Nina Czegledy on Sun, 1 Feb 1998 12:16:43 -0500 (EST) |
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Syndicate: aurora |
Dear Syndicalists, this is a virtual invitation to you all - please come and visit and send me your comments or inquiries. the opening night on Friday was a roaring success with hundreds of people attending. nina Aurora Universalis, an exhibition of installations. http://www. interaccess.org/aurora The Aurora Universalis intercultural telecommunications project, has been conceived in 1996 by Stephen Kovats, architect and media artist in collaboration with Nina Czegledy, media artist and curator. A series of various aurora events were planned and accordingly, in August, 1997, a remote test-transmission was conducted -via the Internet- by Stephen Kovats from Rankin Inlet, Northwest Territories, to InterAccess electronic media arts centre in Toronto. On August 29, 1998, the Goethe Institute of Toronto hosted the Aurora Reflections panel, with the participation of Stephen Kovats, Peter Mettler, film director (Picture of Light) moderated by David Rokeby, media artist. Future plans include wireless transmissions from the Canadian arctic with the participation of Marko Peljhan of Macrolab. On January 30 (toFebruary 28), 1998, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre,Toronto, presents Aurora an exhibition of installations dealing with electromagnetic interference. The show includes works by Douglas Back, Paul Davies, Victoria Scott, Neil Wiernik as well as Catherine Richards' Curiosity Cabinet at the End of the Millenium. Charged Hearts, the multiuser web-site (www.charged-hearts.net/) representing Richards most current installation -on show between January 16-March 15, 1998 at The Powerplant, Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto- is exhibited as part of the Aurora show at InterAccess. The exhibition is curated by Nina Czegledy. The Aurora Universalis exhibition highlights the relationship between transcendental forces and the life of ordinary human beings. The themes of the exhibition include: the role of repetition in human, natural and technological processes and actions: the cultural significance of the detection of radioactivity; the allure and possible danger of living in an environment that is alive with information and seems to demand constant connectivity. Catherine Richards work explores the boundaries between body and machine. In the closed circuit of her Cabinet, the participant/visitor is supposedly shielded from magnetic interference, and becomes "unplugged" from the "plugged-in" state of our contemporary surroundings. In contrast, "Charged Hearts" in the Powerplant, invites visitors/participants to become part in the electromagnetically charged atmosphere. By walking on the glass and steel platform and touching one of the bell jars containing a blown glass heart, a sensor is activated and the glass-object transmits a phosphorescent glow. Simultaneously the spectator's heart-pulse data is sent to the web-page on the internet. Thus the Charged Heart and the Curiosity Cabinet installations compliment each other - one by plugging the participant/visitor into the electromagnetic atmosphere - the other by unplugging him/her. "My work comes from the experience of growing up in North America - explained Catherine Richards in an interview (Now, January 22, 1998)- The environment here has been so heavily influenced by Marshall McLuhan and artists like Michael Snow, who legitimized the whole notion of crossing media, that the relationship between the spectator and the image is what defines art." Close to one of the gallery walls "Black Body "Doug Back's "whipper-snipper" installation shakes, shivers and reacts to the touch of each visitor with a different speed and style. "Black Body -said Doug Back -acts as a mirror, reflecting the electromagnetic radiation absorbed by the body. "Imperfections" in our bodies make us less or more of an antenna, the sculpture describes this signature". Earthworms feed on compost in a metal and plexiglass container placed on the floor - as part of "Warm", Victoria Scott's installation. As the worms feed and generate heat, a thermometer in the container transmits signals and activates the glow of the "Celtic Knot" (a continuous length of heating coil) mounted on a vertical concrete board. Scott's intriguing installation taps into the energy cycle of developing organic life. "Just as Alaskan Inuit waved sharp knives to ward off the mysterious and incomprehensible effects of the Aurora-commented Paul Davies of his Persistent Invisible Fields- our culture grasps technological instruments, in an attempt to understand the hidden nature of the invisible. Our culture created the Radiation Survey Meter in a fashion directly analogous to those same terrified Inuit, in an attempt to ward off the mysterious and incomprehensible effects of invisible fields. We collectively grasp the meter with ever-whitening knuckles, searching for the unseen and unfelt danger of radiation." The radiation meter provided by Paul Davies for the visitor tests the radiation sensitivity of each (white) object of his display. "My installation -said audio artist Neil Wiernik of "How to be an amateur radio"- "is about transmission of RF signals and about how the environment and we as people interact with these signals. Do we transmit these signals ourselves....is this all part of our evolving communication methods...are there other forms of intelligent life on the earth or otherwise who already communicate via RF signals. I am looking at my project as a direct dialogue with the issues of naturally occuring RF signals. Even though the installation is located physically in the gallery it really is everywhere as sound and RF signals are located in the atmosphere and travel throughout space to our ears and bodies. In a sense we are actual RF receivers." The website of the aurora exhibition will be consistently updated with documentation. . Please send us our comments or inquiries. nina czegledy curator