🗓️February 6 – March 3, 2016
Mon to Fri 9am-5pm; Sat noon-5pm
Vernissage: February 6, 2016 (7 — 10:00pm)
THE RUBELLE AND NORMAN SCHAFLER GALLERY
Pratt Brooklyn Campus
📍200, Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205 USA
The era of a real :: virtual global series… CYFEST-9th comes to NYC where CYLAND and Pratt Institute connect those engaged in the borderless, multidisciplinary, progressive movement redefining the intersection between Art :: Tech.
EXHIBITION «Patterns of the Mind»
Presented by St.Petersburg Arts Project, CYLAND Media Lab,
Pratt Institute, and Made In NYC Media Center by IFP
Curator: Anna Frants.
Artwork by: Justin Berry, Petr Belyi, Svjetlana Bukvich, Alexandra Dementieva, Marianna Ellenberg, Carla Gannis, Elena Gubanova / Ivan Govorkov, Pavel Ivanov, Peter Patchen, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Alexander Terebenin, Alyona Tereshko, The Window / Romanian Project, Bryan Zanisnik, Alexey Grachev and Sergey Komarov.
PANEL DISCUSSIONS «Digital Tribalism in Contemporary Art»
Feb 6 (2pm – 3:30pm)
@ Pratt Digital Arts Department
536 Myrtle Ave, 4th Fl (G train to Classon or Clinton-Washington)
Moderator: Anna Frants (artist and Founder / CYLAND, CYFEST)
Panelists: Alexandra Dementieva (artist), Carla Gannis (artist and Assistant Chair, Dept of Digital Arts / Pratt Institute), Natasha Kurchanova (Art Historian / Eastern European Art Critics Society), Lev Manovich (Professor / CUNY Graduate Center), Peter Patchen (artist and Chair, Dept of Digital Arts / Pratt Institute)Cutting edge technology has made possible global communication and created a “digitaltribalism” phenomenon – in which artists band together not on geographical grounds, but byinterests. Historically, cultural tribes have formed among people sharing ideas, observations, andviews in proximity to each other. As the world grew a virtual parallel, networks now connect like-minded members regardless of location. This panel will explore the transition of self-assembled,dynamic network structures from tangible roots to digital reality.
«Infrastructural Aesthetics»
Feb 6 (11:30am – 1pm)
@ Pratt Digital Arts Department
536 Myrtle Ave, 4th Fl (G train to Classon or Clinton-Washington)
Moderator: Tyler Coburn (artist and Assistant Professor, Dept of Photography / Pratt Institute)
Panelists: Ian Hatcher (poet), Shannon Mattern (Associate Professor of Media Studies / The New School), Nicole Starosielski (Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication / NYU), Lance Wakeling (Filmmaker)
In modern times, “Infrastructure” departs from its conventional definition by becoming a relational field that various agents can potentially influence. Recently art has explored a wide range of sophisticated (often covert) systems, from military black sites to the electromagnetic signals that suffuse our everyday life. Culturally, these artworks speak to the broader concern of contemporary“infrastructure” — a term geographers Steven Graham and Simon Marvin attest doesn’t just describe what “runs ‘underneath’,” but comprises the “multiple, overlapping and perhaps contradictory” arrangements of politics, technology and economy. Drawing on their work in Media Studies, poetry, and film – panelists will inquire into how art can engage with systems that rarely have singular forms, but concatenate physical, immaterial and a signifying processes.
«Redefining Women in Technology:Tools, Agency, and Representation»
Feb 6 (3:30pm – 5pm)
@ Pratt Digital Arts Department
536 Myrtle Ave, 4th Fl (G train to Classon or Clinton-Washington)
Moderator: Faith Holland
Panelists: Seung Min Lee (artist), Mendi Obadike (artist and Assistant Professor, Dept of Media Studies / Pratt Institute), Martha Wilson (artist and Director / Franklin Furnace, Associate Professor / Pratt Institute)
In a reality where technology is not new but constantly evolving, multiple generations of artistshave developed approaches to various media. Panelist Martha Wilson was an early adopter ofvideo technology as a way to document her performances that challenge the constraints offemininity. Panelist Seung Min-Lee’s work uses live performances and installation to reflect ourvaried relationships to technologized food across races and classes. A discussion on how womencan mobilize digital media toward political and artistic agendas — this panel will explore the wayfemales, as an intersectional group, can deploy technology to create new pathways to agency and (self-) representation.
PERFORMANCE «Subjectivization of Sound»
Feb 6 (6:30pm)
@ Digital Arts Gallery, Myrtle Hall 4th Floor
Artists: Alexey Grachev and Sergey Komarov (CYLAND MediaArtLab)
There are two technologies of sound synthesis: digital and analog. If we are to forego serial solutions for any given synthesizer, we can find an infinite number of options for creation of sound forms, from simple oscillators to complex generative algorithms. The path of the authors is the ambition to achieve a sound minimalism and a continuity of creative process during the creation of musical compositions and forms where the choice comes down to the subjective tendency of each one to a certain sounding.
PATTERNS OF THE MIND
Curatorial text
“Medium is the message,” the famous phrase of Marshall McLuhan, written at the height of modernism and at the point of its conversion to post-modernity, has become so deeply imbedded in our psyche that we hardly notice that its relevance is challenged by today’s artistic climate. Today, we are surrounded by and constantly bombarded with so many messages in numerous media – digital and analog, traditional and state-of-the-art – that the message of any particular medium becomes diluted and interrupted having to compete for attention with other media.
With the explosion of globalization and cutting-edge communication tools, there has been an emergence of the phenomenon of digital tribalism when artists unite into groups not on the grounds of geography, but rather according to their interests.
The predominant characteristic of art tribes throughout time has been the need to share and to communicate ideas, thoughts, observations and views. Digital networks achieve this objective by connecting like-minded members of such new tribes across the continents. As the principal players move around the arena, a self-assembled dynamic network structure emerges that no single player can control. As an example, one could cite Rhizome as a global community that not only unites digital artists, but also aggressively promotes subcategories of the electronic tribes. Just to mention a few: “An internet art aesthetic phenomenon that invokes a pastiche of imagery that ranges from motifs drawn from classical antiquity to computer-generated animation”, “Technology connects us to porn, our partners, and whatever other bodies we might desire”, and here comes the digital age anarchy presented by Simon Poulter in his paper “Anarchy and the Big Society Machine”: «Anarchism in an electronic age defies definition and will always tend towards sets of values or ways of thinking and doing that evolve from tensions in the individual and collective process. We could say that in this respect anarchism is defined as useful tension between community (or state) and self…»
Let us consider the fact that the tribalization through electronic media not just impacted artists who are interested in the digital media, but it also changed the social behavior of the entire art community. In this day and age, it is unlikely that somebody would subscribe to a publication that lists art competitions, grants or festivals when it is possible to obtain this information by clicking on your computer screen. In such a manner, the networking becomes a part of traditional art communities.
Digital networks have taken tribal behavior to a whole new level of collective consciousness: dynamic self-assembling tribes that come into existence almost instantaneously. Human civilization has gone from local to national and from national to trans-national tribal behavior and congregation enabled by digital catalysts.
On the other hand, in our post-post-modern epoch, McLuhan’s other insight becomes important, which is that once the media do the job of man’s individuation and alteration of his environment by “evoking in us their unique ratios of sense perceptions,” what counts is the ability to choose among them to communicate the message. Medium matters, but only up to a point, as a conduit for the message. Patterns of the Mind is an exhibition about the primacy of the artist’s message, in which any medium is only a tool to carry it across.
Anna Frants, Festival Curator