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Today I rode my bike over to Cambridge to check out Collision Collectiveten (CX) at Art Interactive. I was 1st Finder on HeyLetsGo and figured I better have a look. Today was the last day of the show and it’s supposed to snow for the first time in Boston tonight.
I always visit interactive art shows with low expectations. This comes from not seeing many that really do it for me, with the notable exception of some robot stuff and downtown Guggenheim shows that blew me away.
I want to see live feeds of internet data remixed with touchpads, video sensors and other interactive functions. As for Collision Collective, when I hear the phrase Interactive Technology, I don’t think of vibrating washers, fuzzy boxes that whisper, a box that when approached has a video of another fuzzy animal inside that screams and makes the box shake. And what’s with the static images hung on the wall?
The stuff was cool to check out for a few minutes, but this is what is coming out of the kids at the MIT Media Lab?
I actually look up to people who can meld technology with art, and I’m not trying to be too harsh, but the only technology at the show was a wall of LED lights they bragged used a lot of power (nice selling point!) and another where I could switch my head, torso and legs with other people via three wheels. sure there was some other stuff, which didn’t work, or I just didn’t get how to make it to what it was supposed to do.
The high point of the show for me was Michael Epstein’s walking tour. I really like guided tours, a few weeks ago I took the Boston Harborwalk Tour. I traded my license for an “iRiver Clix mobile device, donned a set of comfortable headphones and started off on my adventure. I chose the short version instead of the full 60 minute trek. A virtual Cambridge mailman walked me around downtown Cambridge, showing me various locations and the theme was the sheer number of arrows around us all the time. Strange concept but after a while all I could see were pointy Verizon logos, churches steeples, the top of the Municipal building and other places I won’t mention in case you want to take the walk. There was one point during the tour where I was looking at a house and laughing out loud, while people walked by looking at me like I was crazy.
Here are a few phonecam pix I took of the show:
I’m going to write more about interactive art installations, especially the amazng Flickr stuff I’m seeing on the net and how that could be displayed in a live space.
