Thanks and Wrapping Up: Electric Sky and the Wondering Woods

[cross-posted on ElectricSkyArtCamp.com] This years’ Electric Sky was a resounding success and we cannot thank everyone enough for your active participation!  (For more imagery, check out our summarizing slide show or  see our video).

Our primary goal with this event is to foster the community of creatives at the intersection of art and technology in the Pacific Northwest – building collaborative relationships, developing best practices, engaging in life-long learning, and inspiring new innovation.  Our secondary goal is to share the art generated by the event with the public, and in particular with the small rural communities of the Skykomish River valley.

This year we organized our collaborative efforts around the “Wondering Woods” theme, exploring what if the woods could talk?  What if they can sense you and respond?  As a part of this effort we hosted a pre-event workshop instructing artists and tech creatives how to use sensors, and at the event we had a CNC router workshop and a project-based workshop for kids to engage with the environment and integrate sound into a group installation.  We also hosted an open creativity lab to encourage emergent on-site collaboration in the style of hackathons.  A total of 71 art and tech creatives attended, including 12 kids, and 40-50 visitors from the region came to our opening night party.

This was our third year, and thanks in large part to our grant from 4Culture, which we used to fund new projects, we observed the depths of the interdisciplinary collaborations and the quality of the art achieve a new level.  Electric Sky is evolving into not only an art and tech retreat, but a new works incubator.   We are very happy to report that we have been invited as a collective to return to both Lusio and Arts-a-Glow to share our Wondering Woods installation with thousands more in Seattle and Burien.

Do you want to see more? Check out our summarizing slide show.
Part I shows overview of the Electric Sky event, and Part II shows the “Wondering Woods” art.

Some of the art was animated, interactive, or included sound, so we made a 2-minute video with some highlights.  See our video.

Here are some more photos shared by community members:
Shelly Farnham.
Jole Sack.

If you are excited by what you see, why wait until next year to get involved? Check out our community page.