10 minute read
ARTWORK
Every year, Canal Convergence selects a featured theme to be highlighted alongside our perennial focus on Water + Art + Light, interactivity, and sustainability. Because 2022 is our 10th anniversary event, this year’s featured theme is “Celebrating 10 Years of Water + Art + Light.”
Since Canal Convergence officially began in 2012, it has embodied an ever-evolving conversation about site-specific public art, light art, community engagement, and more, all within the context of an outdoor, nighttime-focused event. For Canal Convergence 2022, each artist was directed to present an artwork that celebrates Water + Art + Light, interactivity, and sustainability but also draws from any of our past featured themes like “Reconnect,” “The Story of Water,” and “Art and Technology.”
In addition to commemorating the anniversary through the artwork themes, this year’s event also looks to celebrate the vibrant global artist community that has made Canal Convergence so memorable over the years. Scottsdale Public Art selected artists who have exhibited work at Canal Convergence throughout the 10-year span alongside artists who are new to the event. With this collection of past and present artists, we will highlight not only our evolution as an event but also the artists’ growth.
Top row: Beautiful Light, DA Therrien; photo: John Romero. Nodal Water Garden, Jeff Zischke; photo: Dayvid LeMmon. Voyage, Aether and Hemera; photo: Sean Deckert. Water Striders, Jeff Zischke; photo: Sean Deckert. The Garden Grows BioMe, Karrie Hovey; photo: Sean Deckert. Bottom row: Spiraling Droplets, Aphidoidea; photo: Sean Deckert. Les Luminéoles, Porté par le vent; photo: Sean Deckert. Standing Wave, Squidsoup; photo: Sean Deckert. Kukulkan’s Portal, Abram Santa Cruz / Liquid PXL; photo: Chris Loomis. Say What You Will, MASARY Studios; photo: Chris Loomis.
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SunDrops
Jeff Zischke (Scottsdale, Arizona)
SunDrops is a series of internally lit sculptures suspended above the Arizona Canal at the Scottsdale Waterfront. Each sculpture emulates the shape of a graphic sun, creating powerful light patterns and refractions. RGB lights are programmed with a myriad of animated light shows that constantly change and morph into a variety of patterns and colors. The SunDrops are installed in a descending and ascending order, relating to desert sunrises and sunsets. To further celebrate the event’s 10th anniversary, Zischke has refurbished a sculpture from his Canal Convergence 2014 installation Water Striders with the new title: Desert Strider. Check out this piece of Canal Convergence history on view along the southeast canal path.
Sculpture fabrication provided by Magnum Companies. Rigging design and installation provided by HannonRP. Structural engineering provided by Sirius Structures.
Rendering: Immerge Interactive LLC
Reflections
Immerge Interactive (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Reflections is an interactive lighting installation that showcases the mirrored nature of the Arizona Canal’s surface while paying tribute to 10 years of Canal Convergence. It includes two 14-by-40foot suspended grids, each encompassing more than 13,000 individually addressable LEDs, and all powered by an interactive video tracking system. Activation zones are powered by cameras placed on viewing platforms on either side of the canal. Movement of viewers within these zones will contribute data to the interactive system, allowing patterns and colors to morph within the piece. As the structures seemingly fade into the night, the reflections from the lighting sample previous Canal Convergence artworks from the past 10 years and color palettes from Scottsdale and the surrounding geography.
ORB
Walter Productions (Scottsdale, Arizona)
Ten years ago, we existed in a place far, far from here. Together we’ve all taken this unimaginably complex ride on our planet through the expanding universe. Looking back through time, we see a reflection of ourselves as we were then ... together ... floating on the ORB. This artwork consists of 10 metal spheres—each outfitted with flame effects and a band of LEDs—floating on the Arizona Canal. During the daytime, ORB glimmers in the sun, and at night, it comes alive not only with fire performances, but also with a variety of light sequences and patterns generated by each sphere’s LED equator. The LEDs can be controlled by the public between fire performances via an interactive kiosk on the Marshall Way Bridge. Then, at regular intervals throughout the event, ORB will ignite, shooting flames 30 feet into the air and creating choreographed fire shows set to music. See the event schedule for nightly showtimes.
Photo: Pneuhaus and Bike Powered Events
Canopy
Pnuehaus and Bike Powered Events (Rumford, Rhode Island)
Canopy is a grove of six, illuminated, tree-like sculptures that continuously transform in shape and color as participants power them through bike-driven generators. The artwork empowers its visitors, giving them a firsthand experience with green electricity generation and rewarding them with large-scale beauty for their efforts. Canopy instigates a collaborative process of placemaking that affixes ecological vitality parallel to social and artistic vibrancy.
The DOOR(S)
B!G ART (Calgary, Canada)
Canal Convergence and B!G ART are excited to announce the return of one of the fan-favorite installations from Canal Convergence 2021: The DOOR(S). This year’s iteration of The DOOR(S) will once again open to a wide range of “alternate realities,” but with a twist! In addition to opening a portal to one of many experiences, The DOOR(S) will also act as a gateway to past Canal Convergence events and to a real-time livestream at Scottsdale Fashion Square. With one of the doors located at Canal Convergence and the other placed inside Scottsdale Fashion Square, visitors will have the chance to virtually interact with strangers at the other door.
Artwork supported by presenting partner:
Photo: Matt Emmi
The Last Ocean
Jen Lewin (New York City, New York)
Discover The Last Ocean, an expansive landscape of interactive illumination that explores the crisis of global plastic pollution. With platforms created from reclaimed ocean plastic and activated by community engagement, this work evokes a luminescent ice field with a composition rooted in beautiful geometric tessellations. The panel composition created for Canal Convergence was inspired by the Brunt Ice Shelf and the A-74 Iceberg.
