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Tag Archives: net art

Events

Lily & Honglei (杨熙瑛, 李宏磊) Lecture

March 22, 2010; 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm.
Auditorium Room 222, O'Leary Library, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 71 Wilder Street, Lowell, MA 01854

lilyhongleiPLEASE NOTE: This event is at UMASS Lowell (details above and map)

Lily Xiying Yang and Honglei Li (杨熙瑛, 李宏磊) are new media artists from Beijing, currently based in New York City. Since 2005, they have been working under the collective name Lily & Honglei. They create new artistic expressions by integrating traditional and digital art forms. Utilizing online virtual world applications and digital animation, Lily & Honglei reinterpret Chinese folkloric traditions that metaphorically reflect current global cultures and societies.

Lily & Honglei have exhibited internationally, including: FILE (Brazil), SIGGRAPH, Jamaica Flux (New York), Museum of Art and Design (New York), Microwave New Media Fest (Hong Kong), Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (New York), Terna 02 Prize (Rome), and 404 international festival of electronic art (Argentina). Lily & Honglei both received their BFAs in Painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing) in 1997. In 2007, Honglei earned his MFA in painting from UMass Dartmouth, while Lily received her MFA in Digital Media in UMass Dartmouth in 2008.

Merry-go-around by Lily & Honglei [Video of Second Life Performance/ Installation; 3'3" with sound; 2009]

firewallSince 2007, Lily & Honglei have launched several virtual environments in Second Life. Last year, they initiated the DSL Cyber Museum of Contemporary Art / DSL 虚拟当代艺术馆_中文网, based on the DSL Collection and their artwork Land of Illusion in Second Life. Cyber MoCA — built with virtual traditional Chinese architecture — houses a series of virtual installations, multimedia presentations and online performances accomplished through cross-continental artist collaborations (since 2007). Cyber MoCA is a cultural meditation engaging history, philosophy, and the Chinese diaspora. It examines the current economic development of China within the context of globalization, while simultaneously exploring the meaning of virtual online communities in terms of global dialogues as they relate to cultural roots and the “fantasy” of China.

lilyLand of Illusion functions as a net-art platform that aims to fulfill the promise that the Internet is a continuation of Enlightenment thought, namely promoting cultural openness, decentralization, and independent thinking. As Chinese contemporary artists, Lily & Honglei consider these aspects extremely relevant to art-making.

The DSL Collection represents 90 of the leading Chinese avant-garde artists who have a major influence on the development of contemporary art in China today. It was started from a museum approach, which means that Lily & Honglei are collecting a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, video, and photography. They want to share the experience of contemporary culture and to make it more accessible and meaningful for a broader public. DSL Collection participates in conferences, seminars, and talks hosted by institutions or at special events. The DSL Collection has participated in seminars at Tsinghua and Shanghai Universities, ARCO Madrid, and New York University. To visit the museum in Second Life teleport here.

umasslogoThis event is sponsored by UMass Lowell Center for Arts and Ideas and UMass Lowell Art Department. Special Thanks to Jehanne-Marie Gavarini.

Events

Lily & Honglei (杨熙瑛, 李宏磊)

May 19, 2009; 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
Center for Advanced Visual Studies/MIT, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd Floor, Room N51-390, Cambridge

lilyhongleiPLEASE NOTE: DIFFERENT VENUE :: May 19, 2009; 7:00 – 9:00 pm [CAVS/MIT, entrance next to the MIT Museum] [Red Line Train to Central Square]

Lily & Honglei (杨熙瑛, 李宏磊), the artist team from Beijing, recently initiated the DSL Cyber Museum of Contemporary Art / DSL 虚拟当代艺术馆_中文网, based on the DSL Collection and their artwork Land of Illusion in Second Life. Cyber MoCA — built with virtual traditional Chinese architecture — houses a series of virtual installations, multimedia presentations and online performances accomplished through cross-continental artist collaborations (since 2007). Cyber MoCA is a cultural meditation engaging history, philosophy, and the Chinese diaspora. It examines the current economic development of China within the context of globalization, while simultaneously exploring the meaning of virtual online communities in terms of global dialogues as they relate to cultural roots and the “fantasy” of China.

lilyLand of Illusion functions as a net-art platform aiming to fulfill the promise that the Internet is the direct continuation of Enlightenment thought, namely promoting cultural openness, decentralization and independent thinking. As Chinese contemporary artists, Lily & Honglei consider these aspects extremely relevant to art-making.

The DSL Collection represents 90 of the leading Chinese avant-garde artists who have a major influence on the development of contemporary art in China today. It was started from a museum approach, which means that we are collecting a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, video, and photography. We want to share the experience of contemporary culture and to make it more accessible and meaningful for a broader public. DSL Collection participates in conferences, seminars, and talks hosted by institutions or at special events. The DSL Collection has participated in seminar at Tsinghua and Shanghai Universities, and been scheduled for a seminar at ARCO Madrid 2009 and a lecture at New York University.

DSL Cyber MoCA will officially open in Second Life on April 30, 2009. All Second Life users (instructions here) can teleport directly to the museum.

Lily & Honglei (杨熙瑛, 李宏磊) currently live and work in Massachusetts. They have been collaborating and actively presenting their creative projects, including net-art, video installation and multimedia, since 2005. Lily Yang is a lecturer in Visual & Media Arts Department at the Emerson College where she teaches Digital Media at graduate-level with emphasis on Web-Based Interactivity. Honglei Li teaches at Massachusetts Cultural Council Art Program. They both received BFA in painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1997. In 2007, Honglei earned his MFA in painting from UMass Dartmouth, while Lily received her MFA in Digital Media in UMass Dartmouth in 2008.

firewallLily & Honglei worked as designers and independent artists in Beijing several years before moving to the States. Their paintings and mixed-media works were collected and exhibited internationally. During the years living in America, they have dedicated to experimental projects combining traditional artistic approaches and digital technology in the Internet era. They consider their work are interpreting ancient eastern folklore and philosophy with language in contemporary art, creating significant expressions to achieve cross-cultural communications in a globalized world.

