CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, April 02, 2014

City nets collaborative art installation

InAVate: An aerial sculpture that allows visitors to choreograph lighting effects in real time via their mobile devices has been launched in Vancouver, Canada. Named Skies Painted with Unnumbered Sparks, the attraction was launched to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the TED Conference and saw a 23,000 ft sq net sculpture hung between the 24-story Fairmont Waterfront and the Vancouver Convention Center.

1 comment:

AeonX8 said...

I was excited to see this follow-up post to the Janet Echelman net sculpture that was installed in Vancouver last month for the TED Conference. The making-of video for Unnumbered Sparks is very well done and gives more of an understanding as to Echelman’s collaboration with Aaron Koblin, creative director of Google’s Data Arts Team. My one complaint with the video is that it contains hardly any shots of the sculpture in daylight. As Koblin states in the video, “the installation first and foremost is this beautiful net sculpture in the sky, and then the layers on top of that are added by participants.” This would have been the perfect opportunity to show a time-lapse of the sculpture transitioning from passive-day to interactive-night. I am frequently dubious of similar interactive installations, as I feel they quickly lose their appeal. That Unnumbered Sparks can stand on its own as a massive, ethereal sculpture – combined with the temporal nature of the installation – makes for a successful work. I would love to experience this in person.

Last April, I attended a great lecture by Koblin at CMU’s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. You can watch that here:

http://studioforcreativeinquiry.org/publications/video/aaron-koblin-z-axis-lecture-series