Lele Barnett

The Barnett Collection

2011-02-20T20:27:00.000-08:00

Ian and I are so pleased to add this piece to our small art collection: Cynthia Camlin, Burnt Grotto, Watercolor on paper, purchased from the Artist Trust Benefit Art Auction. Thank you, Cynthia! Thank you, Artist Trust!

Farewell and thank you, Artist Trust!

2011-01-06T17:48:00.000-08:00

I was heartbroken when my own gallery closed in October 2008, but Artist Trust was there for me. Artist Trust made a wonderful home for me, and I'm proud to have served as their Development Associate and (later) Membership and Events Manager. They allowed me the time and flexibility to curate exhibitions independently: Kerfuffle at Bumbershoot, Cultural Transcendence at the Wing Luke Asian Museum, Sounds Human at Bumbershoot, and (opening January 24!) Forecast at the Washington State Convention Center.

I am sad to say that tomorrow is my last day at Artist Trust, but thrilled that on Monday I begin my new position as Curatorial Consultant for the Microsoft Corporate Art Collection! I'm looking forward to this exciting new chapter in my life.

Forecast

2010-12-29T21:46:00.000-08:00

Mark your calendars!

Forecast: Communicating Weather and Climate
Presented by the American Meteorological Society and EcoArts Connections
Washington State Convention Center
Seattle, WA

Forecast: Communicating Weather and Climate -- A Collaborative Arts and Science Exhibition -- explores weather, climate, and atmosphere through the lens of diverse Washington State artists creating engaging visual works.

Special Announcement!

2010-09-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

I have a special announcement regarding the Sounds Human exhibition:

Trey Gunn (King Crimson) and Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine) will perform live with Shimon The Improvising Robotic Musician tomorrow September 3rd at 6pm sharp, in the Lopez Room at the Seattle Center. It's FREE. Please spread the word!

Sounds Human
Lopez and Fidalgo Rooms
Seattle Center

Opening: Friday, September 3, 12-7pm (FREE)
Bumbershoot Festival: September 4-6, 2010

Hope you can make it!

The artists of Sounds Human

2010-09-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

Sounds Human opens Friday! We are so excited. Here are some links and more information about the fabulous artists we are exhibiting:

Shimon: The Improvising Robotic Musician

Shimon is the second member of Georgia Tech's Robotic Musicianship Group (the first member was Haile, the robotic drummer). He has performed live on stage with human musicians, and over video-link with conference attendees halfway around the world. This is Shimon's debut West Coast appearance.

Trimpin

A sound sculptor, composer, engineer, and inventor, Trimpin has been called "one of the awesome musical geniuses of the early 21st century." A specialist in interfacing computers with traditional instruments, he has developed ways of playing everything from giant marimbas to stacks of electric guitars via computer. Trimpin has been hailed in New York's Village Voice as "a genius at circuitry and machinery as well as acoustics and musical structure [who] manufactures orchestras that play themselves."

Born in southwestern Germany near the Black Forest, Trimpin spent several years studying in Berlin, working as a set designer and meeting up with artists from both Germany and the United States. He relocated to the states in 1979.

In 1997, Trimpin received both a MacArthur "Genius" Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship for his creative investigations of acoustic music in spatial relationship. In 2005-2007, museums and galleries throughout the Pacific Northwest mounted an extensive retrospective of Trimpin's work; the New Yorker magazine profiled him; and local press hailed him as "a composer / sound artist / engineer / god."

Hugo Solis

Hugo Solis is a New Media artist who works in Mexico City and Seattle. His focus is the creation of interactive works where the active participation of the observer is fundamental to complete the work. The use of sound is a key element of his work, complemented by video, image, or kinetic sculpture. In addition to the development of interactive and multimedia sound installations using antique acoustic pianos, his current work includes creating sonic site-specific journeys and plays with the Juum duet.

Solis holds a DEA of Computer Sciences and Digital Communication from the Pompeu Fabra University, a Master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Laboratory, and a Bachelor in Piano performance form the Escuela Nacional de Música of the UNAM in Mexico City. He also studied computer music at NYU. He has received grants, prizes, and awards from FONCA, UNAM, TELMEX, MIT, UW, and IMEB, among others. Solis is currently finishing a PhD at DXARTS at the University of Washington.

