Salon 46 // Weird Media

And action.

Great. Good evening, everybody, or afternoon as it may be, or early morning as it may be, or maybe not so early morning as it may be. So to everyone, let's hear what is it? What did Walter Winchell used to say to Mr. And Mrs. America and all around the world? You know, so I'm Patrick Lichty, and I'm the curator of the...

All the ships at sea. That's it.

Thank you so much. And let's see. I'm the curator of the International Digital Media Association exhibition. This year, we call it Weird Media. And we'll get into that in a couple minutes. But I think I'll give, let's see here, a little bit of background on the International Digital Media and Art Association.

Patrick Lichty

So I think that we've been around for about 25 years, and we waxed and waned, and we're now in a waxing phase. And something that's really interesting is that the kind folks at the Winona State Foundation have been kind enough to allow, basically allow the International Digital Media Association to be a permanent partner with the permanent part of the Winona State Foundation. And so every conference will be here in perpetuity from now on. And we're very excited about that because that brings, you know, that kind of brings the world to Winona, which is part of this weird exhibition. And then secondly, it's the fact that it gives a really beautiful kind of bucolic destination to a pretty good conference.

Patrick Lichty

So that's kind of the thing that I think people will be pleasantly surprised at in the coming days. So that's kind of the thing then. So anyway, what I would like to do is that I have a, let's see here, I have a little something for you. And just a little bit of, background. Let's see here. Okay. Let's go in here and do the slideshow.

Patrick Lichty

So every year has a theme. So this year is weird media. And the interesting thing about the notion of weird media is that it comes from the, it comes from the German word wird. Which, you know, the three, you know, the fates or, you know, the three sisters in Macbeth were called the Wierd sisters, you know, so the idea behind the word Wierd, which later became weird, is something that's uncanny or unusual or something that it evens like something attempts the face. So I thought this was a really good way to have a very inclusive show. And a show that would definitely have some things that would not normally be at Winona State.

Patrick Lichty

So this is the Laird Norton building. This is the, this is the developing center for the arts and art and design at the Winona State University. From 1918 to 1958, the Laird Norton company was one of the largest logging companies in the continental United States and based in Winona State. From 1918 to 1958, the Laird Norton company was one of the largest logging companies in the continental United States and based in Winona State.

Patrick Lichty

Winona has a very storied past. There's this little town on the river but we can walk to the Mississippi River in 10 minutes. You know it's no big deal. We also have another partner with us the Minnesota Maritime Art Museum where One of our Techspressionists who isn't here very often but is participating, Margaret Dolinsky.

Patrick Lichty

She's here. We'll talk about her work. And she's going to do a performance out in the Mississippi in her printed kayaks. And let's see here. We're also hosting John Keston, who's a noted electroacoustic artist. And we're working with a local music establishment called Broken Records. And we're actually going to have a fantastic event with that. There's a band called Swashbuckler that's kind of a jazz, prog, psych band that where actually everybody in my department has been. And they're a band that in mass communication are big fans of. And so they're going to be doing the late night set. And then John Keston and possibly some of our students are going to be doing some live VJ. And so the thing is, is that we have the conference at the university, the exhibition on Friday night. And this is really nice because the thing is, while we want people to be able to pay to go to the conference, you can go to for free to the exhibition and to all the satellite events that we're doing around here.

Patrick Lichty

So that's kind of it. So in weird, what we're doing is like, OK, what's a little bit uncanny? What's a little bit different? And how can we open up the dialogue with that? I said this is that's actually my office, actually. But this is my office. But that's Winona State University, our home institution and our partner institution in Columbia College, Chicago, which actually I used to be a professor at as well. So we're very grateful to our institutional partners for this particular show.

Patrick Lichty

Let's see here. I think I have some installation shots. OK, now here's our one of our promo graphics done by Talon Mehmet. And actually, he's very into the Gann sort of thing at the at the moment. And so this is this is our vinyl banner piece for the for the conference that we've got out in front of the out in front of the hall.

Patrick Lichty

And here is the bumper for the show. Oh, OK. Sorry that was a little loud. So OK. Whoops. So here are some installation shots.

I don't think we actually got the device audio there, Patrick. Oh good.

Well, you know what? No, actually it's fine. That's great because it was really loud. So the graphics are probably what matter actually. So this is inside the Laird Norton building. So as I said, it's a nice big space. There's Colin's contribution there, a vector or gesture. This is John Ramey and that's Mina Chan, who's at MICA in Maryland.

Patrick Lichty

And so Malavika, we haven't gotten your work up yet, but there it is. And let's see, there's Carter and let's see here. And let's see here, okay. And Negin's work here. One thing that I thought was really kind, our director, Davin Heckmans, one of my academic partners in the department. And we had a great group of jurors.

Patrick Lichty

We had Brandon Gellis, who's another Techspressionist. Of course, my wife and partner in all things, Negin Ehtesabian. And who actually has really been super throughout this entire process. Really stood behind me a lot on this and I'm really incredibly grateful. These two pieces are from Plant Bot Genomics. These are a couple of mutated cabbages that danced to Party Rock and let's see here.

Jeff and Wendy? Yeah. I was... I knew them from a residency down in Key West.

I didn't know they were in the show. Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're in the show. Yeah, yeah. Nice.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah. Plant Bot Genomics. Sure, exactly. And then Isabel Urias, who did these nice big prints. And so another shot of the year. I don't have anything of the pieces up front, like we have Joseph DeLapp and, of course, Cynthia Beth, that we don't have up yet. And let's see here. Another shot. There's Tommy's piece. There's one of Tommy's two pieces, actually. Thank you much, Mr. Mintz. And this is the main hall where we had Tommy's 24-foot banner.

