PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Tangible Interaction and Burrard Arts Foundation present Experience Spheres

December 28, 2014

For Immediate Release: December 28, 2014

PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Tangible Interaction and Burrard Arts Foundation present Experience Spheres

The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Tangible Interaction and Burrard Arts Foundation are delighted to present Experience Spheres, an interactive art installation. The project serves to enable Vancouverites to view the world differently and anew. With Experience Spheres the project’s partners seek to provoke dialogue and shift people’s view of the world around them by wedding our respective practices and expertise into a new, iconic experience for the public.

The spheres will be installed in various public spaces around Vancouver where people congregate, contemplate and pass through. The Spheres are available to experience throughout the months of January and February in several locations throughout the city. The Spheres will be installed each weekend of the 2015 PuSh Festival:

January 23–25: across Granville Island
January 29–February 1: at Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch
January 30: featured at FUSE, Vancouver Art Gallery
February 6–8: at SFU Woodward’s Atrium

Additionally, Experience Spheres will be a featured exhibition at BAF Studio (located at 108 East Broadway, Vancouver) from January 10 to 17, and from February 10 to 28. Experience Spheres will be launched with an exhibition opening on Saturday, January 10 at 7pm.

Inspired by and complementing the themes of the 2015 PuSh Festival programming, the Experience Spheres will transport participants to new places and change perceptions. The public will be invited to enter the Experience Spheres by placing their heads into the installations, where they will be fed different sensory stimuli. The Experience Spheres will offer a range of audio, visual and audio/visual experiences, from lights to soundscapes.

As with the 2015 PuSh Festival programming, the Experience Spheres seeks to deepen the participants’ sense of place, belonging and temporality—to emerge with a more fully rounded understanding and awareness of their place in the world. The Experience Spheres project is an innovative mirror of the transformative theatre experience that PuSh provides to its audiences. The contrast created by the digital world of the Experience Spheres and the participants’ physical location will heighten their awareness and challenge their perception of the immediate surroundings and leave them with an altered sense of reality. It also plays with the twinned notions of public and private experience: as with the theatre, which is both a communal and deeply personal experience, the Experience Spheres is an act of both isolation and connection. By placing their heads into the spheres, thereby unable to see their surroundings, participants are removing themselves from the ‘now’ and entering the artificial world of the Experience Sphere and connecting to a different sense of immediacy. And too, where the participants’ surroundings ‘disappear’ once inside the spheres and they are transported to another place, the participants themselves remain very visible to onlookers. The iconic image of the people standing in public areas, with large, opaque spheres placed over their heads, will spark curiosity, conversation and invite investigation. The participant is both the spectator of the Experience Sphere and a character within the work— the observer becomes the observed.

The PuSh Festival, Tangible Interaction and Burrard Arts Foundation would like to thank DesignCultureMind (DCM) who provided project consultation on Experience Spheres. DCM is an innovation and product strategy agency that cares how culture, community, cities, countries and the world is impacted with every interaction. DCM consulted in the project’s early stages, defined the strategy, created the Experience Spheres concept and strategy with Tangible Interaction, and connected the three lead organizations.

Experience Spheres is supported by

CreativeBC

About PuSh International Performing Arts Festival

The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is Vancouver’s mid-winter festival presenting acclaimed local, national and international artists. The PuSh Festival presents groundbreaking work in the live performing arts with theatre, dance, music, and various forms of multimedia and hybrid performance.

The 2015 PuSh Festival marks its 11th edition and takes place January 20 to February 8, 2015 at various venues in and around Vancouver. This year’s Festival includes works by artists and companies from around the world, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, France, the Netherlands, Scotland, and the United States. The 2015 Festival features 200 performances and events over 20 days, including 21 Main Stage shows, three weeks of performances at Club PuSh, networking events at the PuSh Assembly, film series, dinner/theatre experiences with Dine Out Vancouver, and many artist talks and other ancillary events. pushfestival.ca

About Tangible Interaction

Tangible Interaction creates sensory installations where people participation is key. Our work taps into some of the most basic human instincts, to play and explore. It also generates talk value through a shared experience.

Tangible is led by founder and Creative Director, Alex Beim. Our team is a diverse mix of talent spanning graphic, industrial and audio design as well as programming, electronics engineering and production.

The Tangible studio was established in 2006 and since then we’ve produced branded interactive experiences for companies including Ford, Verizon, ESPN, Heineken, Samsung, Nokia, Adidas and MTV. In the entertainment sector, we’ve collaborated with Blue Man Group, Sensation White, Arcade Fire, Green Day, Coldplay and Chemical Brothers. Tangible also creates public artworks. CODE Live (2010 Winter Olympic Games), City of Turin, the Vancouver Aquarium, Siggraph, Cine Kid and Illuminate Yaletown are just some of the clients and venues we’ve produced installations for. tangibleinteraction.com

About Burrard Arts Foundation

The Burrard Arts Foundation (BAF) promotes the development of, and excellence in, the visual arts in Canada – accomplished through innovative art projects and programs. BAF seeks to advance the understanding and appreciation of the arts in Vancouver by showcasing local and global artistic talent and dialogue from the creative minds of today and tomorrow in dynamic ways, and within the public’s grasp. Our objective is to provide opportunities that enable artists to produce their work and share it with the world.

Within our gallery and studio space, BAF Studio, we promote and exhibit engaging contemporary art in an environment that aims to be open and accessible to everyone. BAF Studio also has a special focus of providing assistance to promising, qualified emerging artists through professional development and exhibition opportunities.
burrardarts.org

PuSh Festival Publicists:

Ellie O’Day: 604.731.3339, ellie@oday.org
Teresa Trovato: 604.897.1939, teresatrovatopr@gmail.com

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