Multiversal Art

Worlds Collide in the most wondrous ways in a young collective's growing movement

When we talk about stereotypes, the eccentric artist is pretty much the polar opposite of the computer nerd: one ruled by passion, imagination, and intuition, the other running on order, specificity, and calculation.

Thank goodness reality isn’t a binary world. STEAM Projects further demonstrates how both identities, each creative on its own, don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Formed by a diverse group of artists, each with interdisciplinary backgrounds, STEAM Projects makes use of the emerging trajectory of the intersection of art and STEAM—science, technology, engineering, architecture, and mathematics—to explore new technology that can be used to create art. Their first exhibition HYPERMANILARAMA happened in July of last year at Nova Gallery, where participating artists presented a collage of works that resembles pages from a science fiction story. “At the crux of this exhibition is not only a desire to dig an oasis of debate points as to the prominence of art vis-à-vis scientific and technological progression,” participating artist Richard Coronel wrote about the event. “But also…the attempt by the artists to tease out the many tangled strands that branched out from plotting the historical past and political present, and collating them into a visionary playground of a subjective future.”

We talk with STEAM Projects’ Derek Tumala, a multidisciplinary artist who works with sculpture, light, video, new media, found objects, and industrial materials, about the merging of various disciplines in the arts and the practical applications that can be done with it right here and right now. – SGM