Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Digest

Catalog (1961) - John Whitney

John Michael Boling — 2008-11-21T20:00:00+01:00

Created with an analog computer and camera system John Whitney built by converting a World War II M-5 Antiaircraft Gun Director.
Via Javier Morales

Viva Cyborg Theory

Marisa Olson — 2008-11-21T18:20:00+01:00

Donna Haraway once wrote, in her infamous "Cyborg Manifesto," of the idea that there were no separations between bodies and objects. Our life force flows through us and out into the objects we make, she reasoned; thus there ought to be no distinction between the so-called real or natural organisms that nature produces and the artificial machines that humans make. Her conclusion: We are all cyborgs. While this theory was developed prior to the internet's big boom (in 1991, presumably before the word "cyborg" took on the stale whiff it has now), and explicitly as a means of wresting feminism from the binary system in which she saw it entrenched, it turns out that it applies very well to the work of a net art boys club that calls themselves "Neenstars." In 2000 the group was so determined to set themselves apart from the existing paradigm of media art discourse that they hired a Silicon Valley branding firm to invent a new name for them and what they do. The resulting word, "Neen" has been used by the boys (and a few girls along the way) to refer to their work and practice, which revolves around replication and the exploration of an ever-upgraded series of machines. It's all spelled out in their manifesto, in which they say, "Our official theories about reality--quantum physics, etc.--prove that the taste of our life is the taste of a simulation. Machines help us feel comfortable with this condition: they simulate the simulation we call Nature." Open now at Brussels' think.21 Contemporary Gallery is a show of the work of Neen godfathers Andreas Angelidakis, Miltos Manetas, and Angelo Plessas. It won't surprise you that their work moves fluidly through media that includes paintings, web animations, photos, and architectural structures. More importantly, the artists situate their output in relation to the fluidity with which they move in and out of real and virtual spaces, jumping online and offline constantly and seamlessly. Their effort is to downplay the oft-hyped distinction between the real and the digital, arguing that the experience of both is all part of the same larger consciousness. With the title of the show, "Everyday Utopia," they at once dispel the myth of the digital utopia and make clear to those older generation critics still clinging to the false horizon of virtuality that the future is already here. - Marisa Olson

Image credit: Miltos Manetas, Dogs and Cables, oil on canvas, 2006

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Expand your mind...

Ceci Moss — 2008-11-21T17:22:00+01:00

....with Expanded Video!

Electronic Arts Intermix's one-day conference, Expanded Video, will take place tomorrow afternoon at their location on West 22nd Street in Chelsea. Composed of two panels -- one on "Exhibiting" and the other on "Collecting" -- the event brings together leading curators, conservationists, gallerists and artists in the field of media art to discuss the movement of moving image across multiple platforms (most notably, digital) and the significance this shift bears on medium-specificity, viewing, conservation and copyright. Rhizome's own Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter will speak, along with independent curator Caitlin Jones, Whitney Curator Chrissie Illes, Joan Jonas, Jacob Ciocci, Glenn Philips of the Getty Research Institute, Jenny Moore of Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Christopher Eamon of the Kramlich Collection, and Rebecca Cleman of EAI.

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"Schematic: New Media Art From Canada" at [ space ] London

Ceci Moss — 2008-11-21T16:00:00+01:00

Image: Peter Flemming, Canoe, 2008
Image: Norman White, The Helpless Robot, 2008 (Photo by Michelle Kasprzak)
Image: Joe McKay, The Big Job, 2008 (Photo by Michelle Kasprzak)

