Art Journal #23: art with iPhone

Was quite excited when I first heard from Henrietta about this work. Combined my fascination about iPhone and new-found interest in digital art. The artist, Masayuki Akamatsu, teaches at Japan's media arts institute IAMAS. His work is called "snowflakes", and the concept is to link iPhone where signal can go from one device to the othe over the air, creating an "digital installation" where people can participate. He called this "distributed autonomy system", where these devices communicate and interact via signals, sounds and images.

Before I went, I actually tried to download the apps so I can link with Akamatsu-san's phones - but failed. So I just watched. The first few minutes was interesting, they turned off the lights, and everyone goes quiet and wait for Akamatsu-san to work his magic. The transmitting snowflakes across iPhones is fun - for about 2 minutes.

Then it got repeative and boring - maybe I left early (I did stay for 30mins so I dont think I missed much), or maybe I missed the full day lecture so I missed the point. Anyways, guess just the idea of using iPhone for art is a cool one. Was certainly thinking about similar things earlier