Rhizome.LA--A New Art & Technology Event Series in LA
Posted by Rhizomer on November 27, 2001 12:00 am
Los Angeles, CA - Rhizome.org announces the launch of a new event series
in Los Angeles. Rhizome.LA, an art & technology event series, will
feature presentations by new media artists at Whose Cafe in Hollywood.
The first event, on December 19, 2001, will feature works by Steve
Appleton, Joyce Campbell, Scott Draves, Mark Pesce, Nick Thompson, and
Ryan Wartena.
Southern California is buzzing with artists using emerging technologies
but there is still no real new media art community. Rhizome.LA will
serve as a gathering point and platform for the different pockets of new
media artists as well as a way to introduce new media art to a public
that is still largely unaware of what is happening at the intersections
of art and technology. "There's a lot of interesting new media art being
made in LA these days, but it's hard to find," said Mark Tribe,
Executive Director of Rhizome.org. "Rhizome.LA will provide a space for
people to come together, see what new media artists are up to, get to
know each other, and start to build a sense of local community." These
"show & tell" style events will provide a window into current movements
involving art, science, and technology. Each invited artist will give a
short talk and show images, videos, and/or demonstrations of a chosen
project.
Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media art
community. A nonprofit organization based in New York City, Rhizome's
programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation
of contemporary art that engages new technologies in significant ways.
For more information about Rhizome.org, and to become a member of the
Rhizome community, go to http://www.rhizome.org.
+ + +
About the Artists & Projects:
Steve Appleton - About Face
About Face is an interactive digital installation where the faces of
viewers viewing images of other faces are captured, with the tools of
surveillance and biometrics. The images of the viewers' faces are then
graphically mapped to form other faces. Steve Appleton is a sculptor
and public artist whose works involve social interactivity. He is an
adjunct Associate Professor of Art at Otis College of Art and Design.
Recent projects include a water wheel and poetry powered filtration
system for the Los Angeles River and installations that use pattern
matching computer programs to create interactive environments.
Joyce Campbell - Bloom
Bloom is an attempt to chart the Los Angeles terrain from within. Joyce
is gathering soil and water samples from across the county, isolating
and cultivating their microbial elements. She is then rendering this
collection of fungal and bacterial colonies as an array of ilfochrome
photograms that form a biological mapping of LA's open lands and waters.
Bloom interprets the landscape as a field of microbial opportunity and
latent aesthetic potential. Each soil sample yields an array of
organisms naturally selected to thrive on a site's peculiar conditions,
while each organism, once liberated from the constraints of its
environment, manifests in a blossoming of color and complex form. Like
the city clinging to the soil's surface, Bloom's structuring element is
water. A microbial mapping will reveal the relative richness of sampled
sites as ecologically homogenous or diverse, barren or fecund. Joyce
Campbell works with public installation, photography and film. She has
exhibited her work extensively in New Zealand and Australia and now
lives and works in Los Angeles. Her most recent projects harness self-
generating biological and chemical systems to interrogate our perception
of space and complex form.
Scott Draves - Electric Sheep
Electric Sheep realizes the collective dream of sleeping computers from
all over the Internet. It is a distributed screen-saver that harnesses
idle computers to create a render farm with the purpose of animating and
evolving artificial life- forms. It creates a shared visual space of
ever-changing, abstract, organic graphics. Scott Draves, a.k.a. Spot,
will present a seven-minute video documentary, report on recent
developments, and take questions from the audience. Spot is a visualist
and programmer residing in San Francisco. He received an Honorable
Mention from the Prix Ars Electronica in 1993 and a PhD in Computer
Science in 1997 and has since worked for a series of technology start-
ups. Project website: http://www.electricsheep.org
Mark Pesce - This Strange Eventful History
High-tech inventor, writer and filmmaker Mark Pesce spent this year's
Burning Man festival behind the lens of a digital camera, capturing a
series of striking images that are being woven into "This Strange
Eventful History," a "Baraka"-style film which explores the beautiful
art displayed - and interacted with - at the annual festival. Using a
combination of digital video, digital still photography, PCs and Macs,
Pesce, with photographer Steven Piasecki and composer Todd Barton (whose
"Genome Music" uses the human genome to create ethereal musical
compositions) are working with inexpensive but cutting-edge production
techniques to create a feature- length film for less than $5,000.
