UCSC”s Digital Arts and New Media program (DANM) will showcase campus projects at the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial—an international festival featuring work at the intersection of art and technology—that takes place in Silicon Valley and around the Bay Area, September 12 to December 8.
The Biennial’s opening weekend, September 14-16, sets the stage for the participants as they challenge traditional notions of place and identity and explore Silicon Valley’s role in how we live, work and communicate.
Interactive and performance works by DANM faculty, students, and alumni will be featured in the opening “eMERGE Street Festival”—which includes outdoor projects by more than 100 emerging artists, whose experimental works engage with new technologies.
The assistant curator of the street festival is Lily Alexander, a PhD candidate in UCSC’s History of Art and Visual Culture Department.
The festival is free and open to the public.
“The DANM program at UCSC is an innovative art program for emerging makers and thinkers at the crossroads of art, science, and technology,” noted associate professor Jennifer Parker, who is also chair of the Art Department and executive director of UCSC’s OpenLab.
“ZERO1 has developed its “Emerging Artist Network” precisely for programs like DANM,” she added. “ZERO1 provides the opportunity for programs like ours to expand beyond the borders of campus into a larger community of voices.”
Parker said that the DANM program at UC Santa Cruz is an excellent resource for Silicon Valley companies.
“Our students are up and coming inventors that create interactive art and technology,” said Parker. “DANM faculty and research projects feed directly into the veins of Silicon Valley.”
She added that “a number of DANM faculty and students are engaged in creating visual tools to better understand the impact of what unsustainable practices have done to our planet, with the hopes of changing them to conserve resources and create more sustainable living models.”
DANM projects at the ZERO1 Biennial will include:
HydroSONIC v.20 --The DANM Mechatronics & SonicSENSE Project team--led by Jennifer Parker with graduate student Sudhu Tewari--has produced HydroSONIC v.2.0 with the support of ZERO1 and the UCSC Arts Excellence Funds. Viewers walk through reflective mylar corridors triggering audioscapes of algorithmic compositions created with hydro soundscapes and data from the Santa Clara Valley Water district, while webcams collect movement to create a visual gestalt of projected images. DANM Mechatronics research incorporates elements of robotics, motion control, software engineering, hardware design, and the use of video, performance, and sculpture for the creation of complex, kinetic, audio-visual artworks.
Three Bodies --Three Bodies is an interdisciplinary collaboration between UCSC professors Greg Laughlin (Astrophysics), Ted Warburton (Dance), Karlton Hester (Music), DANM lecturer Drew Detweiler and Lyès Belhocine (both DANM alumni). The group is actively engaged in an ongoing research project to create a live visualization of the Pythagorean Three-Body problem through music, dance, and interactive technology. Three dancers in illuminated costumes create a live video visualization of the elliptic-hyperbolic solution to the classic Pythagorean three-body problem.
Denizen--Eve Warnock is a multimedia artist, a director who performs and develops costume and set design for live audience and video. She is currently a student in UCSC's DANM MFA program. Denizen is a performance, sound, and video projection-based work that draws inspiration from local native mythology. It is a two-part piece that explores life and the therefore imminent approach of death; using the Coyote as a central character.
Project Socialights --Daniel Christopher is a mixed media artist with a background in video and music technology. He is an alumnus and current lecturer of the DANM program. Project Socialights is an interactive, social art experience. It is a group adventure that leads participants through the ZERO1 street fair activating light and sound sculptures.
Stillness --Jacob Garbe is currently working in the mediums of augmented reality, interactive projection, and alternate reality games. He is a student in UCSC's DANM program. Stillness allows visitors to take time to become still and interact with a digital projection of Silicon Valley's agricultural past by transforming themselves into a tree through the movement and position of their bodies.
a spatial history of computing--
Nick Lally is an artist and programmer whose work explores the ways informational technologies have affected people's everyday lives. He is an alumnus of UCSC's DANM and teaches at the California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute. His project is a guided bike tour of places and geographies in Silicon Valley which have and continue to influence the development of contemporary computing. Several tours will be held per day.
For more information go to the DANM web site or call (831) 459-1919.
