New Media Workshop

On Friday, June 1st, the New Media Workshop will join with the Ludic Union for the Investigation of Gaming Interfaces in co-sponsoring the inaugural showcase of the University of Chicago Library’s newly-established videogame collection.

A six-hour event spanning from 3 PM to 9 PM, the showcase will be broken into half-hour sessions, each of which will focus on a specific genre, gameplay element, visual idiom, or subject matter. Positioned at the intersection of art and technology, videogames have seen astounding formal changes throughout their fifty-year history.  This showcase has been designed to highlight both what videogames have drawn from other media and what makes them uniquely worthy of study and preservation.

Visitors will have opportunities both for hands-on play or simple viewing, and are encouraged to drop in an out at their convenience.

On Friday, February 24, the New Media, Mass Culture, Theater and Performance Studies, and Contemporary Arts workshops join together to host a conversation with the artist Anthony McCall.

Occupying a space between sculpture, cinema and drawing, the historical importance of Anthony McCall’s work has been internationally recognized in such exhibitions as “Into the Light: the Projected Image in American Art 1964-77” at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001-2), “The Expanded Screen: Actions and Installations of the Sixties and Seventies” at Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2003-4), “The Expanded Eye” at Kunsthaus Zurich (2006), “Beyond Cinema: the Art of Projection” at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2006-7), “The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Projected Image” at Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (2008), “The Geometry of Motion 1920s/1970s”, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008), and “On Line”, Museum of Modern Art (2010-11).  McCall’s work has also been exhibited at, amongst others, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004, Tate Britain, London, 2004, Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France (2006), Musée de Rochechouart, France (2007), SFMoMA (2007), Serpentine Gallery, London (2007-8), Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2009), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2009), Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand (2010), Sprueth Magers/Ambika P3, London (2011), and Serralves, Porto (2011). A solo exhibition will open in April 2012 at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.

McCall is currently working on an Arts Council England sculpture commission, which will be part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, to realize his Column in North-West England: a spinning column of cloud that rises vertically from the surface of the water into the sky.

The format of this workshop is intended to provide an opportunity for interested students and faculty to take part in a Q&A with McCall.  Recommended texts to read in preparation for the discussion are no longer available for download.

As a part of the cluster of events surrounding the symposium Phenomenologies of Projection, Aesthetics of Transition: Anthony McCall 1970-1979, 2001–, the workshop joins two other events:

On Friday, February 24 through Saturday, February 25, Experimental Station (6100 S. Blackstone Ave.) will be exhibiting McCall’s pieces You and I, Horizontal (2005), Line Describing a Cone (1973), and Line Describing a Cone 2.0 (2010).

On Saturday, February 25, from 1:00 PM to 5:30 PM, the Film Studies Center will be hosting a symposium featuring an artist talk with McCall followed by a roundtable discussion.

Please note the change in time and place from the standard New Media workshop schedule:  This workshop will take place at 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM (rather than the usual 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM) in Cobb 307 (rather than the usual Cobb 310).

Ken and Flo Jacobs unveil their Nervous Magic Lantern, an empty box with a single-element glass lens, a light and a spinning shutter.  From this simple technology, the most advanced cinema arises without film or electronics, casting images that conjur 3D illusions and other visual phenomena.

In addition to the Nervous Magic Lantern performance, Ken Jacobs will screen and discuss recent digital video works Capitalism: Child Labor (2006) and The Green Wave (2011). (Warning: a discernible flicker operates on the senses. Not for those afflicted with epilepsy or other unusual brain conditions.)

Film Studies Center: 5811 South Ellis Ave, Cobb Hall 306, Chicago, IL

The Open Practice Committee and The Renaissance Society are very pleased to welcome back Pierre Huyghe to the University of Chicago to be a 2011 artist-in-residence. In 2000, Huyghe presented his installation, The Third Memory, one of his first major exhibitions in the United States, at The Renaissance Society.  As part of his 2011 residency at The University of Chicago, Pierre Huyghe will screen recent projects and discuss his work with Jennifer Wild, Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and Hamza Walker, Associate Curator and Director of Education at The Renaissance Society, Friday, April 15th, 7PM, at Max Palevsky Theater.  This event is free and open to the public.

Pierre Huyghe’s residency is made possible by the generous support of: The Division of the Humanities, Doc Films, the Film Studies Center, the France Chicago Center, The Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts, and The Renaissance Society.

For more information please contact Zachary Cahill, zcahill [at] uchicago [dot] edu, 773.753.4821.

Max Palevsky Theater:  Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL

Thursday, April 7th at 6:00 PM: As Botborg, Berlin/Brisbane-based artists and musicians Scott Sinclair and Joe Musgrove fuse and rewire raw electronic signals to create intensely visceral experiences of sound-color synesthesia. Using a complex array of custom electronics, audio and video mixers, cameras and screens, the duo blends sound and vision into a self-perpetuating web of interdependent color and rhythm, generated (in real time) entirely by device feedback. In their first US duo performance, Musgrove and Sinclair will present a new, improvisatory performance, incorporating the unique characteristics of the Film Center’s theater into their system. Botborg’s work has screened around the globe and they have performed throughout Europe and Australia, including at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, and the Spectropia Festival in Riga, Latvia. Co-presented by the experimental music series Lampo (www.lampo.org). Multiple formats.

Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center:  164 N. State Street, Chicago, IL

The University of Chicago is pleased to present Part II of The State and the Digital, a series focused on digital filmmaking in Cuba with invited Cuban filmmakers.  We begin with a screening and workshop on Thursday, April 7th at 5:00 pm in Haskell Hall, Room 315. Director Esteban Insausti and his editor and collaborator Angélica Salvador will present and discuss their two experimental documentaries, The Hands and the Angel and They Exist.

The series concludes with a screening of digital shorts by some of Cuba’s most talented new filmmakers on Friday, April 8th at 7:00 pm at the Film Studies Center. Cuban filmmakers Alina Rodríguez Abreu, Esteban Insausti, and Angélica Salvador will present these works and talk about their own experiences with independent digital filmmaking in Cuba.  Seating is limited.  Please click here to reserve seat(s) for this event at the Film Studies Center website.

For more information, or if you require assistance to participate in these events, visit this series’ blog, or contact Davis Reek at dhreek [at] uchicago [dot] edu.

The Franke Institute: 1100 East 57th Street, Joseph Regenstein Library S-118, Chicago, IL

Film Studies Center: 5811 South Ellis Ave, Cobb Hall 306, Chicago, IL

The University of Chicago is pleased to present a two-part series on digital filmmaking in Cuba with invited Cuban filmmakers. Director Esteban Insausti, editor Angélica Salvador, and actress Ania Bu Maure will present their films and discuss how digital technologies are transforming the face of filmmaking in Cuba today.

Thursday, February 24th at the Franke Institute:  The Hands and the Angel and They Exist: Screening and Workshop with Cuban Filmmakers Esteban Insausti and Angélica Salvador

Cuban director Esteban Insausti and his editor and collaborator Angélica Salvador present the independent documentary shorts, Las manos y el angel (The Hands and the Angel) and Existen (They Exist).

Insausti made the independent short, The Hands and the Angel (2002), using cameras borrowed from friends and colleagues. The end result is a beautiful homage to Cuban jazz musician, Emiliano Salvador. Merging six different video and sound formats with archival footage, the short’s stunning experimental language provides the visual expression of Salvador’s avant-garde music.  In They Exist (2005), Insausti interviews Havana residents considered crazy by most, weaving their moments of lucidity and insight into a moving meditation on contemporary Cuba. This independent documentary combines footage shot on Hi8, Betacam, and mini-DV with 35 mm archival footage.

Friday, February 25 at the Film Studies Center: Long Distance: Special Director’s Preview and Evening with Cuban Filmmakers Esteban Insausti, Angélica Salvador, and Ania Bu Maure

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba entered a long economic crisis designated the “Special Period in Times of Peace” by Fidel Castro. Cubans, especially youth, left the country in vast numbers for the United States and other nations.

In a special director’s preview, Cuban director Esteban Insausti presents his first feature, Larga distancia (Long Distance), an exploration of the emotional impact of this mass exodus on his generation. Based on Insausti’s own experience, Long Distance(2010) tells the story of a woman who on her 35th birthday finds that she has lost all of her friends to this crisis. To console herself, she spends an evening reinventing the best of her past life and friendships. Editor Angélica Salvador and actress Ania Bu Maure will also discuss their work on the film.

For more information, or if you require assistance to participate in these events, visit this series’ blog, or contact Davis Reek at dhreek [at] uchicago [dot] edu.

The Franke Institute: 1100 East 57th Street, Joseph Regenstein Library S-118, Chicago, IL

Film Studies Center: 5811 South Ellis Ave, Cobb Hall 306, Chicago, IL

In preparation for artist Eddo Stern’s visit to the New Media Workshop on November 19th, the New Media Workshop joins with the Film Studies Center to present a screening of a selection of the Stern’s videos from the past decade.  This screening will take place Saturday, November 13th, 7:00 PM, in Cobb 306.  More information about the event, including the specific videos being shown, can be found on the Film Studies Center website, here.

Eddo Stern is an artist and game designer, born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and currently living in Los Angeles and teaching in the Design/Media Arts Department at UCLA.  His work, which covers various media including computer software & hardware, game design, live performance, digital video, and kinetic sculpture, explores the uneasy and otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic simulation, surrounding the subject matters of violence, memory and identification.  A strong advocate for independent game development, Stern’s work explores the inherent potential of game design as a medium for artistic expression and cultural impact.

The selection of works to be shown on Saturday focuses on Stern’s machinima videos – meditations on history, religion, nostalgia, nationalism, and masculinity, all cobbled together from found electronic sources: MIDI soundtracks, online forums, and, above all, video games.

More information on Stern can be found on his website, here.

Film Studies Center: 5811 South Ellis Ave, Cobb Hall 306, Chicago, IL