New York

Singapore

 
    
  

The Peoples' Portrait




The Reuters (North American Headquarters) Sponsors "Peoples' Portrait" 
 - A Global Networked Public Art Project by Media Artist Zhang Ga



In the month of November 2004, Reuters North American Headquarters will
sponsor an ambitious public art project titled "Peoples' Portrait"
conceived by media artist Zhang Ga, using its Times Square Headquarters'
massive video and data display screen. The Times Square location will
echo other regional nodes around the world during the Multimedia Art
Asia Pacific Festival, which commissioned Mr. Zhang Ga's global
networked portrait work.


"Peoples' Portrait" utilizes the Internet as the underlying mechanism to
create a global portrait of people, rendered in real time and displayed
instantly and simultaneously on various museum websites and grand video
walls often seen in cosmopolitan urban centers such as Times Square in
New York City and other countries.


Initially conceived as a nominee's proposal for the Rockfeller
Foundation New Media Arts Fellowship 2003, the project is to be realized
on two interrelated levels: video wall display and web portal
exhibition. The Whitney Museum of American Art's New Media Art Portal,
Artport will be the web portal for this project, a gallery version of
the project will be staged meanwhile at the Museum of Photography in
Rotterdam, the Netherlands and a large projection at the facade of 
the Museum of the Future, Ars Electronic Center, Linz, Austria.
All nodes draw images from the same source,the web server into which 
portrait images are uploaded and stored.


The artist will set up a kiosk in Times Square as well as one in the Central
Business District of Singapore City and Brisbane, Australia during the
MAAP Festival from October 27th - November 28th 2004. The kiosk will
consist of a camera that allows passersby to take snapshots; these
snapshots will then be transmitted via Internet to an image database on
a central server. Every few seconds, the video walls in different
locations will retrieve from the same server the peoples' portraits and
display them first in time stamped order, then randomly from the
archive.


Because of the simultaneity and instantaneity of the network, those
freshly taken portraits from various locales in the world will be shown
immediately and sometimes juxtaposed. For example, as a viewer in New
York City watches a picture of himself/herself displayed, another
portrait from Singapore follows subsequently; or as a viewer in Brisbane
sees a portrait from New York, one from London takes over in the next
few seconds. Time and space will collapse in this transcendent moment.


That the display of the portraits is rendered on colossal video walls in
public spaces and significant museum web sites not only viscerally
empowers ordinary people of all walks of life but also symbolically
connects men and women of different races and cultures.


Here the interactivity lies not in the playfulness of a game console;
but rather, in the global repercussions triggered by a simple click of a
button, which evokes a solemn moment of elevation of subjectivity
hitherto unimaginable.


As the natural extension of the artist's consistent search for a visual
language and cultural metaphor in the age of Internet and globalization,
this project actively investigates the aesthetics of portraiture in the
context of speed and scale. How would a public, fluctuating environment
dramatically alter our notion of portraiture as the depiction of a fixed
moment in a private arena? How would the "drawing out of a personality"
being magnified at such a scale affect the very nature of portraiture?
How would a work of art in the age of Internet regain an aura that once
faded owing to mechanical "re-produceablity"? And how would data bytes
and transmission speeds behave as substitutions for brush and paint to
realize a pictorial space?


To answer these questions, the artist utilizes network and communication
infrastructure as the underlying mechanism of the image making process
to create a collective and instantaneous portrait at a global scale with
unprecedented effect, which is otherwise unachievable, therefore opens
up a new discourse for the art of portraiture and challenges visual
perception at large. In bringing about a self-endorsed, powerful and
uplifting impact realized through technologically produced artifacts in
relation to the dynamics of virtuality and reality, speed and time,
local and trans-local, the artist also questions the notion of
interaction and authorship and expresses a humanist concern in the age
of technological supremacy.



Mr. Zhang Ga is a media artist and co-director of agent.netart, a public
media art program organized by the Intelligent Agent and netart
Initiative. (http://agent.netart-init.org). Zhang Ga studied art in
China at an early age, continued his art education at the Berlin Academy
of Arts in Germany (HDK) with DAAD fellowship and holds an MFA from
Parsons School of Design in the US. He has exhibited in Europe and
America in ephemeral domains as well as in tangible spaces; curated
exhibitions, organized conferences and digital salons; written on new
media art practice and criticism; and served on jury duties for media
art grants. In his own art practice he is more interested in the nuances
of interpreting neon signs than displaying the currents of electricity.
Zhang Ga lives and works in New York City where he is a professor at the
MFA Design and Technology Program @ Parsons School of Design; he also is
a visiting lecturer @ Computer Graphics and Interactive Media @ Pratt
Institute. He was nominated for the Rockefeller New Media Arts
Fellowship and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts for
Net Art Curatorial Initiative. Most recently, he is the Artistic
Director of the First Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition
And Symposium, a two year long project he initiated and co-organized with 
Prof. Lu Xiaobo, vice dean of the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University. 
He will also co-curate a new media exhibition in the fall of 2004 titled
"Passage of Mirage" which will open at the Chelsea Art Museum In
New York City.




