Field Experiment - 2016
Field Ex-per-i-ment - To examine an intervention in naturally occurring environments. Less artificial than laboratory experiments, certain variables can be manipulated but conditions generally cannot be controlled.
In the spirit of nurturing creative research, development, and action, The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences and The Goat Farm Arts Center again joined forces to proudly present an unconventional public action project in Atlanta. FIELD EXPERIMENT 2016 aimed to bring groundbreaking work to the surface with the following support: $20,000 commission, a residency, and collaborative production assistance to realize a prodigious vision for Atlanta. Artists, scientists, architects, performers, and visionaries were invited to work individually or collectively, to dream big and produce a true Field Experiment.
Selected from 77 applications received from 32 cities, 16 states, and 4 countries including Thailand, Chile, Canada & Norway. The proposals included experimentation in the natural sciences & applied sciences, new media, movement, sound based work, transportation, architecture & design computation, music composition, participatory interventions, urban planning, 2D & 3D visual art & robotics.
The 5 finalists each received $2,000 to complete a concept of their projects to debut at the annual Hambidge Auction at The Goat Farm Arts Center on April 23, 2016, and be shown publicly for the following week. This concluded Phase 01 of FIELD EXPERIMENT. Phase 02 commenced with the selection of the winning project, 9to5 by Pablo Gnecco, Travis Broyles Christopher Derek Bruno, and Nate Turley, announced on May 2, 2016. The winning project was awarded $20,000, a two week Hambidge residency, and administration and production support to realize the final, full-scale project.
FIVE FINALIST PROJECTS
{Winner of the People’s Choice Award} Martha Whittington & Rae Long // Contemplation - Resolution - Unity
>> A series of surround sound sculptures intended for deactivated smokestacks in metro Atlanta. Smoke from smokestacks used to paint the sky, signaling abundance, but this prosperity was conspicuously not shared with people from different racial, economic, and cultural origins. Contemplation - Resolution - Unity is presented as three concepts, each embodied in a smokestack. Musical treatises are composed for each environment, inviting Atlantans to find meaning and clarity through the immersive sounds animated from within. <<
Martha Whittington is a sculptor based in Atlanta Georgia. Whittington received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from Tyler School of Art. Whittington has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally with shows in Berlin, Hong Kong, Istanbul.
Rae Long is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, musician, songwriter and artist working in Norway. Rae is an isolationist and does not listen to or perform works by any composer/artist. She has held a life long self study and theory that everyone will generate similar music and sounds based on the musicality of the instruments presented to them.
Maya Gurantz // Ghosting Atlanta
>> A site-specific series of interactive public video and audio installations triangulating history, the body, and the landscape through song, dance, and visual spectacle. Operating like a massive séance to allow history to bleed though the architecture and haunt public space, the pieces that make up “Ghosting Atlanta” unsettle our assumptions about the streets and spaces we take for granted. The series invites Atlanta to experience the diverse histories that make the city what it is today. <<
In video, performance, installation and site specific social practice, Maya Gurantz interrogates constructions of gender, race, class and progress in American communities, shared myths, public rituals and private desires. Maya's work has been shown by the MCA Denver, the Oakland Museum, High Desert Test Sites 2013, Autonomie Gallery, LAX><ART, and Movement Research at Judson Church, among others. She has been written about in Art21, The Atlantic, FastCompany, and Westword, among others. For over a decade, Maya has also created site-specific, community-researched projects in locations as diverse as rural Mississippi and Silicon Valley. In collaboration with Ellen Sebastian Chang, she completed her first public video commission, Hole in Space (Oakland Redux), which was recently recognized as the best public art installation in the Bay Area by the East Bay Express.
T. Lang, Jessica Anderson, Mikhail Jacobs, John Osburn, Hebru Brantley // Post >>
A merging of contemporary dance and emergent techniques in artificial intelligence interaction, Post yields a space where dancers can perform with AI-driven accompaniment in a responsive environment for performance. Post is being designed for a large geodesic dome installation that creates a shadow theater space for dance-reactive interaction. The project will host public activations, performances and community interactions with Atlantans. <<
T. Lang creates, writes and teaches poetic expressions of dance, which illustrates deep, arousing investigations relevant to issues of identity, history and community. Through the vehicle of modern dance, her work communicates perspectives with depth and a movement style that captures the attention of the viewer with its evocative physicality, technical range and emotional viability. T. Lang is the Director of acclaimed contemporary ensemble T. Lang Dance and is a Professor of Dance at Spelman College.
Jessica Anderson grew up in Atlanta. She studies digital media and human-centered design at the Georgia Institute of Technology, graduating this spring with her second master's degree. Jessica spent five years as a university lecturer, teaching undergraduate courses on rhetoric and literature. Her first graduate degree is in English, and her focus was in Native American storytelling.
