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Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) Revisited to be held at Stevens Institute of Technology April 5 and 6, 2008.
Lve web stream Sat. April 5, 7PM:  http://www.sittv.com

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  

For Information contact:
Carol Parkinson (Harvestworks) 212-431-1130
Julie Harrison (Stevens Institute) 201-216-8583
        

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) Revisited

to be held at Stevens Institute of Technology April 5 and 6, 2008

Exhibition, panel, performance, and films to examine E.A.T.’s historic work in promoting collaborations between artists and engineers

 

HOBOKEN, N.J. — Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center and the Art & Technology Program at Stevens Institute of Technology announce a weekend of events entitled “Experiments in Art in Technology (E.A.T) Revisited,” to examine and honor E.A.T.’s historic work in promoting collaborations between artists and engineers, and explore its influences on contemporary art and technology. The weekend includes an exhibition, panel discussion, sound performance and film screening. All events take place at Stevens Institute of Technology’s Babbio Center, located at River and 6th Street in Hoboken, New Jersey, and are free and open to the public. For travel directions, see http://www.stevens.edu/sit/maps/public_transport.cfm.

The events begin on Saturday, April 5, at 2:00 p.m. with the opening of the exhibition, “E.A.T. Revisited: Documents and Works.” Included is an installation of photographic documentation entitled The Story of E.A.T.: Experiments in Art and Technology, 1960–2001 by Billy Klüver; a selection of classic works: Floats by Robert Breer and Silver Clouds by Andy Warhol; and an installation of new works, “Transduced Objects,” created in a workshop inspired by David Tudor’s “Rainforest,” taught by John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein to artists and students from both Stevens Institute and Harvestworks. “E.A.T. Revisited: Documents and Works” will continue through April 27, 2008.

Following at 3:00 p.m. is a panel discussion, “Art and Technology, Historical and Current Perspectives,” with panelists Robert Whitman, Julie Martin, John Driscoll, Steve Bull, Scot Gresham-Lancaster and Anne Swartz (Savannah College of Art and Design), moderated by Julie Harrison (Stevens Institute of Technology).

At 5:30 p.m. is a performance by Steve Bull and Scot Gresham-Lancaster called Cellphonia: Tempo Variable (Cellphonia: Changeable Weather), a surround sound memorial concert for John Cage and David Tudor in which live performance, cellphone calls, transduced objects, and synthetic voices are mixed by the musicians and the neural synthesis ETANN, or electronically trainable analog neural net, developed by Forrest Warthman and Scot Gresham-Lancaster for David Tudor. Cellphonia was sponsored by Harvestworks with funds from NYSCA.

There will be a reception following at 6:15 to meet the artists, panelists, and organizers.

On Sunday April 6, beginning at 1:00 p.m., screenings of films from “9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering,” include Robert Rauschenberg’s Open Score; John Cage’s Variations VII; Öyvind Fahlström’s Kisses Sweeter than Wine and a work-in-progress on David Tudor’s Bandoneon!. Producer Julie Martin and director Barbro Schultz Lundestam, will be present to introduce the films and answer questions. Suggested donation for this event, to benefit the “9 Evenings” film series, is $5.00 at the door, free to children, students and seniors.

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E.A.T. Revisited: Documents and Works
An Exhibition  *  April 5 – April 21, 2008  *  opening April 5  *  2:00 p.m.

An illustrated history of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), founded in 1966 by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, to provide artists with access to new technology and to promote collaborations between artists, engineers and scientists. Work includes:

The Story of E.A.T.: Experiments in Art and Technology, 1960-2001 by Billy Klüver: consists of 50 wall panels of photographs and text that document his activities and the history of E.A.T. over the past 40 years. Beginning with Klüver's collaboration with Jean Tinguely on Homage to New York, the machine that destroyed itself in the garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1960, the documentation continues through Klüver's collaborations with individual artists in the 1960s, the projects of Experiments in Art and Technology, to present-day collaborations with artists. It combines personal memories and historical information to create a visual memoir. These collaborations not only made it possible for artists to incorporate new technology into their work, but also provided a means for artists and engineers to play a more active role in many areas of our society.

Floats by Robert Breer: A series of Floats, a major part to Breer’s early oeuvre, are battery-powered sculptures that move slowly across the floor. One is a large greenish hard cylinder and the other a geometric shape made of foam, both from the 1960s.

Silver Clouds by Andy Warhol: “Created for a 1966 exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery, Warhol created an environment that included one room filled with Silver Clouds, helium-filled balloons which moved with the air currents. In addition to creating an ethereal, joyful atmosphere, they challenged traditional expectations by mingling with and touching the viewer. Made of helium and oxygen-filled metalized plastic film, the Silver Clouds were created with the assistance of Billy Klüver…After seeing the Silver Clouds, choreographer Merce Cunningham was inspired to include the work in a new dance piece, Rainforest, which premiered in 1968 and included choreography by Cunningham, music by David Tudor, set by Warhol, and costumes by Jasper Johns.” (from http://www.warhol.org/whats_on/perm_collections.html).

“Transduced Objects”: created in a workshop inspired by David Tudor’s “Rainforest,” taught by John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein to artists and students from both Stevens Institute and Harvestworks.

Participants: Harvestworks Artists—Max Abeles, Natalie Bell, Laura Vitale, Steve Bull. Stevens Institute Students—Sue Amdur, Jessica Ablonczy, Ken Bachor, Allison Basile, Donna Barden, Danielle Bisson, Brian Borga, Natalie Cullen, Sam Eichner, Eric Giesberg, Mona Hameed, Javier Jacome, Ruchi Shah, Will Sheridan.

