Once a year, the Brooklyn Academy of Music invites interactive and digital artists to take over multiple floors of their Fisher building, creating a sprawling and immersive parcours of experiences. Student groups of all ages roam the halls on weekdays, while the general public streams in on evenings and weekends to check out work by emerging, and well-known artists.
Our piece this year is an abstract exploration of touch, sound and gesture; something akin to a living abstract painting. Visitors discover a world of colour, shape, sound and movement in constant evolution by exploring the myriad hidden affordances of the system. Each person can also leave their trace, which then serves as the starting point for the next user’s own playful exploration.
It’s an experience that’s difficult to describe without trying it for yourself. And that’s the whole point. We wanted to create something that isn’t easily reduced to words, and that explores the complexity of multimodal experience; where sound, touch, shape and movement become blurred together, and it’s unclear which sense is taking the lead.
As we continue to dive deep into the complexities of interactivity, it’s precisely these multimodal effects that are the most interesting, as well as the most illusive! We can’t wait to keep exploring!
Check it out for yourself at BAM’s Teknopolis Festival. It’s open to the public every saturday and sunday from February 24th to March 11th at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
