On View: "Refining Realities" by VolvoxLabs

VolvoxLabs is a new media design studio run by Kamil Nawratil, Pa Her and Javier Cruz. “Refining Realities” was created in conjunction with VVOX collaborators, Ryan Kilpatrick, Zyia Zhang and Mariusz Navratil, Kamil’s father. Today’s post is written from the perspective of Benjamin, our Department of Publications intern, about the installation currently on display through June 19 on the Patsy Dudley Pate Balcony.

VolvoxLabs, Refining Realities, 2016

As an art student at the University of Georgia, I particularly enjoy delving into the complexities of obscure and intellectually challenging works of art such as “Refining Realities.” In this case, I find it fitting to address the installation through the lens of an individual’s evolving experience. Through this personal journey to find meaning in the work, I hope to explicate paths of understanding to emotionally connect with an installation with a life as complex as our own.

The jarring complexity of “Refining Realities” overwhelmed me, and I was so absorbed by theory that I lost sight of the underlying themes. With Kinect sensors placed above each screen, it was easy enough to understand that my interaction with the installation was significant, but the odd patterns only seemed to quiver in response to my sporadic, and sometimes embarrassing, movements. I felt powerless to really manipulate the images even though I knew they were dependent on my actions, but I slowly realized my movements were being dwarfed by a greater influence. Real-time data drawn from undisclosed locations (randomized every 15 minutes) supplies changes in temperature, wind values and cloud coverage; in reaction to these observations, the installation undergoes multiple shifts that add up to a grand, emotional metamorphosis. For instance, when wind speed increases, the LEDs become more energetic. When the temperature rises, the LEDs turn pink. Similarly, when the warm sun begins to shine through the clouds, the ambient music sounds more optimistic and all the panels seem to resonate with a renewed sense of vitality and energy. Upon this enlightenment, I realized it wasn’t just me that was subtly influencing the installation, it was also the fleeting characteristics of the environment that were subtly influencing me through the installation. Additionally, not knowing where the real-time weather data came from universalized that sensation, as though I was being affected by the entire world as a grand idea.

As hinted at by the title, the installation is designed to reduce and repurpose what its sensors describe to it, and this is where “Refined Realities” became increasingly perplexing to me. The way the screens react is simple enough, but the complex, formal mathematical algorithms used to fabricate the initial pattern, followed by the synthesis of the pattern with live data, are something on the forefront of technology. In fact, the computational demands were so extraordinary that the Kinect sensor above the central panel is no longer in place due to limited processing capacity. Several of the monitors were assigned a Voronoi system. Most simply, Voronoi systems are shapes created by the space closest to a particular point on a plane. For clarity, each line in the image below marks locations that are equidistance between a black dot and its closest neighbors, and the space within those lines represent the locations which are closest to the black dots.

Voronoi systems are important because the approximation is useful in understanding complex distributions in real life, such as your very skin’s cells. And that is part of the point of “Refining Realities”: to manifest the forms and patterns underlying life. When I move along the installation, I am reduced to become part of the image, and because of the way it “refines reality,” I am assimilated into the environment. With this came a humble feeling of oneness with nature and art, a wondrous insight into my connection with the surroundings.

After gaining more understanding of the content within the screens, I sought an understanding of how the digital realities presented by the screens related to the intricate frame surrounding them. Most noticeably, the hexagonal patterning created by the Voronoi diagrams and the wave pattern in the central screen is echoed in the frames. I originally perceived it as design for the sake of cohesion, but I later considered it a comment on the difference between the digital and the physical. I began to think about our digital age and how our realities have become increasingly distanced from the physical world. Even as I write this, I consider the intangibility of my words and their loose representation of something real. Here, the environment being monitored is only a digital suggestion of reality, while the frame establishes a connection to the physical environment of the museum. There is also a contrast between the depth created by the frame and the illusion of depth established by the line drawings of Mariusz Navratil. I later learned that the line drawings were spontaneous responses to the forms of the frame, including the shadows the frame casts on the wall. Whether geometric versus organic, digital versus physical or real versus illusion, “Refining Realities” addresses many characteristics of what constitutes our surroundings.

