Kai Zhang-Looking Outwards-09

This week for Looking Outwards, I looked through LIngfan Jiang’s post for Looking Outwards 07 about an interactive art installation. Here’s his decription and reflection of the project below.

This week, I am particularly interested in this project called “skies painted with unnumbered sparks”. It was done by an interactive artist, Aaron Koblin collaborated with Janet Echelman in 2014. Made entirely of soft fibers, the sculpture can attach directly into existing city architecture.

Being an architecture student myself, I really like how the artist started to think about the space between the buildings and how art could be involved in it. I really like the contrast between the hard concrete buildings and the smooth, light installation. Most importantly, with computational information visualization and great lighting effects, it really became something its audiences are willing to interact with. It is also amazing how people could just use their phones to draw lines and that would project directly onto the installation.

I think the final form of this art piece is very successful. As I mentioned earlier, this project is done by an interactive artist,  Aaron Koblin and another artist, Janet Echelman, who mainly does amazing huge scale installation art. Therefore, I think the combination of the two artists really created something fascinating.  As for the algorithm behind it, I would assume that the installation becomes a bigger monitor of people’s phones. Whatever is drawn on the phones would project directly on to the installation.

Furthermore, I think this kind of techniques could really make some science fiction movie scenes come true where a lot of projecting figures are floating in the air in the future.

I really appreciate his reflection of this art installation from a perspective of an architect’s point of view. And for a person of the same identity, I do also have many of the same feelings when I see this project.

And I also see something else. Other than the aesthetic aspect of the project, I also see how this is valuable to the public. Often times we have nothing more to do with the architectural or many of the art installtion than being able to snap photos and post them to Instagram. But this kind of the work enables the possibility for the public to become part of the work. By using technology, everyone is able to join the party and become the composer of the great piece. Also, the form of interaction has a decent amount of capacity for everyone who wants to do the work. It creates a virtual connection between people and encourages the interaction between not only people to technology, but people with each other. And I think this the temperature of the technology driven by people with such ambitions to bring everyone together.