Patrick Lichty

And actually, believe it or not, from that rendering that I did. Oh, by the way, just back to the judges. Cynthia Beth Rubin, Negin. Wade Waller-Cern from Transfer Gallery in Los Angeles, and now head of Gray Area. Brandon. And is that four? And, oh, and of course, Roger Boulay, who's our gallery director as well. So that's, you know, fantastic.

Patrick Lichty

And the other thing I do want to say is that we had people from the Midwest Music Fest, you know, my academic partner. On graphics and families of folks that we know in the area. And we're getting some support from the Winona State Foundation and the Minnesota Maritime Art Museum. And really, I think the one thing that has been, and we also just met with the lead directors of IDMA just looked at what we're doing and I think I think two things that I kind of say is that first just absolutely thrilled that so many people have been willing to come together on an ad hoc basis and put in and do just give so much help. To put something like this and the IDMA directors looked and they just looked at the website which you will see just in a minute and they said, my god, we have never done anything like this.

Patrick Lichty

So we've got like 575 inch TVs like this, about eight or nine laptops and you can see that the space here is just absolutely gorgeous. So and I think that's it for this webinar. That let's see what I think I would like to do right at this point is just kind of say does anybody have before we start going into any raised raised hands does anybody have any questions or you know about winona or you know that you know or the venue or whatnot

I was wondering if you could just give a little intro on idma and just sort of like what the organization is all about because I don't really know too much about it other than that you know you've been involved in it and some of the other folks at bg maybe sure bonnie and diana sure exactly so

I said idma has been around for about 25 years and it has had deep ties to bowling green and columbia college chicago you know our advisors our advisors in graduate school dina eber and bonnie mitchell were very deeply involved at you know for a long time and then a couple of a couple professors that I worked with at columbia college chicago michael niederman and tom dowd tom dowd was the was the game designer for let's see here oh it's here I think mech warrior with microsoft studios so he was he was had the game design program when I was there and so they've been they're currently the chairs of idma at the moment so what's the scope of idma and idma is based around media art media scholarship and then also you know professional media design so because not only is it a media art but it's also a media scholarship and then also you know professional media design so because not only do we have artists we have scholars scholars studying you know the society of media but we also have people in professional cinematography and filmmaking and you know in the you know in the professional end of the you know of the industry another one of our partners is very much involved in digital design but they're currently having an event at madison uw madison the day we are so we're not you know we're not we're not teamed up this year so but they're a great bunch and let's see here I think one thing that I would like to say is that we have a lot of representations from the nodes we have a lot of representations from the iranian node we have a lot of we have representation from the canadian nodes I'm not sure how many other but I know that there's at least a lot of representation from the iranian node and I think the iranian and canadian nodes that are that are pretty well represented here you know and then and then you know and then of course you know malavika has some of her work here so we have representation from we have a representation from india so this is actually we've got as you can see from the list we've got about between 15 20 to expressionists in the show out of a total of I think I think currently we're at 89.

Patrick Lichty

So not so bad you know it's actually I think we have as many expressions as would be in a node show you know which I think is pretty good and actually some of the folks at winona state are interested in possibly starting to come to salons so I'm going to push them a little bit so anyway so that's the background on idma

Nice and I appreciate that and I also wanted to mention you know the idea of nodes is not necessarily just limited to countries like there could be a localized node in a state or region of the us for instance you know like I feel like it's just a way for artists to get together on a local level and try to like put some something together that would it'd be physical exhibition or what have you, you know, but I appreciate the, you know, the inclusion of, a lot of the, the Techspressionist artists. It's awesome to be able to, you know, use it, use Techspressionism as a platform to share opportunities.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Is that, let's see here. Let's, let's open the, let's open the floor to Roz.

Hi, Patrick. I didn't have an immediate question, but one thing that I just want to say that I appreciate, because I live so much online now, it's like I feel divided, that it's really nice that you showed physical building and you know columbia and the that I found that a nice way to engage our two worlds together and when we do shows I think that's really nice one thing we did with Techspressionism we did that only a little bit when we you know went inside every artist piece and everything we're usually inside and that's great to see the inside too but I really thought it was great to get a history and a little review of the building and bring it into context since we're an international group and I just

Think that I appreciated that

Yeah you know the other thing that I also want to bring up I think it's very important is that let's see here you know in our during the show we were very conscious of looking at the set of works that we had through through an equity lens and the matter is that we did as well as we could with the let's just say with the with the pieces that we have we have a lot of representation from around the world a lot of orientations and that sort of thing but there were there were a there were a few holes based may based in time entirely on the sets of works that were submitted and not in regards to anything you know in regards to the jurors so there were there were a few holes you know and this is something that we're this is something that we're thinking about as far as outreach is concerned being in minnesota especially and then so that's something there and then we all since we have the minnesota maritime art museum you know they have various programs like flora and fauna and they're basically focused on water you know art that works with water and the one thing that I thought was another very interesting hole was the curator is that in these in this particular set of works is that in this particular set of works I would say probably no more than about 10 were really dealing heavily with water or notions of the environment and things like that and I yeah we're looking at things like you know genetics we're looking at things like genetics artificial intelligence you know at astronomy scott kildall's piece exotopia is basically basically a VR guide to the known exoplanets and that sort of thing.

