Giant Sing Along – vote by July 1
Mouna Andraos + Melissa Mongiat, Giant Sing Along, Minnesota State Fair, 2011. Concept sketch courtesy the artists.
In order to have the best summer song list ever, we need your help! Submit tunes you love, can’t resist, need to share, or bring back memories. It could be a song that gives you that lovin’ feelin’, a dedication to a few of your favorite things, a traditional folk song, your choir’s best song, or something that makes you wanna rock and roll all night.
Vote now here by July 1.
Music Machine, Group Karaoke, DIY Choir, Electric Campfire
There is a new kind of “machine” coming to Machinery Hill at the Minnesota State Fair this August. It’s a “music machine,” and everyone is invited to take your vocal chords for a spin. With your friends. With your family. With your church choir. With total strangers. Step up to the field of microphones and belt out the words on the giant LED screen. Don’t worry, the 36 microphones are specially designed to “auto tune” voices – or add disguising reverb and other effects.
Giant Sing Along by Montreal-based artists Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat is a giant sing along that puts the “together” in The Great Minnesota Get Together. It’s a machine that combines disparate voices to make common song. It’s group singing around the electric LED campfire karaoke style. It’s a make-your-own-choir opportunity. And yes, it’s song at the end of a stick – a field of stick-microphones inviting you to participate. Or watch as long as you can till you can’t resist participating.
Whether at a stadium, around a campfire, on a dance floor, as part of a choir, or as a family holiday tradition, there is something powerful in the act of singing together – beyond beautiful voices, it’s about the collective shared experience. That collective shared experience is the heart and soul of both the Minnesota State Fair and Giant Sing Along.
Giant Sing Along will be located on Murphy Avenue, across from the Pet Center. It’s free and open to all guests each day of the 2011 Minnesota State Fair.
Giant Sing Along
Giant Sing Along field of microphones. Concept sketch courtesy the artists.
A field of 36 microphones offer an open invitation for anyone to reminisce both the historical and popular American music repertoire.
A giant screen features lyrics of recent, old and very old songs, from chorals, country music and any other musical background relevant to Minnesotans through a voting process. Songs that no one can resist.
Beyond the initial reference to karaoke, Giant Sing Along is actually a proper sing along since karaoke is really about one person performing in front of an audience. Here the goal is not to reproduce a song performance, but to live a communal experience. Jay Livingston, Montclair University, explains it well: “In a sing along, our goal, our motivation, is to do something together – in this case, sing the same song – and our pleasure comes from doing it together. Sing along is less about performance, more about group activity, and we wind up sounding like, well, us.”
The system will integrate different sound technologies to stimulate participation. A sound processing system will auto—tune the voices, lightly adjusting the pitch and reverb so that anyone, even the ones less familiar with singing, can sound good, and feel comfortable taking part.
Giant Sing Along will also increase the impact of each participant’s voice: The more people sing, the more voices will come out – 1 person sounding as if 2 people were singing, 2 persons as if they were 4, 3 as 6, up to 36 voice which in turn will sound like almost 100 people are singing together. And if more than one person sings in each microphone, the sing along will truly sound giant!
Andraos and Mongiat
Andraos and Mongiat come from the fields of interaction design and narrative environments, and research new ways to tell stories. Regarding the fair’s Giant Sing Along, Andros and Mongiat write, “Building on the contagious, positive energy of the fair, participants will connect with one another by sharing in a collective and moving musical experience. This uplifting activity is accessible to all and designed with the goal of inspiring guests to do something in unison.” The two design large-scale projects that impact cities down to tiny ones that fit inside a pocket, bringing art to everyday life and inviting the public to become active contributors. More of their work can be found at livingwithourtime.com.
Presented by Bremer Bank
Presented by Bremer Bank, Giant Sing Along is a co-production of the Minnesota State Fair, the Minnesota State Fair Foundation, and Northern Lights.mn.
