Other Installation Art: A New York Electronic Art Festival Exhibition
Monday June 4 – Saturday June 10, 2007, 12-6 PM @ Roulette, 20 Greene Street
Produced by the Institute for Electronic Arts @ Alfred University
Other Installation Art is an exhibit of video synthesizers presented by The Institute for Electronic Art in cooperation with the School of Art and Design at Alfred University. During the regular exhibition hours, visitors are able to manipulate images and sounds using a hand built Sandin Image Processor, Wobbulator, and Jitter interactive system. Featured artists include Stephen Vitiello, Andrew Deutsch, Aaron Miller, Matthew Underwood, Tammy Bracket and Peer Bode (via cellphone from China).
On the evening of Wednesday June 6, there will be a performance event at Roulette in association with this exhibition; the program will feature solo and duo performances by exhibited artists.
The Institute for Electronic Arts is a high technological research studio facility within the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, NY. The IEA encourages and supports projects that involve interactive multi-media systems, experimental sonic/video production, digital imaging, and publications. The IEA is committed to developing cultural interactions spurred by technological experimentation and artistic investigations. The Division of Expanded Media was created to support and embrace an experience and understanding of art and art making that transcends the divisions that have traditionally existed among the disciplines of printmaking, design, digital interactive arts, video and sonic arts. The Video Arts program at Alfred University is one of the oldest, most diverse, and well-developed video art programs in the country. Emerging out of the intensive discussions concerning art, technology, and structuralism mapped out in the late sixties and early seventies, Alfred ’s video arts program is grounded in an experimental approach to image making with strong ties to the practice of real time imageprocessing and imaging tool development. These technologies range from early tools such as the Sandin Image Processor, developed in 1970, to the newer evolving tools such as Imagine and Big I, which are regularly updated.
About the Artists:
Stephen Vitiello is a sound and media artist. Originally from New York, he is now based in Richmond, Virginia. Vitiello’s CD releases include Scratchy Monsters, Laughing Ghosts (New Albion Records), Buffalo Bass Delay (Hallwalls), Scanner/Vitiello (Audiosphere/Sub Rosa), Bright and Dusty Things (New Albion Records), Scratchy Marimba (Sulphur UK/Sulfur USA), Light of Falling Cars (JDK Productions) and Uitti/Vitiello (JDK Productions). Stephen’s website: www.stephenvitiello.com
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Andrew Deutsch (b.1968) is a sound, video and graphic artist who lives in Hornell, NY and teaches Sound & Video Art in the Division of Expanded Media at Alfred University. He received his BFA in Video Art and Printmaking from Alfred University in 1990 and his MFA in Integrated Electronic Art from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1994. He is a member of the Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University and the Pauline Oliveros Foundation Board of Advisors and is a former member of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation Board of Directors (1999-2001) www.infoblvd.net/andrewandjen/index.htm
Matthew Underwood recently received his BFA at the School of Art and Design at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He has just completed a year as a Special Student in Electronic Arts with a focus on exploring the intersections between time based/print based, sound/video, and analog/digital mediums. Matthew has worked for the Institute for Electronic Arts in Alfred, NY and the Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY.
Aaron Miller is a specialist in audio, video, and interactive installations. Miller has designed software and managed technical production for numerous artists-including Gary Hill-at venues such as The Coliseum in Rome, The Louvre Museum and The Pompidou Center in Paris. His recent performances and exhibitions include The Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s Beyond/In Western New York (Biennial Invitational) and a tour of Poland and the Czech Republic, with Gary Hill and others. Past performances and exhibitions include the 9th Biennial of Moving Images at the Center for Contemporary images in Geneva, Switzerland, and Encuentro Digital en La Habana , in Havana, Cuba. Miller received his BA in Fine Arts from Alfred University and his MA in Media Study and Computer Music from the University at Buffalo. http://www.aaronmmiller.com
Tammy Renée Brackett received a BA in fine arts from Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y. in 2003 and an MFA in Electronic Integrated Art from the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in 2006. Critiques of the impact of scientific “breakthroughs” on identity formation inform Brackett’s work. Using new and traditional artistic media, she explores the factors that contribute to the invention of new identities and the overlapping fluid structures behind them. Brackett’s recent work uses scientific data, such as the Map of the Human Genome, brainwave biofeedback, and DNA frequencies, as elements in her musical compositions and surround-sound installations. Brackett has exhibited in Japan, Croatia, Hungary, and the United States. She has been awarded the 2005 College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship for Visual Artists, funded by the NEA, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in Expanded Media at Alfred University’s School of Art and Design.
