February 21, 2007
MonkeyBook
The work of Alex Itin at Monkeytown
The Institute for the Future of the Book presents: The work of Alex Itin -- at Monkeytown: An evening of motion pictures on four big screens, plus delicious food and drink, celebrating 2 years on the world wide web at IT IN place (and Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube....) :: Wednesday, February 28th, 7:30pm seating :: $10 minimum.
Since 2001 Brooklyn painter Alex Itin has been exploring what it means to be an artist in the age of digital reproduction. Working first on digital books integrating painting, audio and video, Itin moved onto the Web in February '05 at IT IN place as artist-in-residence at the Institute for the Future of the Book. Here he began to explore mixed media in a networked context. Work of the past two years combines blazing low-res images of paintings and drawings with text, photographs, short films, video quotations, animated GIFs and audio mashups -- all within the constraints of the scroll-like form of a blog. In his second year, Itin began to explore new trails out of the blog, establishing a presence on social media sites like Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and MySpace. Through these networked rovings Itin has found a larger audience for his work, attracting new readers back to IT IN place where the media fragments are reassembled.
Recently, Itin has been organizing "The Library," a collaborative project bringing together dozens of artists from online social media communities, particularly Flickr and Vimeo. In the project (a sort of exquisite corpse-Ray Johnson exercise) one artist takes a physical book and in some way alters it. They then send it by email to another artist in the network who, in turn, completes the work and mails it back. Images of these collaborative works are posted in a gallery on Flickr and often showcased on IT IN place. To celebrate its second anniversary, IT IN place will relaunch on February 28th with a spruced up design and an innovative new graphical interface to its by-now enormous archives -- a feature that will unlock the vault of stellar work Itin has produced over the past two years.
Monkeytown:
58 N 3rd St
(btw. Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
Directions:
From the L Train:
1. Exit at the Bedford stop (the 1st stop in Brooklyn).
2. Walk 4 blocks south on Bedford,
3. Make a right on N. 3rd St. (west)
4. Walk an additional 2 and 1/2 (west) on N 3rd. Monkey Town is halfway down the block on the left.
!!Reservations a must!! http://www.monkeytownhq.com/reservations.html phone: 718.384.1369
Posted by jo at February 21, 2007 10:50 AM
