Hayward campus lit up by “In The Dark: New Media Works”
April 1, 2015
The California State University, East Bay Art Gallery exhibition “In The Dark: New Media Works” will hold it’s closing ceremony and artist talk on April 9 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the University Art Gallery’s main lobby in the Art & Education building.
Works created by current and former students are on display until the closing ceremony and have been up since March 10, Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The exhibit is different than a traditional art show. Every piece, aside from one, is displayed on a flat screen monitor.
Alongside every piece there is a set of headphones or a keyboard so you can interact with the pieces by either playing the games or listening to the audio of the videos.
“In The Dark: New Media Works is a new exhibition to showcase work by electronic arts students and multimedia students. The Exhibition includes video games, short films, interactive sound devices, virtual reality gaming, long scrolling websites, moving graphic posters, and more,” said Ian Pollock, a CSUEB professor in the Multimedia Graduate Program.
“We blacked out the gallery and took out the track lighting to allow the screens to illuminate the gallery. This is the first electronic media, video show we have ever done.”
One of the more popular pieces is a sand noise device, created by a few students in the multimedia graduate program who also created The Green Cat Collective, which is, “a quartet of multimedia installation artists and designers,” according to their website.
Small lit-up pillars can be moved throughout the sand, and once the pillars are sensed, music starts to play.
Towards the back of the exhibit, people can gather around a projector facing a white wall that projects what a guest is viewing while wearing a pair of Oculus Rift goggles.
The goggles are headsets that project a virtual reality gaming experience.
“In new media, a lot of times it’s not just one person, its a group of people working on a joint project,” said Pollock. “The Game Jam that we run every quarter is really specifically designed to bring art students and computer science students and engineering students together to work on joint projects. So trying to break down the walls of those silos and get them together.”
In early February, art student Tri Vo arrived at Game Jam, a game-making event held for multimedia graduate students at CSUEB.
He and his fellow students were then given a task: create a computer game based on a specific topic.
Vo’s topic? Diversity.
This project eventually turned into a piece on display at the “In The Dark” exhibit.
Vo’s computer game is now featured in a new media exhibit called “In The Dark.” Vo and two classmates created the game “Bubbly Rainbow,” in which players pick a character that has to jump over obstacles to get to a finish line.
When the player gets to the end of the obstacles the screen, which was initially black and white, suddenly turns to color.
“This is like the internet era, so you can use new media to send a message,” Vo said. “Like for example this game wants to send a message that if you overcome the challenges then there is something better waiting for you.”
Pollock said that the goal was really to just make sure that there was one show that highlighted screen-based media because in traditional exhibits there is a lot of extra light and so some pieces would get somewhat drowned.
