ANNUAL LECTURE SERIES AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART EXPLORES ARTISTS' PIONEERING USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Technology in the 1990s
April 12, 19, and 26 at 6:30 pm
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Technology in the 1990s, a lecture and presentation series organized by the Department of Film and Video, returns to The Museum of Modern Art in April. This annual program, now in its sixth year, invites leading artists working in new art forms powered by the computer to display and discuss the use of interactive technologies in their work. This year's forum, which takes place on three consecutive Mondays beginning April 12, features multimedia artist Lynn Hershman, who presents two recent telerobotic Internet pieces; film/videomaker and media theoretician Peter Weibel, discussing visual perception in the computer age; and Asymptote Architecture [Rashid + Couture] exhibiting the "virtual trading pit" the firm has designed for the New York Stock Exchange.
"As the decade draws to a close, the reach of new technologies into almost every aspect of art and life becomes ever more pronounced," notes Barbara London, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Video, The Museum of Modern Art, who co-organized the program with Sally Berger, Assistant Curator. "Technology in the 1990s explores the ways in which technological developments have expanded the possibilities of existing disciplines, such as filmmaking and architecture, and sparked the creation of new fields of work such as virtual reality environments."
Individual program descriptions follow.
Monday, April 12 at 6:30. Technology in the 1990s. Lynn Hershman, Double Helix/Double Bind: Seductive Interactions and Virtual Telerobotics. For the past thirty-five years, Lynn Hershman has been working in a range of media to explore the politics of identity, surveillance, and alienation, issues especially pertinent in our electronic age. In this presentation, she will show recent works that depend upon collaborative interactions between people in both the physical and the virtual worlds. Included will be examples of two recent multi-user, telerobotic Internet pieces, Tillie the Telerobotic Doll, which turns users into virtual cyborgs, and The Difference Engine #3, which uses Identity Avatars to explore the boundaries of shared identities. She will also show a CD-ROM excerpt of the virtual set processes used in her recent feature film, Conceiving Ada.
Monday, April 19 at 6:30. Technology in the 1990s. Peter Weibel, From Expanded Cinema to Neuro-Cinema. Artist and media theoretician Peter Weibel explores the transformation of visual perception in the computer age. He will discuss his views on how the electronic image has turned into a model world, autonomous and yet responsive to its environment. "The animated image constitutes the most radical challenge to our classical visual notions of image and representation."
Weibel is the recently appointed chairman of Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM), the renowned center for media art in Karlsruhe, Germany. Prior to this position he was artistic director of the Neue Gallery am Landesmuseum Johanneum in Graz, Austria, and professor of visual media at the University of Applied Art in Vienna. His films and videotapes have been exhibited internationally since the 1970s.
The Technology in the 1990s: Peter Weibel presentation is supported by the Austrian Cultural Institute, New York.
Monday, April 26 at 6:30. Technology in the 1990s. Asymptote [Rashid + Couture], Convergences. Asymptote Architecture, a collaborative practice based in New York City, was initiated by Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid in 1989. Their work ranges from experimental installations and computer-generated environments to building and urban design. Most recently Rashid and Couture designed a large-scale, computer-generated environment for the New York Stock Exchange and an accompanying "first reality" theater of operations presently in construction on the trading floor of the Stock Exchange. Asymptote was also selected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to design and implement the Guggenheim Virtual Museum. Asymptote's built work includes a large theater, the dimensions of which can be altered to accommodate different uses, constructed in 1997 in Denmark; presently the team is designing a Museum of Digital Art in Seoul, Korea, and a Multimedia Research Facility in Kyoto, Japan. In 1995 Rizzoli International published the first monograph on Asymptote, entitled Architecture at the Interval. The lecture will discuss the firm's practice and work, most recently involving datascapes, three-dimensional virtual architectures, and "first reality" interfaces.