Paul Rucker

Paul Rucker is an interdisciplinary artist: cellist, bassist, composer, and visual artist known for his innovative performances and installations. Composing and playing in various contexts and situations, his performance roles range from solo cellist to director of a 22-musician ensemble. Rucker also creates interactive sound and video installations that allow the viewer-listener to affect the work.

He has received numerous grants for the creation of visual art and music from 4Culture, the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, South Carolina Arts Commission, Washington State Arts Commission, King County Site Specific, Photographic Center Northwest, and Artist Trust. He has also been awarded residencies to Blue Mountain Center, Ucross Foundation, Art OMI, Banff Centre, Rockefeller Foundation Study Center (Bellagio, Italy), and Pilchuck School of Glass. Public art commissions include Trails of Vapor for the Museum of Flight, a 32-channel sound installation for the T. Evans Wyckoff Memorial Bridge, as well as the Trails Project commission from 4Culture and King County Parks to create new work inspired by the 175 miles of trail in King County, WA.

Signal to Noise

Oliver Wilshen and Niall Quinn graduated from University of Brighton in 2009 and work individually and as collaborators in both visual and sound-based mediums and interactive installations.

Victoria Haven

Victoria Haven received her BFA in painting from the University of Washington. In 1997 Haven moved to London, where she completed her Master's in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College - University of London (1999). Her work has been included in group shows at the Drawing Center in NY, The Henry Art Gallery, Frye Art Museum, Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, and Tablet Gallery, London.

Haven’s focus on drawing, which she employs as a means to mine the fertile ground between 2 and 3 dimensions, has been written about in several publications including Artforum, Artweek, and Art in America. Awards and residencies include: The MacDowell Colony, two Pollock-Krasner fellowships, Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Award, and a Stranger Genius Grant. She has spoken about her work at several institutions including the University of Washington and Central Washington University, and recently completed a month-long visiting artist residency at Illinois State University.

Haven currently lives and works in Seattle and is represented by Greg Kucera Gallery and PDX Contemporary Art, Portland.

Erika Simmons

Erika Simmons is a self-taught artist living and working in Atlanta, Georgia. She specializes in the use of non-traditional media, typically recycling used or donated items and deriving the inspiration for her forms from the materials themselves. Her broad body of collage-based work includes the extensive series of portraits known as Ghost in the Machine, with likenesses in cassette tape and film ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Alfred Hitchcock. Simmons' work has been featured on major websites and in newspapers and magazines the world over. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006 with a degree in Russian.

Ariane Michel

Ariane Michel investigates the perceptual connections and divides between humans, animals, and their environments in her film and video works. Michel graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts DécoratifsFRAC, Reims, France, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York) as well as the film world, (Locarno, IFF Rotterdam, and FID Marseilles). Her recent project, The Screening, both a performance and a film, was shown as an "Art Statements" project at Art Basel 38, and on the Piazza Grande at the Locarno 60th Film Festival. Her feature film Les Hommes won the 2006 Grand Prize for French competition at FID Marseilles. Michel's most recent solo exhibition was in the Atelier du Jeu de Paume, Paris. She resides in Paris, where she is represented by Jousse Entreprise.

The Marty Riemer Show and Sounds Human

2010-08-20T09:24:00.001-07:00

Sounds Human opens September 3rd!

2010-08-14T11:46:00.000-07:00

Please join us for the opening of Sounds Human on September 3 at the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms. The Bumbershoot Visual Arts Exhibits will open with the Mayor's Arts Awards at noon and will be free for the public to view until 7pm.

Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle, WA
Fidalgo and Lopez Rooms
Curated by Lele Barnett and Kathy Lindenmayer

Opening: Friday, September 3, 12-7pm (FREE)
Festival: September 4-6, 2010

Shimon – The Improvising Robotic Musician

2010-06-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce a very exciting addition to our Sounds Human exhibition at this year's Bumbershoot Festival: Shimon – The Improvising Robotic Musician. You will be able to meet and interact with Shimon, a robot who can to listen to, recognize, play, and improvise music using melodic and harmonic perception and improvisation algorithms.

