All Systems Go! at Scope-NY

With thanks to everyone who helped make the show happen (especially Jennifer Fiore who helped so much with the installation; my Rhizome colleague Lauren Cornell; and MRiver, of MTAA, who snapped the install images here), I wanted to post an update on All Systems Go. Here goes...


Part of the Curator's Choice program at this year's Scope-New York Art Fair (March 9-13, 2006), All Systems Go! featured high-tech, low-tech, and hybrid work exploring digital, representational, political, and social systems. This exhibition constitutes an expansion of Rhizome's mission to connect art and technology. The artists comment on systems, in their various forms and themes, with works ranging from computer, video, and electronic installations to drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Here, technology is not the sole tool or object at play, but is often an indirect subject -- a backdrop on the social landscape within which all art practice now occurs. The harmony or dischord between these installations pinpoint areas of overlap between the various systems now navigated by each of us living in a technological society. The show was, thus, an update on the established field of 'systems art,' from the perspective of contemporary culture and practice.


The photos in [dNASAb]’s series, Obscure Sexual Habits of Wireless Data are unique hybrids inspired by his pursuit to visualize and create the possible aesthetics of wireless data, and the invisible, complex systems of overlapping networks.


Brody Condon’s 650 Polygon John Carmack (Version 2.0) is a low polygon likeness of the famous game engine programmer John Carmack, of ID Software. The sculpture is an appropriated portrait of Carmack from the game Quake III, CNC milled in polyurethane, and textured with hundreds of hand placed inket decals.


In preparation for her family therapist role in the Art as Therapy project, Desiree Holman studied therapist training videotapes that taught her to see the family as a system, and the therapist’s job as one of facilitating change to improve the overall functioning of the system.


Shane Hope’s drawings involve molecular modeling systems—collections of techniques to model or mimic the behavior of molecules—in a process whereby the three-dimensional architecture of molecules is interpreted (or predicted), visually represented, and manipulated.


Instant Coffee is an artist collective developed as a response to the exaggerated difference between studio and exhibition practice. For them, the triad of art practice production, presentation & reception becomes jumbled, incorporating the social as a priority. In this case, viewers can plug their ipod, walkman, or laptop into their cooler speakers and be a dj for few minutes at the fair.


Xylor Jane's work draws on mathematical algorithms to make intricate installations. This site-specific piece is called I have been alive 15,421 suns and is made in copic ink on latex.


MTAA’s One Year Performance Video (aka samHsiehUpdate) was originally an internet-based performance in which the artists’ take on Hsieh’s one year studio confinement is rendered in computer-processed clips of their short-term confinement. The one-year commitment was shifted to internet users who could log a year’s viewing time.


MTAA’s Simple Net Art Diagram is a witty illustration of exactly “where” internet art takes place. Originally an animated GIF, the piece has inspired a host of online remixes including Abe Linkoln’s notable Complex Net Art Diagram.


Abe Linkoln's Complex Net Art Diagram is a remix of MTAA’s Simple Net Art Diagram. The printed version, here, is a further remix of Linkoln’s original diagram, emphasizing the practice of cutting & pasting.


RSG’s Prepared Playstation series exploits bugs and glitches in the code of unmodified video games to create dirty, jolting loops. Video games are both the medium and the content of the work; no additional footage or editing is used. After being "prepared," the game plays itself perpetually.


Shirley Shor’s Urban Dream is a sculpture featuring algorithmic software animations generated in real time. The piece 'is about life and existence; spaces circulate within time around an unfixed center point. The time component activates and transforms the circular paths by challenging our perception of boundaries - constantly shifting the boundaries causes space to become temporal. The active component of the work is generated by software code that creates an on-going changeable system of circularity.'


Julianne Swartz’s magnet sculptures are made of string, wire, and magnets. Titled Aimants, these abstract structures embody the complexities and tensions of relationships. They demonstrate the articulations of strength and vulnerability, of distance and intimacy by mapping fields of attraction/ repulsion in space.


Jon-Paul Villegas’s Model engages various concepts of the taxonomic and of epistemological systems. The sculpture and prints here are derived from a store-bought model of a gorilla. The work evokes the familiar through corporeal allusion while maintaining a concurrent aloofness to categorical propriety.


Lee Walton has devised 162 unique systems to create one drawing for each of the games in a regular baseball season. According to the system, the specific events that transpire during a game (pitches, ground outs, strike outs, hit batters, etc.) will determine the drawing activity. Each drawing will be created pitch by pitch. When the baseball game is over the drawing is complete.