Taos High School English Students

The Axel Contemporary artists spent two days with Taos High English students. On their first visit artists Matthew and Jerry introduced students to their PASEO Festival piece entitled “E Pluribus Unum,” and talked about the inspiration behind it. On the second visit they brought their mobile black-and-white photography studio to the school and photographed the students holding a small, meaningful object which the student brought with them. The Taos High school students then used the photo to create a piece of writing based on the images.

Taos Integrated School of the Arts

Natalina spent two days at The Taos Integrated School of the Arts where she worked with the middle school STEAM students. Natalina presented a project related to her PASEO Festival piece entitled “MetaMemories,” where she taught the students about photography and design. She had the students take photos and introduced them to the retro technology of slide projection. The students worked together to create a slide projection show that was then included in the PASEO Festival.

Taos Pueblo Day School

Nina spent a morning with Taos Pueblo students at the Taos Pueblo Day School. She talked about her festival installation entitled “How have you transformed since 2020?” and lead students through an introductory course on electrical circuitry. Students designed and built circuits using colored LED lights, learning how to trouble shoot and fix as they were guided by the visiting artist.

STEM+arts students at Taos Academy

Emil is presented a virtual workshop related to his PASEO Festival piece entitled “Homeostasis”. His workshop looked at how he used digital technology to express creative ideas through interactive real-time participatory experiences. Students practiced procedural thinking using visual programming to produce their ideas, including sonic and visual output driven by motion. By utilizing the output of smartphone sensors such as accelerometers, the interaction becomes kinetic, which provokes ideas beyond what is possible through standard input such as a keyboard and mouse. As a result, students were able to gesture using their phones to control audio oscillators, animations, colors, and various shapes on the screen.

Taos Charter School Middle School Students:

PASEO artists, Pneuhaus, spent the morning hosting Taos Charter School Middle Schoolers at the PASEO Festival installation site in Kit Carson Park. Students had the opportunity to learn about how inflatable art works, and engaged in design conceptualization and engineering. Students were the first of the Taos community members to have a chance to activate Pneuhaus’s Canopy inflatables by riding the bikes.

Global VR Youth Day | September 16 from 8-11am

Pop-up VR installations were set up at Taos High School, Penasco Middle/HighSchool, Taos Day School, Santa Fe Indian School and the Escola Secundaria Sebastiao in Portugal. 150 students joined in the Space Messengers VR world to experience the installation through Oculus headsets. International exchange school participants: New Mexico School of the Arts, Taos Integrated School of the Arts, Universidad de Guadalajara Preparatoria #5

Space Messengers is a multi-artist immersive and interactive projection installation with VR experiences. They call it MR (Mixed Reality) because it bridges real and virtual experiences. Space Messengers visualizes data. The installation is a culmination of an international youth exchange program. It generates messages collected from a custom platform we call the Space Board. Students co-write messages communicating the science they learned and sharing their thoughts and wishes for a sustainable interplanetary future. These messages are seen floating on the wall along with interactive body silhouettes. The live audience can also text space messages in real time at the event. A soundscape has been created integrating NASA space sounds and nature sounds. Teachers jump to the Space Messengers free online curriculum tool to learn how to participate.

How does the space you are in affect the way you feel? How do your feelings influence the space you are in? What do feelings look like?

Community members joined Twirl on the two nights of The Paseo as their Play Space once again became a Creative Space. Twirl invited the community to explore the play between our feelings and the spaces we inhabit. Attendees of all ages were invited to take a peek inside the windows of wonder and let themselves be inspired by the connection between artistic and emotional processes. PASEO revelers reflected and expressed their inner world as they were invited to make their own contribution to our Community Create A Space.

This installation was a part of Twirl's Create A Space outreach program during which over 500 children and adults explored and expressed their feelings through the creation of their own spaces. It is Social Emotional and STEAM learning all wrapped up in a box!

September 14, 2022

Honoring Our Ancestors Mural Project was focused on creating a traveling mural designed by Nicolas Gonzalez-Medina and painted by the local community and displayed on September 16 & 17th. During this workshop they shared stories while learning the process of creating large scale art that conveys the urgency of its making.

The process for the mural included painting, outlining, and final touches which happened on Thursday the 15th.

The mural was then displayed with the artists work, printed on fabric and ready to hang as well as a printmaking workshop where individuals printed designs for free either on their shirts (Bring Your Own Shirt) or on paper.

A part of the PASEO 2022 Warm Up pop-up exhibition, featuring El Paso based artists Paradox Immersive Art. Curated by Michelle Lanteri, this pop-up exhibition presented digital art practice as a continuum of Southwest art and culture to Taos audiences. Coupled with a hands-on workshop inspired by their projection piece, Imperfectly Aligned. The workshop was open to the public and explored form as an interactive digital environment inspired by the wave intersections and optical illusion shapes created through Moiré patterns.

PASEO artists, Pneuhaus, created a giant glowing inflatable Tardigrade suspended from the ceiling which was the centerpiece of the installation room and visible from the window for people driving and walking by. At night the blue glow fills the room for an otherworldly experience.

Santa Fe based artist/educator, Amy Pilling, designing a sensorial Tardigrade Nook under the sculpture for children to lay down and chill out to experience the wondrous SPACE BEAR above. The multi-functional sculpture was used for various sci-art experiences throughout the year such as projecting science videos about tardigrades on to the sculpture, and blacklight explorations of the cosmos.

UNM-Taos Fine Art and Digital Media students were invited to make an object that was then transformed into a “drum.”  There were six (6) instruments based on piezo electric sensors. As the instruments are played, their vibrations are transformed into sound and light. Each instrument connected to an ESP32 microcontroller running a sound reactive version of WLED software. Each microcontroller triggered a six foot strip of LEDs that ran to the center of the drum circle.

Facilitated by Enrico Trujillo and Sarah Stolar.