web-lore: (art)n has been using the Internet since the late 1980s to collaborate with scientists and fellow artists. (art)n launched its first web site in 1993 [at its interdisciplinary research laboratory in the Chemistry Department at the Mies Van Der Rhoe designed Illinois Institute of Technology campus,] under NCSA's Mosaic web browser, before the historic 1994 launch of the Netscape IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The (art)n web site was among the first to introduce web-based galleries and exhibitions, some of which only existed digitally, and featured (art)n works "remixed" with related art historical images by Man Ray, Duchamp, Brancusi, O'Keeffe and many others. Some of the idiosyncratic themes (art)n explored that became quite popular and mainstream included "All My Geniuses," Venus Envy," and "Harlem on My Mind," which were created at (art)n's lab at Northwestern University in Evanston. Jenny Holzer's representatives requested (art)n to link to her Truisms site, and in many cases, (art)n's curation introduced post-modern, contemporary, modernist and pictorial works to new audiences. Since the fall of 1999, (art)n's studio/ laboratory has been located at The School of the Art Institute's Gallery 2 building in Chicago. (art)n's site was featured as "Cool Site of the Day," and won other mid-1990s vintage web awards. A curated selection of images was included in the The Electric Postcards project designed at the MIT Media Laboratory. (art)n's daily web site traffic [measured in "hit" counts] at one time matched that of Wired magazine.
"TOUGH ART Saves"
Ellen Sandor
Coming Soon: New works with Carla Gannis and Claudia Hart and commissioned works for SmithBucklin and Monsanto
With appreciation as we honor all of the Battle of Midway Veterans who kept the U.S. and the world safe, and in remembrance to all those whom we lost. Thank you for your bravery on the anniversary of the Battle of Midway. (art)n's Battle of Midway Memorial is located at the Concourse A entrance of the Chicago Midway International Airport. Please note that due to Federal Security guidelines, only ticketed passengers and badged employees are allowed beyond the security checkpoint.
While we have our bods intact, we can peruse this revelatory exhibition that features the Kurzweil-inspired collective (art)n and a bevy of artists who value intelligent design and want to playfully re-create the history of mankind . . . The true stand-outs of this show are (art)n's PHSColograms, otherwise known as "daguerreotypes of Virtual Reality." Click here for full review.
European traveling exhibition "No Name Fever," curated by the Museum of World Culture in Göteborg, Sweden travels to South Africa, to Red Location Museum in Port Elizabeth opening December 1st. This special exhibition features AIDS Virus, Third Edition, and is the second time the piece will be shown in Africa since its first showing by the US Art in Embassies Program during 1998-2000 in Zimbabwe:
"The AIDS Virus is clearly the most talked about piece in our collection . . . while this country has the fourth highest concentration of HIV infection in the world, Zimbabweans are still generally reluctant to talk about the disease. The PHSCologram offers us a chance to discuss AIDS in an informal, less threatening way, but nonetheless important way. Zimbabweans are drawn to the technology that the piece evokes. Americans are stunned by the artistic feel, the vivid color and amazing shape of 'the disease'."
Anmarie McDonald, American Embassy Harare Zimbabwe 1998
kasia kay art projects invites you to visit the gallery during Vision 12: The Business of Art July 13-28, 2007. Opening Reception: Friday: July 13th, 6-9pm. Currently on view Notions of Wilderness exhibition with two debuts for the VISION 12 reception at the gallery: Passive Erschliessung by (art)n and Hastabryot by Joseph Kohnke.
Special rememberance and appreciation as we honor all of the Battle of Midway Veterans who kept America and the world safe, and to all those whom we lost. Thank you on the anniversary of the Battle of Midway. (art)n's Battle of Midway Memorial is located at the Concourse A entrance of the Chicago Midway International Airport. Please note that due to Federal Security guidelines, only ticketed passengers and badged employees are allowed beyond the security checkpoint.
It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the scientists are describing as 'a second nuclear age' prompted largely by atomic standoffs with Iran and North Korea.
But the organization added that the 'dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons.'
Matt McDermott's interview with Ellen Sandor in Chicago City Arts Review was included in Best of 2006 New Media Profiles
December 1, 2006
Changemakers Series: Richard Sandor, Ellen Sandor, and Bill Kurtis in Conversation
Tuesday, December 5, 6:30 pm, Free
Richard Sandor, founder of the Chicago Climate Exchange, artist Ellen Sandor, and journalist and cattle rancher Bill Kurtis discuss climate change, grass-fed beef, and socially conscious choices.
