Cory’s Yellow Chair

Cory’s Yellow Chair is a kinetic sculpture by Arthur Ganson that assembles, disassembles, and reconstructs a small, four-and-a-half-inch tall yellow chair indefinitely.  Ganson says he got inspiration for this piece when his “son’s little yellow chair explode with infinite speed, travel to the far reaches of the universe and slowly come to complete stillness. Then, […]

The Physiognomic Scrutinizer

Surveillance and physical stereotyping easily go hand in hand together when explored in the context of software. Programs require fundamental placeholders for values and measurements, and to describe a person using these universal traits requires a very cold and objective approach. In 2010, the annual STRP festival in the Netherlands witnessed a new take […]

Text Rain

Text rain is an interactive piece of art that allows viewers to manipulate the motion of letters that emulate rain falling from the sky. Users have their image displayed on a screen in front of them as the letters begin to fall down the screen. Once the letters reach a certain darkness threshold, they stop […]

Contact: A Cybernetic Sculpture

Created by renowned Cybernetic artist Les Levine in 1969, Contact: A Cybernetic Sculpture is a wall of 18 CRT television screens arranged as a pair of three by three grids which show video of the viewer through close-up shots, wide-angle imagery, and a simple medium range portrait. Using an array of eight cameras contained in […]

Life Support Systems – Vanda

In Mateusz Herczka’s work Life Support Systems – Vanda (2004), he seeks to expand the human’s ability to map complex systems with the aid of technology. Herczka comments on the nature of this specie’s existence. “They grow on tree branches with the roots exposed, and they collect water from the morning air. The body of […]

Leo Villareal’s – Bay Lights

Next time you plan a road trip to San Fran, don’t be alarmed when crossing the Bay Bridge around 8:30 PM from now until 2015.  Standing 500 feet high and stretching over a mile and a half long, The Bay Lights installation is bound to surprise and grasp the attention of a few drivers. This […]

Sound Wall

Peter Vogel’s 2009 Sound Wall is unique in that can be viewed as a standalone sculpture made out of hundreds of photocells and electronic circuits, but also has an interactive sound element that is activated by passing a shadow over specific circuits creating a dynamic user exclusive experience and musical composition. Peter’s ideas for Sound […]

The LED Kimono Project

SFEMF-BIRGHT-620x413.jpgMiya Masaoka's LED Kimono Project is an installation based, performance piece in which 444 hand-sewn LED light sensors respond to musical and physical conditions. The artist's website, http://www.ledkimono.com/ describes how the instrument/garment is used and offers insights to her mission: "The LED Kimono Project represents an extension of and an expansion upon the large body of work that I have developed in the last decade addressing interactivity with insects, plants, and the human brain."

Well of Lights

This article is a STUB please make edits and adjustments as suggested on Wikipedia to make it more robust.  Thanks! Toshio Iwai is a Japanese interactive media and installation artist who has also created a number of commercial video games. In addition he has worked in television, music performance, museum design and digital musical […]

Participation TV

Participation TV is another interactive-participatory piece created by video artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006) in 1969. The piece lets the participant control the visuals on the TV screen through speaking or making sounds through a microphone, so as they are making noise they are able to see the line and formations made on the screen instantaneously. […]

The Giver of Names

David Rokeby’s ongoing work The Giver of Names, found on page 79 of Art and Electronic Media, examines our language and the subconscious associations our brain makes when identifying an object. The computer captures an image of an object that has been placed on a pedestal in the gallery space by a visitor. The computer then […]

Present Continuous Past(s)

Present Continuous Past(s) is a piece where present time is reflected. This piece was created by a diverse artist named Dan Graham. 1 “Graham was owner of a gallery, art and culture theorist, photographer, film producer, performance and installation artist. A pioneer in performance and video art in the 1970’s, Graham later turned his attention […]

“Electrum” by Eric Orr

When most people think of electricity, they simply see it as a way to power everything.  Some people also see it as as dangerous and almost uncontrollable in its raw form outside of conductors or wiring.  Artist, Eric Orr, used technology previously invented by scientist Nikola Tesla.  Nikola introduced the Tesla reactor to explore electricity […]

“Wooden Mirror” by Daniel Rozin

Daniel Rozin has produced several artworks that function as mirrors but use materials that are seemingly non-reflective.:  trash, cork, metal, and paper.  Arguably his most awe-inspiring piece is the Wooden Mirror.  When asked to describe this piece, Rozin replied, "Built in 1999, this is the first mechanical mirror I built. This piece explores the line […]

