SXSWORLD

Music & Art Create New Festival Experiences By roB Preliasco  Verstand's oeuvre comprises large audio/visual works that rely on manipulations of light and sound. His "ANIMA" installation, for example, is a plastic sphere illuminated with ever-changing imagery projected from within. Using video map- ping, motion sensors and a custom AI routine, its imagery reacts to the audience. Stand calmly, and its imagery will appear calming; move sud- denly or erratically, and the orb will respond to that visually. It's an exploration of how humans interact with machinery and artificial intelli- gence. Importantly for the festival circuit, it is also something that large numbers of people can engage with at once.  Verstand, who also performs as an electronic music artist, said he has noticed increasing overlap between his two disciplines: "I definitely noticed an increase in demand for artworks and audiovi- sual installations at music festivals over the past few years … I think this might have something to do with [the fact that] the form-factor of cur- rent installations can carry a similar energy to a music performance, because of their combination of light, sound and interaction."  Multi-sensory interactivity is Czetwertynski's goal for artworks at Day for Night. "It's about making things big and relevant to a large crowd," he says. "The art installations integrate, most of the time, a sonic aspect just as much as the stage experience uses visual aspects. They merge sound, vision and space into this unique kind of experience that's hard to translate into any other field."  Artists exhibiting at the festival are usu- ally excited to create something new on a large scale, Czetwertynski says. Some visit the site in advance, while others make do with photos and 3D models while preparing their work.  "People don't transport something they've already done," he says. "They make a new piece or a new version of a piece that is just for us. It's a sort of rare opportunity when you're working in this field to have such scale, so we try to exploit it as much as possible."  As a visual artist himself (he creates media sculptures where sounds and projected images augment physical objects), Czetwertynski hopes that the growing convergence of visual art and music can break down barriers.  "Contemporary arts have been very much defined by the media they use, whether it's painting, sculpture, installation, film, etc. …" he observes. "In that sense, there has been a lot of categorization of different fields. I think this is about underscoring the fact that they're not so separate." V isual art is supposed to be found in museums, while music festivals take place in empty fields, right? That paradigm is starting to change as festivals attempt to set themselves apart in a competitive marketplace. With large-scale art installations at Coachella, hybrid festivals like Australia's Splendour in the Grass and Houston's Day for Night, as well as the SXSW Art Program, the lines that demar- cate music and visual art are beginning to fade. Artists seem to like it that way.  Alex Czetwertynski, visual arts curator of the three-year-old Day for Night Festival, said that artists in the two disciplines are beginning to borrow from each other and collaborate more. "Musicians are getting more and more visual with their stage shows, while artists are using sound in some way or another to create their work," he observes.  Day for Night makes the most out of this trend. The festival takes place on 1.5 million square feet of indoor/outdoor space at a former Downtown Houston post office, filling it with performance stages and large-scale, site-specific art pieces. The installations are frequently interactive, which means that attendees can see live sets from acts like Run the Jewels, Aphex Twin, and Kendrick Lamar and then explore installations like 2016's "Outlines," a massive laser grid by the Russian arts collective Tundra.  "What Day for Night strives for is an expe- rience," Czetwertynski said. "The more senses you engage, the richer the experience. We want to create the most exciting, immersive experience possible."  Nick Verstand is an Amsterdam-based artist who has had the chance to create large, site-spe- cific works at different festivals. He has exhibited works throughout Europe, and collaborated with fellow artists and Creative Industries Fund NL to bring the "POV" piece to South By Southwest 2017. "POV" explored the concept of perception by putting its audience in a sensory-deprivation environment and then gradually reintroducing stimuli. It was meant to confuse and challenge the audience's perception of the space in an examina- tion of how, in our technology-saturated culture, different stimuli can alter our perceptions.  A festival, of course, can be an overly stim- ulating environment on its own, so artists like Verstand must consider how audiences will interact with art pieces there.  "A festival is definitely a specific setting in which some things work and others don't," he explains. "In my experience, things that are immersive and have more intense sensory impact work better, as opposed to a calmer and more fragile work, which generally fits better in a museum context." Infinity Room by Refik Anadol, photo by Merrick Ales Optic Obscura by Raum Industries photo by Nicky Lockman toki - series #02 by Akinori Goto photo by Shelley Hiam Social Sensory Architectures by Sean Ahlqvist at the University of Michigan photo by Ann Alva Wieding

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