Bringing together five Canadian machine-makers, Schematic: New Media Art From Canada is a group show currently on view at London's [ space ] gallery. Curator Michelle Kasprzak begins her essay accompanying the show with a description of Jacques de Vaucanson's duck. Citing the appeal of this quirky and captivating invention within its time, she argues that machines today continue to instigate the same degree of fascination, a response to enduring questions of representation and behavior. The show also claims that the group of artists selected -- Peter Flemming, Germaine Koh, Joe Mckay, Nicholas Stedman, and Norman White -- draw on their particular experience as Canadians in their exploration of such themes as weather, the environment, and craftsmanship. I don't know if those topics are necessarily "Canadian", but I had to chuckle a little bit at the explicit play on the rugged frontiersmen stereotype. That aside, the most compelling strand in the show seems to be that of futility and failure. Three works -- Joe McKay's The Big Job, Peter Flemming's Canoe, and Norman White's The Helpless Robot -- engage in actions that reflect the limitations of machines and often their inutility. The Big Job is a mechanical progress bar that moves in accordance to a loading webpage. Repeating infinitely as the page reloads over and over again, it serves as both documentation and a representation of frustration. Similarly, Peter Flemming's Canoe paddles itself to nowhere, while The Helpless Robot relies entirely on the aide of visitors to move about the gallery, actions which are dictated by a synthesized voice. Rather than cater to the "gee whiz" quality of machines, these projects elicit another concurrent response, which is, of course, "goddammit".

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One Thousand and One Biennials

Marisa Olson — 2008-11-20T20:00:00+01:00

Does anyone know how many biennials there are in the world, now? There is a whole sub-field of biennial studies that looks at such issues as the economic impacts of the shows on their host cities and the artists' market values, or the relationship between Eastern biennials and Westernization. Of course, the latter question hinges on whether the show is called a "biennial" or a "biennale"... The truth is, there are now so many of these that it's easy to overlook them. Even the fledging field of electronic art has a few! But Sweden's Electrohype is a unique one, bringing ambitious installations to the beautiful Malmö Konsthall. Now in its fifth incarnation, the show draws large audiences but avoids the temptation to be a mega-show, instead opting to give serious space and consideration to good work by often more emerging artists. Electrohype 08 features ten international artists whose projects focus on "ongoing processes and time." These are Doug Back (CA), Ralf Baecker (DE), Serina Erfjord (NO), Kerstin Ergenzinger (DE), Jessica Field (CA), Voldemars Johansons (LV), Diane Morin (CA), Kristoffer Myskja (NO), Erik Olofsen (NL), and Bill Vorn (CA). While time and endurance are age-old themes in the modern art world, there's not a usual suspect in the bunch! Nonetheless, there is due notice paid to the histories and influences traced by the show. For instance, Doug Back's Sticks (1979) is showing aside Ralf Baecker's Rechnender Raum (Calculating Space) (2007). Despite a large difference in scale and nearly thirty years between them, both are kinetic sculptures fleshing out what it means to compute and how mechanics might be used to reflect upon human movement. Ironically, the big piece looks at micro-motions within the body and the smaller one looks at social interaction! Other interesting works include Serina Erfjord's Black Stain and Cold Stain (both 2008), which are small stains on the wall that respectively trap magnetic fluid and humidity, so that the respectively light and dark spots bring growth and lifespan into the proverbial room. Voldemars Johansons' Aero Torrents (2007) draws on the old science trick of displaying sound vibrations on the surface of a liquid. In this case, a small pool of water (not altogether dissimilar-looking from an AeroBed) echoes the sonic iteration of meteorological data from recent major storms in Europe. The piece embodies a sort of poetic form of translation, carrying on both bigger water-related weather patterns that have obviously long-predated our field, and reciting a once-novel and now almost vernacular form of representation within electronic art. The presentation of works like these trace enduring practices in the field, while spotlighting new experiments and practitioners. - Marisa Olson

Image: Voldemars Johansons, Aero Torrents, 2007

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Growing // Innit (2008) - Mark Brown

John Michael Boling — 2008-11-20T19:00:00+01:00

More work by Mark Brown

Melter 02 (2003) - Takeshi Murata

John Michael Boling — 2008-11-20T18:00:00+01:00

Animation by Takeshi Murata
sound by Space Machine
30 second clip from "Melter 02", running time 4 minutes
More work by Takeshi Murata

Performative fail (2008) - Rosa Menkman

Ceci Moss — 2008-11-20T17:00:00+01:00

Performative fail from rosa menkman on Vimeo.
This video is made with the help of a collection of failing hard drive sounds, while the video is a combination of failed pdf screengrap videos. More work by Rosa Menkman

Digital Decay III (2007) - Claire Evans

2008-11-20T16:00:00+01:00

Digital Decay from universe on Vimeo.

Statement: This video is an animation of the process of saving an image file in continuously lower file formats over hundreds of times.

