WALK ON BY: Conflux Festival Turns New York Into a Digital Playground

It might be hard to envision the gritty, weathered blocks of Manhattan and New York City’s outer boroughs as a canvas, but this weekend, more than 100 artists, urban explorers, interactive technologists and public space advocates will treat it that way. They are creating a citywide art installation as part of the annual geek-art event known as the Conflux Festival.

Conflux IPhone users will be able to play Gigaputt at Conflux.

Conflux was first held in 2003, when it was more of a festival on “psycho-geography, or the study on the geographic environment of behavior,” said David Darts, an art professor at New York University who is also the curatorial director for this year’s event. “Since then, it’s evolved to more of an art and technology fest, fusing urban public spaces with exploration and experimentation,” he said.

Events, which include workshops, performances, interactive installations and games, will begin Friday and run through Sunday.

Here are some of this weekend’s highlights:

Gigaputt: Avenues become fairways and a series of local bars are transformed into greens as New York turns into a giant 18-hole golf course and iPhones turn into golf clubs. Players swing their iPhone to take a shot and then examine a map on the phone to find their “ball” and continue through the course.

The Urban Disorientation Game: Players are challenged to find their way back to the Conflux headquarters after being blindfolded and driven to remote parts of the city. Players will be asked to create maps and explore their surroundings as they make their way back to the starting point.

Fish ‘n microChips: As part of an effort to spark public interest in New York’s waterways, a New York University professor, Natalie Jeremijenko, installed an array of LEDs and floating buoys at a site on the East River. The buoys have sensors to monitor water quality, temperature and activate the lights when fish swim by.

Waterpod: The photographer and sculptor Mary Mattingly’s 3,000-square-foot self-sustaining, solar-powered, floating living space and art barge will be on display and open for tours to help facilitate a discussion about living in a future where resources are increasingly scarce and eco-friendly habitats are a necessity.

Human Scale Chess Game: While two chess masters play an actual game of chess, each move will be mimicked by human players posing as knights, rooks and bishops. The photojournalist Sharilyn Neidhardt has mapped out an eight-block-by-eight-block section of the city, with each intersection representing a square on the chessboard. As the chess masters complete their moves, 32 volunteers equipped with cellphones and maps will move around to reflect the location of the pieces in the game.

Conflux

IPhone Drum Circle: Mike Koller hopes to create the “First, Possibly Only and Probably Last” iPhone drum circle in Brooklyn this weekend. The artist invites anyone with an iPhone to download a drumkit application and join him in an impromptu musical session. Mr. Koller plans to have amplifiers in place for participants to plug their phones into and play.

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