ArtSake

Amid concrete and clay
And general decay
Nature must still find a way…
- The Smiths, Stretch Out and Wait

Site-Specific Dance: White Wave of Brooklyn, NY is proposing a series of site-specific dance works during the 2010 Dumbo Dance Festival. The seven sites are situated within two designated areas; the Brooklyn Bridge Park (near the entrance at Washington and Plymouth Streets), and along the Pier 1 waterfront (entrance at Old Fulton and Water Streets). There is no application fee to apply. Ideally they would like work to be collaborations between dancers, movement artists and multimedia artists of all kinds: musicians, composers, fashion/costume designers, video artists, photographers etc. You may apply as collaborators or as individual artists and they will will match you together. They are primarily a dance festival but are open to creative applications from artists in different media who can make a strong case for the way their work would fit in a dance context. The sites are presented raw.  Before submitting an application, they strongly suggest you visit the site–specific designated areas. Learn More
Deadline: Postmarked August 15, 2010

Call for Digital Art: Digital’2010: PLANET EARTH, an international digital print competition and exhibition organized by Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. (ASCI) is looking for artists and scientists to submit digital prints that reflect their perceptions of our planet. Jurors are Maddy Rosenberg, owner/director of Central Booking in DUMBO, Brooklyn; and Patrick Hamilton of the Science Museum of Minnesota. Selected works will be exhibited at the New York Hall of Science from October 3, 2010 through January 31, 2011. For more information, visit ASCI’s Web site.
Deadline: August 16, 2010

Funding for Media Artists: The National Endowment for the Humanities is offering Media Development & Media Production Grants.
Deadline: August 18, 2010

Call to Artists: Turners Falls RiverCulture is looking for artists to make art in downtown Turners Falls. Submit a proposal for the participatory/public art you want to make/do and if you’re selected, they will give you money to make that art happen. The criteria are inventiveness/beauty/aha-ness, use of location in a new/reimagined/creative way, likelihood you can pull it off, participatory nature/reach, use of the money, submitted by deadline. Questions, contact Lisa Davol.
Deadline: August 30, 2010

Call to Dorchester Area Artists: The Dorchester Arts Collaborative (DAC) is looking for artists to participate in their 2010 Open Studios October 23-24. For more, see DAC Web site or the DAC blog.

Business Development for Visual Artists: The Artist’s Professional Toolbox Program is a business development program specifically designed for visual artists. The Toolbox is an eight-month intensive course in which artists will learn marketing, networking and business skills with the additional benefits of peer group interaction, mentorship, and feedback. Apply to the program.
Deadline: September 24, 2010

Call for Public Art: Pittsfield’s Artscape invites artists to submit proposals for new work in the 2010-2011 exhibition season. Artists will receive a $1000 honorarium. For more information, call 413-499-9348.
Deadline: October, 31, 2010

Image Credit: Photograph of squirrel by ArtSake.

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The image above depicts a past Governor of Massachusetts. Do clothes make the man or does the man make the clothes? You decide. ArtSake just adores this painting and the artist’s delicate handling of the lace collar. Now onto the opportunities…

For Performing Artists/Presenters: The Maine Arts Commission, NEFA, and the Atlantic Presenters Association are hosting Over The Edge, a free conference to improve opportunities for touring artists and presenting organizations at the the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono, Maine. August 4-6, 2010.

The Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film: Supports the completion of original documentaries that explore the Jewish experience in all its complexity. The online application for 2010 is now live.
Deadline: July 27, 2010

A Trifecta of Web Art Opportunities: transmediale in collaboration with Mozilla have recently announced the creation of the Open Web Award 2011 a special third platform for creative excellence alongside the transmediale Award 2011 and the Vilém Flusser Theory Award 2011.

