The Boston Cyberarts Festival opened this weekend. It's a collection of exhibits and events thoughout the Boston area that meet the criteria of being Art and Cyber, the latter often implying some form of interaction between the piece and the observer.
We started at CyberArtCentral at 1100 Boylston Street, across from Fenway Park. You can pick up a listing of events there, although that is also available online. You can also purchase a T Shirts, get discount passes (although most events and exhibits are free) and play with some of the art, such as Bundith Phunsombatlert, Wind Study.
Next we went to the Boston Sculptor's Gallery on Harrison Avenue, where we saw Beth Galston's Luminous Garden (Aerial), a delicate room-sized installation of flowers made of LEDs and copper wire.
Perhaps the most interesting was a two day Maker Revolution event put on by Willoughby & Baltic at Microsoft Startup Labs in Cambridge. In addition to showcasing a number of interactive works, the event included a workshop where young and old could learn to solder and build a number of entertaining devices. It was great to see some progress in democratizing what is for most people a mysterious aspect of modern existence. The contrast between the elegant exterior and the complex interior of something like the Apple iPod is so jarring that many people mistake the latter for an infernal device. Perhaps more events such as this will help.
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