PRESS RELEASE:

 

TEXELECTRONICA '06

International Symposium / Exhibition discussing Art, Music, Technology, Society, and Culture

"SPIN (Society, Persona, Interactivity, & Networks)"

 

In addition to this document, please visit http://texelectronica.wordpress.com and http://www.texelectronica.com soon.

 

What:

The objective of Texelectronica '06 - International Symposium / Exhibition of Emergent Art, Technology, & Society is to bring together artists, researchers, scholars, writers, curators, professors and students, working directly with new emergent technologies, to discuss the effects of this evolving context on art, music, society, and the evolution of global perspective. Texelectronica '06 is a three-day symposium with three exhibition venues, and a list of evening multimedia performances. These public exhibitions and performances will allow the local community, galleries, collectors, and art patrons to meet and join in the Texelectronica '06 dialog. Texelectronica '06 hopes to infuse a new energy into the Dallas/Fort Worth community, to expand traditional ideologies and definitions surrounding contemporary art practice.

Texelectronica '06 is the first installment of the symposium/exhibition, which is structured as an invited/curated event. Invited artists and theorists will share a wide range of emergent media art processes that fit within the 2006 theme. However, future installments of Texelectronica will be combine invitation with a juried open call, selecting from submissions of artworks and papers in an international contest.

The Texelectronica ’06 Exhibition and Symposium hopes to attract international, national, and local attendees ranging in number from 400 to 800.

 

Theme:

“SPIN: Society, Persona, Interactivity, and Networks.”

Embedded within our society, our persona, the dynamics of human interaction, and the structure of our associative social networks exist characteristics of the SPIN.

The SPIN has the ability to both attract (ex. Earth) and project (ex. a merry-go-round), to capture (ex. windmill) and expend (an electric fan), to encode (ex. LP records/CD/hard drives) and be read (ex. sundials/clocks). SPIN as a force has the energy to gather together (ex. online networks) and to disperse (ex. mass emails / messages).

SPIN can be found in music with looping soundtracks and in the way that sound travels within space. SPIN can be found in dance with the ballet twirl or the back flip.

SPIN can serve to disorient, where one’s perspective can be distorted or blurred by the bombardment of too much content too quickly, or by the disruption of movement while attempting to accessing information.

In some instances SPIN combines both characteristics of projection and attraction. A tornado draws in and then propels.

In Fibonacci’s spiral, the spin can be found as an evolutionary component in nature with the pine cone or the sea shell. It can be found in human spherical social structures such as cities, where life congregates around a central hub.

Within the context of human interaction, SPIN is the emotional, psychological, communicative and strategic byproducts of the energy of human attraction that builds society. SPIN is the characteristic latent within the evolution of ideas that helps in forming our aesthetic, utilitarian, humanistic, educational, unifying, and global ideologies that affect progress in our world.

In every case, SPIN reflects the momentum, immersion, connection, disorientation, and the desire to transcend latent within our culture, industry, and society.

 

When/Period:

Thursday 10/26/2006 through Sunday 10/29/2006

 

Possible Venues for the Symposium:

The University of North Texas campus (Denton, TX) in the Golden Eagle Suite (The Present location for the Symposium)

The University of Texas at Dallas campus (Dallas, TX)

(The Fort Worth Modern Art Museum is interested in hosting the event in their new Auditorium, however, the change in location from the University of North Texas is not yet final.)

 

Exhibition Venues:

University of North Texas Gallery (Denton, TX)

University of North Texas Gallery (Ft. Worth, TX)

And/Or Gallery (Dallas,TX)

Southside on Lamar Building and Gallery (Dallas, TX)

 

Performances Venues:

And/Or Gallery (Dallas, TX)

Southside on Lamar Building and Gallery (Dallas, TX)

University of North Texas Gallery (Ft. Worth, TX)

 

Sub-Themes

-Technology and the Environment

-Global Communication

-Building Virtual Community/Blogs/the Media Alternative

-Bio-tech – Technological influence on the Human Body.

-Information Tracking and the Archive: RFID

-Image Capture, Representation, Storage, and Legality

-Fix – Antiquated Technology as Contemporary Aesthetic.

