Intercreate is commissioning two innovative art works, to be realised in 2014. The Media Art Projects aim to inspire artists and creative teams to think boldly about combinations of cultural ideas and contemporary media technologies, that could be implemented in public space and/or Pukekura Park. These projects are open to Aotearoa New Zealand artists here and abroad.
Shaman Don Patricio in the ‘Car Garden’, Albuquerque.
Being Light: a festival of light and ideas explores ideas about light across Maori, Navajo, Mayan, Pueblo and Western European culture. The festival has two parts, activities in the day with stalls and market; while in the night there are outdoor projections on the side of buildings. Attendance is free.
We live in a time where there is great interest in bringing together indigenous and Western cultures, art, science and technology. Currently involved are: Patricio Dominguez, Ian Clothier, Mike Andrews, Mike Sutherland, Issa Malluf, Agnes Chavez, Tom Greenbaum, Jamila Colozzi, Courtni Hale, Glenn Parry, Enrique Hynes, Julia Pyatt, Sandra Wasko-Flood and Susan Caffrey.
Te Huirangi Waikerepuru, Te Urutahi Waikerepuru (of Aotearoa New Zealand), Will Wilson and Richard Lowenstein have expressed interest. We are in contact with Santa Clara Pueblo and have invited Mayan participation.
At night, artworks are projected onto the exterior of buildings. The projections consist of a programmed selection of:
• projection works by leading artists
• visualization of energy data from humans
• audio works and music themed on light
• sculptures that use light are installed outdoors at night
During the day, the festival includes
• the creation of an energy labyrinth as a participatory art work in both construction and then walking the labyrinth. Activities include instructions on how to turn your phone into an electromagnetic field reader
• videos where shamans and senior representatives of cultural groups are paired with video students, to make short videos that reflect beliefs about light
• solar powered art works
• visualizations and sonifications of light energy
• activities and market stalls themed on light and sun in the day time
• sunflower painting for children; knowledge sharing of indigenous knowledge about growing sunflowers
• stories of the sun and the power of the sun
• solar powered objects and artefacts
• scientific stalls that express the Western science view of light – wave particle duality
• information stands expressing cultural viewpoints on light
• music themed on light
ISEA 2012 Albuquerque Machine Wilderness
Once I was in a bus in Japan and I had a vision of being in a forest at the same time as being in the bus. These two are often seen as antagonistic, but we must find ways to unite them.
The Car garden merges two apparently divergent entities to suggest a future cohabitation. On the one hand we continue to use fossil fuels in transportation and on the other hand we must change our relationship to the earth to one that is more sustainable. This a ‘complex duality’ because it is not a simple dichotomy between transportation or reforesting. Plants filter the air we breath, and inside the Car garden you can explore the Neighbourhood air project while breathing cleaner air.
Neighbourhood air is an epiphyte growing in the Car garden. The work is an ambient software that responds to environmental sensors. Cars, breathers of city air and temperature and humidity circulate in a slowly moving monitoring system. This interactive, online artwork gathers live pollutant levels from Auckland city air. Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city and despite the ‘100% PURE New Zealand’ tourism campaign even geographically remote cities have air quality problems that the winds can’t disperse. Pollutants from vehicle combustion in Auckland, New Zealand in the Southern hemisphere circulate in the same atmospheric container as cities like Albuquerque.
To plant and regenerate the earth’s remaining oxygen producing forests can heal the atmospheric imbalance created by vehicular emissions, alongside crucial changes in human car usage. Somehow we have to leap over where we are, to be where we want to be.