The 28098th dorkbot-nyc meeting took place on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007, at 7pm.

It featured the fragrant and marvellous:

	free103point9: Transmission Arts Two of tonight’s presenters, 31 Down and Tianna Kennedy, are free103point9 “transmission artists”. Tom Roe and Galen Joseph-Hunter will give us a quick intro to free103point9: free103point9 is a non-profit arts organization focused on establishing and cultivating Transmission Arts. This genre includes experimental practices in radio art, video art, light sculpture, and installation and performance utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum. With locations in Upstate and Brooklyn, New York, free103point9 activities support and promote artists exploring transmission frequencies for creative expression. free103point9 programs include public performances and exhibitions, an experimental music series, an online radio station and distribution label, an education initiative, and an artist residency program and study center. http://www.free103point9.org
	31 Down: Pay-Phone Theater represented by Mirit Tal and Shannon Sindelar 31 Down is a theater company that uses radio and network technologies as the backbone for their storytelling in performances and installations. 31 Down has provided a TRIXBOX server (based on Asterisk) for free103point9: transmission arts. Transmission Artists with free103point9 now have access to an open source PBX for use in their artwork. Mirit Tal and Shannon Sindelar, of 31 Down, will introduce the use of this server in their upcoming theater projects, including the subway pay-phone mystery installation, Canal Street Station, opening this March. http://www.31down.org
	Brad Borevitz: The State of the Union Lamenting the triumph of iconicity over rhetoricity in political speech, Brad Borevitz created the State of the Union project to consider if evidence for this assertion exists in the language of the the yearly address which stands as a controlled sample over the course of U.S. history. The website provides searchable access to the corpus of all the State of the Union addresses from 1790 to 2007, and uses visualization software which allows a user to explore how specific words gain and lose prominence over time. State of the Union focuses on the relationship between individual addresses as compared to the entire collection of addresses, highlighting what is different about each document. From this information, users are invited to try and understand the connection between politics and language — between the state we are in, and the language which names it and calls it into being. http://www.onetwothree.net/
	Tianna Kennedy Tianna’s artistic endeavors are collaborative explorations of human/information interaction with an emphasis on the transmission of affect. Though her work often takes shape via sound recording, web-streaming, and radio technologies, her focus inevitably returns to the people involved in the process(es). For her presentation at dorkbot, Tianna will talk about the paradoxical role of nostalgia in the avant-garde of sound technology. Along the way she’ll touch on edison’s gramophone, Sir Oliver Lodge’s Etheric experiments, and her collaborator, Tarikh Korula’s own recent archaeoacoustic stylus, which is supposed to retrieve latent ambient historical sound trapped in objects at the moment of their production. http://www.free103point9.org/artist.php?artistID=10

Here’s a printable flyer for the meeting. Thanks, Joel.

Some images from the meeting! More images from Roberto.

May 22, 2003-June 28, 2003

Click here to view the embedded video.

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On Thursday, May 22, Location One, a not-for-profit multimedia arts organization, will open its second artists in residence group exhibition with multimedia work developed during their stay by Daniel Blaufuks (Portugal), Isabelle Jenniches (The Netherlands), Dominik Lejman (Poland), Jiun-Ting Lin (Taiwan), and Javier Viver (Spain). This exhibition will be on view in Location One’s gallery through June 28, 2003 and will be streamed live on our website (www.location1.org).

Daniel Blaufuks :: Two Hundred and Forty-three Postcards in Real Color
Based on the work of the French writer George Perec, “A Perfect Day” by Daniel Blaufuks takes us to the peaceful world of postcards, filled with pools, beaches, mountains, lakes and, above all, blue skies. George Perec wrote Two Hundred and Forty-three Postcards in Real Color; these short, happy messages, which sometimes remind us of our daily e-mails, are combined here with postcards chosen by the artist, creating a new reading of the original words. Parallel to this, Blaufuks presents a video series, catalogued as Perec would, with titles such as “Pools”, “Mountains”, “Water”, “Beach”, “Road”, bringing us closer to the original ideas of the writer. One could speak almost of the boredom of the perfect day. Daniel Blaufuks has been working extensively on the relation between photography and literature, through works like “My Tangier” (with the writer Paul Bowles) and the more recent “Collected Short Stories”.