Tickets are available at the MCA box office during museum hours or by calling 312.397.4010
November 23, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
From "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," a classic western film directed by John Ford
Matt McDermott: What technical and aesthetic possibilities has the PHSCologram specifically opened up for you as an artist?
Ellen Sandor: We have broken new ground for innovation as an art form by conceptually blending content with process. We have taken on subjects that include war, terrorism, disease and tolerance, with respect for history and appreciation for all forms of expression, as evidenced by all of our collaborators, from early pioneers in the field to the scientists, mathematicians, traditional artists, architects and film directors.
This is the largest curated retrospective of (art)n's work in Chicago since the Science-in- Depth traveling exhibition sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH that premiered at the Museum of Science and Industry in 1990.
Catalog Excerpt:
"The PHSColograms in this exhibit, covering the period of 1985 to the present, represent all the techniques developed over the years. The subject matter involves artistic and technical collaborations with scientists, mathematicians, engineers, architects, and artists. Each collaboration attempts to expand our visual experience to better understand a technical aspect of the original image, or to enhance the communication of the content and the artistic intent of the image."
"Invention in art to develop new ways we can experience it is critical, but the artist collaborations that Sandor and (art)n have made and continue to make are essential to fully enable new technologies; this may be the greater of the two contributions to art she has made."
Robert J. Krawczyk art @ IIT Illinois Institute of Technology
Keepers of the Frame: The Sandors are regarded as "Futurists" in the winter issue of MET Home, featuring a personal interview with Ellen Sandor about the history of their collection.
November 4, 2006
In the Vanity Fair December special issue on art, Contributing Editor Ingrid Sischy remarked "People say each period gets the art it deserves." Ingrid Sischy is Editor in Chief of Interview and co-author of Chorus of Light: Photographs from the Sir Elton John Collection, in which No Fumare por Favore was featured with works by Man Ray, Diane Arbus, André Kertész and Irving Penn. This fine art book was edited by Sischy and Thomas Southall for a public showing of selected works from Elton John's photography collection at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, November 4, 2000 - January 8, 2001.
November 1, 2006
Ellen Sandor was quoted in Anne Stein's Chicago Tribune article about the current art @ IIT exhibition, "Art plus science equals beauty: Artists find visual poetry in details of physical world":
The fact that all the artists-scientists are women [in the exhibition] touches on the significance of gender in the sciences. The topic is so volatile that former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers ignited a firestorm in January 2005 when he suggested that innate gender differences may help explain why fewer women than men advance to the sciences' top ranks.
"The gender question is becoming more blurred (at last) in the fields of art, science and computer graphics," writes Ellen Sandor, a Chicago multimedia artist participating in the exhibition in an e-mail. "The good news is that young girls are more comfortable taking science and computer graphics classes, and society is more supportive."
October 19, 2006
New Work:
Ryan's Hand, from the film "Ryan," directed by Chris Landreth, produced by Copper Heart Entertainment and the National Film Board of Canada.
In his most recent film, Landreth turns his attentions to a biography of animator Ryan Larkin, while at the same time challenging our notions of documentary and animation. Landreths interpretative visuals go beyond "photo-realism" into a pioneer realm where the visual appearance reflects the characters' evolving "pain, insanity, fear, mercy, shame and creativity." A realm that he calls "psycho-realism." In 2004, he received his first Academy Award for Best Animated Short for this exceptional film.
This exhibition features work in various media by faculty returning from their sabbatical leaves. Artists include Candida Alvarez, Susanna Coffey, John Corbett, Shawn Decker, Barbara DeGenevieve, Calvin Forbes, Judith Geichman, Doug Huston, Jim Lutes, Carolyn Ottmers, Laurie Palmer, Andrea Reynders, Ellen Rothenberg, John Rozelle, Xavier Toubes, and Jim Zanzi [one the founding members of (art)n.]
September 30, 2006
"Life is very much about rule-breaking, about confrontation. Otherwise, history would just stand still. Someone has to come along and break the rules and try, for whatever reason, to go about things in a different way. Even if it is a simple sense of adventure, a sense of exploration. You explore concepts and things that interest you, but you are also exploring inside of yourself." - Ed Paschke
Lewis and Clark College, The Chicago History Museum and The Ed Paschke Foundation presents Ed Paschke: A Chicago Icon - A retrospective look at the career of Ed Paschke, September 30, 2006 - February 19, 2007. The exhibition includes a major retrospective of Ed Paschke's work spanning his entire career along with the unveiling of his last project never before seen by the public.