This will be Shimon's debut West Coast performance -- so mark your calendars for our opening reception on September 3!

And pay no attention when Stephen Colbert says that Shimon is only "pretending" to like jazz...

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

ThreatDown - Military Food Police, Jazz Robots & Pretty Girls

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Fox News

Upcoming shows

2010-06-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

I've got some shows coming up:

Sounds Human
September 3 - 6, 2010
Curated by Lele Barnett and Kathy Lindenmayer
Lopez & Fidalgo Rooms
Bumbershoot Festival
Seattle, WA

From advancements in robotics to inter-species communications to explorations of new responses in obsolete media, Sounds Human investigates the many ways that developments in art, technology, and their intersections have resulted in new expressions of sound.

Sounds Human will feature renowned artists Trimpin, Hugo Solis, Paul Rucker, Signal to Noise, Victoria Haven, Erika Simmons, and will also showcase the film Les Oiseaux de Céleste, much hyped from Céleste Boursier Mougenot's recent installation at the Barbican in London.

Sounds Human is made possible in part by 911 Media Arts Center with funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Bumbershoot’s Visual Arts Programs will officially open Friday, September 3 with a free public preview from 12 pm - 7 pm, in association with the Mayor’s Arts Awards Ceremony.

Also:

Forecast: Communicating Weather and Climate
January 24 - April 9, 2011
Hosted by the American Meteorological Society and EcoArts
Washington State Convention Center
Seattle, WA

Microbursts, photography, supercooling, sculpture, Alberta Clippers, painting, sea level rise and more join forces as art and science come together for Forecast: Communicating Weather and Climate.

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 17!

2009-12-10T23:42:00.000-08:00

Please join me for the opening of Cultural Transcendence, an exhibition I am guest curating for the Wing Luke Asian Museum featuring artists Robert Hodgin, Eunsu Kang, Heidi Kumao, Horatio Law, and Brent Watanabe. The exhibit will run December 18, 2009 until September 19, 2010, and the opening reception will be held December 17 starting at 5:30pm. I hope you can make it.

* * *

Wing Luke Asian Museum Presents
Cultural Transcendence

Featured artists: Robert Hodgin, Eunsu Kang, Heidi Kumao, Horatio Law, and Brent Watanabe
Curated by: Lele Barnett

On display: December 18, 2009 - September 19, 2010
George Tsutakawa Art Gallery at the Wing Luke Asian Museum

EXHIBIT OPENING
THURSDAY, December 17, 2009
5:30pm-6:30pm: All members exclusive preview featuring Shin'm, an interactive dance performance with artist Eunsu Kang and choreographer/performer Diana Garcia-Snyder. Reception with light refreshments. RSVP to Joann Natalia Aquino, Public Relations + Marketing Manager, at jaquino@wingluke.org or 206.623.5124 ext.106.
6:30pm-7:30pm: Open to the general public, Free Admission, No RSVP required.
Not a member? Join now at www.wingluke.org/join or call 206.623.5124 ext.126.

Cultural Transcendence

2009-10-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

Please mark your calendars!

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 17, 2009
December 18, 2009 - ~~June~~ September 19, 2010
Cultural Transcendence
The Wing Luke Asian Museum
Featuring Robert Hodgin, Eunsu Kang, Heidi Kumao, Horatio Law, and Brent Watanabe
Seattle, WA

In Cultural Transcendence, five Asian Pacific Islander American artists exhibit works that focus on a step forward from traditional to new media: materials expanding beyond their inherent meanings. Their conceptual themes peer into history but do not dwell on a negative past -- inequality, discrimination, and alienation; instead they search the present and envision a better tomorrow. Cultural Transcendence explores the importance of technology in our modern experience and technology's influence on contemporary installation art.

Bumbershoot 2009

2009-09-09T21:13:00.000-07:00

Thank you so much to everyone who made it to the Kerfuffle exhibition at Bumbershoot!

If you weren't able to see the show, there are more images here, and there is some great press here.

