June 1, 2000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEEMEN at
The Eyebeam Atelier, Inc. presented by Franklin Furnace
in collaboration with the NetArt Initiative!
Friday, June 9th and Saturday
June 10th, 2000
doors open at 9 PM performance at 10 PM live
at The Eyebeam Atelier, Inc. 542 West 21st Street (the Future Site of The Eyebeam
Atelier, Inc. New Museum of Art and Technology)
and netcast live online at Franklin
Furnace and the NetArt
Initiative.
This far-reaching live and
online collaboration will bring together some of the most intense artists, technologies,
and institutions around!
SEEMEN: the Machine Art Group encourages live and online interaction
with their machines and robots!
FAKESHOP: Whitney Biennial Internet Artists, Fakeshop's "The Human Use
of Human Beings," (HUHB) installation on view!
THE EYEBEAM ATELIER, INC.: a not-for-profit new media arts organization
that initiates, presents, supports, and preserves artworks created with computers
and digital tools!
FRANKLIN FURNACE: presents its live art on the Internet series, THE FUTURE
OF THE PRESENT 2000!
NETART INITIATIVE: Netart Initiative is a loosely knit, open source based,
hub styled, forum oriented, action enabled consortium, where people meet, virtually
and bodily, to communicate, exchange, and discourse for advancing the understanding
of a vitual art, a networked art and an art that is pervasive and ubquitous
in the years to come!
SEEMEN From San Francisco, home of the world's largest robot/machine art scene, SEEMEN is not your average art group. SEEMEN creates situations in which audiences are encouraged to interact and operate their machines and robots.
SEEMEN is one of ten artists selected by Franklin Furnace to participate in THE FUTURE OF THE PRESENT 2000, a residency program to create live art on the Internet, in collaboration with Parsons School of Design, Digital Design Department, and the NetArt Initiative.
SEEMEN 2000 CAST OF CHARACTERS:
JAWS OF LIFE
FIRESHOWER
SHARKCAGE
BULLFIGHT MACHINE
Plus a WHIRLING DERVISH, MACHINE SEX, BORNAGAIN BOOTH AND MANY MANY MORE!
SEEMEN is the effort of Kal Spelletich, an art drop-out and extreme technology inventor who enjoys exploring his taste for the dark side of technology. They see themselves as postindustrial folk artists. The actions of their robots poetically symbolize man's struggles and triumphs: life/death, endurance, military grade technology.... These machines have been inspired by a Buddhist sect that uses shock and violence to attain enlightenment.
FAKESHOP Fakeshop is an ongoing digital art collaboration of Jeff Gompertz, Prema Murthy, and Eugene Thacker that combines video-conferencing, Internet art, and performance. Fakeshop is focused on video-conferencing as an art medium, and on the forms and ephemera created as a consequence of that medium. The Fakeshop Web site provides a remote point of entry into various live and archived setups, hookups, and site-specific installations. Franklin Furnace is grateful to Fakeshop for making the resources of their installation, HUHB, available to SEEMEN.
THE EYEBEAM ATELIER, INC. The facility for this event is provided by The Eyebeam Atelier, Inc., a not-for-profit new media arts organization that initiates, presents, supports and preserves artworks created with computers and digital tools. In the future, this site will house a new building which will contain a museum dedicated to art + technology, artist-in-residence studios, multimedia classrooms, a digital archive, theater and cafe.
FRANKLIN FURNACE ARCHIVE, INC. , a veteran of the downtown New York art scene, transformed on its 20th anniversary into a "virtual institution." Since its mission remains to present, preserve, interpret, proselytise, and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art, especially forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content, the Internet embodies the convergent art medium through which Franklin Furnace's institutional goals may be met.
Franklin Furnace, in its 24th season, presents THE FUTURE OF THE PRESENT 2000 ten presentations of live art on the Internet created during month-long residencies at Parsons School of Design.
The NETART INITIATIVE is committed to creating and promoting a dynamic dialogue between the academic and artistic worlds to explore this emerging new medium in artmaking today, offering students as well as the interested public an open space for discussion and collaboration, and showcasing emerging talents from both the educational and public sector, thereby establishing excellence in academic research and experimentation.
Participants in the NetArt Initiative presently include Circle.com; Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's digital arm, Thunder Gulch; Parsons School of Design, Digital Design Department; the School of Visual Arts; the Postmasters Gallery; and Gallery 9/Walker Art Center. The purpose of the NetArt Initiative is to create a dynamic team approach to foster the creation and documentation of art on the Internet. Collaborations among member organizations will produce programs that reinforce the goals of individual groups, while furthering the overall objectives of the NetArt Initiative.
THE FUTURE OF THE PRESENT 2000 is made possible by the faith and foresight of Jerome Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc., the Heathcote Art Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts' Technology Initiative, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology.