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LYNN HERSHMAN: REACTIVE SCULPTURE AND PRINTS
OPENING RECEPTION: 1 22 04, 6-8PM
Lynn Hershman has always been attracted to digital tools and cinematic
metaphors that reflect our time, such as privacy in an era of
surveillance, personal identity in a time of pervasive manipulation. The
21st centuries technologies - genetics, artificial intelligence,
nanotechnology and robotics have opened a Pandora's box that will affect
the destiny of the entire human race. In an era of digital and human
biological sampling, our relationship to computer based virtual life
forms that are autonomous and self replicating will shape the fate of
our species.
Recent works construct alternate realities with ingrained notions of
identity, expanding the possibilities of an artwork's outcome by opening
it not only to the viewer and but now to network-based participation.
SYNTHIA
Modeled on Thomas Edison's stock ticker, Synthia Stock Ticker is a
networked sculpture that personifies changes in the stock market in real
time. Instead of ticker tape, the miniaturized stock ticker houses a
small monitor that projects the environment of a female character named
Synthia. Synthia's "drive" is composed of accumulated stock data;
compiled data is translated into sixteen base behaviors that symbolize
market performance. Guided by 2% changes in stock market trading,
Synthia reacts in real time to changes in the Dow Jones Industrial
Average, NASDAQ, S&P 500, and Russell Cap indexes. For instance, if the
market is hot, she turns to fire, dances, or shops at Christian Dior. If
the market is down, she chain-smokes, has nightmares, or shops at Goodwill.
RUBY2
Agent Ruby 2 is an Artificial Intelligent Web Agent that is shaped by
encounters with users-thereby simultaneously being part of the real and
virtual worlds. Ruby converses with users with synchronized voice,
remembers their questions and names and has moods corresponding to
whether or not she likes them. Her brain interacts with itself by
cannibalizing, morphing and modifying information in a continual
breeding set that lives via the interaction of data.
Lynn Hershman has worked in film, photography, video, installation,
interactive and net based works. She has had over 200 exhibitions
internationally, completed 53 videotapes, 8 interactive installations, 3
web based installations and two feature films, and edited the book
"Clicking In". She was given the ZKM Media Arts Award, was a Flintridge
Fellow for Lifetime Achievements in the Visual Arts, and received an
Independent Spirit Award Nomination. In 1999 she was awarded the Golden
Nica for interactive arts at Ars Electronica, and in 2003, received an
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award for her film Teknolust. She has had
retrospectives at the National Gallery of Canada, ICA and will have a
retrospective organized by the The Henry Art Gallery, University of
Washington that will tour the U.S., Canada and Europe beginning 2005. A
monograph of her work is scheduled for release in 2005 by the University
of California Press. Her work is in the collections of Donald Hess,
Arturo Schwarz, The Museum of Modern Art, The William Lehmbruch Museum,
the ZKM, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The National Gallery of
Canada and others.
THE GALLERY
Digital consciousness is what defines the bitforms artist. This artistic
practice embodies progressive ways of interpreting, manipulating and
visualizing information and ideas. For more information contact Steven
Sacks, gallery director, steve@bitforms.com or 212 366 6939.
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