Coming soon! Dynamic new media works by Scott Groeniger and Kenny Schneider will be added to e4c’s rotation this March.

Scott Groeniger

e4c will feature Groeniger’s The Ping Yao Continuum, depicting a scene of daily life at a restaurant in the ancient city of Ping Yao. Played in slow reverse, the food comes out of their mouths and is placed back onto the plates. Tea flows from within the body and returns to the glasses. The simple ritual act of eating together at the same table is one of the most universal human experiences. This video, The Ping Yao Continuum, is meant to express this tension by exploring the domestic ritual of a simple family meal inside the transitioning city, capturing a brief moment in time; and then extending it in reverse in an effort to prolong the experience of the present tense and savor the moment as an isolated, universal, ritual experience.
http://elasticlimit.com/artwork/

Kenny Schneider

Originally produced in 1968, Schneider’s 1002 Rothko’s was created by hand drawing on 16mm optical negatives, using markers, ink, collage materials and 2D cell animation. In 2008, he digitally reprocessed the work as 1002 Rothko’s. Using the Watchout software of e4c, Schneider has choreographed these newly reprocessed cells into a dance across four monitors.
artistsregister.com/artists/CO201

David Kwan
Kwan has adapted his work SOLARIS, a series of sound-generated video projections for e4c. Kwan composes soundscapes from live radio transmissions, related to the electromagnetic waves that form the basis for the ordering of matter in space and that continue to permeate the environment. These soundscapes are fed through a customized video imaging system to reveal their inherent patterning.
www.davidkwan.net

Ann-Marie Stillion

Ann-Marie Stillion will present Eva Washington: sweet are the uses of adversity, a project that combines photographs, film and audio to examine and share the story of Eva Washington, a 76-year-old woman who lives alone on the streets of Seattle. Each monitor of e4c will portray different visual aspects of Washington’s life. Stillion writes, “Eva’s personal story is the story of millions of people around the world who find themselves living without shelter.”
www.arttrek.com

Learn more about both artists and e4c here.

SOLARIS, © David Kwan
Eva Washington: sweet are the uses of adversity © Ann-Marie Stillion, 2009

Sabine Gruffat: Video Animations

Gruffat’s four channel experimental video includes live-rendered computer animation and analog signal processes of early video. She writes, “In Video Animations, shapes and signals overlay and intersect each other. Production processes are fore-grounded to become the subject of the work: the manner by which technology alters the way we look at, listen to, and feel the world.”

Noah Klersfeld:
vehicles traveling in two directions behind a chain-link fence (R 1mo A)
smoke drifting in front of a concrete building façade (LA 9fo M)
snow falling in front of a red brick building façade (R 4mo A)
water undulating within a ceramic tile fountain (CB 3foM)

Klersfeld will be presenting four video pieces on e4c that represent his on-going series portraying modified urban landscapes. He writes, “My digital video work attempts to materialize time by using time as a design element for the creation of new spatial forms…It is my intention to have people consider time on an inch-by-inch basis rather than day-by-day.” Selections for e4c will include a series that uses the patterns of architecture as the geometric framework for dissecting and reorganizing the timing of vehicles, smoke, snow and water.

These new works join the ongoing rotation of work on e4c, currently featuring pieces by: Laurel Beckman, Ann Oren, Tess Martin, Heather Dew Oaksen, Tina Aufiero, Stephen Hilyard, Perry Bard and Bennett Morris.

Video Animations (still/detail) © 2009 Sabine Gruffat
Water undulating within a ceramic tile fountain (CB 3fo M) © 2008 Noah Klersfeld

Thanks to Salise Hughes and Relja Penezic for sharing their amazing work on 4Culture’s e4c. Their pieces will be taken out of rotation as we make way for new videos by Sabine Gruffat and Noah Klersfeld.

Come by 4Culture this holiday weekend to see Hughes’ Shiny Things, Everyone I Have Ever Known, How to Draw Clouds, and There Were Houses Here. Soak up Relja Penezic’s Fragments of Unused Time. As one visiting artist said about Penezic’s painterly piece, “This is stunningly beautiful!”

Laurel Beckman: New Vowels (4 times to feel you)
Ann Oren: Dollhouse
Public “First Thursday” Reception December 3, 2009, 6 – 8pm (Beckman will be in attendance)

Laurel Beckman, created New Vowels (4 times to feel you), especially for our media gallery. The piece consists of four animated characters (one per screen), whose typographic-like designs were derived from body gestures of classic clowns and street performers. The characters perform in first a relaxed, then hyperactive state. Just prior to the exhibition of her work on e4c, Beckman will present a free, public lecture about experimental media artists at Cornish College of the Arts on Wednesday, December 2, 2009. More details in our earlier blog post.

