Art & Algorithms Festival

Beautiful spring evening at Sand Point Park for the Art & Algorithms Digital Art Festival! There was a small gallery of digital art work, an iPad art demo by artist Corliss Blakely, a Tilt Brush demo (kinda made us dizzy), a sampling of virtual reality tours (through cardboard smart phone VR "goggles"), and a cool Augmented Reality Sandbox that detects your movements and manipulations as you play with the sand and projects the topographical layout over the "landscape," showing mountains "eroding" into hills and valleys filling with "water" and turning into lakes. There was also a short film festival, but we didn't attend any of the screenings (maybe next year).

While waiting for the demos, Mom and I walked around the park, enjoyed the cool breeze, and took in the lovely view of the Indian River!

...and the Max Brewer Bridge lighting up at dusk.

 

 

 

 

Another feature of the festival was Arboria - Architects of Air, an inflatable, whimsical "luminarium" filled with ambient lights, colors, and shapes. I didn't think it was worth the $6 admission, but maybe someday? Looks cool from the outside too.

 

Then I took 7 pictures of the same tree under a color-changing spotlight. ^^;

 

 

 

The highlight of the evening was the performance by Nova Era, the "classical with groove" trio. We first saw them at Disney Springs in Fall 2015, and I've been wanting to go back (but it's so farrr). When I read that Nova Era was coming to town, I was very excited, and honestly, they were the main draw of the event for me.

We stayed for 2 of the 3 sets (45 minutes each), and they played updated classical favorites like Pachelbel's "Canon in D",  Mozart's "Symphony #40 in G Minor", and Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", plus instrumental versions of Disney favorites like "Beauty and the Beast", "You'll Be In My Heart" from Tarzan, and of course, "Let It Go" from Frozen. I loved the mini concert! :D The small audience did too, with little kiddies tumbling and older couples slow-dancing to the music.

 

 

 

After 9pm, when we'd listen to "Canon in D" for a 3rd time, we decided to go home. But first, I walked by the small caravan of food trucks. There were mostly fried snacks, some Mexican, lobster rolls, chicken nuggets, etc. I decided to try the trendy Chicken & Waffles. It is literally fried chicken strips on top of a round waffle with cups of honey mustard sauce and maple syrup on the side. Pretty tasty on their own, but I don't really see what all the fuss is about with this combo?? Anyway, it was a good ending to an enjoyable evening out. ^^