Lily & Honglei’s new media solo exhibitions include, Land of Illusion at Department of Arts, Monash University in Australia (2008), Land of Illusion at American Library Association in New York (2008), Forbidden City at College of Visual and Performing Arts in UMass Dartmouth (2007), Prosperity at Artworks! Gallery in City of New Bedford in Massachusetts (2006).

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Internet Art in the Global South

Internet Art in the Global South @ Joburg Art Fair 2009 :: curated by Tegan Bristow (Upgrade! Johannesburg and Digital Arts Division of the Wits School of Arts) in collaboration with Upgrade! International: Boston – Turbulence.org, Berlin, Chicago, Lisbon, Paris, Sao Paulo, Seoul, and Tel-Aviv – Jerusalem.

Internet Art in the Global South explores and highlights a broad range of Internet art genres by artists in the global south, and works orientated towards its geography and politics. The project was born out of an interest to uncover artists working with the Internet as a primary medium in South Africa. The selection grew to encompass works from or about South America and Asia. Reviewed in The Times (Johannesburg) and the Mail & Guardian.

Events

Real-Time Art: Crouse + Skwarek | Hocking

February 24, 2009; 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Studio for Interrelated Media, North 181, Evans Way (off 621 Huntington Ave) Boston.

February 24, 2009; 7:00 – 9:00 pm [map] Follow the signs posted on the outside of the Tower Building (black glass)[Green Line Train "E"]

This evening will focus on net art or real-time art. From Jeff Crouse’s thesis, Real-Time Art: Emerging technologies have made it possible for artists to use a wide range of live, external data sources to give their work relevance and impact. Works that use these live data sources share certain strategies, values, and influences. Not only does this type of art have much artistic potential, but it can help the Web by encouraging the development of machine-understandable, Semantic data formats. What kind of tools would give some coherence to real-time art and facilitate its creation?

Jeff Crouse creates software and installations that highlight the absurdity of technology in culture. Along with Andrew Mahon and Steve Lambert, he recently launched ABSML- A Bullshit Markup Language (commissioned by Turbulence.org). ABSML is a new markup language that enables the creation of complex sentence formulas for 21st century automatic writing. jeff1Jeff’s previous work includes YouThreebe, a YouTube triptych creator; Invisible Threads, a virtual jeans factory in Second Life; and James Chimpton, a robotic monkey that interviewed the artists of the 2008 Whitney Biennial. He is currently developing BoozBot, a bar tending robot / puppet; and DeleteCity, a Wordpress plug-in that finds and republishes content that has been taken down from sites such as Flickr and YouTube. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, the Futuresonic festival in Manchester, UK, the DC FilmFest, and the Come Out and Play Festival in Amsterdam.

Jeff received his MS from the Digital Media program at Georgia Tech in 2006 and then joined Eyebeam as a production fellow in 2007. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Eyebeam, an adjunct professor at the IMA program at Hunter College, and a freelance programmer. Someday, he plans to add “novelist” or “short story author” to that list.

krannertMark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking will present Children of Arcadia, a real-time virtual ecosystem which undergoes the stress test of apocalypse to expose the moral fibers of its inhabitants and the flaws in their idealized utopia. Virtual reality and augmented reality are used to combine the physical world of downtown Manhattan with a virtual environment called Arcadia. The work gathers real-time information from the Internet related to the American economy and society and translates this data into either a utopia or apocalypse. These changes create a living 17th-century Baroque painting that shifts between a representation of apocalyptic ruin and one of an idealized utopia.

Mark Skwarek is a new media artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Mark recently received his MFA from RISD’s Digital Media department. His art is heavily influenced by videogame culture and current events that face American Society. Mark’s art work is made by modifying current video game technology. This manipulation has been primarily done by Joseph Hocking who Mark has been collaborating with for the last several years. Mark’s role in the creative process falls under concept and fabrication of the virtual experience. Mark’s recent focus has been on a large scale augmented reality called the Children of Arcadia. The project may also be viewed from a personal computer. The piece runs on information gathered from the internet and that transforms Wall St. into either a Arcadia or Apocalypse. The piece contextualizes American societies condition in real time living painting. Outside of his art practice Mark teaches 3-D graphics for video games at NYU Polytech, 3-D graphics for architects at New York City College of Technology, and 3d graphics for artists at Brooklyn College. Mark is also involved in research projects with NYU Polytech and New York City College of Technology that are exploring large-scale real-world multiuser onlines.

Joseph Hocking is a digital artist whose work is devoted to exploring the artistic potential of 3D graphics. Working closely in collaboration with Mark Skwarek, Joseph is a key member of the team behind the immersive 3D artwork Children of Arcadia. Shown most recently at the inaugural exhibition of the Sunshine Museum in Beijing, Children of Arcadia is a virtual environment built to project the financial district of NYC into a 17th century Baroque painting. Although he has a significant background in and knowledge of 3D animation, Joseph’s artmaking activities chiefly revolve around programming, as his work with real-time 3D demands custom software for virtually every project. In addition to creating real-time 3D artwork, he teaches classes about both 3D animation and programming in an artistic context at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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