English report：Clouds, Presentation
恵比寿映像祭スタッフによる英文レポートの掲載を開始します。
第1弾は2/28（土）17:30〜開催した展示出展作家ジョナサン・ミナード &ジェームズ・ジョージによる《クラウズ》プレゼンテーション。
次回もお楽しみに★
Clouds, Presentation
Guests: Jonathan MINARD and James GEORGE (artists)
2/28(土 Sat.)17:30–18:15
Last night, New York based artist and new media documentarian Jonathan Minard and James George drew a large audience in The Garden Hall in Ebisu, for a unique presentation of their live interactive documentary ‘Clouds.’ The presentation accompanied the pair’s interactive installation, which is on show throughout Ebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions. Built using C++ code and running in real time, the presentation had a vivid live atmosphere; ephemeral, precarious, and open-ended.
During the presentation, Minard and George controlled the computer-based data visualization by moving their hands and arms in front of a 3D motion sensor. As if drawing in the air, their gestures activated software that the audience watched on screen. By waving his arm to the left or right, Minard or George took it in turn to click virtual buttons and thereby have the computer transport the audience into an onscreen galaxy of images, artist interviews, and intriguing questions. ‘Can reality be hacked?’ ‘What does music look like?’ ‘What is data?’ ‘Is an artwork ever done?’
The presentation was both a film and a live art work. Without any real beginning or end, it challenged notions of a ‘film’ format, and seemed almost to answer its own question, ‘Is an artwork ever done?’
Minard and George’s project gathers many artists who have been producing artwork using code over the past decade. Using open source software, the group has developed into an expanded network of creative practitioners, producing content that really is ‘never done,’ never finished, never the same twice. Interviews with some of the participating artists were shot using a 3D scanner and are accessible in the installation, as well as forming a central part of the live presentation.
Visitors to the installation can wear an eye set and head phones in order to navigate the coded system themselves, moving their head to steer the spaceship-like program through its galaxy of content, watching interviews, choosing questions, and creating for themselves a unique and live film event.
