Into.Inter.Tech Project: Introvert, Intercommunicate and the Intersection of Technology :: November 3, 2007; 11 am – 7 pm :: The Brewery Complex, 284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

This is the first show for a newly created Boston-based art project, Into.Inter.Tech Project, founded in September 2007 by Rebecca Scheckman to create a live art forum for artists working with new technologies. This specific show is dedicated to communication technology and how we relate to one another through it/because of it. These shows are to be hosted in alternative spaces that are unclaimed by a specific group and open to the public asking only for donation.

Area artists were invited to submit work focused on communication technology, broadly defined as any method of communicating and all the technology that enables or prevents communication, or that develops for and with it. The works examine the evolution, future, history, and presence of such devices and our reliance on them, as well as topics like the effect of communication technology on community, intimacy, trust and love.

Artists and Works: Rebecca Scheckman, Sexual tensions, the Fear of touch, and fear of intimacy run deep in my culture. We build units for the individual and create technological devices that act as an extension of our bodies and create spatial distance. As communication technology develops, the physical distance between us is able to grow, and our cognitive intimacy capabilities are explored. How has and will our society adapt to these recent developments in communication and what new devices will emerge? In addition how are the relationships and connections in our immediate life affected by the changing technology?

ECOARTTECH: Cary Peppermint & Christine Nadir – Untitled Landscapes For Portable Media Players, 2007, 2007: influenced by a class we have both recently been teaching called “Challenge of Modernity.” We almost titled these untitled landscapes “Industrial Revolution.” They are intended to be downloaded as a series of four, shuffled on the play list of your personal media player, and viewed at random. MP4, WMV, and AVI file formats are all available.

Hanna Hart: Our current society is the construct of a new breed of communication technology. This technology has facilitated the widespread acceptance of a global economy and in doing so expanded our definition of community. This shift can be viewed in both a positive and negative light. The impact that the global marketplace has had on the processing and distribution of food is riddled with negative consequences. Fruits and vegetables are cardboard cut outs of what they should be, having traveled exorbitant distances and genetically modified to accommodate such journeys. The way we eat is no longer structured by what is in season, but rather by the convenience of processed food and unnatural diversity. In my piece I will initiate a relationship between the viewer and the food they are consuming. By highlighting the food’s origins and giving the viewer ability to choose where there food is coming from, I hope to spur both an external and internal dialogue over the notion of food, community and the power of what it means to eat locally.

Shane Butler and Annie Newlin: This piece was conceived out of the context of performance art, even though it was a performance in it’s own. We had been fighting late at night, and I told her to be quiet and placed a rubber band in my mouth, she grabbed and pulled it towards her mouth, and we kept putting more and more into our mouths to re-connect something, that something can only be figured out in time. As we move, the rubber bands stretch back and forth creating a tension that is only released when one of the bands snap, representing the way that we constantly try to connect and reconnect to one another. This is also about the pain and relief involved in these connections and relationships. Sometimes, in the end, you are just left with a bloody mouth. The meaning is open for interpretation, but these are just some of the things we have thought about in the process.

Ben McCoy: A bulletin posted on Myspace that summarized our culture and the InterWEB, the following is a only a segment from it: Meanwhile, the small handful of individuals who arrived alone and without plan of meeting anyone that they already know and instead lie in hopeful anticipation of meeting someone new… Well, these individuals can be found either at the bar clutching their Blackberry, or what have-u, texting their brains out (letting you know that, though they may be ALONE in a bar or club, they certainly are not without FRIENDS somewhere), or they can be found outside said establishment smoking a cigarette (one of the last surviving social scenarios that lend itself to meeting new people, and the reason I am still a smoker). There certainly are those individuals who are still shocked at the idea or concept of ‘meeting someone off the Internet,’ as though meeting someone you’ve previously not known in a bar or club is safer.

Elizabeth Owuor: Me and a CD I made of recordings my mom has left me, and her letters recorded, while I mouth her words and some verbiage on mental health from a letter from one of her hospitals.

Deerhead and Dreams: A passionate conversation that has been passed via e-mail, between two lovers living across the country from one another. The e-mails will be printed out and revealed to an audience for the first time ever, keeping the anonymity of the two people safe through the aliases created.

Mephista and Drm4ea at] gmail.com: A demo of teledlidonics. Just add the two vibrators themselves, a small network hub and all the wires necessary to glue it all together. As a demo we’ll have a PS2 set up with a game driving the vibrator.

Maria Miklowski will seek phone numbers, be verbally unavailable and get back to you later.

Matt Gaetner: A box will sit with headphones attached for the individual to listen. Knobs on the box allow the participant to control the sound waves resonating from the box.

Sara Schoemann: Situated in a box located where the box is unobtrusive with a single channel video broadcasting live feed to a remote TV.

Siri Gossman: I want to turn my body and mind into an automated sorting machine to deal with the problems and issues that I can’t really deal with perhaps emotionally or as a real human. I have a very large stack of paper (Documents, fliers, letters, receipts, notes, garbage) that has been accumulating for the past 6 months. I want to organize this meticulously to rediscover what I did, where I went, who I saw and how much money I spent.

Jessica Goehner: The Internet – a drawing using images traced from the Craigslist personal adds.

Ian Colan: i want the objects to serve as a temple which observers must change their actions around because of the imagined precariousness, yet because of the secured nature of the object they gain omnipotence and are aware of their own effect of their presence i feel that this is the relationship between people and sports/technology.