Spark Festival
For the Spark Festival I had planned on attending Paul Demarinis’ lecture on Friday afternoon, unfortunately, I ended up leaving Minnesota on short notice for the weekend, but I would still like to share some information about his work since I find it intriguing. Paul DeMarinis is an electronic media artist and he has created numerous performance works, sound and computer installations and interactive electronic inventions. Much of his work involves speech processed and synthesized by computers. More of his exhibits can be viewed at this website, http://www.stanford.edu/~demarini/exhibitions.htm, but I was particularly was interested in “A Light Rain” produced in 2004, which allowed viewers to take an umbrella, walk under a projected rainbow, and hear music played by streams of water. He did something similar to this in 1998 also in an exhibit titled “RainDance / Musica Acuatica” which included 20 falling streams of water, modulated with audio signals, create music and sound when intercepted by visitors' umbrellas. I think it is always interesting to hear what artists have to say about their own work after I have already looked at it and come to my own conclusions. Here is a quote from him on the subject of his own work, “My work often traverses the untrodden areas of communication technology where the interplay of meaning, materiality and encoding dance round in figures that suggest the uneasy struggles and yearnings that underlie our officially sanctioned notions of utility, efficiency and consumer desirability. I mean to pose questions about the world we have created , to ask how material devices weave their way into our personal relationships, our understanding of the physical universe and our origins, as well as our notions of possible futures.” I hope that I will be able to experience one of his exhibits in the future, I really enjoyed looking at all of the concepts he’s played around with and how he’s incorporated some of the earliest technology in history with the most recent.