Round up of SYNTAX Cyberarts press...

There are only ten more days to see the PRC's SYNTAX exhibition as well as the whole Boston Cyberarts Festival - both run through May 10th!

I'm hitting the pavement hard tomorrow myself. You can check out SYNTAX virtually here and chart out your entire Cyberarts route here.

Some highlights:

In Sebastian Smee's recent review of the entire Cyberarts fest in the Boston Globe, he stated the following: "The best curated group show I saw as part of the festival was "Syntax" at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University (reviewed in the Globe by Mark Feeney, April 3)."

In Nina Barber's Big, Red, and Shiny's interview with Boston Cyberarts Festival's amazing Director George Fifield: "The organizations have a very good sense of what the festival is about. Somebody like the Photographic Resource Center's Leslie Brown has done these great exhibitions where she really gets under the ideas of what technology is when you use the phrase in terms of art. Their current show, "SYNTAX," is about artists who are mainly photographers, but they are approaching the data that's actually in the photos in interesting ways."

Below is a list of links and press that SYNTAX has garnered:

Art New England, April/May 2009 (not posted online yet)

Boston Phoenix, Greg Cook, “Our digital landscape, The 2009 Boston Cyberarts Fest,” Greg Cook, April 28, 2009

BU Today, AV Slideshow, “The Artistic Semantics of Syntax, New exhibition opens today at Photographic Resource Center,” Kimberly Cournelle, March 30, 2009

Stuff, “Syntax,” Jacqueline Houton, March 23, 2009

Boston Phoenix, “Digital language at the PRC, Syntax, at Boston University's Photographic Resource Center,” Evan J. Garza, March 11, 2009

PRC show Syntax in Boston Phoenix

Check out this great preview of the next show, Syntax, at the PRC! Click here or above to read the preview. Learn more about the art and artists here.

The gallery will be open March 26th and the reception will be Thursday, April 2nd, 5:30 - 7:30pm.

A Golden Bee for Picture Show

I just learned today that the PRC's 2007 Boston Cybearts offering was featured in the Boston Phoenix's 2007 Art in Review. I am proud as pie to report that the good art folks there counted Picture Show among the best of 2007! The Phoenix gave the first nod to the amazing "Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination” at the Peabody Essex Museum. This was truly an outstanding exhibition -- a true visual and mental feast and a rare experience indeed -- and I am thrilled to have our exhibition share the same ink.

Here is the blurb on Picture Show:

Back to the future “Picture Show,” organized by Leslie K. Brown at Boston University’s Photographic Resource Center, went low-tech to mull motion pictures. The best stuff seemed teleported straight from some fabulous 19th-century inventor’s lab. Deb Todd Wheeler offered a magic picture wheel and hand-cranked light-up illusions. Steve Hollinger adapted old-time amusement hall flip-book animation technology to create visions of an atomic apocalypse. And a strange pedestal contraption by Hans Spinnerman of the terrific, hallucinatory Musée Patamécanique in Bristol, Rhode Island, somehow made a giant bumblebee appear to hover inside a bell jar.

I am particularly proud of this accolade because...

1.) It's the first time I curated a show with kinetic, interactive art and the first time I worked with this kind of new media meets old media (oh how nervous I was during the opening and throughout the whole show).

2.) I've always loved pre-cinematic and optical toys (and creating as much atmosphere in the gallery as I can).

3.) This is an idea I've had for some time.

4.) These artists were top notch and a joy to work with (and great senses o' humor too!).

5.) Perhaps it was because most of the work was constructed or assembled over several days right in the PRC, we developed a great sense of camaraderie. I count them among my friends. We took a particularly memorable trip to visit le Musée Patamechanique in Bristol, RI after the show ended its run. (Congrats on your recent grant!)
6-1000.) It was a joy to see how much fun visitors had with the show! You can browse pics of the light-sensitive, lens-based, and people-activated artwork here at this flickr set.

Thanks Steve, Olivia, Deb, Erica, Hans and Neil! And thanks Greg Cook!

ABOVE: Detail of Hans Spinnermen - The Dream of Timmy Bumble Bee. Installation at PRC, Photo by Jeremias Paul

Art + Tech = Cyberarts

This past weekend was the first weekend for the Boston Cyberarts Festival and new media enthusiasts were out in force. (The region-wide festival runs through May 6th.) We managed to get to several venues and two openings. Here are some stand-outs:

COLLISIONeleven (C11) (especially the Wizard of OZ piece)

MIT Stata Center Balcony Gallery

3rd floor up stairs from main entrance

32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA USA

as part of Boston Cyberarts and the Cambridge Science Festival

Apr 20 - May 1, 2007, weekdays 9-5, weekends 12-6pm

http://www.collisioncollective.org/

Brian Knep: Aging
Works in Progress from the Harvard Medical School

Judi Rotenberg Gallery

130 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

http://www.judirotenberg.com/

Brian Knep, "Frog Time," 2007, non-repeating video installation, dimensions variable. For more of Knep's work see www.judirotenberg.com or www.blep.com, or even visit him at South End Open Studios (and he is a super nice guy to boot!).