Peninsula

Pixelation of Place (2012) consists of two works on paper that will be exhibited as part of the ArtHERE program at the Pacific Art League, Palo Alto from September 12-December 8, 2012.

Pixelation of Place serves as an artistic commentary on the urban development and technological advances which took place in Silicon Valley between 1954 -1999. My work will translate historical imagery through an optical re-envisioning designed to mimic current technology. My artistic reinterpretations of two historic photographs will be created square-by-square in hand colored illustration. On the Ground, 2012 reinterprets Ken McLaughlin’s 1954 photograph of construction in the Silicon Valley. The image depicts early efforts during the conversion of a field into the Palo Alto Shopping Center on the Stanford Campus. The pixilation of the image will convey a contemporary digitization of this historic moment. The second piece, In the Air, 2012 is based on a 1999 aerial view of the Silicon Valley taken by the NASA Ames Research Center. I will reduce the complexity and expansive depiction of the Silicon Valley by reducing the image using graphing to “pixelate” the landscape. Through my artistic methodology of pixilation by graphing I am revising their historical meaning by symbolically blending the technological advancements achieved in the Silicon Valley with the images creating Pixelation of Place.

Diverse Paths (2012) is location-based (GPS) augmented reality project that will be exhibited as part of the ArtHERE program on the lawn of the Palo Alto Art Center (1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto) from September 12-December 8, 2012.

The augment/artwork can be experienced via a smart device (iPhone 4, android, iPad 2) and will be viewed on the device screen as an overlay of the live camera view of the environment. A splattering of doves, in a rainbow array of color, fly about the viewer in a 360 degree circle. The birds are hand drawn, as opposed to photographic, and thus are imbued with a fine art aesthetic, even as they animate the space. The exhibition site is marked by the shapes of birds in flight. These signs, located on the open lawn (Embarcadero Road side) of the Palo Alto Art Center, indicate to passersby that there is something else to interact with in this space. The work celebrates diversity, creativity, nature, and the power of universal symbols.

Local Report 2012 is an international media and telecommunications work in which Robert Whitman will use live reports from approximately ninety participants in cities around the world to create a live sound and video performance and continuing installation, composing in real time what he calls "a cultural map of the world.” Local Report 2012 is the latest version of a performance concept that Whitman began in the 1972, in which reporters spread throughout New York City made calls over pay phones and the reports were broadcast on a local radio station. Over the years the performances have moved from pay phones to cell phones, to video cell phones coupled with the Internet; and the scope has expanded from one city to embrace the whole world. Though the scope is international, the title of the new work is Local Report 2012, as today the global is local. Local Report 2012 will be produced by Creative Time and will be performed on October 11, 2012, at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City. The Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa) will host a satellite performance at Stanford University, receiving live transmission of the performance on the west coast. This performance will be part of the the ZERO1 2012 Biennial program, “Seeking Silicon Valley.” There are two parts to the performance Local Report 2012: the live real-time gathering of the news reports and the display of the sound and video work. The live performance lasts approximately one hour. During the performance each reporter makes two calls to the performance area. One call will be to make and send a 20-second video clip of something in their city they choose to record. A second call will be a brief verbal description of what the reporter sees at that moment. At the control/performance center Whitman will receive the video images and sound descriptions from the reporters and send them to multiple speakers and video projectors. The video clips will come in live, and will be limited to 20 seconds long. The voice calls will be answered live by Whitman, who will determine the length of the call by hanging up and going on to the next voice report. After the performance, the video segments will be looped and shown on the large screen installation along with the looped sound reports for several weeks at both Stanford University and Eyebeam. Up to ninety reporters or teams of reporters in cities around the world will be recruited to participate during the hour of the performance. Their video cell phones will be equipped with special Local Report software developed by Shawn Van Every of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University in collaboration with students and faculty at Stanford University.

Local Report is the first step in a larger partnership between Robert Whitman and Stanford University marking Stanford's focus on Art and Technology.

The collective proposes to establish an onsite installation for exhibition at the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial with parallel components at the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University in Lewisburg Pennsylvania. Titled “Manifest.AR @ ZERO1,” the group will draw on collective art practices centered around mobile augmented reality apps that aggregate and map a series of works re-imagining and reinterpreting the high-tech corporate campuses and products of Silicon Valley. Performative and site-specific works will be created around the cities of San Jose, San Francisco and Lewisburg.

