For the past two years, I've had the pleasure of interviewing the artists who participated in CL's Sensory Overload and writing about their work in advance of the event — but I've never been involved in planning the annual art-music-performance party. This year, after CL staffers decided that Sensory Overload 4.0 would "go digital" with electronic music and new media art, I signed up to curate its visual art offerings.
Aside from redoubling my respect for curators and event planners of all stripe, the opportunity permitted me to invite some of my favorite local and not-so-local artists to plug in — pardon the pun — to the Honey Pot's three floors. Six projects represent several of new media art's most popular form: video (shot with both a traditional digital video camera and a cell phone, in two separate projects); modified video games; 3D renderings; and playful performances that sample digital imagery and sounds.
In addition to work by the artists listed below, partygoers at SO 4.0 will have a chance to vote and comment live via Twitter on entries in our Student Art and Design Competition. (The deadline has passed, and we received 64 entries in categories including video, 2D animation, digital photography and graphic design.) Of course, you're welcome to comment on anything you want during the event — the hottie across the room, your plans to hit an after-party — just add the hash tag "#overload" to your tweets at Sensory Overload, and they'll make it on the big screen.
Our goal has been to make SO 4.0 an utterly interactive digital art event. Here's the skinny on the folks who are helping us do so by bringing their art to the party:
• Deon Blackwell, a recent graduate of USF's Master of Fine Arts program, is best known for his ceramic-and-salt sculptures, but he can't resist the lure of video game hacks. For SO 4.0, Deon has programmed Wii controllers and other video games to function as an interactive music creation tool and turned an arcade console into the site of a playful performance piece. At a third kiosk, visitors are invited to play the ultimate video game classic: Pac-Man.
• Drums_project_01 performance_02 by Felecia Chizuko Carlisle and Valerie George combines live performance, sculpture, music, sound, and electronic art. Valerie plays a vintage drum set as Felecia plays laptop instruments; together they create a montage of hip-hop, samba, heavy metal and dance beats layered with glitchy electronic sounds and accompanied by colorful animations. Both artists teach at the University of West Florida and work individually as well as collaboratively.
• Aaron David Cook and Julianna Stoll present Enlightened Chandelier, an unconventional video installation that invites viewers to gaze up into a disorienting swirl of urban images. Cook, co-founder of the experimental music-art-technology group Trans-Mission, and Stoll, a web designer, are students at the University of Tampa.
• Giancarlo Giusti is a graduate architect at Wilder Architecture, Inc., in Ybor City. Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, Giancarlo earned a master's degree in architecture at USF. His project, Occupiable Highways, suggests an alternative to the construction of highways as concrete walls. Through a combination of 3D renderings, handcrafted models and drawings, he proposes the integration of residential and commercial development, parks, bike paths and walkways with I-275 in West Tampa.
• Santiago Echeverry's World is an interactive database of nearly 2,000 cell-phone videos shot on multiple continents over the past two years. With each click, a 10-second video is randomly recombined with a different soundtrack. Santiago is a graduate of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and an assistant professor at the University of Tampa.
• Illuminations 33701 consists of St. Petersburg graphic designer David Meek and various collaborators. Through improvised projections of images, video and graphics onto surrounding architectural features and people, Illuminations 33701 creates a temporarily transformed urban environment.
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2009.