Northern Spark in some pictures
Thank you Twin Cities! We had an amazing time at Northern Spark on June 4. Lots of people did. About 25,000 people showed up in Saint Paul and Minneapolis to look at participate in and wonder about 100 projects at 34 different locations in collaboration with 50 organizations. Let us know if you have images to share and tag them with #NorthernSpark on flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and other sites.
This is just a small sample of some of the pictures from the event. Much more to come.
Artists’ + Partners’ documentation of Northern Spark
Art Institutes International Minnesota, Tim Armatto flickr set
Philip Blackburn, Car Horn Fanfare video
Philip Blackburn, Wind Harps and Wind Flutes, video
Chris Farstad and Alex Dyba, video
Intermedia Arts, Northern Spark time lapse rough cut
John Kamp and James Rojas, Twin Cities Re-Imagined flickr set
mnorginal, Northern Spark
Ali Momeni and Jenny Schmid, Battle of Everyouth at MIA flickr set
Notion Collective Station Identification flickr stream
ROLU, A Simple Chair
Piotr Szyhalski, Empty Words, flickr set by Robert Luna; set up and rehearsal
UpTake, Panelectric Dreams
Walker Art Center, Field Report: Photos from Nightshift
Other Northern Spark flickr sets and video
Metromix, Photos: Northern Spark (Nuit Blanche)
Students of Nathaniel Freeman class on Experimental Video and Installation, Northern Spark
Meeting the city halfway
Welcome to the inaugural Northern Spark, a free, all-night festival of public art and performances taking place outdoors and indoors in both Minneapolis and Saint Paul from sundown to sunrise.
There is magic in the night, when the familiar, like the city skyline, becomes majestic, and a starry sky can transport the imagination. One’s senses are heightened, attuned to the slightest noise or even the smell of the nearby river in a way that seems not so common in daylight. One’s regular bus ride or walking over the threshold of a building visited hundreds of times before becomes exotic and otherworldly at 3 am.
Imagining Northern Spark. Maquette and photography by Rasun Mehringer. Design: Matthew Rezac
It is in this context that more than 200 artists are presenting 100 installations and performances for Northern Spark from the top of the Foshay Tower to boat rides along the Mississippi to light sculptures and projections to performances galore, including car horn and brass band fanfares, color guards, river dancing, sewer pipe organs, lullabies, and storytelling. Perusing the festival program (PDF) will introduce you to the rich variety of offerings that will bloom for one night only. It is not our goal to take over the night like some giant big top tent, but to join it. We meet the city halfway. As you walk or ride a bike or take the bus from one venue to another, see and appreciate your surroundings with new eyes and ears. Celebrate one of the great rivers of the world through two magnificent cities and enjoy the next artistic intervention you come across. It’s an adventure. You make your own journey.
Northern Spark is presented by Northern Lights.mn, but it would not be possible without the amazing work of the artists, the generous participation of more than 50 organizations, a talented staff, and the steadfast support of our sponsors, including the people of Minnesota through funding from the Legacy Amendment. Thank you.
Steve Dietz
Artistic Director, Northern Spark
President and Artistic Director, Northern Lights.mn
Northern Spark program guide
The print Northern Spark program guide – 32 pages of not-to-be-missed projects and scheduled events along with essential “getting around” information – is hot off the presses and will be available at the following sites beginning on Saturday. Check websites for open hours.
The Soap Factory
Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis
W Minneapolis – The Foshay
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Intermedia Arts
Franklin Art Works
Walker Art Center
Saint Paul Central LIbrary
Landmark Center
Black Dog Cafe and Wine Bar
In the meantime, download a PDF of the program and start perusing your planned peregrinations.
Programs will be available at all Northern Spark venues the day and night of the Festival.
AOV3 Fellows
Northern Lights.mn announces the recipients of the third round of Art(ists) on the Verge commissions (AOV3). AOV3 is an intensive, mentor-based fellowship program for 5 Minnesota-based, emerging artists or artist groups working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory. AOV3 is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.
Drew Anderson
Michael Hoyt
Caly McMorrow
Anthony Tran
Aaron Westre
Congratulations from the jury: Steve Dietz, Artistic Director, Northern Lights.mn; Ben Heywood, Executive Director, The Soap Factory; and Amanda McDonald Crowley, Eyebeam Art & Technology Center. And from AOV3 Co-Director Christopher Baker.
