Who says San Jose doesn’t have culture? Okay, so they’re live cultures, but hey. Take a look at what’s wriggling around over at City Hall.
“Incursion 37:20:15.71 N – 121: 53:09.51 W” is a projected artwork, part of the 01SJ Arts Festival happening this week in San Jose.
Incursion 37:20:15.71? N – 121: 53:09.51? W continues a series of large-scale projection installations by Australian artist Craig Walsh, which occupy specific sites and responding to contrasting environmental contexts. These urban interventions provide surreal visions of organic forms dominating architectural sites and altering their perceived function.
On December 4,1965 the first appearance of the Grateful Dead as the Grateful Dead took place in a house where the San Jose city Council Rotunda now exists. Whilst this event is best known for its mass consumption of LSD, the event also embraced many art forms in a collective search for enlightenment. Of specific interest in relation to new media practice is the exploration of interactive technologies, spatial installations and projection. These events also experimented with possibly the earliest examples of ‘VJ’ s in the form of liquid oil projections, physically controlled to respond to the sound of live music and projected at scale over the musicians.
Incursion 37:20:15.71? N – 121: 53:09.51? W embraces traces of this history and re-establishes a psychedelic presence within the current architectural site.
Hope it doesn’t get out of that dome. It looks slimy.