ISHKY has brought together a team of artists, programmers and scientists to give life to a compelling vision that a community of millions will directly experience. At 10,000 feet altitude, a team of five synchronized aircraft equipped with dot-matrix technology will skywrite the first 1,000 numbers of Pi's infinite sequence. The aircraft will fly in a 100+ mile loop around the San Francisco Bay Area. Each number will measure over a quarter-mile in height. A sixth plane will fly above the writing team, documenting the entire process. ISHKY has also partnered with Stamen Design, a world-class creative firm specializing in data-visualization, to develop a platform for the public to document and share experiences of the event. The piece will begin above the ZERO1 Garage in San Jose and will follow a flight path determined by ISHKY to include a pantheon of educational and mathematics institutions. Within moments of execution (3.14159265...), the specific meaning of the numbers in the sky will be lost. The piece will dissolve into an unprecedented visual anomaly that prompts curiosity, providing rich opportunity for social interaction. The mass ephemeral intervention is scheduled to appear, as weather permits, sometime between Sept 12 and 16. 

Look UP!

Pi In The Sky  will appear above the ZERO 1 Garage at approximately 11:45AM and then again at 1:30PM on September 12th weather permitting. Have cameras ready and send photos and impressions to: 

Email them to: c@ISHKY.com. 
Tweet them to: @ISHKYStudios with the hashtag #piinthesky, #pi. 
Post them on our Facebook page. 
Tag them in your Instagram feed: #piinthesky, #pi 

ArtHERE (2012) is a new initiative and online platform for crowd-sourced urban revitalization through the matching of art and place. Seeking a test platform and catalyst for the program, the artist group behind ArtHERE and ZERO1 have collaboratively positioned the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial as the launch pad for the first region-specific platform - siliconvalley.arthere.org. 

Focusing on the greater Silicon Valley region, with the Biennial’s hub in downtown San Jose at its center, ZERO1 worked with local businesses and arts organizations to make a total of 12 spaces (and micro-grants) available in San Jose and Palo Alto that range from storefront windows and building facades, to outdoor projections and parklets. Via two open-call campaigns, artists were invited to submit art proposals online that set out to temporarily animate the available spaces with site-specific installations reflecting the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial theme Seeking Silicon Valley. The creative challenge being to use the architecture of the region as a canvas for vibrant and interactive artworks that reflect the creativity and innovation the Silicon Valley is known for. The selected projects will be exhibited in their respective spaces for the duration of the Biennial from September 12 to December 8, 2012.

Nicole Aptekar, Transect Cascade at Liquid Agency
Lynn Cazabon and Neal McDonald, JUNKSPACE at S. 1st Billiards
Ana Teresa Fernandez, Mojada at MACLA’s Noche Electrica
Anne-Marie Gregg, Pixelation of Place at Pacific Art League, Palo Alto
Christopher Haas, Information Lost Highway at the ZERO1 Garage
Victoria Mara Heilweil & Phil Spitler, Reaching for the Top at Touchstone Climbing Studio
Kimberlee Koym-Murteira, The Fractured Weave at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
Daniel Schwartz, Silicon Valley Karaoke at San Jose Stage Company
Pierce Warnecke, Used News at Metro Newspaper
Bill Washabaugh and Jeff Lieberman, The Sitting Wave at Caffe Frascati
Nanette Wylde, Diverse Paths at Palo Alto Art Center
Samson Young, Signal Path II: Sinister Resonance at the Downtown Yoga Shala

Palo Alto-based interdisciplinary artist Mel Day and Jeanne C. Finley will present a two-channel media-and surround-sound installation that explores communal, contemplative, and transitional experiences through the effects of light, sound, sight, and imagination. Threshold brings together voices of members of the Threshold Choir—an a capella group trained to sing at bedside for patients in hospice and palliative care—with voices from residents at Palo Alto’s Lytton Garden’s Senior Community. Jonathan Abel, Consulting Professor, and Michael Wilson, a graduate student at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, processes the singer’s recorded voices to simulate the reverberant quality of a performance in Stanford’s Memorial Church. Through these transformed sounds of song and a video installation that includes a time-lapse sequence of the changing light in the Church sanctuary from sunrise to sunset, Day and Finely’s Threshold transports the residents of Lytton Gardens and memorializes its residents who have passed away.

Mel Day’s work has been included in exhibitions throughout the Bay Area, including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, and internationally in Berlin, Copenhagen, and Toronto. She received an M.F.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and is represented by Peak Gallery in Toronto. Jeanne C. Finley, a Guggenheim Fellow and Media Arts Professor at California College of the Arts, has exhibited at the MOMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and in the Whitney Biennial. Her work is represented by the Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco. Day and Finley would like to acknowledge the support of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University. 

The Art Center is very excited to be a partner in the project and their facility will be open for folks to visit starting October 6th.

Part of the exhibition Community Creates at the Palo Alto Art Center, October 6, 2012-April 14, 2013