Links to the artists' web sites:

DJ Spooky/Paul D. Miller

Lunar Resonant Streetlights

2009-08-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

Christina Seely, one of the artists in our upcoming Kerfuffle exhibition at Bumbershoot, is a principal member of Civil Twilight, a design collective committed to brilliant simplicity.

Civil Twilight's Lunar Resonant Streetlights respond to ambient moonlight, dimming and brightening each month as the moon cycles through its phases.

The project was nominated for the INDEX Award in Copenhagen which comes along with a jury prize. From the INDEX web site:

* * *

Willis agrees that Floridian coastal communities could be particularly right for this lighting system because of the needs of nesting sea turtles on the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shores. "A sort of peripheral area of research I was into involved how natural and astronomical cycles are involved with physiology and the human body and other animals.

"Sea turtles are particularly interesting because they live almost their entire lives in the sea, but come in to the beach during particular times of night at particular times of year to lay their eggs. When the turtles hatch" months after they're laid, " they instinctively crawl toward a light source to reach the water."

The turtle hatchlings interpret whichever major source of light they see as moonlight. In areas where streetlights are on, it's been known for decades that the young turtles can be thrown off course. "Instead of crawling to the water," Willis says, "they head inland toward the lights and they can die of dehydration."

While many coastal communities have lighting ordinances now, requiring residents and municipalities to keep bright lights away from turtle-nesting beachfronts, Lunar-Resonant lighting would automatically resolve the issue because on the bright-moon nights of sea turtle activities, the sensors would have dimmed the streetlight systems.

* * *

Please take a moment to read a little more and VOTE for the People's Choice Award! This will help Christina and her team move forward with getting Lunar Resonant Streetlights out into the world.

Kerfuffle: A Preview

2009-08-08T13:01:00.001-07:00

Please join us for the opening of Kerfuffle (or The Uneasy Relationship Between Humanity and the Environment) on September 4 at the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms. The Bumbershoot Visual Arts Exhibits will open with the Mayor's Arts Awards at noon and will be free for the public to view until 7pm.

Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle, WA
Fidalgo and Lopez Rooms
Curated by Chris Weber and Lele Barnett

Opening: Friday, September 4, 12-7pm (FREE)
Festival: September 5-7, 2009

Kerfuffle
\kər-ˈfə-fəl\
Etymology: alteration of carfuffle, from Scots car- (probably from Scottish Gaelic cearr wrong, awkward) + fuffle to become disheveled

Kerfuffle is an uncompromising look at the environmental mess we have created in our world, the awkward tension the problem has created, and a search for answers in starting anew. We examine exactly how many plastic bottles the United States consumes within five minutes and the light pollution caused by the world's major economic and political centers. What does one man's garbage look like after one year's time? Should we pack our bags and relocate to the unclaimed lands of Antarctica? Or can we change our ways and grow new cities with green, living matter? This exhibition is an exploration of the challenge we face along with many creative possibilities.

Vaughn Bell
Biosphere Built for Two

Vaughn Bell creates interactive projects and immersive environments that deal with how we relate to our environment. Vaughn has exhibited her sculpture, installation, video, performance, and public projects internationally in diverse venues including Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Exit Art in New York, The Soap Factory in Minneapolis, and the town of Kamiyama, Japan. Her work has been featured in Artnews, Afterimage, and Arcade Journal, among others. She received her MFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Joseph Gray
Crystalline Chlorophyll

Joseph Gray makes stuff, usually involving digital electronics and/or sculptural forms. He received his BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, studying video and sculpture. He has exhibited or performed at Unit B Gallery in San Antonio, Texas; Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, California; The Landing Pad in Edmonton, Alberta; and the former James Leslie Gallery in Lewiston, Idaho.

Gray is actively involved with operations and administration at 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle and is also a resident visualist and graphic designer with the Monktail Creative Music Concern, a collective of musicians and composers dedicated to new uses of improvisation based in Seattle.

