September 2008
This season, the Intermedia Art programme focuses around a selection of work reflecting on Video as a Social Agent.
Under Scan is a public art project by Raphael Lozano-Hemmer involving hundreds of video portraits projected onto the ground, that awake to interact with passers by. The work will be presented in London's Trafalgar Square from 15 - 23 November. The public are invited to participate in the work by contributing their video portrait at Tate Modern, 19 – 21 September.
Lynn Hershman Leeson plays the part of Gene Ware, a character from the virtual world of Second Life, who, in conjunction with Tilda Swinton undertakes a series of interviews with Gilberto Gil, Elena Panetowska, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Larry Lessig. Subverting the distinction between real and simulated, the interviews explore interwoven themes of revolution, empowerment and technology. Due for release in four episodes from October.
Noplace is a Net Art commission by Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg that allows people to create their own vision for a utopian endgame. The website constructs a downloadable movie based on a visitor's input. Images and sounds are pulled from the internet and used as raw data in the creation of your personal paradise. Accompanied with a text by Charlie Gere, The Desert of the Digital.
Archaeologist, Michael Shanks, discusses public space and the work of Lozano-Hemmer, Hershman Leeson, Walczak and Wattenberg, as theatres of encounter.
Mark Amerika is interviewed on the subject of his mobile cinema project, Immobilité, and proposes notions of a YouTube aesthetic and Net Art 2.0.
Additional features include four animated films from the 50s and 60s by Stan VanderBeek, exploring collage, assemblage and computer graphics. Political critique and aesthetic experiments, assembled from the media of its time.
Also review documentation of a live performance at Tate Modern by pioneering composer, musician, performer and filmmaker, Tony Conrad. Commissioned for the Turbine Hall as part of Tate's Film programme, Unprojectable: Projection and Perspective, like much of Conrad's work offers a complex reassessment of duration and temporality, directly implicating the live viewer as an active participant in the work.