Still, the prevailing influence remains the transitory emotions created by the dynamic environment, and as I tried to dissect my role as viewer in the work, I abandoned my thoughts and surrendered to the influence of how it made me feel. I can get caught up in the idea that art is meant to cater to the viewer, but “Refining Realities” was independent; it became a meditative experience to consciously allow myself to be influenced. Much as the undisclosed source locations were reduced to data points for this installation, I felt reduced by the Kinect sensors until the landscape and I merged into an engulfing singularity on the screens. Some abstract and baffling forms, at once stupefying and unwelcoming, began to take shape as the most poetic reduction of life itself. Sometimes, I irrationally convince myself that I’m some sort of entity outside the system, but my inevitable influence on the environment and the environment’s influence on me inundated my self-centeredness until I felt a sort of engrossing oneness that simultaneously diminished my concerns and assimilated my being into a greater entity of existence.

Benjamin Thrash
Publications Intern

MFA Candidate: Andrew Indelicato

                  

Andrew Indelicato creates digital paintings filled with 1980s nostalgia and visual reminiscences of video game images. He uses photoshop to create vibrant prints that reference early computer graphics, neon, glitching, and computer manipulation. He makes gifs and is interested in new media, net art, and cross-platforming.

Colliding color fields with overlapping patterns make his prints bright and compelling. To create these images he seeks inspiration from grids. The idea of the grid is prevalent as a visual component for his work as well as a structural guideline. Whether or not it is shown, he says that it still plays a role in guiding his process.

“When the grid is integrated, it becomes a protagonist, and in other other imagery it is used as a launchpoint. It gives me a set of rules and a structure that I can manipulate from,” he explains.

Music is another influential component of Indelicato’s work. He listens to electronic music and lets it guide him through the development. The music and the repetition of the beat help him determine where to lay certain colors. As a result, his work appears very rhythmic and filled with patterns. 

In order to achieve even more visual vibrancy, he suspends neon over his prints. In his upcoming show he will be installing a six foot tube of turquoise neon over two ten foot prints.  The display will integrate new technology while using two different types of media.

“I have a lot of neon.… It makes everything ‘sexy,’ changes the saturation of the colors, and with nice paper the neon bounces off of the paper,” he says.

Indelicato’s prints will be on display at the “Master of Fine Arts Degree Candidates Exhibition” at the Georgia Museum of Art from April 11 to May 3, 2015.

http://www.andrewindelicato.com

When New Meets Old: Lithographs and New Media Technology

This summer, the Georgia Museum of Art is featuring the exhibition "The Lithographs of Caroll Cloar" but is providing new media to juxtapose with Cloar's age-old method of printing. Two iPads are placed in the exhibition and give viewers a chance to interact with the images in a new way.

One iPad contains information about the process of lithography, including a video produced by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The second device includes an application that allows visitors to type in their own titles for the exhibition and read the titles others have suggested. This feedback opens up the lines of communication with visitors and lets their thoughts and ideas become an active part of the display.

Responses to the iPads have been extremely positive. Exhibition viewers have been forthcoming with their thoughts about their own names for Cloar's works, with responses ranging from poetic captions such as "The Haunted Pencil" and "Dreamscapes of Memory" to simpler, straight-to-the-point titles like "Old Days" and "Innocence." The spectrum of answers demonstrates how Cloar's hauntingly beautiful works evoke powerful reactions in each individual. In the past, the museum has offered a more traditional way to respond via pen and paper, but the use of the iPads is a compact and nondisruptive way to promote dialogue, not only between the museum and its guests, but among viewers.

Mixing new media technology with art is becoming a more common trend in galleries. The quick and easy access to information, combined with the ability to tailor it to the individual observer, allows for a new way to experience the art. This year, the museum has also featured other new media exhibitions such as "Machine Wall Drawing" by computer programmer and artist Tristan Perich and the work of University of Georgia master of fine arts candidate Lyndey Clayborn, who manipulated iPhones to create technology-inspired art.

"The Lithographs of Carroll Cloar" is on display through Aug. 10. For more information on the exhibition or other new media programs at the museum, visit, www.georgiamuseum.org.

New Media

one hundred and eight from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

It's the best thing using plastic bags since "American Beauty."

Hello Wall

The Hello Wall from wasted spaces on Vimeo.

Flavorpill linked yesterday to this very cool art project that shows good use to be made of social media. Not that determining whether circles are larger or smaller or faster or slower moving is a huge decision, but it at least shows the potential for public interaction with art, which is something we're always trying to promote. It also, tangentially, makes us think about this early Willie Nelson song that made use of advanced technology in its own way.

