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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Monday, August 03, 2009
Re:Make It! Fuses Art, Technology
By Kathaleen Roberts
Journal Staff Writer
Imagine graffiti minus the fine.
If you've always wanted to aim a spray can at a wall but restrained yourself out of legal concerns, Re:Make It! could be the answer to your artistic impulses. Sponsored by the Santa Fe Complex, where an amalgam of disciplines in science and art intersect, the Aug. 7-9 festival will host robots, art cars and a virtual graffiti station originated by students from New Mexico Highlands University.
The arrest-free tagging is possible thanks to an infrared camera that tracks sensors embedded in spray paint cans, said organizer David Enoch of the center at 624 Agua Fria St. The project will allow participants to create virtual graffiti on any reflective surface. And if they're proud of their work, they can post it onto a computer and save it.
"So it's consequence-free graffiti," co-curator Dena Aquilina said, laughing.
The concept fits Re:Make It's! goal to demystify technology and make it fun.
"It can be intimidating for people who aren't techno-savvy," Enoch acknowledged. "But the whole process of computing has gotten simpler and simpler."
Re:Make It! will corral about 30 artists like Tristan Chambers, who integrates found objects and home-brewed software to transform the signals of nature into music. Or Michael Schippling, who makes assemblages that react to motion. Installation artist Alex Potts will bring sound sculptures fusing speakers and gourds. Taos' Christian Ristow builds post-apocalyptic robots who destroy one another with names like "Subjugator" and "Manipulatrix" from reconfigured road-working equipment. His commercial work has been featured in Steven Spielberg films like "A.I." and "Bicentennial Man." Ristow's Robot Rampage spectacle will take place at dusk Saturday.
Aquilina added her own remade touch to the complex bathrooms, attaching castoffs like circuit boards, pliers, washers and a bicycle chain to a fabric frame. The used techno trash came from the legendary Black Hole in Los Alamos, a laboratory salvage yard.
"There were no mirrors in the bathroom when I first started coming here," she explained.
Taos' Lorin Edwin Parker was making violins from rulers and cigar boxes at 8. At 14, he built a banjo after reading a book. Now he'll bring something called a Phantastron to Re:Make It! Parker makes synthesizers from vacuum tubes instead of transistors.
"It's quite different," he said of the sound. "To my ear, it seems to be more resonant. You can explore the physics; the electrons all move around in there. If you don't plug in the speakers, you can hear the vacuum tubes vibrate."
He's also bringing a new instrument he's dubbed a Thermatron.
"It uses fire as a source of synthesis," he explained, "a Bunsen burner and a special solution of sodium and potassium. It sounds like everything from a low, pulsating drone to almost a swarm of bees. The hotter it gets, the higher the pitch."
Parker and his wife, Sarah Seetig, will perform at the festival as the electronics-meets-the-frontier band Rocket Parlour.
Boulder's Edica Pacha will bring a metaphysical loom she calls Propheseeds, which she uses as a platform for audience interaction. Pacha is a photographer who has moved into installation, performance, and video work and design.
"I'm asking people to put in their dreams and intentions," she said. Pacha tells audience members to weave their energy into thick pieces of fabric she pushes through the loom. The interactive process turns the loom into a virtual temple, she said.
"It's placing these dreams out into the community to create that shift and change into their lives."
Re:Make It!'s workshops will include physical computing, solar-powered oscillators and kaleidoscope-making. Fashion will materialize from donated clothing. The D Numbers, Axel Foley, *Femme Beatbox Say Wut?!* and the Transducers will provide music.
Enoch and Aquilina based the festival on a similar show in Santa Rosa, Calif.
"It's like a 21st-century fair with a lot of cutting-edge art," Enoch said. "People using technology in interesting and new ways."
The pair hope to attract "hundreds" in order to make the fair an annual event. "I think there's a deep interest in Santa Fe for recycled and re-purposed everything," Enoch said, "to stop so much waste — to save stuff from the landfill."
The Santa Fe Complex is a collaborative of volunteers with backgrounds in art, science, education, public policy and technology celebrating the confluence of art and technology. It is supported in part by a grant from the Santa Fe Arts Commission and is seeking nonprofit status.
If you go
WHAT: Re:Make It!,
a three-day festival
WHEN: Aug. 7-9
n 5 to 10 p.m. Friday
n noon to 10 p.m. Saturday
n noon to 8 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: Santa Fe Complex, 624 Agua Fria St.
COST: $10 a day
$20 for weekend
CONTACT: remake@sfcomplex.org or 982-5802
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