implicit art

Yesterday afternoon saw a fantastic double event at the WSOA Digital Arts friday soiree. First, Cobi Van Tonder facilitated successive performances in her award-winning, interactive gumboot project. Analog sensors in the soles and on the sides of these boots trigger and control live samples of electronic music. Her collaborative performances went from fairly simple – where we could mostly see exactly how our performer controlled the music – to very complex. There were all kinds of ideas thrown around with the kinds of samples one could remap to her boots, the kinds of people we’d like to see using them, and how to make the interaction more or less transparent – as well as what this might do to the conceptual framework, and audience, of the work.

Next up, Aryan Kaganof overheated the projector (literally) with 5 video shorts from the past year. The series, entitled collaborations was made up of dialogues with other artists, where contributions, edits, and suggestions went between parties in several iterations before each work was completed. The Q&A session was the weirdest I’ve ever been to, and also the most entertaining. AK managed to sell a handful of his poetry books, and gave me one of his SMS (Sanctuary Mental Space) books from this show. Admittedly, I’ve been eyeing this book for a while. Besides some extremely provocative poetry, the intricate detail of his beautiful text art puts anything ASCII I’ve seen in the Digital Space to shame. Often, I find myself mesmerized by the amazing patterns, and completely forget that these are also legible poems. It’s a stunning publication, highly recommended to digi-geeks, poets and Colin Richards fans, alike.

Finally, about 20 cats from the soiree went over to the Wits post-graduate club for drinks. Attendees included Wits crew, Wits Tech, Bag Factory, even Tuks – it’s really amazing to see the Digital Arts community growing in this way. There are plans, I say, there are plans under way to foster this even more….