3 Upcoming Exhibitions in February

Beginning on February 1, I will have an image from the series “Between You and Me” at the Toledo Museum of Art. This will be included in the “94th Annual Toledo Area Artists Exhibition”. In addition to the exhibition, the museum library will also highlight another work from the series.

In mid-February, 5 images from the series “L’Odesseé” will be included in the “First Contact” exhibition at Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, MI. You can find out more about the exhibition here. This exhibition will also include work by H. R. Giger.

On the last day of the month “Phos: Light Today” will open at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Lakewood, CO. 10 images from the “Empire” series will be on display as part of the exhibition. You can find out more about the exhibition here.

I framed all the images for the 3 exhibitions at the same time. At some point I realized it was the first time I had seen all these pieces together, as they were created at different times. I liked the way they interact and look forward to displaying them together sometime in the near future. Please send me an e-mail if you have the opportunity to attend any of these exhibitions.

Conjunction 12 Biennial

SaBa (Sam Sheffield and Barry Whittaker) is included in this year’s Conjunction 12 Biennial in Stoke-On-Trent, UK, November 2 – December 1, 2012.

http://conjunction.org.uk/

New Faculty Lectures

SaBa exhibition in Osaka

SaBa exhibition “Bunrakuraku”
2012/8/3 – 5 at Galaxy Gallery, Osaka
open > 16:00 – 23:00

Opening Event
created by HEADSPACE & OasisRadio
2012/8/3(Fri) 18:00~

Bunrakuraku is a new interactive project from SaBa, exploring the intersection of technology, participation, and puppetry. Taking inspiration from international styles of puppet theater, ranging from Japanese Bunraku to Punch and Judy, this work explores the intersection of audience and puppeteer―with a few extra limbs included. Bunrakuraku connects audiences from separate locations into a virtual, puppet theater space. Limbs appear and disappear, each controlled by a different audience member. In this space, an individual’s movements and actions are combined to form a single multi-limbed puppet. Here, people are encouraged to playfully engage with an unseen collaborator.

HONF Cellsbutton Festival

Last week I participated in the HONF Cellsbutton International Media Art Festival in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. At the beginning of the festival, I presented work to students and faculty the at the Polytechnic Mechatronica and attended other artist presentations at the Universitas Gadjah Mada. Later in the week, I presented the new SaBa project, “Bunrakuraku”, during the Cellsbutton “Battlestar” exhibition. Later that evening performed and electronic/analog music set  with two other artists—It seems I have added laptop to my list of instruments I currently play.

Prior to the festival, I was invited to present my work to a psychology class at Tezukayama University in Nara, Japan. During the presentation I also showed the new SaBa work. It was a good opportunity to get a larger group of people to experiment with the installation.

Below are images and two posters from the events. The main poster is not accurate, as it lists SaBa for the presentation and my name for the exhibition. I am now looking forward to the SaBa exhibition in Osaka at the beginning of August. I hope to post more images from Yogyakarta and Japan soon.

SaBA in Indonesia and Osaka

I have been busy working on a new SaBa project with Sam Sheffield which will be displayed at two upcoming events. This new project combines Processing, Max/MSP, and the Kinect depth camera. We have been working since late Spring and will continue modifying it through our exhibition in Osaka, which opens on August 2. For the first presentation, I will travel to Indonesia for the Cellsbutton festival with HONF at the beginning of July. There, I will present the work and lead an introductory workshop on Processing. This presentation will be a single-channel version of the project. Later, in Osaka, we will present a networked version which connects players in separate locations. There is still quite a bit to do, but so far, the work is turning out nicely.