Mashable's Mini-Documentary on Kinetic Artist BREAKFAST

the beginning and the end are are the high points and in the middle it's kind of this like roller coaster of it's gonna work it not gonna work it's gonna work it's not gonna work [Music] when you're seven months in and you're still asking yourself is this going to work it's terrifying [Music] the very highest moment in this process is when you are finally standing in front of it and you're finally turning it on and it's doing what you dreamed it would be it's always better than you expected [Music] figuring out how to design and build the piece that is by far what gives me my cakes it's also nice when the pieces is done but it's usually that that initial stage is there when you really get to sink your teeth into a problem and figure out how to do something that usually nobody's done before [Music] I'm salty and the co-founder and co-director of breakfast which is a fairly unique art studio based in Dumbo in Brooklyn there were three of us that started breakfast around eleven years ago and we had come from an entirely software background but we were getting very tired of seeing digital-only manifest itself in glowing pixels and so we decided to start a studio that was dedicated to creating in-person experiences but entirely through kinetic mediums how could we take all of this digital stuff that exists in our world and have it manifest itself not and in glowing pixel but in something that speaks to people in a different way and we've been creating these kinetic pieces ever since early on it was a mix of a lot of prototypes that we created ourselves a lot of them sort of fun and silly to get the attention of companies of people and so most of our early work were large-scale interactive pieces that were commissioned by brands things of that sort and then it's really been over the last few years that we've made a much stronger push into the art world and then really into the fine art world just in the last six months what is the art world gonna think when we start calling this art and when we start hanging it or putting it into the places that is considered for fine art one of the things that our world is struggling with is it tends to be leaning more and more towards older people people that it's not there are not a lot of 20 and 30 year olds spending a lot of money in art and so they see this as a beacon as a way that's bringing in younger people into this world I'd say the most common reaction we were getting is I do not normally like this kind of thing and I absolutely love it I think that's always been why we've gone after these tactile approaches is it a two-year-old will have the same reaction as a 90 year old [Music] the way that our pieces come about it varies a lot I compared a lot to anyone that writes music sometimes a song comes like that and sometimes you're working on it for years [Music] we have an idea for a medium and while we're developing it we're starting to realize what it can become we have a couple ideas at the beginning and then it evolves sometimes we're not even fitting that out until we finally have it made and are playing with the software and realize what it actually is [Music] in other cases we've come up with eight concepts and we are going down that path and we are making that thing for two years to get to that point the place that we start mostly today is how do we want to connect the people experiencing our pieces how do where do we want to connect them to so they're about connecting you to another place another time another person we generally do that through the web and using a web connection and pulling in real-time data so a lot of times we start there this what we're looking at here is one piece out of a climate change series that we're doing this one is called mon aloha air and what this is showing in this abstract pattern is the current co2 levels in the air in Hawaii right now so this is connected to the web it's constantly pulling in that data and they hire those co2 levels go this piece will turn more and more gold if the levels drop it will turn more green we also have this mode where you're stepping in front of it it's a way for us to put you in the middle of the artwork and as a reminder that you're here part of this problem that's going on right now and also ask this data changes so the levels go up your silhouette will become more and more stronger or received depending on that how those levels are are going this piece is part of the climate change series as well this one is called Lake Chapala and Lake Chapala is a lake in Mexico that's just drying out and this piece is also connected to the web it's constantly pulling in data about the lake as that water level keeps dropping the movements that you see in the in the piece is going to subdue down to until there's no movement left a lot of our pieces are connected to the web that's a theme that runs through almost everything that we do and not just connecting our pieces to places but also connecting people to other people when we started breakfast we definitely weren't we didn't have our heads in the fine art world I don't think we ever imagined you know creating these smaller pieces that might go into people's homes or definitely into galleries and museums more sort of learning as we go most people still don't believe that we actually make this stuff and most people are confused by us because we are not a name there's no way any one of us ready two of us writing three of us can make these things like it's such a collaborative effort between you know multiple software engineers mechanical engineers electrical engineers like and so we're making all of that stuff here it's it's all really happening with these hands [Music] you

Channel: BREAKFAST

Views: 225,024

Keywords: technology, art, documentary, kinetic, mechanical, engineering, sustainability

Id: _XAO7-RFMdM

Length: 7min 13sec (433 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020