Art & Events
Hosted by Aria
Special appearances by Pierwoss & SISKA, Cole Pulice & others
Experience the magic of a Northern Spark sunrise with a delicious pancake breakfast, whether you’re tired out from all-night fun or an early-riser.
Kick off your Northern Spark adventure at the Northern Spark Launch Party in the plein air splendor of the Mill City Museum Ruin Courtyard.
Creative City Challenge: Kubota/Reynolds/Roth •
Music by CLOUD CULT
Creative City Challenge: Kubota/Reynolds/Roth •
Music by CLOUD CULT
Watch as mini_polis is unveiled and start your night with Cloud Cult at sunset!
Wondering what to see at #NSPK15? Leave the route-planning to us! Join a late-night guided bike tour of festival highlights and help support the art.
UCLA Game Lab artists are exhibiting several games made for the HappyFunTimes platform—an open-source, browser environment that allows up to 50 people to play together via WiFi-connected mobile phones on a shared screen.
An Overture in Seven Parts is a continuous sound composition & multi-channel installation created in real time by a collective of 7 artists.
Confetti! Balloons! Frosting! Surprises! Experience the essence of birthday in an entirely new way in honor of the MIA’s 100th year.
Bear Fox Chalk creates an 8’x8’ chalk art installation, while Caribou is offering free Crafted Press drinks.
Logjam asks the viewer to contemplate the cyclical process of death and rebirth, while also discovering the calming effect of chaos.
Origami Fishtank is an interactive installation of large origami sculptures video-mapped with digital projections and affected by your interaction and exploration of it.
Closer is a practice in being present. Witness a series of public, one-on-one performances between strangers become an unforgettable, communal experience.
Two projects that call attention to current environmental challenges including the role humans play in their creation as well as their solutions.
Picture-a-Farmer: Farmer Photo Booth, where people construct portraits to illustrate their perceptions of farming by comparing stories in Minnesota and Austria. Thresh-Code / Dresch Code!
Short films of dawn and dusk viewable only at specific locations in Minneapolis on your smart phone via the LEAV app for iOS.
Samba and salsa your night away to Brazilian and Cuban beats performed by a nine-piece ensemble featuring musicians from throughout the Americas.
In the Ear + Nose event, participants experience an immersive environment of sound and aroma.
An immersive, interactive space evoking the process of visiting ancient prophetic oracles.
Sparkle Smash! is a fast, fun game where you team up to take over the lights on top of the Target HQ building using your smartphone. Click to play: Target.com/sparklesmash
Dreamland Faces play live musical accompaniment to silent films “A Corner in Wheat” (D. W. Griffith) and “Labor’s Reward.”
Video and still imagery that explores the hidden habitats and secrets lives of animals.
Engage, embrace and summon your inner child! Come roller skate to the sounds of the 1970s while you experiment with printmaking techniques.
Amid ruins, enter into an immersive installation of uncanny, arresting hand-colored portraits, large as life, from Syrian refugee camps made by a locally-based, world-renowned artist.
Stars hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires; The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
A trio of novels by author Michael Friedman inspires six short plays in the Walker’s galleries that tackle stardom, sci-fi, murder and more! Presented by Rain Taxi.
Don’t you feel it too? Grab your headphones and dance on the Washington Ave Bridge. Practice bravery and vulnerability with Marcus Young.
Playable video game features 50 square blocks of urban wandering.
Mobile JXTA is a small fleet of artist-designed bikes that create an oasis of light, sound, and play in the public right of way. Play a game (illuminated chess, dominos and more), charge your phone, make a music request, or do an art activity to take away. #mobileJXTA
BUMFACK Co. is a ceramic production sweatshop facility that specializes in (re)producing one-of-a-kind objects by famous artists. BUMFACK Co.—Making the things you want, today!
Instantly compose music for a rotating ensemble of musicians, then see a spectral analysis projection of your score.
Game Grid is a retro multi-player social video game played on a giant three-screen installation in the round.
A mysterious, semi-transparent object hovers high above the Mill City Museum courtyard. Could it be a bed?
A scale model of Minneapolis built in collaboration with community participants in a series of “build workshops.
Shown at the 55th Venice Biennale, recently acquired Absolut Revolution: La Isla by Cuban artists Liudmila & Nelson will make its US debut during Northern Spark at the MIA.
Tackle modesty onstage with a stranger! Tell each other why you’re great and why the Twin Cities are great. Free popsicles for those who accept the challenge.
Grab your trusty book & flashlight, and venture into The Night Library! Choose your path wisely, or books will burn….
Plunge into an “orchestra” of sine waves, pulsed images, sound, and vector sketches on your mobile device. Then, come closer. (Log in to millcity.io on your smart phone.)
Where were you born? What brings you here? Contribute your answers and watch as a collective migration map is drawn over the night. URL: http://whoweare.io
Mill City Summer Opera Next: When opera and rock collide. Famous opera arias and scenes twisted into different musical genres and styles.
