FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
18th STREET CENTER Presents:
*HTTL:// Hacking the Timeline / EZTV, Digilantism and the LA Digital
Arts Movement
Exhibition of Digital Art in Print, Video and Installation
*Victor Acevedo, Rebecca Allen, Denis Brun, Dave Curlender, Michael
Dare, Loren Denker David Em, Kit Galloway, Kate Johnson, Tony Longson,
Robert Lowden, Michael Masucci, Sherrie Rabinowitz, Nina Rota, Carolyn
Stockbridge, Anneliese Varaldiev,* *Michael Wright
February 4 - April 8, 2006
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, February 4, 6-8:30pm
18th Street Arts Center*
*1639 18th St., Santa Monica, CA 90404 Phone 310.453.3711
Email, <_mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Web sites, <_http://www.eztvmedia.com/httl.html_>;
<_http://www.18thstreet.org_>
Hours: Monday -Friday, 10am - 5pm
Please direct e-mail inquiries about the exhibition to the gallerys
address (above); NOT the DASH list!
To view formatted version of this announcement online:
<_http://artscenecal.com/Announcements/0106/18thStreet0106.html_>
*_Schedule of Events_:
*ArtNight Opening Event, Saturday, February 4th
4-6pm Artist Presentation with Denis Brun and Michael Masucci
6-8:30pm Opening Reception
7:30pm Performance by Collage Ensemble Inc.
Panel Discussion: Thursday, February 9th
7pm Hacking the Timeline: The Digilante Movement
Michael Wright and Victor Acevedo
Panel Discussion: Saturday, February 11th
2pm Hacking the Timeline: The Untold Story of Digital Art
Moderated by David Plettner with David Em, Peter Frank, Sandra Tsing
Loh, and Michael Masucci
Panel Discussion: Saturday, April 8th
2pm John Dorr and the Legacy of EZTV
Moderated by Strawn Bovee with Nina Rota and S.A. Griffin
For extended artist bios, more images and full artists and curators
statement
see: Web sites, <_http://www.eztvmedia.com/httl.html_> or
<_http://www.18thstreet.org_>
Hacking the Timeline is funded by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation.
It has been said that the widespread adoption of personal computers is
the most significant single cultural advancement since the invention of
the printing press, allowing not only for the personalization of
production, but also for the development of distribution channels which
cross borders, cultures and time zones. At the present time podcasting,
blogs, text messaging, mobile devices and interactive websites
introduce audiences to artists whom they would have never been offered
through the traditional gallery or museum community. Based on the
accomplishments of the last half-century, the last quarter century has
seen more widespread adoption of ideas, methods and possibilities,
spearheaded by small clusters of artists around the world from Croatia
to Germany to Japan to the U.K. Moreover, numerous major technical,
design and production innovations were originated in California. Los
Angeles has been a central hub in the history of the desktop digital art
movement.
By time the 1980s and 90s came about, artist-run spaces such as EZTV and
Electronic Cafe International (ECI) served as the meeting grounds for
artists, engineers and intellectuals who dared to see the computer as a
primary artmaking tool of the 21st century. These spaces combined
experimentation and exhibition of a wide range of media work, from wall
art to video projection to live performances utilizing media tools.
Today, writers, architects, musicians, painters, photographers,
filmmakers and even sculptors have all gravitated to this notion, one
not so widely accepted or obvious 25 years ago yet now taken as a given.
Today digital art is ubiquitous, but its roots are still, all too often,
invisible.
This exhibition focuses on some of these key individuals involved in the
creation, advocacy and exhibition of seminal digital art exhibitions
over the last 25 years in Los Angeles. Many of these shows included
artists who were among the very first to publicly articulate a unique
digital and desktop aesthetic. They have served as activists who have
spearheaded a dialogue between mainstream and experimental artmakers and
who brought journalists and scholars alike into an awareness of the
emergence of an international digital culture. From David Ems
pioneering experimental artworks created at historical places such as
Xerox PARC and JPL to EZTVs development of a desktop video and
microcinema tradition to ECIs experiments in telecommunication arts to
the work of the Digilantes, a term coined by artist/educator Michael
Wright, who along with Victor Acevedo staged many guerilla style
exhibitions and became a local force for Los Angeles digital art. Their
concept of Digilantism, which they not only apply to themselves but also
to the efforts of places such as EZTV and other artists/activists
worldwide, best describes an art movement as genuine as Futurism, the
Arts & Crafts Movement or Hip-Hop.
Michael Masucci, 2006
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