Jen Lewin – TRANSCRIPT
I thought I would start at the beginning, or at least at my beginning I grew up in Maui, in up-country Ko’olau. This is a view of a place that was pretty close to my house. I could be found here running around barefoot, climbing trees; I was a tomboy. I was also trained as a classical ballerina. My mom was a dancer. But most of the time, I was basically daydreaming and looking out over this expansive view of moving lights and moving clouds.
In third grade, in 1983, my public school took on a program called Logo, and the implementation of Logo in schools was the brainchild of Hal Abelson. It was this great program where, as a kid, you could learn to program to draw. You would program and move this small cursor, or turtle, around a screen, and draw pictures. For me, this was profound. I could use a computer to make art; I could program to make art.
Later in my life, I studied a lot of different things. I studied architecture, I studied form, I studied dance, I studied music, I studied film. But I also studied mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science, and I rather stubbornly insisted on doing all of these things always at the same time. This is an example of some of my early work. What you’re looking at is an up-close view of a form that I created.
I painted this; it’s painted silk; I wove electronics through it. I created my own circuit boards, and I created a giant, robotic butterfly that you could dance with. You could walk up to each of the wings, and they would move away from you at the same rate you move towards them, and you’d have this wonderful experience with this huge robotic creature. I learned very quickly that light is really, really important. You can use light to bring people into a piece, and you can take them from being not just a viewer, but a participant, and maybe even an actor.
This is a piece that I also built a few years after the butterfly, and you’re looking at some giant robotic moths. In this piece, there’s an orb that you touch. If you touch it, it senses capacitance and starts to strobe, and then it wirelessly talks to the moth up in the air, and sets it into flight. Now, obviously, it’s not a coincidence in this piece that I’m using light, and this is a sculpture about moths. But for me, there was something really beautiful and ethereal about this, and I loved that I really could bring people to the piece.
The piece only happened if you were there, and if you were part of it. This is a piece that also explores some similar ideas. You’re looking at hundreds of old vintage glass bulbs. I’ve embedded LED lights in the bulbs and created a huge chandelier you can dance in front of. When you move back and forth, you see yourself in this ethereal shadow.
If you’re not dancing in front of it, you can actually sit underneath it and watch this cloudscape that goes by, not too dissimilar to some of the cloudscapes I watched as a child in Hawaii. I thought if I can make a piece that can bring one person in, what about making a piece than could bring ten people in? How about 30 people? How about 100 people? I started making laser harps 20 years ago, and there are other people that make laser harps, but I’m probably the only person in the world that makes giant laser harps Giant laser harps with the intent of really activating people in this experience together. This is an example of one of my early laser harps that was actually created as a grant for Burning Man, and we’ll listen a little bit to what a harp sounds like. This is a harp that went to Korea in 2008.
(Laser harp sounds)
By moving your hand through each of the 60 light beams, you mix different sounds. For example, each beam can trigger up to 12 different sounds based on how you’re moving. Slow movements create rhythmic pulses and whispering echoes. Fast movements create sharp notes and more jagged sounds. (Laser harp sounds) A person passing through the long harp will often initially be surprised by its sound.
This surprise leads them to turn back and then play on their own for a bit. This activity draws others and soon a large group forms. (Laser harp sounds) We’re making a lot of harps this year. We actually just opened a really amazing harp in Palo Alto. It’s part of a program, a park, called the Magic Bridge.
This park is probably the most accessible park in the world right now. This is a harp that works day and night. It’s permanent, and it’s really a sculpture that’s about bringing people together. If you look at this video, you’ll see people dancing in it, people moving through it, and having this wonderful, collaborative, fabulous experience together. (Video) Carmen Contreras: I think it’s pretty cool. It made me want to dance, I mean, you know.
So this is public art, but it’s public art that a baby, a toddler, grandma and grandpa, a hipster, everyone can actually participate in together, and this picture really tells that story. Here’s this young girl, and this whole crowd standing around her, watching, and they’re all having this experience in this laser harp together.
It’s also art that can really transform a public space. This a permanent piece in Vail, Colarado; some of you may have seen it. I built this in collaboration with an extremely talented artist, Lawrence Argent, and this is the piece the video sped up, but this is a giant sculpture that changes color and really changes the entire plaza, it turns red, it turns purple, and completely dynamically changes the public experience there. My most prolific work, however, is a project called, “The Pool,” and this is a zoomed-in picture of The Pool in a museum. The Pool is a sculpture that consists of hundreds of platforms you stand on, and when you stand on one, it lights up, and then you can move in different directions and create light ripples, and basically, play in this huge pool of light.
This is a video we just shot a couple of days ago in West Palm Beach. The Pool is there. It just opened at Bonnaroo. This piece travels worldwide. I have a team, and most of what we do is we manage this sculpture and take it to as many places as we possibly can.
It’s a complicated sculpture, but you don’t really see the complexity when you play in it. There are hundreds and hundreds of computers, each one of the pucks has a computer in it. There’s no computer that talks to the whole system. They all talk to each other like a giant mesh network. Almost like a lot of organisms.
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