Saturday, July 29, 2017
Nuit Blanche North
Huntsville, ON
What I presented at this show was the next major stage of evolution in my interactive installation The NETTT Blaster. The previous step, WR-NETTT, was presented in the summer of 2016 in South River at Warbler’s Roost (NAISA North). In that show, participants used the mouse to add triangles to a triangle mesh overlaid on a forest scene. For Nuit Blanche North 2017 (NBN2017) there were many new developments. One, was a sensor table – the Lumpy Table. A fun glowing puffy cloth interface that people could use to activate the triangles instead of using the mouse. Another addition: two different forms of abstracted animation playback: ‘sensors’ and ‘rgb’ with accompanying notes (triangle wave).
Two themes (or what I call ‘sets’) were presented through this installation: NBN2014 Crystal Bowls and Canada’s 150th.
NBN2014 Crystal Bowls is a re-mix of some of the material from my NBN2014 installation, HARPPP2, that was presented in the same location. It featured a crystal bowl ceremony (amongst many other elements).
Canada’s 150th is about Canada’s 150th Celebration with the Indigenous perspective in mind. Material from a First Nations’ protest march through downtown Toronto to Queen’s Park on Canada Day Weekend was mixed with recordings from conventional celebrations around the city during the same weekend; Heritage Festival at Ontario Place, and Rib-Fest in Etobicoke. Recordings from downtown everyday Huntsville from the spot where I always stage my NBN installations (between Town Hall and Trinity United Church), and a recording from the same spot in Huntsville during a Canada Day Parade the previous year were also included. See the videos below for a replay of the installation animations.
The event was a lot of fun and people were engaged and enthusiastic. There were many questions and I enjoyed answering them and interacting. Many thanks to Dan Watson, Edge of the Woods Theatre, and Huntsville Festival of the Arts. I am honored to be a part of this excellent festival and even more honored to have my own spot that I present from each year. This is definitely a highlight of my artistic career so far, and it has given me the platform to launch my work in Toronto (and beyond). It is a rare privilege to be have a consistent location to work from and it enables me to develop artwork that has a line of continuity extending through many years – as is evident in the contents of this very installation. As I write this, I am working on NBN2018. One of the sets for that show will be a NBN2014 remix 2. There was so much material generated from NBN2014 that I had to divide the remix of it into two sets. [note: this material did not make into NBN2018, but I am planning on using it some time in the future nevertheless].
After each show is done, new material, such as what you see below, is generated and this serves as the source material for new shows. New work is continually referencing, and using as source material, the results and recordings from previous projects. Over time, this generates a network of references (this is evidenced by the links to other projects you see in most of the project descriptions on this website) so that it will become increasingly unclear where one project ends and the next begins and which one came first. Not only is the work itself based on the structure of the non-linear distributed network, but my entire career is taking that form as well, transcending time through simultaneity.
I am particularly interested in exploring the results mathematically/computationally and you will see the work move a major step closer to this in NBN2018 – knot and trre.
the album
recordings from the event (click image to go to Bandcamp page)
video/animation summaries
Video documenting set-up, clips of participation in a recording and playback during the show and a full reproduction of the animation – both as the recording and as the two types of abstracted playback. Also includes the NETTT installation on the ground using ribbon – the ‘secret’ installation. This is the Crystal Bowls set:
The Canada’s 150th set:
details from the show
preparatory work
live show
crystal bowls
unsettle 150
analysis – early work for the CSB
