2014 Exhibition
DLECTRICITY is Detroit’s nighttime festival of art + light that featured over 35 world-renowned and emerging artists whose cutting-edge works of art illuminated Midtown Detroit in 2014, from the Detroit Institute of Arts down to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. This two-night “Nuit Blanche” festival was scheduled for Friday, September 26 and Saturday, September 27 in Midtown Detroit from 7:00 p.m. to midnight. Saturday night also featured the DLECTRICITY Light Bike Parade where thousands of cyclists biked a 4-mile route through Midtown Detroit, adding extra light and energy to the streets. Weekend programming also included artist talks and performances. DLECTRICITY is produced by Midtown Detroit, Inc. and is free to the public.
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3. The Phase Shift Videos: Sash
The videos in this series were inspired by the early music of Steve Reich where he played repeated motifs that slowly went out of phase. My first video (One Again) was created by setting two color shapes -each of which cycles through all the colors in the spectrum- against each other as they slowly go out of phase. After roughly 15 minutes the piece seamlessly loops. In other pieces, the shapes, arrangements of shapes, and color patterns become more complex, but the the generative system remains the same. These pieces can be experienced on different levels. They are visually beautiful, and create unusual optical effects –for example, the shapes sometimes appear to change size, or even move– when in reality nothing except color is ever altered. For many people they create an absorbing meditative experience. Because they are always projected larger than human scale, the experience becomes physiological and interactive.
Over 30 videos have been created in a range of shapes and patterns that range from the simple to the complex. Thus far, Sash is unique in this series owing to its thin horizontal form.
Artist Information
Dennis Summers
Dennis Summers has exhibited artwork in a wide range of genres and media internationally for over 25 years (www.stage2001.com). His on-going global memorial artwork The Crying Post Project, was begun in 2001 (www.thecryingpostproject.org). In stark contrast, in 2005 he began a series of digitally created abstract “color field” videos called The Phase Shift Video Series (www.phase-shift.org). One of these was a purchase prize winner in the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, in Almeria, Spain, 2006. They have also been presented in an airport in Russia, on large screens atop the Kitchener City Hall, and in museums and galleries throughout the world. Most recently, he has begun a new series of videos called The Interference Videos. He is also at work on a series of short, dense digitally created collaged videos inspired by artists and scientists called Slow Light Shadow Matter. His artists books, videos and interactive digital projects are in the collections of several major museums including the MOMA, the Pompidou Center, and the International Dada Archive.
www.quantumdanceworks.com