Patrick Lichty

But the thing is, is that in this day and age of our concern for our Mother Earth is the fact that there weren't as many people as I thought might be talking about it at this point in time. So as a curator, I like to see what people are doing and I like to see where the gaps are. And these are, and I think what happens is that I'm just saying as a little hint for that we have this museum here and they're a partner of our, you know, they're a budding partner with our organization and this exhibition space, is that let's just say that to take a look at what they're doing and they have a program, they have a set scheduled programs for the next three years. And if we will continue being open at IDMA here, I won't be curator again for quite some time, but I'll be in the staff here. And so, you know, that's just a little hint, you know, and sort of like saying, you know, we're here on the mighty Mississippi and we're very concerned with ecology and water and all these things.

Patrick Lichty

And people who engage these subjects, you know, might get a little, might get a bit more interest than, you know, than they might other places. So that's the thing. Oh, by the way, if you saw in the bumper, that you saw this, you know, scanned weird thing. That is actually we it was in the visitors.

Patrick Lichty

It was in the visitor center for Visit Winona. And so we talked to we in mass communications are friends with the folks that at Visit Winona, because a couple of them were former students of ours and said, hey, we're doing this thing on weird media. And so could we get that? Could we get that weird? Sculpture out of out of the visitors is sure. Why not? So that's actually a shot from about an hour ago.

Patrick Lichty

And we'll have lasers up on it and that'll be kind of fun anyway. What's so far has been a really, really, really fun pleasant thing. So. Let's see, I'm looking through here. Wow, we have a we have a nice turn of the sun. Thank you so much. Does anybody does anybody else have any questions? Or does anybody want to talk about the work? I mean, I can I can go over to the website, but does anybody want to talk about their work? Does anybody have anything prepared? And I mean, I can go I can go over to the website. I can bring up people's work or does any if anybody wants to talk about their work, you know, we can we can go right in. So. OK. Let's open the door to Renata.

Patrick Lichty

Renata. Or did she did she did she crash? OK, did you have your hand up or not? OK, well, how about you know what? Victor Victor is in the show. One moment. OK, great.

Thanks. You know, I figured that, you know, you call this a preview, so I could be happy to share my screen and show my video. That's actually in the show. It's only a minute, 17 seconds. And I could talk a little bit about it. OK, great. And before I do that, let me just read a little statement about the piece. So when you see it, you can. Have that in mind.

Victor Acevedo

It's called the video is called Anonymous Ambience SM Remix 2022. And the SM stands for Space Matrix. And the title is a combination and a carryover from the titles of its original two source images or videos, I should say, two original source videos. And the piece is a remix of two short electronic works, as I say, of the original two source images. The movie was originally called Space Matrix and A Space Matrix was originally called Space Matrix. But they were both released in 2021 with some elements dating back earlier. The videos were called originally. Well, I guess I said that anonymous ambience in Space Matrix Version two and the electronic soundtrack for each of them was composed by Igor Emokian, AKA Chris Holland. And one of the ideas expressed in the video here is about how when you're meditating, trying to tune into a blissful state, other perhaps distracting or dissonant energies will momentarily emerge in the mantric field.

Victor Acevedo

But if you relax, the bliss and relaxation will return. So that's kind of the general premise of the presentation. And subjectively, from my vantage point, there is an edgy modernity in the animation and in the sonic environment. In that the bed of the meditative drone is produced by a machine-generated harmonic noise.

Victor Acevedo

So it's very electronic. It's being that the composer is an electronic musician and circuit bender. So there's this... There's this interplay between kind of harmonic machine noise and dissonant machine noise. There's sort of a dialogue between that and then, you know, hopefully visualized compellingly by my visual element or motion graphical element.

Well, how about we see it?

Yeah, so now... Okay, now let me share my screen here. Okay. Got to remember to share sound. Oh, yeah. And many of you or some of you may recognize a lot of the imagery and recognize some of the sounds because you've seen these two pieces before. I've actually previously shared these in previous expressionist salons.

Victor Acevedo

So that's something else to bear in mind.

Thank you. Thank you.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that Renata's back up. So, yeah, let's hear from you. We're showing in our video program, we're showing Crying Pink, which is a fine piece. And so have at it.

Okay. Thank you, Patrick. And thank you to the jury for the selection of my work. I'm just starting to share my screen. And go here. So as Patrick said at the beginning, the word weird comes from the German wird. And it's got to do with fate, chance, fortune, or destiny. And in its original context, it meant strange in the sense of supernatural or paranormal. It refers to having the power to control destiny. So, for example, in Macbeth, you have the three witches at the beginning of the play.

And they're referred to as the weird sisters.

Intrinsically in the weird, there is disorientation. So in my work, Crying Pink, the main character is a clone. The clone is of an indeterminate gender. It could be. Female could be male. Could be something in between there. And it's about the sadness of when you become a clone. You have to leave behind your emotions and your memories.

Renata Janiszewska

The other character is a cyborg. Who is weird in a literal sense. There's a current discussion going on about whether AI is sentient or not. There's a New York Times article about the engineer from. Google who was fired because he made the claim that AI had a soul. But it's an ancient, ancient conceit that we project consciousness onto icons. So religious statues, for example, or things like the haunted house. And this is extremely uncanny and disruptive to our conceptual framework.

Renata Janiszewska

On an emotional or psychological level, it is disturbing. It is here. That art speaks to us. Art evokes. And it is that same evocation that the Google engineer saw and felt in the AI. This happens across all cultures. There's currently even evidence that the Inuit of Canada's Arctic conceive of space as an inherently spiritual entity.

Renata Janiszewska

Going back to Crying Pink. It's my incorporation. Of the uncanny within the convention of European literature and film. The fable of Beauty and the Beast comes to mind here, which is a story both cinematic and like a poem. You have the face of a mysterious woman who dances with a monster. And like the story of beauty in this work, you have spaces that are both gigantic and minuscule.