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Art and Technology, Historical and Current Perspectives  
A Panel Discussion  *  April 5, 2008  *  3:00 p.m.

Participants:

Julie Harrison is the founding director of the new Art & Technology program at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, where she has been teaching for 15 years. As a media artist she has moved between video, photography, performance, installation, books and digital images. Her work has been exhibited widely, won numerous grants and awards, aired on PBS nationwide, and has been featured in festivals throughout North America and Europe.

Julie Martin joined the staff of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1968, and over the years has worked with Billy Klüver on E.A.T.’s major projects. Together with Klüver, she wrote and edited numerous publications including, Pavilion and Kiki's Paris. Currently, she is co-curator and advisor for various exhibitions on the history of E.A.T. and is executive producer of ten films on performances at the 1966 series “9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering.”

Anne Swartz is a professor of art history at the Savannah College of Art and Design who has written about E.A.T. She recently guest curated “Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, 1975-1985” at the Hudson River Museum. Currently she is co-editing a volume of Critical Matrix on Arlene Raven and is completing a textbook on new media art for Prentice Hall. She writes and lectures widely on contemporary art.

John Driscoll has collaborated on David Tudor's “Rainforest IV” since its inception in l973. He has toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe with Composers Inside Electronics, Douglas Dunn & Dancers, David Tudor, and as a solo performer. His work involves rotating robotic instruments, compositions for unique architectural spaces, and sound installations, and has focused upon the use of resonance both in acoustic spaces and materials.

Robert Whitman co-founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1966 with scientists Fred Waldhauer and Billy Klüver and artist Robert Rauschenberg. Whitman is a seminal figure in the context of expanded cinema and multimedia performance. During the 1960’s he distinguished himself with sophisticated theatrical works involving interaction between live performers and filmed images. Whitman’s one-person exhibitions have been presented extensively in the United States and Europe.

Steve Bull worked as a senior information architect and prototype designer/developer for Interval Research after completing NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. He is the founder of Cutlass, a company that specializes in mobile locative media and art. His work Cellphonia: San Jose, an opera at ISEA ZeroOne Festival, was well received by the New York Times and other publications. He has won many awards in the US and abroad for his media productions and is a member of the Directors Guild of America.

Scot Gresham-Lancaster has performed and recorded extensively both in the United States and internationally. He has worked as a technical assistant to Lou Harrison, Iannis Xenakis and David Tudor, among many others. At STEIM in Amsterdam he has been doing ongoing work to develop new families of controllers to be used exclusively in the live performance of electroacoustic music.

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Cellphonia: Tempo Variable (Cellphonia: Changeable Weather)
A Performance  *  April 5, 2008  *  5:30 p.m.

by Scot Gresham-Lancaster and Steve Bull (see bios above) with:

Phil Edelstein is one of the original members of Composers Inside Electronics as evolved from the seminal summer of courses, workshops and performances otherwise known as New Music in New Hampshire.  There has been a consistent thread in his work of a collaborative theatre of technology, cybernetic, structural and sculptural sound best evidenced in the installations and performances of Rainforest IV.

Hans Tammen is a composer/guitarist whose music has been described as an alien world of bizarre textures and a journey through the land of unending sonic operations. He discovers hidden sound properties through means of his modified Endangered Guitar, interactive software programming, stereo and multichannel sound systems. His works have been presented at festivals in the US, Canada, Mexico, Russia and all over Europe.

Brooks Williams is a guitarist, a songwriter, and an interpreter. For more than twenty years he has toured throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland. His unique combination of traditional and original music inspired Dirty Linen magazine to call Brooks Williams one of "America's musical treasures."

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“9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering
A Film Screening  * April 6, 2008  *  1:00 p.m.

In 1966, 10 New York artists worked with more than 30 engineers and scientists from Bell Telephone Laboratories to create works that incorporated new technology for “9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering,” a series of performances presented  October 13 – 23, 1966 at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York. The artists included John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman. E.A.T. is producing films of each artist’s “9 Evenings” performance. Using archive film and audio material, each film presents the original work as fully possible. Each film also contains a documentary section including new interviews with artists, engineers and other participants that illuminate specific technical and artistic aspects of the work. Robert Rauschenberg created the series titles and sound which are used for all ten films. Films screened include Robert Rauschenberg’s Open Score; John Cage’s Variations VII; Öyvind Fahlström’s Kisses Sweeter than Wine and a work-in-progress on David Tudor’s Bandoneon!. Director Barbro Schultz Lundestam and Producer Julie Martin will be present to introduce the films and answer questions.

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Harvestworks is a nonprofit Digital Media Arts Center that provides resources for artists to learn digital tools and exhibit experimental work created with digital technologies. Its goals are to create an environment where artists can make work inspired by and achieved with electronic media; to create a responsive public context for the appreciation of new work by presenting and disseminating the finished works; to advance the art community’s and the public’s “agenda” for the use of technology in art; and to bring together innovative practitioners from all branches of the arts for collaborations in the use of electronic media. For more information see: www.harvestworks.org

The Art & Technology (ARTC) Program in the College of Arts & Letters at Stevens Institute of Technology was formed four years ago as an academic undergraduate art department within an engineering school that promotes the history and administers the education of art as it relates to and interacts with science and technology. ARTC, loosely modeled after E.A.T., has also been a conduit for partnerships between artists, engineers, and scientists through its artist-in-residence program. For more information see: www.stevens.edu/cal/art/.

“Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) Revisited” is partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, the College of Arts & Letters at Stevens Institute and by mediaThe foundation inc.