AOV3 submissions due Monday, April 11
More about AOV3: https://northern.lights.mn/projects/artists-on-the-verge-3/
Online submission form: http://review.northern.lights.mn/AOV3/
Open call for Northern Spark projects
Northern Lights and our partners are sponsoring more than 20 calls for participation in the Northern Spark nuit blanche twin cities. Some are based on specific locations, some on specific media, and others are free form. The deadline for submitting proposals is March 7, 2011. Any artist – or in the case of some of the calls, curator or organization or business – may submit a proposal, but all projects must take place within one of the 6 Festival Zones. More information here.
Goodbye and hello
For its first year, Public Address, our blog about experimenting with art in the public sphere, was a collaboration with Forecast Public Art, publisher of Public Art Review since 1989 and one of the premiere public art organizations in the country. Recently Forecast’s pioneering efforts were rewarded with grants from both the NEA and the Warhol Foundation to fund an online version of PAR, and that is where they will be focusing their energies online for the foreseeable future. It has been and honor and a pleasure working with Jack Becker, Melinda Hobbs Childs, Kaitlin Frick, and Nichole Goodwell, and we wish them all the best with their ongoing efforts and look forward to working with them again on Northern Spark and other efforts.
On a personal note, I recently completed a 6-year stint with another pioneering organizations ZER01, as the founding Artistic Director of the 01SJ Biennial in 2006 and again in 2008 and 2010. It has been an incredible run, and I will miss my colleagues and friends on the West Coast dearly, but I also look forward to directing my efforts full time as Founder, President and Artistic Director of Northern Lights.mn.
And I am especially pleased Jaime Austin, who was the Assistant Curator for the 2010 01SJ Biennial and is now Curator and Director of Programs for ZER01, has agreed to become the West Coast Editor for Public Address. She will be writing about and finding writers about art in public on the West Coast of the United States. Look for her byline soon.
Thank you Forecast! Welcome Jaime!
steve “mediachef”
Dialog in/of/on the tall grasses
Stephen Vitiello, Tall Grasses (location shot), 2010. Courtesy of the artist
I am thrilled to be in dialog with artist Stephen Vitiello about his exhibition Stephen Vitiello: Tall Grasses, along with Christopher Cox, exhibition curator and Executive Director of the Salina Art Center on Friday, October 29. I hope you can make it, if you are in the area.
“Composer, electronic musician, and sound artist Stephen Vitiello is well-known for his experimental approaches to the phenomenological aspects of sound. His field recordings of ubiquitous atmospheric noises are often mixed with electronics to create palpable soundscapes. The play list for Stephen Vitiello: Tall Grasses provides a layered perspective into Vitiello’s explorations of sound, including a room-size installation looping works from 2004 to 2010; a video collaboration with Brazilian filmmaker Eder Santos; and a new sound piece commissioned by the Salina Art Center expressly for this exhibition that echoes the natural life of Kansas’s remaining tallgrass prairies.”–Salina Art Center
Photo Stephen Vitiello
Stephen recently curated a series of midnight concerts at Trinity Cathedral in San Jose for the 01SJ Biennial, and Northern Lights.mn also commissioned him to do a project on the aurora borealis, although nothing sparked, so to speak, on that trip.
The previous day, Thursday, I will also be speaking with R. Luke DuBois about his exhibtion Hindsight Is Always 20/20 at the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita.
Community photo night University Avenue Project
Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project, Project(ion) Site, 1433 University Ave.
The Community Photo Night
This Sunday, October 10, 6:30 pm
The University Avenue Project(ion) Site on 1433 University Avenue, across from Walmart
Come see photos and video taken by community members!
There’s still time to submit your photos-absolute deadline is this Sat, 6 pm! (See info below)
Submit photos
The University Avenue Project invites you to submit photos for our Project(ion) Site!