Renata Janiszewska

The last thing I want to say before I play the video for you is that the soundtrack. Which is my own. Evokes crying sounds. And those sounds heighten the theme of pain as a result of loneliness.

The sound of the word is don't really feel it. The sound of the word is just so short. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room. The sound of the word is like a lost girl in a dark room.

Unattributed

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. That's great. So anything else you want to say you want to add or shall we?

I'm happy.

Okay, good. Great. If you're happy, we're happy. So fantastic. Okay. Colin, I noticed that, you know what? I'm channeling Davo a little bit. It's like, hey, Colin, I saw that you were in the, that you were talking about wanting to be in the queue. So why, why don't you go?

Okay. Yeah. For some reason, they don't, Zoom does not allow the host to raise their hand. Seems like a weird piece of functionality there.

You know what? That's, that's perfectly appropriate for this, right? Yeah. It's all of a sudden, all of a sudden, I just started to feel Davo's voice in mind and I just, okay, that's, that's really hot. Okay.

Go for it. All right. So let me pull up my, can you guys see my screen? Okay. Okay. All right. So the piece that I submitted is a work that is on a wood panel. It's a laser etched piece from my wireframe series. This is it here. So it's a fairly small piece. I did it while I was a graduate student at Bowling Green with Patrick. I remember. And so this is the piece here. It's, it's basically burned into a piece of plywood. And then there's resin on top.

Colin Goldberg

And kind of the idea with this body of work is taking the, the expressionist notion of a gesture and extrapolating it out into three dimensions. So, you know, this wireframe series is a body of work that I've been kind of developing since around 2005. And it usually starts with making these sort of gestural marks on the body of work. And then it's kind of in software and then rotating them in 3D space and kind of moving them around and so on and so forth.

Colin Goldberg

And yeah, you know, that it's kind of crossed over into a bunch of different types of media. It was really fun to be able to play with a laser etcher while I was a grad student there. This one was etched into a piece of slate. Was that in Saddlemire? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

That sort of induction. I had an industrial laser etcher that was for the engineering students.

And, you know,

I'd sneak in slate and go down to the Home Depot and buy marble tiles and all sorts of other stuff.

Actually, this was another one from that body of work. I was doing, you remember, I was doing toast.

I remember the toast. Yeah.

That was another one from that same body of work.

But yeah, that's pretty much it.

Super.

That's, you know,

That's where I'm at. I think it looks fine in the space. And thank you. You know, on one hand, you know, on one hand, I thought, you know, as I was putting together the show, you were thinking about, we were thinking about, we're thinking about video. But the thing is, is that after, after Digital and Beyond, I said, you know, we absolutely have to have, you know, physical space in the piece. I'm really, really grateful that, you know, that you were able to get something, get, you know, send that piece over. So, and I think it looks really great with John Ramey's piece. So that's awesome. Yeah.

I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Let's see here. Well, okay. And then is there, does, does anybody else have anything that they want to, that they, that they want to present or should we go over to the website? I think we should go. I think we should go. Malavika.

Hi.

Oh, hi.

I think even Tommy also wanted to.

Oh, okay.

Okay. Didn't see it. Didn't you know, I didn't see that. So you know what? Definitely.

Am I right, Tommy?

Mr. Mintz, please.

So, thank you, Malavika. I mean, if you want to go first, I'm totally happy to, to go after you. Either way. I'm just trying to set up my screen share on iTunes.

Why don't you go ahead and I'll go after you.

Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you.

Can I share the screen, please?

You should be able to.

Okay, okay. Yeah, I got it.

Mr.

Paul, thank you to the tech experts in Ceylon. Now, because of this, I got connected to Patrick's. And thank you, Itma, for selecting my work. Now, inspiration is... For me is the elements of life. I thought of that work I'll be showing later, but I thought of sharing some of the images which I have used during this pandemic. I mean, which was totally unplanned, as you said, unusual because it was not part, we never thought of something will happen like that, which was very weird for me. So this technology always kept me engaged with the art and I was doing a lot of photography inside the house and which later on, because of this screenshot and different, all different possibilities, I converted that into combined images.

Malavika Mandal Andrew

Like these are all the images I have developed on the on phone only through the screenshot. And later on, I have used these all different images for creating and developing my work, which is getting exhibited. And I have also created a lot of images for the! Now, the most important part is for me, the all the photographs, which I take is like sketches for me. And I have whatever extent of this weird or you can see these kinds of effects I have gone through is because of the technology.

Malavika Mandal Andrew

I mean, we can think of maybe some of the effects manually through hand, but the extreme what I have reached in this, all these full work is only possible because of the technology, the digital art. And another thing is that when I'm working on the layers, I can go back and again, I can see what I have done. So I can, I mean, I can live the life again. I can go through the whole work process again, which is not possible when we do it manually and painting. So I really enjoy always working with this medium. And thank you for selecting the work again. Thank you.

It's our pleasure. And as you as you saw, it's it will be it will be on the wall tomorrow morning. So there we go. So, all right. Tommy.

Hello, Viggo. Those are so fantastic. I really love those images. The let's see if I'm able to share a screen on iPad for the first point time in my life here.

Sorry to you know, while you're doing this, let me let me let me tell you that Davin Heckman and his you know what you brought in it. You brought an entire entire family together over art and there was like Davin Heckman and his sons were basically working for the better part of day putting up that 24 footer and they were just having a blast.

Patrick Lichty

So yeah, yeah. That was great.

Fantastic to hear. Yeah. So this is the 24 foot print. I'm not sure everybody's able to see this as I pinch and zoom in. In. There's a huge amount of detail in these large prints and that's why I really enjoyed doing them because you can really read all the details.

