It is time to upgrade your browser! This site looks and acts much better in a newer browser. Go TO THIS PAGE to find LINKS to all the major NEW BROWSERS. The links are at the bottom of the page under "What can I do?"

Or, you may keep reading this ugly page.

the MTAA-RR

[splash image]

MTAA-RR:

Mar 30, 2008

going

posted at 13:49 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

Oh yeah…I just got a flickr “pro”. You can now enjoy all 493 nuggets of on line snaps and art…like this littel gem of pain -

small performance

Need more? Don’t forget ye ol’ Tintype
permanent link to this post

The Surrogates - Eva and Franco Mattes at OTO on April 11

posted at 12:49 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

01s

On April 11, from 7pm to 10pm, Over The Opening is please to present a new video performance work by Eva and Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.org)

surrogate - substitute, proxy, replacement; deputy, representative, stand-in, standby, stopgap, relief, pinch-hitter, understudy.

Eva and Franco Mattes continue their investigations into power, authorship and identity with “The Surrogates” a new performance based video project. Combining elements of theater, video, surveillance, and social interaction, “The Surrogates” transforms OTO into an experimental social space questioning the distinction between the viewer and the viewed.

Eva and Franco Mattes works have been shown internationally including: Collection Lambert, Avignon; Fondazione Pitti Discovery, Florence, Postmasters Gallery, New York; Lentos Museum of Modern Art, Linz; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; ICC, Tokyo; Manifesta4, Frankfurt.

They received the Jerome Commission from the Walker Art Center, and are among the youngest artists to ever participate to the Venice Biennale. In 2006 they received a fellowship from Colombia University, New York.

Mattes’ works are part of several private and public collections such as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; MEIAC, Spain; MAK, Vienna.

More info at Over the Opening
permanent link to this post

Mar 28, 2008

LIVE @ Beall Press Release

posted at 15:02 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

MTAA + RSG’s new multi-channel video/software installation, Want, is being premiered at the exhibition LIVE at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, UC Irvine next week!

More on Want here and here.

Along with MTAA & RSG, LIVE includes artists Karen Finley, Siebren Versteeg, Natalie Bookchin, Ben Rubin, Aphid Stern and Michael Dale and is curated by David Familian.

Read the official press release (format smorgasbord):
Google doc
Word (.doc)
OpenOffice (.odt)
PDF

Excerpt below:
BRIEF OVERVIEW
What is the meaning of “live” in today’s virtual world? The Beall Center for Art and Technology is pleased to present LIVE, an exhibit which features nine artists who sample and transform data, photographs and video from the Internet and incorporate it into their sculptures and installations. The LIVE exhibit will be open to viewers April 3 – June 7, 2008.

[…]

CURATOR’S STATEMENT
The title of this exhibition poses a question—how do we define and experience what is live when the majority of our daily interactions are increasingly mediated and reconfigured by various technologies? And how does this change our perception of what is considered real or actual versus what is virtual? Līve features nine artists who sample and transform data, photographs and video from the Internet and incorporate it into their sculptures and installations. Either extracting live footage or transmitting data in real time, they cull from diverse sources including Congressional speeches from C-Span, websites with Iraqi war casualties, a critique of consumerism from a peer-to-peer network and on-line video surveillance. As the artists isolate ideas and images from the steady stream of unrelenting data, they produce thought-provoking, aesthetic and “līve” works of art that also challenge our ideas of real and virtual experience.

In 1889 in Time and Free Will, the philosopher Henri Bergson suggested that the “real” and the “unreal” do not exist, there is only the actual and virtual — the actual is that which science describes and quantifies, while the virtual is what we process in our minds. As we take in the input of the actual world through our senses and process a series of physical and quantifiable information, it is transformed into conscious and unconscious responses, as our minds become a repository of virtual experiences.

As communication technologies such as telegraph and telephone were invented, there was suddenly a great physical distance between the sender and the receiver. The innovation of radio and television broadcast media increased this spatial displacement even further, transforming one-to-one personal communication into live events experienced by masses of people. The advent of recording technology increased displacement not just the spatially but also temporally: recordings became like memories fixed in both form and time, just as writing allowed speech to be fixed as text. As Plato noted in his famous account of conversations between Socrates and Phaedrus, throughout history the direct experience and dialogical nature of live speech has always been privileged over recorded text.

Even today it is always emphasized and privileged when any event—a breaking news story, a natural disaster, a sports match or a performance is presented “live.” Since the 1990s with the omnipresence of the Internet and more recently, Web 2.0 technologies such as You Tube, Flicker and social net-working sites, the notion of live experiences has become more spontaneous and democratized. Artists noticed these changes in the mid-1990s in the first generation of web-based artworks.