1. The Open Web Award is a new platform for radical, creative and innovative art works and projects that: are on the web and about the web, use open and free technology, and incite participation and/or collaboration. Proposals may be critical, celebratory or both. Projects should have the potential to demonstrate and/or objectively critique the potential of open web issues, and those employing the creative use of HTML5 and other developing ‘open’ technologies will be given specific consideration. The point is to play with both the idea and materiality of the (open) web in ways that spark new thinking and practice.
   Deadline: July 31, 2010 
2. The transmediale Award 2011 seeks original, innovative and visionary art works across a wide scope of form, process and practice. Works that embrace, question and enrich our understanding of and relationship to our globally complex, media immersed and technologically diverse society, and are exemplary of a high standard of critical digital practice are encouraged.
   Deadline: July 31, 2010 
3. The Vilém Flusser Theory Award 2011 seeks innovative media theory and exemplary research into digital culture exploring current and pending positions in digital art, media culture and networked society. Echoing media philosopher and cultural nomad Vilém Flusser’s unique investigative, cross-disciplinary and analytic approach, the Award is also open to outstanding and significant work which may be produced outside the bounds of traditional academia. Entries may include publications, positions, and projects from a broad range of theoretical, artistic, critical or design-based research that seek to establish and define new forms of exchange, vocabularies and cultural dialogue.
   Deadline: July 31, 2010

Grants for Visual Artists: The Artist’s Resource Trust Fund provides grants for professional New England visual artists in painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography or mixed media who have a financial need. Awards range from $1,500 to $10,000 and may be applied toward any expense that may enhance the artist’s ability to create his/her work.
Deadline: August 1, 2010

Residency for Poets/Literary Scholars: The Amy Clampitt Residency Program award consists of the use of the Amy Clampitt House free and clear for a six-month or twelve-month period beginning February 1, 2011 and ending January 27, 2012.
Deadline: August 1, 2010

Non-Fiction TV Show: ITVS Open Call provides completion funds for single nonfiction public television programs on any subject, and from any viewpoint. Projects must have begun production as evidenced by a work-in-progress video.
Deadline: August 8, 2010

Call for Short Plays: Culture*Park announces a call for entries for the 9th Annual Short Plays Marathon, scheduled for Saturday, November 20, 2010, in downtown New Bedford, MA. Plays should be 15 pages/minutes or fewer in length. One play submission per playwright is accepted. Contact culturepark@earthlink.net, or call 774-202-0588.
Deadline: October 1, 2010

Image credit: Photograph by ArtSake. The painting above is one of many former governors on display at the Massachusetts State House.

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TRIIIBE at Gallery Kayafas; The New Media Curious Experimental Moving Images Festival at Axiom

You know TRIIIBE is an intriguing group of artists when the fact that three of the four members are identical triplets is only part of what makes them compelling (and not necessarily the most majority part!). The work of TRIIIBE, aka Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ‘09), lives in that curious place between performance, photography, video, and conceptual art. A solo show at Gallery Kayafas in Boston this month offers a unique opportunity to see the range of their photographic work, with a revealing focus on identity and the politics of identity.

See a video excerpt from Art on Art/People on Plywood, TRIIIBE’s surprise performance at the ICA Boston

The show runs at Gallery Kayafas in Boston, April 17-May 29, 2010. Dates to know: Saturday, April 17, opening reception, 6-9 PM; Friday, April 30, Crime Night, 6-9 PM; First Friday, May 7, Multiples Night (for look-alikes and like-a-looking), 6-9 PM; Friday, May 28, Last Chance!, 6-9 PM.

Something curious is afoot on Thursday nights this April at the Axiom Center For New and Experimental Media in Jamaica Plain. Axiom and Art Technology New England are hosting The New Media Curious Experimental Moving Images Festival. Like the work of TRIIIBE, experimentation and innovation is at the heart of the festival, with work from the borderlands (or brand new territories) of creative disciplines.

This Thursday, April 15 will feature INtransit V.6: Scientific American, a video journal of art and technoscience produced by AstroDime Transit Authority. in V.6, artists and scientists examine the question “what is a scientific American” through the lens of their disciplines. Massachusetts filmmaker Karen Aqua (whose interview with ArtSake you can read here), is among the artists featured.

Thursday, April 22 will include Experimental Moving Images from the ATNE, a burgeoning community of people working at the intersection of technology and the arts. Thursday April 29 brings What if? 60×60x60, a participatory media experiment that uses 60 video and 60 sound clips of 60 seconds each, from media artist Gene Gort and composer/sound artist, Ken Steen.