I can't see them.

You can't see my screen right now?

Can't see it.

What are you seeing?

Nothing. I don't, I just see your name at this point. Black. Let's see.

Well, I apologize. I'm going to stop trying here. Oh really? Let's see. One second. Start the broadcast. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Here we go.

There you go.

Great. So now. There you are. There's a picture hopefully. And everybody can see it as I pinch and zoom in. Let's see if this works the second time.

Yeah, I can see it now.

Great. So the experience I'm hoping to provide the viewer with these very large prints is kind of an immersive in the actual world. This idea of, you know, the digital space being one that we exist in mentally being maybe materialized and surrounding us here. I have another view of the same print, maybe with a little more detail visible.

Tommy Mintz

I have a. I mean, what we have are panoramic views of different corners. That are a sequence of time lapse collages stitched next to one another, providing views of places that are changing. Right now there's construction going on and a very temporary sort of sense of a place at this moment. And. The digital and time lapse methodology that I'm working with here where the algorithm determines what ends up in the final image and the fact that we're working with these ephemeral components, you know, bits or data, right? Pretty much is parallel and sensibility to this temporary sense, ephemeral sense of space that we have right now in New York. And maybe has a, has a sense of space. So that's one of the things that I've always had here. The Marquis de Lafayette supposedly said the only thing permanent in New York is change.

Tommy Mintz

So that's what I'm thinking about when I'm making these. Time lapse collages. So I think we have two that are up. One is. Sorry. I'm going to stop sharing. So I feel like I'm just gonna. Confuse myself at this point. And. I'm going to go back to the screen. Is everybody back? I get back to the screen, right? Yes. So, yeah, I think it's really fantastic to see these. Large. Fabric prints that Patrick has, I think in his background, even right now, hanging in this big, beautiful space. It really.

Tommy Mintz

The, the materiality of the print. Is something that I'm, I'm very interested in. And I think it's really interesting to see how this is going to change over time. And find that it. By the way, people signs.com SIGNS.com is how I had these prints made on fabric. It's a polyester poplin and Patrick can attest to how easy it is to ship it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Patrick. Did I mess up and kick him off with my screen?

That's a wild screen. Do that. That.

Well, you're still recording, Colin, right? So we're not going to lose everything beyond this point.

No, we are still recording. Yeah. So let's see.

I do

See that there is something in the chat from one of the artists, Azra Kani, I think. Is that a female artist, Negin?

Oh, yes. Yes, some expressionism Iran artist wants to talk. So I think she had a problem with her microphone. So I can show some of her works, and you read it, please?

Sure. So she says, hello, friends. I hope you are fine. I'm very happy to be with you and for my work being displayed displayed in 2022 Weird Media Exhibition. I am, can you pronounce the name? Asra?

Asra Gharakhani.

Okay, thank you. And I am 32 years old. I've been working in the field of digital art and graphics for 17 years. I've been a physical artist for a few years, and I've worked mostly with Conte pencils and oil paints, and then I started to work with digital pens. I've held several exhibitions and have been ranked more than 26 times in different festivals. I've been working on NFT for more than a year. I love details. My pseudonym is Miko, which I have taken from the word...

Colin Goldberg

My works are mostly composed of faces, which are combinations of faces and girls and sea creatures. The name of this work is Mirashellen. It's a girl seagull with a net on its head. Inside, in which small fish are trapped, seagulls catch small fish. This is a natural law that helps the cycle of nature.

This is Asra's page in the show's website. Also, she's very active in NFT and she's working on a collection. She's also a member of the Don Quix. So this is the Expressionist artists in the Yidma show. So I think Patrick is coming back. He has a problem with the internet. So maybe someone else wants to talk about their work?

I can talk a little bit. I've just transitioned from my phone onto the screen.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Stop sharing the screen.

I can show something. I mean, not something. I can show the work. There is that exhibition. Nice to see everyone. Nice to see you too. Thanks so much for taking me into this fantastic exhibition. So I think I can. Yeah, it's really great. I'm honored to be in the company of this Viet Media. So I have work. There is like brain AI in the section of video art, I guess. But brain AI is an interactive installation where AI organism consumes human emotions in order to become human. But it kind of happens through or it's mediated through physical robotic machine with cylinders that touches people while they interact in virtual reality by providing haptic feedback. And the whole thing is interactive. So I think it's really great. Yeah. We were talking about how this whole environment is created by participants emotional input, mainly anxiety.

Uli Ap

So the situation they're in generates anxiety through the sound and through physical elements. And then this insight is being fed back to the machine that produced different spaces. And like each space is individual because it's all dependent on your anxiety. And then at the end. Okay. This AI algorithm synthesizes those individual experiences into a collective anxiety pavilion, which I want eventually to build outdoors somewhere, then all people who experienced this exhibition could come and see how they contributed to the structure of architectural pavilion.

Uli Ap

So this is what it is. And I mean, I don't know, should I, if I share screen, I should be able to show, right? I think it's here. It's loading.

Can you see it now? Yeah. Yes,

Yes. Yeah, okay.

So I said, we're going

And this is the exhibition at Ambika P3 with my other work, with Akselo Scholder, and this is where the brainy eye was exposed and exposed saturation.

Thank

You.

Thank

You. What happened while I had a complete client update and I crashed my system.

Welcome back. Thank you. How is the system?

We're all good now. Okay, I think you went. So thank you, Uli. So, Carter, you also have a piece in. Okay.

Can everyone hear me?

Yes.