The artists in Live build upon this early work, but expand that vocabulary, extending their art from the web page into the gallery. Their wide range of approaches, forms and methods explore the space/time displacements of mediated events and how those events are both transmitted and remediated.


Read the entire press release permanent link to this post

Mar 27, 2008

Awareness Test

posted at 16:02 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

via Boing Boing



http://www.dothetest.co.uk/ permanent link to this post

“Off the Grid” Exhibition @ the Neuberger

posted at 14:45 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

(…you know I only post about my friends.)

erar-at.jpg

Via emailed press release:
EcoArtTech will be demonstrating their Environmental Risk Assessment Rover-­AT at Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY each evening at dusk on 3/27, 3/28, and 3/29, 2008.

Ecoarttech’s ERAR-AT is part of the Neuberger Museum of Art’s “Off the Grid” Exhibition, March 30 - June 1, 2008. “Off the Grid” features works that subvert and circumvent conventional infrastructures. Co-presented by the Neuberger Museum of Art and free103point9 and curated by Jacqueline Shilkoff, Galen Joseph-Hunter, Tianna Kennedy, and Tom Roe.
http://www.free103point9.org/events/1678

Participating artists: Benjamin Cohen, Dylan Gauthier, and Stephan von Muehlen, EcoArtTech, eteam, Max Goldfarb, Louis Hock, Nina, Katchadourian, Kristin Lucas, Joe McKay, Trevor Paglen, Temporary Services, Seth Weiner, Bart Woodstrup
permanent link to this post

Mar 25, 2008

not fairs

posted at 13:06 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

buck hunter

With our email boxes full of press and the sound of art blog engine revving, the NYC art world heads into Fair Week. Here are two “Alt. Fairs” that I would like to note. Why? I just like the idea that they exist.

Disarmory
Dark Fair
permanent link to this post

Mar 23, 2008

photo from last night’s Masolit with the Creationists show at OTO

posted at 15:37 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

Masolit and the Creationists at OTO

Happy Easter. Photos from last night’s Masolit / Creationist show at Over The Opening show are now up at OTO’s Flickr set and Tintype

We are also as happy as bunnies with gifts of chocolate eggs to announce that the April 11 OTO show will be a new performance based video installation by Eva and Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.org). Word. More details soon. permanent link to this post

Mar 21, 2008

NY art fairs 08

posted at 14:22 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

They kinda snuck up on me this year… looks like they’re next week. Sometimes I’m just a tad too out of touch with the art world.

…considering skipping them this year. Is it because I don’t care? Or because I’m just bitter at not being part of the market? Whatever. I hate art fairs — even work I like looks horrid in those packed little stalls. It reminds me of ogling animals in zoos; it always makes me sad. permanent link to this post

Creative Capital scores .5mil for new media

posted at 02:18 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

This is good. Via press release:
CREATIVE CAPITAL RECEIVES GRANT FROM THE TOBY FUND TO SUPPORT EMERGING FIELDS ARTISTS

$540,000 to benefit artists working in alternative gaming, internet-based activism, new media installations, robotics, and more

NEW YORK, NY (March 20, 2008) — Creative Capital, the premier national artist support organization, is the recipient of a major, three-year gift from The TOBY Fund, established by collector, philanthropist, and former curator Toby Devan Lewis. This $540,000 gift specifically supports the production costs of Creative Capital emerging fields artists, a category that encompasses artists whose work includes imaginative uses of new technologies, as well as genre-blurring applications of familiar creative practices.

“From our very first grant round in 1999, Creative Capital was committed to artists whose work doesn’t neatly fit the usual discipline categories,” said Creative Capital’s president Ruby Lerner, “While the sometimes indefinable nature of these projects is tremendously exciting, it also creates a handicap, as this kind of work often lacks the support infrastructure of more traditionally defined disciplines. Ms. Lewis has always had a similar passion for artists who boldly cross all sorts of boundaries — discipline, aesthetic, thematic — and we’re thrilled that The TOBY Fund for Emerging Fields at Creative Capital will draw more attention to how these artists challenge the very landscape of the contemporary arts.”

