Portraits of two of today’s most provocative artists bring contemporary art to the big screen, in Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, and Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present. Cinematic media installations, multimedia performances, and transmedia experiences are found in the Festival’s New Frontier program. Presenting work of artists, journalists, game designers, and media scientists, New Frontier 2012 explores the integration of human forms with the techno-sphere and ushers in a media environment of the future that nourishes the cornerstones of our humanity — our social nature, vulnerability, and creativity.

New Frontier 2012 opens on January 20, 2012. The exhibit runs in Park City, Utah through January 28 and at the Salt Lake City Art Center through May 19.

New Frontier 2012 Artists and Projects

• Himalaya Song by Gingger Shankar, Mridu Chandra, The Shanghai Restoration Project
• Abacus by Paul Abacus, Early Morning Opera, Lars Jan
• Bear 71 by Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison
• The Cloud of Unknowing by Ho Tzu Nyen
• Evolution (Megaplex) by Marco Brambilla
• Hunger in Los Angeles by Nonny de la Peña
• My Generation by Eva and Fronco Mattes, a.k.a. 0100101110101101.org
• Radical Games Against the Tyranny of Entertainment by ARTIST Molleindustria
• To Many Men Strange Fates are Given by Brent Green
• Question Bridge: Black Males by Hank Willis Thomas, Chris Johnson, in collaboration with Bayete Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair
• whiteonwhite: algorhythmicnoir by Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation

2011 marks the centenary of Marshall McLuhan’s birth. Born July 21, 1911 in Edmonton, Alberta, McLuhan became a literary and media icon of extraordinary renown; no figure is more universally associated with the rise of media, information, and our transformation into a digital society. Every passing year, relentless changes in the world deepen our appreciation of the power and scope of his vision.

The School of Communication at the University of Toronto was for a time a crucial intellectual centre and the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, commonly known as the “Coach House”, was a hotbed of ideas. From 1963 until his death in 1980, McLuhan conducted his groundbreaking research on the nature of communication, media and technology at the “Coach House.” At seminars held there on Monday evenings, he refined his ideas and made cross-disciplinary leaps and connections. In attendance were artists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines. They shared a common understanding that the mediated world requires analysis of the most fundamental epistemic, ontological and metaphysical assumptions.

Through the Vanishing Point
Lewis Kaye and David Rokeby

To reflect on the enduring significance of Marshall McLuhan and the relevance of his theories, Canadian artists Lewis Kaye and David Rokeby were commissioned to create site-specific works at the “Coach House” for the Photography Festival in Toronto CONTACT 2010: Pervasive Influence. As the framework of the installation they drew from Marshall McLuhan’s book Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting (coauthored by Harley Parker), 1968, which explores the way electronic media fragments the homogenous experience of space.

Presenting two separate but complementary works in the exhibition Through the Vanishing Point, Kaye and Rokeby aurally and visually reconstruct McLuhan’s presence. Working with his ideas about acoustic and visual space, the artists recreate the atmosphere of McLuhan’s legendary Monday night seminars. Kaye and Rokeby have adapted the exhibition for a site-specific installation at the Canadian Cultural Centre.

Lewis Kaye’s six-channel sound composition uses archival recordings of the seminars—audience murmurs, discussions as well as interviews—to evoke McLuhan and the history and aurality of the atmosphere at the “Coach House.” David Rokeby’s multi screen projection features images sourced from archival photographs and video recordings of McLuhan’s seminars, personal life, television appearances and public lectures.

Commissioned by the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology of the Faculty of Information Coach House Institute, University of Toronto.

Illuminated Manuscripts
Robert Bean

To commemorate the iconic visionary Marshall McLuhan and celebrate the centenary of his birth, Canadian artist Robert Bean was commissioned to create a site-specific exhibition in McLuhan’s former seminar room at the Coach House for CONTACT 2011: Figure + Ground.

Illuminated Manuscripts is a project about writing, archives and photography. It emphasizes the figure/ground relationship that is physically inscribed on the surface of Marshall McLuhan’s documents and manuscripts. Bean contextualizes McLuhan’s writing process within a framework of obsolete electronic technologies. He presents a selection of recent photographs of objects in the collection of the Canadian Science and Technology Museum—such as the telegraph, dictaphone, and typewriter — alongside new video works that animate 100 of McLuhan’s original documents from the collection of the Library and Archives Canada.

Curator: Bonnie Rubenstein

Organized by the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, McLuhan100, the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology of the Faculty of Information Coach House Institute, University of Toronto.

