[node-l] Announcement: Beam Me Up - new online projects launched

[Sarah Cook]

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unpublished poem by artist Alec Finlay (http://www.beam-me.net/ 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






-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://one.server1.org/pipermail/news-l/attachments/20090616/7bbe09f0/attachment-0001.htm