This image is of a quote, taken from Douglas Davis' essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction," which argues (in part) that unlike analogue signals, which are like waves crashing upon a beach and losing clarity with every ebb of the tide, digital bits "can be endlessly reproduced, without degradation, always the same, always perfect."

More work by Claire Evans

Pipilotti Rist's "Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)" Opens

Ceci Moss — 2008-11-20T13:59:00+01:00

Video artist Pipilotti Rist's large scale multimedia installation Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters) opened last night at MoMA. The space is designed to immerse and overwhelm the visitor -- a sensation captured by the work's title Pour Your Body Out. Twenty-five foot high projections surround an immense circular couch -- in an interview in one of the videos below MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach likens the perspective to the experience of looking up while laying at the bottom of a pool. Rist is also interviewed, and she discusses how she staged the project.

Interview with Alexei Shulgin

Brian Droitcour — 2008-11-19T20:00:00+01:00

Image: 386DX performance at Hellenic American Union, Athens, 2000. (Photo by Jenny Marketou)

Alexei Shulgin's pioneering works in internet art are collected on his site easylife.org, but many of the links there are empty or obsolete; one called Insanity Notification sends visitors to a site indicating that Shulgin went insane at an unidentified point in the past. It has been more than five years since Shulgin left the online environment to focus on the production of tangible, marketable objects. His collaboration with Aristarkh Chernyshev began in 2003, and two years later the artists founded Electroboutique a gallery-slash-gadget shop selling distorting screens and other high-tech toys. Shulgin and Chernyshev called it "Media Art 2.0," and wrote a manifesto saying the plug-and-play nature of their new work liberated them from a "media art ghetto," adding that their manipulation of familiar screen-based interfaces contained a nugget of criticality. Their work was recently featured in "Criti Pop", an exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (along with interactive installations that Chernyshev made in collaboration with Vladislav Efimov). - Brian Droitcour

Your recent exhibition was called "CritiPop." Could you explain where this label came from, and what it means?

We spent a long time thinking about what to call the exhibition. Media Art 2.0 no longer fit. We had moved away from media art and no longer wanted to be associated with it. Eventually, we singled out the most important feature uniting the works: critical communication contained in a popular form, with shiny plastic, bright colors, primitive interactivity, a resemblance to consumer goods, glowing LED screens and so on. Thus, "CritiPop" was born. Its effect is akin to that of advertising or propaganda: vivid, universally recognizable images that conceal a subliminal message.

There is a striking amount of texts and manifestos accompanying "CritiPop." Are you concerned that the critical component of your work won't be read without them?

Almost all these texts were written in the years preceding "CritiPop," for exhibitions in our gallery. So, it was natural to include them. But basically you're right. We had to introduce the viewer to the context, because our works are easy to read on the superficial level of real-time, eye-candy effects, brightly polished plastic and impressive animation.

Image: Installation view at Moscow Museum of Modern Art. (Photo by Anton Akimov)

Moscow critics often frame the history of Russian art after perestroika around artists like Oleg Kulik and Anatoly Osmolovsky, who worked with actions and other ephemeral forms of art during the chaotic 1990s and turned to object-based practice during the relative stability of the Putin administration. Your career follows a similar trajectory. Do you think this is a fairly accurate description of what happened? Why did you abandon net.art and begin to produce objects in collaboration with Aristarkh Chernyshev?

I think there are similarities here, but also significant differences. Unlike Kulik or Osmolovsky, who always worked on the territory of institutionalized contemporary art, I was working on the internet, which in the 1990s was an open zone for experimentation. I had become disgusted with the world of museums and galleries, where I spent quite some time in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, thanks to perestroika and the boom for Soviet art. I even decided to stop being an artist for a while.

The term net.art came later. In the mid-1990s you could make art on the internet without getting stuck in a particular context. The internet itself was the context. Eventually even net.art was institutionalized. But it did not create its own economy; only JODI could survive as internet artists, thanks to the generous grant system in the Netherlands. But net.art disappeared simply because the internet developed. As soon as a large number of people obtained access to the internet, net.art became meaningless. It dissolved in the mass of blogs and platforms. You could say that net.art invented and investigated methods and technologies used in Web 2.0.

