Work by four artists will be installed at the Conference site for the duration of the conference.
Monica Chau
Issues of social history and memory are the impetus for Stories from the Faultline, a site-specific installation commissioned by the Sheppard Art Gallery at University of Nevada, Reno. The installation incorporates QuickTime digital video projection based on historical research of late 19th to early 20th century Chinese Americans from the Reno/Sparks, Virginia City, and Carson City areas. The visual layering of the projected images - the transcontinental railroad, 19th century photographs, and contemporary video footage of former Chinese communities - encompasses memory, history, the accumulation of life experience, and time spans.
MONICA CHAU is a New York-based mixed media installation artist/curator/writer who utilizes photography and digital media processes in her work to explore issues of history, labor, and memories of the past. An inextricable part of her art juxtaposes text and image to comment upon the process of looking and being looked at, both as a woman and as an Asian American. On faculty in the Digital Media Lab at the International Center for Photography, New York, she has also taught at UC Irvine, the American Film Institute, and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Chau received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts and was a past participant in Curatorial Studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Janine Cirincione & Michael Ferraro
Janine Cirincione & Michael Ferraro have been collaborating to make digital interactive art since 1992. Cirincione and Ferraro create interactive installations in which the viewer navigates through a 3D computer generated environment - surrounded by music, encountering various characters along the way, a story unfolds for the viewer as they journey through the fictional world. Their works are multi-sensory landscapes of sound, image and spoken word generated in real-time. Their works have been exhibited at The Wexner Center for the Arts, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, The Power Plant, Toronto and other museums and galleries internationally.
Pam Jennings
Les LeVeque
Is It Love?
LES LEVEQUE is an electronic media artist. Many of his video tapes and installations tamper with electronic systems to examine the cultural effects of "incessant technological renewal." His most recent video, flight, is a frame by frame reediting of a five second clip of an astronaut walking on the moon into a seven minute long meditation on technological transcendence. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Canada and Europe and has received awards from the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. He has also produced six video tapes in collaboration with video artist Diane Nerwen.
"Stories from the Faultline (or Woeful Tails of the Nevada Chinese)", 1996
Installation with digital video projection, digital photographs, 30x40 inch color iris print on Rives paper, VHS video projector, 9.4 x 11 ft. organza fabric panels, sound
"The vast contributions of Chinese Americans to the history of the west was the impetus for Stories from the Faultline (or Woeful Tails of the Nevada Chinese), a full-scale installation commissioned by the Sheppard Art Gallery, University of Nevada, Reno. The installation merges historical photographs of Chinese Nevadans with contemporary video footage of Reno, Carson City, and Virginia City areas. Completed as a QuickTime digital video projected within a dark room, the installation explores the lives of the Chinese as laborers who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad and worked in the Nevada-area mines from the late 19th to early 20th century. The visual layering of the projected images encompasses memory, history, the accumulation of life experiences, and time spans. An evening of stories, poetry, and prose shared by Asian American students about their experiences and the cross-pollination of cultures was an integral component of the project, while the entire research process, documented in writing, video, photography and slides, was a tremendous outreach opportunity into the Asian American communities within Nevada."
Poet in a Box
Poet in a Box is a character study. Our Poet is a small character who simply paces back and forth in an endless, existential loop - mumbling, cursing and muttering to itself until it is interrupted by the viewer. Poet has been designed with a limited amount of reactive behavior that sends it into one of several moods. The nature of your interaction with Poet determines the degree to which it comes to trust you and the degree to which the poet reveals information about itself.
"We create interactive virtual reality story-worlds. We define story-worlds as simulated 3-D environments with animated characters, music and spoken dialogue. They combine the narrative thread of fiction with the goal and motivational structure of games, immersing the viewer in a multi-sensory landscape of sound, image and spoken word generated in real time. Literature and games often share a common structure, sending a hero on a symbolic journey or quest. Epic works like the Odyssey or Gilgamesh function as allegories for a hero's transformation through experience and hardship. Many ancient board games represent a similar metamorphosis. In games, however, the vagaries of fate and destiny are not expressed through language, they are manifest in the roll of the dice and through movement on the board. In this spirit, we combine a literary model and a gaming paradigm as the underlying navigational and conceptual structure of our work." - Janine Cirincione/Michael Ferraro
Installations / Mini Galleries Off Main Dining Area
Work by four artists will be installed at the Conference site for the duration of the conference:
the book of ruins and desire
Computer interactive sculpture using a microprocessor and Macintosh platform
An interactive, mixed-media sculpture that explores issues of desire and communication. Imagine you are standing before a simple table on which rests a sculptural object with hinged metal leaves or pages. From its case a barely audible voice murmurs, "touch me." This draws you closer and gives you permission to interact with the book of ruins and desire. When you turn its metal pages, for example, you begin an exploration into its multiple layers, composing your own collage of my imagery and sound. the book of ruins and desire pages are etched metal plates. The degree of a turned page as well as its velocity are calculated via the fuzzy logic inference engine programmed into a microprocesor. The results are fed to a Macintosh computer running the MIDI programming language Opcode MAX (4). Max is programmed as a video and audio switching device that determines which images and sounds are played back via a small LCD monitor and embedded speakers, as well as a qualitative dynamics of the media such as volume, video direction and playback speed. Max is also programmed to create MIDI interludes via freeware serial music libraries.
PAMELA JENNINGS is currently doing interaction design with the User System Ergonomics Research Lab at the Almaden Research Center at IBM, and she is the Design Director of alphaWorks. Her electronic art work explores the creative frontiers of electronic art and issues of desire. Her projects include the CD ROM Solitaire: dream journal, an interactive sculpture the book of ruins and desire, and constant experimentation on her web site. Her writings have appeared in Felix: a Journal of Media Arts and Communication, and Leonardo. She is the recipient of three Media Arts grants from the New York State Council on the Arts; and has been an Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts; and a MacDowell Artist Colony Fellow. She received an M.F.A. in Computer Arts from the School of Visual Arts, an M.A. in Studio Art from the New York University/International Center of Photography program, and a B.A. in Psychology from Oberlin College.
6-channel video installation, VHS video players, monitors, sound
Is It Love (#2) is an installation of 76 used security monitors in various stages of electronic failure. Prior to this installation monitors assisted in the surveillance of workers and customers in a number of different industrial and commercial sites. Their process of electronic failure is active. As I continue to exhibit this work image resolution continues to fade, flickers and finally disappears. Each monitor displays one the six video loops. These video loops consist 12 people blinking in Morse code the slogans from telecommunication companies. The eye blinking sequences are animations digitally constructed from the first 15 frames of a captured eye blink, thereby integrating a human gesture, eye blinking, with digital structure. In Is It Love (#2) I have attempted to use technological structures as a metaphor of experience that re-present a notion of subjectivity that become mediated through electronic communication. - Les Leveque