Chris Jordan
Plastic Bags, 2007
Plastic Bottles, 2007
Cell Phones #2, Atlanta 2005

Chris Jordan's series, Running the Numbers, looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: sixty thousand plastic bags (five seconds of consumption in the United States); two million plastic beverage bottles (five minutes of consumption in the United States); and so on. Jordan's hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large, intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, Jordan hopes to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

Allison Kudla
capacity for (urban eden, human error)

Allison Kudla is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS). She holds a BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (2002) and is interested in creating art that encourages both innovation of and reflection on the technologies and materials that it uses. Her most recent accomplishments include an honorable mention in the international competition Vida 11.0, participation in Artbots Dublin 2008, a commission for DesCours New Orleans, and a paper presentation at PerthDAC 2007. Additionally, her work has been written about in many magazines, and her writing was published in the Leonardo Electronic Almanac for a special issue called Embodiment and Presence. She has recently accepted a two year appointment at Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology in Bangalore, India. There she will be a visiting artist and teacher at their Center for Experimental Media Art (CEMA).

Julie Lindell
Revolution, 2009

Julie Lindell is a Seattle artist educated at Cornish College of the Arts. She recently finished a two year residency at Pottery Northwest in Seattle. Her work has been included in numerous group shows, locally at the Catherine Person Gallery, nationally, and internationally at Natsuka Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Lindell’s work can be seen at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, California; Tryon Creek State Park, Portland, Oregon; and The Port Angeles Fine Art Center, Port Angeles, Washington. Lindell’s sculpture was recently purchased by the Seattle Public Utilities Portable Works Collection, and she has been awarded a James and Janie Washington Foundation Residency for 2009/2010.

Paul D. Miller (a/k/a DJ Spooky)
North/South
Poster Manifesto

Born in 1970 in Washington D.C., Paul D. Miller re-contextualizes elements of cultural detritus as archival video sampling, digital prints, installations, and drawings, thus calling into question the validity of maintaining disparate categories such as copy vs. original, appropriation vs. creation, and auteur vs. audience. Finding inspiration in historic documents and film, Miller explores the fluid range of "truth" in modern portrayals of the explorer's path. In addition to his art, he contributes as a cultural producer by touring the world constantly under the pseudonym DJ Spooky. He currently lives and works in New York.

Karen Rudd
Last Stand

In 2005, Karen Rudd was awarded an artist fellowship to participate in an archeological dig in Darrington, Washington through Earthwatch, funded by the Ford Motor Company. With a group of scientists, artists, and volunteers, she helped excavate a former homestead belonging to a Sauk-Suiattle tribe woman, her Norwegian immigrant husband, and their children.

Because of the fast rate of decay in the damp woods of the Pacific Northwest and because the nearby river had changed its course, the excavation site had few stable landmarks, with the notable exception of the enormous, old-growth cedar stumps. For a week, she helped locate, measure, and map these ancient stumps ranging from 10-18' in diameter with a few reaching nearly twice that size.

Since this influential experience, Rudd's work has focused on tree stumps and recreating the form from reclaimed corrugated cardboard boxes. Reconstructing the organic form from its original material, she draws connections between past and present by creating a historical subject in a ubiquitous and contemporary material. The sculptures are a bold commentary on consumerism and natural resource use.

Christina Seely
Lux

Christina Seely is a photographer and professor based in San Francisco, CA. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections such as The West Collection, The Walker Art Center, Yale University, Fidelity Investments, The Boston Public Library, Wellington Management Company, and The National Museum of Women in the Arts. Born (1976) and raised in Berkeley, CA, she received a BA from Carleton College (1998) and an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design (2003). Christina is also a principal member of Civil Twilight, a design collective who won Metropolis Magazine's 2007 Next Generation Design Competition with a proposal for Lunar Resonant Streetlights (streetlights that dim and brighten in correlation with the moon phases).

Brent Watanabe
Stack:Heap:Loop

Brent Watanabe is an artist, filmmaker, and computer programmer living and working in Seattle. He stumbled into art almost 20 years ago, designing and illustrating hundreds of posters for punk rock shows. Since then, he has focused on video, film, and computer controlled installations. His short films have been screened at film festivals internationally, and his drawings, videos, and installations have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the U.S.

