Author Archives: fa0908mantua

Professor Alter, FMA, to discuss sound art at conference

What is lost or gained when sound is framed, channeled and put on display in an art context? Professor Nora M. Alter, chair of the Film and Media Arts Department, will present a talk exploring this question at Making Time: Art Across Gallery, Screen, and Stage, a cross-disciplinary arts symposium to be held at the Arts Research Center in Berkeley, Calif., April 19 – 21, 2012. Scholars, artists, presenters and curators will discuss what it means to make, curate and evaluate hybrid art practices. Symposium panels and roundtables will broadly examine the definitions of these art practices, the way such work challenges the divisions of labor within and between institutions, and the questions around the works’ authorship, collection, documentation and evaluation.

Alter will discuss the work of video and sound artists Renee Green, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Mathias Poledna and Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, looking closely at the installation of sound and the use of silence in video, performance and sculptural work for the museum and gallery.

For more information, visit Arts Research Center

Professor d’Agostino, FMA, to be featured in panel discussion at Penn Humanities Forum

Professor Peter d’Agostino, FMA, will participate in a panel discussion as part of “Mixed Messages: Marshall McLuhan and the Moving Image” at the Penn Humanities Forum.

The event is Saturday, March 31, at 2 p.m. at International House Philadelphia.

Marshall McLuhan is one of the most recognized cultural theorists of the 20th century. His books Understanding Media, The Guttenberg Galaxy and The Medium is the Massage are landmark texts that distilled the rapid changes in technology, communication and philosophy in the increasingly global society of post-war America. As television became a popular medium throughout the 1960s, McLuhan recognized its potential for social transformation and conjured a utopian ideal that incorporated art, communication and technology.

Inspired by McLuhan and the advent of portable video cameras such as the Sony Portapak, artists set out to experiment with the burgeoning medium and reconfigure the seemingly one-directional effect of television. Active participants of the newly emerging media ecosystem include Nam June Paik, Les Levine, Steina and Woody Vasulka and groups such as USCO, Global Village and Raindance Corporation.

“Mixed Messages” is a thorough examination of the relation between McLuhan’s ideas and the film and video art he inspired over the past 50 years. The program, which coincides with the centennial year of McLuhan’s birth, includes short films and a free half-day panel discussion with media artists Peter d’Agostino, Tom Sherman and Gerd Stern.

FMA Professor d’Agostino’s work to show at ICA, London

FMA Professor Peter d’Agostino’s work will be shown as part of an exhibit at ICA, London, from April 3 to June 10, 2012.

Remote Control includes a range of work by artists who explore the way television shapes contemporary culture, and also highlights a number of contemporaries who are responding to the mediums digital convergence. Coinciding with the digital switchover in the UK, the exhibition marks the end of analog broadcasting—a milestone in the evolution of television. The exhibition includes significant works that examine how television has changed the way artists engage with material and form, and how adopting techniques of television broadcasting has contributed to the deconstruction of traditional definitions of art.

Exploring the role of television in the public sphere, many of the works presented in the exhibition challenge themes of gender, race, propaganda, identity, pop imagery and consumerism.

TeleTapes: a look at television and everyday life (1981) Broadcast: WNET-TV, New York
Distribution: Electronic Arts Intermix Collection: The Museum of Modern Art, NY

Remote Control exhibition (TeleTapes, installation)
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London, Apr 3- Jun 12, 2012

Peter d’Agostino: World-Wide-Walks / between earth & sky / 1973 – 2012
( Video / web installations )
BizBAK Art & Culture, UPV/EHU, Bilbao, Spain, Mar 8 – Apr 27, 2012

The Walk Series ( 1973 -74 / 2008 video installation )
State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970
University Art Museum, Berkeley, Feb 29 – Jun 17, 2012