Both Axiom and ATNE are programs of Boston Cyberarts. All show times are at 7:30 PM. Find more info and purchase tickets here.

AXIOM is located on the ground floor level of the Green Street Subway (”T”) station on the Orange line, at the corner of Amory and Green Streets in Jamaica Plain, MA.

Images: TRIIIBE, THE COMPATIBILITY QUIZ; video excerpt from Art on Art/People on Plywood by TRIIIBE; Still from SENSORIUM (2007), co-directed/co-produced by Karen Aqua & Ken Field.

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April 2010

We compile a monthly list of presentations, honors, publications, and events featuring past and present MCC Artist Fellows & Finalists. As you’ll see, the news is good - not just about these award-winning artists, but also about the breadth and vitality of contemporary arts throughout the Commonwealth.

Three MCC Fellows/Finalists are featured in an exhibition of Artadia Boston’s recent awardees at the Mills Gallery in the Boston Center for the Arts. Work by Claire Beckett (Photography Fellow ‘07), Ambreen Butt (Drawing Finalist ‘10), and Eric Gottesman (Photography Fellow ‘09), along with that of Caleb Cole, Raúl González, Amie Siegel and Joe Zane, will be on exhibit through April 25, 2010.

Steve Almond (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08) visits the Brattle Theatre (hosted by Harvard Bookstore) on Friday, April 16 for a musical celebration of his new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, an ode/confessional for the musical superfan in all of us.

Congratulations to S. Bear Bergman (Playwriting Fellow ‘05). Bear’s essay collection The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You is a finalist for a 2010 Lambda Literary Award.

David Binder’s (Photography Fellow ‘01) documentary Calling My Children is screening at the Sacramento International Film Festival on April 19. The film recently screened at the Bermuda International Film Festival on March 24.

Martha Jane Bradford (Drawing Fellow ‘85) is creating an exciting educational exhibit for the Cahners ComputerPlace at the Museum of Science, Boston, on digital and virtual art. The exhibit, an immersive installation with sound and video projections that emulate the environments Martha creates in Second Life, will further visitors’ understanding of digital images and of making virtual art. You can find more information, as well as a video tour of Martha’s Second Life creations, on her blog. Incidentally, the Museum is currently accepting applications for a Technical Designer Internship for this exhibit.

Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky, aka TRIIIBE (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ‘09) will have a solo show at Gallery Kayafas in Boston, April 15-May 29, 2010. Dates to know: Saturday, April 17, opening reception, 6-9 PM; Friday, April 30, Crime Night, 6-9 PM; First Friday, May 7, Multiples Night (for look-alikes and like-a-looking), 6-9 PM; Friday, May 28, Last Chance!, 6-9 PM.

Michael Downing (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ‘08) wrote an essay for Huffington Post about his experience as an “embedded reporter” in the healthcare debate.

Kurt Cole Eidsvig (Poetry Fellow ‘04) is taking part in x/o: a visual/sound/spoke word installation on Saturday, April 24, 7 PM, at the Fort Point Theatre Channel, Fort Point, Boston. The free event, created by Kurt, Martin Cockroft, and Brendan Murray uses art, sound, poetry, and projected imagery for a 90-minute performance on opposites, building blocks, and the relationships between things. The event will include the premiere of X-and-O.com, an Internet installation created by Eidsvig, Murray, and Claude Keswani.

Vico Fabbris (Painting Fellow ‘06) will have a solo exhibition of watercolors and works on paper, called Floralies, at Gurari Collections in Boston. The exhibition continues Vico’s exploration of the precariousness of the natural world through invented botanicals. The exhibition runs April 2 through May 2, 2010, with an opening reception April 2, 6-9 PM.

