the livingblog

Iterations, original and virtual, of the Dante Hotel

While we here on Pacific Standard Time have not even finished our first pot of coffee, amazing things are happening on the other side of the world (and, in other worlds)! For example, part of ISEA2009: The Exhibition has opened at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast. Simultaneously, the works featured in this exhibition are viewable from around the globe on Kriti Island (not the one in Greece, the one in Second Life). This synchronicity creates a space to explore both the physical and virtual gallery environments, where viewers and visitors can encounter the work, and also each other, as both bodies and avatars. The Dante Hotel Regenerated is one of the works installed on Kriti Island and at Golden Thread, as part of Kritical Spaces: The Kritical Works in SL II Project. ISEA2009: the Exhibition is presented in conjunction with the ISEA2009 Symposium, and

addresses contested spaces, focusing on the environment, political and economic conflicts and the human body. Curated by Kathy Rae Huffman, it will display an exciting range of innovative and challenging work at the interface of art, science, communication and technology.

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Since the late 1960s, Lynn Hershman Lesson has remained new media’s pioneer woman, creating the first site-specific installation and the first robotic net works with a humanoid presence, integrating performance, theater, photography, and interactivity in entirely new modes, breaking ground in this life as well as Second Life, and making powerful films that push the boundaries of experimental documentary and narrative structure. This video, “30 Years in 30 Seconds”, should give you some idea (albeit crunched down) of her trajectory.

We recently announced via the livingblog that the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Technology (ACM SIGGRAPH) is awarding Lynn the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art.  We failed to mention that this is the very first time that this award has been given out, making Lynn and her colleague Roman Verostko the inaugural recipients of this incredibly distinctive honor! And what a deserved honor it is for an artist that, in a culture that is so bent on constant renewal, reinvention, and rediscovery, has stayed so relevant, so ingenuous, so versatile, and so forward-thinking.

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