S E E D : polymer



	more on SEED / more on polymer / UP ONE NIGHT ONLY. Friday October 20, 2006 7pm - 9:30pm at the Hunter Museum of American Art. PROGRAM GUIDE : Artist Title, duration *Dana Sperry Humpty Dumpty, 3 min* Titled after a nursery rhyme originally written to celebrate a victory in the English Civil War, the piece uses footage from United States Civil War re-enactments to address America’s romantic relationship with warfare as a spectacle. artist info: A video/conceptual artist currently living in Nacogdoches, Texas, Dana Sperry has exhibited his work throughout the United States including Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, and New York. Recently, he exhibited at Gardenfresh Gallery in Chicago, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery in New York and the Central European Cultural Institute in Budapest, Hungary. He currently teaches at Stephen F. Austin State University and recently co-curated “Spirited Fusion: Akamatsu and Fenci” at the Tyler Museum of Art in Tyler, Texas. www.danasperry.com *Melissa Racho Water is for Desire, 4 min* The futility of dealing with an inaminate entity, such as the ocean, is at once clownish and classical - the ocean cares nothing for the spectrum of human emotion and, yet, has inspired it for millenia. Taped in front of a green screen to overlay two channels of video, “Water is for desire” is an admission of wanting. It is our desires, earthly and foolish, that reveal who we are through what we might give up to attain them; this admission, on its own, becomes a cathartic action. artist info: Mel Racho is a video and new media artist who lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her work often takes on a reflexive approach, unpacking her medium and content in terms of itself. She is inherently interested in themes of reconstitution and displacement. www.melracho.com *Fred Worden Here, 11 min* An optical rendezvous between Sir Laurence Olivier and Georges Melies brought into being through direct cinematic conjuring. Early cinema audiences, we are told, were mesmerized by the cinematic apparitions and impossible cavortings realized by the sly Melies. Those first paying customers had, apparently, no need for plots, movie stars or sharp ideas. Could that work HERE? artist info: Fred Worden has been making experimental film since the mid 1970’s. His films have been shown in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, The Museum of Modern Art , The Centre Pompidou, The Pacific Film Archive, The New York Film Festival, The London Film Festival, The Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Toronto Film Festival, The Hong Kong International Film Festival and numerous other experimental film venues. Worden’s films develop out of his interest in intermittent projection as the source of cinema’s primordial powers. How a stream of still pictures passing through a projector at a speed meant to overwhelm the eyes might be harnessed to purposes other than representation or naturalism. *Katherine Parker Wallpaper I, 2 min* Parker’s interests include: the redemption of kitsch, archetypes, and Märchen (German fairytales). Her videos, installations, and drawings may require accretions of many hours of detail-oriented labor in order to take them to completion.She earned her BA in Studio Art and Art History from the University of California, Davis in 1995 and has recently graduated with an MFA in Intermedia from The University of Iowa. *Matt Greenwell Field, tba* “Field” references a particular state of meditative dislocation with the “real” when we engage popular culture through commercial media and the need for artificial closure that we have come to anticipate through that relationship. “Field” is simultaneously active/inactive and functions as in infinite sequence of random formal relationships that are ever-changing and always “resolved” but never complete. artist info: Matt Greenwell teaches graphic design at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he also serves as head of the department of art. His studio work includes mixed- and multi-media installations which attempt to (re)frame the media culture that shapes and defines us. *Adam Trowbridge Conversations Y, 7 min* Language comes undone in the violence of an extended stutter in Conversation Y. What begins as a repeated fragment of speech becomes a language always in the making. Standard TV dialogue, a police investigation, a Presidential meeting and a domestic disturbance, television turned back against itself, opens onto a new space. artist info: Adam Trowbridge is a manner of speaking, focused on the common in the form of the “every day” as it intersects common space: community and communication. Trowbridge’s work evokes the possibility of art as incommunicable shared experience and seeks to bring about conditions that give birth to new possibilities. Materially, his recent work has been in the form of sculpture, computer-driven installation and video. Trowbridge is in but not of Chattanooga, Tennessee and grew up nomadically. He holds a BFA in painting and sculpture from the University of Central Florida, where he studied under sculptor Jóhann Eyfells. He spent three years in the MFA program in Imaging and Digital Art at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. *Adam Trowbridge Anhelo, 2 min* Anhelo means both to breathe and to desire. By isolating all action on the screen to the breathing of two figures, Anhelo attempts to create an experience that is physical by way of the brain. The audience not only watches the breathing on the screen, they unconsciously breathe with the video. *Luke Lamborn Square Millimeter of Opportunity, 3 min* The Square Millimeter series seeks to emulate the possibility of extraordinary but overlooked occurrences as if captured by a passing videographer. These videos are informed by the writings of anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, who described rare moments when our normal perceptions of daily life would shift