Peer Bode is a nationally and internationally exhibiting artist with media works in museum collections world-wide. He is also an active educator and studio advocate and facilitator of independent electronic media. He is associated with the renowned American Alfred and Owego schools of new media imaging. He is Professor of Video Arts at the School of Art and Design and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA), NYSCC at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. His work is produced at the IEA, Alfred NY; the Experimental Television Center, Owego, NY and Pep Studios, Hornell and Rochester, NY.
About the Sandin:
The Dan Sandin Image Processor, or “IP,” is an analog video processor with video signals sent through processing modules that route to an output color encoder. The IP’s most unique attribute is its non-commercial philosophy, emphasizing a public access to processing methods and the machines that assist in generating the images. The IP was Sandin’s electronic expression for a culture that would “learn to use High-Tech machines for personal, aesthetic, religious, intuitive, comprehensive, and exploratory growth.” This educational goal was supplemented with a “distribution religion” that enabled video artists, and not-for-profit groups, to “roll-your-own” video synthesizer for only the cost of parts and the sweat and labor it took to build it. It was the “Heathkit” of video art tools, with a full building plan spelled out, including electronic schematics and mechanical assembly information. Tips on soldering, procuring electronic parts and Printed Circuit boards, were also included in the documentation, increasing the chances of successfully building a working version of the video synthesizer.
NYEAF is supported in part by the Argosy Foundation for Contemporary Music.
About Roulette:
Roulette is a major New York City venue for contemporary music and intermedia art, internationally recognized for the presentation and promotion of experimental contemporary music, an incubator for young talent and a laboratory where new ideas and new technologies are examined, appraised and developed.
Many of the tools introduced into the Institute for Electronic Arts Video Arts Studio in the early 70’s by Harland Snodgrass are still in use to this day. Processors such as the Sandin Image Processor, and many odd circuit boards were painstakingly hand made by Snodgrass and the students of the Video Arts program. These tools exemplify the kind of methodical, physical, and slow research it once took to produce electronic art. At the time of their production, these tools marked not only the radical move of artists into the field of electronics but of an art school curriculum as well. Harland himself was a painter, and in keeping with much of the Structuralism of the time, the video program began as a cross disciplinary way of seeing, via new tools, theories and paradigms.
About The Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University:
The Division of Expanded Media was created to support and embrace an experience and understanding of art and art making that transcends the divisions that have traditionally existed among the disciplines of printmaking, design, digital interactive arts, video and sonic arts.
The vocabularies and practices that once separated film, video, sound, digital imaging, graphic design, and printmaking have converged in one of the most productive and wonderfully complex set of possibilities, one comparable in significance and impact on art and society to the invention of the printing press and the advent of photography.
This is due in part to the development of new technologies, specifically the new tools computer hardware and software offer the arts, that allow for this cross-pollination.
The Division of Expanded Media recognizes the ways in which these technological developments, arising out of the common interest and vision of artists, engineers, and computer programmers to invent new ways of imaging, sounding, and understanding the world, are especially significant to all of these art forms. Each area within the division strives to offer the experience, knowledge, skills, and understanding of the tradition of each discipline combined with the creative vision necessary to expand the potential inherent to each medium.
