RHIZOME DIGEST: 12.30.05

discussion

Posted Dec. 29 2005 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 12.30.05

RHIZOME DIGEST: December 30, 2005 Content: +opportunity+ 1. Juliet Davis: Call For Participation - UFVA Conference New Media Exhibition 2. Marisa Olson: Pratt seeks Chair-Computer Graphics & Interactive Media 3. jlboyer@mail.unomaha.edu: Echotrope call for single channel media +announcement+ 4. Marjan van Mourik: 33 Questions per Minute by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer 5. Mica Scalin: My Year in Art +Commissioned by Rhizome.org+ 6. Lauren O?Neill-Butler: Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady: The Work of Lynn Hershman + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome is now offering Organizational Subscriptions, group memberships that can be purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow participants at institutions to access Rhizome's services without having to purchase individual memberships. For a discounted rate, students or faculty at universities or visitors to art centers can have access to Rhizome?s archives of art and text as well as guides and educational tools to make navigation of this content easy. Rhizome is also offering subsidized Organizational Subscriptions to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded communities. Please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/org.php">http://rhizome.org/info/org.php</a> for more information or contact Lauren Cornell at LaurenCornell@Rhizome.org + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. From: Juliet Davis <info@julietdavis.com> Date: Dec 24, 2005 1:30 PM Subject: Call For Participation - UFVA Conference New Media Exhibition UNIVERSITY FILM & VIDEO ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE August 1-5, 2006 Chapman University Orange, California www.ufva.org CALL FOR NEW MEDIA EXHIBITION SUBMISSIONS SUBMISSIONS DUE: February 15, 2006 1) Application Form .pdf: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ufva.org/NewMediaForm2006.pdf">http://www.ufva.org/NewMediaForm2006.pdf</a> .doc: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ufva.org/NewMediaForm2006.doc">http://www.ufva.org/NewMediaForm2006.doc</a> 2) Any additional project documentation needed for consideration (for example, CD-ROM, DVD, JPEGS?no slides, please). 3) Participation in the program requires active membership in the UFVA and pre-registration for the conference. NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: Early May SEND SUBMISSIONS TO: Juliet Davis Dept. of Communication University of Tampa 401 West Kennedy Blvd. Box 106-F Tampa, FL 33606 phone: 727.418.8511 fax: 813-253-6246 julietdavis@tampabay.rr.com QUESTIONS? Contact Juliet Davis at Juliet.davis@ut.edu or info@julietdavis.com. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. From: Marisa Olson <marisa@rhizome.org> Date: Dec 28, 2005 6:21 PM Subject: Pratt seeks Chair-Computer Graphics & Interactive Media Chairperson - Computer Graphics & Interactive Media Pratt Institute (Brooklyn NY) Date Posted: 12/22/2005 Closing Date: 02/03/2006 Title: Chairperson - Computer Graphics & Interactive Media Department: Computer Graphics and Interactive Media School: Art and Design Position Summary: Reporting to the Dean of the School of Art and Design, the Chairperson will assume academic and administrative leadership of the department, which offers both M.F.A. and B.F.A. degrees with specializations in Digital Animation & Motion Arts, Interactive Media & Game Arts, Digital Imaging and Emerging Arts. The selected candidate will offer conceptual vision regarding the mission, character and nature of the program and promote a rich and stimulating environment for teaching, design, research and professional practice. This administrative appointment carries a twelve month per year workload and a three year contract which may be renewed. Job Responsibilities: Supervise and develop the department's curriculum and educational programs. Recruit, supervise and develop faculty and staff. Teach at least one course per semester. Recruit and advise students. Develop and maintain assessment instruments. Maintain accreditaion of the program with NASAD and MSCHE. Establish links to professional organizations and leading practitioners in the field. Administer the department's budget. Serve on School and Institute committees. Continue the development and implementation of department policies and procedures. Assist the Dean and Institutional Advancement with fundraising. Carry out special projects as assigned by the Dean. Perform all other duties as required. Salary: Commensurate with experience and qualifications. Qualifications: We require an M.F.A. or equivalent in computer graphics or a related field; at least three (3) years' university, college or art institute teaching; a minimum of three (3) years' administrative management experience; and a record of professional activity in the digital arts and/or media theory. Candidates should have a broad familiarity with, and understanding of, several of the following areas: digital animation; motion arts; interactive media; game arts; digital imaging; emerging arts; physical computing; interactive installation; device control; digital video; digital audio; virtual technologies; compositing; and special effects. To Apply: Please submit your resume, cover letter and the names and contact information for three professional references to: Chairperson Search Committee Office of the Provost Main 1 Position Code:CHCGIM Pratt Institute 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, N.Y. 11205 No e-mails, online applications or faxes for this position please. ***Proof of identity and eligibility to work in the U.S. will be required upon employment.*** EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER Salary: Commensurate with experience and qualifications. