December 11th, 2011
Press Contacts: Nina J Berger
press@bostoncyberarts.org, 617.543.1595
george@bostoncyberarts.org
BOSTON CYBERARTS AT ATLANTIC WHARF PRESENTS
VAST VISTAS: Landscape in New Media
Curated by George Fifield and Heidi Kayser
Boston, Mass. - Boston Cyberarts presents its second exhibition in Atlantic Wharf's new dedicated art gallery - Vast Vistas: Landscape in New Media, an exhibition of work by four artists - Julia Hechtman, Georgie Friedman, Jane Marsching and Luke Strosnider. On view at Atlantic Wharf, 290 Congress Street, Boston, from December 12 through February 10, 2012, the exhibition is free and open to the public. An Opening Reception will take place on Friday, December 16, from 5-8 pm.
Landscapes are more the product of culture than nature. When artists try to reproduce the world in its natural state, they create a vision of how they wish nature would be. This is as true of the Hudson River School as it is of Ansel Adams. How does new media reflect the natural world? One would think that the most technological of art forms would not be a good fit with nature, but as the artists in this exhibition illustrate, new media can reveal an undiscovered depth to nature that a painting, for instance, cannot.
Julia Hechtman's Quadrants is a single-channel video that composites two separate videos into one with four fields. Two of the fields show a figure sitting, facing the camera. The two others show a figure, back towards the camera. The end result is a contemplative space, where the real focus is on the grace of the seabirds who fly around the edge of the fields, and the sound of a waterfall, barely visible in the distance.
Georgie Friedman's Geyser, a two channel piece of different views of the same geyser are intentionally not synchronized, and the full scene is never revealed. In one, we see the crusty base: the water grows, quivers, rises, falls, until it suddenly surges and bursts filling the frame with whitish-blue water, only to start the process again. In the second, the frame stays focused on the sky. Clouds shift and pass, then, without warning, water shoots up either in one big explosion or in a quick succession of smaller outbursts. By dividing this one location and separating the linked events, time becomes fragmented and new relationships between expectation, anticipation and reward are created.
Jane Marsching's Arctic Listening Post, Future North: Ecotarium and Rising North imagines our future in the next hundred years after irreversible climate change. Massive migrations of urban populations will move north to escape severe flooding and increasing temperatures. Areas inside the Arctic regions will warm up significantly, making their occupation newly desirable. In this animation, entire cities float away from their flooded moorings and meet in a new North, reimagining the entire surface of our planet in the future - subtly warning us about the present.
Luke Strosnider created Ansel Adams | New Landscapes, (from his artist-book Ansel Adams | New Landscapes) by scanning many of Adams's most powerful images of the American West and then generating their histograms in Photoshop. He then chose those histograms for visual forms that reinforced traditional notions of landscape in the original pictures. Photoshop has remediated Ansel Adams's brilliant Zone System, and the precise control offered by both are closely related. The histograms of his landscapes form a two-way bridge between eras of photographic practice and remind us that as our technologies of expression rapidly evolve, it is vital to consider our image-making tools as much as we do our images.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Julia Hechtman is an inter-disciplinary artist. She received a BFA in Photography at Syracuse University, New York and an MFA in photography, film and video from the University of Illinois at Chicago, IL. She has recently exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum, MA; Currier Museum of Art, NH; Bakehouse Art Center, Miami, FL; the Sydney Olympic Park; and the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel, among others. Hechtman teaches in Northeastern University's Art + Design Department in Boston, and lives and works in Jamaica Plain, MA.
Georgie Friedman has her Masters of Fine Arts (Video, Film & Photography) from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in conjunction with Tufts University and her Bachelors of Art (Studio Art: Photography) from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her current projects include video installations, video and film experimental narratives and several photographic series. Friedman has lived, worked and exhibited throughout the U.S. including Portland, OR, New Orleans, Boston & New York City. Professionally, she has taught at Boston College, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MassArt, Art Institute of Boston At Lesley University, The Boston Architectural College, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Digital media artist, Jane D. Marsching explores our past, present and future human impact on the environment through interdisciplinary and collaborative practices, including video installations, virtual landscapes, dynamic websites, and data visualizations. Her current work mines Thoreau's many observations of seasonal plant and animal life at Walden Pond to consider the impact of climate shifts on this landscape at the heart of our American imagination of all that is nature.
Luke Strosnider holds an MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop as well as degrees in History and American Studies from George Washington University in Washington, DC. A critic as well as an artist, he has published pieces in Afterimage, Rochester's City Newspaper, and the Amsterdam Spoke. His work has been shown at venues such as Columbia College in Chicago, IL; Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY; and the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, WA.
About Atlantic Wharf Atlantic Wharf is the new center of Boston's waterfront. World-class offices, waterfront retail and sophisticated urban lofts come together in Boston's only waterfront, mixed-use complex. Located at the vibrant intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Congress Street, Atlantic Wharf offers direct access from both I-90 and I-93, and into the Seaport/Convention Center area. South Station is one block away with direct access to public transit. About Boston Cyberarts Boston Cyberarts, launched by George Fifield in 1999 with seed funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, is an umbrella for several ventures - the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Art Technology New England, the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media, and now, Boston Cyberarts at Atlantic Wharf. The biennial Boston Cyberarts Festival is the first and largest collaboration of artists working in new technologies in all media in North America, encompassing visual arts, dance, music, electronic literature, web art, and public art. The next festival will be held in Spring 2013. Cyberart encompasses any artistic endeavor in which computer technology is used to expand artistic possibilities - that is, where the computer's unique capabilities are integral elements of the creative process in the same way that paint, photographic film, musical instruments, and other materials have always been used to express an artist's vision. Boston Cyberarts is grateful for the support of many generous individuals and institutions, including the Massachusetts Cultural Council, ArtsBoston, IBM, the Boston Cultural Council and Avid. Boston Cyberarts is proud to be a partner with Boston Properties and Atlantic Wharf, and the Boston Children's Museum. Dig Boston is the media sponsor. Further information on Boston Cyberarts is available by visiting www.bostoncyberarts.org, calling 617.524.8495 or emailing info@bostoncyberarts.org. # # #
Press contacts: Nina J Berger, 617.543.1595, press@bostoncyberarts.org. George Fifield, george@bostoncyberarts.org # # # Boston Cyberarts Festival Administrative Offices: 9 Myrtle Street, Boston, MA 02130 Telephone 617.524.8495
Fax 617.524.9968 www.bostoncyberarts.org
info@bostoncyberarts.org
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