Press release
For immediate release
15 June 2009
www.beam-me.net
Launching in June 2009 (coincident with the International Year of
Astronomy - http://www.astronomy2009.org/) are new online projects by
New York-based artists Jamie O'Shea and Joe Winter and a previously
unpublished poem by artist Alec Finlay (http://www.beam-me.net/
tourdetail.php?lang=e&tourid=9). As part of the web-based platform
Beam Me Up, guest curator Sarah Cook has invited these artists as
well as 2 scientists -- Guillaume Belanger and Jayanne English -- to
reflect on the nature of perceiving and representing space and outer
space. Two more contributions commissioned by Sarah Cook will follow
later in the summer.
Beam Me Up is a global project by Xcult.org, based in Basel, which
will continue into 2010 inviting art contributions and essays which
seek to interpret concepts of space and cyberspace using both
pictures and texts, artistic and philosophical models as well as
scientific experience. Xcult.org have been organizing and curating
Internet-based art and text projects which deal with questions of our
understanding of reality and our use of the media since 1995.
Jamie O'Shea has been building small shrines to the transmissions of
the robotic probes on the surface of Mars. The latest telematic
shrine, an icy tomb in O'Shea's freezer created with a timed
humidifier and toaster, is a simulation of a probe we have lost
contact with -- NASA's Phoenix lander. For the duration of the summer
here on Earth you can watch O'Shea's web-cam, delayed by the time lag
between Earth and Mars, and see the latest shrine to the 'martyred
lander' become slowly encased in ice crystals -- just as the actual
probe is entombed in dry ice on Mars right now. Phoenix may come back
online when it thaws sometime in October 2009 (during the Martian
spring), and if it does and begins retransmitting signals to Earth,
it will turn on the toaster probe in O'Shea's freezer, melting it free.
link: http://www.beam-me.net/beitragdetail.php?lang=e&artid=51
Joe Winter's work challenges how we understand the space of the
computer screen and filmic space-time. By shooting videos out in the
world, and then playing those back onto the bed of a scanner, Joe
reminds us that technology, no matter how much it is upgraded, will
never be able to truly capture how we see the world. His online
'animations' are at once both films and drawings, of a space which
seems familiar from lived experience, but has been flattened into
little more than traces of once live, now archived, digital data.
link: http://www.beam-me.net/beitragdetail.php?lang=e&artid=46
Alec Finlay's untitled and previously unpublished poem was composed
in 2008 after a conversation he had with the sound artist Honor
Harger whose practice involves listening to radio signals from
outerspace. Alec's work encompasses poetry, visual art and
publishing; he recently released the One Hundred Year Star-Diary, a
collaboration with Denis Moskowitz & Professor Ray Sharples, which
has a page per year, beginning in 2008, charting the night sky, with
old and new astronomical symbols for the constellations, and leaving
room for your thoughts and observations.
link: http://www.beam-me.net/beitragdetail.php?lang=e&artid=45
Alongside these art commissions are two pieces of writing
commissioned from astrophysicists working internationally, all of
which seek to reconcile the impossibilities inherent in attempts to
represent our understanding of outer space.
Dr. Guillaume Belanger of the Gamma-ray mission Integral of the
European Space Agency has written a new essay that raises questions
regarding our perception of this world, of what we know, and
ultimately of ourselves. He draws his inspiration for the context in
which he sets these simple but fundamental questions from our home
Galaxy: its stars, its structure, and its nucleus, the supermassive
black hole Sagittarius A*.
link: http://www.beam-me.net/beitragdetail.php?lang=e&artid=42
Dr. Jayanne English of the University of Winnipeg's Department of
Physics and Astronomy has submitted a new animation showing the cold
hydrogen gas, which is invisible to human eyes, in our Milky Way
Galaxy. Dr. English makes images from complex data sets acquired via
telescopic observations of outer space, determining the colour and
form of them as she sits in front of her computer screen. A full
essay on the interface of space-time and the human imagination as
seen through a monitor will follow at the end of the summer.
link:http://www.beam-me.net/beitragdetail.php?lang=e&artid=43
About the artists:
Joe Winter is an artist based in New York who makes sculptures that
re-purpose familiar technological systems and undermine their
functional sense. Past works have targeted sound-related technologies
and objects, and have included: a cassette tape that draws three-
dimensional moving images; pianos driving in endless circles; and
telephones that talk only to each other. Recent work revolves around
contemporary technologies of image production such as photocopies and
scanners. Joe recently created a subjective astrophotographic archive
using an office photocopier as an observational instrument with which
to catalog fake stars. Joe has undertaken residencies at the
MacDowell Colony and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing
Space. His work can be currently seen in an exhibition at the Urbis
Center, Manchester. Joe was a resident artist at Eyebeam Art and
Technology Center in 2008.
http://www.severalprojects.com
Jamie O'Shea is an artist based in New York whose work takes the form
of sculpture, installation and performances related to how we
understand the natural world and technological phenomena within it.
