This past weekend, the University of Miami had an art themed student hack-a-thon from noon Saturday through noon Sunday. Their definition of the art theme was:

“And by art, we mean all types of art and its interpretations. Want to make the instagram of music, or the Spotify of Images, or have you been thinking of something really cool with videos? Go ahead. This is your time to work on that side project you’ve been putting off.”

The organizers provided food and a space to work and let the teams go at it.

The results were varied and interesting. The winning team made an app that would allow you to find music local to any city by genre. Second place prize was for an app that help curate music recommendations. The third place team created “a music instrument combining piano and guitar sounds with motion sensors.”

Fourth place I have to copy and paste rather than describe. “Nullinator – Joke apps. 1 creates a plaid shirt design based on the sound waves of a song. Another replaces your face in a video with that of Nicholas Cage. A crowd pleaser.”

The entry receiving honorable mention created an app that uses motion sensors to control music “Speed up the song by moving closer to the sensor or distort the bass by waving your hand from side to side. Become a dj by having fun.”

While the UHack event chose art as a theme this year, the group Art Hack Day holds arts related hack days across the country. They describe themselves as:

“…dedicated to hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is tech. We bridge the gap between art, technology and entrepreneurship with grassroots hackathons that demonstrate the expressive potential of new technology and the power of radical collaboration in art. We believe in non-utilitarian beauty through technology and its ability to affect social change for public good.”

Looking through the list of sponsors at the different cities on both sites, I don’t see a lot of arts organizations involved. I wondered if any arts organizations knew these were going on and if involving arts organizations was even on the event organizers’ radar.

These events are probably organized so that none of the sponsors are directing what is being developed, but there may be some room at one to say “these are problems we face, maybe you can think of a solution.”

There does seem to be some scope for involving specific interests in the competitions. The Miami event had small prizes worth a few hundred dollars for best use of different companies’ APIs and Microsoft technology. That would be something easily within the capacity of an arts related organization.

One of the easiest and most visible ways an arts organization might be involved is to provide the space and food for the hack-a-thon to occur. I have to imagine it would be more inspiring to wander through galleries of a museum or the back stage of a theatre during breaks than to be in a student center lounge.