DLectricity returned last night to a Woodward Avenue whose sidewalks were coursing with people checking out the multitude of exhibitions in all kinds of venues from museums to art galleries to walls of buildings to churches.
Here is a selection of the exhibits, but nothing beats being there. DLectricity festivities continue tonight at 7 p..m with a Light Bike parade starting at 8:00 p.m. If you’d like to know more details, check out our previous post. Below you’ll find some samples of the artistry that is filling the Motor City this weekend below.
Those who don’t think gaming can be art may be mistaken. Imagine Detroit’s architecture as a part of the game. This exhibit by Rebekah Blesing immediately caught our eye.
Here’s how the artist describes it: “Minecraft, the video game, is about breaking and placing blocks in a world of infinite building possibilities. In this project Detroit’s children re-imagine the city’s industrial architecture. The project playfully situates children as designers, exploiting game technology as a means for empowerment. By emphasizing the interconnectedness of space and people through large-scale projection, the game is inverted.”
This light experience in a church built in 1907 is something to behold. Artist Zackery Belanger transformed the Cathedral Church of St. Paul into a digitized form scaled down to the millimeter and then used it to create acoustic simulations.
Many of the exhibits have ways that the public can participate. This exhibit by David Leonard lets someone be interviewed as if they were on the red carpet.
Both sides of Woodward at the DIA and public library are lit up by an exhibit called “P.O.V.,” where each of the buildings are examples of perspective, telling a story from two points of view.
Crowds enjoyed the midtown neighborhood by foot and by bike for the most part.
MOCAD was a veritable dance party along with visits from the Safety Shamans and others.
If you think the party was just for the young in age, you have another thing coming. The young at heart embraced the event.
Spotlights drew attention to the Woodward Corridor, which didn’t let construction get it down.
In this architectural homage to a corner store, “Late Night D-Lite” by Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky gives wonder the mundane.
Movement producer Paxahau got into the mix with their light and art cube, pictured left.
Even The Flash made an appearance. You can find this piece of perspective art by Mike Teavee that recreates the glow of a TV at Woodward and Warren.
People queue up to get into the TV box.
One of the exhibits that draws people to it like a moth to flame is by Osman Khan. It’s called House and signifies the fragility of the housing market after the crisis. As described, “this proverbial glass house flickers its lights on and off in what at first is a seemingly random strobic pattern, eventually settling into blinking in Morse code the last lines of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, “I’ll take on the whole of them! I’ll put up a fight against the lot of them, the whole lot of them! I’m the last man left, and I’m staying that way until the end. I’m not capitulating!”
The walls of the Detroit Historical Museum are aglow in this picture with “The Legendary Leland City Club,” a film made in honor of Detroit’s Leland City Club, a Goth club located in the Leland Hotel.
Here’s the thing. Even after all of these images, this is only the first course of the visual feast that was DLectricity last night. You’re in luck though as it continues tonight (Saturday). More here and here.
