Istanbul l Dome Central

Spent most of yesterday at "home" with swollen feet from the day before walking around with dress shoes that I haven't worn for probably six months or more. However, I did make it out for an extended evening of one very unique exhibition opening and the Biennial opening party! After stopping back by the Biennial to view the second building, my first stop was a dome exhibition at the historic site of the Ottoman military industry,  an old cannon factory in Tophane-i Amire (across from the Biennial site) now the Amire Culture and Arts Center. The building is an 8-domed, stone and brick compound most recently reconstructed by Sultan Selim III in 1803. There were three installations in cisterns and one in a tunnel and the main digital dome presentation was in a larger adjacent dome. The exhibition titled Affective State and produced by Parlor X was presented for a younger audience who are interested in digital arts (somewhat non existent in the Biennial). As many of my friends know, I have become a "domie" of sorts lately while spending time in Santa Fe, working with Ethan Bach who runs the digital dome at the IAIA on my current project Getting Off the Planet. Being in Istanbul is like being a "domie" as they are EVERYWHERE (mosques)! I was a bit let down, thinking that it was a viewing of 5 digital dome videos, but there was only one and the other four were digital arts installations. And, even the main digital dome work was really more of an installation with an architectural feature under glass below the dome and "sculptural elements" in the dome space itself. In the cisterns, there were pod like spaces that gave you a feeling of being transported to other worlds with images and sounds projected on both architectural and constructed surfaces. Overall, I think the potential for artists to create work in a dome is huge in terms of digital projections and other sound or performance based works. Affective State was an excellent start!

From Amire, where I again met up with Ar Zu and Nancy Popp from Los Angeles, we crossed the street over to the Biennial opening party, staying for a couple hours and walked through the second building of the exhibition (a second time for me). Below are a few of my favorites (artists names and titles coming soon).