This weekend marks the celebration of the Vimeo Festival + Awards, which brings together experts and achievers in online video. And, some pretty spectacular visual artists, merging DIY tech ingenuity with brilliant sculpture. And we've got the highlights below.
The exhibit consisted mostly of students from NYU's famed ITP program—whose awesomeness we've covered before—and made vivid the mentality they breed over there. Art doesn't have to be on a wall. You can touch it. It can touch you. It can shake, and gurgle, and interact with its surroundings.
Take this project, for example. A series of motorized boxes, each representing a family member—as depicted through a physical interface, of sorts.
Also endearing for its touchability was this paper slider project—a play on the very notion of the touch "screen," that provided functionality with an adorable and very clever low-tech approach.
But art, as any professor of the field will tell you, can often be about confrontation. It shakes you! And this work does literally that, warding off viewers with aggressive rumbles it detects around itself. Not as cute as it looks, but a blast to sit around with. Just don't try to pet it.
Light played a large part in the gallery's collection—particularly the use of projection mapping. This installation used splendidly executed projection to stick disturbingly lifelike mini-folk in specimen jars.
Illumination was also key with this incredibly complex looking contraption—nine years in the making—essentially a machine that did nothing (beyond look rather pretty). But its complexity was a feat of its own, pumping dyed liquid through beautifully woven tubes.
The festival has far more to offer, and will continue through Saturday—for those of you in the New York City area. [Vimeo]