Inflatable responsive art at Pioneer Works in Red Hook [PHOTOS]

It’s art that will grab you.

Two of the three new artworks showing now through November at the Pioneer Works in Red Hook respond to the approach of visitors. Both were created by Chico MacMurtrie, the artist behind The Robotic Church, which we covered previously The third is a video of a similar creation. The artworks are all products of Amorphic Robot Works.

The first piece visitors will see is “Forest of Totems.” It looks like a gigantic, protoplasmic mass. As visitors approach, parts of it inflate and rise, very slowly, and with changing internal rhythms. Some of the totem poles that rise out of it become somewhat anthropomorphic in places.

The video piece is called “Totemobile.” It begins in the shape of a Citroën DS, the French automobile, then slowly undulates into a 60 foot tall totem pole. Once it has fully risen, it neatly tucks itself back into the shape of a car, which is strangely even more interesting than when it grows.

Lastly, “Chrysalis” is a gigantic installation that starts as what looks like dozens of tubes hanging from high on the very tall ceiling and reaching nearly to the ground. It begins inflating as visitors approach, in a variable and surprising way. From the public reception program: “Chrysalis responds to the audience on different levels. When a visitor approaches, Chrysalis opens one or a combination of several sections … Chrysalis functions also as a temporary architecture that performs independently from audience interation by drawing from previously recorded software sequences.”

Kids at the opening really got into the changing space opened and created by Chrysalis.

Chrysalis is a collaboration betweent Chico MacMurtrie and Bill Bowen.

The works are on view by appointment through November. Contact Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation. Don’t miss their amazing garden and green playground if you go. It’s the door off the room holding “Chrysalis.”