Introducing the Lab Our Incredible Technology and Art Exhibition at the Panorama Festival

The Dome

Justin Bolognino, whose company META.is designed and curated The Lab, thinks a lot about how to make the virtual reality experience more social. "I've become obsessed with domes for the concluding few years," said Bolognino. "I think VR is incredible, only I recall information technology's for your burrow... That photo of Zuckerberg with the headsets" — referencing the now-infamous photo of the Facebook founder walking triumphantly through a sea of VR-clad attendees earlier this year — "that's hell for me."

The 70-foot dome volition permit hundreds of festivalgoers to simultaneously feel the aforementioned 360-caste video experience, with audio by Antfood and visuals made in collaboration by Clay Empire and Invisible Low-cal Network. "For me, The Dome is a lot similar the behemothic planetariums we'd go to when we were kids," said Elliot Kealoha Blanchard of ILN. "The prototype just spreads around y'all. You're not constricted at all, and yous're with these other people." To create an engrossing sound for The Dome — "massive gestures of sounds bouncing around" — Antfood utilized a technique called ambisonics, originally adult in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland in the 1970s.

(Image credit: Katie Hawthorne)

Multiple times per day, The Dome volition exist taken over by Cotton wool Processed Universe, an interactive functioning adult by Emilie Baltz and Philp Sierzega (with creative coding by Charlie Whitney and audio composition by Antfood). The 30-infinitesimal performance volition utilize the full Dome experience and will use cotton processed to create a theremin-like musical experience.

"I'one thousand not knocking VR, but you don't hang a pic frame on the side of a building 20 stories up. It doesn't make sense. Only like you don't put a VR headset in public. You tin, but I think putting hundreds of people in an immersive environment is gonna have a lot more free energy to it." Dirt Empire's Nicholas Rubin added, "In a dome, you walk around and you're there sharing a visual feel with other people, and then it's a little more like theater."

The Facade... and our new statue!

The first thing y'all'll observe when you arrive is The Facade, which encompasses the entire outside of The Lab. Produced by VolvoxLabs, The Facade features a montage of ultra-high-definition visuals, video projection-mapped onto its surface, evoking both natural and futuristic elements in a scene that'due south dynamically driven by the volume of tweets and Instagram photos generated on Randall's Isle throughout the festival. "What we want to do," said creative director Kamil Nawratil, "is introduce natural elements that are symbiotic with the geometry of the piece and grows equally times goes by."

Some other highlight of the entrance? Our shiny new statue:

— Ross Miller (@ohnorosco) July 21, 2016

The exhibits

The final piece of The Lab puzzle is the exhibit tent, featuring a number of interactive installations (we've been profiling the artists behind these for several weeks at present):

Future Wife -€" Visceral Recess

In 1971, pattern group Emmet Farm published the Inflatocookbook, ostensibly a transmission for how to brand inflatable architectural performances. Ant Subcontract's work served as both inspiration and guideposts for Time to come Wife co-founder Beau Burrows. His latest work, Visceral Recess, is in many means a bounce castle for adults, but one fitted with a number of sensors and technology that react to any movements inside the piece (which, past the way, intentionally looks like abstract intestines).

"For me, I'thou actually attracted to things similar bioluminescence and deep-sea creatures," Burrows said. "Stuff that looks like you should be able to touch it and play with it, and it should collaborate with you lot." Visceral Recess is constructed using specialized fabrics designed to showcase the lights both inside and out the tubes, while special motion sensors assistance shape the lights and sounds based on how yous interact with this demon thing. — Ross Miller

Dave and Gabe -€" Hyper Thread

Dave Rife and Gabe Liberti are an creative duo united by sound. Rife was an expert in architectural acoustics, helping to design the way sound would ebb and flow through buildings. And Liberti was a studio engineer, helping to craft the sonic signature of total-length albums. Both had a deep beloved for working with sound merely a frustration with the lengthy procedure of taking their production from first to finish. And so they decided to join forces.

With Hyper Thread, participants enter in a silk-clad dome where a specially buffered portal washes clean their sonic palate. If you've have a piddling too much loud rock and roll, this is the chill tent-inside-a-lab for you lot. Inside the space are 7 silk hammocks, each with a cushioned seat. That seat is full of sensors that detect your movement. As you lot and those around you lot swing, your actions modify parts of 7 songs that bicycle through the feel. —  Ben Popper

Gabriel Pulecio -€" Infinite Wall

Something fundamental is lost when reproduced in a photograph or on a screen — seeing Beyoncé live is different than watching Lemonade, for instance. The stakes only become higher with interactive art. Walking into a space that responds to your presence effectively makes yous a office of the slice itself. It's hard to appreciate that kind of work on your MacBook. You need to be there.

Brooklyn-based artist Gabriel Pulecio makes installations and interactive sculptures using 3D-printed materials and computers to blend the physical with the digital. Pulecio's mission is to make art an experience that connects people, and he uses technology to attain that. His latest piece, the Infinite Wall, is a tunnel lined with mirrors, lights, and an array of Kinect sensors — all of which come together to make seemingly infinite reflections in all directions. Do you feel similar you're floating? That'due south exactly the point. — Kwame Opam

Mountain Gods -€" Giant Gestures

We gesture every solar day. Nosotros swipe to unlock, tap to click, and pinch to zoom in on a photo. We used to turn keys to dial on a rotary phone, but that gesture died a long time ago. With new technology comes new ways to collaborate with information technology, and well-nigh of the time, nosotros don't realize what we're doing. This isn't the instance for Brooklyn-based artists Phil Sierzega and Charlie Whitney. They're well aware of the gestures they utilise to operate their devices and think those mini actions warrant attention.

This is Giant Gestures. Festival attendees will use massive cream easily to play games on an equally massive tablet. Giant Gestures isn't a memorialization of how we interact with technology today, merely rather a "reinterpretation" of it, the artists said. The gestures change meaning when taken out of context, and users will recognize what basically amounts to a daily performance. Mayhap a swipe won't seem then unproblematic anymore. — Ashley Carman

Red Paper Heart -€" Art of Pinball

The Lab is full of calorie-free projections, trippy tunnels, and fifty-fifty interactive bounce castles. There will also be pinball.

That's thanks to Red Newspaper Heart, a minor Brooklyn studio that'due south transforming a 1970s pinball machine into a tool for creating digital art. "Things like pinball get people over the seriousness of artwork," says creative manager Zander Brimijoin. "People dearest pinball, and so they instantly have an emotional attachment to it, and nosotros can utilise that to create this amazing experience."

"As [people] play they're gonna be creating these kind of larger than life animations," Brimijoin says. "And by doing so, they're gonna exist sort of like a concert pianist, but for pinball." — Jake Kastrenakes

Zach Lieberman -€" Reflection Study

Brooklyn-based creative person Zach Lieberman thinks a lot about what he calls "lawmaking poetics," the idea that lawmaking is capable of behaving like poetry. Reflection Study, Lieberman'southward installation hither at The Lab, utilizes the properties of light, geometry, and Lieberman's own software to project unique designs onto any surface. The installation is composed of a calorie-free table with a camera set upwards in a higher place it, and dozens of pieces of plexiglass in various shapes and letters. As people move the plexiglass pieces over the light box, different formations will exist projected onto a wall. These formations are imagined by a DIY software that analyzes data from the photographic camera.

"For these kinds of projects I really honey having them in a festival," Lieberman said. "Having them in a identify where it's unexpected to encounter fine art... When I'm doing this animation, when I'm doing these software studies, for me, it's a form of music." —  Lizzie Plaugic