New show added for The Fortieth Day

From: http://www.buskerchicago.com/

Media.Obscura :: Thuamatropes

Friday, March 30, 2007 8:00 PM

Media|Time.artz are being constantly remixed and reframed as devices of institutional critiques, expressive modes of individual|personal hystories, and investigations of plasticity and medium malleability. MEDIA OBSCURA aims at locating a pinhole to allow for these conversations to flood into focus through lens-less instances of art|media making. In making an obvious reference to the tool that inspired cinema|photography, MEDIA OBSCURA will gravitate away from those origins, and create a point of entry purposefully made to diffuse the upside-down to the point of proper obscurity. The event will consists of live|realTime performances, and single channel screenings that will hopefully disrupt expectations of clarity that an otherwise proper camera obscura would give.

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Media.Obscura :: Thaumatropes
BUSKER
2159 West 21st Place
03.30.07 8PM
FREE & Open

Screenings and Performances by:

Mike Miles
jon.satrom
Swift
Noise Crush + The Fortieth Day

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BUSKER presents a night of screenings and performances by local chicago artists in its first instance of it's new curatorial platform Media.Obscura compiled by Nicholas O'Brien. In attempting to create a duologue between NewMedia/Time.art/Web.art/Live A|V/video installation and their critical implications (or cultural influences), O'Brien creates a space where issues involving "source" become considered when thinking about how to engage with work of this sort. In appropriating the terminology on "arcane" technology, the project hopes to invoke discussions/conversations that reflect ideas of media archeology as hytorical references that might contribute to the works formulation. The infrastructure of Media arts and technology has obviously evolved since the days of the Camera Obscura, however O'Brien suggests that the fundamental processes involved in [New]Media making are actually not as disparate as suggested by the idea of "progress." The artist used the camera obscura as a technology of both recording and observing the world and using those to create art. The Media.Obscura essentially does the same, however the lens that contemporary artists use is one that has becomes purposefully fractured and allows for a multi-logue to occur.

The Thuamatrope was a toy that played with persistence of vision by having a card spin on a piece of string when pulled. In this vein, BUSKER will host a night where the string and the card have been substituted for other Media, but where artists Mike Miles, jon.satrom, Swift (aka Alex Inglizian and Alex Faulk), and Noise Crush (aka Lisa Slodki) + The Fortieth Day (aka Isidro Reyes and Mark Solotroff) might be able to rekindle the optical illusions the thuamatrope gave us.