A public action project in Atlanta that aims to uncover truths and ignite new thinking.
The Goat Farm and Hambidge are thrilled to announce the five finalists for Field Experiment. Selected from 130 applications received from 44 cities, 21 states, and 5 countries including Germany, Canada, Spain, US and the UK.
The proposals included experimentations in the natural and applied sciences, new media, movement, sound based work, transportation, architecture and design computation, music composition, participatory interventions, 2D & 3D visual art, large scale puppetry, and materials engineering. We are grateful and encouraged by the answer to our call and urge those applicants to continue their pursuit to uncover truths and ignite new thinking.
The 5 finalists are:
Jeffrey Collins, Envelope, Atlanta, GA
Mel Chin & Severn Eaton, Jam-D-Jam!, Asheville, NC
Micah & Whitney Stansell, Inversion (with land), College Park, GA
Mark Wentzel, Flow Field(s), Atlanta, GA
Kris Pilcher, Kevin Byrd, & Dale Adams, The Dream Collection Agency, Atlanta, GA
The five finalists will each receive $2,000 to complete a concept of their projects for display at the annual Hambidge Auction at The Goat Farm Arts Center on May 30, 2015. This will conclude Phase 01 of Field Experiment. Phase 02 commences with the selection of the winning project, announced June 5, 2015. The winner will be awarded $20,000, a two week Hambidge residency, and administration and production support. The final project will be realized in Fall 2015.
Hambidge’s Executive Director, Jamie Badoud remarked, “The pool of submissions was incredible. It is clear that many of our most creative minds are hungry to experiment and engage the public in exciting new ways. From physicists, performers, and storytellers to urban gardeners, programmers, and a wide variety of artists, the applicants brought forward powerful and complex ideas executed with layers of grit, grace, humor, analytics, subversion, and surprise. It was a tall task to narrow to five, but we are excited to put into action the dynamic visions of our finalists.
Goat Farm’s, Anthony Harper stated, “These days technology is quantifying all and putting our lives in order. We need more unreasonable things happening in life. It’s good to explore concepts that may not exercise caution. I think we forget how this friction can teach us things. We wanted Field Experiment to bring us something unconventional. It achieved that goal.”
“The sheer volume, diversity, and creativity of the ideas and concepts proposed to FIELD EXPERIMENT are a testament to the pervasive yearning for large-scale experimentation in the public sphere. I like to dream of a time when all 130 of these ideas become reality. Atlanta would be a more open, beautiful, curious, aware, and socially connected city”, says Mark DiNatale of The Goat Farm Arts Center
Finalists Project Details
Jeffrey Collins / Envelope
Site-specific architectural enhancements to mundane buildings and spaces in Atlanta. Buildings are planned and built to be anywhere. Therein, important factors of history, locality and place are in danger of being lost. This project offers an opportunity to reexamine the history & current identity of our city through the faces of its buildings using custom mass-produced parts that are adjusted passively by the environment – the place. Collins will be working with GA Tech University’s School of Architecture, the Digital Fabrication Lab and a cross-disciplinary team of students. Envelope will take something ordinary, everyday and passed-by and, with thoughtfulness and experimentation, turn it into something unexpected, useful and beautiful.
Mel Chin & Severn Eaton (EMC’s) / Jam-D-Jam!
A response to a contemporary dilemma shared by all Atlantans, rush hour congestion throughout the city. This radio based interactive entertainment intervention will invite participants to use these moments to contribute to an ever-changing soundscape. Calling in from their vehicles, their unscripted words or noises of frustration, boredom, aggression or anxiety will be transformed into musical invention & looped back to the traffic, the public, the performers. EMC’s will be working with a diverse set of Atlanta music makers and producers to collaborate in sampling these unpredictable recordings.
Micah & Whitney Stansell / Inversion (with land)
A multi-story, multi-location projection project that grows in scale, run-time and complexity, this project invites people to explore the communities and histories of different areas of the city. The content for each story will be mined from the location where it is to be projected. The stories will be simple, open & experimental. Filmed from a unique aerial perspective moving from the city scale to the human scale using a heavy-lift remote drone that Stansell’s team built from the ground up.
The project will culminate in a fourth location that wraps the built environment in narrative. All four stories will weave together, producing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This project, introspective & anthropological in nature, will provide an inverted view of Atlanta’s sprawl, moving from broad to narrow, focusing in on the human elements of the city. The aleatory form of storytelling will guide Stansell’s team towards collaborations with participating poets & musicians depending on the content captured.
Mark Wentzel / Flow Field(s)
A large-scale application of a grid pattern and vector fields, this installation will use a pattern of laminar flow to consider the human experience of moving through time and space. Scientific discovery is increasingly pointing toward an understanding of both time and space as fluid; altered by things such as memory, mass, consciousness, and distance. As technology persistently invades our time and redefines our space we may begin to feel an increasing insecurity about our connection to ourselves and the natural world.
Flow Fields creates a massive Cartesian landscape within Freedom Park with the simple concept of direction as a tool for self-contextualizing and psychological mooring. Flow Field(s) emerged through ongoing collaborations between Wentzel and Dr. Joel Kimmons, a scientist at the CDC. Their current focus is in the area of behavioral design, work that has a continuous effect on the direction of this project.
Kris Pilcher, Kevin Byrd, and Dale Adams / The Dream Collection Agency
The Dream Collection Agency (DCA) is a corporate entity designed to collect, document, and recycle dreams. The Agency solicits public dream donations via an online Dream Depository and an in-store collection laboratory. Dream donations are cataloged and recreated in three dimensional digital environments using cutting edge 21st century Oculus Rift VR technology. Visitors to the storefront collection laboratory are invited to experience these documented dreams in a safe and secure virtual reality environment under the watchful eye of professionally trained Dream Technicians.
“As virtual reality and other technologies become more widespread in the near future, we would like to begin discussing the implications of existing in both a physical & digital reality and at which point will we allow our hopes, dreams, and ambitions to become nothing more than a computer simulation. We would like to find out if this digital experience & corporatization cheapens or enhances our naturally occurring mental visions.” – DCA
Calendar:
May-June, 2015 – Phase 1 projects presented at the Goat Farm Arts Center
June 5th, 2015 – Announcement of Final winner
Fall 2015 – Phase 02, winning project presented in Atlanta
The website, www.fieldexperimentatl.com, will chronicle the development of the FIELD EXPERIMENT finalists’ projects including project updates, narrative content, multi-media and engagement opportunities.