Jamie describes himself as an inventor who makes semantic machines,
and believes that all machines are semantic. He loves the things,
like memory, that cannot be automated, and strives in vain to
automate them. He believes that boredom is a crucial defense
mechanism, and should be celebrated. He also writes fiction. Jamie
has undertaken residencies at the Bemis Center and the Lower
Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space. His work lives mostly on
the web and in conversation, but has appeared at Exit Art, the Pixel
festival, FACT in Liverpool and the Conflux festival. Jamie was a
resident artist at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in 2006. Jamie
O'Shea's project is supported in part by Eyebeam Art and Technology
Center, New York.
http://www.substitutematerials.com/
Alec Finlay is an artist, poet & publisher. Born in Scotland in 1966,
he now lives in the North-East of England, in Byker (Newcastle upon
Tyne) and is currently artist in residence at NaREC the New and
Renewable Energy Centre (in Blyth). Alec has exhibited widely
including in exhibitions and residencies at BALTIC (Gateshead), Royal
Scottish Academy (Edinburgh), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (West
Bretton), Turner Contemporary (Margate), Sainsbury Centre for Visual
Art (Norwich), John Hansard Gallery (Southampton), Bickachsen 6 (Bad
Homburg), Cairn Gallery (Pittenweem) and EAST (Norwich). Alec's
poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies, including
island, Practice and Poetry Review.
www.alecfinlay.com
About the scientists:
Guillaume Belanger is an operation scientist on the Gamma-ray mission
Integral in the Science Operations Department of the European Space
Agency at ESAC, the European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid in
Spain. His research has been, and still is, firmly anchored to the
deepest gravitational well in the Galaxy: Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
This four-million solar mass black hole whose location defines the
nucleus of the Milky Way, is surrounded by a large array of unusal
and intimately interacting astrophysical systems. He is interested in
the investigation of the ways in which these systems evolve and
interact with one another. He has an M.Sc from the Carleton
University, Ottawa, Canada, and a Ph.D. from Université Paris.
http://www.rssd.esa.int/SD/ESACFACULTY/include/belanger/index.html
Jayanne English is associate professor in the Department of Physics
and Astronomy at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She
has a Ph.D. from Australian National University. Her research
concerns galaxy structure and evolution. Additionally she creates
astronomy images. In 1998-2000 she coordinated the Hubble Heritage
Team of image-makers at the Space Telescope Science Institute which
works collaboratively to decide on the final form of images from the
data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope. In 2006 she won First
Prize in the (American) National Radio Astronomy Observatory Image
Contest for an image of cold hydrogen gas in the Milky Way.
http://www.physics.umanitoba.ca/~english/
About the guest curator, Sarah Cook:
In 2008 Sarah Cook was the inaugural curatorial fellow at Eyebeam Art
and Technology Center in New York through a partnership with CRUMB
(www.crumbweb.org), the UK-based online resource for curators of new
media art, at the University of Sunderland, where she is a post-
doctoral research fellow. Sarah has been curating and co-curating
exhibitions of new media art in North America and Europe for the past
10 years; recent curatorial projects include: Untethered (Eyebeam,
2008); Broadcast Yourself (AV Festival and Cornerhouse, UK, 2008); My
Own Private Reality (Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg, 2007); Package
Holiday: Studer / vdBerg (BALTIC, 2005); The Art Formerly Known As
New Media (Banff Centre, 2005); Database Imaginary (Banff Centre,
2005). Sarah has organised exhibitions and presentations,
commissioned new media art and managed publications and educational
projects for the Banff New Media Institute (Banff, Canada), The Star
and Shadow Cinema (Newcastle), The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis),
and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa). In 2006 she was awarded
a Leverhulme early career research fellowship for her work on artists
use of new technologies, and she is co-author with Beryl Graham of a
book on curatorial practice and new media art (forthcoming from MIT
Press).
http://www.sarahcook.info
About the project Beam Me Up:
Since its launch in Autumn of 2008, Beam Me Up has collected together
in an online database over fifteen newly commissioned works and
articles on the subject of outer space, the space of the online world
and globalization by artists including Tan Gengxiong, Samuel Herzog,
Alan Sondheim, Carlo Zanni, and Esther Hunziker. The project is
organised by Xcult.org, an artist group based in Basel, Switzerland,
who extended the invitation to curators (currently including in
addition to Sarah Cook, Stefan Riekeles from Les Jardins des Pilotes,
Berlin; Zhang Lansheng from Shanghai and Annette Schindler from
Basel) to each select artists and writers for their own
contributions. The variety of material gathered will later be
organized subjectively into Guided Tours by a number of other invited
guests and the audience too, will have the possibility to comment and
to propose field research contributions of their own.
Direction, curatorial work and basic concept: Reinhard Storz, Xcult.org
Conceptual co-operation: Monica Studer / Christoph van den Berg
Interface and database programming, technical support: Klaus Affolter
The Beam Me Up project is supported by
Sitemapping.ch media projects
Digital Art collection
Stiftung Basel
Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt
Prohelvetia (Swiss Arts Council)
Xcult.org
For further information and images please contact curator Sarah Cook
at sarah.e.cook @ sunderland.ac.uk
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