Press Release Draft (back then approved by the artists)
Immersive Surfaces is a public video projection installation onto the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn during the Dumbo Arts Festival from September 23 - 25, 2011. The multi-part video projection will be created by contributions of over 20 international artists and curators and incorporate cutting-edge video mapping technology. Drawing from innovative developments in the arts involving social media and large scale participation, the projection will make “crowd”, i.e. the connection between individuals and the greater group the main topic. Find more information on http://immersivesurfaces.com.
By displaying multiple parts of projection, Immersive Surfaces demonstrates how video art can achieve different goals depending on scope and scale of it’s display. The video projection will showcase 3 parts. The first part will show traditional video art and slowly progressing to utilize the entire anchorage and archway; this will be achieved by contributions from 15 international artists from Europe, Asia, and the U.S. The 15 individual pieces have been created either recently or specifically for Immersive Surfaces and will decorate the enormous wall space in small units like a virtual gallery. It will be connected by a background that contextualizes the entire canvas, a surface that is going to be animated in the second part of the installation. The animation will put on display a site-specific op-art projection. This piece will lead into the third and central part of the projection, an installation by the Lumen Brothers, a newly formed team of artists from the US and from Europe; the festival marks their first collaboration.
The projection by the Lumen Brothers puts at its center an up and coming type of art: Crowd Art. Crowd Art reflects that we have become a crowd and that the boundaries between the individual and the group have become blurred. In a globalized world that’s saturated by social media and information technologies, media in- and output, by a political process that’s dominated by polls and corporations, the role of the individual has been called into question. The projection tries to reflect the disorganization of communities into both, individuals and crowds. The philosophical question behind addresses an experience that reflects our daily conduct: What is it that makes us connect?
3 elements will facilitate the magnitutde of the projection: The particular site (Manhattan bridge during the Dumbo Arts Festival), the technology involved (D3, Watchout, Hippotizer), as well as the narrative of the content: the relationship between the individual and the crowd, their struggle, and their connection, visually translated into a number of scenes culminating into a reversed slow-motion waterfall of people. As individuals and groups they will be immersed into the surface of the architecture with which they will interact till they ascend.
The project is at the center of the Dumbo Arts Festival and is being organized by video curator Leo Kuelbs in conjunction with a team of artists and SenovvA Inc., a leader in cutting-edge projection technology in the U.S. Lumen Brothers are Simon Anaya, Farkas Fülöp, Richard Jochum, John Moreno, John Ensor Parker, and Ryan Uzilevsky. Multimedia design firm Light Harvest Studio will assist in producing content. Leo Kuelbs has been organizing outdoor projections in the past, this project however is the largest scale involving more than 20 international artists, more than 24 projectors and high-end equipment beyond a quarter million dollars.
The project will be accompanied by an augmented reality component created by Meg Pullis Roebling. It compliments the Immersive Surfaces theme of the show and allows the crowd to participate in the installation. Directions and a QR code will be posted around the site and in the guides to dowload the Layar app to their smartphones. Throughout the festival people will be encouraged to tweet images with the hashtag #dumboarts. Tweeted images will float though the atmosphere in an inverse waterfall with a parallax effect. The effect of the images floating, as viewed through the users device, up in front of the video projections, is that the crowd becomes part of the art piece.
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The artist’s statement has to be evolved as the art evolves. It’s important that we revisit this to make sure that we are precise and in order to tailor this to the needs of the art world. More references for a press release for the art world: The flow of the East River. The large scal real waterfal installation by Olafur Eliasson in the past. Dumbo and the gentrification which leaves us disorganized; on the other hand: the progression of culture by the selfless help towards others.
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