Kuros Zahedi
Finding Away

Kuros Zahedi is an artist and a teacher. He is originally from Iran and has lived and traveled extensively in Europe. He is inspired by his spirituality, the natural world, and a vision of hope for civilization on earth. His work explores consciousness, the human being, and its ultimate inseparability with nature.

Kuros has worked with non-profits, educational institutions, and governmental organizations to successfully complete community-based art projects which stir significant and relevant questions about the future of humanity. He believes that art can play a powerful role in the renewal of human civilization. He has worked with groups such as Sound Transit, 4Culture, The Green Festival, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Bellingham Parks and Recreation, the RE Store, Sustainable Capitol Hill, and numerous public and private schools. His work has been featured on network television. Kuros lives in Bellingham, WA.

Bumbershoot and the Mayor's Arts Awards

2009-07-10T12:38:00.001-07:00

Bumbershoot

2009-05-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

Our Bumbershoot exhibit is coming together with some truly amazing artists:

Kerfuffle (or The Uneasy Relationship Between Humanity and the Environment)
Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle, WA
Visual Arts Exhibition: Curatorial collaboration with Chris Weber: Fidalgo and Lopez Rooms
Featuring Vaughn Bell, Joseph Gray, Chris Jordan, Allison Kudla, DJ Spooky/Paul D. Miller, Karen Rudd, Christina Seely, Brent Watanabe, and Kuros Zahedi

The exhibit opens with the Mayor's Arts Awards at 12pm on Friday, September 4. Visual arts exhibits will be free to the public that day until 7pm. The official Bumbershoot Festival (lineup here!) runs from September 5 - 7. Ticket information here.

New Media at The Wing Luke Asian Museum

2009-04-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

I am extremely excited to announce that I am curating my first museum exhibition:

December 17, 2009 - June 19, 2010
Cultural Transcendence
The Wing Luke Asian Museum
A new media exhibition of Asian Pacific American artists in the George Tsutakawa Art Gallery
Featuring Robert Hodgin , Eunsu Kang, Heidi Kumao, Horatio Law, and Brent Watanabe
Seattle, WA

More details to come!

Also, the Bumbershoot festival has given a sneak peek at the 2009 lineup. It's going to be a great festival this year, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. Again, I'll post more details soon.

This Summer

2009-03-21T21:39:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to summer; how about you? Here are some upcoming events that are going to make summer even better:

July 11, 2009: Frayed Wire

Frayed Wire is a one day event bringing together people at the intersection of art and technology in the Pacific Northwest. I am on the Programming Committee, so please let me know if you have suggestions for speakers, teachers, etc.!

9:00am - 6:00pm day camp at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center

7:00pm - 12:00pm evening reception at 911 Media Arts Center

REGISTER NOW for early registration price of $40

September 5 - 9, 2009: BUMBERSHOOT

Chris Weber and I are curating a visual arts exhibition for the Fidalgo and Lopez Rooms. So far we've got some awesome artists lined up: Chris Jordan, Allison Kudla, DJ Spooky/Paul D. Miller, Karen Rudd, and Kuros Zahedi. The show will be exploring waste, regrowth, and sustainability. More information to come...

Artists Working with Technology

2009-02-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

Tuesday night's New Media networking event at Artist Trust was fantastic. Brent Watanabe shared some of his past projects as well as ideas for his upcoming residency at Jack Straw New Media Gallery. Hugo Solis spoke about his improvisations, sound art, installations, and his fascination with adding electronics to discarded pianos. Following the presentations, Maggie Orth led a discussion about new media resources in Seattle. Shelly Farnham from Dorkbot and Steven Vroom of 911 Media Arts talked about what their organizations have to offer.

The feeling that I got from many of the artists is that they feel isolated and disconnected from Seattle's art scene. They enjoyed having the face-to-face meeting and discussion time, and hoped the group could continue. I started a google group:

http://groups.google.com/group/artists-working-with-technology

for artists to continue networking independently of Artist Trust. Feel free to join, and please post about other meetings, ideas, projects, art openings and opportunities.

Networking Event at Artist Trust

2009-02-13T16:40:00.000-08:00

Hi!

I am hosting an upcoming networking event at Artist Trust on Tuesday, February 24. Please join me for some great presentations and a talk about new media resources in Seattle. Anyone who is interested may attend. Beer and snacks will be provided.

