FLOATING POINTS: NET ART NOW
Co-Presented by Turbulence.org and Emerson College

CHRISTIANE PAUL+JOHN KLIMA
"Context as Moving Target: Data Visualization and Dynamic Mapping"
Friday 02.27.04, 7:00 p.m. (EST, USA)
Bill Bordy Theater, 216 Tremont Street, Boston
Live online at http://institute.emerson.edu/floatingpoints
All lectures are free and open to the public

CHRISTIANE PAUL: In digital environments, the continuous flow of
information creates fluctuating contexts that become a "moving target"
when it comes to establishing our frameworks for creating meaning. While
this applies to digital environments in general, content and context can
fluctuate to varying degrees, depending on the openness or closure of a
system or artwork. It does not come as a surprise that "mapping" in
various forms has become a prominent narrative in networked digital art.
Networks constitute an environment with no fixed entry points,
consisting of nodes and synapses that can be reconfigured. The ability
to create context and meaning in this type of environment largely relies
on possibilities of filtering information and creating some form of
map–be it mental or visual–that can allow for orientation, even if the
map is constantly reconfiguring itself in front of our eyes. The talk
will give a survey of the artistic practice of networked data
visualization and "dynamic mapping."

JOHN KLIMA: By drawing upon gaming and the various possibilities of
manipulating and transliterating data, John Klima's work occupies new
territory in media art. Although there is an obvious connection between
gaming and interactive digital art, and the gaming industry has played
an important role in the development of multi-user environments, the
parameters of this connection are rarely subjected to serious aesthetic
investigation. Employing a variety of technologies to produce both
hardware and software, Klima's work consistently connects the virtual to
the real, addressing issues of remote responsibility, and blurring the
distinctions between the simulated and the concrete.

BIOGRAPHIES

CHRISTIANE PAUL is the Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney
Museum of American Art and the director of Intelligent Agent, a service
organization and information resource dedicated to digital art. She has
written extensively on new media arts and her book Digital Art (part
of the World of Art Series by Thames & Hudson, UK) was published in July
2003. She teaches in the MFA computer arts department at the School of
Visual Arts in New York and has lectured internationally on art and
technology. At the Whitney Museum, she curated the show Data Dynamics
(2001), the net art selection for the 2002 Whitney Biennial, as well as
the online exhibition "CODeDOC" (2002) for artport, the Whitney Museums
online portal to Internet art for which she is responsible. Other
curatorial work includes "eVolution" (Art Interactive, Boston); "CODeDOC
II" (Ars Electronica, 2003), and the net art exhibitions Mapping
Transitions (Boulder, Colorado, 2002) and "Re-media" (Fotofest,
Houston, Texas, 2002).

JOHN KLIMA: Ca. 1980, Brooklyn-based artist John Klima (b. 1965)
attempted to code a 3D maze on a TRS-80 with 4k RAM and failed
miserably, but has been obsessed with 3D graphics ever since.
Contracting for companies such as Microsoft, Turner Broadcasting, and
Dun & Bradstreet from 1993 to 1998, Klima honed his programming skills
while continuing to make art within the flexible schedule that
free-lance programming provided. In 1998, Klima discontinued activities
as a commercial programmer to focus solely on the creation of art software.

Klima mounted his first solo exhibition in February 2001 at Postmasters
Gallery and has opened his second solo show at Postmasters in November
2003. His work has been shown at European festivals, such as VIPER
(Switzerland) and EMAF (Germany). His work glasbead was included in the
"New Media New Face" exhibit at the ICC in Tokyo, Japan (1999) and
received the Golden Lasso Award for Art in the Web3DRoundup at SIGGRAPH
2000 in New Orleans. His work ecosystm, commissioned by Zurich Capital
Markets, was shown at the Whitney Museum as part of the exhibition
BitStreams (2001). Klima's recent work, EARTH - previewed at the
National Library of Medicine on May 21, 2001, and at SIGGRAPH 2001 in
Los Angeles - was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. In 2002, he
received a grant from the Langlois Foundation for his project Terrain
Machine. A complete list of works is available at www.cityarts.com/lmno/

FLOATING POINTS: NET ART NOW is a speaker series examining some of the
current critical areas being explored by net-based artists:
interactivity, visualization, Internet protocol, software art,
generative art, mapping, and games. The series considers contemporary
theoretical and conceptual issues in net art, challenging notions of the
art object, the artist and the audience. Steve Dietz introduced the
series with an overview of the current state of net art. His talk is
archived at http://institute.emerson.edu/floatingpoints.

For more information about Floating Points, please send an email to
turbulence@turbulence.org