Subject : www.-reverse.-flash-.-back- for RHIZOME ARTBASE 101 at the New
Museum of Contemporary Art
From : Lauren Cornell - Kevin Mc Garry
Date : 2005/06/22
Link : http://www.rhizome.org/artbase101.rhiz
http://www.newmuseum.org/now_cur_RhizomeArtBase101.htm
RHIZOME ARTBASE 101
Rhizome Home
Rhizome ArtBase 101 surveys salient themes in Internet art, a practice
that has flourished in the last ten years. The exhibition presents forty
selections from Rhizome.org's online archive of new media art, the ArtBase,
which was launched in 1999 and currently holds some 1,500 works by artists
from around the world. Featured works are grouped by ten unifying themes
and include seminal pieces by early practitioners as well as projects
by some of the most pioneering emerging talents working in the field today.
Encompassing software, games, moving image and websites, Rhizome ArtBase
101 presents the Internet as a strapping medium that rivals other art
forms in its ability to buttress varied critical and formal explorations.
Rhizome ArtBase 101 is currently on exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary
Art. At the Museum, all 40 works are installed on computers and some have
additionally been elaborated into installations. Rhizome Members receive
half price admission to the New Museum during the run of the show, June
23rd - September 10th. **Please note that as our membership is constantly
fluctuating, we will submit an updated list of our Members to the New
Museum admission staff each Friday over the Summer. Practically, this
means if you become a Member on Tuesday of a given week, your membership
will not be noted at the front desk until the following Monday.
For the duration of the exhibition, all 40 works will be available here
to the general online public. Many of these works would usually be accessible
only to Rhizome Members as they are located within our archives.
DIRT STYLE
Projects described as DIRT STYLE counter the impulse to upgrade. Some
works appropriate graphic detritus from the web in gestures that both
celebrate and satirize digital pop culture. In extreme animalz: the movie:
part I (2005), U.S.-based collective Paper Rad and Pittsburgh artist Matt
Barton translated the outdated aesthetic of animated gifs into a sculptural
installation exploring the spectacle and emotion we bring to these digital
forms and their obsolescence. Here, collages of animated gifs of animals--sourced
through Google's Image search--are surrounded by similarly discarded stuffed
animals found in thrift stores. For Rhizome ArtBase 101, their animations
are available online, while the whole piece is available only at the New
Museum. www.-reverse.-flash-.-back- (2003) is an example of French artist
jimpunk's deconstructed web-based work that makes use of HTML special
effects, JavaScript and visual debris from the Internet. In www.-reverse.-flash-.-back-,
browser windows--each a different colorful collage--pop up, stutter and
careen across the screen, depriving the viewer of control including the
ability to exit. In GOODWORLD (2002), New York artist Lew Baldwin uses
a unique program to translate any submitted website into an abstracted
field of RGB color blocks and decorative syntax. The program takes the
most prominent image on a web page and turns it into a magenta abstraction,
and transforms the rest of the site into chunks of other websafe colors.
GOODWORLD neutralizes the web by draining content and generalizing all
websites into aesthetically similar visual fields. Dirt Style works can
also express nostalgia by repurposing analog technologies. In Dot Matrix
Synth (2003), American artist Paul Slocum reprogrammed a dot matrix printer
so that it plays electronic notes in accordance with different printing
frequencies. For Rhizome ArtBase 101, Slocum accompanied the printer with
an introductory sign that invites visitors to "PUSH BUTTONS TO ROCK
OUT."
GOODWORLD
Lew Baldwin
US
2002
www.-reverse.-flash-.-.back-
jimpunk
France
2003
extreme animalz: the movie: part 1
Paper Rad and Matt Barton
US
2005
Dot Matrix Synth
Paul Slocum
more>>>
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