WHITE BOX
329 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002
212.714.2347
info@whiteboxny.org
Exhibition Hours:
Wednesday to Friday, 11am - 6pm
Saturday, 12pm - 6pm
Sunday, 12pm - 5pm
Monday and Tuesday, closed
GIZMODO GALLERY
Curated by Yucef Merhi and Susie Lim
December 9, 2011
Antarctica
DJ Spooky
Antarctica, the only uninhabited continent, belongs to no single country and has no government. While certain countries lay claim to portions of the landmass, it is the only solid land on the planet with no unified national affiliation. Drawing on the continent’s rich history of inspiring exploration and artistic endeavors, Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky has put together his own multimedia, multidisciplinary study of Antarctica. Book of Ice is one aspect of this ongoing project.
In light of climate change and tireless human enterprise to be present everywhere on the planet, Miller uses Antarctica as a point on entry for contemplating humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The two additional contributors to The Book Of Ice - Columbia University's Brian Greene, best selling author of The Elegant Universe, and Ross A. Virginia, Director of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College, a world renowned expert on Antarctica - add several layers of analysis to the books exploration of the theme of science and graphic design.
Using photographs and film stills from his journey to the bottom of the world, along with original artworks and re-appropriated archival materials, Miller ponders how Antarctica could liberate itself from the rest of the world. Part fictional manifesto, part history and part science book, Book of Ice furthers Miller’s reputation as an innovative artist capable of making the old look new. Out now on Mark Batty Publisher.
Project Noah
Yasser Ansari, Martin Ceperley, Peter Horvath, David Munson
Project Noah was launched out of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in early 2010. It started as an experiment to build a fun, location-based mobile application to encourage people to reconnect with nature and document local wildlife, harnessing the power and popularity of new smart phones to collect important ecological data and help preserve global biodiversity. Soon after, project Noah was on the umbrella of National Gegropahic.
Today, Project Noah is a platform for documenting all the world's organisms, an effective way to measure Mother Nature's pulse. By encouraging the mobile masses to document their encounters with nature, they (Yasser Ansari, Chief Leaf; Martin Ceperley, CTO; Peter Horvath, Design Director; and David Munson, Education Director) have built a powerful force for data collection and an important educational tool for wildlife awareness and preservation.
Betaville
Carl Skelton, Jee Won Kim
Betaville is an open-source multiplayer environment for real cities, in which ideas for new works of public art, architecture, urban design, and development can be shared, discussed, tweaked, and brought to maturity in context, and with the kind of broad participation people take for granted in open source software development.
Image courtesy BxmC
Ouroboros
Ali Hossaini
Nowhere is the fragmentation of the human psyche more evident than in how we treat the environment. We know we're pillaging our habitat, but we can't make the leap from knowledge to right action. I attribute this disconnect, and many others, to the factionalizing of culture that began with modern science, industry and art.
I'm not saying we should turn our backs on the Enlightenment. But neither should we take it as dogma - we need to rethink its foundation, integrating our psyche into the cosmos in a way that builds on premodern wisdoms as well as modern science. The Enlightenment freed physics, astronomy and eventually art - think "art for art's sake" - from tradition, spawning remarkable advances along with deep alienation.
It's time to produce culture in a more holistic, organic way. For now science, art and religion - and I use "religion" here to mean a generalized psychology - lie in private tracks, each requiring extensive knowledge for appreciation let alone practice. How can these disciplines work together more effectively?
The answer doesn't lie in the rejecting, merging or reconciling science and spirit. Instead we need to create a framework for integrating our experiences of these different realms, and this is precisely what artists can do. Art needs to step out of its self-referential confines, the safe house of galleries, museums and markets. It needs to be Saturday night and Sunday morning, be the new church, and it needs to invade pop culture. Mass appeal is critical.
Most of all art needs to rejoin itself to science. Both embody urges to explore, understand and create, and both have become specialized, mechanized and self-absorbed, given to destructive irony. Art cannot be science, but it can convey the sense of wonder that drives scientists. It can visualize the worlds of science while honoring our sense of self as beings that transcend the mundane.
Our experiences of spirit and matter cannot be reconciled, but they can be represented. And they can be represented in a way that sheds light on the complexities and responsibilities of being self-aware. Artists can rise above the dilemmas of modern life: they can comprehend the contradictions, integrating them into new levels of experience where knowledge, desire and energy meet the limits of human freedom.
digiDrench
Jason Rosen, Jee Won Kim, Luca Shapiro, Matt Richardson, Phan Visutyothapibal, Zena Koo
digiDrench is an interactive video installation in which the user controls video playback by filling and draining three tanks. As the water level rises, the video plays forward; as it lowers, the video reverses. The user gets to interact with the very same materials that are used on screen. As the user pours, liquid falls on screen. There is a direct correlation between the user's action and the video content, allowing for more playful and meaningful engagement with the project.
Inside the tanks, fluid level sensors relay water levels to an Arduino, which in turn passes those values along to a computer running Maxwith Jitter. Max uses the data from the Arduino to "scrub" the video playheads back and forth.
This installation was created at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) by Jason Rosen, Jee Won Kim, Luca Shapiro, Matt Richardson, Phan Visutyothapibal, Zena Koo.
Richard Garet
Richard Garet works interweaving multiple media including moving image, sound, live performances, and photography. He completed his MFA at Bard College, and was awarded the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, Jerome Foundation Residency Grant through Issue Project Room, and the New York State Council on the Arts Grant through Lehman College. He recently completed a three months artist residency at Issue Project Room, NY in 2010, and previously completed a residency at Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Scottsdale, Arizona in 2006. Recent exhibitions and performances include: EAC - Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo, Uruguay; Fine Arts Museum of Montreal; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain; Art Museum of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico; and El Museo del Barrio, NYC and more. His sound pieces have been published through sound art labels such as And-Oar, Non Visual Objects, Winds Measure Recordings, Unframed Recordings, Con-V, Leerraum, White_Line Editions, Sourdine, and Contour Editions.
First Apple
Ramón Espantaleón
November 9 - November 30, 2011
Betaville
Betaville is an open-source multiplayer environment for real cities, in which ideas for new works of public art, architecture, urban design, and development can be shared, discussed, tweaked, and brought to maturity in context, and with the kind of broad participation people take for granted in open source software development.
The Betaville platform is designed to be deployable by individuals, small groups (say, a project class or a neighborhood association), all the way up to professional design firms and planning offices of major cities: any group that is serious about offering a proposal in the spirit of a programmer's RFC (request for comment). In this case, the proposal takes the form of a 3D model set in a "mirror world" of the local context, with a built-in discussion forum, and provision for multiple iterations... the environment can accept models from authoring tools as simple as Google Sketchup, or as elaborate as Autodesk Maya. Anyone with access to a web browser can contribute, and every contribution remains accessible.
Betaville is developed within Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at Polytechnic Institute of NYU and the Media 2 Culture program at Hochschule Bremen.