Digital Art at Babson-Algorithmix by Lina Maria Giraldo
By Danielle Krcmar: At the Opening Reception for Algorithmix last night, one of my students told me this was the first time she had seen a video based artwork. And while artists like Nam June Paik have been playing with video and interactive work since the early 1960’s and Boston has held an annual cyber-arts festival since 1999 a lot of people don’t realize how many artists make their work with video or other interactive digital technologies. I’m excited to be showing the Lina Maria Giraldo’s work here at Babson. Her video pieces “Rain” and “Dump” which we’re showing on a multipanel screen have also been shown at the Boston Convention Center marquee. Rain was originally designed for the IAC video wall in New York, one of the largest high resolution video walls in the world. Due to the shared public space of the Hollister Gallery, we aren’t able to use the sound component but if you play Lina’s Rain video from the IAC installation you will hear hollow echoes of the dropping, bouncing bottles that sound oddly like amplified rainfall. There is beautiful chaotic build-up of noise as the bottles drop, a few at first and then more and more, building on one another visually and acoustically, creating a wall of plastic, the evidence of our consumption habits. In addition to Rain, and dump, Lina is also showing the multi-screen piece Fractal Maps, and Plus and Minus, an complex user interactive data visualization system that demonstrates world AIDS/HIV rates from 1990-2010, and the potential impact of investments on those rates.
Come to Lina’s artist talk on Tuesday February 5th, to hear more about the how she creates this amazing work. The show will be up until March 14th.
Danielle Krcmar, Artist-in-Residence at Sorenson Visual Arts Center