Space Messengers: A mixed reality projection and youth workshop

Space Messengers is a mixed reality installation and youth workshop created by Agnes Chavez and the Projecting Particles Collective as part of the BioSTEAM International youth exchange program in partnership with the U.S Embassy of Portugal and the U.S. Consulate General of Guadalajara.  This virtual collaboration connects middle/high school classrooms in New Mexico, USA with classrooms in Lisbon, Portugal and Guadalajara, Mexico through a shared sci-art installation. Students learn about the science behind sensing technologies that help us understand biodiversity on earth and in space, challenging the notion of “outer” space. The goal is to raise awareness to the fragile interdependent relationship between earth, sky and space and the importance of a biodiverse interplanetary perspective in environmental policy. As their culminating project, students co-write messages through a real-time data sharing platform working with their peers from their partner country on this interactive and international activity. Student imagery and messages from the workshops become part of the artist-facilitated projection installation to be presented at the Festival Internacional de Ciencia e Arte in Lisbon on April 6-11, 2021, and at a festival in New Mexico and Mexico in the fall of 2021 (TBD). The event is live streamed for all students and the general public to see wherever they are in the world. Students as well as the audience in both countries can experience and interact with this installation either in person or virtually via the STEMarts Lab website by sending their messages to be displayed in the projection in real time.

Stay tuned!

Fluidic Data: When Art Meets CERN, Data Flows

Fluidic Data is a floor-to-ceiling installation spanning the four levels of the CERN Data Centre stairwell. It utilizes the interplay of water and light to visualize the magnitude and flow of information coming from the four major LHC experiments. The installation consists of an array of transparent hoses that house colored fluid, symbolizing the data of each experiment, surrounded by a collection of diffractive "pods" representing the particles pivotal to each experiment. The organic fusion of art and science engenders a meditative environment, allowing the visitor time for reflection and curiosity.

The Fluidic Data installation is a cross department collaboration that incorporates materials and techniques used in the construction of the LHC and its experiments. The project brings together artists, engineers, science communicators and physicists with a common goal of communicating CERN's research and resources. The success of this collaboration exemplifies the effectiveness of working in diverse teams, both intellectually and culturally, to accomplish unique projects. https://indico.cern.ch/event/773049/contributions/3474847/

(x)trees: a dynamically generating forest of trees from SMS and tweets

(x)trees is a dynamically generating forest of trees created from SMS and Tweets from the audience in real time. It is projected in real time on to buildings and large spaces, exploring our relationship to nature and technology.  (x)trees tours around the world creating a participatory experience to raise awareness to ecological topics such as deforestation and climate change. By integrating data mining from SMS and social networks, people participate in the creation of the branches to form a virtual interactive forest of dynamically generating trees. The audience sends a tweet or text message and sees their message appear on the wall with a branch. Archived messages include articles from the Universal Declaration of Rights for Mother Earth and the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.  (x)trees programmers: v.1: Jared Tarbell. Original concept and browser-based code written in Flash, v.2: Jeff Milton and Joe Roth, v.3: Alessandro Saccoia. Converted to OpenFrameWorks, v.4: Kamen Dimitrov, v.5: Roy MacDonald

Contact us to bring (x)trees to your festival or community event. Keywords can be customized to the topic or event.

Origination Point explores the origins of the universe through generative light and sound

Origination Point is a generative interactive projection installation originally exhibited at the 12th Havana Biennial in Havana, Cuba as part of the collective exhibit Entre, Dentro, Fuera/Between, Inside, Outside and in 2016 at The Harwood Museum, Taos, New Mexico.

As part of Agnes Chavez’s Projecting Particles series and inspired by her Educational Outreach research stay at ATLAS@CERN in Geneva Switzerland, this work explores spacetime, our origins in the universe and how matter was created after the big bang through the newly discovered Higgs field. In Origination Point, Chavez contemplates humanity’s shared subatomic origins in relation to her Cuban-American origins to express that we are more than the physical bodies and socio-cultural identities we construct.

Through a collaboration with artist Marcel Schwittlick, who programmed the code, Origination Point features images of self-generating ‘rocks’ that are transformed in real time exploring the evolution of matter and our wave/particle duality. The images are projected onto a wall of hanging fabric strips creating mesmerizing movements in rhythm with an interactive soundtrack. The interactive composition designed and programmed by sound designer Robert Schirmer includes sounds from NASA’s field recordings of outer space accompanied by terrestrial nature sounds. Through an interactive sensor the visitor moves rocks in and out of a circle on the ground. This process adds layers of water, space and earth sounds designed to shift one’s perception and emotional response to the projected visuals.

Collaborating Team: Artists: Agnes Chavez (artist/concept), Marcel Schwittlick (visual artist/coder), Robert Schirmer (interactive sound). Special thanks to UNM Art Graduate Student assistants in Havana: Abbey Hepner, Christine Posner, Julianne Aguilar, Adrian Pijoan

Origination Point is available for commission as a temporary indoor installation