ALAVs 2.0 at Art Center 12/14

Though it seemed to be a one night and one night only exhibition, it was a fun outing over at the South Campus of the Pasadena Art Center. There were a few works displayed: interactive plastic geese that seemed to be a hit with the small kids, funny little bunny sculptures that lit up when walked by, but the big draw for the evening were the Autonomous Light Air Vessels (ALAVs) 2.0 by Jed Berk. The text for the work makes all kinds of claims for smart interactions between people and the transparent, microchip carrying 3ft blimps that circulated in the space. Now, I am not sure how much of what was said was true, but there did seem to be some interaction, real or imagined between the folks at the opening and those crazy little mobile creatures. My husband called one of the blimps on the provided phone number for blimp interaction, promptly found his blimp, responded to the phone questions, made the blimp mad and caused it to fly away. Other blimps seemed to respond to a “feeder” device and others still seemed to follow you around a little like a dog. Everyone seemed to be having a good time trying to figure out the proper method of relating to the art objects (if only people did this with all the art they see). Besides being objects to interact with, they were also very lovely, interesting, sculptural objects. The whole scene reminded me of a Warhol work with slver ballons that were floated back and forth by large fans and created a great joy for the audience. It definitely seemed like a prototype for something more large scale, but charming enough that I would definitely like to see the results when it all gets figured out.