tournament date: monday, feb.20th, 11:30 a.m.*
shoot to win: prizes, fame, and immortality!
open to all students: sign up in the gallery by feb. 17th

ANY QUESTIONS? Ask Diana in Room #104 or Gallery personnel
*If you want to compete, but cannotat this time, please indicate on sign-up form.

This exhibition is designed to highlight experimental works that have pushed the boundaries of traditional cinema using computer and electronic technology. From computer games to interactive films and immersive environments, “Outside the Box” will allow students and the community in general to see and experience non-traditional cinema. Exhibition artists include: Jud Yalkut, Cory Arcangel, Toni Dove, Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky, Tennessee Rice Dixon, and Paul Catanese.

Akron, Ohio, Dec. 5, 2005 – Featuring experimental works that challenge the boundaries of traditional cinema, “Outside the Box: New Cinematic Experiences” will be on exhibit Jan. 18-Feb. 24, 2006, in the Emily Davis Gallery at The University of Akron.

Using computer and electronic technology, the free exhibition will showcase works by seven pioneering media artists who explore such subjects as computer game hacking, interactive cinema, and database-driven movies.

“This innovative exhibition displays the interplay of art and media in a variety of formats,” says Seth Thompson, curator of “Outside the Box” and an adjunct faculty member in the Mary Schiller Myers School of Art at The University of Akron. “It enables us to explore a new frontier in contemporary art.”

Emily Davis Gallery is in Folk Hall, 150 E. Exchange St. Gallery hours are Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. For more information call 330-972-5951, e-mail dwatt@uakron.edu, or visit www.uakron.edu/art.

The exhibition’s free public opening reception is Jan. 18 from 4:30 to 7 p.m.

Two media artists will give free public lectures in the Folk Hall Auditorium. Cory Arcangel will talk about “How I Went from Modifying Nintendo Games to Giving Lectures About Simon and Garfunkel” at 6 p.m. on Feb. 3. Arcangel takes a novel approach to computer games by hacking them as part of his artistic practice to create new meanings. Super Mario Clouds v2k3 and I Shot Andy Warhol are two of Arcangel’s game hacks in the Emily Davis Gallery exhibition.

Computer artist Patrick Lichty, widely known for his work as the computer animator for the activist art group called The Yes Men, will talk about “Confessions of a Culture Hacker: Probes, Pranks, and Investigations” at 6 p.m. on March 24.

The other artists showcased in “Outside the Box” include:

• Jud Yalkut, a video artist with a 40-plus year career focusing on spiritual transformation, is showing his 1966 landmark piece Turn, Turn, Turn and his 2005 video installation Sea Islands.

• Toni Dove’s interactive video installation Sally or the Bubble Burst uses speech recognition and synthesis to allow viewers to interact with Sally, a responsive virtual character based on the 1930s fan and bubble dancer Sally Rand.

• Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky’s Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database features three database-driven films in which software creates movies by selecting and editing media from a database.

• Tennessee Rice Dixon’s 1995 award-winning Scrutiny in the Great Round CD-ROM is a slow-moving and interactive collage about birth and marriage that employs sound, poetry, and imagery of artifacts and symbols from cultures throughout history. Dixon’s artist book that inspired the CD-ROM will also be on view.

• Media artist Paul Catanese will show three of his hybrid creations: Medicinal Craft of Cephalopods, Recollections of a Somnambulist and A Short History of the Bezoar Stone made for the Gameboy Advance.

“Outside the Box” is part of the Myers Artist-in-Residency Program at the UA Myers School of Art. The program brings nationally and internationally renowned artists to campus to share their diverse talents with students, alumni and the community.

Larry Miller describes himself as an intermedia artist, who was active in the development of multi-media and performance-based works in SoHo’s earliest alternative exhibition spaces. Whether presented as live performance, specific site installation, or gallery exhibition, Miller considers all of his works -- as well as himself -- to be “performing objects.” He explains that in this view, there are no fixed boundaries between objects, events, time and space, or between definitions that societies offer for science, art, and religion. Drawing upon a background in music, theater and the visual arts, Miller composes configurations that merge diverse media and participatory elements, cutting across disciplines to blend ironic humor and poetic contemplation.