Ralf Yusuf Gawlick (Music Composition Fellow ‘09) will premiere Kinderkreuzzug, his dramatic cantata for children’s voices and small chamber ensemble, on Saturday, April 10, 7:30 PM, at St. Ignatius, Chestnut Hill and again on Sunday, April 11, 3 PM Trinity Episcopal, Concord. The cantata, which takes as its source material Bertolt Brecht’s extraordinary and grim anti-war poetry, will be performed by two New England choirs and a German boys choir sponsored to fly to the region specifically for this piece. The choirs will record the cantata for the label Musica Omnia. Read more about Ralf and Kinderkreuzzug in an ArtSake profile.

Congratulations to D.M. Gordon (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08), who won first place the Glimmer Train Short Story for New Writers Prize!

Liza Johnson (Film & Video Finalist ‘03, ‘07) has won a Cinereach Grant for her film Return, which follows a female soldier home from a tour of duty.

Masako Kamiya (Painting Fellow ‘06, ‘10) has a solo show at Gallery NAGA in Boston: “Masako Kamiya: New Work 2009-2010,” running April 3-May 1, with an artist reception on April 2 (6-8 PM) and an artist talk on April 10, 2 PM. The show is presented in conjunction with the mid-career retrospective of Masako’s work at the Danforth Museum of Art, Masako Kamiya Outspoken: 2002-2010, through May 16.

Yanick Lapuh (Painting Fellow ‘10) is among the local artists whose work will light up a gallery at the Boston Children’s Museum with “their yellowy best.” The Yellow Show will run April 22-June 20, 2010.

Melinda Lopez’s (Playwriting Fellow ‘03) play From Orchids to Octopi: an Evolutionary Love Story runs at Central Square Theatre through May 2, 2010. The play was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health to celebrate the 150th anniversary of “On the Origin of Species.” From Orchids to Octopi is a project of Catalyst Collaborative@MIT - Underground Railway Theater’s science theater initiative with MIT. Read an interview with Melinda on ArtSake.

Julie Mallozzi (Film & Video Finalist ‘07) wrote a fascinating essay on The Public Humanist, a blog of Mass Humanities, about her documentary-in-progress Lalita.

It won’t be your average artist talk when Jane D. Marsching (Photography Finalist ‘03) presents 7 Stories & a Dance: Feeling Data at Upgrade! Boston on April 6, 7-9 PM, at MIT-ACT. Jane will “weave together an evening of storytelling, dancing, and conversation as part of her talk about recent projects that seek to translate abstract climate data and depressing climate news into sensory experiences.”

Anne Neely (Painting Finalist ‘10) has a solo show of paintings called Waterlines at the Danforth Museum in Framingham. The show runs through May 16. Anne will give an artist talk on May 9 at 3 PM.

Mary O’Malley (Drawing Fellow ‘06) has a solo show, called Super Natural, at Sam Lee Gallery in LA, through May 13.

Jim Peters (Painting Fellow ‘08) is among the artists in an artSTRAND exhibition at Fort Point’s FP3 Gallery. Jim Peters’ mixed media piece of oil on canvas, photo and glass, “Blue Bath,” is part of a new series of works done in Paris and Provincetown and is inspired by French poetry and fiction. The show runs through April 30.

Monica Raymond (Playwriting Finalist ‘07, Poetry Finalist ‘08) will be participating in the Cambridge Poetry Festival in Jill Rhone Park (Lafayette Square, Cambridge, corner of Main and Columbia). The festival runs 12-5 PM on Sunday, April 18.

Evelyn Rydz (Drawing Fellow ‘10) was featured on the website Artist a Day.

Vaughn Sills (Photography Fellow ‘09) is among the artists in Shoot’n Southern: Women Photographers, Past and Present, at Mobile Museum of Art April 30 - July 18, 2010. The show will feature photographs from Vaughan’s series “Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens.”

Peter Snoad (Playwriting Fellow ‘09) has two short plays, The Greening of Bridget Kelly and My Name is Art, in the “American Bytes” series by Liminal Space Productions at the New Wimbledon Studio in Wimbledon, London, UK. There will be four performances the week of April 5, 2010. My Name is Art will also be produced by Edgemar Theater Group in Santa Monica, CA April 23-May 16 as part of their “Acts on the Edge” series. And two of Peter’s other short plays are being staged this month: Apple Pie by the Boca Raton Theatre Guild in Boca Raton, FL April 23-25; and Resistance by Actors’ Refuge Repertory Theatre in Boston April 23-24.

Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz (Drawing Finalist ‘06) was recently featured in The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley College’s Five from Around exhibition.

Jeff Warmouth’s (Sculpture/Installation Finalist ‘05) solo exhibition, Food Court, was recently featured at UMASS Lowell’s University Gallery (closing April 2, 2010). The show consisted of three video installations — two of them interactive food stands that battle for your media-starved attention: JeffuBurger and the brand new Il Jeffuria Pizza. For a sense of what a JeffuBurger entails, visit Jeff’s website.

Past Fellows Notes
Mar. 2010
Feb. 2010
Jan. 2010

Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.

Image: TRIIIBE, PAINT BY NUMBERS, 50×42 in; images from FLORALIES by Vico Fabbris; Anne Neely, SURPRISE (2009) Oil on linen, 45×60 in (photo by Clements/Howcroft).

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Photo above depicts two artists wondering whatever happened to their luggage.

On a happier note, The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has issued two Calls to Artists for upcoming projects at Washington Dulles International Airport and they have nothing to do with locating lost luggage.

The first call to artists involves the International Arrivals Building. The Airports Authority is looking for artists to make artwork for three permanent installations intended to welcome arriving international passengers to the United States and the National Capital Region, to enhance their travel experience and to promote the cultural diversity of the National Capital Region.

The second call involves the the Federal Inspection Services Area, Concourse C. One project artist will be selected to work with nine classroom/art teachers at schools in the National Capital Region to create student portraits for a public art project titled, HELLO AND WELCOME.

For more information contact Margaret Bishop, Community Relations Manager, Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, 703-417-8383, or email Margaret.Bishop@MWAA.com

Deadline for both projects: October 15, 2009.

There are two upcoming free talks to note:
The first is the launch event of Artists In Context on Friday, October 9, 2009, from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum Lecture Hall, Harvard University, 485 Broadway, Cambridge. Seating is limited so reservation is recommended. Email RSVP@artistsincontext.org to attend.

ARTISTS IN CONTEXT is a flexible organizational framework designed to assemble artists and other creative thinkers across disciplines to conceptualize new ways of representing and acting upon the critical issues. The speakers include: Claudine Brown, Director of the Arts and Culture Program, Nathan Cummings Foundation; Mel Chin, Ann Hamilton, Dava Newman, Director, MIT Technology and Policy Program and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems; and an additional speaker TBA. The moderator is Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture and of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University.

The second talk involves Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Poetry Festival presenting Massachusetts Poetry in Hard Times: What the Best of Bay State Bards Offer Us in Bad Times and Good. Poets include David Ferry, Suji Kwock Kim, Jill McDonough, Gail Mazur & Lloyd Schwartz, with moderator Christopher Lydon. For more information, call the Ford Hall Forum at 617-557-2007. Event takes place on Thursday, October 15 at 6:30-8:00 pm, at the Rabb Auditorium, Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.

Image credit: NASA Center: Headquarters, Image # wrightflyer-1904.

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The environment for media arts makers is, to put it mildly, in a state of change. So many ideas are in play, so many words abuzz - sustainability, monetization, community-building, to name a few - that this month’s NAMAC (the National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture) biennial conference at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel (April 26-29) couldn’t come at a better time. It’s a chance for media arts groups, artists, and creative thinkers to share ideas and make connections. (Learn about it, register, and/or see a full schedule, here. Online registration ends Friday, Aug. 21.)

Organizers of the conference (called CommonWealth) are looking for volunteers to help keep its many gears in motion. By working ten hours, volunteers will get free registration to the entire conference. From conference assistant Mira Simon: “We will need volunteers starting on August 26 (Wednesday) and ending on August 29 (Saturday). Any interested individuals can contact me with a resume and a list of times that they will not want to volunteer.”

If you’re interested, be specific about times you can’t volunteer; organizers will assume you’re available anytime you don’t specify.

And if you do volunteer and/or participate in the conference, let us know your impressions!

