D.A. Therrien is no stranger to presenting technological art installations on L.A.’s Waterfront. The last offering was this past November, when he presented the work of Pennsylvania “machine” sculptor, Charles Emlen, at the ARTcon facility at the Port of Los Angeles and San Pedro Bay.
Named after Arizona Testing Laboratories, testingLAB has been offering art/tech workshops for artists and students, LAB space and technology/tool access for artists, technical consulting, equipment testing, lectures, as well as an Artist-in-Residence program and internships.
Therrien has been creating technological art installations for 35 years, was one of the founders of the Machine Art movement in the 1980s, and has presented work worldwide in factories, museums, high-rise buildings, over water, and inside ancient cathedrals.
His early performance/installations include COMFORT/CONTROL, which utilized electricity as an active performance element, along with robotics, surveillance, physiological monitoring, video projection and interactive systems, integrated human performers into massive machines as switches to control large high power lighting arrays and as integral elements in the overall control system by monitoring physiological signals electronically, which controlled the mechanical motion.
In the past 10 years, Therrien has worked on the Beautiful Light series, creating large scale interactive information based lighting arrays that are suspended from buildings, bridges and cranes. These high power, million watt arrays are visible for miles.
Current projects include autonomous solar powered beacons that can be seen from space, an interactive ARTIFICIAL SUN, and a research project to create on object capable of surviving intact for 2.5 billion years.
testingLAB is a new art/tech project based on Therrien’s research and design into various technologies for creative application.
testingLAB is offering a series of workshops over the next 6 months for high school and college students who will experiment with electricity, mechanics, motion control, circuit design, sensors, lighting, battery design, 3D printing, CAD, structural design/materials, Arduinos/RaspPi with the objective of creating art on-site during the workshops.
testingLAB Spring 2019 workshops are being produced with Palos Verdes Art Center (PVAC). Students participating in the next 2 workshops in March 2019 will create a light or kinetic sculpture.
March 9, 11am-3pm (open studio 3-6)
#1 ELECTRICITY – AC/DC circuit design, safety, switching, voltage, amperage, watts & ohms law, DC batteries, high voltage vs. low voltage, measurement, LED vs incandescent lighting, review of machine/tech artists and their work.
March 16, 11am-3pm (open studio 3-6)
#2 MORE ELECTRICITY – electrical circuit assembly skills, wiring, soldering, testing circuits (short circuit demonstration).
Details: email gphinney@pvartcenter.org to register for Spring 2019 Workshops with PVAC