Artists Now!
Department of Visual Art
Guest Lecture Series

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 7:00pm
Arts Center Lecture Hall (ACL 120) on the UWM campus
2400 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Free and Open to the Public

In this talk Lieberman will present his interactive works and collaborations, focusing on the artistic process as research.  He will show works such as Manual Input Sessions, in which an old school overhead projector is transformed into a magical audio visual performance device, and Lights On, a performance of sound and light commissioned for the 2009 opening of the new Ars Electronica center in Linz.  He will also talk about openFrameworks, a C++ toolkit for creative coding which is being used by developers worldwide to make compelling interactive installations and performances.

Zach Lieberman flier

Please come to the second Upgrade! Milwaukee, featuring Nadav Assor (Israel) and Maria Bolivar (Venezuela)!

Nadav Assor, Tunneling (performance)

On Nadav Assor (who was the founder of Upgrade! Tel Aviv):

“I am greatly interested in theories and explorations of urban architectural, emotional and ideological sub-structures. One tactic I use in exposing and reshaping the structures around me is digitization, in the sense of reduction to a primal, reconfigurable matter. The transformed digital matter is recast into its original context, physically manipulated in an ongoing live process that ranges from the absurd to the violent. The outcome often presents various transgressions or inversions of the technological, socio-political structures that served as a starting point. Many of the mechanisms inherent in my work require palpable, physical effort or struggle to manipulate, thus exposing the constant friction between body and media. I do not want my devices to ‘run smoothly’.

My work has been shown in Berlin, Chicago, and in many Israeli venues, including several showings at the Israeli Center for Digital Art, the C.Sides International electronic media festival, the Laptopia festival, the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel-Aviv, The Haifa and Bat Yam Museums and more. I have received a 2006 Leumi (the Israeli national bank) award for excellence in the arts.
I am currently pursuing my MFA with full fellowship in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.”

Maria Bolivar @ UWM

Maria Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She was significantly influenced by her father, Cesar Bolivar, who is a well-known film director in Latin America. After attending the most important design academy in Venezuela: El Instituto de Diseño de Caracas, Maria spent three years as a professional designer. Due to the violence and her involvement in the 2002 National Strike in Venezuela, Maria was forced to come to Milwaukee  where she received her BFA in communication design from the Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) in 2006. Maria is currently pursuing a Master’s of Fine Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee with an intermedia focus.

Hope to see you there!

Time Has Come for a Milwaukee Upgrade!

Upgrade! At a point in history when independent artists, collectives, galleries, and small arts organizations are struggling to see their way through this thickly choking economic smog, all the while acutely aware that the endeavors of some of their colleagues have been sadly lost forever, there are still a few discernible rays of hope in the form of a growing number of groups that place an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration.

Locally, we’ve seen the establishment and continuing success of the creative/tech idea incubator Spreenkler and the foundation of the much anticipated artistic cross-pollinator RedLine Milwaukee, opening in July. In what may enable us to confidently call this a trend o’ our times, we can now happily welcome Upgrade! Milwaukee to our fair city by the Great Lake.

read more…

Please come to our first-ever Upgrade! Milwaukee, featuring Chicago-based Patrick Lichty and Milwaukee’s own Christopher Burns!

patrick lichty

Patrick Lichty (b.1962)  is a technologically-based conceptual artist, writer, independent curator, animator for the activist group, The Yes Men, and Executive Editor of Intelligent Agent Magazine. He began showing technological media art in 1989, and deals with works and writing that explore the social relations between us and media. Venues in which Lichty has been involved with solo and collaborative works include the Whitney & Turin Biennials, Maribor & Yokohama Triennials, Performa Performance Biennial, Ars Electronica, and the International Symposium on the Electronic Arts (ISEA). He is a CalArts/Herb Alpert Fellow, a Smithsonian New Century/New Media Award recipient, and a multiple nominee for the Rockefeller New Media Fellowship.

He also works extensively with virtual worlds, including Second Life, and his work, both solo and with his performance art group, Second Front, has been featured in Flash Art, Eikon Milan, and ArtNews.  His latest work, a collaborative work with Gazira Babeli, entitled 7UP, will have a solo exhibition at SKUC gallery in Slovenia this Fall.

visualizations by Christopher Burns

Christopher Burns is a laptop improviser and a composer of instrumental chamber music.  His works explore simultaneity and multiplicity: textures and materials are layered one on top of another, creating a dense and energetic polyphony.  Both electronic and acoustic music are influenced by Christopher’s work as a computer music researcher.  The gritty, rough-hewn sonic materials of his laptop instruments are produced through custom software designs, and the idiosyncratic pitch and rhythmic structures of his chamber music are typically created and transformed through algorithmic procedures.  His most recent projects emphasize multimedia and motion capture, integrating performance, sound, and animation into a unified experience.

A committed educator, Christopher teaches music composition and technology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Previously, he served as the Technical Director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, after completing a doctorate in composition there in 2003.  He has studied composition with Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Jonathan Berger, Michael Tenzer, and Jan Radzynski.

Upgrade! Milwaukee is a regular gathering of digital creatives - artists, musicians, performers, writers, curators and the public - that fosters dialogue and creates opportunities for collaboration within the local new media community. It features 1-3 guest speakers at each event, held at a rotating venue: informal, free, and open to all. We welcome suggestions for speakers, panels or gatherings. Upgrade! Milwaukee will continue to grow as a local node within the global Upgrade! International (UI) network.

Upgrade! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. While individual nodes present new media projects, engage in informal critique, and foster dialogue and collaboration between individual artists, Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year. There are currently over 30 nodes in UI, across North and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Second Life.