Slingshot

We are about to hit up a couple of art openings in town tonight, but before we do, I thought that I should finally post my photos from the big SLINGSHOT art, music, and tech festival from a couple of weekends ago. On our way to the inaugural Slingshot show, we stopped at the grand opening of a new print studio in town - SMOKEY ROAD PRESS...







When we finally arrived downtown, the first art installations we ran into were behind the old SNOW TIRES garage. There was a row of small SPEAKERS, suspended upside down by a bar over a row of MICROPHONES. The bar would dip and then rise in cycles - as the speakers dipped closer to the microphones, a wall of FEEDBACK would come tumbling out of seemingly nowhere. There was also a TELEVISION SCREEN suspended screen-side-down over a silver mat. In order to view the screen, you had to lay on the mat. Inside the garage, there were still other installations being put together...I guess we got there a little early. We decided to kill some time getting a bite to eat at nearby CLOCKED and then doing a bit of record shopping at LOW YO YO...















Many of the art installations and pieces involved screens and projections in dark spaces, so it was hard for me to capture them on my camera (it doesn't take the best photos in the dark). Around the corner from Clocked and Low Yo Yo, in the recently vacated 42 Degrees head shop, were more pieces...one was a huge screen with many different layers of projections on it. On one wall, there was a row of iPads with different interactive videos that the viewer had to activate and interact with...





After the sun went down, we ventured back to Snow Tires. Missy got a turn under the suspended television screen (she saw video images of a "family"). In a dark corner, there were these little white cubes. Inside the cubes were these ROBOTIC ARMS holding pieces of RAW MEAT. These robotic arms were rhythmically pounding these raw steaks against the walls of the cubes. Later in the evening, we passed a group of kids and we overheard a girl ask, "Is this where the meat is?" Inside the garage were huge screens with weird indescribable projections on them accompanied by an eerie soundtrack...















From Snow Tires, we walked down to LITTLE KINGS to see what was happening there. Inside, there was a band making experimental noise/music...they were even using an old honest-to-goodness PHONOGRAPH. Outside, we ran into what was probably our favorite installation of the night. There was a projection of the classic STREET FIGHTER video game on the wall of Little Kings. Across from it was a YAMAHA KEYBOARD. In lieu of video game controllers, the action was controlled by certain keys on the keyboard. As you played the game, you also ended up making a cacophony of noise along with the original video game soundtrack - a perfect intersection of art, music, and tech!





















In an ALLEYWAY, we came across another art installation. There was a couch in front of a screen...laying on the couch was a girl. As she slept, GLITTER showered over her on the screen, as if all this wonderful magic was happening in her dreams:



We caught a DANCE PERFORMANCE at NEW EARTH MUSIC HALL...as these dancers moved across this carpet of light, these projections would follow their footsteps. They each also wore these sensors around their necks and arms that controlled the intensity and pitch of the music/noise that accompanied them:







We closed the night out with some band performances at the 40 WATT CLUB. I only managed to get a few half-way decent photos of the incredible NYC-based Japanese band THE SUZAN and local powerhouse duo, GRAPE SODA. We spent the last couple of hours of Slingshot dancing and getting sweaty, which was really the perfect way to end a great day filled with inspiring art...