Born 1976, Alton, IL
Lives and works in Montgomery, AL

Mike Beradino received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 and in the same year was awarded the Linden Labs (Second Life) fellowship. He graduated with his MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2008. Beradino’s work functions in multiple ways, both in the real world and in online communities. Beradino looks to many of the DIY online communities in which he is involved and finds in them content and resources for the creation of his work, as well as a venue for its production and dissemination. Central to his work is a belief that growing technology is responsible for the fragmentation of human relationships. Yet in the virtual world, a reciprocal relationship can develop between the audience and the artist and two roles become blurred. As a result, the audience is able to learn from the artist’s technical instructions and create new works.



Liquid Pong is an attempt to create a real-time, physical representation of pixels from the intangible space of the computer screen. The piece is made from a grid of 144 electromagnets placed below a tray of ferrofluid, extremely small magnetic particles suspended in a liquid. These particles become strongly polarized in the presence of a magnetic field. Low resolution animations and games can be displayed in the liquid, transforming the liquid into pixel formations. Beradino used an online tutorial and free control software called Blinkentools to create the piece. Demonstrating the democratic applications of freeware, Liquid Pong brings the digital world into the tangible world, blurring the line between technology and real-life interaction.



caption:
Liquid Pong, 2008
interactive sculpture
36 × 36 × 48 inches
Courtesy of the artist