Jess Baggia & Lily Robinson
In September 2024, Somerville's New Alliance Gallery launched a series called "Synth-tember". The exhibit explored the intersection of art and science, featuring photography, video, AI-assisted collage, and other mediums presented by more than 18 artists.
Jess Baggia, co-owner and manager of New Alliance Gallery, and Boston-based artist Allison Tanenhaus curated the event, which focused on interactivity, connection, and community through a diverse range of art forms, including video, light, kinetic sculpture, projection, and audio. These art forms were all designed to inspire and engage the human experience through technology.
"Our goal with this show was to expand our artist and art-lover community. We were ambitious in theme and content and the artists truly delivered," said Baggia. "My favorite part was meeting so many people who had never been to the gallery before and experiencing their delight with the show."
The exhibit closed on November 15, but New Alliance shared select photos from the event for those who missed out on visiting in person. Scroll on for a special look-back at the mesmerizing and mind-bending work from this year's Synth-tember.
"Phantasmagoria" by Ben/Haus. Artist statement: Ben collects and assembles discarded packing materials into new sculptural forms that resemble classic stone structures. Mounted on the wall in custom, contextual forms for each exhibition, they become topographical landscapes, brought to vibrant life with projection-mapped video art by Allison Tanenhaus, merging the physical with the ethereal.
"Levitations" by Ben/Haus. Artist statement: Ben’s innovative constructions suspend optical lenses in front of traditional flat-screen TVs. Rather than clarifying the imagery, they bend light and form, diffusing pixels and turning Allison’s incandescent video art into dimensional illusions.
Left: "Hexagon: Nuit" by Jennifer Deafenbaugh. Artist statement: This exploration in the hexagon series features 91 individual LED lights that illuminate sparkling darkly colored, transparent, 3D printed shapes. It evokes a sense of wonder and is a reminder of the night sky, taking inspiration from images of galaxies and space. The piece plays geometric animations and patterns based on natural phenomena and it is mapped and animated using TouchDesigner.
Right: "Marble Fountain" by Will Morrison: Artist statement: Marble Fountain is my attempt to pull the flowing curves of generative art out of the screen and into tactile space. The algorithm pulls order from chaos, forcing initially random paths into smooth continuous tracks using an iterative optimizer. A second pass iterates from the top down to generate the support structure. It treats each support as a particle with inertia, an attractive force to other supports, and a repulsion away from the paths taken by the marble. This surprisingly simple system emergently generates the organic structures reinforcing each path, and allows the whole static structure to be printed in place.
The artistic process of this kind of generative design frequently feels like a collaboration between myself and the system as I create it. When supports block the path or the track insists on ejecting balls into the void, I don’t fix the problem, but rather we work through it together. The system does generate unique pieces of art, but to me the real work is more akin to process art. The specific geometry is a reflection of the algorithm, and you can see every quirk shine through. My pile of unsuccessful iterations does not feel like a waste, but rather tells the story of Marble Fountain coming to life.
"Oscillation to the Edge" by Maria Finkelmeier. Artist statement: Translating musical gesture into breathing, moving visual webs, "Oscillation to the Edge" is Finkelmeier's first collection of Melody Figments. Created by tracking nuanced motion as music is performed on marimba, the webs are generative, building upon each linear expression and sonic moment. The work was coded in collaboration with MAD Labs in Dania Beach, Florida.
Left: "Latent Doors" by Anna Buchele. Artist statement: AI-generated images are generally bland and disposable. As an artist and researcher fascinated by the potential of generative AI models, this puts me in a difficult position. I have found that the outputs of these models seem to be imbued with more meaning when brought into the material world and physically handled. These collages are the product of countless iterations. From the tens of thousands of images I generated for each collage, only a few dozen were printed. By holding each photo in my hands, I was able to find the ones that managed to evoke some kind of emotion from me. These I decimated into fragments and recombined to form something more interesting than the sum of their parts.
Right: The Video Percussion Synthesizer, by Zizza. Artist statement: With this device, you can play the video while you make a beat. Inspired by a mixture of sound and video synthesis techniques, I wanted to create a performable instrument based on a MIDI drum pad and a pair of sticks. Striking each drum pad synthesizes a drum sound in real-time. Each strike on the six main pads also triggers a video synthesizer to play a video clip. The video layers can be played over each other just like drum sounds. They will interact with each other and can also be manipulated globally via three additional synthesis algorithms dedicated across the top three pads.
For more information on the artists who created Synth-tember, 2024 visit newalliancegallery.com. Synth-tember is an annual event. Keep an eye out for the submission period for next year's exhibition to open soon.
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