Image: Alexei Shulgin, Natalie Bookchin, Blank+Jeron, Introduction to Net Art, 1994-1999

In the early 2000s I saw some creative potential in software art, which could be called the heir to net.art, and organized with Olga Goriunova four Read.me festivals, as well as the repository Runme.org (along with Amy Alexander and Alex McLean), which is active to this day. While working on Read.me, I noticed that software art was following the same path to demise as net.art -- it was gradually becoming absorbed by media culture and new IT products, by digital banality. That was when I began to work with Aristarkh Chernyshev. Our first project, in 2003, was Super-i Real Virtuality Goggles . But that wasn't my first material project after net.art. In 1998 I made 386 DX, the singing computer, and I've given 100 concerts around the world with it.

Web 2.0 marked the end of net.art, as it had to compete with the glut of ideas published on Livejournal and other sites like it, and thus introduced a crisis of originality. Moreover, the inability of political activism to affect policy -- the main shock here was the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq -- cast doubts on its reasons for existence. That brings us to the mid-2000s. With the strategies of the 1990s facing a crisis, we created Electroboutique as a laboratory for studying new strategies in art. We wanted to create media works that were plug-and-play and zero-maintenance. Furthermore, we wanted to distance ourselves from media activism, which had hit a dead end. Since art equals consumption in the conditions of the unipolar capitalist world, we decided to make a commercial object. We put protest and critique in its body. That's how we arrived at our style, which we called commercial protest. Then we added exciting shapes and sound. And that's how we got CritiPop.

Image: Electroboutique, Californian Ideology, 2008. (Video-object)
You say that net.art "did not create its own economy." That makes it sound like opening Electroboutique was a way for you to survive. You created your own commercial system outside the existing art market, the museum and gallery system.

You're right on the first count, we really were in search of financial independence. We wanted to make a product that would be an interesting work of art and also sell. But we were never trying to build an alternative to the museum and gallery world. As an art company, we are not hostile to that world (though we are critical), or to capitalist society in general. We work with XL Gallery in Moscow and we don't turn down museum shows. Net.art was fun. It was a game and a parody of an art movement. But now, Electroboutique mocks museification and historization.

Image: Alexei Shulgin and Aristarkh Chernyshev, MediaMirror, 2005. (Photo courtesy of Moscow Museum of Modern Art)

I'm not convinced that your commercial protest in the form of Electroboutique's products is a sharper weapon of critique than media activism. Even if media activism has hit a dead end, as you say, do you think commercial protest can escape that?

Time will tell, but for now we're satisfied with the result. First of all, we borrow subliminal devices from advertising, so if the viewer doesn't read the critical message right away, he'll still get it. Besides, we've had a lot of feedback from "ordinary viewers," from reputable critics and collectors, and in the vast majority of cases the reaction is perfectly adequate. Of course, there are critics who say: "That's not art!" But we're happy with that, too. It makes us feel like real modernists.

As for dead ends, that's a crisis embedded in the Western idea of progress. The idea of progress assumes the necessity of the new. The new comes to replace the old, only to later go out of date and be pushed aside by a "new" new. Well, with our mind and our sensory organs we know and feel that CritiPop is new today. Just try to convince me otherwise.

Brian Droitcour is Rhizome's Curatorial Fellow.

Thank you!

Rhizome — 2008-11-19T19:00:00+01:00

We would like to acknowledge all of the generous individuals who've contributed to our Community Campaign thus far. We would not be able to run Rhizome without your support. Thank you!

We have until December 31, 2008 at midnight to reach our goal of $30,000. Please take a moment to support Rhizome today.

The Analog Color Field Computer (2006) - Gregory Shakar

Ceci Moss — 2008-11-19T18:00:00+01:00

LAUNCH
More work by Gregory Shakar

secondary colors (2006) - Peter Luining

John Michael Boling — 2008-11-19T17:30:00+01:00

LAUNCH
More work by Peter Luining

ColorFlip.com (2008) - Rafael Rozendaal

John Michael Boling — 2008-11-19T16:00:00+01:00

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More work by Rafael Rozendaal

Sizer (2008) - Harm van den Dorpel

John Michael Boling — 2008-11-19T13:14:00+01:00

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More work by Harm van den Dorpel

