New Media Work – Elegy, by ARCOS

I found a site called Currents New Media that records artists and pieces that are shown at their annual festival. Currents is based in Santa Fe, and they host many artists each year and show their work. The work that I wanted to talk about this time is a multi-media piece from 2016, called Elegy. This piece is done by a performance art group called ARCOS. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out very much information about ARCOS. I believe that they primarily are a dance performance group, though. Elegy takes place both in-person and online, with audience participation available in the form of a 360 degree video leading up to the live show at Currents. The audience could interact with the video as they walked around. They could hold up their phones at a specific angle and view a specific moment that follows the story ARCOS created for their performance.

I think this sort of art piece is interesting. The pre-festival aspect of it gets the audience excited for the piece and then ARCOS follows it up with a live portion to complete the piece. Using common technology such as smart phones to give audience members the chance to follow the story prior to the actual performance draws attention and takes the piece to the next level.

The link to the original page/article is here:

https://currentsnewmedia.org/work/elegy/