Reminder: jihui with Perry Hoberman -- tomorrow 1/31/03 7PM

Jan. 29, 2003

Type: discussion

jihui - Digital Salon
presents
Perry Hoberman

Friday, January 31, 2003 7 PM
@ Parsons Center for New Design
55 West 13th Street, 9th Fl.
New York, NY 10011
Live Webcast @ http://agent.netart-init.org starts 7pm EST.

Perry Hoberman will be discussing his current exhibition at Postmasters
Gallery. In this exhibition, Hoberman tackles one of our current dilemmas:
in a world of ever-increasingly "powerful" media technologies, our own power
to creatively make use these technologies is under constant threat on a
variety of fronts. Restrictions and surveillance are being hard-coded into
the hardware, software and networks we use daily in a process that seems
determined to make us little more than fodder for an ever-more-profitable
army of passive and fearful consumers.

Several works satirize the endless attempts to price and profit from what
has become known as "intellectual property" - a term that emphasizes
ownership above all. A series of prints is based on the ubiquitous dialog
boxes that appear whenever we open, save, close, delete, or do anything at
all with the files on our computers. Another series of prints consist of
superimposed images of every spam email message that Hoberman received over
a given period of time, in an attempt to visualize the increasing onslaught
of unsolicited advertising and to transform an utterly debased form of
communication into something beautiful. Several works deal with iconography
of the All-Seeing Eye, recently repurposed as the symbol of John
Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness System," thus shifting its meaning
from a suggestion of divine omniscience to a more earthbound ideal of total
surveillance.

Perry Hoberman is one of the pioneers of new media art, having addressed the
form, content and social implications of media technology for over twenty
years. During that time, he has exhibited internationally, with major shows
throughout the USA and Europe. His work is currently on view in the "Future
Cinema" exhibition at the ZKM Center for New Media in Karlsruhe. Hoberman
has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, and is both a 2002
Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and a 2002 Rockefeller Foundation Media Art
Fellow.

jihui (the meeting point), a self-regulated digital salon, invites all
interested people to send ideas for discussion/performance/etc.
jihui is where your voice is heard and your vision shared.
jihui is sponsored by Digital Design Department and Center for New
Design @ Parsons School of Design

jihui is organized by agent.netart (http://agent.netart-init.org), a joint
public program by NETART INITIATIVE and INTELLIGENT AGENT