After the pressures of dead week, students can watch a robot-fueled film, gaze through home-crafted kaleidoscopes, and take a ride on the trippy “galaxy glider”. These things and more will appear at JAMCON, a multimedia art event from 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday in Gerlinger Hall. JAMCON is a forum for new and experimental art than isn’t made for commercial reasons.
Marc Moscato, a graduate art student and one of the organizers of JAMCON, said that he wants to create a new forum for Eugene artists to express themselves.
“Art here is very commercially oriented; there is a lot of arts and crafts made by hippies for the Saturday Market,” Moscato said. “We’re trying to get people to open their minds up to new and interesting things.”
JAMCON will open with a collaboration of video, dance and music, followed by a group of bands that will play in a ‘jukebox’ performance. In the jukebox, the bands Chevron, Little 2s, Alamoconspiracy and Mine37 will take turns playing songs and then engage in a 15- to 20-minute improvisational session. While the bands are playing, a film made by two University students will be shown in the background.
“It’s going to have ‘bots in it,” Greg Dusic, a co-creator of the video, said. “And footage of Eugene and all of the ‘bots in Eugene. It really speaks for itself.”
After the bands play, Noel Lawrence, a filmmaker from San Francisco, will show his underground horror film. Next, two hip-hop DJs will alternate spinning songs while people take a ride in the “galaxy glider,” a kind of whirling teeter-totter. One person sits in the control station of the glider and plays a keyboard while the rider lays in a hammock-like platform and listens to the music over headphones while together they float around the center of the contraption.
Besides the events of JAMCON, there will be a variety of other art displays, including three-dimensional paintings and interactive furniture. There will also be disposable cameras with attached cardboard kaleidoscopes — filled with wire and other found objects — for taking pictures of JAMCON.

The organizers started JAMCON as a way to establish a small monthly art event, but it turned into one giant multimedia event.
Mi Jeong Kim, also a graduate art student and organizer, said that JAMCON is a place for people to see the art of the community in an improvisational and interactive way.
“It’s for artists to show and share art,” Kim said.
Moscato agreed.
“We go to a huge university with 20,000-some students, and there is a rather large art department and small galleries, but there isn’t much collaboration between departments,” he said.
Moscato said that he wanted something different.
Before coming to Oregon, Moscato was involved with non-profit media centers in Buffalo, N.Y., and he wanted to establish something similar here. The event’s organizers feel that it is important for the community to have a spot for new art to come together.
“I just read this study that showed that there are more art centers in ethnically and economically diverse areas,” Moscato said.
Moscato also wants to see more media-based art that incorporates television, video, computers and new media to counter the increasing homogenization of art.
Moscato decried the growing corporate philanthropy in art, because it seems as if art is decreasingly controlled by artists.
“They’re building a McDonald’s in the Smithsonian,” he said.
JAMCON is targeted at anyone in the University and surrounding community, especially young people and artists.
“This is where art is heading in the future,” Moscato said.