dramatically and without warning. artist info: www.lucidstraw.com *Krista Birnbaum Constance, 3 min* An elegant teacup sets the scene for the balletic movements of Constance. As her curiosity battles against her desire for safety, her delicate pink ears and tail mimic the lines and color of the teacup. artist info: Krista Birnbaum is a multi-media artist whose work stems from the conflicts inherent in a contemporary relationship with nature. She is currently completing her MFA at Syracuse University, where her cat and six pet mice keep her company. Her work has been exhibited recently in New York and Toronto. *Carol Lafayette Sacrament, 4 min* Sacrament is a cleansing ritual performed by avian undertakers. artist info: Carol LaFayette explores the way technology mediates ideas about nature and the environment. She mixes mediums to create cinema, interactive installations, and multimedia, with time as an element of experimentation. Her work makes use of alternative capture systems such as wireless video, remote sensing, and 3D scanning. LaFayette’s artwork is in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Printed Matter, and Microcinema International. She was artist in residence at the Hungarian Multicultural Center in 2001. She exhibited “After the Hunt,” an interactive installation with AFEW Artists’ Collaborative at SIGGRAPH 2002. Her 2003 award-winning video “Skateboarding in Sarajevo” screened at 10 international film festivals including Zebra Poetry Film Award, Berlin; Filmstock, UK; and Moondance, Colorado. Her video “sluice/ants/spin/fog” screened in the International Festival of Cinema and Technology World Tour in 2004. In 2005, her video collection entitled “‘Texas’ is an adjective” screened on citywide billboards in the L.A. Freewaves Experimental Media Arts Festival. http://www.clafayette.com *Jessica Westbrook likeness, 10 min* Westbrook’s photography, media, and installation work explores the visual cues which describe and define our living experiences. The mundane artifacts and views of her domestic path become products, recontextualized in modular systems. Likeness was an opportunity to consider the products of (my) social intersections, familial connections, and the complex of human relationships resulting from a set of shared conditions (geography, timing, art making). artist info: Westbrook earned her MFA in photography from Tyler School of Art. She is a founding member of the Chattanooga artist collective SEED, Co-founder of TW/Co art + technology + design (www.tw-co.com), and teaches photography, design, and web media at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. *Gregg Biermann Hackensack Motet, 5 min* Recorded on Main Street in Hackensack, New Jersey and animated in the same software that is responsible for 3D animated features like Shrek, this video transforms an ordinary street scene into a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria with stunning depth effects. The original audio composition has associations with early choral music and thus imbues the otherwise worldly imagery with sacred, almost cosmic qualities. artist info: My work comes out of the avant-garde tradition of film as visual art. Avant-garde cinema is an important and relatively young artistic project. While it maintains its scrappy integrity, and while many significant works have been created in subsequent decades, current practioners have not fully moved out of the shadow of the prodigious 1960’s and 70’s. Consequently I’ve looked to new technologies to discover vast unspoiled frontiers no longer available to small gauge filmmakers. The development of new instruments has often determined the important aesthetic developments in artistic and musical composition. The meaning of digital technology lies in its ability to copy, but also in its plasticity. Its capacity to alter, mask, fragment, re-mix, super-impose, mutate, reflect, transmit and reframe are its prime currents. *Priyanka Dasgupta Havaldaar Imaandaar, 5 min* I use video to present the duality, emphasize the complexity or unpredictability, within what may seem simple or ordinary – relationships, people, emotions, events. ‘havaldaar imaandaar’ (the earnest policeman), through contrasting visuals that alternately depict the policeman (puppet) as graceful dancer and frantic clown, playfully explores the dichotomy between the law’s idyllic public persona and how it actually functions, artist info: Priyanka Dasgupta received her MA in Studio Art, from New York University / International Center of Photography, New York and BA in English Literature from St. Stephen’s College, India. Her videos have been featured at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Gallery Korea and Goliath Visual Space in New York, and in Europe and India. She will be exhibiting at the Jersey City Museum and at the International Center of Photography in New York, in Fall, 2006. She has participated in the ‘Artists-In-The-Marketplace Program’ at the Bronx Museum and in Aljira Emerge in Newark, with Creative Capital. Priyanka is a recipient of an NEA grant and currently works as a Teaching Artist with Studio in a School. Born in Kolkata, India, she lives in New York City. *Shana Moulton Feeling Free with 3D Magic Eye Poster Remix, 8 min* Appropriating a dated exercise video hosted by actress Angela Lansbury, Feeling Free presents a woman, played by Moulton, who attempts to follow the televised workout in her living room even as elements of her home décor begin to appear onscreen. Deriving its title from an inspirational segment of Lansbury’s program, Feeling Free subjects the appropriated footage to eccentric visual and audio displacements, culminating in a psychedelic dance sequence set to a remix of the program’s insipid theme song. The piece was first shown in the context of Moulton’s multimedia performance Decorations of the Mind. artist info: Shana Moulton’s videos feature a character who has psychic adventures with her home décor, and whose orthopedic dresses reveal her anxieties