Multimedia + Creative Arts – Magic Spoon Productions

In 2016, I worked with the City of Austin’s Cultural Arts Division on a public art program they used to fund called TEMPO. The intent for TEMPO was to cultivate curiosity, spark imagination, engage the community in a meaningful dialogue about public art, foster work by local artists and cultivate exploration of the City of Austin. Artists are encouraged to create artworks that reflect the site where they exhibit their work, and design artwork that can be easily installed and de-installed. I was hired to film and produce a video documenting each project and had such a wonderful time working with all these amazing artists!

Teruko Nimura’s “1800 Lucky Cats” is a temporary public art installation commissioned by Austin Art in Public Places TEMPO Project. Each four‐inch cat represents 1/10th of the 18,000 animals the shelter serves every year. The sculpture raises awareness about the no‐kill animal shelter. November 11 will be the opening event for the East Austin Studio Tour. Partnering with the Friends of the Austin Animal Center organization to sell the individual sculptures framed as an “adopt a lucky cat,” the installation will function as a fundraising tool to help the center with pet adoptions. People can purchase each cat to help sponsor individual animals that are in need of adoption.

Entitled Signals, the artist team of Christine Angelone and Alexander Bingham wrapped five traffic signal boxes with artwork and original poems, adding a moment of visual interest to the neighborhood and inviting pedestrians to pause and reflect. Each box is unique with its own story – there is a phone number on the boxes to call and hear the poems read to you.

Hundreds of crystal prisms are mounted between two aluminum panels that refract sunlight into an array of rainbows in this sculpture installation by Autum Ewalt entitled Hyperprism. The work utilize light both physically and conceptually to create immersive environments for viewers that allow moments of wonder.

Exploring the simplicity and complexity of patterns, 30 tetrahedrons made of tubing and fabric will sit in a different geometric pattern and will explore fractal patterning which is a basis for natural growth. Tetrahedron is an infinite shape and fractal in nature, suggesting never-ending growth. The installations will be installed in three different parks over three weekends. Each park was selected based on the vegetation and trees as the raised geometric pattern of the sculpture sits in contrast to the natural surroundings.

Artist Steve Parker will modified a bicycle into a sculpture that functions as an interactive musical instrument, titled Sound Cycle. The bicycle will be will be equipped with several music making devices in a wide array of bike horns and bells of different pitches and timbres. The artist hopes to creatively engage the public with art, help people think more broadly about what constitutes a musical instrument, a performance, and a musician, and facilitate interaction between community members. As more than one person can play the bike at a time, it provides the opportunity for strangers to meet and play a short duet together.

Artist Michael Anthony Garcia’s installation El Capacitor is meant to inspire residents and amplify their voices. Through empowering imagery and concept, this work deals with the transformation of the neighborhood surrounding the park over the past decade. Using flags made of clothing from residents in the area, and five flagpoles are mounted to a stage with a podium. The artwork’s title means “a passive element that stores energy in the form of electric field” and references the nearby decommissioned Holly Power Plant.

Encounter by artist Brent Baggett is a 6-sided, seven-foot tall interactive puzzle sculpture, with mazes on each side featuring movable, brightly colored pieces. Up to 12 people can interact with the sculpture at one time, moving the shapes through the maze by pushing them around pathways. The artist hopes to evoke discovery and exploration as the participants have their own encounter with the artwork and with other players.

Artist Yuliya Lanina’s concept is a cute, plump, girl-version of Humpty Dumpty with stereotypical female gender attributes. The sculpture will have a skirt, lace, red shoes, and accessories and a solar-charged music mechanism that is activated by a motion sensor, playing original music by composer Yevgeniy Sharlat. The legs will be activated by steel coil springs to create a bouncy effect for the upper body. It is intended to bring joy, amusement, and a sense of wonder; and is also intended to challenge the way we perceive gender and body image.

Artist team Lisa Woods and Rodolfo Magnus propose to take an already existing piece of neoclassical art, a bust of sculpture Elisabet Ney, and produce a new, remixed work using digital technology, titled Ney Remixed. The “remixed” sculpture will be made of alternating opaque and translucent layers of laser cut metal and acrylic. The plinth to the bust will have fiber optic lights embedded into a cement column and powered by a solar generator. The artists will also invite the public to produce remixes of their own from the digital file in a 3D art hackathon event. The artists are interested in technology as a tool for creative expression and enable everyday people make art. Participants can utilize the existing 3D scan or capture their own (or via phone apps like 123D Catch) to remix new works of their own. Whether it is via encountering the sculpture, participating in the hackathon, or attending the exhibit, the artists intend that Ney Remixed will shine a spotlight on the rich history nestled in a small Austin neighborhood.

Through his artwork, titled Creek Speak, Artist Eric Leshinsky seeks to make Waller Creek more visible, giving the viewer a broader understanding of how daily actions impact the watershed as it reaches Lady Bird Lake.

The Flow Factory by vûrv Art Collective is a temporary, mobile, and interactive artwork in which participants create flow frequencies using flow oscillators, a wearable pendulum that affixes to the ankle via a small plastic hoop. The flow oscillator is spun in a 360 degree rotation around the ankle and skipped continuously by the participant’s other foot. Participants experience real-time audiovisual feedback via an accelerometer gyroscope located inside the oscillator. The participants “flow” is broadcast back to the home base CPU located inside a mobile unit via wireless bluetooth transmitter. The collected data stimulates sound and animation that are projected onto a large screen behind each participant. The sound and animation projections gauges the participant’s performance control and helps each participant achieve a flow state.

As part of the yearly event “Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz Week” at the Mexican American Cultural Center, artist Mery Godigna Collet will have an exhibition of her new body of work titled “Petro-Poems” from April 14 to July 2016. In conjunction with that exhibition, a land art installation entitled Let’s Talk in Volume which highlights the volume of crude oil people consume annually, approximately 27 barrels per person will be exhibited on the lawn space of the MACC. Six vinyl spheres, in three varying sizes, illustrating the volume of 27 barrels of oil, are to be tethered to the ground on top of plastic pebbles and glow stones representing plankton. The intention is to ask people to reflect on, in the artist’s words, the “good and bad” aspects of crude oil.