People Doing Strange Things With Art

Art and technology are the twin engines that keep the Emerald City afloat, but it's not that often that they mix. For the most part art stays on its side of the street and technology toes the opposite curb, but right now there's a rare opportunity to witness them both meeting in the middle of the road. You missed the opening (although a great many people didn't; it was packed on Saturday) but you can still catch the People Doing Strange Things with Electricity exhibition at COCA.

From the description of one of the installations:

BLOWHARD is an interactive investigation into the rhetoric of fear culture, exploiting a carefully crafted atmosphere of anxiety by redeploying it in a breathtakingly new two-player game. Players compete by breathing into a specially crafted CPR mask, where a breath sensor translates cumulative respiration into the player's current level of anxiety, shown on the screen in the same friendly color-coded system used by the Department of Homeland Security's Threat Advisory System. Simply hyperventilating won't work -- players must increase their anxiety gradually, moving up one stage at a time. As the level increases, the media responds, with the video becoming more intense in an effort to match the player's state of mind. The first player to get in the red and stay there wins! Then get prepared for a special advisory alert message from the President of the United States of America!

Seattlest was a little light-headed after that one.