Glocal: How Do You See Your World?

Have you ever imagined what it would look like if you were soaring up in the sky like a kite? Or what the road looks like as a Hawaiian hula dancer figurine on the dashboard of a car? Glocal is an interactive digital and online artwork that is sweeping the city of Surrey by storm.

Developed by local artists Sylvia Grace Borda, M Simon Levin, and Jer Thorp, they were able to create a unique media program that can capture 100 images while in motion and put them together in one image. This digital artwork allows audiences to experience different perspectives and point-of-views, thus enabling Surrey to be locally and globally conscious (thus, Glocal).

The art is just like a frame-by-frame of a movie and not to mention, it's fun creating it! My fellow art enthusiasts and I had the chance to take part in a Glocal workshop at the Vancouver Art Gallery last month. Under the guidance of Simon (one of the founding artists), he split our class into three groups and he put about ten of us in front of an Apple laptop on a lazy susan with nothing but our creativity.

The group I was in decided to make a circle and make silly faces and do different poses while the laptop spun; we even held up coloured pieces of paper in front of it and got fantastic results. Our images looked like what you would see if you were on a merry-go-round with 10 girls around it making silly faces at you.

After spending a solid 20 minutes with the laptop we were sold and wished to do more things with it, like take it off it's rotating pedestal and take it with us around downtown. We had time afterwards to discuss what we did and how we could expand our horizons with this type of technology. After throwing out some interesting ideas, Simon and the team are now going to try to provide us and other prospective students (like you) some low-tech toolkits to help us take this art to a whole new level. Taking part in this workshop can gain more insight in digital photography and horizons are broader than ever before.

The possibilities are endless with this type of technology; whether it's a web-cam at the office computer or a camera attached to a kite or on the handlebars of a bicycle, the Glocal team has figured that out because they've done almost all of it!

But they're constantly looking for fresh ideas from students and residents from Surrey. Visit their homepage at www.glocal.ca or their Facebook group or even go to the Surrey Art Gallery and check it out. You can find ways on how to get involved and try it for yourself! See your world in a brand new point-of-view.