Ed Paschke's collaboration with Ellen Sandor and (art), No Fumare por Favore is included in the retrospective. Ed's works with (art)n from 1997-2004 have been featured in exhibitions in Euorpe and the US, and are in the permanet collection of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art and others.
"Art doesn't require you to be completely rational and logical. It allows you to be personal and see how these technologies affect you . . . Our whole mission is to encourage cross- disciplinary discussions. I find scientists to be very open to what the artists represent."
"Michael Dunbar has balanced his sharply escalating renown as a sculptor with two decades as the coordinator of the arts and architecture program for the State of Illinois, which has enabled him to mentor the careers of hundreds of artists for over twenty years. Each of Dunbar's precisely crafted sculptures is a new entity rather than an abstraction of an existing one. They are concerned with ideas such as time, connection, and interaction. His formal influences include trestles, clocks, and navigational instruments as well as the cultural concepts of the heartland. His works are installed at universities, corporate headquarters, and sculpture parks throughout the country." - Suzanne Deats
"With Kertész's funhouse mirror in Chicago, Ellen, Richard, and I spent an afternoon making group portraits together, interacting with Kertész's distorted, reflective, historic object. We created a series of photos through the transfer of High Definition Digital video to chromogenic prints. The obvious conclusion for this project was to consummate the process in a PHSCologram image."
Following several friends who had left Hungary, Kertész moved to Paris in 1925, where he sold prints for 25 francs. Many of Kertész's early photographs in Paris were of tourist sites, such as the Eiffel Tower. Paris at the time was the center of the cultural avant- garde, and Kertész became acquainted with several major artists then living in the French capital, including the Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). In Paris, he began his series of Distortions:
"A Hungarian friend of mine introduced me to the editor of the magazine "Le Sourire," a very French sort of magazine - satiric, risque. Many artists worked for this publication. They had never published photos before. The editor asked me to do something. I bought two distorting mirrors in the flea market - the kind of thing you find in amusement parks. With existing light and an old lens invented by Hugo Meyer, I achieved amusing impressions. Some images like sculptures, others grotesque and frightening. I took about 140 photographs in a month, working two or three times a week. "Le Sourire" published a couple of them, and we planned a book, but it had to wait forty years to be published - but that is another story."
In 1927 he was the first photographer to have a solo exhibition, and in 1928 met Brassai, whom he introduced to photography. Henri Cartier-Bresson acknowledged " We all owe something to Kertész. "
June 19, 2006
New Work:
"Bridges can connect us, bring us together, and allow us to cross an obstacle. Somewhere on this highway running through us is the pixel between the past and the future, between adversity and hope, between survival and disappearance; its pavement is the new digital canvas on which we map our lives."
Special rememberance and appreciation as we honor all Battle of Midway Veterans on the anniversary of the Battle of Midway. (art)n's Battle of Midway Memorial is located at the Concourse A entrance of the Chicago Midway International Airport. Please note that due to Federal Security guidelines, only ticketed passengers and badged employees are allowed beyond the security checkpoint.
April 1, 2006
Coming Soon: New works with Miroslaw Rogala, Jim Zanzi and Michael Dunbar
NÂjd produced in collaboration with Nordic Virtual Reality artists, BINO & COOL, now showing at Galleri Bergman in Stockholm, March 18- April 9, 2006
AIDS Virus, Third Edition is included in Aids in the Age of Globalization at the new Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden, showing through July 2006. The exhibition puts HIV/AIDS into a global perspective. Through art, personal stories, film, music, photographs, examples of political activism and campaign materials from different parts of the world, the visitor gains a broad and emotional understanding of the disease. Meetings with peoples immense determination to survive, inspire new hope and boost the drive to make an active contribution.