Hide and Seek

Okay, so a lot of what's on Twitter isn't all that useful. We use it, and we find information that's helpful (weather updates, last-minute reminders of events, promotions) in among the junk, but we can understand why you might not be into it. Well, this story from the Chicago Tribune about artists Patrick Skoff and Samantha Brown gives some insight into its very real and large possibilities when it comes to the arts and interacting with your public. The two young painters have been leaving their art around the city, then tweeting its location. If you get there first, you get a painting for free, plus the thrill of the chase. What do the artists get out of it? Fans and publicity, which are about as valuable as cash when you're starting out. Check out their Twitter feed here, and if you happen to be in Chicago (say, at the ongoing College Art Association Conference, where two of our staff members are), maybe you'll end up with something to put on your walls.

artnear

Here's a useful app for you art lovers who travel frequently and diversely. The new artnear, for the iPhone, will pull up a map of nearby galleries and museums, along with details on current exhibitions, admission, etc. There's a pro version for $4.99 that enables bookmarks for archiving, but the regular version is free as free can be.

New Media Gives the Public a Role

The New York Times ran a great article yesterday about specific ways museums are using new media to interact with their patrons. As the author puts it, "While museums have been experimenting with the Web for years, these projects have often consisted of little more than an exhibit photo gallery or online guestbook. In recent years, however, the rise of social media has given Web users the technological wherewithal to play a more active role in shaping the direction of museum collections." The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which isn't yet open has a Virtual Shtetl project to help collect photographs, videos and audio recordings "related to life in 1,300 towns with Jewish populations before and after World War II." The Smithsonian provides another example:

Last February the Luce Foundation Center of the Smithsonian American Art Museum invited Web users to help decide which paintings should be displayed in its visible storage facility, typically frequented by art historians and other scholars. Museum staff created a Flickr group called Fill the Gap, which allows users to suggest items to fill the bare wall spaces left when paintings are removed for conservation or lent to other institutions.

Fill the Gap represents a tiny but potentially precedent-setting step for the Smithsonian as a whole, where a larger conversation is starting to percolate around the changing role of curators in a Web 2.0 world. That institution recently began an ambitious initiative called the Smithsonian Commons to develop technologies and licensing agreements that would let visitors download, share and remix the museum’s vast collection of public domain assets. Using the new tools, Web users should be able to annotate images, create personalized views of the collection and export fully licensed images for use on their own Web sites or elsewhere.

The Smithsonian’s new-media director, Michael Edson, described the initiative as a step in the institution’s larger mission to shift “from an authority-centric broadcast platform to one that recognizes the importance of distributive knowledge creation.”

“Distributive knowledge creation” can be a tricky business. While social-media platforms may open up possibilities for user participation, they also carry the risk of promoting bad information and questionable judgments and of eroding the authority of institutional curators. In this sense museums are grappling with the same technological conundrum as other cultural institutions, like universities, publishers and newspapers: how to reconcile institutional principles of order with the liberating impulses of electronic networks.

The rest of the article focuses on the last question, and while there are disagreements and the right method to handle shifting nexuses of power is still evolving, the discussion is worth reading.

GMOA on Your Phone

So, if you're hip enough to have a smartphone that uses Android, Issuu, where GMOA keeps flash versions of all its newsletters and is working on archiving past brochures, is now accessible while you're out and about in the world. The company plans to introduce Issuu Mobile for iPhone and iPod Touch soon, and if you follow the link above, you can sign up to be notified when it's got that ready.

MailChimp

After many years of text-based emails, GMOA has finally moved into the 21st century, signing up for MailChimp, which enables us to send HTML emails to our listserv that include graphics and links, plus an attractive layout. If you're not on the list and would like to see the first "campaign," click here. If you're not on the list and would like to be, please send us an email at collardj at uga.edu.

GMOA in the News

Lee Shearer of the Athens Banner-Herald called yesterday to ask some questions about new media/social media, and this article that mentions GMOA and its Second Life endeavors is the result of his labors. We talked about a lot more on the phone that didn't make it in, including our efforts in Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, and maybe, just maybe, we've helped Lee another step along the way toward participating in the first two.