Okay. This is the page, beautiful page you all made. And it has more explanation of what I'm doing. I'm going to just be short and show the animation. I became interested in atomic particle collisions in the late 70s, and a friend of mine who was a physicist showed me his experiments with cloud chamber photographs at Stanford Linear Accelerator. And I started incorporating images of that into my paintings through silk screen. But in 2004, I discovered processing where I could actually create particle collisions. So that's how I create my paintings now, making particle collisions and transforming them into paintings. But I'm also, it's an animated process. I'm where the particles collide and form. And so I started making animations themselves.

Carter Hodgkin

This is one that's in the show. And I'm just going to fast forward. I'm playing around with this sense of time and things forming, mutating, and dissolving. So these are, I'm not going to show the whole thing because it takes time to view it. But this will give you a sense of what it is. And it's on my website, and it's on the website for the show. And thank you for including my work.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Did you ever do the CERN residency?

No, I haven't done that.

Okay.

I tried once a long time ago. I don't know.

Okay.

But I feel like I have the tools to create what I want to do and explore forms. But I'm sure I could learn a lot by going to CERN.

Mm-hmm. I was thinking of the amount of support that you get for doing that. Yeah. Always hopeful. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, it's always like your work. So thank you. Yeah, great. Okay. And, oh, okay. And I'm just getting caught up here. So let's see. I think. Did. I'm sorry to be kind of catching up a little bit.

Patrick Lichty

Let's see here. I guess. And again, was saying that. She described a little bit of the work and I'm wondering whether there's anybody who wanted to. Let's see here. Marjot. I see. Have you gone? Okay. Great. Welcome.

Can you hear me? Everybody?

Yes. Yeah.

Hello everyone. And I'm, I'm so happy to. Be in this meeting. And thank you very much for just selecting my artworks. Let me share a screen. Here. It's. Can you see it?

Yeah.

Okay. Let me. Okay. It's. One of the illustrations. I just did. For a collection. Some years ago. It was called apocalypse now. And the pieces were just, I mean, the artworks were just based on. Famous movies. And I just made a parody of the movies. In a very. After. Absurd way. And I mean, hilarious way. And in this piece. I am just showing.

Marjan Andaroodi

Family. In a. Atmosphere of just. Being just stoned in front of the TV and being brainwashed by TV by. Just consumerism. And I just. Wanted to show. Just chaotic. Scene of the. Of human beings. Daily life. Today. And. That. Person from the above. Going to burn. Everybody. Is me. Myself. The artist is going to. Save everybody. And. I'm going to show. From their. Just banal. Life from the.

Marjan Andaroodi

Just path. Like life. By burning them out. It's just something exaggerating. I never burn people, but. I wanted to show something. Gothic something. Grotesque. Excuse me. Something. To. Criticize the. Lifestyle of. Today's people. And.

I'm going to show. That. Is. A.!

By Hamilton.

I love. Yeah.

I was just thinking the same thing. It reminded me of his famous piece.

Yeah. What is going on in modern? Houses.

I think I was prompted to Google it.

Just what is it that makes today's home so different? So appealing. Totally reminded me of that. That was good. Very nice.

It's an appropriation of, you can say, an appropriation of that piece. Because I love it so much.

Great. One thing that I kind of want to do is that while we have so many people in, one thing that's been done on the site is that there's actually a Techspressionist selection. So, I realize that we, Colin, we tend to like to go about an hour and a half, right, on the recordings, right?

Yeah, we go through until about seven, I'd say. Sure.

Seven or five, maybe.

Okay, let's see here. Got it. Okay. So, I just wanted to basically go down through here and go through a few more people. Let's see here. We've already seen Colin Carter. We haven't seen Diane. We talked to Victor. Also, one of my colleagues at Winona State who did an incredibly powerful piece, and I can't really hope to speak for him. But I do want to show you his piece because it's, it's quite an incredible thing.

Patrick Lichty

Is that, is that this is Talon Nemeth. And this actually a, let's see here, about a six by six foot nine piece work. And it also has incisions and sutures as, as, and stomas as he has, he is currently recovering from throat cancer. And this is one way I think, and I can't, I won't speak for it any more than that because I absolutely cannot, I do not have this experience. But on the other hand, was that everybody who's seen is absolutely thinks been an incredibly powerful piece.

Patrick Lichty

Just, but on the other hand is that using this is one way I think in which, you know, GANs and AI can be used in a way that's, it, it surpasses the process. In other words, it's kind of like how the, how the body is reshaped and all that sort of things that I think this, this particular process speaks extremely well to that. And I think this is something where Talon has done an incredible piece of work.

Patrick Lichty

Let's see. Here also our, let's see here. Our mentor Gregory Little has a piece a video piece actually called in soft echoes, which actually if you're familiar with his painting work, this is it actually, the one thing I think is very interesting about Gregory's work is the fact that, I mean, he's a trained painter from Yale and he creates his own pay, grinds his own pigments and he all, but makes his own canvas. He doesn't do that, but you know, in other words, he's such a, she's, he's such a formal materialist who also uses digital media that this is the one thing that I think is really unique about his work. And to see this represented in a video piece, I think is really, really special. And I think this is something that's going on. He says, do you mind if it's 14 minutes, 15 seconds?

Patrick Lichty

I said, I've seen the piece. I don't think anybody's going to mind sitting through 15 minutes of this. So, I, I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things.

Patrick Lichty

And I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things. And I'm just going to say a few things. It's an NFT and basically says I created this abstract. Oh, here we go. So she says that I likes the, likes the story of Adam and Eve and we often need to verify our identity and our computer always asks us to whether we're human.