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Support Rhizome: buy a hosting plan from BroadSpire <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/hosting/">http://rhizome.org/hosting/</a> Reliable, robust hosting plans from $65 per year. Purchasing hosting from BroadSpire contributes directly to Rhizome's fiscal well-being, so think about about the new Bundle pack, or any other plan, today! About BroadSpire BroadSpire is a mid-size commercial web hosting provider. After conducting a thorough review of the web hosting industry, we selected BroadSpire as our partner because they offer the right combination of affordable plans (prices start at $14.95 per month), dependable customer support, and a full range of services. We have been working with BroadSpire since June 2002, and have been very impressed with the quality of their service. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. From: jlboyer@mail.unomaha.edu <jlboyer@mail.unomaha.edu> Date: Dec 29, 2005 11:57 AM Subject: Echotrope call for single channel media Deadline February 1, 2006 Echotrope is a nomadic arts collective that organizes and curates screenings and exhibitions of media throughout the midwest. We are currently seeking film,video and new media work of all genres, single channel format only, for two upcoming exhibitions: 1) Single Channel: an exhibition of single channel media work at the South Bend Regional Museum of Art in South Bend IndianaJuly 15 - Oct. 1 2006 2) Spring Shorts, a screening series at Mary Ross Reimpa Media Arts Center in Lincoln NE., and the UNO Art Gallery at the University Nebraska-Omaha in Omaha NE., in May 2006. We are also seeking both feature length and short format Independent Filmand Video for our 2006/2007 Experimental and Independent Film and Media Series at the UNO Art Gallery at the University Nebraska-Omaha. Please send a DVD or miniDV preview copy of your work, Bio, Resume, andsupport materials (film/video synopsis, reviews, articles) for consideration. Also include a SASE if you would like your materials returned. Echotrope P.O. Box 31394 Omaha NE, 68181-0394 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.echotrope.org">http://www.echotrope.org</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. From: Marjan van Mourik <webmaster@targetfound.nl> Date: Dec 26, 2005 10:03 AM Subject: 33 Questions per Minute by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer SPOTS, the media installation at Potsdamer Platz,Berlin. presents 33 Questions per Minute by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Berlin, Park Kolonnaden at Potsdamer Platz, 12.12.2005: * Questions from passers-by become part of an interactive work of art * 33 Questions per Minute by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, until 8 January 2006 What is life? Who am I? Where do we come from, and where do we go? If you?ve ever wanted to ask a deeply personal question on a gigantic media facade, then as from 13 December 2005 you can by taking part in the interactive art project 33 Questions per Minute (33QPM), Relational Architecture 5 by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Passers-by can type whatever questions are occupying them into a terminal that is installed within viewing distance of the SPOTS light and media facade. SPOTS is one of the largest light and media installations in the world and is integrated into the facade of Potsdamer Platz 10. As the name suggests, 33QPM will display 33 questions each minute. If no question has been typed in at the terminal, the computer generates the questions itself from a virtually limitless source of sentence fragments, combining human curiosity with purely mechanical, often meaningless strings of words. The software, which Rafael Lozano-Hemmer developed himself, can generate 55 billions questions in German, English and Spanish. It would take 3,000 years to output all the possible question combinations. Lozano-Hemmer: ?33QPM is a project that represents mechanical irony. Inexhaustible grammatical algorithms make a romantic and hopeless attempt to ask questions that have never been asked before. The words are combined electronically and form random links between totally disparate levels of experience.? + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome ArtBase Exhibitions <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/">http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/</a> Visit "Net Art's Cyborg[feminist]s, Punks, and Manifestos", an exhibition on the politics of internet appearances, guest-curated by Marina Grzinic from the Rhizome ArtBase. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/cyborg/">http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/cyborg/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. From: Mica Scalin <contactmica@gmail.com> Date: Dec 29, 2005 9:35 AM Subject: My Year in Art In an effort to organize for the 2006, I bring you - My Year in Art, a video diary documenting my experiencs with art this past year. I thought you might enjoy, this as little year end review. All 17 short videos are available for download as a podcast feed here: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://publicaddress.typepad.com/art/rss.xml">http://publicaddress.typepad.com/art/rss.xml</a> or visit the the blog: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://publicaddress.typepad.com/art/">http://publicaddress.typepad.com/art/</a> More to come in 2006! Cheers! – hello? <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.micawave.tv">http://www.micawave.tv</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.micascalin.net">http://www.micascalin.net</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org 2005-2006 Net Art Commissions The Rhizome Commissioning Program makes financial support available to artists for the creation of innovative new media art work via panel-awarded commissions. For the 2005-2006 Rhizome Commissions, eleven artists/groups were selected to create original works of net art. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/commissions/">http://rhizome.org/commissions/</a> The Rhizome Commissions Program is made possible by support from the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial, the Greenwall Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support has been provided by members of the Rhizome community. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. +Commissioned by Rhizome+ Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady: The Work of Lynn Hershman By Lauren O?Neill-Butler <fansofsoft@gmail.com> San Francisco-based artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman has a knack for doing things three times. Here are some facts about her fiction-heavy artistic practice. From 1968 to 1972, as part of her graduate thesis, she wrote art criticism about her own work under three different pseudonyms: Prudence Juris, Herbert Goode, and Gay Abandon. Then, in the third year of her influential ?The Roberta Breitmore Project? (in which she took on a whole new identity, from 1974-1978), she enlisted three additional incarnations of the ?original? Roberta, performed by Kristine Stiles, Michelle Larson, and Helen Dannenberg, with each carrying on Hershman?s obsessive documentation of Roberta?s social, professional, and ?real? life. Also, from October to December 1974, she created three site-specific installations about three fictional women in New York City hotel rooms, entitled ?Forming a Sculpture Drama in Manhattan.? Jumping ahead several years, Hershman?s second feature film, Teknolust (2002), showcased Tilda Swinton playing three ?self replicating automatons? (SRAs) named Ruby, Olive, and Marinne, as well as their creator, the geneticist Rosetta Stone. And finally, though probably not the last instance of tripling, there are three concurrent exhibitions of Hershman?s art this winter: ?Hershlandia,? a retrospective in Seattle at the Henry Art Gallery (11/5/05?2/5/06); in New York at Bitforms Gallery (12/10 /05?1/14/06), and in San Francisco at Gallery Paule Anglim (11/23/05-12/22/05). The recent resurgence of interest in Hershman?s art is compounded by several other important matters of note aside from exhibitions. Her first major monograph, ?The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson, Secret Agent, Private I,? was co-published by the University of California Press and the Henry in time for the retrospective, featuring critical essays by prominent scholars and the artist herself. In addition, Stanford University recently acquired her working archive (1966-2002), securing a vital future for many of her documents in film, video, performance, installation, and photography. She also just finished a feature length documentary on Steve Kurtz, a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble accused of bioterrorism in 2004 by the FBI. Rounding out what is truly a time of Hershmanlandia: her work will be featured in the 2007 exhibition on the history of feminist art, called ?WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,? at the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art. Dubbed a ?pioneer? and ?the grande dame of digital art,? Hershman?s art has continuously questioned and pushed the limits of new media and feminist art, harboring her position on the cutting edge. As Robin Held, curator of Hershlandia, writes: ?More broadly, her technological innovations in digital and Web-based art have helped legitimize the ?new media? of video, Web art, and works of artificial intelligence.? To name just a few of her achievements (well, three): she created the first interactive artwork on videodisc (Lorna, 1983-4) predating branching-narrative CD-ROMs by a decade, designed the first touch-screen controlled interface for an art work (Deep Contact, 1984-89), and built one of the first networked installations (The Difference Engine #3, 1995-98). But to view her art just in terms of technical abilities and ?firsts? is not enough. She is perhaps also the most varied and inventive artist today, exploring such regenerative themes as vision, interactivity, autonomy, embodiment, surveillance, cyborgs, and repetition–to name a few. Her art also brings to mind key theoretical idioms of the postmodern age, such as Foucault?s panoptic gaze, Deleuze and Guattari?s desiring-machines, Donna Haraway?s cybernetic organisms, and Judith Butler?s notion of the performative (among many others, including feminist science fiction). So how is it that within this technological and politically-bound framework, her art seems to naturally flow from one piece to the next, as if each one were dependant upon the other? Is it because her areas of interest have remained, for the most part, the same? Hershman?s early works from the mid-60s expose her feminist treading and comment on the state of art history at the time: male dominated and mostly minimalist. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and akin to finding her contemporaries involved in using ?alternative? art forms such as performance and installation, her twist on both ideas led her to create fictional personas in real spaces, as in ?The Dante Hotel? (1973-74), ?Forming a Sculpture Drama in Manhattan? (1974) and ?25 Windows: A Portrait of Bonwit Teller? (1976), which showcase an invisible or narrative occupant through ?belongings.? In other words, by piecing together the materials scattered in the installation, someone or something is conjured through the voyeuristic imagination of the spectator. This act of being ?caught? in looking, or enamored with images, is one of Hershman?s most vital themes. Then came the ?Roberta Breitmore Project; (1974-78), with its name derived from a Joyce Carol Oates story, and its personage donning a blonde wig and heavy make-up. Performing as Roberta, Hershman Leeson inverted the structure of the previous three works into a ?real? person, or at least one real enough to have a driver?s license, dental records, a checking account, credit cards, a lease on an apartment, romantic dates, and psychiatrist appointments. Thoroughly documented and even ?exorcized,? Roberta Breitmore commented on the constructed identity of young women and the slippery slope of the real and the virtual. Yet, most telling about this project was Hershman?s capacity to create a ?self? anchored within a history of fakers, as Amelia Jones has noted, ?What makes the Breitmore project different from the more obviously postmodern strategies of Warhol and Sherman (which slide along the surface of things) is her profundity as a ?subject.? Hershman was willing to take a risk by literalizing Roberta?s claim to the status of officially sanctioned subject.? In doing so, she also staked her claim in one of the preoccupations of modern art: blurring art with everyday life. Hershmans? video, net, and film works continued her investigation of embracing artifice, and introduced new levels of interactivity and technology, engaging the spectator through video cameras, lasers, and invisible sensors. While in the early works viewers mainly acted as a voyeur, her projects of the early and mid-1990s have the viewer surveyed. For example, in the interactive computer and videodisc installation, ?Room of One?s Own? (1990-93) the viewer peers into an articulated eyepiece, modeled on the concept of Thomas Edison?s peep show. As the eye looks at what seems to be a miniature empty bedroom, a periscopic device tracks movement and corresponding video images of a female occupant named ?Marion? are produced (she can be either seductive or irate, depending where one gazes). Adding another level within the installation, a small monitor exhibits the viewer?s eye, alongside the projections, implicating a virtual dialogue of sight where everyone is examined. Similar to ?The Dante Hotel,? but with new technologies to spontaneously produce an audio and visual track, the spectator here enacts what that the work calls into question: a moral self-observation. ?Room of One?s Own? references two important processors: ?Lorna,? an interactive video art disc about an agoraphobic woman whose decisions are remotely controlled by the audience, and ?Deep Contact? (1984-89), a touch-sensitive monitor that investigates sexual fantasy that replicates the Marion character. In each interactive structure, by just playing along, the viewers? gaze incriminates them in a level of identity theft. Likewise, with ?America?s Finest? (1994-95), Hershman confronts the guilt associated with what we think of as passive looking through violent, active methods: as we look through the eye piece of an M16 rifle, we discover ourselves as the target superimposed over images of war and devastation. Many of Hershman?s Internet and video projects from the late 1990s onward are interconnected, with both media providing a way to successfully incorporate all of her characters and themes. For example, in her film Teknolust (2002), Hershman?s Agent Ruby, an autonomous web agent created the same year, is featured in several scenes invoking the audience to extend their filmic experience outside the theater and onto the Net. Her 1997 film, Conceiving Ada, was completed using virtual sets similar to those of ?The Difference Engine #3,? Hershman?s interactive investigation of museum space as a cyber entity. As these contemporary projects deepen and expand our sense of alternate reality and identity (which looking back only seemed to have flickered in her installation art), the impact of Hershman?s pervasive career multiplies to an unsettling degree. But in fact, it stretches back to 1985 when director Susan Seidelman modeled her film Desperately Seeking Susan on the infamous Roberta Breitmore. And as far as artistic inspiration goes, anyone who has seen Hershman?s art has probably been influenced by it, whether they knew it or not. In ?The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson, Secret Agent, Private I,? Hershman writes that, according to a national database, there are several other people living in the United States under the name ?Lynn Hershman,? and she cites three cities: Rancho Palos Verdes (CA), Manteca (CA), and Phoenix (AZ). She then writes, ?I am none of the above.? Nothing could be more true. For the last 35 years, she has perfected an art practice in which ?thinly disguised surrogates for herself,? as Howard Fox notes in the same publication–a repertoire of Robertas–have safeguarded her from the perils of autonomy and supported a simulacrum of living. Even so, Hershman has overcome the formalism that prohibited her works to be understood early on, she has progressed and spearheaded a movement for a new kind of art, and she has influenced at least a century to come of artists who will hopefully know her name and the rest of the projects this article couldn?t have even attempted to cover without writing another 200+ page monograph. Lynn, Roberta, Agent Ruby: over and over. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard Foundation,  The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Digest is filtered by Marisa Olson (marisa@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 10, number 52. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org. To unsubscribe from this list, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/subscribe">http://rhizome.org/subscribe</a>. Subscribers to Rhizome Digest are subject to the terms set out in the Member Agreement available online at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/29.php">http://rhizome.org/info/29.php</a>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +