Last Supper 2010 – New Media Art – Liubo Borissov

Artist: Liubo Borissov
Title: Funny You Should Say That
Size: Size variable, single channel video loop, aspect 16:9, duration 4′52″
Medium: Digital Moving Painting

Artist Statement:
Funny You Should Say That is an animated digital painting created by the interaction of the
artist with a bespoke software process. The painting starts with a single mark, which is then
manipulated and transformed through code. The artist leaves another mark in response to the
result, then another digital transformation follows and so on. This call and response system
amounts to a tentative collaboration or a visual game of exquisite corpse with a feedback loop
between the artist and the computer where both players are cheating. Once the first mark is
left, the work is, in a sense, self-generated. There are elements of control, which guide the
process — the artist’s conscious and subconscious choices, technique, the music playing in
the background etc. Similarly, the response of the computer follows predetermined algorithms
which, while familiar, have built-in elements of chance. The result of each human and machine
move is, thus, at the same time both expected and unpredictable. Each digital brush stroke and
transformation is recorded, broken down to its components and smoothed over time to create
the final animated loop.

Bio:
Liubo Borissov is a bricoleur working with digital and organic media. In his works, he explores
the interface between art, science and technology. His multimedia installations, performances
and digital video paintings have been featured internationally, including the New Interfaces for
Musical Expression, ICMC and SIGGRAPH conferences, the Lincoln Center Summer Festival,
NYC and the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC.

He received baccalaureate degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Caltech and a doctorate
in Physics from Columbia, where he also studied electro-acoustic music at the Columbia
University Computer Music Center. He holds a masters in Interactive Telecommunications
from NYU’s Tisch School, where he was a Global Vilar Fellow in the performing arts. He has
taught at Harvestworks, the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and
Preservation and is currently an assistant professor at Pratt Institute’s Department of Digital
Arts.

Aug 23, 2010 | Categories: New Media Art | Leave A Comment »

Last Supper 2010 – New Media Art – Gabriel Barcia-Colombo

Artist: Gabriel Barcia-Colombo
Title: Animalia Chordata
Date: 2006
Size: 23” x 17” x 5”
Medium: Digital sculpture, incorporating Video, Projector, Glass, Proximity sensor, Tiny people

Artist Statement:
Animalia Chordata, a six-piece digital sculpture, makes use of Barcia-Colombo’s technical
background as a trained filmmaker, video editor and animator. One projector concurrently
plays six different videos,meticulously stitched together as a single composite video,
on a ten-minute loop. In their natural state, the projected people stand, sit, waver and lean.
But when they feel “threatened” by a viewer approaching the work, they react in a defensive
manner. (The artist shot separate footage of all six people’s defensive reactions, which are
triggered by an infrared sensor.) When approached by the viewer, the entrapped businessman,
for example, shoos you away with his newspaper, suggesting that the glass enclosures act as
much as a defensive shield as they do a self-imposed form of entrapment. The idea of personal
space, both literal and digital, has, incidentally, become a singular theme running throughout
the artist’s work.

Bio:
Barcia-Colombo’s work focuses on memorialization and, more specifically,
the act of leaving one’s imprint for the next generation. While formally implemented
by natural history museums and collections (which find their roots in Renaissance-era
“cabinets of curiosity”), this process has grown more pointed and pervasive in
the modern-day obsession with personal digital archiving and the corresponding
growth of social media culture. His video sculptures play upon this exigency in our
culture to chronicle, preserve and wax nostalgic, an idea which Barcia-Colombo
renders visually by “collecting” human beings (alongside cultural archetypes) as
scientific specimens.

Barcia-Colombo repurposes everyday objects like blenders, suitcases and cans of Spam®
into venues for projecting and inserting videos of people. While making conspicuous
references to Marcel Duchamps’ ‘Ready-Mades,’ he also draws from an eclectic
range of other influences, from the combines of Robert Rauschenberg and the video
spectacles of Aernout Mik to taxonomy texts and anatomical drawings.

Aug 23, 2010 | Categories: New Media Art | Leave A Comment »

Last Supper 2010 – New Media Art – Zach Gage

Artist: Zach Gage
Title: Best Day Ever
Size: 27″ w x 4.5″ h x 3″ d
Medium: Custom Software, Public Tweets, LED Display

Artist Statement:
Twitter’s success has given rise to the self-made journalist. No longer does one even need to
write more than 140 characters to have a sizable following online. Because of its popularity,
hundreds of thousands of people use it every day. Unfortunately, however, many of these users
only follow the news updates of their social circles or famous individuals from the physical world.
A side effect of the rise of the self-made Internet user is the creation of a widespread public
discourse. Although it can be used positively to self-promote, it can also be used negatively
when it is collected and analyzed by corporate or governmental agencies. For every successful
self-made Internet user, there are thousands that exist only within small social bubbles, freely
giving up their information to commercial entities, who use the data to create targeted ads and
comprehensive brand success/failure analytics.

Best Day Ever challenges the corporate data-aggregate model by finding personal and
humanistic meaning in the masses of data posted to Twitter every second and delivering this
meaning in a way that is relatable and not overwhelming. Although this doesn’t completely turn
the tables, it at least returns some value to the average user for their input. Best Day Ever’s
Twitter-scraping component was written with PHP. Additionally, Best Day Ever feeds upon the freely
available public statements of others to sustain itself.