Artists, in recent years, have pioneered forms of interactive, environmental, and database art that document socio-political, cultural, and natural phenomena that were once the purview of the film and video documentary. While film and video had the ability to collect, record, narrate, and argue about the historical world, expanded documentarians utilize the full palette of digital media in order to engage audiences, participants, and users in the production, archiving, and mapping of the real. Interactive and multimedia works implicate spectators in the production of information and arguments about the world, foregrounding the public nature of the construction of knowledge.

Participants include: Steve Dietz, Andrea Grover, Ryan Griffis, Mark Shepard, Benj Gerdes, Stephanie Rothenberg, Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, Millie Chen, Skip Blumberg, Zabet Patterson, Josh Tonsfeldt, Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere, Amir Husak, Samara Smith and Jeremiah Teipen.

Panels will be moderated by artists and scholars with active participation and discussion by all attendees.

Expanding the Documentary: New Media and the Digital Documentary is a one-day conference with accompanying exhibition organized by the School of Film and Media Studies at Purchase College, State University of New York.

There will be an accompanying exhibition at The Passage Gallery, Purchase College.

Directions to Purchase College.

Campus map.

Please use the Facebook wall to post ride share information (if you have room for more or need a ride). This is especially needed to and from NYC.

The exhibition focuses on contemporary artists exploring public platforms for communication and social networks through an aesthetic and conceptual lens. In an era of increasingly omnipresent new technologies, Social Media examines the impact of these systems as they transform human expression, interaction, and perception. The exhibition will feature works by Christopher Baker, Aram Bartholl, David Byrne, Jonathan Harris, Robert Heinecken, Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher, Sep Kamvar and Penelope Umbrico.

David Byrne’s Democracy in Action, 2011, is a multi-media installation consisting of 20 digital frames — commonly used to auto-display sentimental family snapshots — that instead shuffle images of arguing parliamentarians pulled from the Internet. The photojournalistic images, which capture the tiered speaking arena and the diving and wrestling of politicians in suits, become animated as they rotate through the digital frames, as though underscoring the volatile democracies and defunct capitalistic societies over which the parliamentarians quarrel. “The idea of pictures in sequence has been around for a long time,” Byrne says. “Photo essays, photo books and slide shows all support the idea that multiple views of something, someone or someplace add a kind of cubist depth. I realized that this possibility had become something anyone could make at home and display for their friends and family with the advent of these (somewhat) cheap digital frames. I liked the idea of taking this consumer technology, this gadget with somewhat tacky and sentimental associations, and tweaking it a little.” The exhibition will also feature the first presentation of works from the artist’s new Apps series from 2011. The works are advertisements for witty applications authored by Byrne that speak to the rapid proliferation of apps for the iPhone and other smart phones, playing on the promise of convenience, connection and distraction. Each pigment print is approximately 20 x 30 inches with hand-painted logos. Concurrent to Social Media, a new large- scale outdoor installation by David Byrne will be installed in the lot beneath the newly opened second section of the High Line, adjacent to Pace’s 510 West 25th Street gallery. The work, entitled Tight Spot, is an inflatable sculpture with internal sound components. It will be on view through October 1, 2011.

Other featured works include We Feel Fine, 2006, a collaboration by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar that includes both interactive and photographic components. The project measures the “emotional temperature” of the world in real time by harvesting sentences containing the phrase “I feel” or “I am feeling” from newly posted blog entries. Harris’s I Love Your Work, 2011, a video installation documenting the lives of nine women involved in the filming of a lesbian porn series, will also be on view. Ten screens will be displayed side-by-side and synchronized by time of day, presenting an uncensored, intimate exploration of sex and sexuality. The ten second videos were filmed over a period of ten days, at ten minute intervals, switching women daily at 10:10 a.m. — echoing the ten second standard format of free previews on porn sites.

Christopher Baker examines the rise of micro-messaging technologies through Murmur Study, 2009. Baker designed software to pull live status updates from Twitter containing variations on common emotional utterances such as argh, meh, grrr, ooo, ewww, and hmphh. Twenty thermal printers mounted to the wall will spew out the words, making visible the accumulation of publicly accessible personal expressions that pervade the Internet.

