Moti/on "artists Exploring Interactive Media" Review

The exhibit at the Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, DC featured the show Moti/on "artists exploring interactive media." The show featured works that explored the different ways we use and can use technology to interact. In the Exhibit there were different works that toyed with the concepts of remote control, amplification of sound, and internet searches. One of the pieces that I found to be extremely interesting was "The Sent Project," By Benjamin Domiminica, Samuel Ortiz, et al.

picture of an art work that uses the parts of a bathroom with additional piping to create an instrument quite like a drumset. The piece also includes a hookup to a computer.

The Sent Project is a musical composition that Uses synthesizers and other traditionally non-musical sounds. Unlike most compositions of this sort, The Sent Project was not just a collaboration between one or two composers, but by many different composers in a lot of different locations. The premise was that each of the composers was sent a part of the composition by email, it was up to them to build upon the concept to create this work of art.

The music itself starts off with a quasi exposition, detailing the type of sounds that are used throughout the piece. As the piece continues o play it seems to resemble a Jazz recording, but instead of a traditional quintet, the sounds of chairs being dragged against the floor, keyboards, a scratchy record player and pulses all mix and collide to create at times an incredible ambient atmosphere one minute an in the next moment the piece becomes alarmingly tense. It is the interaction between the tension and the eventually resolution that truly gives this piece it's compelling cohesiveness despite the many different inputs.