June 14 - July 20, 2002
NIGHT VISION
curated by Joy Garnett
http://www.firstpulseprojects.net/NightVisionIndex.html
WHITE COLUMNS, NEW YORK CITY :
OPENING
RECEPTION: Friday June 14th, 7 - 9 pm
320 West 13th
Street, NYC (entrance on Horatio Street)
tel: 212 924-4212 info@whitecolumns.org
[Summer Hours: Wednesday
- Saturday, 12 - 6 p.m.]
LIVE PERFORMANCE: Thursday June 27th, 7 - 10pm @ White Columns
Original music by Ben
Neill from his
forthcoming album, "Automotive."
with midi-video performance by Bill
Jones.
ARTISTS PANEL + OPEN DISCUSSION: Wednesday July 17th, 7-9pm
Night Vision artists and writer Tim Griffin discuss their work and
issues touched upon in the exhibition.
Night Vision presents artists who are influenced
by technologies developed by the military, government intelligence agencies,
and NASA for use in research, surveillance and combat. The title of the
exhibition is taken from the high-tech optical apparatus used in nocturnal
military operations, whose green glow has become widely familiar. Whether by
co-opting these technological advancements or by examining public perception of
them, the artists in this exhibition explore the various murky implications
surrounding their uses.
Jordan Crandall's erotic and noir
DVD Drive (Track 3) uses 16mm film, DV, night vision cameras, and other
technologies to conflate images taken from various possible perspectives:
theater audience members, a pilot on a bombing run, a lover, a victim, an
attacker, an agent for Big Brother, and a lascivious Peeping Tom. Christoph
Draeger's DVD Crash shows aviation disaster statistics juxtaposed
with crash test footage, newsreel documentation and Hollywood hyperbole. The
accompanying soundtrack is a montage of sound effects, movie tracks, disaster
footage, and music. Joy Garnett's night vision paintings are derived
from both well-circulated and obscure sources, including CNN's coverage of the
Gulf War, pilot camera images, and bomb targets as seen from remote viewing
devices. Adam Hurwitz's highly refined paintings of stealth bombers and
night vision dreamscapes use television documentaries, advertisements and the
Web as their sources. Bill Jones and Ben Neill's interactive
music video, Life During Wartime, combines original musical composition
(Neill's remix of the well-known Talking Heads song) with video and real-time
video capture, to produce a constantly morphing multimedia piece. Disguised as an arcade game, John
Klima’s The Great Game actually presents a relief map of Afghanistan
beginning on October 7, 2001 and each minute advances one day, charting the
advance of U.S. military forces on Taliban strongholds. The progression is
based on declassified statistics on the US Department of Defense website. Joseph
Nechvatal's Virus Project 2.0 is a projection of an
"artificial-life" virus unleashed on his own computer files. An unpredictable,
progressive virus, it operates by degrading and transforming an image. Jonathan
Podwil's documentary-like film loops resemble artifacts, but are doctored
footage shot in and around the artist's Brooklyn studio using props like
hand-painted aerial city plans and plastic toy models. Originally shot in
Super8, the film is re-manipulated digitally and transferred to Quick Time, VHS
or DVD, with each change of medium altering the look. In addition to the films
are diminutive paintings of planes and airports. Radical Software Group
(RSG) is a collective of computer artists from around the world, directed by Alex
Galloway. Their first public release, Carnivore, takes data from a
specified local area network and sends it via the internet to members of the
artist collective who then reinterpret it in visually manipulative ways.
Carnivore is inspired by DCS 1000, a piece of software used by the FBI to
perform electronic wiretaps (known by the nickname "Carnivore.")
Night Vision first opened at the University
Galleries at Illinois State University, and will travel to Paris in 2003. It is
accompanied by a 16 page color exhibition catalogue with essay by Tim
Griffin, art editor of Time Out New York. Available at White
Columns, Dia
Bookstore, Printed
Matter, The
New Museum Bookstore, St.
Mark's Books, and Amazon.com or order directly: catalogue@firstpulseprojects.org
About the curator: Joy Garnett is an artist and
co-founder of First Pulse Projects, Inc., an art/science
publishing collaborative.