Learning To Love You More, 2002–2009, from the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is a project consisting of both online and non-web components by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. The interactive website invited visitors to create responses to specific assignments, visually document the outcomes, and submit them to an ongoing series of exhibitions, screenings, and radio broadcasts presented worldwide. Assignment #68 Feel the News will be on view here for the first time. The assignment asked the audience to watch a segment from democracynow.org, select someone from the news that made an impression on them, and “act out a moment of their day today.” All assignments were documented via photography and emailed to the site with a caption. Examples included “Monday, August 13, 2007: After Resigning as Presidential Advisor, Carl Rove Looks into The Refrigerator” and “Monday, August 13, 2007: Kim Kyung-ja, One of Two South Korean Hostages Freed In Afghanistan Today, Takes Off Her Shoes.”

Google Portrait Series, 2006–2011, by Aram Bartholl, addresses the multifaceted nature of portraiture in the modern digital age. Each “portrait” commissioned for the exhibition is a hand-drawn, working QR-code that — when decoded by a smart phone — links to a Google search for the individual, reflecting the continuous evolution of the subject’s virtual representation in a digital age. The portraits of Ai Weiwei, Amy Winehouse, Barack Obama, Bre Pettis, Penelope Umbrico, among others, will be on view.

Penelope Umbrico identifies trends in online visual culture using the image hosting and photo-sharing website Flickr in Sunset Portraits from 9,623,557 Flickr Sunset Pictures on 8/22/11, 2011. The work is an expansion on the artist’s 2006 project Suns (from Sunsets), in which Umbrico explores the inherent contradictions between the sun and the “closed cold electrical circuit” that the photographs of it are confined to on the Internet, while also grappling with issues of the individual and the collective. In Personal Subjects (TVs from Craigslist), the artist offers insight into the private lives and interior spaces that have been unknowingly (or perhaps subconsciously) reflected in the screens of the televisions for sale on Craigslist. Sideways TVs (Craigslist), an ongoing project that originated in 2010, depicts the anthropomorphized, rejected relics of a bygone age. The collection of the two- inch squared c-prints of the cumbersome, technological dinosaurs — once representative of the height of home entertainment technology — stand as symbols of their own obsolescence.

A precursor to the contemporary artists highlighted, Robert Heinecken (1932–2006) utilized the power of mass media to subliminally promote ideas about sexuality and politics. In 1969 the artist began subverting and re- contextualizing familiar media iconography, superimposing lithographic prints of a gruesome photograph from the Vietnam War or pornography on the pages of popular magazines. He then snuck the copies back on to public newsstands and distributed them in waiting rooms of doctors’ and dentists’ offices for unassuming consumers to peruse. Heinecken’s practice of creating “compromised” and “revised” magazines would continue into the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. In a seminal work from 1999, he removed pieces from every page of Time: 150 Years of Photojournalism, 1999, violating iconic images as he layered them into unusual juxtapositions. This magazine, in addition to three earlier examples from 1969 and 1971 (Time: Counter Attack on Dissent, 1969; Mademoiselle Magazine [Periodical # 5]; and Mademoiselle Magazine [Periodical #6], 1971), will be on view.

Presented by The Pace Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery and the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts.

Infinity’s Kitchen from Dylan Kinnett on Vimeo.

Are you a writer, or an artist of any media, whose work experiments with its own recipe? Are you interested in combining art and literature? Are you aesthetically inclined toward the experimental, the conceptual or the avant-garde? If so, you’ll like Infinity’s Kitchen.

Infinity’s Kitchen is an experimental literary magazine. We’re seeking new contributors.

The works that interest us are multimedia and multidisciplinary, but here are some general descriptions:

• Words: visual poetry, sound poetry, flarf, constraint writing, text generation experiments or any other literary form experiment
• Images: experimental typography or graphic design, web comics, net art, video art
• Happenings: fluxus scores, experimental music, performance art, dance

We’re also interested in more traditional magazine content such as interviews, reviews, photo essays, little tidbit articles that make magazines fun, etc. You can get to know Infinity’s Kitchen’s style and scope and send submissions online.

“Using early media like 19th century stereopticon slides, found footage and her own original 3D films, Zoe Beloff is a scavenger who makes quirky, multidimensional pieces of multimedia. She describes herself as a “medium” who speaks through artifacts of the past to create visual commentaries on the psychological implications of technology and civilization.

Devoted to reviving archaic and near-obsolete pre-cinematic spectacles, the Velaslavasay Panorama in an appropriate stage for “The Somnambulists,” Beloff’s staging of the unconscious via five small wooden dioramas in which scaled-down archival and original 3D film footage of mental patients provides continues loops of hysterical dramas. We spoke with the artist herself in order to gain insight into “The Somnambulists” and her own “theater of the mind.”" More >> Also see Philosophical Toy World on Turbulence.

