Art Hack Day featured a GIF photo booth, the ability to swim the internet, 3D printing, laser cutting and digital pizza. (All photos by the author for Hyperallergic)
“Yaay!” happy as a little girl who just found a great toy, Ashley Zelinskie grabbed my shoulder as soon as I walked into 319 Sholes this past Saturday night. “You have to try my GIF booth!” she said clapping her hands. She handed me a toy moustache on a stick. Ashley proudly pointed to a cardboard booth she had concocted for Art Hack Day. Loud music blasting, crowds of people as excited as Ashley, I walked into the booth where a laptop captures a series of images of me with my toy moustache generating a GIF that was immediately projected simultaneously in the gallery and onto a video billboard in midtown Manhattan.
And this was just the beginning of the most entertaining art event I had been to in months — Art Hack Day at 319 Scholes.
Ashley Zelinskie with a toy mustache in front of her GIF booth.
319 Scholes is an experimental art space dedicated to the frenzy of activity around digital and internet art. Run by Igal Nassima and Lindsay Howard, the space has played host to a number of excellent curated events that have no equal in the area.
Last weekend, 319 Scholes invited 60 artists who work with new media and technology into their space to crack open the process of art making “with a special reverence towards open source technologies.” Last Friday, we gave you a tour of the process and space. Now take a closer look at some of my favorite final products presented on Saturday night.
With the SwimBrowser you can “swim” the web, and it’s a good back workout too.
Are you bored of surfing the web? How about trying to swim it?! David Stolarsky created SwimBrowser, a web browser that allows you to swim through websites. Thanks to the movement detector you can either pull yourself forward using the breaststroke or go back with the backstroke. Drowning is not an option.
The creator of the SwimBrowser, David Stolarsky.
The website was projected on the wall.
The creators of the the Aliens That Look Like Skrillex game project have an “interesting” hypothesis. They think that aliens are trying to communicate with us through dubstep, but we measly humans interpret their actions as hostile and go on the offensive. In the line with this theory, their DJ, who was set up on the stage, was controlling the spaceship in their game using turntables. The player had to detroy the DJ’s spaceship using lasers.
Kill the DJ.
Kill the DJ using this cool old skool controller.
DJ behind new media artist James George.
The Pizza Machine allowed the visitors to feed digital people a slice of the good stuff, and this game, needless to say, made everyone very very hungry. As you can guess, the unofficial Art Hack Day afterparties took refuge in all the pizza parlors near 319 Scholes.
Press the button to feed digital people some pizza.
Hungry digital lady waiting for her slice.
One of the creators of The Pizza Machine, Pamela Reed.
Creators of Jello City Earthquake applied some electronic oscillators to the ground of a mini-city made of Jello. The result was a jiggly earthquake.
Jello City Earthquake.
319 Scholes director Lindsay Howard with Aaron Meyers.
Bartender in the glow of new media.
Guys from 3D printer company Makerbot Industries assembled their largest MarkerBot yet, the Replicator, for the first time at Art Hack Day.
A view of the Makerbot’s Replicator.
Marko Manriquez printed the 319 neon sign using a laser cutter.
Entertained crowds at Art Hack Day.
The Art Hack Day exhibition was open to the public on Saturday, January 28 (7pm-9pm) at 319 Scholes (319 Scholes Street, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
