Gallery: Pixels, Music and Projections: When Art and Technology Collide
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Forget paint brushes and molding clay. Today's avant garde uses technology -- computers, software code and wireless signals -- for all modes of artistic expression. The Creator's Project, an exhibition held in San Francisco this weekend, celebrated just this type of innovation in 21st-century art. A joint venture of Intel and Vice.com, the event is in its third year, but the 2012 gathering marked its first time in the Bay Area. Upon entering the exhibition, attendees passed through a 40- by 40-foot grid of light and metal called *Origin* (which can be seen in the final slide of this gallery). Once the sun set, a number of event-goers lay at the bottom of the lattice structure, gazing up at the rippling and blinking LEDs, and taking in the undulating, almost guttural noises emanating from its core. These people weren't just observing this digital installation. They were becoming a part of it. "So much of how we understand ourselves and communicate with each other is behind glass -- you can't touch it," Jamie Zigelbaum, co-creator of an interactive piece titled *Six-Forty By Four-Eighty* told Wired. "We hope that by using our exhibit, you start to think a little differently about what computing and electronics can be." Click through this gallery to check out the sights of The Creator's Project. __Above:__ In Chris Milk's *The Treachery of Sanctuary*, people took turns watching their silhouettes sprout wings, and even whole flocks of birds. The exhibit uses the motion-sensing capabilities of the Microsoft Kinect to project fantastical avian-themed silhouettes onto ceiling-high white displays.
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Lucky for event-goers who had to brave chilly weather and fierce winds, much of The Creator's Project took place indoors.
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*\#Creators Live* is an interactive video installation that collects images captured in real-time. The display is a joint effort of the San Francisco creative agency Social Print Studio and researchers from Intel Labs. *\#Creators Live* lets you experience The Creators Project as a voyeur, even though you're actually there seeing everything first-hand.
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 Many artists shunned the phrase "look but don't touch" for their work. Here an attendee moves an illuminated square block from Zigelbaum + Coelho's interactive lighting exhibit *Six-Forty By Four-Eighty*. *Six-Forty By Four-Eighty* is composed of magnetic, Arduino-controlled pixels. You can rearrange the pixels into new configurations, tap their capacitive-touch displays to change their color, or touch two at the same time to transfer the color of one to the other. The artists had an IR remote that could swap the colors of every pixel to change things up -- or frustrate those trying to create a small masterpiece.
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Minha Yang's *Meditation* features flowing red visuals that respond to viewers passing by. The exhibit uses IR motion sensors and cameras to capture audience member movements, and translate them into hypnotic designs.
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*Life on Mars Revisited* took 30-year-old 16mm film of David Bowie performing "Life On Mars," digitized and re-colored it, and then warped it into a completely unique Bowie experience. Ziggy Stardust, eat your heart out.
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 One of the highlights of the musical side of the event was Squarepusher, who lit up the stage with seizure-inducing visuals and high-energy break-beats. It was the DJ's first U.S. performance in seven years.
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 A performance by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs was the highlight of the event for many. The Creator's Project was showing a behind-the-scenes look at lead singer Karen O's *Stop the Virgens* at intervals throughout the day. *Stop the Virgens* is a "psycho-opera" based off an unreleased record made seven years ago.
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 Walking up to San Francisco's Fort Mason, attendees were immediately greeted by *Origin*, an architectural light structure by United Visual Artists. An accompanying electronic score that completes the LED-riddled experience was written by Scanner.