Anomalous Press, a new multi-format multi-media literary arts journal, welcomes submissions of literary works of texts (poetry, fiction, nonfiction and translation) and especially seeks hybrid, multi- and new media, audio or video literary works, and images. We realize literary is a slippery term, and we most assuredly do not mean the fifth definition as listed on Dictionary.com. Neither do we think of the term as exclusive — H.G. Wells and Anaïs Nin created great works of literature. If it’s good, it’s good. Period. We want works that challenge us, and challenge you, to move outside our comfort zones, individually and collectively, and socially and anti-socially, and liminally and subliminally, and into spaces new and old and musty and fresh.

The upcoming Waterwheel project revolves around water as a topic and metaphor - what you want to share, say, or debate about this fundamental element. It includes:

• The Waterwheel - an interactive website
• The Tap - an online performance & collaborative venue
• Fountains - outcomes that well up from the project

The Waterwheel interactive website will give you the power to collaborate, explore ideas, research and gather feedback by uploading and sharing media about water: images, video, music, text or sound.

The Tap online performance & collaborative venue will be accessible by audience and performers with just a click, no download needed, and will be free. ‘Live’ performers from various locations will interact with audiences in real time using webcams, media from The Waterwheel and drawing tools. Audience can participate online through a chat facility or directly with the ‘live’ performers on site.

From February, basic versions of The Waterwheel and The Tap will be available: you can be involved and follow the developments by uploading your media, exploring the online venue, and giving your feedback.

Fountains will be outcomes that anyone is free to initiate and will be triggered by interactions on The Waterwheel. A Fountain could be a book, a performance, an exhibition, a community project, a multi-generational exchange, a concert or an installation festival - let your imagination steer the way. These Fountains will be mapped out on the website, so you can see what The Waterwheel is powering.

Throughout 2011, workshop residencies will develop one Fountain which is an installation performance, testing the website and the online venue. The first residency, which runs 14 Feb - 6 March, is based in Brisbane and open for your participation online or on site. Please let us know if you are interested.

Turn the wheel your way and pass on this message to your pool of people! You are welcome to translate it into your language. For more information about any part of the project and how to contribute/participate,
please email suzon [at] water-wheel.net or skype suzonfuks.

This project is initiated by Suzon Fuks, an Australia Council for the Arts Fellow, in collaboration with IGNEOUS and INKAHOOTS, and assisted by Arts Queensland, Ausdance Queensland, Youth Arts Queensland, and the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts (Brisbane).

Version Française
Bonjour!

Après une année de préparation, 2011: The Waterwheel (la roue-à-eau) commence à tourner! Welcome!

Participez à ce nouvel espace de performance et de collaboration sans frontières sur Internet.
Que vous soyez enseignants, étudiants, artistes, scientifiques, producteurs, programmateurs, commissaires d’ exposition, activistes, le projet est ouvert à tous de tout âge!

Le projet “Waterwheel” a pour thème “l’eau” en tant que sujet et métaphore: dès février, vous pourrez y partager, raconter, ou débattre sur cet élément fondamental. Il comprendra:

• The Waterwheel (la roue-à-eau): un site internet interactif
• The Tap (le robinet): un lieu de performance et de collaboration sur le Web
• Fountains (les fontaines): résultats qui jaillissent du projet

The Waterwheel (la roue-à-eau) site internet interactif vous permettra de collaborer, explorer des idées, faire des recherches et recueillir des commentaires en téléchargeant et partageant vos documents relatif à l’eau (images, vidéo, musique, texte ou audio). http://www.water-wheel.net

The Tap (le robinet) lieu de performance et de collaboration sur le Web sera accessible gratuitement au public et aux artistes: un simple clic et vous y serez, sans aucun téléchargement. Les artistes situés dans des endroits différents vont interagir en direct, et en temps réel, avec le public, en utilisant des webcams, des médias en provenance du Waterwheel (la roue-à-eau) et une palette à dessin. Le public pourra participer en discutant sur Internet ou directement depuis les endroits où se trouveront les artistes “live”. Dès février, les premières versions du Waterwheel (la roue-à-eau) et du Tap (le robinet) seront disponibles: vous pourrez y participer et suivre leurs développements en téléchargeant vos médias, en explorant le lieu sur le web, et en donnant vos commentaires.

