Kinetica Art Fair showcases works in the realm of interdisciplinary new media art, paying focus on the convergence of art and technology, which means a good place for Mike and I to get some inspiration.
There was a varied selection of art at this year’s fair, ranging from high-tech interactive work to aesthetically pleasing holographic artworks to moving sculptures that are simply constructed out of suspended weighted strings and motors. There was even, what was to me, a conceptual performance piece by Sam Meech, “8 Hours Labour – Rates for the Job”, where he was using a knitting machine to create banners at the fair. The stitched banner incorporated contemporary data about working hours within the ‘digital’ economy to map the shift from Robert Owen’s 8 hour day ideal, where each misplaced stitch represented an hour of work done outside of the 8 hour ‘contract’.
Another work that stood out for me was Temporeal by Maxime Damecour, who used wagon-wheel effect to do real time animation of a sculpture. I was drawn to how it was created and I found out here: http://misc.nnvtn.ca/temporeal.html
Works that are most relevant to our project were the automated drawing machines and there were quite a few of them. One thing we noticed was they were all pre-programmed machines and we are aiming for something that is less predetermined in our project, something that generates unpredictable results.
It was insightful to see current examples of work that merges art and technology. However I feel that there wasn’t any work that really caused an impact on our project. The next stage is for us to develop further the ideas we generated in our last workshop and to make some decisions on where we are heading and then to create a few prototypes for us to experiment, with the ultimate goal of developing a body of work to exhibit in the future.
Mike and I had a chat after the fair and it seems like we are both interested in the ephemeral and performative aspect of the work we are making.