Have your photos of St. Paul’s University Avenue neighborhoods projected on our forty-foot screen on the evening of Sunday, September 19 for our “COMMUNITY PHOTO NIGHT.” This is open to all photographers, amateur of professional, University Avenue resident or not.
All types of photography will be considered, including photos of people, things, landscapes, conceptual, or family snapshots (but only your family snapshots if you live in a University Avenue neighborhood). The photos should be taken in the area north of I94, south of Pierce Butler, East of Emerald Street (two blocks west of Hwy 280) and west of 35E.
Send a maximum of 3 jpgs (around 1.2 mb) to: info@wingyounghuie.com
Or drop off a CD (maximum of 3 jpgs) at the Project(ion) Site anytime during projection hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 8:30 – 10:30 pm, 1433 University Avenue (across the street from Walmart, next to the Town House Bar).
This is not a photography contest, rather a way of creating an epic family album from all points of view! Photos selected will be at the discretion of Wing Young Huie.
The University Avenue Project
The University Avenue Project, produced by Public Art Saint Paul, is an extraordinary, large-scale public installation of hundreds of photographs that reflect the incredible diversity of its neighborhoods–taken by Wing Young Huie–that are exhibited along six miles of University Avenue in Saint Paul in store windows and on sides of buildings.
Project(ion) Site
The centerpiece is the Project(ion) Site where a giant, outdoor slide show of Wing’s photographs are projected on a 40 foot screen, accompanied by a soundtrack from 40 local musicians. The last Saturday of each month, we invite local talent to take the stage for The University Avenue Project Cabarets.
Conceived by Steve Dietz of Northern Lights.mn and designed by Meyer, Scherer and Rockcastle, Ltd. (MS&R), the site is built from cargo containers. 2 large towers along the edge of University provide for projection of images that will be visible for a mile in each direction. Entering the site, visitors can view the nightly show that will be projected on a 40 foot screen.
Northern Spark
Northern Spark is a new MN Festival modeled on a nuit blanche or “white night” festival – a dusk to dawn participatory art event along the Mississippi and surrounding areas.
Save the date!
Northern Lights.mn received start up funding from the MN State Arts Board and Northern Spark will take place the evening of June 4 (sunset 8.55 pm) till the morning of June 5, 2011 (sunrise 5.28 am).
Our goal is make Northern Spark a world-class event that focuses on Minnesota-based artists, pushes the boundaries of contemporary art, transforms the urban environment into a city-wide art gallery, includes a diversity of participating organizations from partner non-profits to commercial sponsors to “mom and pop” businesses, involves a broad and diverse audience who are not regular attendees of traditional art venues, and showcases the natural and urban splendors of the Twin Cities.
In addition to a number of invited local, national, and international artist projects, there will be open, juried calls for at least 10 additional artists and 10 venues to each receive support for projects at Northern Spark.
Presented by
Northern Spark is directed and produced by Northern Lights.mn in collaboration with the Spark Festival and with the support of numerous participating organizations and institutions.
Northern Lights.mn
Northern Lights.mn is a roving, collaborative, interactive media-oriented, arts agency from the Twin Cities for the world. It presents innovative art in the public sphere, both physical and virtual, focusing on artists creatively using technology, both old and new, to engender new relations between audience and artwork and more broadly between citizenry and their built environment.
Spark Festival
Now in its eighth year, the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts gather creators and performers of new media arts from around the world to the Twin Cities to showcase their groundbreaking works of music, art, theater, and dance that feature use of new technologies.
Participating Artists
Participating artists to date include: Christopher Baker, Body Cartography, Jim Campbell, Barbara Clausen, Phil Hanson, Wing Young Huie, Minneapolis Art on Wheels, Ali Momeni, Janaki Ranpura, Jenny Schmid, Andrea Stanislav, Piotr Szyhalski, Diane Willow, Roman Verostko, Marcus Young, and others.
Participating Organizations
Participating organizations to date include: Forecast Public Art, Intermedia Arts, Kulture Klub, Le Meridien Chambers, Macalaster College, McNally Smith College of Music, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota Museum of American Art, mnartists.org, Public Art Saint Paul, ro/lu, Soap Factory, SooVac, The W Foshay, Walker Art Center, Weisman Art Museum
Supported by
This activity is 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.
