The Art of #Domains19

There was a fairly short turnaround between trips as Antonella came back from successfully defending her dissertation in NYC, I was on my way back to the US. Reclaim Video really does make for a soft landing 🙂 We were pretty busy last week closing down submissions for Domains19 (it’s gonna be pretty awesome) and sealing up details of our fourth and final keynote to be announced shortly. And speaking of featured speakers, given Ryan Seslow will not be at Domains19 (but his art will), we organized for a visit this past weekend so we could brainstorm on-the-ground approaches to his art installation for the conference focused on accessibility. When he arrived Friday afternoon we brought him to the office and talked to him ad nauseam about the evolution of Reclaim Hosting, as well as the development of the office space.

Ryan’s mock-up of CoWork post-Seslow art invasion 🙂

Given CoWork/Reclaim Video/Reclaim HQ, etc. is as close to done as it ever has been, it was a lot of fun to talk about the molting of the space. I find I don’t ever want to leave it once I get there these days. And the video games and laser discs have only made it harder to extract myself. We are considering more substantial art for the space (mural, digital triptychs, etc.), and that was also part of our discussion with Ryan. After that we got some dinner and called it a night.*

On Saturday morning we were up early and got some breakfast, then Tim, Ryan, and I headed back to Reclaim HQ and talked at length about what the installation was going to look like. We nailed down at least five possibilities, and figured we would try and do as many as we can. As luck and Tim Owens would have it, we already figured out the stacked monitors with animations piece, which can also feed into the Projection of the inner ear piece—which would take 3 or 4 LED TV screens in portrait mode. Tim figured out how to project the animations using a Raspberry pi and the Video Looper software (use version 4) Michael Branson Smith turned us on to for UMW Console. We are planning on printing custom designed holders for the RaspberryPi and RF modulators for older TVs, which will give us a series of multiple, varied monitors to display many of Ryan’s animation. Below is a couple of examples:

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Make art with @ryanseslow, dammit

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It was amazing, but after an hour or so discussing everything with Ryan it all made sense and I felt like the centerpiece installation was well in hand. We still have to figure out details around the hooded hologram like figure (not really a hologram); we will be getting some mock-ups of the art cubes; and we need to collect some more old monitors, TVs, and the like—fun, fun, fun. It looks like Domains 19 is going to fill up fast, and given we have almost 15  installation submissions, it’s going to really live up to its aspirations of an edtech art exhibit.

The rest of the day was spent tooling around the office, ordering RaspberryPis, RF modulators, RCA component wires, and more . It’s cool to feel like the conference is coming into sharper focus, and it really is going to be something both different and special—I’m getting fired up!

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*I have been struggling with jet lag something fierce on this trip so far, so I am up and ready to go at 4 or 5 AM—which has gotten me in the office at 6 AM on Saturday, Sunday, and a later 7 AM today.

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