Future Sketches

This collaboration with Zach Lieberman, one of the most dynamic pioneers in the field of coding and interactive media, was his first solo exhibition in Washington, DC and presented a series of interactive installations that surprised and inspired visitors at every corner.

Emphasizing his eclectic style of sketching with code for creative exploration, Future Sketches blurred the boundaries between visible and invisible to inspire new, innovative ways of thinking about what it means to be human. By creating digital poetry through code, technology and theory, Lieberman’s engaging and extraordinary installations unlocked the creator inside us all.

“I really appreciate ARTECHOUSE because they have pushed me to show so many projects and really pushed the limits of what I would consider possible. It’s a really magical space to be able to show a lot of different types of work in one venue.” – Zach Lieberman

Sketch Lab – Main Gallery
Featuring an interactive compilation of Lieberman’s daily sketches over the course of four years, this installation highlighted the importance of iteration in an artist’s life — from creating initial ideas to reworking them and building upon the design. It also included a compilation of select sketches edited together with music from Jemapur, Daito Manabe and Nahre Sol.

Code Lab – Gallery One
Produced by students of the School for Poetic Computation, Re-Coded paid homage to innovators whose work existed in the space between art and technology by presenting significant works of computer- and algorithm-based art alongside the code that derived them. Visitors could adjust aspects of the code, which in turn changed the visuals, aiming to help visitors see the relationship between code and result.

Interactive Lab – Gallery Two
This series of interactive pieces showcased the various ways human inputs can be used to create art. Pitch Paint Revisited responded to the sound of visitors’ voices. Manual Input Sessions combined analog overhead projectors, digital projectors and custom interactive software to generate graphics and sounds from shapes. Body Sketches created a series of dynamic “costumes,” encouraging performance and movement. Reflection Studies allowed visitors to “paint with light” to see how light behaves.

Face Lab – Media Lab
This series of pieces focused on how technology sees and interacts with faces, including an LED wall of facial features called Face Sketches and a video essay exploring the dark side of facial recognition technology. The pieces Expression Mirror, Más Que la Cara, Reface, Average Face Mirror and Faces in Things explore different takes on the topic, from playful augmented reality “masks” to facial recognition software that learns as it is used.

About the artist

Zach Lieberman

Zach Lieberman is an artist, researcher and educator with a simple goal: he wants visitors to be surprised and inspired. In his work, he creates performances and installations that take human gesture as input and amplify them in different ways — making drawings come to life, imagining what a voice might look like if we could see it, and transforming people’s silhouettes into music.

He’s been listed as one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People and his projects have won the Golden Nica from Ars Electronica, Interactive Design of the Year from Design Museum London as well as listed in Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year. He helped start the School for Poetic Computation, a school examining the lyrical possibilities of code.

sfpc.io \\ @zach.lieberman

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