Les Fontaines résulteront des interactions sur The Waterwheel (la roue-à-eau) et seront créées librement par tout un chacun. Une fontaine peut être par exemple un livre, un spectacle, une exposition, un projet communautaire, un échange multi-générationnel, un concert ou un festival d’installations. Laissez-vous guider par votre imagination… Ces fontaines seront cartographiées sur le site internet, afin que vous puissiez voir ce que The Waterwheel (la roue-à-eau) alimente. Tout au long de 2011, des résidences-stages développeront une fontaine - installation performance qui servira à tester le site internet (The Waterwheel) et le lieu de performance et de collaboration (The Tap). La première résidence aura lieu du 14 Février au 6 Mars, à Brisbane et sur Internet. Vous voulez y participer, faites-le nous savoir.

Faites tourner la roue en transmettant ce message à votre entourage! Traductions bienvenues.
Pour plus d’informations sur le projet, savoir comment vous pouvez y contribuer/participer,
contactez-nous par email suzon@water-wheel.net ou par skype suzonfuks.

Ce projet est initié par Suzon Fuks, boursière du Australia Council for the Arts, en collaboration avec IGNEOUS et INKAHOOTS, et le soutien d’Arts Queensland, Ausdance Queensland, Youth Arts Queensland, et le Centre d’Arts Contemporains Judith Wright (Brisbane).

IGNEOUS
mob:+61-404 292 119 - Tel:+61-7-3255 8355
info [at] igneous.org.au - www.igneous.org.au - suzonfuks.net
3/27 Waverley St - Annerley QLD 4103 - Australia
Artistic directors: Suzon Fuks & James Cunningham

The launch of East of Borneo marks the convergence of two very distinct lines of thought. What is the nature, and the future, of art magazines? And how might we give form to the sprawling history of art in Los Angeles, a form that can be generative and productive, not merely descriptive or fancifully speculative?

Launched in October 2010, East of Borneo is a collaborative online art journal and multimedia archive that offers a new way to research and present the various histories of contemporary art. Its hybrid form — which publishes newly commissioned art writing within a larger context of user generated material — reflects an editorial process of thinking through the delights and constraints of printed magazines, and fully considering the transcendent possibilities of online publishing today.

East of Borneo is a new model for art publishing that rethinks traditional editorial structures, using the power of networked collectivity to create depth and complexity. Articles incorporate web-savvy multimedia footnotes that offer readers immediate access to the primary materials — video, images, links and texts — that the writers have used in their research. Readers can upload additional items of their own, creating a growing archive of relevant content that activates and enriches the editorial material, highlighting unexpected connections and encouraging new lines of thought.

As you navigate the site today, you’ll find a range of content that reflects the sprawling, rhizomatic nature of Los Angeles as well as the broader international art world.

Recent articles include:

• Value Engineering: Roger Corman in His Own Context by Michael Ned Holte
• Mythology and the Remake: The Culture of Re-performance and Strategies of Simulation by Jenni Sorkin
• Character Development: Brody Condon’s Level5 and the Avant-LARP of Becoming Self by Jennifer Krasinski
• Kalifornienträumen: Bertolt Brecht’s Los Angeles Poems and Other Sunstruck Germanic Specters by Quinn Latimer
• From a Waxy Yellow Build-Up to a Nervous Breakdown: The Fleeting Existence of Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman by Claire Barliant
• Do You Believe in Television? Chris Burden and TV by Nick Stillman
• Don Bachardy: Regarding Portraits by Susan Morgan

“As a writer,” notes Editor-in-Chief Thomas Lawson, “I have become accustomed to working in a way that allows skipping back and forth as a text builds, checking references and finding new evidence as a result of lateral moves across the internet. A few online publications allow readers a similarly multifaceted experience, although most quarantine reader participation in the shadow zone reserved for comments. Until now, no art publication has offered the kind of varied experiences provided by East of Borneo.”

East of Borneo is quickly becoming a substantial repository of information and interpretation from a multitude of perspectives. Visit us often to watch the site grow in both content and interactivity as we roll out further features. Visit us often to upload that telling image, indispensable text, incredible link. Join us on this journey.

Additional Resources:

• Read The Journey West, introductory essay by Thomas Lawson
• The Huffington Post calls us “A New Model for Online Magazines”
• Yes, We Pay Writers!
• Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

East of Borneo is published by the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts and is funded in part by grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the J. Paul Getty Foundation.

East of Borneo
24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, CA 91355
T: +1 661-253-7722
info [at] eastofborneo.org

Press Contact: Margaret Crane, mcrane [at] calarts.edu