CityScope creates a field of kinetic follies that simultaneously invite participation and new ways of seeing and recall industrial histories of Minneapolis.
Chamber Concert at Orchestra Hall: From Amber Frozen, a music mashup of contemporary electronica and traditional Indonesian gamelan.
Gutless Warrior is a live animation performance that disrupts contemporary stereotypes with drawings, masks, hecklers, green screens and play.
Hear stories of women who’ve escaped sex trafficking and add your reflections to a photographic installation of wishes to be exposed throughout the night.
Tackle modesty onstage with a stranger! Get your “careercature” drawn by expert illustrators. Contribute to a collective migration map drawn throughout the night using data collected from Northern Spark visitors.
A spatial architectural experience inviting visitors to explore the mill and reconnect with Saint Anthony Falls in an unexpectedly new way.
You Are Hear is the interactive 3D soundtrack of Northern Spark—GPS-located audio tracks, visualizations and giant glowing balloons that everyone experiences together. Bring headphones!
Marketopia: a flea market quite unlike any other. Part financial counseling session, part walk-through board game, part hands-on microeconomics lesson, and part flea market from another planet.
Step up close or inside The Rainbow Pyramid to experience the physiological and emotional effects of color in this immersive light installation.
Human Foosball + Tron = Tron Human Foosball. Join us for a rousing night of retro futurist space foosball after dark.
KINO is an homage to a former Minneapolis movie theater screening an all-night program of local video works and private Super 8- and 16-mm films.
Get your “MSPortrait” drawn by expert illustrators. Answer a few questions about why you live here and what you make to walk away with a personalized portrait.
Writers face off in a single-elimination tournament inspired by Moby Dick.
The Dark Room investigates myth making, its evolution and the illumination of text by its discoverer, the reader.
Tamsie Ringler’s River of Iron is an all-night pour performance with molten iron mapping the entire Mississippi River watershed.
Within pulsing color and motion imagery, you are in a live projection as faces and bodies of the audience interact with the Gold Medal silos.
Unleashing a child’s vision of the world through experimental films, a balloon poppy field, a Royal Croquet Game, and an Arcade Backpack.
Shapiro & Smith Dance presents HANDS, a collection of outrageous handshakes, unusual caresses, and slapstick encounters that explore the power and expressivity of our hands.
Make collaborative paintings in the style of Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat using projectors and pop images.
In Ruins is a 3D submersive projected environmental multimedia performance experience that transports the audience into connection with the lives lived and stories told through diverse cultural and historical ethos.
An interactive work for screen, stage, and audience that uses public video gaming for direct engagement with the sublimated consequences of America’s “first televised war.”
The Thing About Words investigates the way words are imbued with significance by challenging players to interpret meaning from virtual nonsense.
This nationally touring seminar helps attendees achieve their dreams of material wealth and spiritual fulfillment, and meet the challenges of the 1990s and beyond.
Sumunar presents an all-night music performance of traditional and contemporary Javanese gamelan music. The first half of the evening includes dance.
Endlessly Repeating Endlessly. Musical change in repetition. Propulsive stasis. Static movement. Always changing. Never.
Three ensembles perform endurance-based dance segments throughout the night in a performance that plays with the idea of making time.
UCLA Game Lab’s Game Bar is a place to explore games in a variety of formats, from installations and board games to virtual reality environments.
Kinect with others to create a furious snowstorm, explore a beautiful summer landscape, or sit back and watch the seasons change over night.
Catch views of the city from the outdoor terraces and discover favorite artworks in select galleries all night long.
9 pm – 1 am: explore the solar system with the Minnesota Astronomical Society. 11 pm: The Raptor Center will introduce you to some nocturnal feathered friends.
Make a really big book on “Really Big Table” and explore art from the handmade to the digitally wrought. Think “Big expansive bobbing quiet.”
The museum will be open all night (exhibits and cafe until 12 midnight) with performances, activities, and artist projects throughout the building.
Voices in the Dark aren’t scary. They invite, enchant, tease, calm and (ultimately) raise your pulse rate.
Mellow under the moonlight at WAM. Watch the river fill with iron, dance to your own tune under the stars, picnic in the park, and catch up with your feathered nocturnal friends.
Relax under the stars on the inside of the museum. A park will be set up in the galleries where you can picnic, define a space for yourself, have your portrait sketched by an artist, listen to live music, and enjoy the stars with the Minnesota Astronomical Society.
Help a computer make art: embrace your inner robot.
Micro-Cinemas and Tiny Listening Spaces are close encounters that feature small life, non-human animals and plants that share Minneapolitan nightlife with us.
Belly up to Water Bar to sample a tasting flight of municipal waters from around the Twin Cities, and learn about the local aquifers, lakes and rivers where these waters are sourced.