MAPP
AlexP (Uithoorn, The Netherlands)
MAPP, an abbreviation of Mapping At Private Properties, is an interactive, mobile, point-andshoot video-mapping system, with which imagery is projected from an old-fashioned pram onto a custom-built projection screen. To activate MAPP, participants will step into the light to be scanned. Then, within seconds of stepping away, they become part of the artwork as the resulting MAPP scans appear among the colorful images and patterns in the projection. Don’t forget to bring a camera to capture all the picture-perfect moments!
Photo: Angela Fraleigh and Josh Miller
Sound the Deep Waters
Sound the Deep Waters is a projection-based artwork that invites visitors to submit secret messages that are then translated into Victorian flower language before their eyes! Participants can use an online portal to submit any number of messages to the artwork, from love letters and prose to inside jokes. Then visitors can watch the projection in front of them as their private words, identified on the screen by the submitter’s initials, become bold, brilliant, larger-than-life floral compositions associated with their messages’ meanings. The title is inspired by Christina Rosetti’s poem “Sleep at Sea,” which conjures a hallucinatory dreamscape of slumbering sailors. In this work, the title alludes to an undetected sonar—one that rumbles beneath the surface, creating a deep sounding, or awakening, of a cultural psyche.
The STARQUARIUM
B!G ART (Calgary, Canada)
The STARQUARIUM is a one-of-a-kind, intergalactic aquarium. The main vessel is connected to a gateway through space and time, delivering flora, fauna, and other mysteries from faraway worlds. The “tank” captures the specimens for a short period of time so our scientists, and the general public, can observe these magical mysteries before they disappear back through the gate from which they came. This 22-foot high, 16-foot-wide mega-structure delivers custom 3D animated content via 560,000 video pixels and an array of intelligent lighting. You can view the entire installation in 360 degrees around the artwork and even underneath it. All visitors passing by, passing underneath, or viewing from a distance will be treated to video, lighting, and special effects.
Photo: HYBYCOZO
Trillian + InSpires
HYBYCOZO (Los Angeles, California)
Trillian + InSpires consists of three steel sculptures that showcase complex, laser-cut patterns inspired by natural forms, ancient Islamic tiles, mathematics, and geometry. During the day, Trillian + InSpires shine like golden jewels, and at night they transform to cast light and shadow from the patterns on the surrounding environment. Each sculpture is lit with LEDs from the inside in order to cast colorful, intricate shadows.
Los Trompos
Hector Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena (Mexico City, Mexico)
Functioning as both artwork and rotating seating spaces, Los Trompos act as a gathering place for relaxation, social interaction, and entertainment. Esrawe and Cadena found their inspiration for Los Trompos in the form of a spinning top, a toy popular with children around the world. The colorful material used to create each “top” is made from fabric, woven in a traditional style of Mexican artisans. The fabric is stretched over the “spinning-top” structures to seat several people at once. By working together, visitors can spin the tops on their bases to add motion to their interaction with the structures.
Photo: Paul Magnuson
The TUNNEL
B!G ART (Calgary, Canada)
Some of our most imaginative adventures start with a door, or portal, or a gate. Passing through these structures indicates the start of a journey beyond the known world into something … transformative. The TUNNEL is a series of strange, 13-foot-tall cosmic structures that create a passage of magical light for a one-way trip to another side. Viewers become pilots using an interactive device to manipulate the array of arches, creating an infinite number of patterns of light and sound to guide their path through the structures. The 3D design uses more than 200 LED bars, consisting of 12,000 pixels, video-mapped to create a vortex of light pulling you through the structures.
The Poetics of Impermanence
Kristin Bauer (Phoenix, Arizona)
Poetics of Impermanence takes the poetic writings of artist Kristin Bauer about the elements (earth, air, water, fire/sun) off the page and wall and instead activates the words in the environment of the Scottsdale Waterfront. The preciousness of water—resource and element— and its necessity for life are so frequently captured in poetry, as it is also a symbol for so many things: emotion, the womb, mother, purification, change, grief seasons, etc. You can find all the AR activation locations identified by the colorful plexiglass boxes on the north side of the canal.
Scan the QR code at artwork location to activate AR experience. * The app requires an augmented reality-capable device running iOS 13 or later, Android 7.0 or later.
Rendering: Fausto Fernandez
Flowing Overlapping Gesture 2.0
Fausto Fernandez (Phoenix, Arizona)
Artist Fausto Fernandez was commissioned by Scottsdale Public Art to create one of the inaugural floating canal installations at the Scottdale Waterfront in 2010. This public art intervention was part of the precursor Canal Convergence events that led to the official creation of Canal Convergence in 2012. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Canal Convergence, Fernandez has recreated that floating art installation, Flowing Overlapping Gesture, in augmented reality.
Scan the QR code at artwork location to activate AR experience. * The app requires an augmented reality-capable device running iOS 13 or later, Android 7.0 or later.
What Grows Here
Jen Urso (Phoenix, Arizona)
What Grows Here is a virtual, layered map showing more than 1,000 years of water use in the Scottsdale area. Layered in three dimensions, the viewers can observe the six large maps, stacked vertically over the ground adjacent to the Arizona Canal, with the ability to walk up to and within the maps to see their details.
Scan the QR code at artwork location to activate AR experience. * The app requires an augmented reality-capable device running iOS 13 or later, Android 7.0 or later.
