2021 Exhibition
16. All-Nite Tetherball
Mask Required In Line (Regardless of Vaccination Status). Social Distancing Encouraged. Hand Sanitizer Available.
Artist Information
All-Nite Tetherball transforms a light pole into an interactive plaything and with it the surrounding urban space from utility to play. Wrapped in colorful LED strips similar to the art of urban knitting, the light effects displayed on the pole can be set in motion by interacting with an illuminated ball attached to it.
Set up on three municipal light poles on Kirby Street outside the Detroit Institute of Arts, this installation creates an urban icon with references to both the neighborhood barber pole — an illuminated, spinning column of stripes that calls out to pedestrians — and street games. It offers a brilliant, interactive interpretation of a favorite playground staple, a tetherball pole. The installation is programmable in all rainbow colors, inviting everybody to participate and set it in motion all night long.
Step up and give the glowing ball a smack! Play on your own or challenge a friend. All-Nite Tetherball will answer your action with sparkles cast from fast-moving LED lights.
All-Nite Tetherball builds on Roland Graf, Nick Tobier and Michael Rodemer’s previous collaborative works such as Red Crossing (with Jennifer Low) and Brightmoor Runway (with Michael Flynn) and it is supported by Cameron Kabacinski, who leads the technical development.
Visit the Artwork on our map here: https://dlectricity.com/map/#16.
Roland Graf/Assocreation
Roland Graf is a media artist and inventor. He collaborates across disciplines to design platforms and interactive systems that reframe the body and interactivity in the built environment. Since 1997, he has co-directed the artist collective Assocreation, best known for its public happenings and award-winning interactive installations such as the telematic sidewalk Bump or the street video game Solar Pink Pong.
assocreation.com
Nick Tobier
Nick Tobier studied sculpture and landscape architecture and worked, among others, at Storefront for Art & Architecture in NYC. Nick’s focus as artist-designer is in the social lives of public places both in built structures and events from bus stops to kitchens and boulevards in Detroit, Tokyo, Toronto, San Francisco. His work has been seen at the Smithsonian, The Queens Museum, NY, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh. Nick is a co-founder of the Brightmoor Maker Space in Detroit.
everydayplaces.com
Michael Rodemer
Michael Rodemer's sculptures, shown in the USA and Europe, employ tiny embedded computers to generate expressive behaviors. From 1996 to 2020 at the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design, Rodemer also taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Tübingen (Germany). He has had two Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowships (1999-2000, 2009-2010).
umich.edu/~rodemer