MISSION TO EARTH (Soft Cinema Edition)
A Media Installation by Lev Manovich
Exhibit In The Project Room @ Chelsea Art Museum
January 8 – 26, 2004
The Official Release Presentation of a new DVD by Lev Manovich and
Andreas Kratky
Soft Cinema: Navigating The Database (The MIT Press, 2005)
Opening and Panel at Chelsea Art Museum SATURDAY January 8, 2:00 - 4:30
PM
with:
Lev Manovich, associate professor of new media, University of
California, San Diego
Christiane Paul, adjunct new media curator, Whitney Museum of American
Art
Barbara London, curator, video and digital media, Museum of Modern Art
Sue Hubbard, art critic, Independent Newspaper, London
Ken Feinstein, artist/professor of experimental video
The Project Room @ Chelsea Art Museum
Home of the Miotte Foundation
556 West 22nd Street, @ 11th avenue
New York, NY 10011 USA
Phone: 212-255-0719
www.chelseaartmuseum.org
New York, NY – Lev Manovich will present Mission to Earth in The Project
Room @ Chelsea Art Museum from January 8 through January 26. The
exhibition includes a public reception, the release presentation of
Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database DVD, and a panel all taking place
on Saturday, January 8, 2.00 – 4.30pm, 2004.
What kind of cinema is appropriate for the age of Palm Pilot and Google?
Automatic surveillance and self-guided missiles? Consumer profiling and
CNN? To investigate answers to this question Lev Manovich - one of
today’s most influential thinkers in the fields of media arts and
digital culture – has paired with award-winning new media artist and
designer Andreas Kratky to create the Soft Cinema project. They have
also invited contributions from such other leading cultural figures as
DJ Spooky, Scanner, George Lewis and Jóhann Jóhannsson (music), servo
(architecture), Schoenerwissen/Office for Computational Design (data
visualization), and Ross Cooper Studios (media design).
SOFT CINEMA: Navigating the Database is the Soft Cinema project’s first
DVD publication published and distributed by The MIT Press (2005). It
presents three ‘films’, including Mission to Earth, that were created
within the framework of the project. Although the ‘films’ on the DVD
reference the familiar genres of cinema, the process by which they were
created and the resulting aesthetics fully belong to the software age.
They demonstrate the possibilities of soft(ware) cinema - a 'cinema' in
which human subjectivity and the variable choices made by custom
software combine to create films that can run infinitely without ever
exactly repeating the same image sequences, screen layouts and
narratives.
MISSION TO EARTH (Soft Cinema edition) is a science fiction allegory of
the immigrant experience that adopts the variable choices and
multi-frame layout of the Soft Cinema system to represent ‘variable
identity’. In this gallery installation the film is being assembled in
real-time by the Soft Cinema software from a large database of media
elements. While the narrative stays the same and repeats every 23
minutes, all other elements can potentially change. As a result, there
is no single ‘unique’ version of the film – every run produces a new
version.
Lev Manovich, the leader of the Soft Cinema project and the
videographer, editor, and author of Mission to Earth, is an
internationally recognized leader in the field of new media culture. He
is the author of The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2001) and
Little Movies (1994), the first film project created specifically for
the World Wide Web. His computer-driven installations and films have
been exhibited in numerous museums, galleries, media and film festivals
in the US, Europe and Asia, including ZKM, Karlsruhe; the ICA, London;
SENEF, Seoul; and the ICC, Tokyo. In addition, Soft Cinema received an
honorary mention at Transmediale 2003 festival, Berlin and is the
subject of a short documentary by ARTE-TV.
Andreas Kratky, the author of the Soft Cinema software, has been
responsible for media design and co-direction of a number of
groundbreaking new media projects, including the award-winning DVDs
That’s Kyogen and Bleeding Through – Layers of Los Angeles 1920-1986
(both published by ZKM).
FURTHER INFORMATION
Soft Cinema Project: www.softcinema.net
Complete text used in Mission to Earth is available at
www.softcinema.net/mission_to_earth.htm
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WHERE: Chelsea Art Museum is at 556 West 22nd Street, at the corner of
11th Avenue. Take the E or 1, 9 to 23rd Street.
HOURS: Chelsea Art Museum is open Tuesday - Saturday, Noon – 6 PM;
Thursday to 8.
TICKETS: Events are FREE with museum admission: $6 for adults, $3 for
students and seniors. Thursdays $3 for everyone. Free admission for
members and visitors 18 and under.
Chelsea Art Museum, Home of the Miotte Foundation, was created to foster
an understanding of postwar artistic originality and to further the
language of abstraction in contemporary culture. The Museum also seeks
to provide a venue for national and international artists who may be
less familiar to New York audiences, and to offer exhibitions, public
forums and interactive, multi-media cultural activities to the public
and its diverse membership. Chelsea Art Museum is committed to
scholarship and outreach; to the development of important thematic
exhibitions and programs which link art to such crucial issues as the
environment and the expression of human rights. The Museum aims to
create trans-cultural dialogues and provide an arena in which
individuals can gather as a community to explore and enjoy contemporary
art.
The Project Room is he special projects and education division of the
Chelsea Art Museum produced by Nina Colosi. The program showcases new
concepts in all art mediums and their intersection through technology,
in monthly exhibitions & art talks; performing arts; weekly
Introductions: meet-the-artist; educational workshops; and the New Art
Lab.
For more information, interviews or press photos contact —
Nina Colosi
Producer, The Project Room
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212-255-0719, 646-425-0981
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