FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Games

Geek Out at Geekdown This Friday Night

A new art-tech party is coming to NYC.

Music made by dueling gameboys, virtual phophorescence, and collaborative new media art galore will be at the opening of the first ever Geekdown at the 92Y Tribeca this Friday night. Did we mention there will be drinks and chiptunes DJ’s there as well? Order your $10 tickets online here. The event starts at 8pm this Friday, August 6th, but the show will be running for the next month, so if you miss the party you can still stop by to take in all the awesome new media art. We spoke to event organizer and third-generation DJ Winslow Porter about why it’s such a clever idea to get a bunch of geeks together.

Advertisement

This is the first ever Geekdown. Can you tell us a little about its conception?
About four months ago, we got started talking it through, finding a date and probably the hardest thing, picking the name. But honestly, finding an art and tech name is one of the hardest things imaginable. Because you don't want to make it sound cheesy, like ArtTech!…So I went with Geekdown because it's actually a song from one of my favorite artists, J Dilla. Then we all talked about how geek is the acceptable word to use to describe us, because we're not nerds. Nerds are sort of uncool, and dorks are confident in the knowledge they have, but that knowledge may not be all that relevant, so I prefer to call myself a geek if anything.

But you also can geek out right? You can geek out on something when you're getting really into it.
Exactly. This event is going to be like geeking out meets hoedown. Everyone should come on in, have a few drinks, just relax, and get entertained. It's a mixture of those two things: geeking out and hoeing down.

At our London event, Cassette Playa joked that it's always good to get geeks out of their houses and together in a public space, away from their computer screens. To take her statement a little more seriously, what do you think it is about new media art that is more conducive to collaboration than more traditional art forms?
Well I think the fact that a lot of it exists in binary, in ones and zeros — the fact that it can be shared easily, helps. And a lot of it doesn't cost anything to make. A lot of the software that's coded is free and there are tutorials everywhere. The online community, is so open to sharing information, which is something that, in the past, with galleries and museums has been sort of reserved for the upper echelon of people. With the internet new trends happen and die within a day, and some last forever, but everyone has some ownership of it.

Where do you think things are headed for new media art in the future?
The fact that things are becoming less tangible is troubling in a sense. The fact that anything can be duplicated in a simulacra, that we now have a representation of everything. I don't know if the creative products we make and consume are as personal as they used to be, because they are less tangible, but I think that we're going to see a lot of art from people who are a lot younger. More fresh takes on things. I remember a Francis Ford Coppola interview right after Heart of Darkness was made. In it he was saying that the next great movie's going to come from a 12-year-old girl, as soon as she has the technology to be able to make it. I think there is something to that. As technology improves, the level of entry into the arts is getting reduced every day.

What does a computer game or piece of software have to gain from becoming art?
Roger Ebert recently said that video games will never be a form of art, and I thought that was so strange because it's just such a backlash, especially since he's so used to movies being considered art. It's hard to say what is art when it's happening. I think as soon as everyday people have control of a medium, that's when it really has room to become an art. When it's not just for pushing units, when it's not just for selling something, then it becomes more.

Do you think it's because we're the first generation of adults who grew up as children with video games, so now that we're adults we want to consider them in adult ways, the same way movies and videos gradually became considered art for Ebert's generation?.
Now that we're no longer kids, just sort of passively taking video games in, now we're actually producing them for ourselves. A lot of it has to do also with dismantling nostalgia, being able to take down your previous experiences with something and project it as something else. In addition to video game art, there are other pieces in Geekdown that deal specifically with this as well. We've got a piece by Eyal Ohana which is like a surreal sea creature. It's playing with the idea from when you were a kid and seeing an animal at the zoo for the first time, or a fish in the aquarium, something exotic that glows. You have no idea what to compare it to, the first time you've seen it. But after you have that experience logged in your mind, you think of it as being sort of a defining moment.

Most of the work at Geekdown is made by students and graduates of NYU’s ITP (Interactive Telecomunication Program) at the Tisch School of the Arts. After seeing all they’ve got going on there, we’re almost tempted to enroll ourselves.