Patrick Lichty

So yeah. And there's another piece that she, we have on display as well as says I'm not a robot. So in her recent work, she's saying that a lot of her work is re-examining our humanity and saying, you know, and reflecting on this idea that, that the computer network asks us whether we're a robot or not, which if you think about that from a, you know, from a, from, just kind of a situational perspective, that's a really weird thing. In other words, if you're the network is asking you whether you're a robot or not. And yeah, of course we say, of course we're not, but what if you were, and then, then, then I think that's when the story gets really interesting. So that's it. So I don't know whether Giovanna is a robot or not, but you know hope not.

Patrick Lichty

Let's see here. Let's go back. Let's go back to the gallery. Let's see here. Have some more people from the, we have Marjan, Ghazaleh, Seda Badi, Azra, Azra is that, I think I saw you out in the audience. Do you want to say anything about your work or? You these otherworldly creatures that hunt from the sea.

I think Negin showed us these when you were away.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

You know what she did?

She said that. You know they're wonderful. I'm so sorry. Anyway, I just blanked. So that's all right. I'm just kind of going down through the Marzan and then anybody else we should talk about? So, Sue Byers piece is algorithmic. Is kind of interesting. This is a landscape that's all done as kind of an HTML table piece that loads in live on a browser, which is kind of interesting. We've got this set up with iPads, and then actually for one of our pieces, we've got Ershad Fatahian, so kill so you don't get killed. This is actually also an NFT, where you have something orbiting around, I guess, perhaps Mars. But the one thing I really like about his work is that he...

Patrick Lichty

You know, he takes these classic elements and, you know, works them, juxtaposes them with the classic book of the king, the Persian book of the kings, the Shahnaneh, and I think they're really humorous, actually. And I think last one of the other pieces we have is Farnisdor Gar, who I don't know, is it... Being that actually Winona is a fairly religious town, I thought this was very interesting, very Catholic, actually. So I thought it was a very interesting piece that, you know, she's dealing with the notion of the icon and a little bit with the kind of like the gangsta pixel glasses and kind of owning this person. I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, but...

She was explaining that it's irony of being good and bad in balance. So when it's a bad person there and baby Jesus is punishing him, like, Okay.

Very bad look.

So, so, and then, and then Mary is, you know, standing there with the gangsta glasses saying, okay, we owned, we owned, we owned the bad person. So, So, so, that's great. So, Okay. And In general, let's see. Let's go back to The gallery. And I think that we run through. Oh, you know what? I think that one thing I do want to do is I want to go through just a couple pieces Before we, before we head out.

Patrick Lichty

This is a very interesting thing. A piece called retract. And it's just something that by Alex Mackenzie and Dana Potter. We're dedicating a room to this in that what they're doing is that they have these, you know, LP picture discs and which they actually have an augmented reality program that basically reads these and then creates sound and composite and video. Through the iPhone from that. And then basically they're doing projections and sound throughout throughout the space. So we're dedicating entire room to this particular piece. I'm very interested in seeing what they're doing with this is that it's usually three platters. They're doing two and you know, so I don't think it really does much justice here. We're going to try to get some documentation on that.

Patrick Lichty

Let's see here. I'm Dominic rivers. He's from Indiana University. And also there's also one other person I want to talk about as well. Is that he's working on his MFA and he's doing a VHS installation here in this thing called kooka manga and it's He's dealing with the nostalgia of the videotape and he's building this hey hut around the VHS installation that he's doing and to be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure what's happening with this thing. But I think it's so fits the notion of the of the exhibition. I just said he when he when I talked to him in person, he said, Can you get me a bail? Hey, I've never had an artist I've ever dealt with. Ask me that question. But I'm not sure. I've never done that before. And I just said, Sure.

Patrick Lichty

So I just seem to remember the story of the three little pigs with the first pig basically creating the house out of out of out of out of straw so I'm just sort of saying, this is just basically hitting so many so many cultural notes with me and I just I just want to see what this thing is. Cynthia Beth Rubin. The thing you're you have a piece that's going in the show. Do you want to say anything about that?

Patrick Lichty

Are you still here? So let's see here.

Let's wait. Hi, Patrick.

Did you just call me? I did.

Okay. I was just turning off the fan. That was blaring here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

As we're as we're wrapping up here, I realized that we hadn't talked about your work and we got about seven minutes left.

Okay, so I actually, I'm on my phone right now. Okay, I'm trying to figure out how to turn on video so that, oh, here it is. So that people can see me. Can you guys see me now?

No.

So the piece that I put in. Is a large plankton kind of banner that.

Oh, can't see me. I can't see you, Cynthia.

You can't see me.

No, we say stop video.

But you know, I'll stop sharing. You should just stop.

Okay, here I am.

Thank you.

Okay. I'd like to add what I put in the chat, which is that I'm not going to be able to hear you. I'm going to be able to hear you. I'm coming to you from the south of France. And you may have seen in the chat. That with one of our newer members who's Swiss. Who's listed as AI gardening, gardener, gardening.

I'm not sure.

On Instagram. It turns out this person's name is burn and I actually don't even. I know no more about burn than that. But burn and works full-time at CERN and I've been invited to visit CERN. That's fantastic. So I'm really excited about that. So that's going to be in about 10 days, I guess. So to get back to what I have in the show is. It's a plankton piece. That shows three versions of.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

Tin tinnit, which is a long, thin plankton. And it's a combination of drawing. And my. Photography. And each one of them is kind of mixed. So each one is kind of more expressive or less expressive. And telling us more about the plankton. By showing kind of detail of the work or not. And because I'm on my phone right now, though, I do have a computer with me, but this was. Easier. I can't really show it to you.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

It's on my website. So. Okay.