February 24, 2009 :: 6-9pm
Artists' Networking Event at Artist Trust
New Media: Artists working with Technology
1835 12th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122

An evening of networking with artists that enrich the arts landscape through the use of technology. Featuring:

Brent Watanabe: 2008-09 Jack Straw New Media Gallery Artist
Hugo Solis: Technologist and sound artist, PhD student at DXArts at the University of Washington.
Maggie Orth: Artist and Technologist, who will lead a discussion on New Media resources in Seattle.

Living Matter as Media: Allison Kudla

2009-01-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

New media artist Allison Kudla and I got together at Grey for delicious crepes and a talk about her work. Here's a little bit of our discussion. I'm going to talk more about Allison's projects in the upcoming summer issue of Arcade.

* * * * *

Why do you choose living matter as media?

Living matter comes with a time scale, a life span; it changes. We identify with it in a real way. It has its own behaviors and characteristics.

How did you start working with living matter?

I started my art career as a painter. In a conceptual painting class, we were questioned why. I asked myself, why am I making paintings? I was interested conceptually with states and cycles within paintings -- what I was really trying to create was something with time embedded within it. I started taking classes in the art and technology department. I didn't want to make things that were static and material, so I jumped on the digital "virtual" bandwagon that was ever present at the time. I got excited about software becoming art and taking data from the external world and having it become tangible. I made external data streams become video or animated graphics. I learned how to program graphics to move in response to the environment. I learned about sensors, and I wanted the audience to have input into the picture plane. Then I asked myself, why am I making these pictures? I wanted to push it into making experiences for people. I worked on a piece called tech.table, and I made another piece about wallpaper that vibrated depending on sine waves that were being picked up in the ambient space. I wanted to bring live and reactive responses and behaviors to a space and its components. When I went to DXArts, in my first meeting with Shawn Brixey, he asked why I was still using a screen, pushing me to reconsider if i had fully rethought the picture plane and painting within my work. I asked how else can I do something like make grass dance? I needed to use a screen. And in that moment I thought about questioning the actual biology of plants and how their systems work. I spent the next 4 years studying plant movement, growth and morphology by making art using plants within systems of sensing and control. Its funny, in a way, I moved from doing interactive interiors and interactive furniture to making work using plants. But the connection is really lucid to me, there is something incredibly architectural about plants.

Tell me about your newest pieces and how the technologies you are exploring might be applied to practical scientific, municipal or other problems.

Living material has its own behavior, and when working with it, you have to make decisions about the behavior. In the Search for Luminosity, as soon as the plant I was working with woke up, its light turned off. I mutated its cycle by putting it in this system, making it live shorter days. There was a glitch in which the light didn't turn on, and I captured in timelapse the plant waking up in darkness. I found out about its endogenous rhythms; once a certain chemical depletes, it looks for more. I figured out that the light can be guided by what the plant does, instead of the opposite. So in that piece I managed to learn in a very tangible way the difference between a self-reinforcing and a counterbalancing feedback loop. Looking at it we can see a similarity between ourselves and our environment. What climate does effects humans. What humans do effects the climate; human behavior is altering the environment.

In these works, the organism is the thing that drives the mechanics, electronics and the computation that surrounds it. The clearest tie it has to the climate change problem is that the biological system is effecting the change in the physical universe. These are things that we don't think of as malleable or mutable. But when we begin to see, through technology, that we can and do make significant change, we then ask ourselves, what do we want that change to be? One that wants to sustain life! This project doesn't directly explain how to sustain life. Ken Rinaldo's work is a better example because he's actually showing us how to make systems that sustain life.

It's less interesting to read a book than watch a machine watching a plant and causing an environmental change based on what it sees. It's learning science through art. It's about the process. It's finding an audience that isn't necessarily interested in science but gets excited about the visual systems they are confronted with. Personally, I got so excited when I learned that plant cells can become any organ. It made me finally begin to deeply understand stem cell research! Showing Decorative Growth Pattern at McLeod Residence was exciting because we showed people that the cut plant leaves will actually grow.