Isabelle Jenniches :: true looks and readers in the subway
Isabelle Jenniches comes from a background of scenography and theater. Her more recent explorations focus on the open-ended yet highly ritualized postures of real life. Her newest work, true looks takes place in a SoHo furniture store. The artist’s friends and colleagues—a dancer, a cook, a choir member—become covert protagonists. Mingling with the clients, shop assistants and teamsters, they are instructed to initiate subtle dramatic occurrences amidst the beds and sofas. Everyday patterns of consumer behavior are being poached, subverted into micro-dramatic moments that are followed and captured by the store’s webcam system.

Jenniches’ second project, readers in the subway, zooms in on commuters engrossed in their books. Seemingly oblivious to the noise and the ads, cramped, wearing thick layers of winter clothes, they each escape into their own thoughts, creating a bubble around themselves. Expression, body language and the occasional book title offer an intimate glimpse of that inner world. Focusing in on this one particular group of people reveals nuances of a larger human condition and taps into the collective consciousness of the moment: the video stills and sound bites create a snapshot of what was on peoples’ mind during the NYC Winter of 2003.

Dominik Lejman :: Video Murals – Social Surfaces Central Air Condition (Use and Care)
In Video Murals – Social Surfaces, Dominik Lejman employs direct recordings of crowds and urban gatherings he has filmed. This original footage is then rendered into a purely abstracted form by the artist through the creation of ornamental crowd motifs that are projected on the wall. The projection on the wall is equivalent to painting’s surface for the emerging pattern of repetition. In Lejman’s words, “the structure of the mass ornament is abstract, but is not a mere abstraction. The aesthetic pleasure provided by the statistical tapestries is a form of information anesthesiology. It neutralizes the fact of being a product of a shared destiny and organic life, the function of individual personalities with unique souls”.

Central Air Condition (Use and Care)

is a work dedicated to the conditioning role of the information we “inhale” on a daily basis, and its physical effect on our survival. The gallery space is conditioned by the synthesis of information extracted from the media—creating a glass house effect, whereby information is reduced to temperature, humidity and ventilation conditions. The impact is direct. In this project, the ornamental, floral pattern designed for the gallery is created from recorded images of crowds in motion, both real and virtual.

Jiun-ting Lin :: Psyche-Zone
Jiun-ting Lin is the first recipient at Location One of the Yageo Tech-Art Award of the ACC. If “installation art” gives the audience a spatial perception at a fixed point in time, then Jiun-Ting Lin’s work can be experienced as “time and space installations.” His current work, Psyche-Zone, attempts to create a space in which the viewer experiences shifts of sensation between immediate perspective and experiential memory, a certain place in the “here and now,” simultaneously representing the infinite unfolding of the “there and then.” In his installations, Jiun-ting Lin attempts to create a time and space that is sealed like a capsule, devoid of “venue” meaning, distinct from heterogeneous art space or undefined “wasteland space.”

Javier Viver :: EspHeM
Javier Viver is currently developing EspHeM, a utopian company whose mission is to offer a new formula of portable habitat prototypes. Through the appropriation of packaging systems, EspHeM questions the concepts of material security in a mass consumer-driven society. During the exhibition, prototypes of temporary living structures will be displayed in a booth, while general information on EspHeM can be accessed at http://www.location1.org/esphem, a website that the artist created largely during his residency.

LOCATION ONE’S INTERNATIONAL RESIDENCY PROGRAM
The central purpose of Location One’s International Residency Program is to encourage collaboration by inviting artists from all over the world and different media to experiment with advanced technological tools and delivery systems, and to develop new work. We encourage artists at all levels of experience to participate: they are given studio space, unprecedented technical support and guidance, and access to computer-assisted digital tools.

SPONSORS:
Asian Cultural Council; Center for Dansk Billedkunst (DCA Foundation); Denmark Statens Kunstfond (National Endowments for the Arts, Denmark); Det Danske Kultur Institut, Denmark; Fonds voor Beeldende Kunst, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst (Netherlands); Fundacio Marcelino Botn (Spain); Fundao Calouste Gulbenkian (Portugal); Kosciuszko Foundation; Luso-American Development Foundation; The Milton and Sally Avery Foundation; Polish Cultural Institute in New York; Trust for Mutual Understanding; Yageo Corporation, (Taiwan) (The Yageo Corporation of Taiwan has recently created the “Yageo Tech-Art Award of the ACC”, a special annual award enabling a Taiwanese artist to participate in Location One’s International Residency Program for 6 months.