-Understanding Electronic Media Art Education

-Thinking Architecturally in the Age of Digital Media

 

Symposium/Exhibition Schedule Including Participants:

10/26/06

6:30 PM - Evening (at And/Or Gallery):

Opening at And/Or Gallery

Performance by Treewave (And/Or Gallery)

Performance by Zach Lieberman (And/Or Gallery)

Performance by Damian Keller and Andrew May

 

 

Symposium Schedule:

10/27/06

9:30-10:00 AM - Introduction to Texelectronica Symposium (How the day's presentations are organized around subject)

SESSION 1: “Society”

10:00-10:30 AM – Artist Presentation (30 min) 

10 min break

10:40-11:10 AM - Artist Presentation (30 min) 

10 min break

11:20-11:50 AM - Artist Presentation (30 min) 

10 min break

12:00-12:30 Noon - Session 1 Panel Discussion (30 min)

12:30-2:00 PM - LUNCH

SESSION 2 “Persona”

2:00-2:30 PM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

2:40-3:10 PM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

3:20-3:50 PM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

4:00-4:30 PM - Session 2 Panel Discussion

-------------

----If there is adequate funding we will begin the symposium earlier, and shorten each presentation and panel discussion

---- by 5 minutes to accommodate a third session each day.

-------------

4:30-5:00 PM - See the UNT Art exhibition

5:00-6:30 PM - DINNER

6:30 - Evening at Southside on Lamar Janet Kennedy Gallery

Janet Kennedy Exhibition Opening

Multimedia/Music Performances

 

10/28/06

9:30-10:00 AM - Welcome Back to Texelectronica Symposium (How the day's presentations are organized around subject)

SESSION 3 “Interactivity”

10:00-10:30 AM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

10:40-11:10 AM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

11:20-11:50 AM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

12:00-12:30 Noon - Session 3 Panel Discussion

12:30-2:00 PM - LUNCH

SESSION 4 “Networks”

2:00-2:30 PM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

2:40-3:10 PM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

3:20-3:50 PM - Artist Presentation (30 min)

10 min break

4:00-4:30 PM - Session 4 Panel Discussion

-------------

----If there is adequate funding we will begin the symposium earlier, and shorten each presentation and panel discussion

---- by 5 minutes to accommodate a third session each day.

-------------

4:30-5:00 PM - See the UNT Art exhibition

5:00-6:30 PM - DINNER

6:30 - Evening at And/Or Gallery

And/Or Gallery Exhibition Opening

Multimedia/Music Performances

 

10/29/06

Day:

9:30-10:00 AM Collective Discussion with all artists regarding

 

Participating Artists / Theorists (exhibitors/performers/speakers not limited to the list provided)

LISTING OF PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

 

Casey Reas:

From 1999-2001, Reas was a graduate student and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. After twenty-eight years of drawing, playing video games, drumming, and designing information systems, his nascent talent for writing software forged these disparate interests into a new path. Building on his professional experience and undergraduate studies in design at the University of Cincinnati, he spent the next two years developing software and electronics as an artistic exploration. After graduating, Reas began to exhibit his software and installations internationally in galleries and festivals.
    In August 2001, Reas moved to Italy. As one of the founding professors at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Reas worked with an international student body to develop a new arts pedagogy for the present cultural and technical environment. Simultaneously, Reas initiated Processing with Ben Fry. Processing is a programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.
    After two years in Italy, Reas moved to Los Angeles. As an assistant professor in the department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA, Reas interacts with undergraduate and graduate students to push the boundaries of art and design. His classes provide a foundation for thinking about computers and the Internet as a medium for exploration and set a structure for advanced inquiry into synthesis of culture, technology, and aesthetics.

 

Janek Schaeffer:
Janek was born in England to Polish and Canadian parents in 1970. While studying architecture at the Royal College of Art [RCA annual prize], he recorded the fragmented noises of a sound activated dictaphone travelling overnight through the Post Office. That work, titled 'Recorded Delivery' [1995] was made for the 'Self Storage' exhibition [Time Out critics choice] with one time postman Brian Eno and Artangel. Since then the multiple aspects of sound became his focus, resulting in many releases, installations, soundtracks for exhibitions, and concerts using his self built/invented record players with electroacoutisc collage. The 'Tri-phonic Turntable' [1997] is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the 'World's Most Versatile Record Player'. He has performed, lectured and exhibited widely throughout Europe [Sonar, Tate Modern, ICA], USA/Canada, [The Walker, XI, Mutek, Princeton], Japan, and Australia [Sydney Opera House].
The context of each idea is central to its development and resolution. His concerts and installations explore the spatial and architectural aspect that sound can evoke and the twisting of technology. Hybrid analogue and digital techniques are used to manipulate field recordings with live modified vinyl and found sound to create evocative and involving environments. His CD 'Above Buildings' [2000] was released on Fat Cat to considerable praise, [The Guardian CD of the week]. He plays in a duo with Philip Jeck ['Songs for Europe' CD] and formed 'Comae' the improvisational electroacoustic duo with Robert Hampson [Main] in 1999. Janek runs his own label [audiOh!Recordings] and web site [audiOh.com] as well as releasing work with Asphodel, Sub Rosa, Staalplaat, Hot Air, Sirr, Rhiz, Alluvial, DSP and Diskono. He currently works as a full time sound artist/sound designer/musician/visiting lecturer and composer from the audiOh! Room in London.

