Archive for the ‘The Future’ Category

From Gong…

“Play is the greatest natural resource in our creative economy.” (This was the keynote at MIT’s 2010 Sandbox Summit)

For the second time in three years, the annual Plutopia extravaganza was reported as “the best SXSWi party to date.” In 2008, it was the Austin Chronicle’s columnist, Stephen Moser, who proclaimed this, and in 2010, Jean Russell, global community visionary and “thrivability” author.  Plutopia 2009 was hailed as a mega success on a mega scale. While we don’t like to think of our experiential spectacle as merely a party, we are extremely happy that our audience had so much fun.

Not surprising, given that the audience was presented with a manifestation of captivating, future-forward performances, including a world-premiere from DJ Spooky – which expertly wove together science, music, film, culture, art, sensory immersion and entertainment – as well as an all-local, artisanal foodie fest from Edible Austin and cutting edge mixology from the Tipsy Texan Cocktail Bar.

Plutopia 2010 (an official SXSW evening event) was held on March 15th, 2010 at the Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin, a spectacular statement of modern architecture that boasts an amazing hi-tech auditorium and a large-scale plaza overlooking Lady Bird Lake. This year’s audience numbered around 1200 people throughout the evening, made up of international entrepreneurs, the tech community, art and culture aficionados, and the general public. About 75% were between 20 and 40 years old.

This year’s theme, “The Science of Music,” explored the role of technology, sound and digital media in changing the landscape and narrative of music in the information age.

The science ranged from the expanding of audio boundaries and experimentation, to new forms of instrumentation, sampling and remixing and emerging creative processes, to integrated multisensory systems and interfaces with intelligent networks, to the transformations of aesthetics and the changing rhythm of nature.

The theme was aptly presented both through the spectacular shows in the Auditorium as well as through the exhibits and interactive installations on the Plaza.

If headliner, DJ Spooky’s riveting world premiere of a 60-minute piece based upon Brian Greene’s Elegant Universe (which he performed with a four piece woodwind orchestra), was the highlight of the Auditorium shows, there is no doubt that the simply stunning projections and spectacular lighting, especially designed for Plutopia 2010, by Interactive Entertainment Systems delivered a mixture of awe and amusement on the Plaza. The system featured the highly interactive Synth-A-Beam, which allows the user to interrupt light beams to trigger cool sound/music and lighting projections onto the side of the building and across the plaza.

Plutopia Productions, Inc. is about creating what we term the Sense Event - an intense, interactive experience through augmented ambience, multi-sensory engagement and immersive technologies, fueled by fun and all-round well-being. It is our mission to deliver sensation, an experiential adventure, whether it is through the performances, the immersive installations, the social interaction, the unusual or experimental arts and cultural phenomena, the food and beverages, or simply exposure to the new and unexpected. Whatever the theme, we always endeavor to create a brief encounter with the future. And once one realizes the creative potential of the combination of unique perspectives and skills of the Plutopia core team - comprising the futurist, the cultural strategist, the technology visionary, and the theatrical producer and anthropologist, supported by 70 or so volunteers – one cannot fail to understand why Plutopia events are so spell-binding.

Plutopia 2010 had sensation in abundance. From the opening words of wisdom from world-renowned American science fiction author, Bruce Sterling, to the closing rhythms of Chinese experimental electronica duo, White, one of most acclaimed outfits in the Beijing new music scene, the event was a tour de force.

From our post-event research, it is easy to understand what made Plutopia 2010 a resounding success. Yes there were moments of magnificence beyond DJ Spooky’s performance, none less that the finale of Chinese experimental guitarist, Xiao He and his magic sound box. Xiao was recently voted one of the coolest rock stars in Beijing and his mixture of Chinese folk, jazz, experimentation, improvised performances and action art was surreal and scintillating.

Then there was the first glimpse of those eight (seven 6 foot tall females and one 6 foot man) futuristic-clad exotic dancers, led by their shaman, Maranda Pleasant, spicing up the Black Pig Liberation Front’s Erotic Raga. Their performance featured text, electronics, turntables, film, dance, explosive tonal attacks, and beautiful flowing erotic atmospherics, creating sacred zones and temporary communal spaces in time. White kept the auditorium buzzing until midnight, While Dr. Strangevibe (David Demaris) kept the juices flowing between headliner sets with ambient sound and video works that featured sound, words and images by luminaries spanning the worlds of science and art.

On the plaza, besides the amazing interactive installations by Interactive Entertainment Systems, the audience had great fun with the sound and lighting design installations from Darkstack Media, an electronica test area created by Switched-On, a variety of AI and robotic installations from members of the Robot Group, led by Dr. Conrad (Marvin Niebuhr) and his team with The Giant Brain, as well as Plutopia regular, John P. Funk’s remote art robots, as well as Toy Joy and Bazaarvoice’s hipster playgrounds. We even offered old school oil and water psychedelic projections!

Of course, much of the activity on the Plaza was centered on exploring the amazing food and beverage offerings. As Dave Dart of Dart Music International said “Tonight I tasted the best cocktail on earth (Treaty Oak rum with jalapeno).”

If the individual moments were magnetic, the overall experience generated at Plutopia 2010 was not just sensation-al, provocative and inspirational. True to Plutopia Productions’ vision, we also focus on ensuring that we optimize the ecological effect of the event, both by minimizing energy consumption by using LEDs and magnificent projections that illuminated every surface of the MACC, as well as making sure that we maximized the event’s recycling potential. One of our sponsors, Green Fern Events together with Wandering River Recycling, made certain that we not only walked the talk, but had the metrics to prove it. Consequently, we can report the following sustainability success:

- 200 lbs of recycling

- 80 pounds of food waste to local composting facility

- a total of 400 lbs of waste, which represents a 70% diversion rate from landfill.

