OSCILLATION BY THE URBAN CONGA
BRINGS FUN, LIGHT AND JOY
TO WEST PALM BEACH THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
GIANT CRYSTALS THAT COME ALIVE THROUGH MOVEMENT
November 21 – December 26, 2023
WEST PALM BEACH, FL (November 13, 2023) – By special arrangement with Creos, the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts is thrilled to bring the immersive, interactive traveling art exhibition, Oscillation, created by The Urban Conga to West Palm Beach. Oscillation will be displayed at the Kravis Center from November 21 to December 26, 2023, and operational daily from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. on the Kravis Family Plaza. Oscillation is accessible to the public, and reservations are not required.
“Oscillation builds upon the Kravis Center’s objective to amplify connecting communities through the arts and technology by continuing to welcome everyone to experience unique ways of gathering at and engaging with the campus for free and open to all. Recent community activities include the KravisCenter’ss first Block Party this past October, as well as ongoing weekly programs, such as the dynamic” Live & Social” outdoor concert series on the Kravis Family Plaza and the stunning photography exhibition, Carasmatic: Through the Lens of a Dancer, located on the second floor of the Cohen Pavilion.”Oscillation builds upon the Kravis Center’s objective to amplify connecting communities through the arts and technology by welcoming everyone to experience unique ways of gathering at and engaging with the campus for free and open to all. Recent community activities include the Kravis Center’s first Block Party this past October, as well as ongoing weekly programs, such as the dynamic “Live & Social” outdoor concert series on the Kravis Family Plaza and the stunning photography exhibition, Carasmatic: Through the Lens of a Dancer, located on the second floor of the Cohen Pavilion.
“We are thrilled that Oscillation is arriving just in time for the holiday season. This incredible installation truly captures the spirit of the Kravis Center as the place for inclusive, creative, and stimulating experiences, “said Georgiana Young, Vice President of Marketing and Programming.
Oscillation is an interactive touring installation that uses sight, sound, and movement to spark spontaneous community activity and social interaction through open-ended play. The installation reacts similarly to a Theremin, a musical instrument that you can play with movement without touching.
“It takes no skill to play the pieces, just subtle movements. As you walk toward the pieces, they play different sounds and pitches depending on your distance from them. When you move and dance around them, they also reflect and refract light differently, revealing different colors and filtered reflections based on the angle it is viewed,” said Ryan Swanson of The Urban Conga.”When designing Oscillation, we wanted to create a piece with a similar but different identity during the day and at night. During the day, the pieces reflect the surrounding environment and often become the perfect Instagram backdrop, and then at night, the pieces illuminate from within and cast a splash of changing colors within the surrounding space.””“It takes no skill to play the pieces, just some subtle movements. As you walk toward the pieces, they play different sounds and pitches depending on your distance from them. When you move and dance around them, they also reflect and refract light in different ways, revealing different colors and filtered reflections based on the angle at which it is viewed,” said Ryan Swanson of The Urban Conga. “When designing Oscillation, we wanted to create a piece with a similar but different identity during the day and at night. During the day, the pieces reflect the surrounding environment and often become the perfect Instagram backdrop. Then, the pieces illuminate from within at night and cast a splash of changing colors within the surrounding space.”
The crystal-like structures begin to disrupt the once-static spaces with a moment of open-ended, playful activity. The result is an immersive experience that breaks down social barriers and fuels joyful conversations between strangers. Oscillation isn’t just about sparking an interaction between the person and the piece but also sparking connections between people.
About The Urban Conga:
The Urban Conga is an award-winning multidisciplinary design studio in Brooklyn, NY, led by Ryan Swanson and Maeghann Coleman, AIA. The studio comprises diverse creatives focused on sparking community interaction and social activity through open-ended play. They achieve this by utilizing play methodologies as a critical tool implemented in the work itself and in the participatory design process in which the work is created. Their work explores working with clients to make more playable cities as an ecosystem of inclusive multiscale playable opportunities intertwined with our existing urban fabric.
Through this work, The Urban Conga has had opportunities to collaborate with local communities, NGOs, businesses, municipal agencies, and institutions worldwide, delivering multi-scaled urban interventions, playable products, workshops, lectures, development plans, and public policy recommendations.
The experiences and spaces The Urban Conga creates are just one component of their work. The impact of the connections, conversations, relationships, knowledge, and equity they have been able to spark through these opportunities goes far beyond the physical work itself.
“Play is our natural human driver to discover, explore, and empathize with others. It is universal and can be applied as a powerful tool to start bridging divides and breaking inequities within our cities and public spaces. And yet, the term”play” is consistently absent from significant discussions surrounding urban development, public space design, and city change. Often, play is seen isolated within a specific space for a specific group. Through our work, they push to shift that narrative and begin to generate open-ended playable opportunities for all demographics within everyday spaces. Their work investigates how play can start to exist in these everyday spaces at various scales.”Play is our natural human driver to discover, explore, and empathize with others. It is universal and can be applied as a powerful tool to start bridging divides and breaking inequities within our cities and public spaces. And yet, the term “play” is consistently absent from significant discussions surrounding urban development, public space design, and city change. Often, play is seen isolated within a specific space for a particular group. Through our work, they push to shift that narrative and begin to generate open-ended playable opportunities for all demographics within everyday spaces. Their work investigates how play can start to exist in these familiar spaces at various scales.
The work created by The Urban Conga encourages people to think about these spaces that could become PLAYces, like public park benches, bus stops, streetlights, or just the everyday spaces in between. They explore how these often once-overlooked and underutilized situations can become inclusive, stimulating, creative outlets for communal connection. The work becomes more than just a photogenic monument or moment in time; it becomes an ever-changing, open-ended platform that showcases how play can impact our cities’ and communities’ identity, health, social, and economic value. The Urban Conga sees their work as a catalyst for sparking a larger conversation about the value of inclusive, open-ended play within their everyday lives.
About the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts:
The Kravis Center is a not-for-profit performing arts center located at 701 Okeechobee Blvd. in West Palm Beach, FL. The Center’s mission is to enhance the quality of life in Palm Beach County by presenting a diverse schedule of national and international artists and companies of the highest quality, by offering comprehensive arts education programs, by providing a Palm Beach County home for local and regional arts organizations to showcase their work; and by providing an economic catalyst and community leadership in West Palm Beach, supporting efforts to increase travel and tourism to Palm Beach County. For information, please visit kravis.org
All programs, artists, ticket prices, availability, dates, and times are subject to change without notice. Visit kravis.org for up-to-date information.
Media Contacts: Director of Public Relations PR Coordinator
Charlotte Vermaak Bridget Gross
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