Project website: http://www.webearth.org/strangehistory/
Nick Thompson - Glambient
Glambient is a computer graphics program that explores families of
periodic tilings. The user can explore Glambient by dragging pieces of
the tiling around, creating new points and edges, or enforcing
symmetries. Alternatively, exploration can be directed randomly by the
program. Within a single family of tilings, variations may be
interpreted very differently by the human eye. Animating a transition
from one variation to another can be surprising and pleasing, as one
interpretation gives way to another. The Glambient program is written in
C and runs on windows. However, animations can be saved in shockwave
flash format for web presentation: see http://www.glambient.com for
examples. The program first produced images in September of this year,
and is in continuing development. Nick Thompson's first computer was an
Apple ][+. He lives in San Francisco.
Ryan Wartena - Analogue Information Storage by Laser Machining
We find the duality of nature in the production, recording and playback
of music by considering how analogue and digital components enter the
framework of experience. The efforts made here are to, yet again,
advance the modes of analogue realization in light of the overwhelming
digital barrage of approximation. The process initiates with the
question, "Why do we love vinyl?" and proceeds into a vision for a pure
analogue audio and visual information storage structure. Process
development for laser machining of audio records will be described in
addition to options for modulated and unmodulated methods of storing
visuals on the same record. Ryan Wartena has a doctorate in chemical
engineering, specifically, electrochemical engineering. Currently, he
is performing in a post- doctorial position within the machine
developing small, distributed energy systems by laser deposition and
shaping of microbatteries.
+ + +
Location: Whose Cafe, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; 323.804.4146
Date: December 19, 2001
Time: 7:30pm - 10pm
No cover charge, no need to RSVP; this event is free and open to the public.
in Los Angeles. Rhizome.LA, an art & technology event series, will
feature presentations by new media artists at Whose Cafe in Hollywood.
The first event, on December 19, 2001, will feature works by Steve
Appleton, Joyce Campbell, Scott Draves, Mark Pesce, Nick Thompson, and
Ryan Wartena.
Southern California is buzzing with artists using emerging technologies
but there is still no real new media art community. Rhizome.LA will
serve as a gathering point and platform for the different pockets of new
media artists as well as a way to introduce new media art to a public
that is still largely unaware of what is happening at the intersections
of art and technology. "There's a lot of interesting new media art being
made in LA these days, but it's hard to find," said Mark Tribe,
Executive Director of Rhizome.org. "Rhizome.LA will provide a space for
people to come together, see what new media artists are up to, get to
know each other, and start to build a sense of local community." These
"show & tell" style events will provide a window into current movements
involving art, science, and technology. Each invited artist will give a
short talk and show images, videos, and/or demonstrations of a chosen
project.
Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media art
community. A nonprofit organization based in New York City, Rhizome's
programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation
of contemporary art that engages new technologies in significant ways.
For more information about Rhizome.org, and to become a member of the
Rhizome community, go to http://www.rhizome.org.
+ + +
About the Artists & Projects:
Steve Appleton - About Face
About Face is an interactive digital installation where the faces of
viewers viewing images of other faces are captured, with the tools of
surveillance and biometrics. The images of the viewers' faces are then
graphically mapped to form other faces. Steve Appleton is a sculptor
and public artist whose works involve social interactivity. He is an
adjunct Associate Professor of Art at Otis College of Art and Design.
Recent projects include a water wheel and poetry powered filtration
system for the Los Angeles River and installations that use pattern
matching computer programs to create interactive environments.