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George Fifield is the founder and director of Boston Cyberarts, Inc., a nonprofit arts organization, which produces the Boston Cyberarts Festival. The 2009 festival takes place April 24 - May 10 at dozens of locations across Greater Boston.

We asked George to offer some insight as to how the region came to be known as a nexus of art and technology.

The Boston Cyberarts Festival came about as I began to understand the incredible history of art and technology that had occurred in the Greater Boston area. At this time in the mid 90s, I was writing a column for Art New England, and in my search for ideas, I slowly came across this history. Of course, this made perfect sense as Boston has always been a center for technology. Boston is where the future is beta-tested.

But the convergence of this technology with art came about in the 1960s. One program was the WGBH New Television Workshop, officially founded in 1972. Though video artists were mostly working in New York, the first television presentation of this work was a WGBH show called The Medium is the Medium in 1969, which presented six video artists to a national audience.

Subsequently, WGBH started an artist-in-residence program allowing video artists in the television studio to use the equipment for the very first time. The first artist in residence was Nam June Paik, who while here invented the Paik Abe synthesizer, the first machine that controlled the distortion of the existing video signal. This synthesizer was distributed around the world. This led to the New Television Workshop, through which hundreds of well known and aspiring artists came to make work.

The first-ever video art exhibit in a museum, Vision & Television, occurred at the Rose Museum in Waltham in 1970.

M.I.T. has germinated many programs of technological art, including the Architecture Machine Group, the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), the Visual Language Workshop and the Media Laboratory. CAVS, established in 1967, was especially famous for the number of important artists who worked and visited there. Boston area art schools are well known for the excellence of their art and technology courses.

Boston companies that specifically advanced the technology of art were numerous, like Avid and Z-Corp. Some followed a tradition of working directly with artists to develop their technologies, following the close relationship between Dr. Edwin Land and Ansel Adams in developing the Polaroid camera.

But while digital art works were being presented and exhibited by a select number of Boston area organizations, there had not been a major event highlighting the art and the artists combined with a public education effort. So the Boston Cyberarts Festival was created in 1999 to recognize and celebrate this long tradition of innovation in the arts and focus attention on local artists in this important field.

Today, this region is known worldwide as having one of the highest concentrations of digital artists, including key innovators. Its academic institutions have built up excellent departments in digital art, new media and electronic music. The digital media industry, especially computer game development, has grown and added an important component to the creative economy sector.

The Festival can take no credit for the concentration of digital artists who live here the area is a great place to be an artist, with ample exhibition and performance opportunities and many jobs, including teaching for support. But I do believe the Festival can take some credit that the world knows about us.

Images, top to bottom: Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe, “Paik/Abe Synthesizer,”" 1969 and still from “Nam June Paik: Edited for Television,” 1975

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For culture junkies like us, trying to answer the question So, whats going on tonight? can incite a mad scramble across several different websites and one or two free newspapers. Luckily, our friends at ArtsBoston are unveiling their new site, and its a must-bookmark for art lovers. ArtsBoston.org compiles just about every event in the Boston area - music, theater, dance, film, museum and gallery exhibits, opera. If you have a performance or an exhibition coming up, make sure its listed. If youve seen something recently and want to share your opinion, you can write a review.

Were particularly psyched about the extensive visual arts listings, which even come with image galleries. But most of all, were relieved that the answer to that pesky question is finally all in one place.

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Make your voices typed
There’s a great discussion underway in the comments section of our post about Martha Mason and the end of Snappy Dance Theater, ranging from tributes to Snappy to the future of Boston’s dance scene to the virtues of dance as an art form. Check it out and join in.

Leslie K. Brown invites you to guess that photographic image.

Mirror up to Nature wants you to send in your pictures of theatre artists at work.

A Minnesota playwright asks for your definition of success as an artist.

West Coast literary agent Nathan Bransford wants writers to share the worst writing advice you’ve ever received.

Reports from the field
At Best American Poetry, Eleanor Goodman shares her experiences at the Simmons College Chinese Poetry Festival, starting here and continuing here.

At the local indie film blog Kino-Eye, David Tames offers a perceptive, two-part response to the DIY Days Boston conference: part 1 and part 2. The conference was designed to help filmmakers finds ways “to have a say in how their films were reaching audiences.”