The Real McCoys

Marisa Olson — 2008-11-18T18:00:00+01:00

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy are a married couple of New York-based artists whose collaborative work conveys a love of film and televised narratives. Their early projects embodied database aesthetics as they chopped shows like 8 is Enough, Kung Fu, and Starsky and Hutch into short clips, often inviting viewers to rearrange them according to what we'd now call metadata. For instance, one could choose from a bank of DVDs in their Every Shot, Every Episode to watch every occurrence of the color blue, or of extreme close-ups. More recent works have entailed building elaborate miniature film sets, complete with working cameras, to shoot microfilms. In the case of High Seas, the set is a sort of kinetic sculpture in its own right, mimicking its subject as it moves around to create shots of the famed Titanic loosing its footing on the ocean. The role of filmic media in mythologizing the ill-fated boat is of course implicit in the installation. While these projects have always been infused with a sense of subjectivity, as the artists perform their fandom through their selective decisions, lately their work has incorporated more explicitly autobiographical elements. Their piece, Our Second Date, for instance, is a miniature movie set which features the artists watching the film from their second date, Weekend, reenacted through a mobile sculpture and video streamed live to a tiny screen. The choice to position themselves as spectators within their own reality, and moreover to confess that their romance budded around screen pleasure opens up a number of interpretations of their ongoing work and paves the way to their newest project, which opens November 22nd at Postmasters Gallery. In I'll Replace You, the artists again place themselves at center stage, without stepping in front of the camera. Instead, a series of different actors (some of whom are quite miscast) play them in enacting a "day in the life" of the artists. Of course, this day is unfathomably long in that it includes every type of activity in which the artists, parents, lovers, and professors might possibly engage on a given day, thus exploring the roles and experiences that constitute our identities. Nonetheless, the fake McCoys manage to do it all, with the actors changing shift throughout the day, while engaging with the artists' real children, students, friends, and colleagues. The resultant video installation is accompanied by a series of photo portraits of the artists in which passersby and friends stand in for one or another member of the couple (raising questions about the deeper psychic or cosmic nature of compatibility and the implausibility of replacement) and a series of "artist talks" in which actors from outside of the art world discuss work by famous artists as if it was their own. Once again returning to the database form, the latter piece promises to shed light on the genre conventions of art-related discourse and critique with clips that are both humorous and poetic. Leave it to the McCoys to sketch out the formal boundaries of a practice and then show us how fun and beautiful it can be to color within those lines! - Marisa Olson

Image: Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, I'll Replace You, 2008 (Photo courtesy of Postmasters Gallery)

Radio Astronomy (2004) - r a d i o q u a l i a

Ceci Moss — 2008-11-18T17:15:00+01:00

LAUNCH

Statement: Radio Astronomy is an art and science project which broadcasts sounds intercepted from space live on the internet and on the airwaves. Listeners will hear the acoustic output of radio telescopes live. The content of the live transmission will depend on the objects being observed by partner telescopes. On any given occasion listeners may hear the planet Jupiter and its interaction with its moons, radiation from the Sun, activity from far-off pulsars or other astronomical phenomena.

Tetrasomia (2000) - Stephen Vitiello

Ceci Moss — 2008-11-18T16:00:00+01:00

LAUNCH

Statement: Stephen Vitiello's first solo project for the web, Tetrasomia presents intriguing web-based archives of sounds from the natural and physical world, including such sounds as a fruit fly courtship, an underwater volcano, and poison frogs, as the source for an interactive sound project. Tetrasomia also features four new sound compositions by Vitiello: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Work commissioned by Dia's ongoing web projects series.

Alexandre Singh's "Assembly Instructions" at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco

Ceci Moss — 2008-11-18T14:00:00+01:00

"Assembly Instructions" is a visual thought map, comprised of over 120 small framed black and white xeroxed collages, by Brooklyn-based artist Alexandre Singh. Each collage represents an idea, which the artist connects to other collages via a network of dotted lines. The city of San Francisco is the originating point for the series, and the visitor can follow Singh's train of thought related to this subject by following the intricate and tangential maze of images, which spread throughout the gallery. In a sense, this project is almost a tactile answer to the visual sequence of ideas encountered on sites such as FFFFOUND!, while also drawing on the older practice of free association. The exhibition is up at Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco until the end of November.

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