In fact, Naimark's Karlsruhe Moviemap (1990-91), was filmed from the nose of Karlsruhe's trams and the moviemap, allows viewer-users to navigate the tramway system, selecting which way to turn at intersections, and controlling the speed of moving backwards and forwards through the scenery. While it sounds - and is - simple the work is neither simplistic nor merely historical. It still has a palpable presence when operated and the experience of the scenery is visceral to a remarkable degree. I think this says a lot for both our personal and societal romance with the train but also the skill and attention to detail with which Naimark constructed the interface. Nothing is gratuitous. Nothing is unnecessary. You don't feel stupid using it. It's fun. This is work that while it was groundbreaking when it was created, underscores one of my favorite mantras, that art is not about the technology (but without the technology, this artwork could never have been made).
Probably my favorite piece in the show is Displacements (1984). This is a work that could easily have been shown alongside Robert Morris'sFinch College Project (1969) as part of the seminal show curated by Chrissie Illes for the Whitney Museum of American Art (although the only passable information about it on the web seems to be on the website of the Cleveland Museum of Art), Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977. Such a pairing would have demonstrated the "what else" that "new media" brings to the table, certainly, but again, the work is remarkable for the experience not the technology. Displacements layers the perhaps ur "no place" of a white on white living room with a palimpsest of memories as the computer-controlled projection revolves around the room, illuminating the generic with ersatz fidelity of a family Super 8 movie. The "cheap tricks" - as Naimark refers to them - of someone in the projected film playing the guitair and then hanging it up exactly where it's platonic form rests on the wall signify that this is another show in a long history of spectacular shows. It's magic. At the same time, the quotidian scenes of bringing home groceries, working at the computer, vegging out in the armchair are a cultural memory that does tug, regardless of what you know.
While See Banff (1994) will be shown at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff in September as part of the exhibition The Art Formerly Known As New Media, which I am co-curating with Sarah Cook, it is not clear that the entire show of six remarkable works will travel. Catch it if you can.
ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN FEATURES PIONEER NEW MEDIA/CINEMA ARTIST MICHAEL NAIMARK
IN WILLIAMSON GALLERY SURVEY
Pasadena, CA, May 10, 2005 Art Center College of Design breaks new ground by weaving the experience of professional artists and designers into the curriculum, as Michael Naimark investigates place representation with a survey at Art Centers Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery. Following a term in which Mr. Naimark collaborated with students in the graduate Media Design Program to develop their works, Mr. Naimark now brings six installations to the College to be included in Michael Naimark: Interactive and Immersive Film Environments, 1977 1997,
The gallery will host an opening reception for the exhibition on Saturday, May 21, from 6 to 9pm, and the public is invited. The exhibition continues through August 20.
Throughout the history of cinema, a radical avant-garde has existed on the fringes of the film industry. Electronic media have not only fundamentally transformed cinema but have altered its role as a witness to reality by rendering "realities" not necessarily linked to documentation, by engineering environments that incorporate audiences as participants, and by creating event-worlds that mix realities and narratives in forms not possible in traditional cinema. This hybrid cinema melds montage, traditional cinema, experimental literature, television, video, and the net.
Featured in the 2003 book Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film published by The MIT Press, and exhibition of the same name organized by the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM), Michael Naimark has spent twenty-five years as a leading practitioner and theorist of experimental cinema.
Included in the Williamson Gallery survey are Moving Movie #1 (1977), an experiment conducted at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Study in which the artist first expressed his obsession with why movie cameras move and movie projectors do not; Displacements (1984), a re-creation of Naimarks original immersive film installation in which an archetypal Americana living room is filmed and re-projected back on itself; Golden Gate Flyover (1987) in which users navigate around the Bay Area at unnaturally fast speeds using images filmed by a special gyro-stabilized helicopter camera and satellite navigation; Karlsruhe Moviemap (1990-91), based on virtually traversing the German citys well-known tramway system; See Banff (1994) which is an interactive stereoscopic installation resembling a Kinetoscope of one-hundred years earlier; and Be Now Here (1995-2000), an immersive 3-D installation in which the artist filmed panoramic views of UNESCO-designated danger areas in Jerusalem, Dubrovnik, Timbuktu, and Angkor, in order to audio-visually transform a viewer of the installation into the center of these unique and endangered places.
Michael Naimark has been a member of the Society for Visual Anthropology since 1984. He was on the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory in 1980 and was a founding member of the Atari Research Lab (1982), the Apple Multimedia Lab (1987), and Lucasfilm Interactive (now LucasArts, 1989). He joined Interval Research Corporation, a long-term lab funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, as it opened in 1992, and worked an additional year after it closed in 2000 on his webcam spinoff venture, Kundi.com. Several patents have been granted for his work.
The artists art projects are in the permanent collections of the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and the ZKM | Center for Arts and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. His 3D interactive installation "Be Now Here," produced by Interval with the cooperation of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, toured in the ZKM's "Future Cinema" exhibition in 2002 and 2003.
A recipient of the 2002 World Technology Award for the Arts, Naimark was also awarded a 2003 Rockefeller Foundation grant to direct a feasibility study for a unique, financially sustainable Arts Lab. In 2004, he taught the first History of New Media class at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and guest-curated the Ars Electronica 25th Anniversary Symposium in Linz, Austria, whose theme was The World in 25 Years.
Naimark is currently a Visiting Associate Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinema/Television. He serves on the Visiting Committee of the MIT Media Lab and on the Boards of the Zero One Network, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, and Presence journal. Naimark was recently a guest artist in the graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design.
For over a decade, the Williamson Gallery has been a Southern California leader in presenting artists whose work is defining the 21st Centurys intersection of art, science, and technology. The international group of exhibitions, curated by Williamson Gallery director Stephen Nowlin, has included artists Jim Campbell, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Lynn Hershman, Paul DeMarinis, Sara Roberts, Ken Goldberg, Jennifer Steinkamp, Bill Seaman, Simon Penny, Jessica Bronson, Christian Moeller, and many others.
Michael Naimark: Interactive and Immersive Film Environments, 1977 1997 will be installed in the Williamson Gallery May 22 through August 20, 2005 (www.williamsongallery.net/naimark). Williamson Gallery hours are 12 noon to 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday (12 noon to 9 pm on Fridays), closed Mondays and holidays. Parking and admission are free. For taped gallery information call (626) 396-2446. Art Center is located at 1700 Lida Street, Pasadena, CA, 91103.
Williamson Gallery exhibitions are funded in part by grants from the Pasadena Art Alliance and The Virginia Steele Scott Foundation.
In 2005, Art Center College of Design marks its 75th year as a leader in art and design education, and sets the stage for the next era of growth. Art Center has distinguished itself as a center of innovation, educating art and design professionals to also be creative thinkers capable of inspiring change in society by solving problems through design. Looking toward the future, Art Center continues to develop its educational curricula, enhance its facilities and contribute to bettering our society.
Art Center College of Design (www.artcenter.edu) offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in a wide variety of art and design disciplines, as well as Public Programs offering design education to students of all ages and levels of experience. Integral to Art Centers core curricula is a commitment to providing its students with the skills to embrace change and address real-world issues. Art Center College of Design is located in Pasadena, California, with classes held at both its Hillside Campus and South Campus.
