Spotlight: ‘Electricity Comes From Other Planets’ at La Gaîté Lyrique
Combining the worlds of video games and music and culminating in an immersive, interactive exhibition at the forward-thinking and pioneering La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, is musical game, ‘Electricity Comes From Other Planets’ by Fred Deakin of Fred and Company. The playful movements made by the visitors / interact-ees (this word should be added to the dictionary in light of interactive art’s extensive developments) actually activate and determine the shapes created in the space and the walls of the room.
“It allows people to create music physically but through discovery.” says Heather Kelly of ‘Joue le Jeu’ or Play Along, the title of the exhibition and which she curated.
Crucially, the installation provides groundbreaking food for thought: these type of installations and developments in technology will allow people to experience products and spaces even more intuitively. These type of works, which require human response, will not only change the way we think about the 4D spaces we inhabit and move in and around, but will also tap in to modes of experience that all other genres of art cannot. Also, these works actually need human interaction to work, so they have large potential to tap further in to our emotions much more than more traditional art forms can.
Watch this video to see how Electricity Comes To Other Planets’ came to fruition.
Electricity Comes From Other Planets from Fred Deakin on Vimeo.
More about the experience:
Fred & Company transformed the Gaîté’s 21-meter-long projection wall into an animated interactive instrument-machine. Eight glowing, responsive “planets” are echoed in mirrors. By moving around the floor space in front of these planets, visitors mixed new musical compositions and triggered entrancing visual effects. And yet, these planets hold some secrets. Coordinated movements together as a group, participants could discover certain mystery formations.
