Boston Cyberarts Gallery presents COLLISION19:COmpress/DECompress, organized by the COLLISIONcollective and guest juried by Boston Cyberarts assistant director, Stephanie Dvareckas. COLLISION:19 includes twenty two artists from eight countries around the world whose work lingers at the junction of art, technology and science. Chosen from an international open call, COLLISION:19 exemplifies the diverse range of work produced by artists working under the influence of technology.
Some pieces, such as Elizabeth Fuller’s Schrödinger, address our acceptance of scientific theories. Schrödinger is an exercise in frustration: the closer you approach the piece, the more difficult it is to see the subject. A box of one-way mirrors encompasses a lit cat. Yet, as the observer approaches the cat, the lights lower. With lessening light, the material of the box becomes more mirrored and obscures the cat until, upon close inspection there is nothing to see.
Others are social experiments where technology is implemented to uncover something about human behavior. This can be seen in Lauren McCarthy’s Social Turkers: Crowdsourced Relationships where Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (a website where one can hire a person to perform jobs that computers aren’t able to accomplish) gets paid to watch and give feedback on romantic dates.
Nathaniel Hartman
Nathaniel Hartman’s extraterrestrial origins of pulsating stars examines the timings of 96 rotating pulsars as light and sound. An array of LED tubes displays either single stars as a pulsing wave or clusters of stars, creating a cacophony of visual and sonic noise. The brightness of the array also changes with the stars’ relative distance from Earth, giving the viewer a sense of spatial awareness.
Artists include: Marios Athanasiou, Axes, Nathan Boyer, Zachary Clemente, Will Copps, Juan Escudero, Antony Flackett, Elizabeth Fuller, Rob Gonsalves, Nathaniel Hartman, Stephanie Hough, Bob Kephart, Paul Kinsy, Lauren McCarthy, Matteo Pasin, Hector Rodriguez, Jean-Michel Rolland, John Slepian, Mark Stock, Wayne Strattman, William Tremblay and Emilio Vavarella
ABOUT COLLISIONcollective Formed by artists and technologists, the COLLISIONcollective is premised on the intersection between art and technology. Its practitioners are drawn to this synthesis as the epicenter of forward-looking cultural adaptation. COLLISIONcollective was formed to address several vital needs: the promotion of artists, the creation of events and venues for exhibition, and fostering the exchange of ideas, techniques, and enthusiasm for making art. COLLISIONcollective brings together people of all ages and disciplines in a collective format, creating a supportive community. It has eighty-five members from around the U.S., who are active visual artists/engineers and holds forums and invites speakers of interest to their members. It is the largest organization of its type in New England.
For more information, visit http://www.collisioncollective.org/show/collision19