Join Us
AOV2 @Spark Festival
Spark Festival. Regis Art Center. tectonic industries, Perhaps this is the only way of knowing if anything was ever important to you.
For one week each year, the Spark Festival gathers creators and performers of new media arts from around the world to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul, USA, to showcase their work to the public.
Art(ists) On the Verge is an intensive, mentor-based fellowship program for Minnesota-based, emerging artists or artist groups working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory. This is the second round of Art(ists) On the Verge grants, which are generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.
Arlene Birt, Kyle Phillips, Tyler Stefanich , and tectonic industries are presenting their Northern Lights.mn supported projects for Art(ists) On the Verge at the 8th Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, which opened Wednesday, September 29.
Arlene Birt, Visualizing Sustainability: Tracing Grocery Purchases
Visualizing Sustainability: Tracing Grocery Purchases is part of a larger project, TRACEPRODUCT.INFO , which, is a prototype for an in-store, retail-wide system for displaying information on grocery product backgrounds at point-of-sale. It aims to “visualize the narratives behind the seemingly ubiquitous everyday objects that we interact with as consumers; focusing on the ways in which these products connect us to the larger world. By bringing the attention of the shopper to the detailed and factual backgrounds of their everyday choices, TRACEPRODUCT.INFO seeks to inspire people to understand more about how their individual purchases impact global environment and society.”
The project was going to be displayed as a proof of concept at a local store but last minute technical difficulties at the partner store prevented this. In the Regis Center, blow ups of sample “receipts” are displayed along with their corresponding basket of groceries. Via a kiosk, viewers can enter product IDs and review a visualization of the “localness” of the products. To try this online, go to http://traceproduct.appspot.com/ and enter any of these codes: 1a2b3c, 4d5e6f, 7g8h9i, 1x2y3z, or 4x5y6z.
Kyle Phillips, Indexical Architecture
Kyle’s original Art(ists) On the Verage proposa l for “Empathetic Architecture” stated “I would like to create an empathetic space, which explores the network and relationship between itself and the people that inhabit it.” In part, the past 9 months have been spent understanding just how difficult it is to create a successful and compelling responsive architecture. Kyle’s installation in the Regis Center has at least 3 components. A shotgun microphone in the gallery captures conversations and sound in a very localized part of installation. These sounds are played back after an offset by speakers at the entrance to the room as a kind of attract sequence. Once inside, the viewer inevitably moves toward a shrouded space with a projection surface, which alternates between a grid of faces previously inhabiting the space and a real-time overlay of one of those faces and yours, as you gaze at the projection. Finally, projected spots on the floor indicate the “weight” of where the most people have stood, and a faint glow follows you one the floor as you walk around. Each of these reactive elements of the installation remind you of all the others who have been through the installation, also trying to figure it out.
Tyler Stefanich, Re-presented Narratives
Tyler’s work is also about memory. When you walk into the room, there are four chairs, each facing a projection of a person, with a raw speaker hanging on its own speaker wires next to each chair. You sit and put the speaker to your ear. The person is describing an event. An event which happens to have been Tyler’s graduation show at MCAD, where he told stories in person about project home movies that were not his own. Each person it becomes apparent is describing what they remember of their encounter with this performance. Their memories are not always precise, and if you sit through a couple of iterations or as you move from chair to chair, you may notice that each telling becomes less clear. It is physically degraded like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Eventually, by the end of the show, the stories may be little more than white noise, which may also be the end of our own “shows,” eventually…
tectonic industries, Perhaps this is the only way of knowing if anything was ever important to you.
tectonic industries (Lars Jerlach and Helen Stringfellow) are endurance artists–although that’s probably not how they would describe themselves. Or at least endurance is only part of their practice. For The One Year Project (2007) they cooked one meal a day in chronological order from the Rachael Ray cookery book, “365: No Repeats A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners.” For their AOV2 grant , they proposed “for the duration of 2010, tectonic industries will transcribe from spoken word to text, every new episode of the Oprah Winfrey show and publish the results online every weekday, with summaries posted to Facebook and Twitter.” For this Another One Year Project , tectonic industries creates three versions of each Oprah show. One is not a verbatim transcript, but it is an honest attempt to “report” the entirety of the program. The second version is a distillation into the top 5 lessons learned from the day’s episode. And finally, there is a 140 character Twitter feed of the episode, from which the title of this installation derives. While the project is not yet completed, tectonic industries is streaming across the facade of the Regis Center, the Tweets of the episodes viewed to date.
