CURRENTS Kicks off Summer Festival Season in Santa Fe

One of our favorite art festivals of the year is just around the corner, a FREE event that showcases artists who create futuristic work at the nexus of art and technology.

Everyone in Santa Fe knows CURRENTS New Media Festival, but if you've never gone or are visiting us from out of town, you should definitely make the time for it this year. We promise that you'll be telling your friends about it for weeks to come.

‍CURRENTS kicks off its 2017 show on June 9 at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe. In addition to the exhibition, the festival will host events throughout the city (including Meow Wolf!) through June 25. The festival is a treasure trove of video and tech artists from around the world. CURRENTS spans genres, but among the things it does best is futurism, giving the audience a peek at how technology could change artistic expression in just a few short years. For example, CURRENTS was on board with virtual reality years before the first consumer headsets hit the market.

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There's plenty of "retinal art" to go around with video works and digitally-assisted paintings, but conceptual pieces shine as well. Fans of near-future science fiction would love these. In the past CURRENTS has scared us with installations that show how entropy eats away at copied image files and it has pacified us with a hug from an adorable beeping robot.

This year CURRENTS is exhibiting more than 86 different works by more than 100 artists, meaning it’s something you can return to again and again and feel satisfied each time. Many of our own artists are CURRENTS alums and this year continues that relationship with a work by Meow Wolfer Dave McPherson. We're also sponsoring the event by sending a team to help install the show.

Meow Wolf will host one of the ticketed events for CURRENTS. On June 16 Machinedrum will perform at our concert venue (click here for ticket information). Machinedrum (Travis Stewart) will present “Human Energy,” a live audio/visual show.Breaky and psychedelic with just a pinch of IDM, Machinedrum has an almost synesthetic approach to his music, a quality he attributes to his fascination with energy healing, meditation and pseudoscience. Sight, sound and even touch blend together to leave audiences completely immersed in the environment he creates. Stewart described the effects on his friends:

“I played the songs for friends and their immediate reaction was that the songs made them feel something in their bodies, like the music was pouring energy into them. I realized that I was creating an album that will make people feel something instantly, connecting my intention with the listener.”

It’s an honor and a joy to collaborate with CURRENTS, one of our favorite events in Santa Fe. CURRENTS begins a season of summer art that is unmatched in the rest of the world. Once you’re done seeing the sights at CURRENTS, stop by Meow Wolf where Summer in the Multiverse will continue blowing your mind with futuristic sci-fi fun. — Billiam