Tuesday, October 16, 2012

2012 Link Fest: Everything, All At Once

A lot has happened over the last few months and there is still quite a bit more to come before the year is out. Here are some highlights with associated links:

Museum of Glitch Aesthetics: My new commission with Abandon Normal Devices (AND), my new artwork, Museum of Glitch Aesthetics (MOGA) launched online in late June and is available for interaction at glitchmuseum.com. MOGA is the latest work in my collaborative series of transmedia narratives (see Immobilité for another recent example of this new form of contemporary art). MOGA tells the story of The Artist 2.0, an online persona whose personal mythology and body of digital artworks are rapidly being canonized into the annals of art history. The piece traces the life of the artist and his ongoing commitment to a practice of “glitch aesthetics” that leads to the museum name in the title. MOGA features a wide array of artworks intentionally corrupted by technological processes including net art, digital video art, digitally manipulated still images, stand-up comedy, sound art, and electronic literature. The project also includes a full color museum catalog available in both free e-book and limited edition print editions. (For those who never caught the video trailer for MOGA, you'll definitely want to experience it here).

AND Festival: A few months after the online launch of MOGA as part of the Abandon Normal Devices festival, a physical installation of the work was curated by Omar Kholeif and appeared at the Lionel Dobie gallery in Manchester, UK. My long time collaborator Chad Mossholder made the trip out the UK with me for the opening and, while in Manchester, we also performed with the powerhouse poet and rocker Lydia Lunch and the Japanese noise band Bo Ningen. The night of performances took place at The Sally (The Salutation Hotel) and was titled Machines By Other Means. Two words about that whole trip: total awesomeness.

Digital Aesthetic 3: DA3 is large-scale exhibition and conference in the Northwest of England that takes place at the Harris Museum and the PR1 Gallery in Preston. As one of the co-commissioners of MOGA along with Abandon Normal Devices, the Harris Museum exhibition includes a very different physical exhibition of MOGA. Whereas with the exhibition at Lionel Dobie in Manchester, MOGA helped launch a new art gallery focused on experimenting with contemporary curatorial practice in digital times, the exhibition curated at the Harris Museum is puts a different narrative spin on The Artist 2.0. Given the historical range of works already on permanent display in the museum, the curatorial team led by Lindsay Taylor came up with a brilliant idea to "glitch the museum," i.e. to distribute some of the digital images (as thumbnail prints), audio tracks, animated GIFs, and videos throughout the museum so that the work would immediately engage in a dialogue with museological practice. Mano y mano, museum y museum. Here are some images of the exhibition:

Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art: On October 12, 2012, my new sound art work, Micro-Cinematic Essays on the Life and Work of Marcel Duchamp dba Conceptual Parts, Ink, created in collaboration my long-time colleague Chad Mossholder, opened as part of the Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. The exhibition runs through February 3, 2013. The show will travel to the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto in June 2013. The exhibition is co-curated by Nora Burnett Abrams and Andrea Andersson and includes work by Carl Andre, Erica Baum, Derek Beaulieu, Caroline Bergvall, Jen Bervin, Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw, Christian Bök, Marcel Broodthaers, Pavel Buchler, Luis Camnitzer, Ricardo Cuevas, Tim Davis & Robert Fitterman, Monica de la Torre, Craig Dworkin, Tim Etchells, Ryan Gander, Michelle Gay, Kenneth Goldsmith, Dan Graham, Alexandra Grant, James Hoff, Seth Kim-Cohen, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Tan Lin, Gareth Long, Michael Maranda, Helen Mirra, Jonathan Monk, Simon Morris, João Onofre, Michalis Pichler, Paolo Piscitelli, Vanessa Place, Kristina Lee Podesva, Seth Price, Kay Rosen, Joe Scanlan, Dexter Sinister, Frances Stark, Joel Swanson, Nick Thurston, Triple Canopy, Andy Warhol, Darren Wershler, and Eric Zboya.

Moscow International Film Festival and MediaLab: The third part of my net art trilogy, FILMTEXT 2.0, was on exhibit as part of the 2012 Media Forum exhibition, “The Immersion: Towards Haptic Cinema,” in conjunction with the 2012 Moscow International Film Festival. The exhibition took place at The Ekaterina Cultural Foundation from June 22 — August 19, 2012 and was curated by art historian, curator, and director of the MediaLab in Moscow, Olga Shishko. It was great honor to exhibit my work with other historical figures such as Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Nam June Paik, Peter Greenaway, Kazimir Malevich, Ken Jacobs, Hans Richter, Pia Tikka, Valie Export, Luis Bunuel, Stein and Woody Vasulkas, and many others.

MIX: Merging Media Conference: MIX took place at Bath Spa University’s postgraduate centre at Corsham Court from 16th-18th July 2012. Its aim was "to bring together practitioners and theorists working with writing in digital media." The purpose of the event was to create a core group of practice-based researchers who both play-to-play and create their own theoretical frameworks to operate in. My opening keynote address was on transmedia narrative and remixology (a transcript from earlier versions of this keynote delivered in Rio de Janeiro and Melbourne can be found here).

"Comedy of Errors" exhibition at Pratt Univerity: This excerpt from Museum of Glitch Aesthetics was on exhibit at Pratt in conjunction with my visiting artist presentation in September. "Comedy of Errors" can be experienced at the MOGA website.

Ctrl-Z: My theoretical fiction and accompanying soundtrack "Seminar" appeared in the premiere issue of Ctrl-Z, a journal focused on the philosophy of new media. These excerpts are from a larger transmedia project I am just now developing and that has TWO working titles one which I am leaning toward at the moment: Inside the Green Box (can you guess where I get that title from?).

Vague Terrain: This special issue on Mobile Performance includes an interview with me conducted by guest-editor Camille Baker.

remixthebook reviews: More reviews came out on my last book, remixthebook, including the Times Literary Supplement (link unavailable). This surprising review (quite positive) came out in The Melios, a religious journal. Other reviews have appeared in Art Monthly, furtherfield, and Leonardo. remixthebook also came up in Simon Reynolds polemical essay in a recent issue of Slate.

Streaming Museum: Streaming Museum's "Artistic License"@ ZERO1 Biennial in San Jose was launched on September 14. My contribution to the exhibition is a remix of the video art trailer for MOGA, a work I titled #NewAesthetic Video. The Biennial runs through December 8.

Upcoming gigs include performances and presentations next month at ELMCIP in Edinburgh, MOGA at the Harris Museum, and a guest lecture at the Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art Design & Media at the University of Southampton right near London (lately it feels like the UK is my third home after Boulder and Kailua).

Keywords: Mark Amerika, Museum of Glitch Aesthetics, mobile media, remixthebook, Marcel Duchamp, Postscript, Digital Aesthetics 3