VPA’s computer art graduate students and faculty celebrate ‘100 million years of progress’ on April 26 with ‘Electric Art Show’

VPA’s computer art graduate students and faculty celebrate ‘100 million years of progress’ on April 26 with ‘Electric Art Show’April 14, 2008Erica Blustesblust@syr.edu

Graduate students and faculty in the Department of Transmedia‘s computer art program in Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts will celebrate “100 million years of progress” with the “Electric Art Show,” an exhibition of interactive and electronic works, on Saturday, April 26, from 7-10 p.m. at the Taskale Gallery, 713 E. Fayette St., Syracuse. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

The “Electric Art Show” features fun, interactive art displays, 3-D computer animation and physical computing projects. All of the artwork functions using electronics and computers in some way, making this an exhibition fit for the 21st century.

Graduate students participating include Steve Belovarich, Blake Carrington, Bret Malley (whose work “Growth” is pictured above), Ryan Marchand and Chris Prior. Faculty members with work featured include Heath Hanlin, Sean Hovendick and Diana Salles.

The graduate students’ projects include an installation that uses the movement of cockroaches to modify audio clips of prominent figures speaking about progress and decay, a digital picture frame that blurs the digital image the closer a person stands to it, a surreal 3-D animation based on a poem that visits “phantasmagoric rehallucinations of memories,” an interactive installation in which the participant can shoot down news headlines on a projected screen, and several works that address environmental issues in different, unexpected ways.

The computer art program is dedicated to exploring the possibilities of digital media in a fine-art, experimental context. Through instruction in interactive media, procedural thinking and virtual space/time, students are encouraged to develop their vision and technical skills.

For more information about the show, contact Belovarich at (315) 399-7700 or sjbelova@syr.edu.