Technologists, artists, and absolutely everyone else who can respect the intersections wherein creativity is fostered are invited to the woods northeast of Seattle later this month for the 5th annual Electric Sky Art and Tech Weekend Retreat.
In a Skykomish, Wash., ballpark serving as a makeshift campground and hackathon placing, contributors will collectively include paintings to create tech-infused artwork counting on the herbal surroundings, sound, light, video, and more.
This 12-month event, which runs July 25-28, is focused around a theme called “Bio Zoom,” and makers are encouraged to “discover how converting perspectives—whether through a microscope or a telescope—reveal the stunning, summary, regularly fractal, repeating styles of the universe.”
Shelly Farnham, a senior UX researcher at Google who previously labored at Microsoft Research, is an artist and lead organizer of Electric Sky, a nonprofit, volunteer-led effort.
“A lot of the most revolutionary paintings that I see are happening at the intersection of artwork and technology,” said Farnham, who co-authored a paper that helps that claim and holds a PhD in social psychology from the University of Washington.
Farnham has found some training via preceding years of inviting humans out to the small mountain town, along with the reality that if you immerse human beings in a hackathon-style environment, they develop relationships. They discover ways to work together and collaborate. However, the mix leans more heavily towards techies from large organizations and startups than artists.
“It’s been honestly clean to get the technologists to head because they’re sincerely keen and excited to interface with artists,” Farnham said. I could say it’s a bit of a greater assignment on the opposite stop. There’s a distinction in how [artists] approach or think about their work. They have an extra proprietary feeling in the direction of the production of their work.”
Electric Sky, which culminates with a Saturday artwork show open to all, is designed to be a playful environment where people can examine and make errors. It’s also an incubator for initiatives that cross directly to be displayed in Seattle at the annual Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival.
Projects this 12 months consist of a giant, stroll-thru kaleidoscope and a “river desk” constructed by a woodworker using a CNC device that relies on geographical survey information tied to the upward thrust and fall of the Skykomish River.
“Northwest people are genuinely more engaged with the environment than I might say the common tech network is, both on the art and era stop of the spectrum,” Farnham stated. Being capable of retaking the gen, retaking out into the surroundingtheiras has surely been a pretty compelling experience for people.”
