Battle of Everyouth by Ali Momeni and Jenny Schmid with students from Washburn High School was presented at Northern Spark. It is a projection-based performance staged at multiple sites on and around the Minneapolis Institute of Arts , which is blend of live cinema, participatory theater and live performance. The Battle of Everyouth creates a context for exploration and conversation on the theme of global youth and violence.

A “mixing station” staged in front of the museum produces large-scale panoramic projections onto its facade using live video feeds from numerous dispersed performance contexts. The performance contexts that generate the raw materials of the projection are centered around a miniature urban set on display outside the museum. These performance contexts are run by students from Washburn High who act as the messengers as well as the listeners in this work. They use two types of devices in their interactive rapport with the public, which are both mobile and wireless. The first is an ornate hat, which is designed to capture up-close video footage of faces. The second is an augmented briefcase used to capture writing and drawing with markers. Video feeds from these interaction devices are projected onto architectural components in the miniature set, and simultaneously recorded and manipulated by Momeni and Schmid as they project at large scale onto the museum.

Supported by

MIA Inside/Out: Battle of Everyouth is made possible by a Joyce Award and a grant from the Friends of the Institute with additional support from Best Buy Children’s Foundation. Presentation of The Battle of Everyouth at Northern Spark is also made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature from the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

Camille Utterback and Alan H. Davidson installing touch sensitive handrail for interactive light work.

Over the past week, Camille Utterback has been installing her as-yet-untitled (suggestions?) interactive sculptural artwork for the lobby of the Showplace Theaters in The West End, St. Louis Park, MN. It’s all working!

Camille Utterback, untitled interactive artwork, The West End, St. Louis Park, MN

There are 6 tubes with LED lights hanging over the staircase in the lobby of the theater. The LEDs react to people touching the handrails along the balcony. Each touch of a hand rail creates an upward “blip” in the corresponding LED light, which is the color of the rail at that moment. The length of the blip is determined by the duration of touching the rail. If all 6 rails are touched simultaneously, the lights rain down blips.

Camille Utterback, untitled interactive sculpture, The West End.

The balcony railing still needs to be stained, so the touch sensitive sections will not be permanently installed till next week, but it’s all working and ready of for the opening of The West End, which will begin in stages after September 15.

See Alan H. Davidson’s excellent documentation on flickr and previous posts on Public Address.

Dry run installing Camille Utterback's new project at West End. Photo: Alan H. Davidson.

On Monday, Camille used some “funnoodles” to mock up final location of her interactive lighting installation in the theater at the new West End development.

Funnoodles to mock up hanging locations for interactive LED lights. Photo: Alan H. Davidson

More pictures here.

Today they install the real thing.

Camille Utterback, West End project (studio). "Studio before we sent out the lights. The lights are 'naked' as all but one test acrylic tube had already been shipped."

Camille Utterback begins installation of her West End project today. I’m excited to go visit and see the installation. They plan to hang some styrofoam pool “funnoodles” as a mockup to lock in the column heights/locations.

Prior site visit photos.

Here’s a link to a set of photos from a site visit last week checking out the wood railing by Utterback’s collaborator, Brett, who did the engineering on the project.

"A good shot of one of the Railing Sensor housings in place."

"Our clear test cable guard (will be stainless steel)."