Spark, Northeastern University Art Collective

One night April 3, 2025

As we dig through the tangled wires of our lives in the modern era, we have found ourselves increasingly connected to technology. Tools like the computer have progressed so deeply that we begin to see ourselves within their complexity; we have become nearly one with our mutual dependence. The evolution of artificial intelligence has also posed a massive ethical dilemma about the role of technology in human lives. But could things have gone any differently? Imagine we go back to a time before smartphones and high-speed internet. Where would we be today? Can we re:boot, or are we forced to carry the mistakes of the past with the consequences of the present?

Spark* invites artists to explore the intersections of retro technology and modern life in imagining the ideal update for the future of humanity. Our exhibition, re:boot, looks to bring artists into the minds of computers through the minds of themselves. Through the bright flashing error messages and black and white static screens, we are transported to a past, but what past? 

In re:boot, Spark* is asking artists to immerse themselves in the digital world in ways they didn’t think were possible. By hitting the refresh button and watching the walls around you dissipate, Spark* wants you to look beyond the screen and into the reflection. The world of re:boot looks to set artists on a journey of reexamining the buzzing blocks in our pockets and the invisible world wide web above our heads to begin to question the interplay that the digital world has on our real world. 

DATA FLUENCIES: Rivulets

April 18 – June 15, 2025 (Opening reception April 18)

Gallery hours Fridays, 4pm–9pm; Saturdays and Sundays, 12pm–6pm

Featuring artists Lai Yi Ohlsen, Lani Asunción, Jazsalyn, Kristoffer Ørum, Caroline Sinders, and Roopa Vasudevan, alongside work from the Data Fluencies Theatre Project (Emerson College, Boston) and DATA/FFECT (York University, Toronto).

The first of three thematically-connected shows on view across North America in mid-2025, this exhibition investigates art's potential for reimagining our often narrow understandings of data and machine learning. Using the rivulet (a small, localized stream that flows into larger systems) as a conceptual starting point, the projects in this show work together to explore the ways that adjusting or reconfiguring our individual experiences of data-driven and machine learning systems might lead to broader systemic change. Through critique and subversion of existing technological systems, along with reflection on their prevalence in our lives, the works seen here offer ways to reimagine the data that surrounds us, and to ask what might be possible instead.

Data Fluencies: Rivulets features the work of six contemporary artists, alongside experimental research supported by the Mellon Foundation-funded Data Fluencies Project (based out of the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University). The exhibition aims to provide open public engagement with the research outputs emerging from the larger project and place them next to cutting-edge and critical work of artists examining the same themes and ideas. Together, the artists and researchers featured here offer us ways to (re)consider our relationships with the data that drives our everyday lives—and perhaps find new routes to agency once we are able to do so.

The Data Fluencies exhibitions are generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver). Organized by Roopa Vasudevan, a co-PI on the Data Fluencies Project. Visual identity by PROPS SUPPLY.

Boston Cyberarts receives ongoing support from the Mass Cultural Council

Transporter Experimental music Shows and Labs continue at Boston Cyberarts thru 2025. See the schedule here

Boston Cyberarts summer gamE Dev program

Slots are filling up fast

The Summer Game Development program July & August 2025. 10 teens, 2 college students, 1 instructor.

Applications for Summer 2025 are open. For Boston teens 14-18. To apply email cavanaugh.kevinp@icloud.com

Interns will be taught the basics of game programming and will work in teams to develop digital games. The program will focus on developing STEM skills, but also on using games as a form of artistic expression. By the end of 6 weeks each student will create a game either as an individual or as a team member.

Work will be focused on our gallery at 141 Green Street in Jamaica Plain (at the Green St. Orange line station). We will invite outside speakers and do some field trips to other sites around the city. Teens will be paid $15 an hour for 25 hours per week over the 6 week program. We are grateful to the City of Boston for their support. https://www.boston.gov/departments/youth-employment-and-opportunity/youth-job