Payphone, Robert Lazzarini

  payphone is made from the exact materials a New York City pay phone was made out of: Steel, aluminum, Plexi, gunk, materials and processes requiring 45 fabricators. The work’s distortion gives it a futuristic feel — even as pay phones are increasingly out-of-date.” [3] “His beautiful yet unsettling works address the physical, psychological and […]

Tribute in Light

“More recently, light has been used as an artistic medium to illuminate a metaphorical passage between the earth and the heavens.” [1] Tribute in Light is not only beautiful aesthetically, but also beautiful in content as it paid a tribute to the victims of 9/11. The NY Daily News describes the work: “The […]

Rearming the Spineless Opuntia

Amy Youngs offers a critique of the way we treat our natural resources with her piece Rearming the Spineless Opuntia found on page 39 in Art and Electronic Media [2]. In this piece, while critiquing the careless genetic alteration of the naturally occuring environment, she attempts to create a solution for it as well. She says […]

Polygon Playground

[video src=http://vimeo.com/35134962 height:200 align: left]Polygon Playground is a ‘dynamic lounge object,’ incorporating 3D projection technologies and sensors to detect movement and proximity of people in the room. The physical structure is such that up to 40 people may climb, rest, or walk around it, while sensors cause the ‘landscape’ to continuously change as as long as there is human presence. Often the imagery responds to movements, so running across the top of the structure may cause it to highlight the participants footsteps. Other motifs include grids, filling with water, orbs or color that can be ‘kicked’ around, and various abstract color forms.

Mappings

0ablackwhit3f9959f966.jpgBalint Bolygo’s Mappings is a 2005 kinetic sculpture which utilizes the core aspects of the Bolygo’s ethos as an artist. In the sculpture/installation two pens rigged to outlying pendulums transcribe the motions taken by the pendulums onto a rotating sphere, or blank globe. Viewers can interact with the pendulums, pushing them to behave more erratically, or calming them to induce smoother lines. The resulting process essentially becomes the earth mapping its own forces onto a replica of itself, a truly interesting portrayal of mapmaking that encourages the viewer to consider the mass our planet, whose gravitational pull directs the motion of the pendulum and creates the drawings.

Long March: Restart

In 1993, Feng Mengbo created a series of paintings he titled Game Over: The Long March. Painted in the style of 8-bit video games like Mario and Mega Man, the paintings depicted 42 scenes, arranged in order to look like snapshots from a real side scrolling video game. Feng’s protagonist was a nameless Red Army soldier, depicted battling everything from ghosts and giant insects, to sumo wrestlers and astronauts.

AH_Q

Ah_Q.jpgChinese new media artist Feng Mengbo has worked with iconic first person shooters Doom and Quake throughout his career. In Q3 (1999) Feng recorded footage of the game Quake III Arena and superimposed live action video of himself, toting a camera around the battlefield and interviewing contestants, over top. Feng expanded upon this idea in 2002's Q4U (a play on the common abbreviation for the game, Q3A) by completely reworking the game's code to replace all character models with a model of himself, bespecktacled and shirtless, with a gun in one hand and a video camera in the other. Feng's AH-Q, released in 2004 and pictured here, saw the addition of a dance pad used to control all the player character's motions.

The following video, produced by the Creator's Project, includes examples of Feng Mengbo's work and an interview with the artist.

[video src= http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/creators/feng-mengbo]

Emerge

[video src= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huvVO18c8Hw align: right height: 220] Emerge relies heavily on viewer interactivity. It features childish cartoon figures that are projected onto a wall. Visitors control the movement of the figures and change them through these interactions. The figures in this piece can be seen as fables about our own daily struggles and activities as they move, expand, and escape. In Emerge each character is inside of an individual chamber and this examines, in a humorous way, the illusions that drive us and the small worlds we confine ourselves to. They cover all available surfaces, reacting to viewer’s intrusions into their small worlds. Emerge is part of artist Brian Knep’s Exempla series and is the first item in the adjacent video.

Healing Pool

 

picKnepHealingPoolWeb-747755.jpg

The Healing Pool by Brian Knep is a six channel interactive video that was installed in 2008. A glowing pool of organic patterns move and pulse. As a person walks across the video the pattern tears and then continues to rebuild itself. However, the pattern never returns to its original form. Each person who walks across this work leaves a scar. The regenerative piece holds a record or a memory of every interaction it has as it constantly evolves. This work is part of Knep’s healing series and this work investigates artificial intelligence and artificial life. Of this work Knep says, “with these pieces I am focusing on the complexity possible with very simple rules. The patterns and their growth are completely emergent phenomena; they arise from the mathematical equations that the software simulates.”

Metropolis II

Metropolis II – Chris Burden

Scaled version of a future LA. 1,100 miniature vehicles and 18 roads, buildings etc.