[rohrpost] TAGallery 007_Loops, Rings, Circles and Infinity | CONT3XT.NET.NEWS #14.07

[CONT3XT.NET]

TAGallery 007_Loops, Rings, Circles and Infinity
By Michelle Kasprzak

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TAGallery by CONT3XT.NET extends the idea of a tagged exhibition and
transfers the main tasks of noncommercial exhibition spaces to the discourse
of an electronic data-space. The method of tagging allows the attribution of
artworks to different thematic fields. Exhiobition_007 was tagged by
Michelle Kasprzak.

Connectivity on the Web is often thought of in a linear fashion – point to
point, server to server. This perception might be rational and convenient,
but the way that we use the web is often more circular, looping upon itself,
or seemingly without end. The artworks selected for this TAGallery represent
the opposite of a finite or fixed experience.

100 Black Boxes, for example, is a circular hypertext fiction. The last
entry makes this explicit, referencing a repeating children's rhyme and the
ancient symbol of the Ourobouros: "There was an old man called Michael
Finnegan. Ourobouros. That's the word. Ourobouros, the snake that swallows
its own tail. Between these shelves, between these books, between these
words, I go round in circles. Swallowing myself." Unlike most conventional
games that have a logical conclusion, The Endless Forest invites you to
participate in a gamespace that is ambient and endlessly explorative. Every
Icon, a beautiful piece of software that will depict every possible
combination of black and white squares in a grid of 32 x 32 is a work that
will reach its endpoint so far into the future, by our human timescales it
seems to reach forth into infinity. Mario Battle No. 1, with the iconic
Super Mario wandering in a game world stripped of the usual enemies and
prizes, ends after a certain amount of time, but the lack of objects in the
world lengthens the sense of time. Instead of racing against the clock
killing all the monsters in his path, the Mario character that you control
is left to ponder his fate, wandering past a limitless, pristine expanse of
digital green fields and blue skies. Tom Moody's animated GIFs repeat a few
frames over and over, offering a study of the simple charm of repetition of
movement. These works and the others included here utilise the possibilities
of the power of computation, channeling this power into aesthetic and
emotionally resonant experiences.

Exhibition at TAGallery
http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/EXHIBITION_loop.infinity

Statement
http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/STATEMENT_loop.infinity

Tagger/curator
http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/TAGGER_loop.infinity

With works by
Tom Moody, Lisa Jevbratt, Mark Napier, Myfanwy Ashmore, Auriea Harvey &
Michaël Samyn, John F. Simon, Jr., Alistair Gentry

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About Michelle Kasprzak

Michelle Kasprzak is a curator, writer, and artist. Since winning the
InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre Emerging Electronic Artist award
early in her career, she has exhibited her work throughout North America and
Europe, and has been featured in numerous publications and on radio and
television broadcasts syndicated worldwide. She completed her MA in Visual
and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal in spring of 2006,
and later that year was awarded a curatorial research residency at the
Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art (NIFCA) in Finland. Most recently, she
has been curating video programmes for the urban screen at Federation Square
in Melbourne, Australia, and she co-curated an exhibition at the Holden
Gallery in Manchester, UK. Michelle is currently based in Edinburgh, and is
the Programmes Director of New Media Scotland.

http://michelle.kasprzak.ca
http://www.curating.info

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