Okay. The let's see here. Here we go. Like in Hebrew manuscripts. So it's under. Is it.

Show it as if I signed up and signed back in and got a. Book?

How about this? Is that close?

Something just happened. I just lost you guys.

Are you still there?

No. Cynthia I'm sharing your work.

Okay.

I'm on your website.

Okay.

You're on my website. Yeah. Section.

Go and go to. Projects. AR VR. Okay. And then go to the one on the front. Our right. Do plankton have feelings? Sure. So click on that. And here we are. Okay, so it's from this series. It's actually if you start the video, I can tell you when it gets to the right one. But it's this series of kind of combining the drawing and the plankton. And unfortunately, the augmented reality no longer works because I was using Erasmus.

Cynthia Beth Rubin

And the piece that's in the show we will get to shortly. I don't know if you can fast forward the video.

I need to get I need to get back on.

Oh, it seems to be running slowly, but people get the idea. Yes, the exhibit was actually a combination of works I did in a workshop with the public and the do plankton drawing and finding their own drawings in this kind of sea that I made of and then my own work. And the AR revealed more about it. Someday I'll put it back in. But I think it actually stands on its own as showing that with the computer, we can really combine approaches to making new imagery.

Fantastic. Okay. Thank you so much. Well, this is so far been quite an evening. And as I said, I'm trying to like, step in for Davo just a tiny bit, you know, it's that is, well, this has been quite an evening. And the no, but really, the one thing that I really want to thank thank everybody for is that I want to thank everybody for their support of the for the exhibition the project is that our institutional partners are really thrilled with everything they're seeing and you know and let's see here the director of the Minnesota you know Maritime Art Museum is going to be the opening and of course we have a catalog that'll be coming out next week and so more chances to give some money to blurb so but we'll be we'll be selling you that cost and then anyhow and as a as an a as a pdf and I think what happens is that since we are almost at the cutoff point I want to ask whether anybody has any other comments or questions if not we'll and I also want to thank Cynthia for being one of our esteemed judges you know it was your input was really valuable and so and let's see here anybody has anything else to say and or shall we shall we call it a night

Well I just wanted to thank you Patrick for you know putting this together for hosting you know moderating tonight and also opening you know the exhibition up to so many Techspressionist artists absolutely the site looks great the show looks great so kudos you know one more

One more thing actually so to kind of front load you know kind of you know let's just say let's all meet let's all meet around this next year is that the next the next show is going to be called wild media okay so in other words the idea of like rewilding spaces or then how can we how can we you know you know it do the look at the notion of wild or wilding or the notion of ferality you know in media you know what is what is media in the wild or what is media that represents you know something that we're you know interested in as a species is possibly rewilding our environment so I put that forth and I think I thank everybody so much for your time and I as and as always I'm deeply deeply grateful to my wife and partner of all thing in all things Negin Ehtesabian for all her amazing amazing help in this project and everything everything else doesn't need to be said so thank you thank you thank

You

Okay shall we do it shall we do a count shall we do a countdown that sounds good speaking

Of catalogs I'll give the obligatory little marketing push that we now have our catalog hard copy and

Also available at textfreshenism.com

As a free download. You know, it's 28 bucks, which is basically cost. You know, I didn't add any profit to it. That's just what blurb charges to make a book on demand, you know, which is a little bit steep, but one thing that is kind of a little Easter egg. I don't know if I can actually. This on screen here. Do you have some? There is actually if you point the Art of Vive app at the back cover, it does it turns into the drone fly through. Very nice. Pretty fun. That's great. One incentive to get the hard copy. But there are a lot of good essays in the book. We have artist text. Well, Helen Harrison wrote the introduction, which is amazing. Then we have artist text from Suzanne Anker, Frank Gillette, myself, Patrick. Don't read that. Steve Miller, Joseph McFatale, Felix Rothschild, Christine Schooley and Anne Spalter.

So very.

I'm pleased with, you know, the publication. I think it'll it'll be a nice, you know, note to posterity for the exhibition.

You know, the one thing that I kind of have to say about things like this and then people kind of say, you know, what are you doing like this? You know, is that, you know, even after all the years since it's happened, you know, it's that one of the things that's legendary is the is the catalog, the cybernetic serendipity. I think it was at the ICA. And the thing is, is that, you know, digital media tends to be ephemeral.

Patrick Lichty

And but nevertheless, you know, so then you think about it maybe kind of being analogous to performance. Right. But then on the other hand, it's great. We make objects. And it's also, on the other hand, the other way for that people will go back and find something on a shelf 50 years later is a catalog.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And, you know, has. It's own ISBN number, which is a nice, you know, benefit of publishing on blurb, even though their cost per book is a little steep. It's relatively easy to self publish. And, you know, we do have the ability also to put it on Amazon, although to me at this point, I mean, basically it's just a 30 percent markup off the bat. I don't really know if it gives any more reach as far as who can buy the book. I'd be interested if anyone has any experience with that. But for now, I'm leaving it on blurb. There is a nice discount if people get together and they want to order a bunch. It's 30 percent off on orders over 10 books and 40 percent off on orders over 20 books. So just putting that out there. And, yeah, that's about it. So I'm going to count us down. And anyone that wants to stick around for the after party slash advisory board meeting, whatever you want to call it.

Colin Goldberg

We do need to come up with a theme for the next.

Salon and maybe a little other order of business. Ask Tommy. We talked we talked about some good stuff. OK, I can't remember them. Yeah. Ask Tommy. Cool. OK. All right. OK. Yeah. And now let's go in five, four, three, two, one.