The Ambient Electron: Abstract Media Art
September 14, 2002 – February 23, 2003
Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 2002 from 6 – 9 pm
With The Ambient Electron: Abstract Media Art, DeCordova underscores its commitment to new media exhibitions by presenting the work of three moving image artists who rely on abstract imagery and music to explore atmosphere and mood. The artists are Devon Damonte, Dennis H. Miller, and Walter Wright.
Since 1987, Devon Damonte has been an independent experimental animator who creates humorous abstractions through a handmade cameraless technique known as Direct Animation, a process that involves manipulating various types of raw film leader by hand-applying ink and paint, scratching away image, creating material collage directly on the film, and a myriad of further methods. In essence, the film material quite literally acts as the canvas for imagery created by hand. Damonte's particular interest is in non-representational or radically abstracted imagery, and his work often stems from a conceptual deconstructionist or 'decompositional' aesthetic applied to material artifacts of popular culture. These films are then frequently transferred to video and digital media for presentation, as well as screened in traditional film formats and as components in installations.
Dennis H. Miller uses complicated 3D ray tracing software to compose animations in the same manner in which he composes his internationally known electronic music. By creating the imagery and sound simultaneously, he achieves a more unified work in which neither form predominates. A Music Department faculty member at Northeastern University in Boston since 1981, Miller currently heads up the music technology program and serves on the Multimedia Studies Steering Committee. His works have been performed at concerts and festivals throughout the world, and his music appears on Opus One Records and the Frog Peak Collaborative CD, among others. Miller is an Associate Editor of Electronic Musician magazine, for which he writes about music software and hardware technologies. A graphic artist and 3D animator since 1998, Miller's animations have likewise appeared at numerous venues throughout the world.
Walter Wright shows video pieces in live settings using a device of his own invention—the "video shredder." The videos in this show are excerpts from his performances. A member of the Boston-area collective VideoSpace—as well as a professor of film, video and computer graphics at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston—Wright has performed throughout the east coast of the USA and Canada at art galleries and museums, schools and colleges, media centers, conferences, and festivals. One of the first video animators, he worked at Computer Image Corp in the early 1970s. In 1973–1976, as artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center, NY, he pioneered video performance touring public access centers, colleges and galleries with the Paik/Abe video synthesizer.
The Ambient Electron: Abstract Media Art is organized by Curator of New Media George Fifield.