The TOBY Fund grant will allow Creative Capital to support more of its emerging fields grantees at the $50,000 level, the organization’s maximum award. These artists will also benefit from the organization’s trademark program of artist services, which is valued at an additional $25,000 per artist. To date, Creative Capital has funded 48 emerging fields projects representing 65 artists, with $1.1 million in direct funding and more than $1 million in artist services. Artists previously supported through this category include Cory Arcangel, Luca Buvoli, Hasan Elahi, Marie Sester and art collectives such as The Yes Men and SubRosa. The organization is currently conducting a grant round that will result in another class of emerging fields grantees being announced in early 2009.
permanent link to this post

Mar 17, 2008

Masolit and the Creationists at OTO Saturday, March 22nd (7pm to 10pm)

posted at 20:04 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

masolit

On Saturday, March 22nd from 7pm to 10 pm, OTO is pleased present the debut live performance of Masolit, a new music project featuring vocalist/producer Margaret Jameson (also known as tinydiva), mix master/producer Phil Painson, and guitarist/melodist extraordinaire Tom Jameson. Before forming Masolit, Phil and Margaret performed together at many New York City venues including Bowery Ballroom, Galapagos, Brownie’s, CBGB’s and Fez as members of the downtown ensemble Market. Influenced by a wide spectrum of musical styles embracing hip-hop, funk, old-ass blues, French Impressionism and electro, Masolit seeks to create an innovative original music culture for the masses.

Opening for Masolit will be the Creationists, consisting of Abe Maneri (keyboards) and Tom Jameson (guitar). They will present a set of eclectic preludes comprising both unpremeditated and intelligently designed phases.

Saturday, March 22nd (7pm to 10pm)

7pm The Creationists

8pm Masolit

To hear Masolit’s latest recording “NSA” go to www.myspace.com/masolit or www.masolit.net

OTO is located at 60 North 6th Street (2nd floor) Brooklyn, NY, 11211
L train to Bedford Avenue
3 Blocks west on North 6th - just shy of Kent
permanent link to this post

MTAA + RSG premier Want

posted at 14:26 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid


Want @ Beall Apr 3, ‘08

We’re very happy to announce that in our first major collaboration with RSG, we’ll premier a new multiple channel algorithmic video installation entitled “Want” as part of the exhibition “Live” opening April 3rd, 2008 at the Beall Center for Art & Technology.

Watch the ‘teaser’ trailer above. And there’s more here: http://mtaa.net/want/

+++ a description +++

People want what they want NOW. Instinct tells us to get as much as we can as fast as we can – and the Internet obliges. Instant gratification meets infinite opportunity – be it information, commerce, employment, acceptance or love. And yet the majority of bandwidth is dedicated to base human behavior, i.e. celebrity gossip and pornography.

Nobody needs poorly Photoshopped pictures of naked Britney Spears – but hey! If they’re out there, why not look? The Internet gives our less-seemly desires space to grow, allowing us to anonymously indulge curiosities, perversions and fetishes that most would never pursue in a public space. And yet “virtual reality” has ceased to exist. What we think of as the “real world” now encompasses the Internet. We download movie clips and call our co-workers to watch. We shop online and have goods delivered to our home. We meet through matchmaking web sites. No more virtual vs. real. It’s all real now.

“Want” explores the current climate of society over-stimulated by the bombardment of technological instant gratification, and the very definite, yet-to-be-revealed implications and issues of accountability and responsibility surrounding virtuality. Here, the Internet’s underbelly is exposed; pushing the quiet, anonymous behavior that flourishes in cyberspace into public space, forcing us to reevaluate this behavior if it were to take place in the physical community.

The life-sized six-screen video display uses custom software to monitor real time Internet searches. When the software finds a programmed keyword, it triggers a video clip of one of several actors/avatars who translates the virtual request to reality.

A soccer mom says, “I want French.”
A rocker dude says, “I want Star Trek Enterprise.”
A nondescript middle-aged guy says, “I want Little Girl.”
A girl says, “I want Forever.”

The six video screens are triggered almost concurrently, causing the voiced requests to overlap. The result is an audio-visual cacophony of desire; an online echo chamber of warped reality.

+++

“Want” is funded by a grant from the Creative Capital Foundation. permanent link to this post

Mar 13, 2008

Rhizome’s widgets

posted at 18:47 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Rhizome released a bunch of widgets for their site. You can now easily add bits of code to your web site that displays your portfolio, Rhizome news and lots more. Check it out…

permanent link to this post

Mar 12, 2008

just thinking out loud on del.icio.us

posted at 16:26 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

about artist who visualize communication

http://del.icio.us/m.river/vc permanent link to this post

Mar 07, 2008

a song for tim on friday

posted at 13:45 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver



“Losing My Edge” was the first LCD Soundsystem single released on 8 July 2002.

