The Creators Project brought its extremely noisy, techie and arty show to San Francisco this past weekend. The most exciting exhibit by far was the one that transformed you into a giant bird — or a flock of birds, depending on where you were standing.
Chris Milk’s “The Treachery of Sanctuary” loomed at the back of the Herbst Pavillion, with three giant 5m by 7m tall screens in a triptych format showing giant birdlike shadows. Upon closer inspection it became clear the shadows were being created by people standing behind the screens, with a huge reflecting pool separating them from the screen.
Motion-sensing Kinects detected movement. In the first panel, the top part of your body appeared to decompose into a flock of birds. In the second panel, birds swooped down, tearing your shadow apart creating a sort of violent but irresistible scene. The third panel was the most impressive: waving your arms gave your shadow thrillingly huge and powerful-looking avian wings. Milk also created this awesome finale involving beach balls imbedded with specially programmed LEDs for Arcade Fire at Coachella last year.
Check out the rest of the images from the weekend-long Creators Project event, which was a collaboration between VICE and Intel and included a giant 12m by 12m light and (very loud) sound cube called Origin, a short and ear-drum-busting film Life on Mars Revisited featuring outtakes from footage recorded by Mick Rock and re-imagined by Barney Clay, and performances by Zola Jesus, Shabazz Palaces, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, among others. The underlying goal of the event seem to be to find new ways of experiencing jarringly loud noises. I think by the time the Yeah Yeah Yeahs went on around 10:45, I could feel the sound shaking my kidneys.
