Here's a Sneak Peek of Panorama Festival's Dazzling Visual Arts Hub

The Panorama Festival is making its debut this summer, and The Verge and Goldenvoice are promising a world-class event that will usher in a new era of festival art. Instead of scattering installations across Randall’s Island, festival organizers decided to collect larger-than-life and tech-heavy works under one roof. Say hello to "The Lab."

The Lab is an exhibition tent that will soon play host to a series of seven interactive art installations. Together they represent a merger between science, technology, and creative design. In addition to the exhibition space, The Lab will also feature a fully immersive, dome-shaped virtual reality theater. This 70-foot tall attraction will allow up to 400 festivalgoers to experience a 360-degree VR performance at once.

The Lab will serve as a central hub for the Panorama Festival’s entire visual arts scene. Each one of the artists featured in The Lab’s exhibition is a New York City local, hand-picked by the multifaceted design studio, META.is. After sending out a request to 25 different technology artists and studios, META had to narrow down a list of 30 different proposals to a group of seven finalists. META.is' "Chief Experience Officer," Justin Bolognino, tells The Creators Project about getting The Lab together and picking the winning proposals: "Considerations for the RFP (Request For Proposal) started with asking how our individual and collective sense of identity has been re-invented by technology. Also the durability within a festival setting at Panorama, applicable within the festival settin, a.k.a., not too heady, not too intellectual, but lots and lots of fun while still being meaningful."

One of these chosen finalists is an interactive performance piece by artists Emilie Baltz and Philip Sierzega, entitled, Cotton Candy Theremin. The project is described as a sort of performative remix of the cotton-candy-making process, “transforming it into a multisensory orchestration,” according to The Verge. With a little creative coding help from Charlie Whitney, Baltz and Sierzega have effectively turned a run-of-the-mill cotton candy machine into a playable audiovisual instrument. By placing a paper cone into the machine’s candy floss spool, viewers will be able to trigger different sounds and visual projections.

Other artists to be featured in The Lab include Zache Lieberman, the artist responsible for coding toolkit openFrameworks, and Gabriel Pulecio, better known as the artist Lustix, who created interactive projection mapped installations and visuals for Madonna’s 2012 tour.

Keep an eye out in the weeks leading up to Panorma as The Verge is set to release a series of behind-the-scenes videos. Head over to the Panorama website, here, for more information about the festi.

Related:

Electronic Music Festivals Hire Art Curators Now

A $10 Art & Music Festival Series Joins Long Island City

[Exclusive] Building Art Boats for a Music Festival on a Lake