Opening Reception: Portrait on the Fly / See Sound / Xoromancy
Pop-up Performance, May 8 – 11 at 8 PM
On view until May 28
As part of Live Ideas 2019, AI: Are You Brave Enough for the Brave New World, the Ford Foundation Live Gallery hosts four interactive installations including Portrait on the Fly, See Sound, and Xoromancy through May 28th. Free and open to the public, an opening reception will be held on Wednesday, May 8th at 6:30 PM. Each evening of the festival at 8 PM, a guest singer/vocalist will perform a 10 minute set animating See Sound to create unique 3D sound sculptures. Guest performers include Julia Easterlin, Carl Hancock Rux, Helga Davis, Kaila Mullady and Mark Martin. Read more about the installations below:
Portrait on the Fly (2015): An Interactive Installation by Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau
The interactive installation consists of a monitor that shows a swarm of thousands of flies. When a person positions oneself in front of the monitor, the insects build up the contour of the person’s figure. They begin to arrange and rearrange themselves continuously, creating a recognizable likeness to the individual. Portrait on the Fly is a commentary on our love for making pictures of ourselves (Selfie-Culture) and has to do with change, transience and impermanence.
See Sound (2017), Rama Allen and creative team at The Mill
See Sound is a generative artwork experience that creates sound sculptures based on the human voice. Each user has access to a microphone and hardware interface. They trigger different visual behaviors within the music visualizer based on experimentation, which results in each user leaving with their own bespoke sound sculpture. The resulting media can be sent to each user immediately afterwards. See the schedule of guest performers below:
- May 8, 8 PM, Julia Easterlin
- May 9, 8 PM, Carl Hancock Rux
- May 10, 8 PM, Helga Davis
- May 11, 8 PM, Kaila Mullady and Mark Martin
Xoromancy, Aman Tiwari & Gray Crawford
Xoromancy explores the near-infinite space of psuedoreal images generated by a neural network trained on millions of images. Participants move their hands to shift the influence and mixture of texture, color and subject, training themselves in the ways of Xoromancy.
See Sound is on-view through the 2019 Live Ideas festival, ending May 12th. Portrait on the Fly is on view through May 29th.