AOV2 artists featured at SPARK Festival
Today, the SPARK Festival of Electronic Music and Arts, directed by Ali Momeni, announced the line up for its 2010, 8th annual edition.
“Minneapolis, MN (09/02/2010) — The University of Minnesota’s West Bank Arts Quarter will present the eighth annual SPARK Festival of Electronic Music & Arts, Wednesday, September 29 through Saturday, October 2, 2010. SPARK will present a significant portion of its programming in the historic and iconic “Love Power Church” building at 1407 Washington Avenue, in addition to numerous venues within the University’s West Bank Arts Quarter. A complete schedule can be found at www.sparkfestival.org.”
In addition to the extensive music programming, SPARK 2010 will present new commissioned works by grantees of the Art(ists) on the Verge 2 program by Northern Lights.mn: Arlene Birt, Kyle Phillips, Tyler Stefanich, and tectonic industries will premiere their new media installation works at the University of Minnesota’s Regis Center for Art.
SPARK will also host the URBAN CARAVAN Bicycle Tour; a mobile media project by Minneapolis Art on Wheels artists, Andrea Steudel – an AOV 1 grantee – and Luke Anderson. This work is distinguished as a Forecast Public Art’s Public Project.
“The SPARK Festival is a week-long celebration of the latest electronic music and arts, featuring fresh works created by artists from around the globe— The United States, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. SPARK brings internationally recognized scholars and performers of electronic music and arts to the West Bank Arts Quarter for lectures, performances, and master classes. Other festival highlights include presentations by artists on their works and ideas, video and sound installations, guerrilla-style events throughout the University’s West Bank Arts Quarter and expanding to other venues including the Love Power Church and the 1419 Artist Collective.
“This year’s featured composers/performers include multi-instrumentalist, composer and improviser FRED FRITH, London-based electronic duo FURT, Montreal-based composer/ performer group KLAXON GUEULE and Chicago-based trio FRICTION BROTHERS. This year’s Night Life programming includes DroidBehaivior, techno-master MOE ESPINOZA (DRUMCELL), Los Angeles-based electro-duo Vangelis and Vidal Vargas, Danish electronics recycler Mikkel Meyer and dub-step warrior Puzzleweasel.
“The opening reception, concert and exhibition event will take place on Thursday September 30 at 5pm in the Regis Center for Art’s Quarter Gallery. For an up-to-date schedule of SPARK events, visit www.sparkfestival.org. Photographs available upon request. E-mail photo requests to mbalhorn@macalester.edu.”
Auctions speak louder than words
Futurefarmers, Auctions speak Louder than words on Vimeo.
On Saturday (September 4), Futurefarmers will present (perform) Auctions Speak Louder Than Words, the culminating event of their month-long residency A People Without a Voice Cannot Be Heard. Bring your stories – and 3 objects.
Here is how it works:
Objects on Blankets
11 am–1 pm
Futurefarmers invite us to consider what our possessions say about us in this unusual auction. Bring a blanket and three objects from home and spread out on the Field prepared to share a story with others. Throughout the morning, Futurefarmers will collect these stories as special “vocal” guests roam the field.
Auction and Drawing
1–2 pm
An auction commences where you may be invited to have professional auctioneers Glen and Dale Fladeboe auction one of your objects by retelling your story in their own inimitable voice. Futurefarmers will be making interpretive drawings of the selected auctioned objects and the owner of the object can choose which to keep—drawing or object—and which one is awarded to the winning bidder.
