Streets As Stages

With networked technologies now a staple of urban life, it’s hardly a surprise that new media artists so frequently engage the aesthetic possibilities of areas like street corners or shopping malls. The new exhibition, Urban Networks, organized by Susan Joyce at Boston’s Art Interactive, presents works by John (Craig) Simon, Jody Zellen, UrbanTells, Urban Atmospheres, and Finishing School, all of whom explore technologically-mediated encounters and situations in city spaces. Some are interested in social behavior such as ‘Meet/Greet,’ by Finishing School, which examines the interactions between a customized polylingual drone and the pedestrians it addresses. Others are research-based, such as ‘Imaging Place,’ initiated by Simon in 1997, which considers possibilities for location-based virtual reality experiences. On Thursday, June 29th, Art Interactive will team up with new media art organization Turbulence and the Boston branch of the international artist-run Upgrade! ! to present two artists’ talks in conjunction with the exhibition. Join Vancouver-based Nancy Nisbet and MIT graduate student Amber Frid-Jimenez as they discuss their practices–and stretch your notion of creative terrain from your studio out onto the street. - Lauren Cornell

from http://www.artinteractive.org/shows/urban_networks/:

Urban Networks features five interactive art projects that examine social encounters and explorations in urban places. The works in this exhibition employ a range of technological devices that create urban community connections and offer insights into how emerging technologies might play an alternative role in our experience of everyday urban life.

(Via Rhizome News.)