Review of
Nicolas Schöffer Exhibition
at
Espace EDF Electra
6, rue Recamier 75007 Paris
Until September 11th, 2005

If one discounts the existence of László Moholy-Nagy’s Bauhaus Light Space Modulator (1923-30) (rebuilt in 1970 and now in the collection of Harvard University's Busch-Reisinger Museum) – a visionary multimedia artwork that helped inaugurate the artistic dialogue between machines, light, shadow and motion - there is something to the claim that the Hungarian-born French artist Nicolas Schöffer (1912-1992) is 'the Father of Cybernetic Art'. At the very least this premise may now be entertained while viewing actual work (mostly mobile sculpture under theatrical lighting effects) and an incredible amount of documentation now on view in Paris at the museum of the French electricity company Espace EDF Electra.

R&Sie(n)’s Dandy & Mutant A-life Architecture
by Joseph Nechvatal

R&Sie(n)’s exhibition “I’ve heard about…©” opened on the 6th of July at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris‘s temporary space at the Couvent des Cordeliers - and I think it is one of the most relevant exhibitions to what is going on in art today that is of importance. R&Sie(n) is an investigational architectural firm consisting of François Roche, Stéphanie Lavaux, and Jean Navarro; working here with Benoît Durandin. Together, they utilize generative heterogeneous mutations in the creation of proposed utopian city spaces. In fact what they propose at the Musee d’Art Moderne is the artificial growing of extruded urban housing (generative & robotic) - where new cities are constructed via robotic processes by feeding off the carcasses of older dying cities. Very viral. Envisioned is an approach to city planning based on growth scripts and open algorithmic procedures. Towards these ends the show itself includes some subtle audio tracts, model-sculptures, a fully immersive hypnosis chamber with video monitors, booking services, 3D movies and robotic drawings/plans that reveal the source code of the generative program at the heart of their work.

I missed it in the theaters last year, (in case it ever was in the theaters), but last night I screened Michael Winterbottom's flim-before-film-before-last & I think it cements his status as my fave working director right now. It's called "Code 46" & it is something I'd never contemplated & wasn't sure was even possible, a cyberpunk love story.

A vital fusion of abstraction and representation is shrewdly inter-weft in the paintings of Elizabeth Neel. At Gasser and Grunert, her first New York solo exhibition, is a series of oil on canvas, aggressively gushing from the walls, with titles like Strung Up, Popped Off, Sucked Up and Flushed Out.

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The ghost of Jack Goldstein is haunting New York right now with films, records and paintings at Mitchell-Innes & Nash uptown and paintings from the early '80s at Metro Pictures in Chelsea. His suicide two years ago went practically unnoticed by a contemporary art world deep in debt to him (details: here).

The sixth anniversary of the Upgrade with Cat Mazza. She summarized her Micro-revolt project complete with a software application that allows Internet users to reaquaint themselves with the process of knitting. The images show her presentation and inciting the audience to knit.