Starting in 1969, Miller became a core associate of the group of artists known as Fluxus – a nonconformist international group which began in Germany in 1962, This group was opposed to tradition and professionalism in the arts, and were noted for its Happenings, actions, publications, and concerts. Miller was active as an organizer, performer, and presenter within the Fluxus milieu, and today he is recognized internationally as a Fluxus scholar. His works have appeared world-wide in a variety of exhibitions, galleries and museums.

Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator of Exhibitions, Wexner Center for the Arts, to speak at Myers School of Art, The University of Akron – March 15

Visiting the Myers School of Art on Wednesday, March 15, Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, will lecture at 5:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Folk Hall. Helen Molesworth's most recent exhibition at the Wexner, "Part Object Part Sculpture", charted a geneology of transatlantic sculpture produced in the wake of Marcel Duchamp’s erotic objects and his hand made readymades of the 1960s.

This presentation is free and open to the public. Ms. Molesworth is a guest lecturer for Asst. Professor of Art Kevin Concannon's special topics class, "Mass Production: Artist’s Multiples from the 1960’s Through the Present”. Seating is limited.

Contact dwatt@uakron.edu for more information, or call 330-972-5951.

Image by Donn Young.

Akron, Ohio, March 6, 2006 – For the past 25 years, New Orleans photojournalist Donn Young has chronicled life in his culturally rich city. Nothing could have prepared him for the calamity that devastated so much of the Gulf Coast last August. Deemed an essential employee by the State of Louisiana, Young got back to work three days after the storm, despite the fact that he had personally lost his home and his photography studio, which was located in the Lakeview neighborhood. Since September, he has worked 12-hour days or longer to document a city brought to its knees, and the subsequent attempts to start the monumental rebuilding process.

Young says, “I believe the power of photography can bring empathy and compassion for people whose lives have been forever changed, and to a great American city that bears little resemblance to its former self”. The program ends with images from a “New Orleans comes back” promotional campaign. Young will be available to answer questions following the presentation.

Young has been selected as guest curator for a one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, to be created by the Louisiana State Museum. His photography has been deemed “historically significant” by Louisiana State University and the Records Management Association of America. As such, LSU has mandated the salvaging and restoration of Young’s storm-damaged archive of 1,350,000 images. Young has been a photographer for the past 35 years, and has received 38 awards during his career. His gallery exhibitions include Florida State University, New Orleans Contemporary Art Center, Springfield Museum of Art, Louisiana State Museum, and many other group and one man shows.

Patrick Lichty is a technologically-based conceptual artist, writer, and curator for over 15 years, and graduate of The University of Akron. Lichty’s work includes video, digital media, print and installations that deal with political and social issues of contemporary media and technological culture. Currently, he is best known as the computer animator for the activist art group, The Yes Men, and as Editor-in-Chief for Intelligent Agent, a New Media arts journal published in cooperation with Christiane Paul, Adjunct Digital Arts Curator for the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC.

Lichty’s work has been exhibited worldwide at such venues such as Ars Electronica and the International Symposium of Electronic Arts as well as the Whitney, Torino, Melbourne, and Maribor Biennales. Lichty was born and raised in the Akron/Canton area, and his 2000 Smithsonian work, “SPRAWL: The American Landscape in Transition” spotlights the encroachment of urban sprawl in northeast Ohio.

Akron, Ohio, Mar. 15, 2006 – Bringing the work of seven contemporary artists together, the exhibition, “Intersections”, opens at the Myers School of Art’s Emily Davis Gallery on April 3, 2006, and continues through April 27 in Folk Hall on the campus of The University of Akron (150 E. Exchange St.). Artists Fabian Marcaccio, Richmond Burton, Lydia Dona, Julia Fish, Joe Fyfe, James Hyde, and Steve Roden will each have several works displayed in the show. In discussing the exhibition, curator Matthew Kolodziej, Assistant Professor of Art at UA, explains that “An intersection is a place where encounters happen and choices are made. In the hands of these seven accomplished artists - time, space, and materials are crafted to orient and mislead. The painters all use materials and subjects that suggest familiar and intimate experiences, only to question the permanence and strength of what we seem to understand.”

For more information, contact 330-972-5951, email dwatt@uakron.edu, or visit
www.uakron.edu/art/intersections.