Artist: Zach Gage
Title: Hit Counter
Size: 13″ w x 16.5″ h x 3.5″ d
Medium: Custom Hardware, Custom Software, Camera, Viewers, Birch Box

Artist Statement:
For many, the greatest strength of the Internet is that they need not be wealthy or famous
to become important. Simply by having a regular impact through a blog, Twitter account, or
website, one can amass a following and begin to shape the digital/virtual space they inhabit.
Despite this apparent strength, becoming well-known is nevertheless important in the
digital world. Being “Internet-famous” helps others understand how important you are more
readily, thus exponentially growing your influence.

In the early days of the Internet, popularity was generally attributed to websites. Site usage was
illustrated via “hit counters” at the bottom of each page. With the rise of social media and the
self-made user, popularity is now attributed to individuals. Popularity is commonly conveyed
with follower counters, friend counters or view counters. Despite the problems that popularity
has led to in the physical world, we have opted to translate this metric into the digital/virtual
space.

If literal popularity is such an important metric of value, can it not be used to evaluate an
artwork?

Hit Counter re-translates this metric back into the physical space. With no other means to judge
it, Hit Counter demands to be assigned a worth based solely on its popularity.
Hit Counter software makes extensive use of OpenFrameworks, openCV for facial recognition.
The hardware is built upon Firmata/Arduino, both open-source as well.

Bio:
Zach Gage is a designer, programmer, conceptual artist and video game designer from New
York City. Inspiring thought and discussion by broaching serious topics with humor, his work
explores the increasingly blurring line between the physical and the digital.

See his collective works at:
http://stfj.net

Or the more recent individual projects:
www.sonicwiresculptor.com
www.bitpilotgame.com
www.unifygame.com
www.synthpond.com

Aug 23, 2010 | Categories: New Media Art | Leave A Comment »

Last Supper 2010 – New Media Art – Sophie Kahn

Artist: Sophie Kahn
Title: Head of a Young Woman, I
Size: Life-size
Date: 2004
Medium: Bronze (from rapid prototype in wax and 3d laser scan)

Artist Statement:
I first encountered 3D laser scanners at RMIT University, Melbourne, where a team of
architects were using it to reverse-engineer an unfinished building from the architect’s original
maquettes. I began using the scanner after-hours to create a series of self-portraits. The
precisely engineered device was never intended to image the body, and when faced with breath
and movement, it breaks down and generates fragmentary results. Like many artists, since
graduating I have found it hard to access such expensive and hard-to-find technologies, so I
began exploring means to creating a more sustainable practice. I have made video with a DIY
scanner made from a $40 laser level and a webcam, digital paper sculpture from free Japanese
origami software and crystal sculptures using laser engraving technology more commonly used
for corporate awards and golf trophies. I continue to use imaging technology “against the grain,”
so to speak, making a subtle and poetic critique of its claims to objectivity and veracity. While
truly DIY high-resolution rapid prototyping is a long ways off, the Internet has made it possible
for me to collaborate with file-engineering and rapid-prototyping service bureaus internationally
and to create pieces like the one in this exhibition.

With regard to my actual work, it addresses the erotics of death in the still image. It owes
its Victorian-futurist aesthetic to the interaction of new and old media–ie: the digital and the
analogue. My sculptural and imaging practice is a hybrid one, combining new advances in 3D
scanning and stereolithography with the comparatively ancient technology of bronze casting.
My practice has evolved (from my original training in photography) into a three-dimensional,
post-photographic exploration of the application of architectural imaging tools to the body and
landscape.

The precise 3D scanning technology at the laboratory at which I worked was never designed
to represent the body, which is always in flux. When confronted with a moving body, it receives
conflicting spatial coordinates, generating fragmentary results – a 3D ‘motion blur.’ But the
scanning process generates other referents too. The closed eyes and deathly frozen attitude
of the scanned bodies also resemble death masks and other forms of memorial portraiture.
The forms of this face twist and turn in space; the woman’s eyes are closed, as though asleep.
It is this concern with memorial representations – an imperfect archive of the traces left by the
body or by objects as they move through time and space – that is the thread combining the
historical and contemporary technologies combined in the making of this work.

Bio:
Sophie Kahn was born in London in 1980, and grew up in Melbourne, Australia. Sophie trained as a
photographer and studied in the UK, completing a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths
College, University of London, in 2001. Sophie returned to Melbourne after graduation, studying Spatial
Information Architecture at RMIT, where she expanded her practice to include animation, 3d imaging and
digital sculpture.

Sophie has presented individual and group exhibitions at artist-run, public and commercial spaces in
Melbourne, Australia (Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, West Space, 24Seven, Linden, Monash
Gallery of Art, Spacement Gallery), Sydney (Performance Space, Stills Gallery, and the Art Gallery
of New South Wales), Seoul (Loop Alternative Art Space), Tokyo (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery,
DesignFesta, Tokyo Big Sight), Osaka (Arts Aporia), Singapore (Graphite at NTEU) Paris (Musee des
Sciences de L’Homme), Washington DC (The Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution), London
(Britart.com space) and New York City (Space 414 and the Armory Show). Screenings and festivals
include the Japan Media Arts Festival, EMPAC Dance Movies, DANSCAMDANCE, and the International
Video Dance Festival of Burgundy.

Sophie has lectured and tutored in Photomedia, taught photography and new media at Eyebeam, the
International Centre of Photography and in a number of community settings, including to young woman
transitioning out of incarceration. She has also been employed by the Royal Children’s Hospital in
Melbourne, where she conducted research into 3d medical imaging. Her work has been shortlisted for a
number of prizes and awards, supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Network for
Art and Technology, and the City of Melbourne, and is held in private collections in Australia, Britain and
the United States.

Sophie currently lives and works in Brooklyn, and teaches in the Digital Arts Department at Pratt Institute.

Jul 01, 2010 | Categories: New Media Art | 2 Comments »