Electronic and time-based art shines light at new program's exhibit

"Blink!" is 7-10 p.m. on Dec. 1 at 514 Main St., Lafayette. The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, features graduate student artwork developed in the course "Interactive Light." This is the first course to be offered in electronic and time-based art, which new faculty member Fabian Winkler is developing in the Patti and Rusty Rueff Department of Visual and Performing Arts.

This new area relies on merging art and science to offer new forms of creative expression. Such artwork can include printers reading out loud while printing, movie storylines reorganizing themselves every time the DVD is watched and theater stage backdrops responding in real time to actors.

"Blink!" features four projects completed by graduate students that investigate light's ambiguous nature in different fields: fine art, design, architecture, gaming, performance and popular culture. Rather than looking at the use of light in each of the above-mentioned areas separately, the participating students employed a mix of practices across different disciplines toward the use of light as "inter-medium," Winkler says.

"We still do not know what exactly light is," says Winkler, an assistant professor. "It appears immaterial to the human eye, yet it renders our world visible. Common to all of the works involved in the exhibition is the aspect of interactivity that allows the artwork to respond to the presence of visitors. This in return asks for responses from the visitors establishing a constantly changing dialogue between artwork and audience."

The students and their projects include:

• "Kaboom," a light sculpture based on the ideas of anticipation and excitement. Andrea M. Dailey and Jasmine L. Grskovic, graduate students in photography, created large balloons to float on the gallery ceiling. The inside of the balloons are illuminated with a flash of light when triggered by the viewer's touch. Dailey is from Fort Wayne, Ind., and Grskovic is from Michigan City, Ind.

• "Light-tap," a light-emitting faucet created by Onur Fatih Yazicigil, which adjusts the intensity and the frequency of drops of light coming from its virtual source. The light creates constantly changing visual patterns on the walls of the exhibition space by reflecting from water in a bucket underneath the faucet. Yazicigil is a graduate student in visual and communication design and is from Ankara, Turkey.

• "BioHex41," created by studio art students Liz Erlewine and Ingrid Shults, which is an interactive performance based on sculpture and technology. The graduate students are creating a hybrid environment in which they test the boundaries between art, science and reality. Erlewine is from Big Rapids, Mich., and Shults is from Tempe, Ariz.

• "Killer Waves," a video-game system that allows participants to save Earth from aliens while they sing a karaoke song. The imagery used by artist Esteban Garcia, a graduate student in studio art, is inspired by 1980s arcade games and science fiction culture. Garcia is from Bogotá, Columbia.