Multimedia exhibit highlights “digital error” projections to create immersive visitor experience
Announcement
Boston, MA —
Emerson College’s Media Art Gallery presents a new multimedia exhibition of glitch art, the creative practice of interfering with or intentionally altering digital image files for aesthetic purposes, beginning Wednesday, September 18. Curated by Dr. Leonie Bradbury, Emerson’s new Foster Chair of Art Theory and Practice and Curator in Residence, the exhibition showcases glitch art by Allison Tanenhaus and others with the art taking many forms, digitally projected onto the gallery walls, windows, and displayed on monitors.
An opening reception will be held Thursday, September 19, from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Emerson Media Art Gallery, and features live electronic music by Dj Limbc and live video mixing by local digital media artists DebStep and J. Bagist. DebStep and J.Bagist run Property Materials, a local glitch art magazine and materials collaborative that will celebrate the release of its most recent issue showcasing Tanenhaus' work.
Emerson’s Media Art Gallery, located at 25 Avery Street in Boston, is open Wednesday through Sunday from 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. All exhibits and related programming are free and open to the public. The exhibition runs through Sunday, October 6, 2019.
“GlitchKraft is a celebratory display of digital errors, an ode to the interrupted image. Images that are usually limited to be viewed on a screen – mobile or otherwise – here are projected larger than life onto every surface of the gallery to create a technicolor ‘glitch-world’ that will surround visitors and allow them to be fully immersed in light and sound,” said Bradbury, who joined Emerson College in this role this summer following the passing of gallery founder and former Foster Chair of Art Theory and Practice Joseph D. Ketner II last year.
For the GlitchKraft exhibit, Allison Tanenhaus collaborated with color-bending, mind-scrambling, new-media friends and local artist collaborators, including Alex Kittle, Ben K. Foley, Property Materials, Lauren Klotzman, and stickipictures. Together, they embrace electronic error, circumvent computational constraint and transcend technological overstimulation — culminating in an immersive, ephemeral glitchscape made to overload the senses.
About the Artist
Allison Tanenhaus is a Boston-based digital glitch artist who specializes in abstract geometrics, vibrant color fields, optical perspectives, playful patterns, and unexpected dimensional qualities. Tanenhaus’ source material consists of original photographs and previous glitch works that she digitally alters via smartphone. Created with equal parts deliberation and experimentation, the results are rainbow-hued, architectural, fantastical compositions that take on a psychedelic life of their own.
Tanenhaus is a graduate of Harvard University and Emerson’s Copy Editing Professional Certificate Program and founder of street-art inspired Slogans for Nothing. Her work appears locally and throughout the U.S. in various exhibitions and commissions; recently, in The Alternative Gallery in Allentown, PA and Cover These Walls in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. In 2019, Tanenhaus was awarded a Fellowship in Visual Art from the Somerville Arts Council.
Additional Events Schedule
Thursday, September 26, 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Artist Talk Featuring exhibiting artists Allison Tanenhaus, Ben Foley, and Lauren Klotzman + Video Art Performance MEMORY RECOVERY : : \\AFTERDARK REVISITED by Lauren Klotzman.
Saturday, September 28, 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Glitch Workshop with Allison Tanenhaus
One-on-one guidance on iPads (and BYO devices), with preloaded images and apps.
Thursday, October 3, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Artist Talk featuring illustrator, art historian, and film curator Alex Kittle
Since 2018, Kittle has been devoted to women filmmakers, creating portraits and zine biographies as a way to share their stories and works in an accessible way. She also co-hosts a monthly screening series and discussion group called Strictly Brohibited, which highlights women-made films in a welcoming community for women and non-binary film fans. Visit @panandscan and @strictlybrohibited for more information.
Saturday, October 5, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Closing Reception
Featuring live electronic music by Doug Bielmeier, Robin Amos, and Blaik Ripton, and live video art by Christopher Konopka. A slideshow viewing party includes glitch art made by visitors at the workshop, artists featured in the exhibit, and artists in the latest issue of the Property Materials zine.
A selection of images can be viewed and downloaded here.
About Emerson’s Media Art Gallery
Emerson’s Media Art Gallery, which opened in 2016, offers four to six exhibitions per year, featuring the work of outstanding national and international visual and media artists as well as Emerson’s advancements in the fields of emergent digital media, projection mapping, augmented reality, data visualization, and performance art. It will serve as the locus of Emerson College’s School of the Arts’ Visual Art Program that has brought public art events to the City of Boston.
Funding for the Media Art Gallery has been provided by the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, a program of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, administered through a collaboration between Mass Development and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Additional funding has been provided by the George I. Alden Trust and individual contributors to the Emerson’s Media Art Gallery. For more information, visit http://emerson.edu/urban-arts.
About the College
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, opposite the historic Boston Common and in the heart of the city’s Theatre District, Emerson College educates individuals who will solve problems and change the world through engaged leadership in communication and the arts, a mission informed by liberal learning. The College has 3,780 undergraduates and 670 graduate students from across the United States and 50 countries. Supported by state-of-the-art facilities and a renowned faculty, students participate in more than 90 student organizations and performance groups. Emerson is known for its experiential learning programs in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, the Netherlands, London, China, and the Czech Republic as well as its new Global Portals, with the first opening last fall in Paris. The College has an active network of 51,000 alumni who hold leadership positions in communication and the arts. For more information, visit Emerson.edu.