Where art, technology (& hipsters) meet [photos]

This weekend, San Francisco’s first Creator’s Project — a collaborative program between the media company Vice and Intel — kicked off, showing off works of art that incorporate technology, software and connectivity. Johan Jervoe, VP of Creative & Digital Marketing Services for Intel, explained that The Creator’s Project was developed three years ago as “a way to use technology to push art forward.”

To me, the event was refreshing in terms of seeing San Francisco, and the tech community, get some long-needed cool factor. Everyone knows “San Francisco is the tech capital of the world,” as Vice founder Shane Smith said in a press event on Saturday, but many of us can agree that San Francisco can be lacking when it comes to design, art and, for lack of a better word, hipness.

But San Francisco’s sold-out Creators Project had hipsters, musicians, and artists in spades. The program featured a dozen installations focused on art that leverage technology — from the web to connectivity to sensor networks to video to AI — to inspire and innovate.

For example, upon entrance to the festival, you immediately came face to face with the massive (10 meter by 10 meter) LED-flashing, metal-framed, audio-filled Origin cube, which previously was featured on the stage of the music festival Coachella. Created by the Cambridge-based United Visual Artists, Origin uses software and AI to manage the flashing LED lights and ambient audio sounds to create a sense of “a being” that “demands to be worshiped,” explained Ash Nehru.

Other works of art included in the program included a video installation that deconstructs live broadcast video on the fly using analytics and visualizations, and a piece that invited viewers to interact with LED magnetic blocks (real live pixels writ large as the artist explained them) that connect via infrared. Check out my photos of the projects to get a feel for how technology can be used for art (and not just commercial aims).

var galleryData = [{“title”:”Origin”,”caption”:”Origin, by UVA”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01267.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Inside Origin”,”caption”:”Inside Origin”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01270.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Origin”,”caption”:”Inside Origin”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01271.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Origin”,”caption”:”The LEDs inside Origin”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01273.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”#Creators Live”,”caption”:”A live, video and interactive mashup of photos from the event that participants could send to #creators. Viewers could interact with the piece, via a motion sensor, which created sort of a mudbath of digital, overwhelming, real time imagery.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01281-e1332116153605.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”#Creators Live”,”caption”:”A live, video and interactive mashup of photos from the event that participants could send to #creators. Viewers could interact with the piece, via a motion sensor, which created sort of a mudbath of digital, overwhelming, real time imagery.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01288.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Partyline”,”caption”:”Partyline is a project created for the Art Hack Weekend, that takes phone numbers off of Craigslist and puts them into a virtual party line for viewers to watch for a short amount of time. The image is of the mashup the program can create, after the live event.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01293.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Six Forty by Four Eighty”,”caption”:”The project places magnetic pixels on a board for the participants to interact with. The pixels change colors, can connect via infrared, and via body touch. It’s the idea of taking the pixels from behind a computer screen and connecting them with people.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01297.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Six Forty by Four Eighty”,”caption”:”The project places magnetic pixels on a board for the participants to interact with. The pixels change colors, can connect via infrared, and via body touch. It’s the idea of taking the pixels from behind a computer screen and connecting them with people.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01301.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”The Treachery of Sanctuary”,”caption”:”A project by Chris Milk (who made Archade Fire’s interactive Google maps video), The Treachery of Sanctuary featured three screens that participants could stand behind and would capture their motion and tweak it with software. The screen to the left would turn the silhouette slowly into birds, the middle screen showed birds attacking the silhouette, and the screen to the right gave the silhouette bird wings. Together the screens were paired with ambient sounds of bird wings and birds crying.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01307.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”The Treachery of Sanctuary”,”caption”:”A project by Chris Milk (who made Archade Fire’s interactive Google maps video), The Treachery of Sanctuary featured three screens that participants could stand behind and would capture their motion and tweak it with software. The screen to the left would turn the silhouette slowly into birds, the middle screen showed birds attacking the silhouette, and the screen to the right gave the silhouette bird wings. Together the screens were paired with ambient sounds of bird wings and birds crying.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01311.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Overscan”,”caption”:”Overscan, created by Sosolimited, is a video installation that features one live broadcast screen and three screens that feature visualizations of the content that is being deconstructed by software in real time. “,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01325.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Overscan”,”caption”:”Overscan, created by Sosolimited, is a video installation that features one live broadcast screen and three screens that feature visualizations of the content that is being deconstructed by software in real time. “,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01328.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”Process 16 (Software 3)”,”caption”:”The visual, animated project, by Casey Reas, creates a set of rules that defines the environment and determines the movement of the colors and shapes. It’s a slow moving swirl of growth.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01331.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}, {“title”:”OctoCloud”,”caption”:”OctoCloud, by SuperUber, is a multi-player game and interactive sculpture. Players slingshots around the game board, which is also a shaped sculpture and piece of art.”,”thumbnail”:”http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/dsc01339.jpg?w=48&h=48&crop=1″}];