Mirror States group exhibition
George will be showing the second iteration of his new work for 2008 - ‘Enfolding & Disclosures’ in ‘Mirror States’ a group exhibition curated by Lizzie Muller and Kathy Cleland, at Campbelltown Arts Centre, NSW, Australia (July 18th-August 14th, 2008) and the Moving Image Centre, Auckland, New Zealand (May 23rd-June 5th, 2008).
Mirror States is a major exhibition of interactive installations. It brings together some of the most exciting Australian, New Zealand and International artists working with digital media and interaction. It will take place in two venues: Campbelltown Art Centre and Moving Image Centre in Auckland. Mirror States showcases outstanding artworks made primarily in the last 5 years, most of which has never been shown in either Sydney or Auckland before, and includes 2 new commissions.
The Heart Library map making sessions for Campletown Arts Centre
George Khut will be on-site at Campbeltown Arts Centre to facilitate and record participant experiences as part of The Heart Library. Share your experience of the Heart Library - Biofeedback Mirror through drawing and conversation, and contribute to a growing collection of maps and body-focussed experiences.
Experience mapping session times:
• Thursday, July 24th, 2008, 11am - 5pm
• Saturday, July 26th, 2008, 11-am - 5pm
• Thursday, 31st July, 2008, 11am - 5pm
• Saturday, 2nd August, 2008, 11am - 5pm
Background of the exhibition
Both art and technology act as mirrors that reflect our selves and our relationship to the world. Both also create “quasi-others” – entities which we endow with subjectivity through the projection of ourselves. The Mirror States exhibition draws together art and technology, combining these two powerful systems of reflection and projection. The exhibition presents interactive artworks that offer arresting glimpses of the self as well as intriguing interactions with digital reflections and simulated personas.
The artworks in Mirror States call for unusual modes of audience engagement. Works such as John Tonkin’s time and motion study (holding on, letting go) and Shilpa Gupta’s Untitled act as digital mirrors, enabling the audience to interact with magical reflections of themselves. These reflections need not only be visual, David Rokeby’s seminal work Very Nervous System creates a space in which your movements produce an audio-portrait, whilst George Khut uses biofeedback and story telling to allow people to reflect on their own experience. These works make use of the seductive allure of reflections of the self but go beyond narcissism into a realm where the self is creatively transformed. In David Rokeby’s words, these artworks act as “Transforming Mirrors”, which not only reflect, but also refract our self-image, creating moments of dialogue between the self and the world, the self and technology, the self and art.
Other works, such as Dislocation (2006), act like Alice in Wonderland’s magical looking glass, taking audiences into a digital realm where they come face to face with simulated digital personas or digital doppelgangers. The interface acts as a boundary and a meeting point between the real world of the physical and the virtual world of digital simulation. The interface is where human and computer come face to face or, as Negroponte puts it, where ‘people and bits meet’. In the work of Mari Velonaki and Sean Kerr computer technologies allow artworks to ‘come to life’, demonstrating life-like behaviours and sophisticated modes of audience interaction. In the ‘interactive moment’ the audience enters into a new participatory relationship with the artwork. This can be a magical moment or an uncanny and disturbing confrontation depending on the style and mode of the interaction. These works point to new ways of exploring and understanding our own subjectivity and relationship with self as well as our increasingly important relationships with technology and digital others.
www.lizziemuller.com/projects/mirrorstates/