FOLLOW THROUGH by Jennifer Crowe and Scott Paterson, Whitney Museum

FOLLOW THROUGH, A MOBILE MEDIA PROJECT
by Jennifer Crowe and Scott Paterson
December 1, 2005-January 29, 2006
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave.
5th fl.


Artists Jennifer Crowe and Scott Paterson have created a mobile, audio-visual project that will be accessible to visitors on portable media players in the Museum's 5th Floor Permanent Collection galleries. The project is inspired by the discrepancy the artists found between the dynamics of the art on view in the galleries and the rather passive and languid body language of museum visitors looking at that art.

Referencing the structure of the existing audio tour, the artists invite visitors to engage in a set of exercises designed to bring well-established behavioral codes of museum attendance into relief. Visitors are prompted by visual instructions that appear on the screens of the handheld players. The project's title has its roots in sports terminology where the term "follow-through" describes the act of carrying a motion to its natural completion. With "Follow Through," the artists are inviting visitors to complete the dynamics in the galleries in an experience that goes beyond the mental act of contemplating or interpreting artworks.

The exhibition was co-commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and Antenna Audio and is sponsored by Antenna Audio.

Documentation of the project will be accessible online at
www.whitney.org artport.whitney.org and www.antennaaudio.com





ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jennifer Crowe is currently a new media producer in New York. Trained in the arts, her education includes an MA from Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies and a BA in Visual Arts and Communication from the University of California, San Diego. Jennifer has broad experience in the arts with a special interest in digital archives and fine art preservation. Highlights include curating exhibitions at A.I.R. Gallery and The New Museum, initiating Rhizome.org's Artbase, an online archive for Net-based artworks, and producing online companions for Peabody-Award winning art television shows at Thirteen/WNET New York Public Television. She has coordinated digital video archiving projects for Yale University, the Dance Heritage Coalition, and the EU's international video preservation project PrestoSpace. She has lectured at various venues including the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, the American Museum of the Moving Image, and the Guggenheim Museum.

Scott Paterson is an architect, interaction designer, and artist based in New York. He teaches studio courses in the MFA in Design and Technology Program at the Parsons School of Design and has also taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture. Trained as an architect, his education includes a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Minnesota and a Masters degree from Columbia University. He has received grants from the Walker Art Center, Parsons School of Design, and The Design Institute at the University of Minnesota. Paterson lectures internationally and his work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, as well as in venues in Amsterdam, Berlin, Florence, and Mexico City.

ABOUT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM
The Whitney Museum of American Art is the leading advocate of 20th- and 21st-century American art. Founded in 1930, the Museum is regarded as the preeminent collection of American art and includes major works and materials from the estate of Edward Hopper, the largest public collection of works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Lucas Samaras, as well as significant works by Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Georgia O'Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Kiki Smith, and Andy Warhol, among other artists. With its history of exhibiting the most promising and influential American artists and provoking intense critical and public debate, the Whitney's signature show, the Biennial, has become a measure of the state of contemporary art in America today.

ABOUT ANTENNA AUDIO
Antenna Audio, the leading audio and audio-visual interpretation firm, serves more than 50,000 visitors of museums and other cultural sites each day. With 20 years of experience in the field of educational interpretation and entertainment, Antenna Audio designs, manufactures, and manages portable digital information systems and multilingual audio-visual productions for clients worldwide.