In regards to the piece in New Orleans in 2007 called capacity for (urban eden, human error), I became interested in homemade 3D printers when I was working on that piece. Check out these web sites: reprap.org, fabathome.com. All of these people are building 3D printers to make things out of plastic... or glue...and in some cases food and I thought, why not make something green! Something living! Something that can start in a computationally guided pattern and then become something else based on its own inherent behaviors and characteristics. That to me seemed super interesting from all sorts of angles.

What I had hoped to do with that machine was to make 3D objects out of plant matter, like a cube shaped plant, or something that wouldn't happen in nature but maybe would happen in a digital or algorithmic space. It didn't work out that time around, but maybe in the future.

When I was at the Prado in Madrid, I was fascinated by Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, always one of my favorites, but in this case especially all of the weird organic architecture. I loved the merging of the biological with the mechanical, and how organic matter became architectural through human imagination. I imagine creating something similar in three dimensions.

Do your endeavors have (or potentially have) wider applications?

My work is about living organisms both struggling and thriving in the physical world. You hear the phrase "think globally act locally," and it's so cliche that we don't actually understand it until we recognize how much small changes effect the environment. My work makes people who maybe don't regularly think about engineering and science think about how living systems behave in and effect their surroundings.

Ken Rinaldo: upcoming exhibit at Open Satellite

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Ken Rinaldo is a new media artist known for his work in electronics, robotics, rapid prototyping, aquaponics, artificial life, engineering, and human and animal computer interaction. He has created interactive, artificial life robotic installations such as Autotelematic Spider Bots (2006) and Autopoiesis (2000-2005), an exhibition of musical and robotic sculptures exploring the idea of group consciousness.

In 2004, he created Augmented Fish Reality, an interactive installation of five rolling robotic fish-bowl sculptures designed to explore interspecies and transpecies communication. The sculptures allowed Siamese Fighting Fish to use intelligent hardware and software to move their own robotic fish bowls. Rinaldo's work merges the organic with new technologies harmoniously. Most recently, Ken Rinaldo and collaborative partner Amy Youngs created Farm Fountain, a system for growing edible and ornamental fish and plants in a constructed, indoor ecosystem. This project grew out of concerns for the environment and an interest in sustainable agriculture.

New Media Art

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According to Wikipedia:

New media art is an art genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, Internet art, interactive art technologies, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology. The term differentiates itself by its resulting cultural objects, which can be seen in opposition to those deriving from old media arts (i.e. traditional painting, sculpture, etc).

My interest started out like this:

From 1999-2004, while arranging glass exhibitions for Traver Gallery and Foster/White, I was always searching for transcendence in glass. Well past the height of the Studio Glass Movement, it seemed patrons had already collected every glass artist on their checklist, purchasing one signature vessel from each. I wanted to find artists who were not simply repeating form after form that made him or her famous. What I discovered in my search were artists experimenting with new technologies, such as Jeffrey Sarmiento with his combination of digital, mechanical, and manual glass-working methods. In 2007, I hosted an exhibition for Sarmiento at McLeod Residence. While we were preparing the exhibit, I visited him at the Pilchuck School of Glass, where his instructor in 3D modeling was artist/technologist Ken Rinaldo.

It wasn't my first contact with a new media artist. I had already curated exhibitions with Paul Rucker's interactive sound installations, and I'd also just hosted an exhibition called Interactivity with some amazing pieces by the Barbarian Group. But: it was my first contact with a new media hero. And luckily, I was able to keep in touch with Ken Rinaldo. After the closing of my gallery in October, I decided that I still want to put together exhibitions, and in particular I want to promote new media artists, especially those whose work I find transcendent, those who are exploring technologies that can be applied to benefiting our world. I'll share more about Ken Rinaldo's work and our upcoming exhibition at Open Satellite in the next blog post. But first... the point of having this blog:

Work that transcends, to me, is work that is entirely new, with new concepts and new ways of exploring those concepts. It doesn't separate the viewer from itself. It is interactive. It encourages consciousness.

The new art movement is New Media, Interactivity, and Community. I want to talk about smart art, and I want to cultivate a community of smart artists.