Big
day yesterday. We sent our first flight of Roadtrippers to provide support for the Come Out and Play Festival, a two-day celebration of big urban games, about which we'll write shortly.
But our first group stop was at the Graffiti Research Lab, a fabled group of digi-tech graffiti writers working at Eyebeam. They're just back from the huge Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, where Mike Waggoner, an artist-friend of John Schott had "told them that we were OK." That, plus the video we did of their graffiti tour of Williamsburg, not only got us in the door, but produced a long, interesting discussion of their work and graffiti in general. Among other things, they showed us their rapid prototype 3D machine, a way to manufacture objects based on software descriptions. At the end, one of our participants, Ollie Moltaji, said: "In two years this is where I want to be!" And no doubt he will.
Amanda Crowley [above], Eyebeam's Executive Director, gave us a full tour of the facilities. Their mission is to engage cultural dialogue at the intersection of the arts and sciences, and to to forge an understanding of the relatedness of these practices, which are becoming increasingly significant engines of cultural production. Eyebeam amplifies the flux and hybridity of the art/science intersection by openly fostering the parallel strands of education, research, production, and exhibition with its public and peers.
Next we visited Postmasters Gallery, a leader in exhibiting new media work. Magdalena Sawon [below], one of the owner/directors, gave a wonderful talk on the history of the gallery, and the esthetic and market issues involved in exhibiting new media work. Although Postmasters regularly shows new media artists, Magdalena insists that they be integrated with all forms of speculative new art in order that it not become isolated as "technological art." Her talk alerted us to the formative, visionary role that gallery owners can play in the art world: Postmasters is exhibiting work that few – if any – other galleries will. Interestingly, their sales primarily are to museums rather than collectors. When asked how many individuals collect new media, Magdalena raised fifteen fingers.
The show at Postmasters was a new project [above] by Natalie Jeremijenko, a highly respected new media artist whose themes relate broadly to issues of science and the environment. Her project is a strange, wonderful garden for birds built atop the gallery. Although it is still under construction, we saw the garden projected by video onto one wall of the gallery. The show included several conceptual birdhouses that had been built as playful prototypes at Jeremijenko's invitation. On the left above is Jeremijenko's own bird perch: when a bird lands on it the motion triggers a spoken message with an ecological theme.
So our day started with supporting the Festival [above: Aaron Colussi and Boris Scherbakov chalk a greeting logo for the Fest outside Eyebeam], and ended with a video game projected on the wall in which musicians "played" the characters through the gamespace.
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