CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT: Vector Festival Party

What happens on a website when we can’t connect? Maybe behind the loading screen is “a time that exists outside of every other time,” (Wark, 2023, “Raving”): a party! Disconnect and reconnect with interactive artworks and performances that need your physical presence, IRL. Featuring music by DJ Durga.

Featuring interactive installations by Zainab Husain and Grace Sun; timed performance by Sweet Lips at 9:30PM. 

Tickets are sold at varied tiers to allow for flexible pricing; all tickets offer the same access to the event. Funds from ticket sales directly support new media programming, artists, and education. 

About the Artwork

Sweet Lips' performance continues the structure of their “small music” approach but with the addition of the sonic language of digital error and decay that intentionally subvert expectations of sound through repetition and glitch. Their use and misuse of non-traditional and analogue sound making instruments delights in unexpected delay and decay, embracing a more corrosive sound without being overly noise-y.

Debugger by Zainab Husain is an interactive installation that reimagines the concept of computer bugs and errors through a playful, historically grounded lens. Inspired by the 1947 discovery of the first computer "bug"—a real moth trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer—Debugger explores the tangible origins of abstract computational errors. Audiences are invited to "debug" the system by squashing pixelated bugs that move across the screen using the motion of their hands. When a bug is successfully caught, it bursts into a binary explosion of ones and zeros; miss too many and the game “crashes”.

Waiting Games by Grace Sun is an interactive artwork that explores the loss of digital liminality in the shift toward constant stimulation and instant gratification. Three iconic symbols of digital liminality and delay - the Windows XP desktop, the neon screensaver, and the rainbow spinning wheel of death - are reimagined as playful, reactive environments, programmed to respond to the movement and exploration of viewers passing by. Encouraging viewers to reconnect with the absurdity and creativity born from waiting, the project asks what has been lost in our abandonment of slowness, and whether delay and decay still have a function in our digital lives.

Venue Accessibility

We are located on the second floor of the building, which is accessible by two flights of stairs or an elevator. The front entrance has an automatic push door and is accessible by ramp or a short flight of stairs. Inside, all InterAccess facilities are on the same level, including a single-user accessible washroom.