and strange inner fantasy worlds. These videos are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix as part of their emerging artist series. Her work has been exhibited and screened at venues and festivals such as the European Media Arts Festival (D), the Impakt Festival (NL), Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin (FR), Internationale Kurzfilmtage (D), The Kitchen, Canada NYC and Smackmellon in New York, De Appel in Amsterdam and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Shana recently attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has just completed a 2-year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. www.shanamoulton.com *Lawrence F. Mesich Misrepresentations, 5 min* Misrepresentations, Erroneous Conclusions, and Ethical Breeches explores the interactions of two figures through a series of gestures that don’t quite play out the way the gesture suggests they should socially. The video is broken up into several short vignettes, each focusing on a particular gesture or set of gestures: handshake, kiss, hand slapping game. The piece explores the body, specifically gesture, as a text that reveals, confounds, and inscribes meaning(s) within social spaces. artist info: Lawrence Mesich is a media artist whose work explores relationships between bodies, behavior and the built environment, and their social and political implications. Most recently, he has created videos and installations that document his often eccentric relationships toinstitutional interiors. His work has been seen in several US cities including Chicago and New York, and his performances have occurred inpublic spaces throughout the US, much to the delight, outrage and bewilderment of passers-by.Lawrence was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His fascination with and exploration of the spaces created by the city’s rapid development and abandoned industrial infrastructure continue to inform his work. http://emedia.art.sunysb.edu/lawrence *Joshua Bennett Paintie Dannnzzsssszszsz, 2 min* “Paintie Land” is a world evolving from the absurd, grass roots, grafitti, children’s illustration, fantasy, love, the sinister, and other mysterious phenoms. artist info: Joshua Bennett is an artist working in paint and video in Chattanooga, TN. He is a graduate of University ofTennessee at Chattanooga with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. He is currently working on a project of sound/video art dubbed “Forest Magic” as an exploratory extention.- *Rebecca Targ This is Ventriloquism, 15 min* artist info: Rebecca Targ is an Indiana native living in Chattanooga by way of Chicago, Illinois. Her work has been shown at Woman Made Gallery, Gallery 2 and 1926 Exhibition Studies Space in Chicago. She is an assistant professor of graphic design in the Department of Art at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and has taught at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago and Dominican University. Her clients have included Spiegel, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Chattanooga’s Cress Gallery. She has given talks on the topic of color in films at Eyedrum in Atlanta and AVA in Chattanooga and hopes to continue to develop her academic interests in film, design, critical theory and the unsettling animal that is life in the bible belt. Katherine Parker Voynich Secret History, 5 min see info in Parker’s previous listing *Norman Magden Anima Animus, 13:45 min* “A psycho/visual portrayal of female and male aspects of the human psyche through a metaphor of transparent layers of gender integration. Consider movement stationary and stationary in motion, both movement and rest disappear. When such dualities cease to exist Oneness itself cannot exist“ - Versus on the Faith Mind by Seng-Tsan, Third Zen Patriarch. Wendy Wischer Under the Spell of Maya Under the Spell of Maya, makes reference to the illusion that we can comprehend reality with the limitation of our human consciousness, yet there is far more to reality than our mind can comprehend, our vision can see and our existence on this blue planet, this illusion, or maya, is constantly shifting and the video projection has the freedom to shift in scale and location as well. artist info: Wendy Wischer Born in Wisconsin 1971, she lives in Miami, Florida. She received a Master of Fine Arts from Florida State University in 1995 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 1993. Wischer creates conceptually based work in a variety of media ranging from photography to sculptural objects, to site-specific installations and public works. Much of the work is based on blurring the separation between the spirituality of working with nature and the cutting edge of “New Media”. She exposes the sacred within the mundane, the monumental within the minute, unraveling boundaries created by culture and language and revealing common ground in the “in-betweens” of established categories. She is the recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship and the Artist Enhancement Grant from the State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and twice the recipient of the New Forms Grant, Miami-Dade Division of Cultural Affairs. She is also the recipient of the 2003 Alberta Prize for Visual Art. Wendy Wischer has exhibited extensively in Miami and in several states, with solo exhibitions in Florida, New York, California and Minnesota. Her work has also been on display internationally, including Spain and the Dominican Republic. Wendy exhibited an outdoor - site-specific installation as part of the Art Projects at Art Basel Miami Beach, curated by James Rondeau, in 2002. Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Miami Art Museum and can be viewed in November and December of 2006 at the David Castillo Gallery in Miami. She will also participate in the upcoming exhibition Fatamorgana at the Haifa Museum of Art in Israel. www.wendywischer.com Many thanks to our sponsor The Pulse and our host The Hunter Museum of American Art.