Creative Economics of Festival Art

 
as published in BC Musician Magazine, July24/2013
written by Jason Guille

Will it add to the experience if my interactive bubble organ makes different coloured bubbles?? If I program a Skrillex tune into the Synaesthesiatron LED wall will I lose any friends?? How many swingers should the tire swing on my mobile tree fort party bus be able to support??

These are the sort of questions which keeps the BC installation artist up at night.

Once a far more rare sight, the installation art piece – and often huge collections of them – have become a mainstay feature of west coast music festivals. Ranging in size, sophistication and budget from 6″ knit mushrooms to the 90’ Man at Burning Man 2012 (www.burningman.com), they are products born of creativity, curiosity, and sheer willpower.

We set out to explore how these diverse, amazing, random THINGS come to life – particularly from an economic standpoint. Seriously, who invests big time & money into a fire-breathing land shark, a temple we will all burn down together or an interactive bubble organ? Turns out – quite a few people will.
The bubble organ, a glimmering 1970s organ which has been modified to make bubble noises and blow bubbles, is a project by Monkey C Interactive (www.monkeycinteractive.com) of Victoria.

“The project is conservatively $5000 in hard costs, which we pay out of pocket up front – and then try to recoup some of that investment through funded bookings for events, and/or grants from arts organizations & festivals, where possible.” partner Scott Amos

With 2013 support from Rifflandia Festival (www.rifflandia.com) as well as having received an Art Grant from Bass Coast, they are on their way and excited to debut slightly different iterations of the project for festival attendees.

As one of the most committed support systems for BC installation artists, the tremendous recent growth of the Bass Coast Art Grants Program has artists celebrating across the province. This year alone, Bass Coast (www.basscoast.ca), has allocated $20,000 from gate revenue to be directly funded back to artists via their art grant program – a significant investment, for a festival of less than 3000 people. “Our mission is to have the entire festival be a piece of art,” says Bass Coast co-founder Liz Thomson, “from the stages, to the vendors, to the grounds. Our end goal is to inspire creativity inside of every individual – we want people to walk away from Bass Coast and have their own ideas – which impacts how they arrange their plants, cook their food, everything!” A very realistic mission, given 32 successful applicants this year receiving grants ranging from $100 to $2000 – Bass Coast has now become as much about art, as it is about music.

Read the rest of the article at BC Musician Magazine!