CAFKA

I had the privilege of checking out CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener & Area) this weekend as it wrapped up. It's a biennial event, where various forms of art are situated around the Kitchener-Waterloo area at different establishments. This year's theme was CAFKA.07: Haptic.

I checked out the art at Kitchener City Hall, mostly because I had read an article about Stelarc, who is, well, very convinced that the body is obsolete. His piece is called the Prosthetic Head, and is essentially his head, projected 3D onto a screen, that will have a conversation with you as you type your words into a keyboard. It's run on a number of algorithms he's written for it. It also has voice recognition, but currently only for the artist Stelarc (as opposed to the head). It was spookily realistic most of the time, got confused a few times...it asked another person if they could help get a boyfriend at one point, and claimed "he" was a female...then backtracked. I talked to it about robots and physics. It was fun.

(if you navigate through the CAFKA site, you can read about it; can't get a direct link)

Anyways, there were a ton of neat exhibits, including an automated bubble-wrap popper, a "Personal Living Unit", and a huge braille billboard reading "READ ME" (the point of which being that the people it's targeted for can't actually read it, as it's on a billboard).

This is the kind of art I love. Truly.