What are those thermo-sensitive seats inspired by Mississippi swamplands doing at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival?
Sitting on their art in the New Frontier on Main, Nuno Goncalves Ferreira and his artistic partner and wife, Erin Hayne try to explain.
“I think it’s related to the concept of this specific space,” says Ferreira, referring to the avant-garde artistry surrounding him, projected on the walls and into the air through speakers. “The idea of New Frontier is that artists are working with different levels of interactivity.”
“So far it’s pretty much lived up to our expectations,” says Hayne. “We’ve gotten a lot of exposure and already met a bunch of really smart and passionate people We feel much more comfortable here than at the furniture trade show. There isn’t a sense of commercialism. People are here to learn.”
Hayne notes that with nearly every piece at Sundance’s second annual New Frontier exhibition corner for cutting-edge video work, there is a degree of performance where the audience must join in, which is in essence the mission behind her and Ferreira’s constellations of furniture that change color when their temperature is raised. “In daily life, especially in this country, people are super isolated,” she says. “We wanted people to feel free to touch. It’s natural, I think, to explore things with your body.”
That Hayne and Ferreira are in good company is confirmed by the activity going on right beside them at The Second Life station. People are taking turns at a computer screen to make choices about what kind of jeans they would like to design and purchase in two-dimensional virtual reality. After the jeans are designed to each person’s liking heart-shaped patches, tassels they are then printed out life-size for their architects to take home in the third dimension. In the Rabbit Hole lounge and café a few feet away, Deejay Javier Natureboy spins beats in a booth decorated with clear plastic bottles lit up by color-changing lighting like a jukebox.
In an ancillary room, two works by artist Daniel Rozin attract a few cautious viewers who, after a few moments, catch on: the motion, the form of their bodies are captured with cameras, and in real time the artwork responds. As viewers stand in front of one piece called “Peg Mirror,” the shadows of their figures emerge on 660 motorized wooden pegs and as they stand in front of his other piece, “Snow Mirror,” black-and-white reliefs defining their bodies are projected on a screen.
“All of my work is fashioned as mirror pieces where you part of my ongoing investigation of reflection and the creation of images and interaction and digital images,” Rozin explains.
As he watches people play before his art, seeing their own figures make impressions, change his work, he claims a satisfaction he supposes many artists can’t touch.
“Universally, not a lot of conceptual pieces make people really happy,” he says. “They make them think deeply, think about profound things, but it doesn’t make people happy. My art makes people happy and that makes me happy, too.”
What does this all hold for the future of film? Only time will tell. But already, Sundance is beginning to see the emergence of film that reaches beyond its usual dimensions. In “U2 3D,” as Bono sings in one song, his face jumping out of the screen, his hand raises high, then gently lowers, almost as if he is touching the face of each audience member, dissolving the barriers between art, artists and viewer. The future, it seems, is near.
See The New Frontier at 333 Main St. through Friday Jan. 25. The gallery is open from noon to 8 p.m. daily.