 

Carmin Karasic:
Carmin Karasic is a software engineer and digital artist. She currently works part time as a software quality engineer and web developer. When she's not testing software, she's usually working on some aspect of digital art. She may be creating new art, collaborating on a computer art project, or developing websites. Carmin has collaborated with artists in various Internet projects and has been invited to exhibit her work in virtual galleries in Massachusetts and Bath, UK. She has also the chaired the Boston based MJT Dance Company Board of Directors for the 3 years.
She received an undergraduate math degree from Suffolk University, Boston. She also would have met the requirements for a computer science degree, if they had had one at the time. At her graduation, the math department honored Carmin for her important contributions to their community.
Carmin has 18 years experience in information systems application development and in software development. In that time she has worked in the Boston metro area, progressing steadily from programmer to technical manager. She has worked at Teradyne Inc., Polaroid Corp., Lotus Development Corp. and Fidelity Investments. She managed Lotus' Human Resources Systems and Financial Systems. Carmin managed a hypertext development project at Fidelity, until she realized she was a digital artist trapped in a Project Manager's body. This simple realization changed her life. She decided to trade the glory of management for the personal satisfaction of creating digital art.
In 1995, Carmin began studying digital art at Mass College of Art. She returned to Lotus as a member of the Lotus Notes Quality Engineering team. She left Lotus to become the Resident Artist for the DoWhile Studio, in Boston. The residency allowed her to explore many technical areas, including animation, audio and video editing, 3D modeling, technical considerations for printing digital images, and web design. During her residency, she learned to appreciate the artist's responsibility to the community at large. She also decided to commit herself to introducing computers to urban youth through art.

 

Kurt Hentschlager:

New York-based Austrian artist Kurt Hentschlager creates large-scale immersive theatrical events and installations. For 10 years he has worked collaboratively with Ulf Langheinrich as a part of the group

Granular-Synthesis. Employing monumental projected images and towering sound environments, their multimedia installations affect the viewer on both physical and emotional levels, pushing the limits of how much sensory

information audiences can absorb.

 

Garnet Hertz:

Garnet Hertz is a Fulbright Scholar, Research Fellow at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and is a doctoral student at the University of California Irvine. He also holds an MFA from the Arts Computation Engineering program at UCI and has completed UCI's Critical Theory Emphasis. His current interests include the history, theory and practice of electro/mechanical art, computing, media theory, digital/internet art and robotics. He has shown his work at several notable international venues including Ars Electronica and SIGGRAPH and is also founder of Dorkbot-Socal, a monthly Los Angeles-based lecture series on electronic art. Popular press about his work is widespread, disseminating through 25 countries including The New York Times, Wired News, I.D. Magazine, The Washington Post, Slashdot, NPR, USA Today, NBC, CBS, TV Tokyo, ZDTV and CNN Headline News.
(updated 20 January 2006)

 

HeHe:

HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen) reverse cultural engineers the technological systems that surround us: From transport design to pollution monitoring, from public advertisement to meteorology, from architecture to public lightning. Their work seeks to go back in time, re-work past and as a result, re-phrase the existing into a new critical usage, a social function, with the spectator in its epicentre. At a time of ongoing technological expansion, progress starts to fray on its edges. How can we use and re-use, not only as a semiotic resistance against those who prey on the new, but also to return back to original invention, which have become clouded by recursive innovations. In this way, the work of HeHe is a process of reduction and subtraction until they find a point of departure, from which they can develop a usage with a plain functionality.

HeHe is a collective and a non-profit making organisation for production, founded in France by Helen Evans (United Kingdom, 1972) & Heiko Hansen (Germany, 1970). Helen and Heiko’s work has been shown in a range of cultural contexts.

