Live projections at a downtown plaza, flashing messages on bicycle wheels, and a geo-tagged audio archive app are just a few of the new ways to look at Ottawa.
The installations and applications are part of the five-day electronic arts festival Electric Fields, running Sept. 11—15.
Artengine, the collective that runs Electric Fields, has been exploring intersections of technology and creative expression since 2003.
This year’s theme, We Make The City, was influenced by past themes, such as how sounds and spaces relate to the city, Electric Fields’ program manager Remco Volmer said.
“The past events like Swimming In Sound got us thinking about participatory art . . . it’s almost an investigation of that concept, and how far you can take that,” Volmer explained.
The events encourage people from around the city to take part in the activities. Some include getting lost in a maze or using a bike ride and a bridge to make music. Most of the events are located in Lowertown.
“Something will happen, and whoever is at that place at that time are the people that experience it,” Volmer said.
“Agit P.O.V” is another project people might see around the city. It uses persistence of vision—the idea that an image rests in your mind for a few seconds after you’ve seen it—to make light-up words. “Agit P.O.V” invites random riders to create lights on bicycle wheels. These flashes of light, when combined, spell different words.
“The human eye is pretty slow, so we can perceive a sequence of motions as a movement, like an animated film,” Mariangela Aponte, an organizer of “Agit P.O.V,” said.
“For the first time people see the device, they want to write their names. I think that is normal. We want to see our names there,” Aponte said about the bicycle riders.
But, she added, there’s more to the project than the participants.
“The project is for other people that can see the message in the bike,” Aponte said.
Another project, called “You Are Here,” is a multi-disciplinary art piece happening at the stair-surrounded plaza on Sussex Drive and Rideau Street.
It will project contemporary and archival images onto the plaza’s stairs and walls, along with music and dancing, organizer Elizabeth MacKinnon said via email.
“[It] is a title we came up with as a way of locating this project in a specific space,” MacKinnon said.
“The space directs [viewers’] movement in a certain path (the stairs are diagonal!), and so by using it differently, we hope we’ll open some eyes about how the space could be used,” MacKinnon said.
Another project, Landline, is a smart phone app that archives geo-located audio clips.
“It’s a vehicle for people to voice their opinions, and physically see where those opinions are grounded,” Landline’s founder Megan Smith said.
“I think it’s through celebrating experiences, but also . . . [through] having constructive criticism of the spaces we’re inhabiting, that we can start to discuss change,” Smith said.
For those who do not own a smart phone, they can listen into other people’s voices online for now, Smith said.
Perhaps one of the most interesting elements of the festival is that it’s organized by three members of Artengine, lab co-ordinator Britta Evans-Fenton said.
“You can do this stuff, with . . . a small organization,” she said, in front of colleague Remco.
“I’m impressed now that you say that,” Remco responded with a laugh.
