Annual Digital Arts Expo at CalArts on May 7

Above: Promotional video for Digital Arts Expo.

CalArts presents work that marries technology and art in the 2015 Digital Arts Expo, which takes place on campus next Thursday (May 7).

According to organizers, this year’s event “reflects the latest practices in technologically sophisticated arts, involving viewers in interactive experiences, bringing artists’ perspectives to computer games, forecasting future directions of digital performance, animation, and projection mapping, and exploring the latest in software and hardware as a means of commenting on our increasingly connected world.”

Featured projects in the Digital Arts Expo include:

• The Grip, an Arduino-based serial interface designed to take advantage of natural hand gestures to interact with audio, visual software and design environments (watch a demonstration below);
• Sitting Outside the Pavilion… v2.0, where two fans with amplified spring reverb tanks activate sound;
• Digital Dollhouse, a miniature room with furniture made of recycled materials brought to life by lights and sound controlled by motion sensors;
• Resonant Spectra, three instruments play low frequencies in order to rotate a sculpture; and
• übeldrohne, an electro-acoustic instrument that utilizes four bass strings, motors and slide levers to create polyphonic bass drones;

Performances in the Sharon Disney Lund Theater and Roy O. Disney Concert Hall are also scheduled as part of the expo.

Above: The Grip demonstration.