Their installations have been presented at the Centre George Pompidou Centre in Paris, Triennale in Milan, V2 Institute for Unstable Media in Rotterdam, Electrohype in Malmo, ISEA Nagoya, CynetArt in Dresden, the Palazzo delle Papesse Centre for Contemporary Art in Sienna. In 2001 they were awarded the CyNet Art Award for interactive installation.

They have published scientific papers and held research positions in informatics laboratories such as: Frauenhofer in Germany and INRIA Futurs in France (National Institute for Research in Informatics and Mechanics).

Both Helen and Heiko have taught young artists and designers within both art education and artist-run organisations: including masters students at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, both undergraduate and masters design students at ENSCI/Les Ateliers in Paris, and undergraduate media students at the University of Amsterdam.

They benefited from two years residency at the prodigious artist factory Mainsd’oeuvres, a multidisciplinary site for cultural projects based in St-Ouen (Northern Paris), as well as the Pixel Ache residency at NIFCA (Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art) and a residency at Makrolab in Scotland with ArtsCatalyst. HeHe Association has been generously supported by DICREAM and CNAP (Ministry of Culture, France).

HeHe association collaborates with a range of companies such as Beauty Prestige International in Paris, Cluster Magazine in Italy and Interface-Z in Paris.

Galerie Quang, Paris, represents “Collectif HeHe”.

 

Christophe Kihm:

Christophe Kihm is an independent curator, a writer for Art Press, and a professor at Le Fresnoy based in France. He has curated many international electronic and emergent media art exhibitions in France.

 

Li Tan:

Professor Tan has portrayed his inventive and autodidactic energy as an artist, teacher and researcher for three decades while residing in China, Canada, Singapore and the U.S.A.

He has taught art and computer 2D/3D animation graphics for over a decade across all college levels internationally. Currently, he is an assistant professor at Rutgers University. In addition, he has worked as an art director, animator, graphic designer and exclusive art editor in local and board industries over the past decades. His specialties are concentrated specifically on 3D character animation technology through the use of Softimage/3D, as well as video editing and multimedia knowledge. His advanced qualifications are equally balanced by his classical animation skills along with a profound knowledge of animation principles.

 

Paul Slocum:

Describes himself as a i'm a geek artist/musician/hacker living in dallas, texas...

Slocum has exhibited his interactive and time-based hacks as well as given talks and performances around the world and from the east to west coast. He recently opened a new gallery in Dallas called The And/Or Gallery, has been performing with his group treewave, exhibits at Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas.

 

Jonah Brucker Cohen:

Jonah Brucker-Cohen is a researcher, artist, and Ph.D. candidate in the Disruptive Design Team of the Networking and Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG), Trinity College Dublin. He also worked as a Research Fellow in the Human Connectedness Group at Media Lab Europe in Dublin, Ireland. He is co-founder of the Dublin Art and Technology Association (DATA Group) and a recipient of the ARANEUM Prize sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Art, Science and Technology and Fundacioin ARCO. His writing has appeared in numerous international publications including Wired Magazine, Rhizome.org, and GIZMODO and his work has been shown at events such as DEAF (03,04), UBICOMP (02,03,04), CHI (04) Transmediale (02,04), ISEA (02,04), Institute of Contemporary Art in London (ICA-04), Whitney Museum of American Art's ArtPort (03), Ars Electronica (02,04), and the ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe(04-5).

 

Zhang Ga Brinkmann:

Zhang Ga is an artist and director of the Netart Initiative, a loosely knit, open source-based, hub-styled, forum-oriented, action-enabled consortium. He studied art in China, continued his art education at the Berlin Academy of Arts in Germany (UdK) with a DAAD fellowship and holds an MFA from the Parsons School of Design in the US. Zhang Ga lives and works in NYC where he is a faculty member of the MFA Design and Technology Program at Parsons School of Design; he also is a visiting lecturer in Computer Graphics and Interactive Media at Pratt Institute. In 2004, he was the Artistic Director of the First Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium, a two-year-long project he initiated and co-organized with Prof. Lu Xiaobo, vice dean of the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University.

 

 (NOTE: A few artists have asked to participate on a charitable basis, requesting that the financial assistance/fee be applied to the needs of the symposium and exhibition.)

 

Projected Number of Attendees and Gallery Visitors

400 – 800 attendees/gallery-visitors

 

Present Advertising Materials/Branding

http://www.texelectronica.com