Special Events, First Floor of NCSA Building included:
4:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m. - Building Dedication, NCSA Auditorium
4:30 p.m.-7:00 p.m. - Reception and VIP Tour of NCSA Demonstrations, NCSA Lobby and Main Floor
7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. - 20th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture, "Un-common Sense: Recipe for a Cyber-Planet," Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Director, National Science Foundation
This paper suggests a revisitation of the New Games Movement, formed by Stewart Brand and others in the early 1970s in the United States as a response to the Vietnam War, against a backdrop of dramatic social and economic change, fueled by a looming energy crisis, civil rights, feminism, and unhealthy widespread drug abuse. Like-minded contemporaries, R. Buckminster Fuller (World Game), Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty), and Christo and Jean-Claude (Valley Curtain), responded in kind to these environmental and sociopolitical quandaries with their "earthworks." As digital game designers and theorists embark upon developing new methods to address the creative crisis in mainstream game production, against a similar backdrop of climate change, a controversial war, political upheaval and complex gender issues, we propose a reexamination of the New Games Movement and its methods as a means of constructing shared contexts for meaningful play in virtual and real-world spaces.
One reviewer's comments include: "I applaud the sentiments here, especially the overt and unapologetic gender analysis, which I am coming to believe may be the only thing that can save our rapidly collapsing civilization."
Chicago has always been a haven for artists who make and break their own rules to re-imagine the future on their own terms. The city's urban landscape, unlike no other, offers its local community and visitors a culturally active canvas of ideas that never sleep. (art)n invites you to celebrate Art in Chicago: 1995-2005 with a new exploration of our collaborations with the original members of *The Hairy Who* movement, formed by the Chicago Imagist painters, Ed Paschke, Karl Wirsum and Roger Brown. Recent works with Chicago Visionary Artist, Mr. Imagination, are also prominantly featured.
Highlights include a Memorial Tribute to Ed Paschke and a supplemental Tracking Ephemera section, both remniscent of our colorful dialogues about the future of painting [Chicago Imagist sytle] and sculpture [(art)n style] in a virual world, culminating in works shown in the U.S. and Europe. It is our hope that this special folio, presented with a vintage (art)n web aesthetic that is media-rich in hyperlinked materials, will inspire future generations of historians and artists working in both traditional and contemporary media to examine the past with an eye towards the future: A R T über-alles!
Synthecology will debut at WIRED's NEXTFEST2005 in Chicago, June 24-26, 2005. During the festival, you will be able to visit the physical installation and/or connect to the virtual installation and contribute content to the project. You can experience Synthecology by visiting the Future of Communication Pavillion at the Navy Pier Conference Center, June 24-26, 2005, 9am-6pm. You can contribute content in the form of audio to the installation by visiting the project website.
Medical imaging technologies have come a long way since the discovery of the X-ray in 1895. Explore this exhibit to learn some of the many ways doctors look into the human body without cutting and see where these technologies are going in the future. One of the five exhibit areas is The Art of Imaging. Explore the beauty of medical images in our collection of works of art created by doctors and other artists. An X-ray can reveal the inner beauty of a flower. A CT scan can be the inspiration for a series of paintings.
Ellen Sandor, Director, (art)n Bertram Ulrich, Curator, NASA Art Program Anne Collins Goodyear, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery Suzanne Anker, Host of Bio Blurb (WPS1 Art Radio), Chair and Editor of ArtLab23, and Professor of Art History and Theory, School of Visual Arts Advancements in science and technology often provide new tools and vocabulary for working artists. How can collaborations between artists and scientists be used to communicate new ideas and preserve the history of science through art? What can be done to help facilitate cross disciplinary discussion between art and science? This session offers a panel discussion on the issues surrounding the intersections of art and science. An example of a successful collaboration is illustrated by the work of (art)n which is included in the Visionary Anatomies exhibition, on display at the Academy in the Upstairs Gallery.
April 19, 2005
J.D. Talasek, Director of the The National Academy of Sciences's Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs was recently quoted in Henry Fountain's articleWhat Leonardo Could Have Done with a CAT Scan on Visionary Anatomies in The New York Times:"Art doesn't require you to be completely rational and logical. It allows you to be personal and see how these technologies affect you . . . Our whole mission is to encourage cross-disciplinary discussions. I find scientists to be very open to what the artists represent." In June, the exhibition will travel to six museums through July 2007. Stay tuned for exhibition schedule.
"The AIDS Virus is clearly the most talked about piece in our collection . . . while this country has the fourth highest concentration of HIV infection in the world, Zimbabweans are still generally reluctant to talk about the disease. The PHSCologram offers us a chance to discuss AIDS in an informal, less threatening way, but nonetheless important way. Zimbabweans are drawn to the technology that the piece evokes. Americans are stunned by the artistic feel, the vivid color and amazing shape of 'the disease'."
Anmarie McDonald The Art in Embassies Program, for exhibtion in American Embassy: Zimbabwe Ambassador McDonald, Africa, 1998-2000