PEOPLES' PORTRAIT

  • Concept and Producer: Zhang Ga

  • Advisors: Dave Jenson (Instinet), Sven Travis (Parsons), Kim Machen (MAAP)

  • Curators of MAAP 2004: Kim Machen (MAAP), June Yap (Singapore Art Museum)

  • Collaborating Curators: Alex Adriaansens (V2_ ), Christiane Paul (Whitney),
Gerfreid Stocker (Ars Elecctronica)

  • Production: MFA Design and Technology, Parsons School of Design

  • Server Side Scripting: Ossip Kaehr

  • Software and Hardware Engineering: Marc Lin, Frank Lin

  • Signage: MFA Students, Design and Technology Program, Parsons School of Design

  • Times Square Location Sponsorship: Reuters, Instinet

  • Singapore Location Sponsorship: National Arts Council Singapore

  • Brisbane Location Sponsorship:  Creative Industries, Queensland, Australia

  • Linz Location Sposorship: Ars Electronica Center, Austria

  • Rotterdam LOcation Sponsorship: V2_, The Netherlands





    

'MAAP in Singapore' 2004

    
"GRAVITY" Exhibitions: 1 October - 28 November Conference and Festival
Focus Week: 27-31 October

    
MAAP (Multimedia Art Asia Pacific) is an organisation and festival that
explores New Media Art across a range of art forms and practices
emphasizing interactive multimedia, broadband content, Internet, digital
media, animation and projects integrating new media. MAAP was
established to bring focus to the "unmapped" cultural new media content
emerging from Australia and the Asia Pacific regions and is now an Asia
Pacific touring new media arts festival and web site resource,
partnering with key organisations in our region. MAAP's inaugural
festival in 1998 was based in Brisbane and Online and continued till
2001 when it progressed its committment to regional partnerships. MAAP
stepped offshore to Beijing in 2002 and after the resounding success of
'MAAP in Beijing' we are planning our next major program in Singapore.

    
October and November 2004 will see 'MAAP in Singapore', partner with the
Singapore National Arts Council and the Singapore Art Museum to produce
a core New Media exhibition surrounded by a network of exhibitions and
events. GRAVITY as the central festival theme will be linking the
weightless code of digital media to the conceptual weight of ideas in a
concentrated examination of New Media Art. This international exhibition
will explore underlying themes of GRAVITY Ð the gravity of real and
virtual space, social gravity, and the ultimate gravity of ideas
referenced and linked to the Conceptual Art movement.

    
MAAP in Singapore has a range of Partner Programs sourcing content from
MAAP's regional networks with additional exhibitions and screenings
managed by cooperative local venues and collaborators. The Substation,
The Earl Lu Gallery, The National Institute Education Gallery, The
Esplanade along with other galleries and public events will combine to
bring their GRAVITY program to the mix.

    
Other events include a live broadband event linking Singapore and
Brisbane, in an event that will see digital art works beaming and
performance exchanges melting into a VJ/DJ event between the cities.
Also programmed in Singapore at the Nanyang Technological University, a
refereed conference focusing on New Media Art Education while further
symposium and artists talks held at The Singapore Art Museum and The
Substation examines the GRAVITY of other new media issues. 

    
A live internet public art project 'Peoples Portrait' by Zhang Ga will be
rendered in real-time on video walls in public spaces in Singapore,
Brisbane and other cities connecting people of different race and
cultures to create a celebratory experience of 'self portrait'. As MAAP
oscillates between the gravitational pull of online and physical spaces,
MAAP is planning an online residency that will physically locate four
artists in Singapore for the festival and then continue support and
training over a twelve-month period - net/works.- will be calling for
expressions of interest in December.

    
'MAAP in Singapore' is part of the SENI: Singaore Art and the
Contemporary visual arts festival.

    
Further information www.maap.org.au   info@maap.org.au


    

MAAP in Singapore partners with

Singapore National Arts Council www.nac.gov.sg
Singapore Art Museum www.nhb.gov.sg/SAM
The Substation, Singapore www.substation.org
Earl Lu Gallery, LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts
www.lasallesia.edu.sg/secondary.html
Esplanade Theatres on the Bay www.esplanade.com 
Switch Media, Chang Mai http://switchmedia.culturebase.org
Nanyang Technological University www.ntu.edu.sg
The National Institute of Education Gallery www.nie.edu.sg 
Siggraph, Singapore Chapter http://singapore.siggraph.org
The Year of Living Digitally, Singapore http://www.livedigitally.net
The Australian High Commission Singapore www.singapore.embassy.gov.au


MAAP in Singapore is generously supported by

Australia Council www.ozco.org.au
Singapore National Arts Council www.nac.gov.sg
Arts Queensland www.arts.qld.gov.au
Brisbane City Council www.ourbrisbane.com
Australian Film Commission www.afc.gov.au
Queensland College of Art, Griffith University 
QUT Creative Industries www.creativeindustries.qut.edu.au

 
Partner Programs
The Digital Art Museum of the China Millenium Monument,
http://www.bj2000.org.cn
Switch Media, Chiang Mai, http://switchmedia.culturebase.org
Asialink www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au and Australian Centre for the Moving
Image www.acmi.net.au
Experimenta Media Arts www.experimenta.org
DLux Media Arts www.dlux.org.au
Videotage Hong Kong www.videotage.org.hk 
Art Center Nabi, Seoul www.nabi.org.kr

More partners to be announced...