Also joining e4c this month is Ann Oren’s Dollhouse. Adapted for e4c, this multi-channel video features (in the words of the artist) “role exchange between professional and “reality” performers. Professional actors, thrown in virtual rooms, were asked to perform banal activities in a fake building under surveillance. The surveillance cameras go out constantly which forces the building’s tenants to trouble the concierge to come and fix them.”

Read more about both artists and e4c here.

2009 © Laurel Beckman, New Vowels (4 times to feel you), still/detail
2009 © Ann Oren, Dollhouse, still/detail

Kamran’s Kha Variations/Passing offers a visual representation of sound. The amplitude and frequency of the artist-created soundscape generates data that then determines the color, motion and depth within a digital graphics environment. The full duration is is 4 minutes, 20 seconds.

Rob’s 180 series, created for e4c, features curated thematic compilations of some of his microdocumentaries. Themes like Snow, Bird and Hammer, offer clips of everyday life that together, make you experience the ordinary in a new way. Each of the six microdocumentaries are 3 minutes each.

As we mentioned before, we have Oz-like powers over e4c. If you want to see these works without waiting through the whole rotation you can contact staff at heather.dwyer@4culture.org to let us know when you’ll be by and we can cue them up for you.

We’re excited to see Kamran’s new work  selected as part of the 2009-2010 season. He’ll be presenting those next spring. Thanks to Kamran and Rob for sharing their work with us this past year!

Photo: Kha Variations/Passing, Video Still, Courtesy of Kamran Sadeghi

Recently, Nancy Guppy and the team from Seattle Channel’s Artzone spent a day at 4Culture filming a quick segment about what 4Culture is (and does). They’ve posted it on their website, take a look!

A Moment’s Reverie and Gaijin/The Foreigner
premiering November 5, 2009

In conjunction with First Thursday, we are psyched to premiere the first new additions to the e4c lineup for the 09/10 season. Seattle-based animator Tess Martin will present two works adapted for the electronic gallery:

A Moment’s Reverie, a back-lit paper cut-out animation, which is a journey through a character’s thoughts and memories, triggered by the letters in her book. These same letters burn up in a tea cup, get shot, and hover in the sky, spelling out her most hidden desires.

Gaijin/The Foreigner, a piece using packaging from junk mail found in Japan in a clever cut-out animation following a chameleon-like character through a journey of change.

Tess Martin, A Moments Reverie (Still), Video Animation, photo by the artist

December 2, 2009, noon – 1pm
Cornish College of the Arts
1001 Lenora Street,
Room MC3-1

Join 4Culture and the Art Department of Cornish College of the Arts for a free, public presentation by experimental media artist, Laurel Beckman. Working in public spaces, Laurel explores themes at the crossroads meta-physics and science investigating perceptual phenomena, language, the built environment, and animal-human relations. Employing a wide range of media and distribution strategies, her projects often enlist commercial and civic spaces in her efforts to contribute meaningfully to the cultural landscape and to our understanding of empathy. She is currently an associate professor of art at the University of California Santa Barbara.

On December 3rd, during Seattle’s First Thursday Art Walk, Beckman will premiere New Vowels (4 times to feel you), a new work created especially for e4c, 4Culture’s storefront media gallery.

We have Oz like powers over e4c. If you want to see these works without waiting through the whole rotation. Contact us to let us know when you’ll be by and we can cue them up for you.

Thanks to Thom, Wyndel and Gazelle for sharing their work with all of us this past year!

Photo: Gazelle Samizay, Nosh-e Jan (video still)

For a short time, 4Culture’s e4c was the only North American host of Digital Fringe. Now a swanky venue in Vancouver B.C. is also showcasing this great collection of digital art – produced and curated by the Melbourne (AU) Fringe Festival. Hey Miami, New York, Toronto and Mexico City – don’t you want digital art on your screens?!

You may have learned from our previous post that Digital Fringe, a curated selection of media work, includes work from over 30 countries and are screened at e4c in concert with over 200 venues worldwide during the festival. Digital Fringe is produced by Horse Bazaar, a Melbourne experimental media bar. You can come see the works on 4Culture’s electronic gallery, e4c through October 30. All works are also available via the Digital Fringe website.

