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SOLO EXHIBITION OPENS AT ENGINE GALLERY - JULY 22, 2010

Please join me at Engine Gallery in the Distillery District, Toronto to open an exhibition of new works. The exhibition runs until August 15th.

HELIOS: EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE IN A TIME OF CHANGE STILL ON AT CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART

Brad Hindson and I are incredibly proud to be a part of the Corcoran Gallery's upcoming exhibit Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change. The exhibit will feature a presentation of Studio F-Minus' 400 sqft installation A Dream of Pastures. From the exhibition website:

Best known for his groundbreaking studies of animal and human locomotion, 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge was also an innovative landscape artist and pioneer of documentary subjects. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change, the first retrospective exhibition to examine all aspects of Muybridge’s art, will be on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from April 10 through July 18, 2010.

Born in England in 1830, Muybridge spent much of his career in San Francisco and Philadelphia during a time of rapid industrial and technological growth. In the 1870s, he developed new ways to stop motion with his camera. Muybridge’s legendary sequential photographs of running horses helped spark a technological revolution that changed the way people saw the world. His projected animations inspired the early development of cinema and the enormous impact of his photographs can be measured throughout the course of modern art, from paintings and sculptures by Thomas Eakins, Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp, and Francis Bacon, to the 1999 blockbuster film The Matrix and the music video for U2’s hit song Lemon.
Structured in a series of thematic sections, Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change includes numerous vintage photographs, albums, stereographs, lantern slides, glass negatives and positives, camera equipment, patent models, Zoopraxiscope discs, proof prints, notes, books, and other ephemera. Over 300 objects created between 1858 and 1893 are brought together for the first time from numerous international collections. Muybridge’s only surviving Zoopraxiscope—an apparatus he designed in 1879 to project motion pictures—will also be on view.

Organized by Corcoran chief curator and head of research Philip Brookman, the exhibition will also travel to Tate Britain in London from September 8, 2010 through January 16, 2011, and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from February 26 through June 7, 2011. A catalogue of the exhibition, with new essays by Brookman, Marta Braun, Andy Grundberg, Corey Keller, and Rebecca Solnit, will be published by Steidl.

Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and made possible through the generous support of American Express and the Trellis Fund. Additional support was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and Deane and Paul Shatz. The accompanying catalogue was made possible, in part, by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.

MAY 2010 - 'PUBLIC LIGHT AND SPACE' EXHIBITION AT RICHARD GRAY GALLERY IN THE JOHN HANCOCK TOWER, CHICAGO

The exhibition 'Public Light and Space' is open for viewing until June 3rd, on the 24th story of the John Hancock Tower.

11 unique visions for public art projects, each developed by a different artist are presented, and it is my honour and privilege to be among them.

My piece, entitled Brief Moments, is a fully operational 1:50 scale model for a public sculpture that shoots clouds into the air. The clouds can be emitted in varying patterns to produce, however briefly before dissipating into the air, letters and messages in ground-level skywriting. Furthermore, the clouds serve as projection surfaces for a series of images of bodies and architecture, rendering both immaterial.

The exhibition is the result of an intensive 4-month investigation by a group of students led by Jaume Plensa, the internationally-acclaimed artist best known for Chicago's Crown Fountain.

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of William and Stephanie Sick. The artists would also like to extend their appreciation to Paul Gray of the Richard Gray Gallery for hosting this exhibition, and of course to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

MOST RECENT PRESS:

Heidi Weiss for the Chicago Sun-Times

Lia Grainger for The National Post

Ceci Moss for Rhizome at the New Museum

Gareth Branwyn for MAKE Magazine Blog

Ben Spur for BlogTO

"...exemplifies the grandiose ambition of a young artist."

An interactive installation featuring a performance by Ashleigh Semkiw

First exhibited and performed January 22, 2010
at Spoke Club, Toronto.
Part of an exhibition with Tom Ngo running until April 2010

Later exhibited in collaboration with Studio F-Minus at Brookfield Place as part of their Earth Week Programming. On display from April 12-24, 2010.

TECHNICAL:

The microphone feeds into a custom software written by the artist in the Processing language. The software performs a pitch and volume analysis on the incoming audio feed, and then uses a set of algorithms to determine which strings should be activated based on the audio input. The software then exports PWM values for all the motors via serial protocol to a set of microcontrollers. The project was originally set up using Arduino microcontrollers, but it was found that for addressing multiple controllers, the protocol was simpler using the new ArtBus controller being developed at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The spinning bearing mechanism connecting the string to the brass rod was custom lathed from delrin machining plastic, and the accuracy of these mechanisms is essential to ensuring that the rods spin on axis.

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