BigShinyThing

Here at BST we have a ‘kid test’. If kids immediately ‘get’ a piece of interactive art and are engaged with it, then that’s a clear indicator of the effectiveness of the piece. Of course, all art is subjective, but interactive and new media art in particular can suffer from a degree of convolution and — to be frank — irrelevance. The kid test filters a lot of that out. One parent was overheard patiently explaining to their daughter that ‘not everything moves’, but if the art fair is called ‘Kinetica’ that’s a fair expectation.

There are lots of pieces which pass the kid test at this year’s Kinetica art fair at P3 in Marylebone. Special props go to Squidsoup‘s Ocean of Light, a startlingly beautiful ‘dynamic light sculpture’ that reacts to music. We can see all kinds of amazing artistic and commercial applications for this piece, not least in live performance. Bjork, get in touch! Cinimod Studio‘s Flutter which produces a rabble of virtual butterflies is also charming and effective — a real example of how digital art can be humanised. On the more Dorkbot-esque side of things, Monomatic’s P.E.A.L. replicates bell ringing with tubes of light, lasers and a iPhone remote (note, expect to see A LOT more iPhone remote controlled applications).

The fair also has some neat examples of first generation hacker art, such as Miss Rosa Bosom, a robot created by Bruce Lacey which won the Alternative Miss World in 1985 and SAM, a sound reactive cybernetic sculpture from 1968 by the late Edward Ihnatowicz. As an argument for the continued importance and relevance of digital and electronic art (are you listening, ICA?), Kinetica 2010 makes a pretty compelling case.

Philip Worthington’s Shadow Monsters is an updated digital version of shadow puppets where participants’ hand shapes are augmented with animation and sound — kind of like an interactive Vib Ribbon. There are more sounds and visuals on Worthington’s website.

We were charmed also by pe lang & zimoun‘s untitled sound objects — a scattering of solenoids earnestly tapping out a death watch beetle stacatto in an echoey stairwell.

This exhibition is just one strand of the Cybersonica festival of music, sound, art and technology, which itself [like seemingly everything good in London this week], is affiliated with the Encompass electronic music festival.

Check out the shadow monsters and the rest downstairs at Phonica Records, 51 Poland Street, London.