Northern Spark 2014 - Update #4

Your Public Acts of Drawing Projected onto the City

Public Acts of Drawing is a real-time art-making event that merges free-form collaboration with large-scale urban spectacle.
 
Participants put pen to paper alongside local artists, dignitaries, and a few hundred friends. Drawers of all ages, skill levels, and styles are welcome. Special contributors will help steer and energize the proceedings, but the results are delightfully unpredictable.
 
A spacious drawing table with a hand crank provides participants a gradual feed of fresh paper, lit by energy-efficient LEDs. The draw-a-thon is simulcast several stories tall on the exterior of a building near the Minneapolis Convention Center, turning each small gesture into a heroic act.
 
Public Acts of Drawing is a project of MakeSh!t, a free-form collective founded in 2010 with a mission to explore the social and process-based aspects of art—in other words, collaborative making. Current members include Lucas Alm, Justin Heideman, Aaron Marx, Jake Nassif, Craig Phillips, Paul Schmelzer, and Witt Siasoco.

David Luke Animates Poems from Upstream Arts

Interdisciplinary artist David Luke is collaborating with Upstream Arts to create a quartet of unique animated movies to be shown at Northern Spark. Upstream Arts provides arts programming for youth and adults with disabilities. They employ artists to teach theatre, dance, visual arts and poetry activities designed to develop social and communication skills central to success in school, work, and life.
 
Taking poems written by UA teaching artists and program participants as base text, Luke is transforming them into videos that make visual the vibrant voices of program participants, expanding the creative process from the UA programs into a new realm of public engagement. Projected large-scale near the Minneapolis Convention Center, viewers are invited to choose, by way of assistive technology often used by UA participants, which poem/movie they would like to watch.
 
A preview showing of Upstream Animated will be held as part of Upstream Art's first Annual Meeting and Fundraiser on May 17. The event will include specially-created performances by UA participants to accompany Luke's animations of their words.