Best of ATL Block Party: Meet S. Bedford
One of six participating artists talks about his piece, and ‘so many sparks!’
To celebrate the CL annual Best of Atlanta issue, the Goat Farm Arts Center curated a physical manifestation of the best the city has to offer. The six chosen installations will imagine a future world based on plausible present technologies, ideas, or milieus. Expect an ambitious cyberpunk-inspired future Atlanta presented in way that has never been done before. The installations for BOA do not deal with the past, but rather what is on the horizon. It’s time we all agree those Goat Farmers are drinking some serious Kool-Aid.
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? With that said, please meet S. Bedford — a mortal man, mad scientist, and visual magician. He’ll be occupying Broad Street Visitors Center with his installation “Caution and Medicine” — a grandiose pinball game with no pins and measuring at an impressive 12-by-15 feet.
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? Tell me more about yourself — who are you and what do you all do?
? Good question, I mostly make cartoons and watch insects fight.
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? What is the title of your piece and please describe it.
? This piece is called “Caution and Medicine,” a large green head of a king, with mimes for eyes and a mystery tongue, flanked by glowing orange pinecones, sweats steel balls that cascade down increasingly large spinning translucent plates with bits of steel along the edges. The plates are operated by whoever choses to yank on the cables, and they make tones by whizzing those steel bits past magnetic pickups. A pendulum runs the lights.
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? How did South Broad Street inspire your concept?
? Laughs My piece is about giving away cigarettes.
? Going off the loose theme of time — a future or passage of time from present toward the future — what does your installation have to do with the future of Atlanta?
? Well “Caution and Medicine” both started about clay and copper in a full circle, and now acrylic and clear coat in half a circle, and then next it’s mostly about the question and not stabbing at it. Like sleep paralysis.
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? What is the best thing about Atlanta?
? It’s not New York City.
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? Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself? Anything in particular that was sparked working with this project?
? So many sparks!
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?CL’s Best of Atlanta 2015 Block Party. Free. Fri., Sep. 25, from 6-11 p.m. South Broad Street, between Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and and Mitchell Street.