(Boston) – The Boston University School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents the multi-media installation Phantom, on view Tuesday, November 17, 2009 through Sunday, January 17, 2010 at the 808 Gallery at Boston University. The opening reception is open to the public and will be held on Wednesday, November 18, 5:30-7:30pm with the artists present.
Phantom is created by Canadian-based artists Alan Dunning and Paul Woodrow as part of the Einstein’s Brain Project, an ongoing collaboration between artists and scientists who use various methods to examine human consciousness and constructions of the body. Created specifically for Boston University’s 808 Gallery, Phantom will encompass a room-size video projection and sound components that appropriate strategies found in paranormal psychology and pattern recognition, to explore ideas about how we construct our world.
Phantom, as in previous works created as part of the Einstein’s Brain Project, explores the construction of a world delineated by presence and absence, and pattern and randomness, locating the body through a construction that is both machine and human. Specifically, Phantom will comprise a back-screen projection approximately 120 feet long and 16 feet high depicting a liquid environment that responds electronically to the ambient sound in the space, including the human voice; its effect being that of a rippling pool of water in sunlight. Below the surface of this simulated pool are abstracted images generated through a paranormal psychology apparatus used to record electronic voice and video phenomena. What sounds like distorted speech can be heard throughout the space. Phantom thus intimates the hidden content of the present space – the history and residue of past lives – creating tension between what is real and what is imagined.
Alan Dunning has been working with complex multi-media installations for the past two decades, using the computer as a tool for generating data fields and, for the last 15 years, interactive environments. Since 1980, he has exhibited in more than 100 shows and has had more than 70 catalogues and reviews published on his work. Dunning’s work has received numerous awards, including grants from the Daniel Langlois Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council, the Marion Fund, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, and the Alberta Art Foundation. He is represented in collections internationally, including those of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He is currently Head of the Media Arts and Digital Technologies Programme at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary.
Paul Woodrow has been involved in a variety of inter-disciplinary and multi-media activities since the late 1960s, including performance art, installation, video, painting and improvised music. He has collaborated with many artists, including Iain Baxter (N.E.Thing Co.), Hervé Fischer (The Sociological Art Group of Paris), Genesis P. Orridge (Coum Transmissions, England), and Clive Roberstson (W.O.R.K.S, Canada). He has exhibited extensively in Japan, France, Italy, Sweden, England, Belgium, Russia, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and the United States, including the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm and The Tate Gallery, London. He has received numerous awards from the Canada Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. He is currently Coordinator of Graduate Studies in the Art Department at the University of Calgary.
Einstein's Brain is a collaborative, immersive, virtual and augmented reality work, begun in 1996, that explores the notion of the brain as a real and metaphoric interface between bodies and worlds in flux. The Einstein’s Brain project seeks to examine the idea of the world as a construct sustained through the neurological processes within the brain and revealing that the world is not simply a reality outside ourselves but, is in fact the result of an interior process that makes and sustains our body image and its relationship to the exterior world. Through the investigation of virtual reality, its potential use as a perceptual filter, and its accompanying social space, Einstein’s Brain is an exploration of the new constructions of consciousness and the consequent technological colonization of the body.
The Boston University School of Visual Arts at the College of Fine Arts is a community of artists within a great university and in a city that offers diversity within a vibrant arts culture. Founded in 1954 as a professional training school at Boston University, the school offers an intensive program of studio training, combined with liberal arts studies leading to the Bachelor’s of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees. The first-rate teaching and mentoring of its regular faculty is supplemented by a vibrant program of visiting artists, guest lecture series, and exhibitions. The School offers introductory and advanced classes in painting, sculpture, graphic design, art education, ceramics, photography, glassblowing, and printmaking. A solid background in art history, contemporary critical analysis, and liberal arts complements the studio arts courses.
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