[rohrpost] The ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART features ELLEN PEARLMAN

[Image Science]

The ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART features ELLEN PEARLMAN
www.digitalartarchive.at 
"First I’m gonna take you to La La Land, then to dystopia land." 
Ellen Pearlman, Keynote at RIXC Festival 2017
For Ellen PEARLMAN, dichotomy is a centrally recurrent motif. Across
her oeuvre as artist, curator, director, and scholar, Pearlman makes
visible the aesthetic and innovative qualities in digital technology
(e.g. cybernetics and telematics), while at the same time also their
destructivity (regarding issues of public surveillance, environmental
pollution, and government control). In Pearlman’s performances, she
combines dance with image and sound in data visualisations, translating
bodily movement and experience into their technological correspondents
and opposites.
Ellen Pearlman is co-founder of several media art research projects and
artist residency programmes, including Art-A-Hack and ThoughtWorks Arts
Residency. Based in New York, she achieved her PhD at Hong Kong City
University. Lecturing all over the world, including at the first
collaborative laboratory on cyborg art at Parsons/The New School,
Pearlman’s telematic and interactive video performances have been shown
at major media art festivals such as Microwave Festival, SIGGRAPH, ISEA,
RIXC Festival.
ARTWORKS
Pearlman’s media artworks address issues of human communication and
connection through performative explorations and telematics methods,
with influences from Asian culture, Buddhist and Zen thought. During her
PhD research at the School of Creative Media (City U, HK), Pearlman
developed Noor: A Brain Opera (2015). Within a fully immersive
360-degree environment, a performer moved through the audience wearing a
wireless EEG headset, her brainwaves displayed on screen, and changing
in accordance to her mood and in response to the audience. The
performance discussed the hazards and hopes for cybernetic innovation,
while raising the question: "is there a place in human consciousness
where surveillance cannot go?"
In the video dialogue Surveillance Siddhi (2014), Pearlman searched for
the meaning of being human in terms of privacy, individuality,
authority, and the state. Using robotized voices, and enhanced visual
processing developed by MIT’s CSAIL Lab, Pearlman created digital
imagery as poetic as it was disturbing. 
Explore Ellen Pearlman’s work on her artist profile on the Archive of
Digital Art
BOOKS & QUOTES
In her extensive writings as book author and art journalist, Ellen
Pearlman explores the histories and intersections between religion,
Buddhism, dance, performativity, and modern technology. Her book Nothing
and Everything: The Influence of Buddhism on the American Avantgarde
(2012) drew a comparison between the art scene in America during the
late 1950s to early 1960s and Zen Buddhism’s emphasis on "enlightenment
at any moment" and "living in the now".
"Zen thinking permeates Western arts: the mid-century pivot to Eastern
influence is a truism of previous generations, but curiously absent from
contemporary mastications of history. Ellen Pearlman gets it all right:
Nothing and Everything is the perfectly balanced lesson—art, and change,
and friendship" wrote John Reed, novelist and book editor of The
Brooklyn Rail, on Nothing and Everything.
ELLEN PEARLMAN AND MEDIAART/HISTORIES
Browse through the Media' Art Research Thesaurus and search for
Keywords related to Pearlmanʼs work in order to find visual comparisons
and conceptual bridges with the Graphic Print Collection of the
Goettweig Collection.
Keywords: Telematics art, performance, immersive environments,
surveillance, brain sensors, post-human, embodiment, telepresence
BECOME A MEMBER ON THE ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (ADA)
ARTISTS and SCHOLARS are invited to become members of the online
community and set up their ADA profile! To ensure a high academic
standard, five published articles and/or exhibitions are required to
become members of the ADA community. Apply for an account here:
www.digitalartarchive.at/support/account-request.html 
SHARE YOUR RESEARCH WITH PEERS AND THE COMMUNITY
Community members can upload publications and PDFs, announce upcoming
events, post comments, document exhibitions, conferences and other
relevant news.
ADA: THOUSANDS OF ARTWORKS
Since its foundation in 1999, the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (former
Database of Virtual Art) has grown to be the most important online
archive for digital art. In cooperation with established media artists,
researchers and institutions it has been documenting the rapidly
evolving world of digital art and its related fields for more than a
decade and contains today a selection of thousands of artworks at the
intersection of art, science and technology. ARTISTS and SCHOLARS are
invited to join the community and set up their own archive pages.
EXPANDED DOCUMENTATION FOR THE NEEDS OF DIGITAL ART
Due to the processual, ephemeral, interactive, technology-based and
fundamentally context-dependent character of digital art, it is at risk
for becoming extinct without an adequate documentation. Therefore, the
ADA is based on an expanded concept of documentation, which takes
account of the specific conditions of digital art.
ARTISTS represented, among many others: Rebecca ALLEN, Suzanne ANKER,
Cory ARCANGEL, Roy ASCOTT, Louis BEC, Maurice BENAYOUN, Paolo CIRIO,
Charlotte DAVIES, FLEISCHMANN & STRAUSS, Masaki FUJIHATA, Ken GOLDBERG,
Agnes HEGEDÜS, Lynn HERSHMAN LEESON, Ryoji IKEDA, Eduardo KAC, Ken
RINALDO, KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH, Lev MANOVICH, George LEGRADY, Golan LEVIN,
Rafael LOZANO-HEMMER, Joseph NECHVATAL, Michael NAIMARK, David ROKEBY,
Jeffrey SHAW, Julius v. BISMARCK, Paul SERMON, Karl SIMS, SOMMERER &
MIGNONNEAU, STANZA, Nicole STENGER, THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD, Peter WEIBEL,
et al.
Advisory board: Christiane PAUL, Roy ASCOTT, Erkki HUHTAMO, Gunalan
NADARAJAN, et. al.
ADA TEAM:
Oliver GRAU (Head of Scientific Conception)
Janina HOTH, Wendy COONES, Ann-Christin RENN, Viola RÜHSE, Devon
SCHILLER (Editorial Team)
Contact us at digitalart.editor at donau-uni.ac.at