now this is cool - Rust Fest digital art and new media celebration begins saturday

sometimes you get the feeling Youngstown is a laboratory of ideas - with attempts to try new things popping up all over the place.

enter Rust Fest


Rust Fest is the first attempt of what hopefully will be an annual celebration of new media art - incorporating light, sound, projection, etc - and is taking place at the McDonough Museum of Art (right across from the Butler on Wick Ave.) from this saturday June 13th to July 24th.

From the exhibition's website:

Rust Fest will feature a presentation of screen based work in all forms - from animation to computer games and novel visualization environments - to works in second life.

Helping to kick off Rust Fest will be a live performance at 7pm (opening reception is from 6pm to 8pm) by Potter-Belmar Labs, professors in New Media at the University of Texas at San Antonio.



Twenty-five pieces will be on display, which includes work from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Minnesota, University of California at Berkley, New York University, and the Rhode Island School of Design.


From yesterday's story in the Youngstown Vindicator:

With all of this innovative artwork, audiences have to wonder where the contradictory title Rust Fest fits in.

“The title of the new media festival references Youngtown’s history as a steel-producing giant,” said Brothers. “The remnants of the steel mills, with their corresponding ‘rust’ aesthetic, have influenced a number of artists, working in many different media, from the Youngstown region since the closing of the mills in 1979. The term ‘rust’ represents this unique collective artistic consciousness, specific to the Steel Valley.”

Maas and Brothers hope that more local artists are inspired by new media, so that Rust Fest can become a permanent part of that Youngstown consciousness.

Nice.