High-tech Artist and Educator David Durlach Offers Perspective-shifting Artworks and Playgrounds for Mind, Hands and Heart
SOMERVILLE, Mass., Sept. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — The weekend before last, 25 years after its award-winning debut at the Boston museum of science, TechnoFrolics' Dancing Iron Dust exhibit, developed by founder David Durlach, returned from the 2014 New York Maker Faire proudly bearing three "Editors' Choice" blue ribbon awards.
Photo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140929/149157
Photo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140929/149158
Much has happened over the past quarter century. In the technological realm, for example, consider the fact that the exhibit shares the same birth year as the World Wide Web. What accounts for the exhibit's continuing appeal, across the years and across generations, and what inspired the imagination behind its creation?
Exploring such questions will be at the core of David's talk on hidden assumptions, presented at the upcoming Springfield, MA, TEDx event on October 17. New creative possibilities and profound perspective shifts will be highlighted as emerging naturally through turning implicit assumptions on their head.
"The Dancing Iron Dust has endured for exactly the reasons I began TechnoFrolics," explains David. "It embodies the truth that technology is a rich medium well-suited to art, drama, and emotional expressiveness. While people now increasingly recognize and celebrate this, when TechnoFrolics began, the exact opposite was assumed by most of our culture."
Another widely-held assumption, that David has re-imagined and uses in his works, is that video is a passively watched produced experience.
Considering video, instead, as a fluidly explorable medium, is at the core of one of TechnoFrolics' most popular technologies – the FrameGlide | Spin Browser video explorer, installed in scores of science museums, aquariums and other public venues around the world.
The simplicity of the interface, clarity of imagery at any speed, and responsiveness of the technology enables users to fly through a terabyte of content in seconds, such as a year's worth of shifting seasons and weather patterns over the Great Lakes, or to fluidly explore the progression of high speed phenomena in slow motion such as splashing milk "crowns" or the wings of a hummingbird in flight. The system thus enables visitors to interactively travel forward and backwards 'in time', fast or slow, making new discoveries along the way.
Re-imagining another assumption regarding video, that it is 'trapped on screen', has given rise to TechnoFrolics' newest creation, "ChoreoV". The ChoreoV environment serves as a 'playground' in which users bring physical artworks to life, employing video as a natural, intuitive 'language' with which to represent real-world actions. ChoreoV fluidly translates the video content into a real-time stream of data that controls the lighting, motion and other behaviors of the user's real-world creations.
To learn more about TechnoFrolics and our works, visit:
– www.technofrolics.com
– www.choreov.com
– www.temporalinnovations.com
PRIMARY CONTACT: David Durlach
617-441-8870
Email
TEDx CONTACT: Karen Lavariere-Sanchez
413-744-7660
Email