New Media and Museums

We've just started poking around the Web site of the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), a project funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation that assesses museum practices in new media, specifically that accessed on mobile devices, and makes recommendation for its further development in the field. The assessment section discusses the proliferation of podcasts (cheap, easy to produce with little technical knowledge) but brings some other ideas to light as well:

The San Jose Museum of Art was among the first American museums to build an iPhone/iPod Touch tour that featured browseable gallery guides to augment the exhibitions’ objects. These digital exhibitions offer short videos, including discussions with curators and artists. Selections from the museum’s permanent collection offer images and videos. The Brooklyn Museum of Art released their collections database API for public use which resulted in a company developing an iPhone application for the museum that gives users free access to their collections in and outside their galleries. Relying on a rich tagging schema, Brooklyn’s application gives visitors the opportunity to search for art by tag or artist name. And for those who do not know what to look for, they may choose to randomize the collection. This randomization brings one to a painting by Thomas Birch followed by a shot glass designed by Tiffany Studios. Antenna Audio recently launched Pentimento, a system for creating iPhone application templates, with its first application called Love Art. Love Art provides access to select art collections and curator-narrated videos on the lives and art of masters from the National Gallery, London, including Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Van Gogh. Visitors may also scroll through different “insights” or themed tags, such as betrayal, faith, or light, to find videos on specific pieces. Opening collections and exhibitions for a mobile-friendly website or an iPhone or Touch application allows anyone to browse through art and related curated information in or outside of the gallery. While increasing access to museum collections, these applications limit the audience by platform, thus limiting the total audience able to enjoy such access.

The CHNM has also created three different prototypes that put its recommendations into action. We haven't had a lot of time yet to play around with these or with the site, but it's a work in progress, with a bibliography to which visitors can contribute, and it's a good idea, at very least, to have a gathering place for this kind of information that is specific to museums.

More R.A.'s

Ray Channell sent us four more images for the Flickr gallery of R.A. Millers, which is up to 55 pictures. We'd like to keep it growing, so please send yours in to gmoapr at yahoo.com.

Ray writes, "I got to visit with Mr. Miller at his home sometime in the Fall of 2003. He was very personable and chatty. He showed me and my friend around and inside his house, answering questions and telling stories about his art and some pieces that were gifts from other artists. I got him to tell me the Blow Oscar story. 'He never stopped to see if I needed anything, he just blew the horn and waved.' Janice also got a really nice whirleygig, a green cut-out dog, and a cut-out chicken. At least two other rectangular 'roofing tin' pieces were gifted." Click through to see some of his other information about the images he sent, including why the devil above has two mouths...

Staff Art Show

We really miss having art to look at on a daily basis, so Lynn Boland, our Pierre Daura Curator of European Art, is spearheading a staff art competition, which should also fill up the blank white walls in our hallway. Each of us gets to submit up to three entries, measuring 4 x 4 feet at the most, plus an artist's statement (perhaps the hardest part). These will then be posted to our Web site for you, the online community, to vote on. The winners will then be exhibited in the old Visual Arts Building on Jackson Street, where our offices are at the moment. We're also looking for ideas for the name of this show, so please pipe up in the comments if you have any.

Streaming Construction Webcam

After quite a bit of this and that, and a lot of hard work by staff members and friends, we finally have the streaming webcam of construction on our new wing available on the Web site, and you can see it by clicking here. For some reason, it's clearest when you use Safari as your Web browser, but it's exciting to see it in any browser, especially with structural steel going up. It's not quite as awesome as PandaCam, but it's close.

New Podcast

It's been forever since we last put up a podcast, but when Paul Manoguerra, our curator of American art, interviewed Carl Mullis and Durwood Pepper for the Lord Love You exhibition catalogue, we thought it would be a great opportunity not only to record the conversation for transcription, but also to put it up on our Web site for the public to download and listen to. Well, it's finally up, complete with a smooth introduction added by our intern John Keith. Click here to go to the podcast page on our Web site or here to go directly to the mp3 of the interview.

We've spent the morning playing around with the Art Institute of Chicago's new Pathfinder Web app, as prompted by Art Daily. We can't imagine having such an abundance of space (four levels!), but it's a really interesting and, it seems, fairly useful online map, with panoramic views of the galleries, mapping of routes (both on foot and with handicap accessibility in mind) from one area to another, location of amenities and so on. Would it be useful to you if we provided our general information brochure and gallery map online, or is GMOA not large enough to make that necessary, even post-expansion?

YouTube

Did you know MOMA had a YouTube channel?



This video is part of a series in which the museum's staff tried to convey something about the institution in 30 seconds. There are also sections of the channel devoted to videos about new exhibitions.

The Georgia Museum of Art also has a YouTube channel, but it's much smaller. Still, you can watch our introduction to Second Life and slideshows of the 2008 and 2007 MFA exit shows. Maybe we should add some cartwheeling?

Digital Books

This article by Lee Shearer in the Athens Banner-Herald on UGA Press's move toward some digital printing (specifically on-demand printing of books less in demand) reminded us of a couple of related links, neither of which at first would seem to be connected. Art Daily published an article today about the British Library's digitization of the Codex Sinaiticus, the world's oldest surviving Christian bible, which dates from the 4th century. Its physical pages are scattered in the British Library, the Leipzig University Library, the Monastery of St Catherine (Mount Sinai, Egypt) and the National Library of Russia (St Petersburg), so the website the library has created is the only way to see all of them at once, let alone flip through the book. Similarly, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore posted three high-resolution digitized Korans on Issuu (a two-page spread from one appears above).

Both these projects and the efforts of UGA Press allow us to think about the spread of works of art and books in the digital age. It's true, there's nothing like holding a physical book in your hand, but there are other ways in which digital versions are an improvement, such as the fact that they're vastly easier to search. We don't plan on relying on digital printing or digital distribution any time in the near future (color reproduction isn't there yet for the former, and the latter often doesn't have color at all, as in the case of the Kindle), but we are working on digitizing our entire collection of brochures and smaller booklets, to cut down on the storage space needed and to promote scholarship. Currently, if someone's writing a book on, for example, Earl McCutcheon, and sees that we had an exhibition of his work with a large brochure, it's difficult to go find that brochure, expensive to mail it and hard to find the space to store it. When we're finished, we should be able just to burn a CD or, better still, send a link, plus these publications will be searchable. Hooray for the future!

Image Rights and Digital Databases

Lynn Boland sent this along last week:

Just in case there were still any questions about the positive correlation between having more images of works of art from the collection on the website, and on-site museum attendance--not to mention the myriad of other benefits--this IMLS-funded study should put them to rest. From the press release: “The Internet is not replacing in-person visits to libraries and museums and may actually increase onsite use of libraries and museums. There is a positive relationship between Internet use and in-person visits to museums and public libraries.” The report is called Interconnections, IMLS National Study on the Use of Museums, Libraries and the Internet and you can reach it by clicking here (there's also a snazzy PowerPoint presentation you can download).

We've also been reading the April 2009 issue of MuseumVIEWS (an organization that focuses on small and mid-sized museums), which addresses the issue of image rights in its cover article (not yet posted online) by Christine Sundt, who writes:

In the longstanding and fruitful partnership between art museums and publishers, tighter controls and escalating costs during the last decade have brought about frustration, confusion, and headaches for both parties. The licensing of art images--and the attendant costs and restrictions--has become a burden, especially in today's economy, when both museums and publishers are facing severe financial constraints and shortfalls.

Sundt comes down strongly on the side of open access and Creative Commons licensing, as well as in favor of digitizing collections, which can promote the easy and inexpensive distribution of images. She points out:

. . . the effect of the scaled pricing has been to pressure publishers into reproducing works of art in small black-and-white format rather than in reasonably sized color prints, to print smaller editions (at higher retail prices), and to pare down the image programs of their art books. The result has been less attractive, more expensive art books and fewer of them--surely not the aim of the publisher, the author, or the museum.

Sometimes a museum's fee is inconsistent. When, for example, the institution generously waives or reduces fees for scholars or nonprofit presses, it encourages the publication of scholarly works for arts professionals. But, in maintaining regular fees for other non-scholarly projects, it discourages "gateway" books such as children's books, textbooks, and beautifully produced gift books, all of which are vital in bringing new audiences to art. . . . What could be the alternatives to the traditional criteria for scaling fees? To waive fees for all mission-driven uses (books, journal articles, and educational Web sites) while increasing fees for other uses (note cards, tote bags, coasters, aprons, advertising campaigns, and the like). Or, to consider other ways to generate revenue for the museum that do not place the burden on images and scholarship.

We're doing our best to move into the digital age, but the issues are complex, and there are always new wrinkles that occur.