Exhibition
signal
The sound, image, or message transmitted or received in telegraphy, telephony,
radio, television, or radar.
We receive signals, they
pass through and around us - some undetected, others indiscriminately assimilated
or consciously ignored - informing and shaping our electronically mediated worldview.
Technological advances in electronic communication networks enable one to enter
the habitat of endangered species in Africa via webcams or witness presidential
palaces destroyed by "smart bombs" in real time, CNN-itized with a slick
3D graphical interface. Far removed from decimated dictators and vanishing exotic
species, how do we perceive these transmitted representations of remote events
and behaviours? Is technology facilitating our world knowledge by removing spatial
boundaries or does the promise of "real-time" experience only lead to
more uncertainty when reality can be digitally augmented to suit global infotainment
standards or personal agendas?
With its geographic immensity,
relative remoteness, advanced telecommunications and artist-run centre infrastructure,
Canada has always been at the forefront of the international tele-art movement.
As early as the 1970's artists were using telephones, faxes, radio, television,
computers, and satellites to explore and question our ambiguous relationship with
machines and communication networks.
signal is an exhibition
of two projects that electronically record and transmit behaviours and natural
processes over network cabling in order to explore notions of time, space, representation,
and transmutation.
Wind Array Cascade Machine:
Pod by Montreal based artist Steve Heimbecker is a digital landscape of the
tactile and the ethereal. It consists of an array of sixty-four movement sensors
on the roof of the Méduse Artists' Co-operative in Quebec City and sixty-four
corresponding light sculptures at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre in
Toronto. As the wind blows across the roof in Quebec, the sensors gather real-time
data and transmit it though the WWW to the light markers in the Toronto exhibition
space. The lights illuminate according to the pressure waves of the wind, showing
the audience a visual representation of the pattern related to the amplitude,
direction, and wave motion of the wind at the remote location.
Bedlam Telekinesis
is collaboration between Quebec artist Bill Vorn and Australian artist Simon Penny
which explores the creation of mixed or augmented reality through the use of computation
and telematics. It is a two-way telematic/telerobotic installation that joins
two locations within the DECONism gallery space. An enclosed space in the back
of the gallery contains four cameras which capture and record bodily gestures
of the visitors. This data is used to determine the behaviour of a vaguely anthropomorphic
robot installed in the semi-public space of the gallery window. A fifth camera
records the robot and the responses of onlookers, which are then projected in
the video, capture space at the back of the gallery. In this way, a highly mediated
gestural communication loop is formed by Bedlam.
As signals continue to occupy
and affect our daily lives, the artists that prompt us to explore these technologies
reveal how thought, emotion, and behavior are consciously and unconsciously adjusting
to these mediated worlds.
Michael Alstad
and Camille Turner
signal: an exhibition
of telematic art
Wind Array Cascade Machine: Pod
by Steve Heimbecker
InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 444
May 23 - June 7, 2003
Opening Reception: Saturday May 24th, 5-7pm
Bedlam Telekinesis
by Bill Vorn & Simony Penny
DECONism
330 Dundas Street West (at McCaul Street)
May 23 - June 7, 2003
Opening Reception: Thursday May 22nd, 9-11pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday to
Saturday, noon - 5pm
curated by Michael Alstad
and Camille Turner
co-presented by InterAccess
Electronic Media Art Centre
and Year Zero One
as part of the Subtle Technologies Festival
Sponsored by DECONism, Avatar,
Méduse, The McLuhan Programme in Art and Technology
Bill Vorn
Based in Montreal
(Canada), Bill Vorn is pursuing research and creative work in Robotic Art. His
installation projects involve robotics and motion control, sound, lighting, video
and cybernetic processes. He pursues research on Artificial Life (and Death) and
Agent Technologies through artistic work based on the "Aesthetics of Artificial
Behaviors". He recently received a Ph.D. degree in Communication Studies
from UQAM (Montreal) for his thesis on "Artificial Life as a Media".
He actually teaches Electronic Arts in the Faculty of Fine Arts (Department of
Studio Arts) at Concordia University in Montreal where he is responsible of the
A-Lab, a Robotic Art research lab. He is also a member of the Research Committee
in the new Hexagram Institute for New Media.
