The Inventgenuity Festival this weekend invites young participants to complete a public art project and other creative activities.

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Most art and design fairs for young people encourage them to create something they can take home. Inventgenuity Festival does this too, but it emphasizes a rarer and possibly more resonant principle: create something that can be left behind.

This is exactly what visitors will do on Saturday and Sunday during the 11th festival, and it is also the first outdoor event held on Governors Island. This free event is hosted by the Beam Center, an educational non-profit organization based in Brooklyn, and invites participants between the ages of 6 and 18 to participate in seminars dedicated to crafts, technology, music, science, and even sports. However, the central activity will be the completion of "Constellation", a public art project and sound installation of interdisciplinary artist Ye Chin-zhu, which will continue on the island until at least mid-October.

"I want to show that during the pandemic, even if we are separated, or we might feel that we are separated, we still have inextricable connections," Zhu said while visiting the center’s new governor Liangying City. Outpost.

This idea promoted the design of the "constellation", which is composed of six independent tree structures or "stars". Each consists of three vertical 10-foot-high steel rods set in a fiberglass base shaped like a body part. (One sculpture grows from one eye; the other grows from one foot.) More steel pipes branch out from the top of the pole to form an interconnected canopy with dozens of different shapes and Patterned ceramic clocks, each clock has a copper clapper. When one of the sculptures swayed in the breeze, or someone shook it—yes, Zhu really wanted you to do that—a vibrant bell rang. This weekend, festival audiences are invited to cast, decorate and hang their own bells.

"We not only have levels under the constellations, but also under the constellations of experience," Zhu said. The constellations themselves also have levels. Part of his inspiration came from astroseismology, a scientific discipline that measures seismic waves inside stars. Researchers say that if these frequencies are converted into auditory rhythms, they sound like bells ringing.

The invention itself is the product of countless connections. Now a New York institution, its origins can be traced back to Beam Camp, a summer sleep program that is still thriving in Stratford, New Hampshire, founded in 2004 by Brian Cohen and Danny Kahn, former executives of Elektra Records . Beam, whose name refers to different lighting, smiles, and structural supports, partly responds to the so-called maker movement, promotes do-it-yourself crafts and problem-solving methods, and reminds adults of the value of creativity.

Cohen said that this method is designed to "mainly serve white men who make things." Although the sport has become diversified since then, at first it "made me very angry," he added, "because the types of projects they do are the ones that need to be done in the classroom and need to be done on the playground."

Beam Camp in New Hampshire was established to bring hands-on learning—invention plus originality—to young people of all backgrounds. The Inventgenuity Festival established by Cohen and Kahn in Brooklyn in 2010 became an experience that opened up this experience to the public. One way. Like summer camps, each festival revolves around the cooperation to complete an important art and engineering work. (Beam Center makes public calls to artists every year.)

Previous projects include dynamic sculptor Andrew Brem’s "Mechanical Swamp", a three-story stage set full of motorized wooden birds with flapping wings, and "FlipNYC". The animation is composed of huge illustrated books and uses solar energy. Illumination and crank are featured for page turning. These machines were conceived by architect Chee-Kit Lai and artist Ebony Bolt and were exhibited in Dumbo, Brooklyn in 2019. (Due to the pandemic, Inventgenuity will not be held in 2020.)

But this festival also offers smaller items. For example, in multiple sessions of its 10 seminars this weekend, participants can make clay pendants to evoke their favorite feelings, make Calderesque mobile phones inspired by Zhu’s sculptures, and make postcards using blue technology. It is a printing method that involves sunlight. (The staff will even mail them later.)

The annual festival also contributed to the establishment of the Beam Center itself, which has been providing in-school and after-school public education programs in New York City since 2012. But Cohen, the center’s executive director, is particularly excited about Beam Camp City, which helps create a vibrant arts center on Governors Island, a short ferry ride from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Cohen said: "We want to help the island widen the places they know and the people who are coming," he added, adding that the site "places us where Beam should be, under the trees and the sky."

Beam Camp City opened in July and will become a year-round affiliate of the Beam Center in September, providing high school groups with a four-day free camp program every week in the summer, as well as free public weekend handicraft workshops until Inventgenuity. Campers have been helping to build the "constellation" and lay the foundation for the festival, which will feature the official opening of the installation on Saturday, with youth performing dance and music performances. (Visitors must register online for the festival, which lasts from 11 am to 5 pm.)

The new location makes Inventgenuity both health-conscious and broader. Beam staff will set up huge tents when it rains. They plan to wear masks in the workshop and increase social distancing, which will include two other sound explorations.

The first one, the Cicada Symphony, will be transformed into "a group of children making Cicada music," said interdisciplinary artist and Liang Center project designer Kerrenz. He added that they will find that they can use "animal and natural organic rhythms" to complete the composition.

Use the keyboard to change the pitch of the recorded cicada sound. Participants will create their own works and record them on small modules in the music greeting card. After connecting the modules to their colorful insects made with craft materials, they will take these insects to the "constellation" sculpture for a nature-inspired jam session.

Visitors can also collaborate with Building Beats, a New York organization that teaches digital music production and DJ skills. Using music samples or their own vocals, young people will arrange and record a 16-bar audio loop. Students who have recently received training will provide DJ sets, which the organizers hope will impress attendees.

"This is what we teach our students to do-make people dance," said Phi Pham, founder and executive director of Building Beats.

But the biggest advantage of the site may be the chance to mess up and get dirty. The billion oyster project will establish Inventgenuity's first oyster research station. The federation behind Circle Rules Football, which uses yoga balls and is far less aggressive than the NFL, will recruit young people to invent an outdoor sport.

Cohen's ultimate goal is to turn Beam Camp City into a sleep camp and learning center that is open all year round. Artists and young people associated with Inventgenuity have the same overall vision.

He said that at every festival, "you will be part of the effort to create something bigger than yourself."

August 21st and 22nd at Nolan Park on Governors Island; beamcenter.org/festival.

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