Archive: Arts & Entertainment

Aurora, New York - The Wells College String Room Gallery is pleased to present Analog Futures, a group exhibition organized by guest curator Laura McGough. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, September 1, from 6 to 8 p.m., and will feature a performance entitled "Ritual for Hybrid Media" at 7:30 p.m. by exhibiting artist Jason Bernagozzi. This exhibition is free and open to the public and will be on view until October 14.

Analog Futures features work by two generations of artists who emphasize the material and sculptural potential of media technology: Aldo Tambellini, Brandon Barr, Jason Bernagozzi and the collaborative partners known as LoVid. Beginning in the 1960s, Tambellini has played an influential role in video and new media art practice. His manipulated cathode ray tubes, known as "prepared" television sets, produced engrossing, abstracted visual alternatives to conventional televised content. Prefaced by documentation of this influential work, Analog Futures presents artworks that demonstrate the unique aesthetic vocabulary made possible by artists' purposeful exploitation of the inner workings of electronic media devices.

Curator Laura McGough describes the creative approach of Barr, Bernagozzi and LoVid as "resurrecting half-forgotten and obsolete media, creating a host of new meanings and contexts." Bernagozzi, co-founder of the experimental media arts non-profit Signal Culture, cites disciplinary precedent as he comments on our current political media culture with his newly-constructed wobbulator, while LoVid's Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus reach inside computer circuit boards to unlock the visual potential of the short circuit. Los Angeles-based artist Brandon Barr exposes the elemental properties of plasma screens themselves, and in a new installation created by McGough and Wells College students, VHS tapes are re-envisioned as a source of vibrating, kinetic matter.

Laura McGough is a media art historian, curator and educator currently based in Buffalo, N.Y. She has organized exhibitions, screenings, performances and streaming content for arts organizations in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia. In 1997, she co-founded the new media collective NOMADS and through this initiative organized a number of early web-based art projects/exhibitions including Audiophfile, a six-part sound art series, and published MASSAGE, an early multi-media Web-based journal. She received a master's in interdisciplinary studies from New York University and is completing a Ph.D. in the Department of Media Study at the University of Buffalo. Her current research focuses on the live transmissions and the turn to liveness in contemporary visual and media arts.

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