This parallel approach within the division simultaneously provides a strong foundation that prepares young artists to explore the range of possibilities within a singular medium as well as the flexibility to approach the infinite possibilities for hybrid forms continually emerging in contemporary art. Rather than placing the emphasis on new media,which suggests a separation between the new and traditional, the division emphasizes the idea and process of expanding media.
The Division of Expanded Media is comprised of faculty whose experience is grounded in extensive backgrounds within each area,who within their own work and area within the division have a common interest in investigating what the new tools of digital technology offer each medium.
The Video Arts program at Alfred University is one of the oldest, most diverse, and well-developed video art programs in the country. Emerging out of the intensive discussions concerning art, technology, and structuralism mapped out in the late sixties and early seventies, Alfred ’s video arts program is grounded in an experimental approach to image making with strong ties to the practice of real time imageprocessing and imaging tool development. To work in real time means to process the video image live, directly as it happens on the television screen. The video arts studios are comprised of technologies that support this approach allowing the students working in video to experience a wide range of technologies and theories necessitated in the production of video art across both digital systems and analog/digital hybrid systems.
These technologies range from early tools such as the Sadine Image Processor, developed in 1970, to the newer evolving tools such as Imagine and Big I, which are regularly updated. These elements are explored within an extremely creative atmosphere where students are encouraged to explore both assignment based works and independent projects, which include but are not limited to:digital image processing and post production techniques, analog video tape editing, real time video image processing, digital animation, digital sound processing, story boarding, media analysis, signal analysis, visual scoring strategies, performance art, contemporary time based art theory, and film analysis. Video Arts incorporates performance and sonic art strategies and encourages the free use of these and other synergistic approaches throughout its curriculum.
Projects range from the production of single channel videotapes to multi media installations to interactive DVD authoring. In keeping with the philosophy of the Division of Expanded Media, students are encouraged to investigate the multitude of possibilities for time based images to cross over into other disciplines. The video image, exported in various formats, becomes as fluid as any other kind of image, ready to become a print, a frame in an animation, a button on a web page, or a structure for sound. Thus, the investigative research and work produced in the video arts program cross all forms of time based electronic art, including real time image processing, digital image manipulation, digital video, interactive media, installation, animation, and studio design.
Sonic Arts grew out of the Video Arts program at Alfred University and is an integral part of the Division of Expanded Media. Sonic Art is a relatively new and rapidly expanding artistic practice. It has been said by many that there is currently a sonic boom taking place in contemporary art; sonic art can be found in museums and galleries around the world.
The first question one might ask is “what is Sonic Art?” There are many answers to this question, but the simple and perhaps most useful is “anything you can do with sound that is not necessarily music. ” This definition, stated so openly, allows artists to consider sound as a material for a whole series of creative investigations rarely considered in the world of the “serious composer. ” Historically, these investigations have included: digital manipulation of sound, sound installation, sound sculpture, electroacoustics, ambient music, loops, noise composition, soundtracks for video, graphic notation, body music, minimalism, structuralism, and silence. Corresponding to the larger philosophy of the division of Expanded Media, the Sonic Arts curriculum focuses on the use of technology in a creative art-making context. The investigation of these various strategies and their applications in an independent and creative context expands the range of possibilities for sound to be synthesized into the multitude of new hybrid forms.
Students working in sound will experience a wide range of technologies and theories necessitated in the production of sound art. These elements include but are not limited to digital sound processing and post production techniques, digital/analog sound synthesis, digital multi-track editing, electroacoustic sound processing, sound for the web, graphic notation, improvisation, installation works with sound, and signal analysis. These elements are explored within an extremely creative atmosphere where students are encouraged to explore both assignment-based works and independent projects. Projects range from the production of compact discs to multimedia installations to soundtracks for video.
About Harvestworks:
Founded in 1977 as a non-profit organization to cultivate artistic talent using electronic technologies, Harvestworks’ mission is to encourage the creation and expand the distribution of digital media artwork.