New Forms Festival

At Open Studios on Friday, September 14, and VIVO on Saturday, September 15. No remaining performances

I didn't have much luck with the New Forms Festival this year, but that didn't mean that the annual event was without its charms.

My initial intent was to review its Cross-Pollination concert at Open Studios on Friday night, but that was derailed by the unexplained absence of some key components. My understanding was that solo bassist Wendy Atkinson, the electronic quartet Integrated Circus, and the art-rock trio Primes would perform, which they did. After that, though, sampling commandos Team Rad were supposed to organize a "live remix" of their music. That never happened–or at least there was no sign of it happening by the time I left at about 2:30 in the morning.

Further vexations followed on Saturday afternoon. Feeling that I hadn't enough material for an arts-section review, I trotted over to the VIVO Media Arts Centre for a look at a New Forms exhibition of video and installation pieces. Florida artist Anat Pollack's Shi.ko Ltd. 2007 v.2 had promise: viewers were asked to remove their shoes and crawl into a gazebolike tent, where they could engage in an interactive "conversation" with five cute, anthropomorphic sculptures. But after whispering sweet nothings into the supplied microphone for at least two minutes, I didn't get a peep out of the Shi.kos, and crawled out again feeling rather foolish.

This feeling was only amplified when I then managed to crash Adriaan Stellingwerff's computer-based Eternal Sunset. I eventually managed to restore the link to the Australian artist's Web site, but the effort didn't seem worth it. It's a nice conceit–a link to Web cams around the world, each coming on-line as sunset approaches–but the interface was clunky and the images pedestrian.

There was one masterpiece at VIVO, though: Erik Olofsen's Drives. The concept is simple enough: take a high-speed digital camera out onto a highway at twilight, shoot the oncoming traffic, and then slow the images down to the point where they flow across the screen like liquid paintings. The effect, however, is exceedingly complex, and oddly beautiful. As each car comes into view, we're given a window into the private world of its occupants: some are caught in animated conversation, or gazing adoringly at each other, or glowering with fixed intent. That these scenes progress at the every-second-lasts-an-hour pace of an accident in progress gives them an eerie sense of dread that is entirely at odds with the otherwise banal circumstances. This, at last, was new and extraordinary art.