Inspired by Nuit Blanche arts fes­ti­vals from around the world, DLECTRICITY is a spec­tac­u­lar out­door visual light and art cel­e­bra­tion that took place in Detroit’s cul­tural cen­ter and DTE’s Bea­con Park on September 24th and September 25th.

Pro­duced by Mid­town Detroit Inc., atten­dees are immersed in a land­scape of light through ground­break­ing installations of video art, new media, lasers, inter­ac­tive design and engi­neer­ing, and cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mance. Chrisstina Hamil­ton, Direc­tor of the Penny Stamps Speaker Series and Roman Witt Vis­it­ing Artist Pro­grams at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, served on the 2021 DLEC­TRIC­ITY Cura­to­r­ial Committee.

Three Stamps School affil­i­ated artists presented work as part of the DLECTRIC­ITY fes­tiv­i­ties, including:

Stephanie Dink­ins — On Love and Data and Hold­ing Space

In this new pro­jec­tion work, Dink­ins illu­mi­nates the power and resilience in black women’s sto­ries, remind­ing us that shar­ing and receiv­ing sto­ries is an act of resis­tance. This pro­jec­tion, shown on the U‑M Rack­ham Edu­ca­tional Memo­r­ial Build­ing in Detroit, is part of a major sur­vey of Dink­ins work titled Stephanie Dink­ins: On Love & Data, on view at Stamps Gallery through Oct. 23. Curated by Stamps Gallery direc­tor, Sri­moyee Mitra.

Stamps pro­fes­sors Roland Graf and Nick Tobier, with Stamps Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Michael Rode­mer — All Nite Tetherball 

All-Nite Teth­erball trans­forms a light pole into an inter­ac­tive play­thing and with it the sur­round­ing urban space from util­ity to play. Wrapped in col­or­ful LED strips sim­i­lar to the art of urban knit­ting, the light effects dis­played on the pole can be set in motion by inter­act­ing with an illu­mi­nated ball attached to it.

Abhishek Narula (MFA ​’20) — All the light we can­not see

Every­day tech­nolo­gies like wi-fi, blue­tooth, and cell­phone sig­nals radi­ate an invis­i­ble light, oper­at­ing at such a high-fre­quency that it is imper­cep­ti­ble to the human eye. In this instal­la­tion, Narula visu­al­izes this invis­i­ble ambi­ent phe­nom­e­non, through hun­dreds of LEDs lin­ing the branches of trees on the lawn of the DIA. The lights glow, shim­mer, and pul­sate response to the ambi­ent sig­nals of smart phones, Blue­tooth and Wi-fi devices in the vicin­ity.

An alum from the Taub­man Col­lege of Archi­tec­ture and Urban Plan­ning also had an instal­la­tion on view. Patrick Ethen’s (BS Archi­tec­ture, ​‘12) Pul­sar uses hand-wired LEDs and gen­er­a­tive code to cre­ate an abstracted light object ver­sion of a pul­sar, one which feels alien in nature, which oscil­lates and pulses to its own rhythm, cre­at­ing a hyp­no­tiz­ing atmos­phere that pulls the observer in with its grav­ity.

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