Unique light sculpture that uses projection and string to pull digital art and animation out of the screen and into the real world, by Matt Parker and Albert Hwang in the Lewis Arts complex CoLab
Lumarca, a unique installation by artists and designers Matt Parker and Albert Hwang that explores individual perceptions of projection and digital animation, is on view in the CoLab at the Lewis Arts complex at Princeton University through December 15. Presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Princeton Atelier, the exhibition is free and open to the public daily from 10:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
A view of Lumarca installed in the CoLab at the Lewis Arts complex. Photo by Justin Goldberg
Lumarca is a light sculpture and flexible platform that utilizes projection and string to bring digital art and animation to life, featuring several animations that represent the exhibition’s flexibility and encourage audiences to view it from a variety of angles. Since its creation, Lumarca has been replicated in different sizes, shapes, and resolutions by artists around the world with unique approaches to the piece’s ability to function as a collaborative and abstract platform. Both Parker and Hwang hope for the further development and innovation of the Lumarca concept as a means to an end for artistic expression.
The installation highlights an Atelier course Parker will teach this spring at Princeton. The course, “Rising Waters: A Climate Change Game,” focuses on creating a commercial game that follows a socially conscious narrative about climate change. Students will have the opportunity to explore the mechanics and narratives of similar games while collaborating on their own project.
Matt Parker is a game designer, teacher, and new media artist. His work has been exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Academy of Music, SIGGRAPH Asia, the New York Hall of Science, Museum of the Moving Image, FILE Games Rio, Sony Wonder Technology Lab, and many other venues. His game Lucid was a finalist in Android’s Developer Challenge 2 and his project Lumarca won the “Create the Future” prize at the World Maker Faire. He created the game Recurse for the inaugural No Quarter exhibition at the New York University (NYU) Game Center. Recurse was a finalist for Indiecade 2010 and won the “Play This Now!” award at Come Out and Play 2012. He joined the full-time faculty at the NYU Game Center in 2013.
Albert Hwang describes his work as “tech-driven, 3D experiences for the body.” He creates large-scale centerpiece installations, live performances, and YouTube videos. His work has been exhibited in galleries and theaters in New York City; Yokohama, Japan; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Manchester, England; and a number of other cities around the world. As an artist, designer, and developer, Hwang considers his medium of choice physical, three-dimensional space and views his work as computational, somatic, functional, and performative, designed to resonate kinesthetically by accessing audiences’ mental models of their physical surroundings and by empowering them with a sense of physical agency.
