Yael Kanarek
FEB 7, 6:30pm
Neuberger Museum

"Ali Baba and the Yahoos meet in China"
On the Internet, languages draw borders and define territories. In the netart Object of Desire, media artist Yael Kanarek sends a lone traveler through three language spaces, English, Hebrew and Arabic, to search for a lost treasure in the parallel world Sunset/Sunrise. Will the traveler find the treasure? Follow the traveler through the windy tracks of Near East and Mediterranean motifs as they appear in contemporary culture.

Object of Desire is the third chapter of the ongoing interdisciplinary project World of Awe. The project was funded by the Rockefeller Media grant in 2005.

URL: http://www.treasurecrumbs.com

Marek Walczak
APR 11, 6:30pm
Neuberger Museum
Co-hosted with Art + Design

"Space and Sensibility"
Magic tricks. We want to know how they are done, but also they get at our perception of things as super-logical. As we start to interact with a world of smartness, this gnawing sense of magic creeps up behind us.

Marek will demonstrate previous and upcoming works that smarten our connection to others, to things, the connective tissue created out of software and spaces.

URL: http://mw2mw.com

Char Davies
MAY 2, 6:30 pm
Neuberger Museum

"Antimonuments and Subsculptures"
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a Mexican-Canadian electronic artist, who develops large-scale interactive installations in public space, usually deploying new technologies and custom-made physical interfaces. Using robotics, projections, sound, internet and cell-phone links, sensors and other devices, his installations aim to provide "temporary antimonuments for alien agency". His work has been commissioned for events such as the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999), the Cultural Capital of Europe in Rotterdam (2001), the United Nations' World Summit of Cities in Lyon (2003), the opening of the Yamaguchi Centre for Art and Media in Japan (2003) and the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004). His work is in private and public contemporary art collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Jumex collection in Mexico and the Daros Foundation in Zurich.

His work in kinetic sculpture, responsive environments, video installation and photography has been shown in two dozen countries. He has won several awards, including two BAFTAs, a Rockefeller fellowship, a Golden Nica, a Wired Rave Award and an International Bauhaus Award.

URL: http://www.lozano-hemmer.com

"Subliminal Stateswoman Speaks her Mind"
Carrie Dashow is a New York-based artist working in the intersection of video, performance and new media. Through combining and reading space, interaction and energy with an anthropological, formalist and geomantic slant, Carrie creates content. Her work reveals the subliminal as a counterpoint to everyday existence by employing concepts that contest fact-based reality. Using available public tools ­ a greeting, an island, building, friend, forest, map, history, camera ­ Carrie examines the undercurrent of visible space which result in tactile, experiential and more real than real performance and video. Much of her work takes place in social and collective situations, either on the street, in communities, relationships and even classes. Her participatory-style performances amongst diverse audiences in turn reveal a momentary sense of community and possibility. Her work plays with our psychological understanding of reality, replacing what we see inside out.

Her work has been exhibited at venues internationally from St. Petersburg, Seoul, Paris and Berlin to New York, L.A. and Pittsburg, PA. Including P.S. 1/MOMA, UCLA Hammer Museum, Exitart, Jessica Murray Projects, Eyebeam, Andy Warhol Museum, in mines, public parks, campervans and her living room. Carrie is currently visiting faculty in the New Media program at Purchase.

LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus) scrambles ordinary TV output into hyperkinetic audiovisual abstraction using homemade electronic devices, repurposed analog toys, and low-res video loops. In the duo's real time performances, an intense, variable audio signal disrupts the video's horizontal raster lines into swirling or stroboscopic patterns. Whether projected on a large screen or worn on the body as mini-monitors, the static sizzles and mesmerizes in an orgy of post-consumer creative destruction. LoVid's installations and object based work includes video stills transformed into fabric patchwork, wall collages, laser etched tiles, electronic mixed media sculptures, and photos. In these, LoVid focuses on the materialization of glitch video and electric signal into fixed objects.

“From the Camcorder Revolution to the Digital Convergence”
Paul Garrin will discuss his 25 years of work as a video, installation and interactive media artist as well as his involvements in media activism. He will address the evolving climate and landscape of media, access, and citizen empowerment.

Eddo Stern is an artist and computer game designer. He was born in Tel Aviv and currently lives in Los Angeles. His work explores new modes of narrative and documentary, fantasies of technology and history, and cross-cultural representation in film, computer games, and the Internet. He works in various media including computer game design, modification and programming, building kinetic sculptures and electronic devices, producing film, video, and public video game performances.

Flanagan will discuss selected works of what she calls her practice-based research into computer-centric "playculture." She explores the relationship between computers and everyday life which becomes for her, extraordinary and revealing artifacts of human desire, intimacy, secrecy, language, and the spaces of machines themselves.

“Virtual Border Crossers”
Alex Rivera is a New York based digital media artist and filmmaker. Through the past 5 years he’s made work in digital video and on the internet that addresses concerns of the Latino community through a language of humor, satire, and metaphor. His work has been screened at The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center, on PBS, as well as at film festivals, universities, libraries, union halls, and community centers.

“The Old and The New: Amateur Film and New Media”
Patricia R. Zimmermann is professor of cinema and photography at Ithaca College. She is the author of “Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film”; “States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies”; and co-editor with Karen Ishizuka of the forthcoming volume “Mining the Home Movie.”

“Doing Strange Things with Electricity”
Douglas Repetto is an artist and teacher. His work, including installations, performances, recordings, and software has been presented internationally. He runs a number of arts/community-oriented groups in New York City and on the web, including dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity, ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, organism: making art with living systems, and the music-dsp mailing list and website.