His work has been presented
in many international events, including Ars Electronica, ISEA, DEAF, Sonar, Art
Futura, EMAF and Artec. He has been awarded the Life 2.0 award (1999, Madrid),
the Leprecon Award for Interactivity (1998, New York), the Prix Ars Electronica
Distinction award (1996, Linz) and the International Digital Media Award (1996,
Toronto). His current projects include a telerobotic installation called "Bedlam",
a collaborative project with Australian artist Simon Penny; "Evil/Live 3",
an audiovisual cellular automaton; and a series of robotic installations entitled
"Trilogie des Stèles". In collaboration with Martin Peach, he
is also developing "LifeTools II", a MaxMSP control software toolbox
based on Artificial Life algoritms and integrating OpenGL display. You'll find
more information about his work at http://www.billvorn.com.
Simon Penny
Simon Penny
is an Australian artist, theorist and teacher in Interactive Media Art. He makes
interactive and robotic installations which have been exhibited in the US, Australia
and Europe.
He edited the anthology
Critical Issues in Electronic Media (SUNY Press 1995) and is currently working
on a book on embodied interaction and procedural aesthetics for MIT press. His
essays have been translated into seven languages. He curated Machine Culture at
SIGGRAPH '93 in Anaheim CA, arguably the first international survey of interactive
installation.
Recent awards include a
grant from the Langlois Foundation (with Bill Vorn), first prize in the Cyberstar
98 awards (GMD/WDR, Germany) and a residency at the Institut fur Bildmedien, ZKM
Karlsruhe, spring97.
Penny is Professor of Arts
and Engineering at University of California Irvine. He is architect and director
of a new graduate program in Arts, Computation and Engineering. He is Layer Leader
for the Arts in the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information
Technology, CAL(IT)2.
Steve Heimbecker
Born in Saskatchewan,
Steve Heimbecker studied fine art at The Alberta College of Art and Design and
is now recognized internationally for his role in the development of audio art
installation, performance, and multi channel sound composition in Canada. His
critically acclaimed (1999) double CD anthology "The Enormouslessness of
Cloud Machines", is a showcase of his multi channel sound diffusion performances
since 1992. Heimbecker’s installation exhibitions have included; “Nirvana
- 1987”, “The Acoustic Line as the Crow Listens - 1993”, “Soundpool:
The Manufacturing of Silence - 1996”, “Hell is just the Opposite -
1999”, and “Songs of Place: Ile de Montreal - 2002. In 2001, he moved
to Montréal and performed for the final concert of "Silophone"
(Société Radio-Canada & [the user]). Since 2000 he has been
producing a series of DVD Dolby 5.1 audio art portraits entitled “Songs
of Place”. In 2003, after 3 years of research and production, the ambitious
64 channel network diffusion system, "Wind Array Cascade Machine" phase
1, along with the first network installation “Pod” was completed.
He is currently creating and exploring national and international installation
and performance variations of the WACM system, through his studio, The Qube Assemblage
for Art in Motion - 1987, splitting his time between Montreal and Ville de Quebec,
Quebec, Canada.
Michael Alstad
is a Toronto based artist and curator working in installation and digital media.
He is a founding member of the Canadian artist collectives Year Zero One and Symbiosis.
Michael has co-ordinated several site-specific projects including The Clinic
(95), The Bank of Symbiosis (97), The Hoarding Project (98)
and the Transmedia video billboard exhibitions (00, 02). His web/video
works have been presented at the Images Festival -Toronto (02), FILE
-São Paulo (01), Graz Biennial on Media and Architecture
-Graz, Austria (01), Global Multimedia Interface -London (99) and the
Pandæmonium Festival of Moving Images -London (98). Michael’s
most recent site responsive project trans_plant consisted of a series
of 'living sculptures' in a former cable factory on the banks of the River Spree
in Berlin-Oberschöneweide.
http://www.year01.com/alstad
Camille Turner
is a curatorial resident at InterAccess
Electronic Media Arts gallery in Toronto and the co-founder of Year
Zero One, a new media art collective. Recent projects include an ongoing journal
on the theme Belonging and Home for Horizon Zero's latest issue: FEEL, a collaborative
project between Wayne Dunkley and The Banff New Media Institute. She is an international
collaborator on The Container Project initiated and coordinated by Mervin Jarman
of mongrel, a UK group of artists/activists.The container is a mobile media lab
used to teach media arts to people in Jamaica who have been locked out of technology.
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