More ISEA / ZeroOne Artists to Watch

ZeroOne was so huge and spread out that it was pretty much impossible to see everything, and my access as an Associate Producer was limited by my responsibilities to certain artists and venues within that role. Still, I managed to see a few really outstanding projects, not all of which I will remember to list here.

Luther Thie & Eyal Fried, Acclair (at San Jose City Hall)

Luther and Eyal won the Adobe-sponsored Emerging Artist Award for Acclair, a performative commentary on consumerism in the name of security.

Rachel Rakena, Pacific Washup/Rerehiko (in Container Culture at the South Hall)

These videos, made in collaboration with aboriginal choreographers, address immigration and ethnic integration in Australia and New Zealand.

Norimichi Hirakawa, DriftNet (in Container Culture at the South Hall)

DriftNet is a visualization of the immense flow of data over the Internet. The abstract projection of the DriftNet washes over the floor and walls of the exhibition space, responding to the movement of the viewer.

Gail Wight, Rodentia Chamber Music (in Edge Conditions at the San Jose Museum of Art)

Gail Wight's "species collaboration" is a group of plexiglass instruments, hollow inside, housing white mice as a cage would. The mice control the sounds made by the instruments. Mouse music - I love it.

Mark David Hosale, Defendex-ESPGX (at the South Hall)

I first saw DEFENDEX-ESPGX at SIGGRAPH in 2005. I really like how the structure housing the video monitor and components visually complements the videos' retro militarism. This would look fantastic in one of the Headlands' ex-military barracks buildings.

Bioteknica (Shawn Bailey & Jennifer Willets, with assistance from Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr of SymbioticA), Bioteknica: Laboratory Remix (at the South Hall)

Bioteknica addresses fears surrounding stem cell experimentation by deliberately inciting the artist's own cells to mutate, with the aim of creating living sculptures inspired by teratoma cancer cells. Creepy and very thoughtfully executed.

Huang Shi, Drift Bottles (in Container Culture at the South Hall)

The smell, sounds and arrangement of this artwork made me very, very happy. The Drift Bottles are blown glass with elegant silver stoppers, hung in an arc from the ceiling, with microchips inside. Open one and speak into it, and the next person who comes by will get your message trapped inside the bottle with a potent whiff of incense.

Pia Tikka with Joonas Juutilainen, Obsession (at the South Hall)

Obsession is a four-channel feature film in which the scenes are not traditionally sequenced. Instead, sensors inside the viewers' seats monitor heart rate and viewing position to select the sequence of the scenes according to the viewers' responses. This maintains the passive experience of movie-watching while giving the viewer agency to dictate what he or she sees.

Colin Ives, Nocturne (at the South Hall)

Kit foxes, field mice and possums are some of the animals Colin Ives observed and documented with his infrared camera. Part naturalist documentary, part interactive installation, the creatures in the video footage seem to respond to the presence of viewers.

Neighborhood Public Radio (Lee Montgomery, Jon Brumit, Michael Trigilio and Linda Arnejo) (at the Camera 12 ticket booth and on the air)

NPR provided commentary on the festival, programs on other artists' projects, interviews, music and live entertainment for pedestrians on San Jose's downtown Paseos. Listeners could tune into the radio broadcasts emanating from the tower of the San Jose Museum of Art and see the programs being created in the window of the Camera 12 ticket booth. I'm excited to work with NPR again this summer at Headlands. More details to come.

Survival Research Labs, Ghostly Scenes of Infernal Desecration: An SRL End of Days Production (at the South Hall)

Pulling off a full-scale SRL show was no small feat, and the result was genuinely mind-blowing (I'm fairly sure mine was blown at least a foot back by the Shockwave Cannon). My partner worked with SRL many years ago and had been telling me for nearly a decade how I needed to see them, but he wouldn't allow me to get my first impression of SRL from the small-scale events they've been restricted to putting on in the Bay Area these last few years. It was absolutely worth the wait to see SRL in full effect. Keep an eye on Recombinant Media Labs, who will be screening a 10-channel video recreation of the show sometime in 2007. Not to be missed!