result is that when you stop moving, they will stop moving in a random way and it will look like a mosaic with some figments of you mirrored and some not. You see yourself transformed into these figments.”
Ramos will also be displaying “Firelights,” a machine-generated laser that will continuously imprint temporary patterns on a glow-in-the-dark fabric, a project he created with Emma Gertsen. “Her goal was not to create animation, but to visualize the process of drawing,” says Ramos.
Roaming through the crowd will be Butch, the pet robot dinosaur Watson wish he had. Butch is a walking, turning, tail wagging robot Protoceratops that Peter Dilworth created from a simple design with only two motors—one to power walking and one for turning. Butch’s biggest fans, Dilworth says, are 10-year-olds and drunk club goers, but its giant eyes and head that can move left, right, up and down attract everyone because people think its interacting only with them.
Following visitors with a stream of light, “Kinetic Spectrum” by Joseph Unruh and Jacqui Manz uses a camera that measures distance and is an experiment in how people react to being followed, explained Sadiya Carr, who helped curate the exhibit.
For even further stimulation, the soundtrack for the show includes found sounds and computer sequencing from Barnz, as well as music from the festival’s Links club event and music off the free Together compilation.
The opening reception on Sunday and the Amalgamate demo and panel on Friday will feature the artists who can talk about the work and explain the mad science and beauty behind technology and art—the most sensual, raw and raunchy love story ever told.
AMALGAMATE
PRESENTED BY VERMIN STREET
WED 4.20.1-SUN 4.24.11
NOON-5PM
RECEPTION
SUN 4.24.11
3:30PM-7PM/ALL AGES/FREE
AMALGAMATE DEMO
FRI 4.22.11
1:30PM-2:30PM
TOWER AUDITORIUM
621 MASS AVE.
BOSTON
FREE
YES OUI SI SPACE
19 VANCOUVER ST.
BOSTON
646.269.8909
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