Art Meets Interactive Virtual Technologies at Armory Center Friday Night

In a unique emerging intersection of technology and art, one of the fastest growing meet up groups in Los Angeles brought together more than 300 game developers and artists at the Armory for the Arts in Old Pasadena on Friday evening at the “Creative Code Circus” event.

The Hypercube meet up, a group for anyone who uses technology to as human expression, has grown to almost 900 members after less than one year.

Hypercube organizer Eddie Lee chose Pasadena as the location for his meet up and business because of the longstanding history of the two themes.

Quickly outgrowing the “dive bar” location of the first three events, the Armory for the Arts acted as the ideal background to the interactive virtual technologies on display.

Attendees squished and cuddled the virtual pet called Puni. Others wore a technology with balloons on their head that look like fruit through the Oculus Rift, goggle type lenses that shows a virtual reality up close.

Josh Randall founder of Robotkid worked on Guitar Hero and Rock Band in Boston for 18 years and now pursues the latest interactive technology.

“There is a revolution happening where a lot of barriers to making your own video game or software or interactive experience have melted away over the last few years. People are deciding they want to express themselves combining code and art and music. This is an expression of that,” Randall said.

Breaking the trend of most male dominated tech events, Hypercube was well attended by women and has the “hipster edge” with the eclectic mix of programmers, artists, animators, and musicians.

Lee never charges for his events, he simply wants people to comingle and develop community.

“I think its this divergence where were seeing less of a division between art and sciences technology. There’s a lot more cross technology,” Jeffery Travis of Positron said, maker of a hologram on display. “There’s a lot of this false perception that you’re left brain or right brain but I think we’re all whole brained, we’re all a whole person.”

Lee’s only concern is that he does not want Pasadena to follow in San Francisco’s footsteps by pricing out the artists and becoming a technology hub only.

“Now tech is so heavy there in San Francisco that artists can’t work there because they can’t compete with tech salaries,” Lee said, “Hopefully Pasadena retains its artistic heritage. Hopefully by bringing this type of event people will see what we can offer.”

Meeting in Japan, Lee and Kalin co-founded an independent game development studio called Funktronic Labs. Just under a year ago the creative duo moved their game business from Japan to quickly technology growing Pasadena.

“With the intersection of Cal Tech, JPL, and the Art Center that downtown Pasadena was a good place to start up a company with a little bit more focus on art, not just purely tech,” Kalin said.

Kalin said when more technology starts coming to town the innovators will have to respond with artful design. “I’m sure the City going to change fast, even in the space of one year that we’ve been here I’ve seen a lot happen and I don’t expect it to slow down.”