Digital Art Workshops in Ancient Myndos

Digital Art Workshops in the Ancient City of Myndos

Contemporary Artists from New York and Istanbul will be gathering in the ancient city of Myndos for a series of
Digital art workshops between the 11th and 21st of August 2002. Myndos, located near Bodrum, in the southwest region
of Turkey, is a unique ancient city as parts of the city including its port have sunk below the sea level. The
imagery of a sunken ancient city conbined with today's technology, the cameras and performers,
constitutes the perfect surreal scene for the artists.

Gumusluk Academy, an independent arts foundation, located near the ruins of ancient Myndos, is organizing this
series of Digital Art workshops in collaboration with istanbulmuseum.org/. The aim of the workshops is to combine
new technology with ancient culture in order to reach to a new conceptual level. The categories in this workshop are
Digital Design, Net Art, Video Art, Interactive Art and Electronic Music. The artist/ instructers are Tina La Porta, Genco Gulan, John Plenge, Tim Hailey and Murat Egi.

The instructers taking part in this workshop are also praticing artists. Tina La Porta, one of the first artists to be
accepted into the Whitney Museum of American Art collection as a net-artist, is a faculty at the NY Institute of
Technology and School of Visual Arts. She recently opened a solo exhibition "voyeur_web " at Universal Concepts
Unlimited in NY.

Genco Gulan has participated in the Net-art project, Chaos in Action, exhibited in 'Centre Pompidou et du Musee
National d'Art Moderne', Paris. Gulan has given seminars on the subjects of Internet and New Technology, at the
New York Institute of Technology and New School University. He recently participated to Kanonmedia's "New
Media Line" net art exhibition on the web and the IV.th Digital Salon Exhibition at Habana, Cuba.

Interactive works of Tim Hailey, have been exhibited in major museums including the New Orleans Museum of
Contemporary Art. He recentyly curated "Ironclads" an interactive performance at Here Art NYC.
John Plenge is an ASCAP, NYSCA and OBIE award winning songwriter, composer and sound designer. Past
highlights include performances at The Kitchen Theater, NYC, 450 Broadway Gallery , NYC, Wonton Destruction,
3 Legged Dog/ Wooster Group, NYC, (2002) HERE Center for the
Arts NYC, Teatro Carignano, Torrino, Italy (Obie Award for Best Production 2000) New School University,
NYC, Music Composition Award "Symphony East-West" (1999) ASCAP SongWriting Award Recipient (1995).
Dr. Murat Egi is the head of the İstanbul University Underwater Technologies Program. His underwater studies
have been published in National Geographic and international Medical and Biomedical magazines. He recently made
an underwater survey of the Van Lake and produced a documentary film based on his survey.

In history, Myndos, or as it is called today Gumuşluk, was an important port of the ancient Carian Kingdom which
dates back to the 5th century B.C. and even to prehistory. Caria, along with Ionia to its north was a cradle of
culture, home to noted philosophers, historians, architects, and physicians of antiquity-including Herodotus of
Bodrum/ Halikarnassos, Hippocrates of İstankoy, Herakleitos of Ephesus, Thales and Anaximenes of Miletus, and Eudoxos of Knidos.

Moreover Halikarnassos is the original site of the Mousoleion, the tomb of Carian King Mousolus, one of the seven
wonders of the world. It is currently on display at the British Museum. The spectacular Bodrum Castle, built by the
Knights of St. John, currently houses the internationally known Museum of Underwater Archeology. It is in this
museum where the participants will gain the archeological references of the remains.

The digital workshops at Gumuşluk Academy aim to bring a new approach to digital arts in the context of process
art and site specific workshop. The workshop will include theoretical and practical levels while diffusing the
difference between the observer and the producer. During the workshop period, participants will develop projects
together, working with each other, switching between different roles and positions. Works will be exhibited in
Bodrum, İstanbul, New York and on the Internet. We believe that a carefull but a spontaneous meeting of the
ancient and the new technology might carry us to a new conceptual level.

For more information: www.gumuslukakademisi.org / www.istanbulmuseum.org