Joyce Campbell - Bloom
Bloom is an attempt to chart the Los Angeles terrain from within. Joyce
is gathering soil and water samples from across the county, isolating
and cultivating their microbial elements. She is then rendering this
collection of fungal and bacterial colonies as an array of ilfochrome
photograms that form a biological mapping of LA's open lands and waters.
Bloom interprets the landscape as a field of microbial opportunity and
latent aesthetic potential. Each soil sample yields an array of
organisms naturally selected to thrive on a site's peculiar conditions,
while each organism, once liberated from the constraints of its
environment, manifests in a blossoming of color and complex form. Like
the city clinging to the soil's surface, Bloom's structuring element is
water. A microbial mapping will reveal the relative richness of sampled
sites as ecologically homogenous or diverse, barren or fecund. Joyce
Campbell works with public installation, photography and film. She has
exhibited her work extensively in New Zealand and Australia and now
lives and works in Los Angeles. Her most recent projects harness self-
generating biological and chemical systems to interrogate our perception
of space and complex form.
Scott Draves - Electric Sheep
Electric Sheep realizes the collective dream of sleeping computers from
all over the Internet. It is a distributed screen-saver that harnesses
idle computers to create a render farm with the purpose of animating and
evolving artificial life- forms. It creates a shared visual space of
ever-changing, abstract, organic graphics. Scott Draves, a.k.a. Spot,
will present a seven-minute video documentary, report on recent
developments, and take questions from the audience. Spot is a visualist
and programmer residing in San Francisco. He received an Honorable
Mention from the Prix Ars Electronica in 1993 and a PhD in Computer
Science in 1997 and has since worked for a series of technology start-
ups. Project website: http://www.electricsheep.org
Mark Pesce - This Strange Eventful History
High-tech inventor, writer and filmmaker Mark Pesce spent this year's
Burning Man festival behind the lens of a digital camera, capturing a
series of striking images that are being woven into "This Strange
Eventful History," a "Baraka"-style film which explores the beautiful
art displayed - and interacted with - at the annual festival. Using a
combination of digital video, digital still photography, PCs and Macs,
Pesce, with photographer Steven Piasecki and composer Todd Barton (whose
"Genome Music" uses the human genome to create ethereal musical
compositions) are working with inexpensive but cutting-edge production
techniques to create a feature- length film for less than $5,000.
Project website: http://www.webearth.org/strangehistory/
Nick Thompson - Glambient
Glambient is a computer graphics program that explores families of
periodic tilings. The user can explore Glambient by dragging pieces of
the tiling around, creating new points and edges, or enforcing
symmetries. Alternatively, exploration can be directed randomly by the
program. Within a single family of tilings, variations may be
interpreted very differently by the human eye. Animating a transition
from one variation to another can be surprising and pleasing, as one
interpretation gives way to another. The Glambient program is written in
C and runs on windows. However, animations can be saved in shockwave
flash format for web presentation: see http://www.glambient.com for
examples. The program first produced images in September of this year,
and is in continuing development. Nick Thompson's first computer was an
Apple ][+. He lives in San Francisco.
Ryan Wartena - Analogue Information Storage by Laser Machining
We find the duality of nature in the production, recording and playback
of music by considering how analogue and digital components enter the
framework of experience. The efforts made here are to, yet again,
advance the modes of analogue realization in light of the overwhelming
digital barrage of approximation. The process initiates with the
question, "Why do we love vinyl?" and proceeds into a vision for a pure
analogue audio and visual information storage structure. Process
development for laser machining of audio records will be described in
addition to options for modulated and unmodulated methods of storing
visuals on the same record. Ryan Wartena has a doctorate in chemical
engineering, specifically, electrochemical engineering. Currently, he
is performing in a post- doctorial position within the machine
developing small, distributed energy systems by laser deposition and
shaping of microbatteries.
+ + +
Location: Whose Cafe, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; 323.804.4146
Date: December 19, 2001
Time: 7:30pm - 10pm
No cover charge, no need to RSVP; this event is free and open to the public.
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