Photo: Courtesy of Digital Fringe

new on e4c – Digital Fringe
The digital arts arm of the 2009 Melbourne, Australia’s Fringe Festival playing in Seattle, WA
September 23 – October 11, 2009

We’re excited to announce that 4Culture’s e4c screens are hosting Digital Fringe, a collection of digital art, produced and curated by the Melbourne (AU) Fringe Festival. The curated selection includes work from over 30 countries, and will be screened at e4c in concert with over 200 venues worldwide during the festival. So far, e4c is the only host site in North America! Check out the map of screening locations here.

The curated playlist is a compilation of G-rated visual works of animation, abstractions, video art, short films, motion graphics, silent films, photography and other still images. It is the cream of the crop from nearly 1,000 submissions that resulted from an extensive international call to artists. Digital Fringe is produced by Horse Bazaar, a Melbourne experimental media bar.

All works are also available via the Digital Fringe website.

Read more

Photo: digital fringe logo

Third Eye Cinema And Northwest Film Forum Present –
A Special live event with Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat

Tuesday, Aug 18 at 08:00PM at Northwest Film Forum

Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat set the dials and push the levers while guiding you through the fourth dimension! Our machine will be carried on the breezes of parallel universes to return you to your rightful futures and pasts. Riding frequency waves of sight and sound, Sabine Gruffat will navigate by the red, green and blue stars of electronic constellations. Watch and learn about Real-Time Rendering, Quartz, and Max patches as she steers you through the sensory drone of the digital and analog hyperspace. Dropping out of the temporal flux and onto the lonely highway, Bill Brown will take you on a guided tour of memory’s roadside attractions. Brown will pilot the machine toward the irretrievable past and the inaccessible future by way of scratchy records and the hazy glow of 35mm slides, narrating the interspatial monuments of our extemporary voyage.

Tina Aufiero: swansongs
Heather Dew Oaksen: PAUSE and Rondelet

www.4culture.org/e4c

In conjunction with First Thursday Artwalk on June 4, 4Culture is excited to premiere electronic artworks for e4c by Tina Aufiero and Heather Dew Oaksen.

Between ‘nature observer’ and ‘obsessed videographer’, Tina Aufiero documents and frames the arrival of trumpeter swans in Skagit Valley, Washington. Swansongs, a video piece created for e4c is a record of her experience.

PAUSE, a four-channel video installation created by Heather Dew Oaksen and Norie Sato, investigates the notion of parallel experience as it relates to simultaneity, quotidian cycles and the space-time continuum. Through the use of multiple images, the artists hoped to consider both micro and macro levels of daily existence. Rondelet by Heather Dew Oaksen, is a four-channel pattern piece, exploring the manipulation of time through expansion and contraction to confound our sense of linear sequencing.

These projects join the ongoing rotation of work on e4c, currently featuring pieces by: Stephen Hilyard, Perry Bard, Thom Heileson & Wyndel Hunt, Gazelle Samizay, Kamran Sadeghi, Robert Zverina, Salise Hughes, Bennett Morris, Relja Penezic & Victoria Jordanova.

image: © Tina Aufiero, 2009, Swansongs, videostill

E4C

Calling all media artists! 4Culture’s electronic gallery, e4c, will soon be seeking contemporary media work for the September 2009 – August 2010 season. A national, open call for applications will be posted later this month with a deadline of May 25, 2009.

E4c was launched in the fall of 2008 and has featured over 15 new works by 8 artists/artist teams to-date. Works on view at e4c premiere on First Thursdays and are added to an ongoing rotation of work that is shown from 6am – 10pm, daily. Rather than a typical indoor gallery space, e4c faces the high-traffic and high visibility transit block on Prefontaine Place South in Seattle’s Pioneer Square district. The exhibition is visible by foot, bike, car or bus to more than 20,000 people each day allowing both intentional and unintentional audiences access to the work. Media artists of all genres are encouraged to apply.

Check 4Culture’s homepage on April 15, 2009 for more information.

image: © Courtesy of YaM Brand

Bard’s adaptation for e4c focuses on submissions related to Scene 13, a segment of Vertov’s work that features a busy market scene and intersection. Contributing artists include: Ryu Nakagawa Tokyo, Japan; Linda Rosenthal Nathanson Tel-Aviv, Israel and Heather Dew Oaksen, Seattle, Washington.

Read about the ongoing rotation of work on e4c.

image: © Bennett Morris, protectorate 02, 2006, archival print