When I was DJing, playing Can, Liquid Liquid, ESG, all that kind of stuff, I became kind of cool for a moment, which was a total anomaly. And when I heard other DJs playing similar music I was like: ‘Fuck! I’m out of a job! These are my records!’ But it was like someone had crept into my brain and said all these words that I hate. Did I make the records? Did I fuck! So, I started becoming horrified by my own attitude. I had this moment of glory though. People would use me to DJ just to get them cool. They’d be like ‘It’s the cool rock disco guy’ and this was really weird. And to be honest I was afraid that this new found coolness was going to go away and that’s where ‘Losing My Edge’ comes from. It is about being horrified by my own silliness. And then it became a wider thing about people who grip onto other people’s creations like they are their own. There is a lot of pathos in that character though because it’s born out of inadequacy and love.
— James Murphy

twhid: haha, thanks dude! permanent link to this post

Mar 06, 2008

Rhizome Commissions Program

posted at 21:05 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Rhizome logo

We’ve posted about this before, but here’s a reminder for everybody:

Deadline for applications: midnight, March 31, 2008

Rhizome says:
We support: New Media Art, by which we mean projects that creatively engage new and networked technologies and also works that reflect on the impact of these tools and media in a variety of forms. Commissioned projects can take the final form of online works, performance, video, installation or sound art. Projects can be made for the context of the gallery, the public, or the web.


Amount: 7 commissions in the amount of $3000-5000

Guidelines and application forms can be found here: http://rhizome.org/commissions/ permanent link to this post

Mar 05, 2008

Net art in polish

posted at 14:54 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Ewa Wójtowicz’s book “net art” features MTAA’s Creative Commons-licensed Simple Net Art Diagram on the cover. It looks like you can get the book here.

Congrats on the book Ewa.

ewa_net_art.jpg permanent link to this post

Mar 03, 2008

Favorite color

posted at 15:55 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

red

Via some meanderings on-line I found this little blog interview with Cory Arcangel in reference to the new show at MoMA “Color Chart.”

In the blog post, the W mag editor asks Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Ryman and Frank Stella what their favorite colors are. None of these icons of color would say they had a favorite color.

Cory, of course, went against the grain and chose red…

As far as I can remember red has always looked good to me—on cars, on Detroit Redwing uniforms.


There is more than the age difference between the oldsters and Cory. First off, the old guys are all painters (more or less) but Cory isn’t. Cory was trained as a musician and I’d bet that if you asked him his favorite note he wouldn’t give you a definitive answer.

I was trained as a painter and in a recent MTAA project I had to answer the favorite color question and confidently stated that artists don’t have favorite colors. I think M.River chose blue….

blue


M.River adds - Yes, blue is good but if you look at my Tinjail.com site, you will see that my fav RGB bacground color is

#666666


t.whid updates
What M.River doesn’t know is that in CSS shorthand you can type the hexidecimal notation for grey like this:

#666

I put that color in every web project I do… just for fun and because I’m evil. So you could say that ‘#666’ is my favorite color. permanent link to this post

Mar 02, 2008

More on Büchel v. Mass MoCA

posted at 15:08 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

The NYT covers the “metaproject” that sprung from the “Training Ground for Democracy” debacle in this article: Accusations, Depositions: Just More Fodder for Art (don’t miss the slideshow).

(We’ve typed things about this fracas previously here and here.)

The work sounds and looks a tad tedious from what I can tell from the article, but one obviously can’t make an informed judgement unless one sees the work.

This quote of Büchel’s no artist should argue with:
“Who is going to decide what art is?” he wrote in an e-mail message. “For sure it is not the art institution if the authors are still alive and can speak.”

Word. permanent link to this post

Mar 01, 2008

Light Industry

posted at 16:39 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

MTAA will be taking part in the inaugural season of Light Industry, a new screening/performance/lecture series covering film and new media. It’s being organized by Ed Halter and Thomas Beard.

Some press release below and lots more on the web site: http://www.lightindustry.org. Looks awesome!
“The Blazing World,” a screening to be held on March 25, marks the beginning of Light Industry, a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project will begin as a series of weekly events this spring and summer, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator, including Peggy Ahwesh, Cory Arcangel, Rebecca Cleman, Ben Coonley and Michael Smith, Bradley Eros and Brian Frye, eteam, Kendra Gaeta and Laris Kreslins, David Gatten, Lia Gangitano, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Nick Hallett, William E. Jones, Andrew Lampert, Dennis Lim, Mark McElhatten, MTAA, Marisa Olson, Jacob Perlin, Seth Price, Jennifer Reeves, Eddo Stern, and Dan Streible, among others.

Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media. Bringing together the worlds of contemporary art, experimental cinema, new media, documentary film, and the academy, to name only a few, Light Industry looks to foster a complex dialogue amongst a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.

For its opening seasons, all events will take a place on Tuesdays at 8PM in Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn that’s home to a cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of rent-stabilized studios for artists in need of low-cost rental space. This program was conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial redevelopment—one that does not displace artists, workers, local residents or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that integrates cultural and industrial production.
permanent link to this post

1997 - 2006 M.River & T.Whid Art Associates. Some Rights Reserved. MTEWW.com is licensed under a Creative Commons License with the exception of Website Unseen titles which are covered by agreements with individual collectors and otherwise where noted.