conflux... and other weekend activities
As you may have noticed, I've kind of gone missing from this blog in the past few days. I've had a busy weekend running around meeting with artists, visiting with a friend from school, and starting to work on some art of my own. Highlights are as follows:
Conflux ran from Thursday through Sunday, and each day featured artists showcasing their works at the main gallery, giving talks at local bars, and leading excursions out into the neighborhood and larger city. The projects all had something to do with psychogeography: the artists' way of interacting with the spaces around them.
As far as general impressions of the Conflux festival go, it was interesting. It was a bit of an adventure: at times, it all felt very disorganized and honestly a bit boring, but there were also some fascinating projects on display and being carried out during the duration of the festival.
My main complaint, and maybe this is just because I'm not very familiar with the field yet, but many of the projects just didn't really feel like art. Most of them were interesting, but just not terribly artistic. As an example, take the lecture I attended that discussed a commute done in a kayak that included a trek through a ditch. Interesting? Could be. Art? I'm skeptical. Another project of this type is "Freestyle SoundKit" by Jessica Thomson (photo below). She designed a set of devices that picked up impacts on pressure sensors and produced an audio beat on each impact.
I also had the chance to conduct a more formal interview with an artist to include in the Roadtrip Conflux magazine (more to follow on that!), and I'll go into more detail on that one later.
As far as the rest of the weekend goes, it was pretty awesome. Pinsh came out from Carleton to visit her friend Kris, so Joe and I met up with them for dinner and an excursion into Brooklyn. At dinner, the boys ended up ordering almost matching pasta:
Other highlights included getting a Berry Lime Sublime smoothie at Jamba Juice and finally going to see Little Miss Sunshine, which was very good.
Today I also dug in on my big project of the trip, which is going to be AWESOME. Seriously. Stay tuned for more on that, hopefully within the next week or so. It is going to rock your socks.
Conflux ran from Thursday through Sunday, and each day featured artists showcasing their works at the main gallery, giving talks at local bars, and leading excursions out into the neighborhood and larger city. The projects all had something to do with psychogeography: the artists' way of interacting with the spaces around them.
As far as general impressions of the Conflux festival go, it was interesting. It was a bit of an adventure: at times, it all felt very disorganized and honestly a bit boring, but there were also some fascinating projects on display and being carried out during the duration of the festival.
My main complaint, and maybe this is just because I'm not very familiar with the field yet, but many of the projects just didn't really feel like art. Most of them were interesting, but just not terribly artistic. As an example, take the lecture I attended that discussed a commute done in a kayak that included a trek through a ditch. Interesting? Could be. Art? I'm skeptical. Another project of this type is "Freestyle SoundKit" by Jessica Thomson (photo below). She designed a set of devices that picked up impacts on pressure sensors and produced an audio beat on each impact.
I also had the chance to conduct a more formal interview with an artist to include in the Roadtrip Conflux magazine (more to follow on that!), and I'll go into more detail on that one later.
As far as the rest of the weekend goes, it was pretty awesome. Pinsh came out from Carleton to visit her friend Kris, so Joe and I met up with them for dinner and an excursion into Brooklyn. At dinner, the boys ended up ordering almost matching pasta:
Other highlights included getting a Berry Lime Sublime smoothie at Jamba Juice and finally going to see Little Miss Sunshine, which was very good.
Today I also dug in on my big project of the trip, which is going to be AWESOME. Seriously. Stay tuned for more on that, hopefully within the next week or so. It is going to rock your socks.
I still can't believe you posted this picture. Grumble..grumble...
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