Max at NYEAF

If you happen to be around New York this Summer and are looking for something to do, we'd like to suggest a trip out to Governors Island for the New York Electronic Art Festival presented by Harvestworks.

We are happy to be one of the festival sponsors and to support the talented Max users who will be displaying work there. Below you'll find descriptions of some of the works there utilizing Max. We hope you'll also check out the Electronic Music SUNDAYS at St. Paul's Chapel, and the Festival Closing Concert at Roulette.

For more information on all the events at the festival, please visit the New York Electronic Art Festival website, and enjoy your Summer!

WaterWall is a sonic sculpture of tuned metal bowls, plates, and sluices that are amplified and distributed to an array of speakers in the walkway. The acoustic sound, the kinetic movement of the water on the sculpture and the sonic events create a musical, spacial, sculptural, and theatrical link to the urban experience of water. The installation is part of THE NEW YORK ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL Wave(form)s - an Exhibition of Electronic Art on Governors Island.

A composer and instrument builder, John Morton has presented his music throughout the United States. His 2009 NYC outdoor installation “Central Park Sound Tunnel” received significant critical acclaim. John Morton and Jacqueline Shatz have collaborated on many music box-based sculptures and installations. Visual artist Jacqueline Shatz is a sculptor who often works with collage. Her work is included in numerous collections, and she has curated and organized many exhibitions.

An interactive video installation that uses video and sound to bring to life stop-motion photographs from a 1950’s competitive swimming manual. Using Max/MSP and Jitter, the installation reanimates these beautiful but outdated images, creating an immersive environment where the viewer influences but does not control events.

Blue Swimmer is the latest piece from Louisa Armbrust that uses games and sports to examine ideas about play and creativity. Armbrust uses games and sports as a helpful matrix for thinking about the creativity involved in trying to follow a rule. The installation is located in THE NEW YORK ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL Building 10b, part of Wave(form)s - an Exhibition of Electronic Art on Governors Island.

The original images upon which Blue Swimmer is based were created with the photographic technologies of their time to attempt to convey, as comprehensively as possible, the rules for performing a butterfly stroke or a competition dive. These images exquisitely demonstrate the distance between lived experience and the carefully orchestrated representation of experience, aligning them poetically with the task of exploring the gap between the rule and its resulting action.

Credits: Gene Kogan, Engineer with additional help from Kyle Kaplan. Supported by the Jerome Foundation through the Harvestworks Artist In Residence Program.

Revisiting a vintage computer data storage format using reel to reel audiotape, Data Decay is an installation that uses data as the primary sound palette and room acoustics as a modifying agent. Images are converted to sound and played back in a tape loop. The looping audio is decoded and the encrypted visual content is displayed. The size and volume of the audience changes the acoustics in the room, and thus alters the visualization of the image. The installation is located in the NEW YORK ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL Building 10b, part of Wave(form)s - an Exhibition of Electronic Art on Governors Island.

This project was commissioned by Harvestworks with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional support was provided by The Experimental Television Center’s Finishing Funds program which is supported by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts.

Angie Eng: Liminal is a series of live video music cinepoems based upon the concept of liminality, coined by ethnologist, Arnold Van Gennep (1909). The multimedia performance combines new inventive tools such as the VideoBass, French avant garde experimental cinema tricks and customized music/video software. This collaboration of music and video crosses genres: experimental jazz, neo-abstract expressionism, puppetry and live experimental cinema. Support for this project was also provided by: Experimental Television Finishing Funds, mediaThe foundation inc. and The MacDowell Colony for the Arts.

CreditsAngie Eng: Director/video/VideoBass Nancy Meli Walker: live camera Satoshi Takeshi: percussion/electronics Shoko Nagai: piano Audrey Chen: cello/electronics Michael Egger: MAX programmer