O₂=O₃; Fractured Oxygen=Ozone
September 20 – November 28, 2001
Opening Reception: September 20th, 6-8 PM
Location One 26 Greene Street NYC 10013
Between Grand and Canal

Click here to view the New Yorker cartoon (pdf) for O₂=O₃; Fractured Oxygen=Ozone

Location One is happy to announce an exhibition of selected work created by the internationally celebrated artist Keith Sonnier. The exhibition comprises six pieces that result from Sonnier’s investigations into the work of Nikola Tesla during the period 1990-1997. The Tesla series “captures” raw electricity in its most spectacular form by stringing copper wires and causing the current to flow and spark between them.

Keith Sonnier, born in Mamou, Louisiana, gained international recognition 30 years ago with his sculptures and installations using neon and argon lights. His most spectacular work in Europe is the one-kilometer long “Lichtweg,” which runs the entire length of the Munich airport. Although neon and fluorescent light have been an important part of his artistic vocabulary, Sonnier’s work distinguishes itself above all by the variety of materials used, and by its formal as well as thematic complexity.

Beginning with his earliest explorations with light, sound, video, and live and taped broadcasts, Sonnier has engaged in a constant investigation into the process of exchange which constitutes communication. As early as 1975, he created a 2-way open channel performance event connecting New York and Los Angeles via NASA CTS satellite. He explores sometimes by redefining the functions of the transmitter/receiver, sometimes by indicating and reconfiguring elements of the process, but always with an awareness of the energy fields in which we live and maneuver.

Selections of early video work will be presented as part of the exhibition, both on the Location One website and in the gallery. Keith Sonnier was among the first artists to incorporate technology into his work. By making the communication process an integral part of the art context, he forever changed the environment of contemporary art.

Sonnier is a seminal figure at Location One, as our central purpose is to encourage artists from different media and different cultures to experiment with advanced technological tools and delivery systems. He continues to explore technology with the careful tenacity of a research scientist and the vision of a poet.

“These are the perfect images of ‘the medium as the message.’”
—Flash Light, 6/01/97

Click here to view the embedded video.

Location One is happy to present Ken Butler’s Voices of Anxious Objects. The performance will take place in the gallery and be streamed live on our website.

The artist/musician performs mesmerizing world trance textures and driving gypsy grooves on an amazing arsenal of amplified hybrid string instruments made from household objects and tools. Duchampian Dada meets Hybrid Hindu Hendrix. Function and form collide as audio-visual antics and explorations create a provoking cultural portrait of man/machine adaptation and transformation. A performance may also include interactive hybrid audio-visual keyboards powered by motorized strummers which control lights, slide animation, motion, and video projections.

Press Quotes:
“One of music’s most ingenious and eccentric personalities.” — John Zorn, Tzadik records, 10/97

“. . . a crazy instrument builder who can get virtuoso riffs from anything.” — Kyle Gann, The Village Voice, 12/29/92

“Ken Butler’s work is enormously interesting, particularly his idea of recycling and giving voice to found objects.” — Laurence Libin, curator of musical instruments at The Metropolitan Museum, The New York Times, 6/12/94

artist bio
Ken Butler is an artist and musician whose hybrid musical instruments, collage drawings, performances, and installations explore the interaction and transformation of common objects, altered images, sounds and silence.

His works have been featured in numerous exhibitions and performances throughout the USA, Canada, and Europe including The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Exit Art, Thread Waxing Space, The Kitchen, The Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as well as in South America, Thailand, and Japan.

His works have been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, The Village Voice, and Smithsonian and have been featured on PBS, CNN, MTV, and NBC, including a live appearance on The Tonight Show.

Awards include fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commisssion, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Ken Butler studied viola as a child and maintained an interest in music while studying visual arts in France, at Colorado College, and Portland State University where he completed his MFA in painting in 1977. He has performed with John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Butch Morris, The Soldier String Quartet, The Tonight Show Band, and The Master Gnawa musicians of Morocco. His CD, Voices of Anxious Objects is on Zorn’s Tzadik label. Works by Ken Butler are represented in public and private collections in Portland, Seattle, Vail, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, and New York City including the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Click here to view the embedded video.