Best of ATL Block Party: Meet Rebecca Makus

To celebrate CL’s annual Best of Atlanta issue, and our forthcoming Block Party, 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 a way that has never been done before. The installations for BOA do not deal with the past, but rather what is on the horizon. We’ll be posting interviews with the participating artists leading up to the event. Previous: “Meet Mimi Hart Silver.” 
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? Rebecca Makus is co-creator/co-founder of Ipomoea, an interactive performance laboratory making it’s debut at the Goat Farm Arts Center in 2017. For Creative Loafing’s Best of Atlanta Block Party, she and her team are presenting Ipomoea:Grass — an installation environment incorporating light, sculpture, and performance art that utilizes gesture and movement-recognition technology. Grass is an impromptu story of light and sound emerging from the collected data of interacting participants.
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? What hood are you from?
I live in Marietta behind the Walmart and right around the corner from the Big Chicken. I’m creating the work with two other artists: Elly Jessop Nattinger, who lives in Mountain View, Calif., and Peter Torpey of Boston, Mass.
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? Tell me more about Ipomoea, who y’all are, and what you all do?
? Makus: I’m an associate professor in theatre and performance studies at Kennesaw State University. I’m exploring how technology collaborates in the development of new work. Working with directors, choreographers, and artists, I create objects that can be manipulated by the performers and examine how these objects become a driving factor in the development of movement, text, and visual aesthetics.
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? Peter Torpey: I am an independent media experience artist based in Boston. My work is inspired by the power of abstract representations, from visual music to synchromist paintings from the early 20th century. These abstract forms communicate emotionally expressive and intangible concepts. I assemble them, using technology as a mediator and translator, to create immersive multimodal experiences.
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? Elly Jessop Nattinger: I am an artist working in performance and technology; in my day job, I’m an experience engineer at Google in California. My work is inspired by the power of technology to extend the expressive potential of the human body and voice. I give a performer the power to infuse the expressive power of her movement into sound, image, and light.
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? Please describe Ipomoea:Grass.
? It is an interactive sculpture and installation crafted from man-made and recycled materials that takes the form of a synthetic urban garden. We’ve created these hanging pallets of “grass” made from yarn and rope that are embedded with LEDs and sensors. Using gesture and movement recognition technology, Ipomoea:Grass responds with color and sound to your presence and touch. Through interaction with Ipomoea:Grass, you create a world of light and music. Ipomoea:Grass is excerpted from a larger installation and interactive performance space, Ipomoea, to be presented in Atlanta in 2017.
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? How did South Broad Street inspire your concept?
South Broad Street is an intensely urban area with a striking lack of usable public green space. Ipomoea:Grass, as well as our full installation Ipomoea, highlights the juxtaposition of our largely urban technological existence and our desire for organic natural spaces. By reclaiming an abandoned space and filling it with natural forms (though a synthetically created version of nature), we explore the contrast inherent in the “urban garden.”
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? 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?
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? ??? There is an expanding movement in Atlanta to repurpose abandoned or empty industrial spaces and reinvent them as arts and cultural venues and public green spaces. The reinvigoration of discarded spaces has actively involved local communities and artists as participants and leaders in redefining the use and shape of their environments. This movement is something we are paralleling conceptually with Ipomoea:Grass
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? The experience of Ipomoea:Grass encourages participants of all kinds to craft an artistic experience. This is not art that you just sit back and observe, but art that is shaped and brought to life through your active participation with it. It puts the agency in the hands of the individual. This model parallels the future of Atlanta’s urban development.
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? What is the best thing about Atlanta?
The cultural diversity with its attendant diversity of restaurants. I’m a big foodie and love discovering new flavors and cuisines. I’ve really enjoyed sharing these experiences with Peter and Elly when they visit. Another aspect of Atlanta’s cultural diversity that we are all big fans of is its thriving multidisciplinary arts community.
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? Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about yourselves? Anything in particular that was sparked working with this project?
? We met while working on “Death and the Powers,” an innovative ‘robot opera’ showcasing visionary MIT Media Lab performance technologies. This included techniques developed by Elly and Peter to translate a performer’s offstage presence into an expressively animated stage, a musical chandelier, and a chorus of robots. I worked as associate lighting designer and collaborated with Elly and Peter to help integrate the lighting design into the immersive stage environment.
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? Inspired by our many conversations during this process, we began exploring the role of interactive technology in shaping theatrical performance. This evolved into a discussion of how spaces (venues) influence the performances inside them. Through Ipomoea, we want to use technology to create an interactive environment that responds to the person or performance inhabiting it. We want to discover how such an environment can shape the development of new or established work.
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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.