Criticism makes us stronger. We hired three writers to share critical feedback for each work at WaveForms. Explore their reviews in the Program & Artworks section of the site.
Chenoa Baker
Chenoa Baker
Chenoa Baker (she/her) is a curator, wordsmith, and descendant of self-emancipators. Art spaces as incubators for intergroup dialogue and imaginative portals were her foray into curatorial work. In addition to leading the exhibition program as the Associate Curator at Beacon Gallery, she worked on: Gio Swaby: Fresh Up at the Peabody Essex Museum; Simone Leigh at ICA/Boston; Simone Leigh: Sovereignty at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia; and Touching Roots: Black Ancestral Legacies in the Americas at MFA/Boston. Her autobiographical-style art criticism appears in Public Parking, Material Intelligence, Studio Potter, Boston Art Review, Sixty Inches From Center, Burnaway, and a monograph contribution for Helena Metaferia: Generations, Art For This Moment.
The Reverb: Anthro-Tech Connection and ‘00s Nostalgia
A Love Letter to the Ghost of Technologies Past:
To my long-lost Digi console, where I played Indiana Jones that my dad gave away;
To the endless times in class where MiniClip took over my mind;
To Lizzie McGuire: Lizzie's Fashionable Adventure (2001) that monopolized my family’s Windows PC;
To Wii Sports and Wii Fit that lit up my pre-teen and teenage years;
May I never forget your influence.
You reverberate in new technologies.
The meaning of WaveForms is a curve showing the movement of sound waves. It is an interplay of time and magnitude. Therefore, the environment is equally important to the piece activating it. Coincidentally, when I looked outside the Museum of Science, I saw the Charles River which formed an environmental collision with the evening media festival. Watching the waves unlocked the memory of turning on the TV and seeing black and white pixels dancing on the screen, free flowing like waves.
As the environment is equally as important, this was the setup: Mugar Omni Theater is an IMAX theater where the center of the oculus controls the field of vision and is the best place to see, Cabot classroom/lab was previously a classroom turned into a multimedia lab for gathering, mingling. It was an acoustic sound orb and place for artists to meet technicians. The common space, an interpolation, was where sound and visual was a call and response dance in the name of groovement.
LAUREN LEVATO COYNE
LAUREN LEVATO COYNE
Lauren Levato Coyne (she/they) is a transdisciplinary artist and writer. Her works have received numerous awards, including the 2022 Toni Beauchamp Prize in Critical Arts Writing, awarded by Legacy Russell and Gulf Coast Journal. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Antennae Journal, The Berkshire Eagle, International Sculpture Magazine, Gulf Coast Journal, HEY! Magazine (Paris), and others.
WaveForms, organized by an impressive collection of multimedia partners and held at Boston’s Museum of Science, was an aspirational event with a distinct science fair meets indie concert vibe. It was a night to celebrate and showcase a range of talented artists working with myriad technologies as their mediums. In my work as an arts writer and journalist, I typically write about analogue artworks. That says less about me, however, and more about the arts landscape as a whole.
I began my career as a journalist in the mid-90s, just before the internet became available to home users (and at the very beginning mostly only in libraries and cafes). I began my career in the arts a few years later when photography was still considered a new media even 170 years after the first heliograph was processed on a pewter plate. Every era brings its hand-wringing about art and what will destroy it (hint: it’s always tech, spoiler: art remains undefeated).
It’s the art-world’s loss that events like WaveForms aren’t standard offerings. This could certainly be its own art building or pavilion at any of the major art fairs. We are certainly well beyond the time when a line-up of 10 digital shorts is as provocative as any painting or sculpture can hope to be.
LEAH DAVIS
LEAH DAVIS
Leah Davis (she/they) is a Senior Editor at No Proscenium, the arts and entertainment magazine that specializes in all things immersive. Leah covers LARP, virtual reality, installation art, and immersive theatre with the enthusiasm of a fan and the expertise of a critic. Her writing is informed by a background in Virtual Reality and Psychology, advanced degrees in Graphic Design (MFA) and Social Innovation (MBA), and a career spent in public radio. You can join Leah on her quest to uncover the awe-inspiring world of immersive arts at noproscenium.com.
WaveForms 2023
MASARY Studios, Illuminus, Boston Cyberarts, MIT Spatial Sound Lab, AVFX——Boston Museum of Science
WaveForms 2023 felt like a beginning. Ten years from now, people standing in line for WaveForms 2033 will gush — "Can you believe I was here back when this was a free event? None of us knew what we were getting into that night. Back then, the Boston experimental art community was so fractured, and now... just look what we've grown into!" Curated by MASARAY Studios, Boston Cyberarts, MIT Spatial Sound Lab, AVFX, Illuminus, and the Boston Museum of Science, WaveForms 2023 showcased a wide array of art that pushed the boundaries of creativity and technology. Each piece left a lasting impression.
One week later and I'm still wrestling with thoughts about the intersection between technology and the universal human experience. I really did mean that this event felt like a beginning, though. The art was captivating and the night's energy was electric, but parts of the program felt disorganized. It wasn't always clear to me who this event was for or how attendees were supposed to interact. At various points in the evening, I felt like I was attending an educational show-and-tell, a creators' meet-and-greet, a dance class, and a film festival. Overall flow and organization felt underdeveloped, as if we were walking through a dress rehearsal for the actual event.
Honestly, though? None of this is a complaint. It was refreshing to attend an event filled with all of the people who make up a community — students, hobbyists, artists, explorers, collaborators, and so on. And I think that was the point — "to provide resources of space, equipment, production, curation, and mentorship to multimedia practitioners in our region to present media artworks." In other words, this was about starting to build a framework. I’m thrilled to have attended. And I’m optimistic that WaveForms has the potential to evolve into an even more cohesive and impactful annual gathering that puts Boston on the experimental immersive map.