Latest news with #interactiveinstallation
CTV News
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Edmonton artwork nominated for top 100 international public art projects
One of the phones from the Play it by Ear public art installation in Butler Memorial Park in Edmonton can be seen on July 03, 2025. (Evan Klippenstein/CTV News Edmonton) An Edmonton public art work has been nominated for an international award. The interactive art installation Play it by Ear was created by Calgary artists Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett and installed in Butler Memorial Park in 2023. Park visitors can pick up one of the brightly coloured phones to send a call to a matching phone somewhere else in the park, hopefully sparking a conversation with whoever stops to pick it up. If no one answers, the phones record a message that can be listened to by other visitors. 'It's really encouraging that community connection,' said Renée Williams, executive director of Edmonton Arts Council (EAC). Williams said the installation has been nominated as one of public art industry leader CODAworx's Top 100 Public Art Projects for 2025. It will compete against 281 entries from 14 countries. 'We're going to find out in August if we've been selected, and (we're) so excited to see what comes of that,' she said. 'Public art is such an important part of what the EAC does here in the city' 'We've got such a great public art program that's recognized nationally,' she added. 'We have different cities that reach out all the time to understand what it is that we do.' According to Williams, there are about 300 pieces of public art in Edmonton. She encourages Edmontonians to visit the EACwebsite to learn more and find out where to go to find installations and artworks to engage with. 'There's a story behind every single piece in the collection, so understand the story, understand the connection, and understand the place that it's in and what it represents – and you might find yourself coming to be a big fan of public art,' she added.
New York Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Global Arts Festival Taking Shape Inside Gowanus Power Station
A new arts festival, featuring performance art from Brazil, an interactive installation from New Zealand, and a party presented by a Beyoncé dance captain, will be staged this fall inside a onetime power station along Brooklyn's industrial Gowanus Canal. The three-month series, called Powerhouse: International and scheduled to run Sept. 25 to Dec. 13, is being curated by David Binder, a longtime performing arts producer and former artistic director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It will take place at Powerhouse Arts, a hulking structure that since 2023 has housed fabrication studios for artists from a variety of disciplines. The festival will be the building's first series of performing arts events, and will feature acclaimed artists like William Kentridge, from South Africa, who is presenting his multidisciplinary opera-theater work 'Sibyl'; Christos Papadopoulos, from Greece, whose prizewinning dance piece 'Larsen C' is about a melting ice shelf; and Carolina Bianchi, from Brazil, who will perform her 'Cadela Força Trilogy,' a stage work about sexual violence, with her collective Cara de Cavalo. 'We're in this moment when there are so many barriers — cultural, physical, ideological — and this festival aims to break down those barriers,' Binder said in an interview. 'What really interests me is the convergence of artists from different countries and different disciplines.' To keep the events accessible, the festival is making at least 10,000 tickets — just over half of the expected total — available for $30 each. At most configurations, the venue will have about 800 seats. Binder said he was motivated in part by a change in the types of work being presented in New York City in recent years. 'There's obviously a lot less international work in the city, a lot less art, a lot less new plays, a lot less music and dance,' he said. 'I'm hoping we're adding to the conversation.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CBC
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Every year, folks travel from far and wide watch this giant pencil get sharpened
John Higgins likes to think of the six-metre-tall pencil on his front lawn as a piece of pop art. "When you think of pop art, you think Andy Warhol or Claes Odenberg. I mean, these are these iconic artists. They take a simple object in bold shape and colours, and it's fascinating how humans relate to it, " he told As It Happens guest host Stephanie Skenderis. "That's exactly what this is." Once a year, the massive piece of pop art becomes an interactive community art installation. Hundreds — or sometimes even thousands — of people make their way to Higgins' house in Minneapolis to watch the giant pencil get sharpened with a giant pencil sharpener. "It's fun. It's joyful. There's no agenda. It's not a commercial event. There's not a ticket or anything," Higgins said. "But through word of mouth, I think, people come and they really have fun." The giant pencil was once a giant tree Saturday marked the fourth annual pencil sharpening event. But the sculpture's origins date back to 2017, when a sudden and powerful windstorm hit the city and ripped Higgins's beloved oak tree from his front lawn. The tree, he says, was about 180 years old. "It was very very hard to see that happen," he said. "Very sad, I'll say." He remembers the oak's severed trunk amid the storm's debris in the aftermath. "It looked very, you know, almost sinister — just marred wood at the top and looked, kind of, at night time, like a broken skeleton." So he and his wife, Amy Higgins, decided to turn it into art. They enlisted wood sculptor Curtis Ingvoldstad to transform it into a replica of a classic Trusty brand No. 2 pencil. "Why a pencil? Everybody uses a pencil," Amy said. "Everybody knows a pencil. You see it in school, you see it in people's work, or drawings, everything. So, it's just so accessible to everybody, I think, and can easily mean something, and everyone can make what they want of it." As soon as they conceived of the pencil, Higgins says they came up with the idea of sharpening it. So Ingvoldstead also crafted a to-scale pencil sharpener for the task. "It's about four feet large [and] weighs a hundred pounds," Higgins said. "We hoist that up, and turn it around a few times and the pencil gets sharpened." 'Life is too short' to miss the sharpening The first year they did this, Higgins said, a few hundred people showed up, mostly from the neighbourhood and surrounding area. But over the years, he says, it's grown through word of mouth and social media. Last year, he says about 1,000 people attended. This year, he estimates the crowd was in the multiple thousands, with people coming from out of state, and even other countries. Some people dressed as pencils or erasers. Two Swiss alphorn players provided part of the entertainment. The hosts commemorated a Minneapolis icon, the late music superstar Prince, by handing out purple pencils on what would have been his 67th birthday. Rachel Hyman said she flew from Chicago on Friday for the event, which a friend told her about. "Some man is sharpening a pencil on his lawn and this is what happens?" Hyman said Saturday while dressed in a pencil costume. "Yeah, I'm gonna be part of it. How can you not? Life is too short." A ritual sacrifice You may be wondering why a giant sculpture of a pencil would even need sharpening. Higgins says the tip, while not made of lead of granite, gets worn down by the weather throughout the year. But, mostly, he says, it's for the symbolism. "This is a community pencil. With the sharpening, there's a chance for, you know, renewal, a new beginning, a promise for writing another note," he said. "People love that message." With each sharpening, the pencil gets shorter and they lose a part of the artwork. Ingvoldstad, the sculptor, says that's the whole point. "Like any ritual, you've got to sacrifice something," Ingvoldstad said. "So we're sacrificing part of the monumentality of the pencil, so that we can give that to the audience that comes, and say, 'This is our offering to you, and in goodwill to all the things that you've done this year.'" So how many years until it's nothing but a little stub with a bright pink eraser? And what happens then? "We don't have answers to that, and we're fine with that," Higgins said. "But for today, for this moment, we're going to take what we have and make the most of it."
