DetroitMakers. Art Meets Technology.

• By Michael H. Hodges
• Detroit News Fine Arts Writer

Art meets technology in a spirited mash-up opening Saturday at Detroit’s District VII gallery, just east of Renaissance Center.

“Twisted Toys & Mad Scientists” will present work from across the alternative Do-It-Yourself spectrum, from straightforward visual artists to Victorian-influenced steam punkers to the wizards associated with those tool-sharing spaces for creative types known as hackerspaces.

Gallery co-owner and artist Kristine Diven says one of District VII’s goals is to introduce highly creative groups who wouldn’t ordinarily cross paths.

“People at hackerspaces wouldn’t necessarily socialize with people who create fantasy costuming,” says Diven.

But they will Saturday night, in a creative stew that should make for a rocking opening night.

Diven promises eight live performances, including the aerial dancers from the Weird Sisters Circus, who will hang and gyrate from the 30-foot high ceiling. Below them will be a couple dozen pieces of art and installations scattered among the sofas and armchairs that break up the floor space and give a homey touch to the raw, 3,000-square-foot warehouse.

Expect to find jewelry and outfits from the steam punk set, where Victorian aesthetic meets the sci-fi future. Prepare to be dazzled by the “Mannequin Forest,” an installation starring vintage TV’s and several mannequins, all of which light up and react to your approach in unpredictable ways.

And look for zany technical achievements like the “Squiggletrike,” a hackerspace creation that uses unconventional means to power a large tricycle.

A little like fitness clubs for techno-geeks and artists of all stripes, hackerspaces have members who pay monthly dues and get access to a communal workshop outfitted with everything from hammers to the highest of high-tech equipment, like 3-D printers, that few could afford on their own. About a half-dozen hackerspaces have sprung up around Detroit in the past several years, fostering a lively revival of the sort of tinkering Thomas Edison would recognize and applaud.

“Hackerspaces are the primordial soup from which the next big thing will come,” says one enthusiast at the OmniCorpDetroit hackerspace in Eastern Market, who gives his name as just Mikey G.

Whether the Squiggletrike constitutes the next big thing is open for debate, but the triangular vehicle is a marvel, however ungainly. Powered by compressed air or carbon dioxide and created by a group at the Ferndale hackerspace i3, it propels itself much the way the in-out motion of a frog’s legs propel it through the water.

Also on view from i3 will be the Chronotune, a handsome, wood facsimile of a 1927 Philco radio. Spin the dial not for radio stations, but specific years — say, 1937 — and listen to music and news clips specific to that date, like radio coverage of the spectacular crash of the Hindenburg in New Jersey.

“Now here’s the question,” asks Nathaniel Bezanson, an i3 member who had a hand in both projects, “is it art?”

Experts will disagree, but both Squiggletrike and Chorotune are dazzling in their way, with something like artistic elegance in how they’ve responded to technical challenges.

Rather more artsy, though still totally teched-out, is Diven’s “Mannequin Forest,” built with gallery co-owner Micho Detronik. Equipped with antennae, surveillance cameras and motion sensors, three silver-painted vintage mannequins light up and react to your approach. One, “Gorilla Girl,” even swivels her head to level a drop-dead stare at you.

“They’re bizarre and ridiculous-looking,” Diven says. “You’ll be stunned.”

For those eager to try their own hand at the DIY experience, Diven and Detronik have equipped the show with a robot-making station, where visitors can fashion their very own R2D2 out of coffee containers, tubes, pipe cleaners, auto-industry scraps and googly eyes.

Want to go totally steam punk? There will also be a dress-up area full of Victorian-era clothing.

And, sometime late in the evening, guests can work off excess energy by having at a specially designed, candy-and-trinket-filled robot pinata hanging from the ceiling.

Sounds like quite a party.