Mikhail Jacob is a Ph.D. student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his B.E. in Computer Science Engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in 2011, and his M.S. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013. He has developed AI-based technologies in areas such as pretend play, improvisational dance, improvisational theater, generative visual art and procedurally generated video games. His current research is on enabling virtual characters to learn and improvise embodied narratives with people. His work has been featured at venues such as the Creativity & Cognition 2015 conference Art Exhibition in Glasgow, ICIDS 2014 Art Exhibition titled "Remembering/Forgetting" in Singapore, the Autumn School on Computational Creativity in Porvoo (Finland), the Georgia Game Developers Association in Atlanta, and at the AIIDE 2013 conference.
John Osburn hears sound like a painter sees color, paying particular attention to the textures and shading of each element within his work. He not only listens to how his sounds thread in and out of each other, but also focuses on how they are affected by the space in which they resonate. Rather than creating music, Osburn focuses on creating a sound environment in which to immerse his audience. Sourcing from his eclectic background in Western music, African drumming, and Sonic Arts studies, Osburn creates a unique musical blend which floods out of his speakers in an evocative array of frequencies.
Hebru Brantley breaks down the walls of cultural boundaries through his art. Inspired by his 1980’s Chicago upbringing, Brantley’s work touches on tough subjects in a way that may be easily digestible to the viewer, by telling his stories through youthful characters and their adventures. Brantley’s work can be described as pop-infused contemporary art inspired by Japanese anime and the bold aesthetics of street art pioneers Jean Michel Basquiat, Kaws and Keith Haring. While spray paint is often at the forefront of his mixed-media illustrations, Brantley utilizes a plethora of mediums from oil, acrylic and watercolor to non-traditional mediums like coffee and tea.
Pablo Gnecco, Christopher Derek Bruno, Travis Broyles // 9to5
>> An interactive co-working space and ongoing art project that focuses on experimental approaches to the collaborative process in Atlanta. As a digital presence, through livestreaming, the space allows the world to engage with interactive projects curated by the project team. Though the initial iteration is intended as a pop-up, the goal is to make 9to5 a permanent installation by threading itself into an Atlanta community space. <<
Pablo Gnecco is an experiential artist and motion designer currently practicing in New York City. His work explores the intersection of participation, performance, and new technology to create immersive experiences and interactive works of art. His works are activated by light, motion, touch, audio and gestures to create an engaging reaction. Gnecco founded Studio Studio, an interactive (art) agency, a member of the New Museum's Art and Technology Incubator, to create and collaborate with like minded artists, designers, and engineers to create site-specific installations and immersive experiences.
With an education in industrial design, Christopher Derek Bruno cultivated his approach to the design/fabrication of furniture and sculpture based imagery. His recent work explores the cognitive visual experience using (but not limited to) a set of 0-dimensional points bound by 1-dimensional lines, combined to make 2-d planes, organized into 3-d forms, applied to objects with the express purpose of creating a 4-dimensional relationship with the observer. Bruno’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
Travis Broyles has been a copywriter and digital strategist for seven years. During this time, he has helped define the voice of giant brands (Kleenex, McCormick) as well as more likable ones (Fox Theatre, Living Walls). Broyles believes that the best communication, whether it's for collaborators, communities, or consumers, starts with common sense ethics and a desire to truly help one another. Most recently he started Very Sandwich Inc.
Beau Martin & Sam Crane // Color Slug
>> A robotics project where semi-autonomous, wall-climbing ‘slugs’ are pre-programmed to paint drab surfaces across the city. In Atlanta there’s a disturbing lack of color, a sea of grays — concrete, drywall, and asphalt. Color Slug focuses on painting large urban structures and adding color to the city. More color would lead to a more vibrant ATL, not only visually but socially. A more animated city would create a greater sense of community: all of Atlanta united by a fleet of color-printing robot slugs. <<
Beau Martin is an aerospace engineering student at the Georgia Institute of Technology focused on the intersection of art and engineering. He served as the fabrication lead, machining lead, and strategic director of an internationally-ranked robotics team. Artistically, his photography has appeared in the Museum of Design Atlanta, the Dogwood Arts Festival, and the High Museum of Art. Beau has worked under several influential innovators, including renowned inventor Lonnie Johnson, and stereoscopic photographer Peter Bahouth. He works part-time at the SuperGroup, an internationally acclaimed marketing agency, producing virtual reality experiences.
Sam Crane is a computer science student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He served as the lead programmer and project manager of an internationally-ranked robotics team, working with feedback control and smooth motion control. He has worked under Dr. Betty Whitaker in the Georgia Tech Research Institutes’s Information and Communications Laboratory doing advanced data analysis, localization, and artificial intelligence projects.