That’s pretty good and means well over half of all the waste for Plutopia was either recycled or composted.

Last, but definitely not least we want to thank our sponsors, not just because without their generous sponsorship monies and services the event would not happen, but also because they all entered into the Plutopia experiential adventure, both by providing exciting content and fascinating interactive experiences. They helped give Plutopia 2010 its cutting edge.

All in all a spectacular night, an extravaganza that merited the epithet “the best SXSWi party to date.” At least until Plutopia 2011!

View an excellent photostream of the event by Menelaos Prokos Photography here.

And on Austin360.com here.

I am excited by a new project being undertaken by Pattie Maes’s group “Fluid Interfaces Group” at MIT. Titled  ”ioMaterials”, it is an umbrella project encompassing a variety of collocated sensing-actuation platforms looking at various aspects of dense sensing for humane communication, memory, and remote awareness. Using dense collocated sensing actuation and sensing, we can change common objects into an interface capable of hiding unobtrusively in plain sight. Relational Pillow and TextureWall are instantiations of this ideal. In the visual below, we see Recorded writing: Playing back the strokes of the sender.

Recent  interfaces for artistic expression have included:

Gesture Recognition

Smart Tags

Gaming Interfaces

Max/MSP

IPhone

[PDA, GameBoy, PC, MIDI]

Virtual synthesisers

Haptic Feedback/Touch

Relative position sensing

Gravity

Space Invaders: Art and the Computer Game Environment
FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L14DQ www.fact.co.uk
Preview: Thursday, 17 December 2009, 6.00pm – 8.00pm
Booking: rsvp@fact.co.uk

FACT explores the increasingly blurred boundaries between videogame spaces and real spaces with an exhibition featuring artists including Bill Viola, Blast Theory, Aram Bartholl, Cao Fei, Ludic Society and more, alongside playable, commercial games that push the limits of the medium. Space Invaders is part of a season of gaming at FACT which includes interactive games events, competitions and a game-themed film programme.

Gallery 1 & 2, Media Lounge, Public Spaces and online, FREE entry
Space Invaders is open to the public from 18 December 2009 to 21 February 2010

Opening Night 8-Bit Performances
Music shaped by computer game culture selected by Cybersonica; Firebrand Boy(Glasgow) and the Kittenrock label use gameboys, Nintendos and other consoles to get you dancing! Plus a special Marching DS Orchestra with kids, siblings and parents led by Ross Dalziel of SoundNetwork.

Then follow the 8-bit music over to Chameleon for an afterparty:
8.00pm-9.00pm, Soundmatrix – a Liverpool-based musician who makes glitchy, 8-bit beats on a Gameboy running LSDJ
9.00pm-10.00pm, Syphus – a UK-based demoscene and chiptune musician who has been composing and performing for most of his life

The Drop: Urban Art Infill presents the special exhibition 2012+ curated by Alexandra Chang and Mie Iwatsuki. The title is partly coined from the Mayan calendar, indicating an upcoming shift from one phase of life to something new about to take shape. As the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, a certain sense of impending urgency is represented by this number when coupled with the current global realities of climate change. And what is felt locally and individually can potently highlight our participation within a global society. Yet the symbol “+” is also a call to contemplate and seek possibilities to envision what can be.

The 2012+ exhibition investigates the relationship of the urban-based artist and city dweller to their environs, from the city, to how they situate themselves in relationship to the environment on a global level. Each artist presented in the show contemplates their link to their notion of the environment in a unique way. By including both urban space as well as the natural environment within this realm, these artists take into account a point of view specific to the city dweller.

Some art may take on the urgency of a last warning, or contemplation of the politics that results in dystopias of environmental and societal disaster. Some may seek to present elements of harmony, an ideal state of nature, and coexistence, ushering in ideas of optimism or a possible utopia. While others may be meditative on the closeness or elusiveness of these ideas in everyday urban existence.

The special exhibition 2012+ is situated within the frameworks of the daylong art festival THE DROP: URBAN ART INFILL, a series of planned indoor and outdoor art projects, including the best in New York’s independent music, fashion, art and design, creating dialogue in the New York community about our relationship to art, the city and the greater global environment.

Artists participating in the 2012+ exhibition are:

Yoko Ono
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Paul D. Miller
Mamoru Oshii
ON Megumi Akiyoshi
John Ahearn
Rainer Ganahl
Luis Mallo
Chen Ching-Yao
Ali Hussain
Mikael Levin
Jing Ai
Nayia Frangouli
Raquel Rabinovich
Julian Montague
Julia Chiang
Mary Ting
Adrian Kondratowicz
Peter Garfield
Sungmi Lee
Robert Peretti
Mimmo Roselli
Seth Carnes
Manuel Acevedo
Fred Fleisher and Marguerite Day
Saya Woolfalk
Zhou Yi
Hiroshi Sunairi
Ula Einstein
Midori Harima

2012+

at THE DROP: Urban Art Infill
4th Floor Gallery, 521 W. 25th Street, Between 10th and 11th Aves, New York, NY.
3-17 October 2009
Opening and Arts Festival: Saturday, October 3rd, 2009, from Noon-5PMVisit:www.thedropnyc.org

FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC