Early Neoist Computer Animation - Boris Wanowitch
Neoism Propaganda (1984)
The Unknown Neoist on Broadway (1983)
MACHINES / MACHINES (1984)
Dr. Amok's Brain Waves (1984)
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Neoism Propaganda (1984)
The Unknown Neoist on Broadway (1983)
MACHINES / MACHINES (1984)
Dr. Amok's Brain Waves (1984)
General Web Content:
Via Ryder Ripps
Hosts Matt and Jaimie from Whoop Dee Doo
Now at the Daniel Langlois Foundation:
David Rokeby, Very Nervous System, 1983-
Originally via Networked_Performance
Neoism Propaganda (1984)
The Unknown Neoist on Broadway (1983)
MACHINES / MACHINES (1984)
Dr. Amok's Brain Waves (1984)
Richard S. Mitchell on 16777216
16777216 is a new online work by Richard S. Mitchell, a San Francisco-based artist with a background in video. 16777216 is viewable through the Jancar Jones Gallery's website from August 28th until September 4th, click here to see it. The work consists of over 16.7 million frames, each a color in the RGB color model, displayed at 25 frames per a second. Colors are displayed when the web browser synchronizes with the server, where the colors slowly move from black towards white.
Your project 16777216 launches on the Jancar Jones Gallery's website this week - can you talk a little more about this project - what are you trying to achieve with this work?
I've been interested in using the Web as a medium for art for a long time. By medium I mean the place, center, and means of production, and not simply as a way to distribute work produced elsewhere. One early idea was a dynamic HTML spinning beach ball, using the inherent capabilities of a Web browser to display color and change its display over time, even without interaction from a user. I didn’t follow through on the beachball because I felt it was too much a one-liner, not multi-dimensional.
Issues surrounding sequencing, series, and serialization have been a major point in my video work for several years now: including numbers, text, and colors (from color sample sheets, etc.). Obviously, the RGB system is a numbered sequence of colors with many possible routes through it depending on how you map the total number of colors, a 24-bit number, to each of the 8-bit channels, which are semi-independent.
My goal with 16777216 is, on the one hand, to make tangible certain aspects of the computer’s representation of reality and, on the other, to produce a work pleasing to look at and contemplate.
General Web Content:
CAPTCHArt
CAPTCHA-related humor began with the widespread use of CAPTCHA (and more recently reCAPTCHA) on popular blogging and forum sites. The technology is intended to stop spam by asking the user to verify a pair of distorted words, thereby proving they are not a bot. In the case of reCAPTCHA these words are pulled somewhat randomly from an archive of textual documents requiring digitization, and that random pairing of words often produces strange and comical combinations. While simple reCAPTCHA screengrabs have appeared on sites such as lamebook, and "draw your CAPTCHA" threads have been around on the Something Awful forums for well over a year, the practice really took off when Moot implemented reCAPTCHA on the 4chan boards. Users took their extensive MS Paint skills and trollface comic generators and produced a wide variety of CAPTCHA related art and images, a sample of which we have included here.
Haven (2008) - Ian Burns
This sculpture generates a three scene narrative with the scene lengths and order controlled by a mechanical randomizing mechanism which is also part of the sculpture. All video and audio switching occurs via mechanical switches.
-- DESCRIPTION FROM THE ARTIST'S SITECliff Hanger (2009) - Jeff Shore and John Fisher
With this latest work, the Texas-based artist duo breaks new ground in the development of their sophisticated "story-telling machines". Cliff Hanger's narrative is assembled from five separate scene-generating contraptions that output timed segments of a choreographed black and white "movie". The atmosphere of their work is akin to Ansel Adams and Hiroshi Sugimoto photography imbued with early David Lynch film noir.
The creation of these works is a collaborative process between the artists: Shore develops the mechanics and the set-scenes, while Fisher programs the microchips and composes the soundtracks using original compositions, digital audio samples and mechanically operated instruments. The combination of all these elements results in a poetic complexity that is both surreal and cinematic.
-- DESCRIPTION FROM THE MCCLAIN GALLERYDream Sequence (2006) - Jennifer & Kevin McCoy
Dream Sequence is a two-channel video installation in which a series of dream images from Jenn and Kevin respectively are seen rotating over our sleeping heads.
Michelle Ceja's M O M E N T U M at Important Projects
I'm in the Bay Area this week, and I stopped by Important Projects in the Rockridge area of Oakland. Started by SAIC grads and recent Chicago transplants Jason Benson, Sean Buckelew and Joel Dean, Important Projects is run out of the top floor of their house. It reminded me of some of New York's pocket-sized exhibition spaces I've discussed here on Rhizome, like Art Since the Summer of '69. All the exhibits at Important Projects last for four weeks, and so far, they've organized seven shows in total.
They are currently showing Michelle Ceja's M O M E N T U M until September 10th. A fully immersive installation accompanied by a continually building ambient sound loop, the work seemed to deliberately intensify one's sense of claustrophobia and confusion. In that sense, it felt like an enclosed physical version of Ceja's project Silicon Velocity for Jstchillin, while the use of black paint, lights and mirrors recalled Banks Violette's sculptures, but on a smaller scale. I took some shots of the show, see below.
OFF BEAT REPEAT (2010) - Sally Thurer and Mylinh Nguyen
OFF BEAT REPEAT is a pattern making machine developed and designed by Sally Thurer and Mylinh Nguyen with the help of Dan Michaelson.
Interview with Jaimie Warren of Whoop Dee Doo
Whoop Dee Doo is a kid's show, run by about 20-30 volunteers in Kansas City. The show is filmed in the style of public access television shows of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, drawing heavy inspiration from the likes of The Carol Burnett Show, The Gong Show, Pee Wee's Playhouse, You Can't Do That on Television, Mr. Wizard, Soul Train, Double Dare, public access horror show hosts like Svengoolie, and the Chicago public access program Chica-go-go. The group has put together shows around the country and internationally, from the Smart Museum in Chicago, to a holiday party at Deitch Projects, and a collaboration with Loyal Gallery in Malmo, Sweden. In each new venue they draw on local communities of performers and artists to collaborate and contribute. Performers range from musical acts and performance artists to Civil War Re-enactors, Celtic Bagpipers, Christian Mimes, drag queens, drill teams and science teachers. Kids help build the sets and make props along with artists and volunteers, and they are a huge part of the show itself. Whoop Dee Doo is intended to showcase the diversity of artistic talent within the community, and to create an opportunity for these groups to work, and party, together. Unlike many kid's shows, Whoop Dee Doo is in no way dumbed down or infantilizing, and it forms an important part of the vibrant and creative Kansas City arts community.
The show is hosted by artists Matt Roche and Jaimie Warren. Matt plays a quiet, awkward werewolf, and Jaimie is generally wearing red spandex and covered in empty food packaging. I spoke with Jaimie about the art scene in Kansas City, about working with kids and technology, and about the philosophy of Whoop Dee Doo.
Jaimie Warren: We try to make the show a project that is truly inclusive. I have always wanted to create something that really involves the community in a way that is actually effective and meaningful, and that is something we are totally striving to do. We work with a lot of under-served youth groups like the Boys and Girls Club, so [we try to make it] a pretty memorable and unique experience for them. The kids are also a huge part in making the show – they help make props, costumes and sets, so you have 20- and 30-something artists making the look of the show alongside kids and community members, and it ends up looking pretty rad. Plus our workshops and shows are always free, so the kids who don’t have money are always able to attend.
Matt Roche acts as sort of the Art Director of the show, but it is a super collaborative process, and artists like Chris Beer, Roger Link, Erica Peterson, Rochelle Brickner, and our remarkable new gem named Lee Heinemann, who is a 17-year old genius, help set the stage for the way everything looks. And it looks AMAZING!!