A tech reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has high praise for Act/React at the Milwaukee Art Museum, which was curated by Boston Cyberarts Festival founder/director George Fifield and features Brian Knep (Sculpture/Installation Finalist ‘07).

Do stuff
Film-makers and -appreciators in Central and Western Mass. have two upcoming festivals to hit: the Williamstown Film Festival October 17-26, and the Northampton Film Festival October 24-26.

This month in the Berkshires, a consortium of excellent arts groups presents two events in the Tricks of the Trade professional development series for individual artists. Events offer advice on selling handmade work online (October 14 in North Adams) and pricing artwork (October 15 in Pittsfield). Series flyer.

Big tubs of Gatorade poured on the heads of (i.e. congratulations to):
Massachusetts playwright Kirsten Greenidge, recently named a 2008 Time Warner Storytelling Fellow by the Sundance Institute. The fellowship “provides substantial support over four years to help fund the development and celebration of independent artists across the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film and Theatre Programs,” according to a press release quoted on the Filmmaker Magazine blog.

Massachusetts novelist Sue Miller, this year’s winner of the Kate Chopin Award, according to the Word Up blog from the Phoenix.

Americans for the Arts, who actually did what the debate moderators have yet to do: ask about the presidential candidates’ positions on the arts.

A parting question
In an ideas piece, Marjorie Garber asks: should universities become the ultimate patrons of the arts?

Art today is often collaborative, costly, and ambitious. Whether for an installation, a film, a theater or dance production, or some combination of these, art requires large and flexible spaces, and large and flexible budgets. There is more need than ever for connections, global and local, and for expensive, delicate, and complicated tools and equipment…

… Universities would create open spaces for art-making, with natural light, high ceilings, flexible flooring (for dance and other performance activities), and acoustic sophistication, furnished with state-of-the-art technology, staffed by skilled technicians, and providing spaces for encounters and improvisation across art practices. With augmented funding and a new vision of art’s centrality, universities might set up endowed centers that bring together international practitioners, begin directing major donations toward art centers, and recruit major working artists and give them a home during the prime of their careers.

Read the full piece.

Image: Still from String Beings. Premiered at the Virginia Wimberly Theater, June 2007. Image by MIT scientist and New Media artist, Jonathan Bachrach. Photo by Allison Evans.

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As we mentioned in the October Fellows Notes, Boston Cyberarts Festival founder/director George Fifield has curated Act/React, an exhibition of interactive installation art at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

So if you’re planning on being in Milwaukee sometime before January 11, go and see and re-, inter-, or otherwise act with it. The show is worth another mention here not just because it was curated by the brain behind a groundbreaking arts and new technologies festival, and not just because it looks, in the modern parlance, massively righteous (or was that modern 20 years ago, back when I was?), but also because it features an artist from these parts: Brian Knep (who’s appeared on this blog here and here). Brian is premiering his piece Healing Pool, a project of Creative Capital.

George and Brian are both contributors to an exhibition-specific blog called, forthrightly, the Act/React blog. Commenting on why he’s excited about the show, George writes:

Being director of the Boston Cyberarts Festival exposes me to other intersections between art and technology including electronic music, digital literature and dance and technology. But the growing use of interactivity in the arts has always been a main interest of mine…

… in many ways, this is my dream exhibition. I’ve followed the field of interactive installations for many years and have known and supported the work of most these artists before. Many of them are friends of mine. It was fascinating to watch the seismic shift that occurred when artists moved away from techie interfaces to allowing the audience to intuitively interact with the work with their own bodies.

His description “allowing the audience to intuitively interact with the work” is such a good description of Brian Knep’s installations. In his own post, Brian writes of some of the practical challenges of realizing such an intuitively interactive piece.

Anyway, good on ya, gents. And how massively righteous is it to know that when an art museum elsewhere in the country puts on a cutting-edge, interactive exhibition, innovative folks from our fair land are called on to participate?

Image: Brian Knep, HEALING #1 (2003), Computer, custom software, video projectors, video cameras, vinyl flooring. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

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