I feel like all of the examples I have seen in the past of the art world infiltrating the community have always had this unavoidable cheese-y factor, like having the homeless make art and invite them into the gallery or something. We hope that Whoop Dee Doo can occupy a position that is highly respected as both community art and contemporary art, which is something I've always felt was very difficult to achieve. It sort of strips away the divisions between high art and low art, and it all blends together in a really successful way.
Now at the Daniel Langlois Foundation:
David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1983-) Documentary Collection
Montreal's art and science organization the Daniel Langlois Foundation announced a new collection of online materials for Canadian artist David Rokeby's work Very Nervous System (1983-), an interactive sound installation that reacts to the movement of visitors. The work has developed over the years, and has exhibited in many contexts. This particular collection of documentation is interesting because they bring in the audience's response to the work, through a series of interviews. You can read more about the project and their approach in the excerpt below from the "Introduction to the Collection" by Caitlin Jones and Lizzie Muller.
This is the second documentary collection that we have created for artworks by David Rokeby. In 2007 we produced a collection for the artwork Giver of Names (1991-), through which we developed a documentary approach to media art that captures the relationship between the artist’s intentions and the audience’s experience or, as we have described it, “between real and ideal” (1). The aim of this strategy is to acknowledge the fundamental importance of audience experience to the existence of media artworks and to create a place for the audience within the documentary record.
We believe this approach offers a productive way to reconcile how media artworks exist in the world and how they are represented in an archival context. In recent publications, we have begun to refer to the product of this approach as an “Indeterminate Archive”: a collection of materials that provides multiple perspectives of the work, as well as multiple layers of information, held together with—but not secondary to—the idea of the artist's intent (2). This indeterminate archive, we have argued, captures the mutability and contingency of the artwork’s existence, creating a more, not less, “complete” account. For a full explanation of how we developed this approach as well as a fuller discussion of the issues surrounding documentation, archives and audience experience, please see the introduction to our 2007 collection for the Giver of Names on the Daniel Langlois Web site (3).
The invitation to produce a second collection for Rokeby’s Very Nervous System (1981- ) came from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research in Linz, Austria. This artwork is a particularly interesting case study for the Indeterminate Archive for two reasons. Firstly, it offers an unmatched demonstration of the importance of experience in media art. Very Nervous System is, as many audience members pointed out in our interviews with them, essentially an empty room until someone walks in and activates it. It is a work that is brought into being very literally through experience.
Secondly, it is a seminal work in the history of media art, with a lifespan of more than 28 years. Its celebrity and longevity pose some particularly interesting questions about documentation and contextualisation of media artworks over time and through change. The Very Nervous System’s celebrity makes it a fascinating focus from the point of view of the relationship between real and ideal. The work is, for many, one of the first successful artistic experiments in gestural, embodied interaction. An enormous number of texts have been written about it, and many curators and critics of media art have read about it without ever having experienced it themselves. This notion of an “ideal” Very Nervous System has, therefore, a powerful role within the discourse of media art. This begs the question of how the “real” individual experience of the work, here and now, relates to this powerful ideal.
Vote for Rhizome's Panel at SXSW 2011!
A little shameless self promotion, guys. Nick Hasty, Rhizome's Director of Technology, has proposed a panel on "Emerging Trends in Internet Art" for SXSW Interactive in 2011. The panels are selected by votes - see a little description of the panel below, and vote here. Note: Voting ends 11:59 CDT on Friday, August 27th and you must register to vote!
Artists working with the Internet have to adapt, adopt, and respond to a continually developing medium with ever expanding potential. In this panel, we'll talk with leading artists about their practice and the current state of Internet art. Artists will discuss how recent developments, like the boom in online video, the proliferation of social media, mobile technology, and introduction of HTML5, has prompted new artistic strategies and aesthetics. The conversation will foreground how artists are some of the first to experiment with, and think through new possibilities and limits of, new technologies. Rhizome is a leading organization dedicated to Internet art. Founded in 1996, the organization has tracked and supported the development of this field since its inception. Rhizome supports artists working at the furthest reaches of technological experimentation as well as those responding to the broader aesthetic and political implications of new tools and media. We are affiliated with and based out of the New Museum in New York.
