Dinner #2: Public Art and Technology

When: Friday July 13th from 7-10pm

Where: Art Interactive in Central Square, Cambridge.

Who: Guests included...

Dirk Adams is a local artist, curator, and member of the Mobius Artist Group.

Kenneth Bailey is Sector Organizing and Strategy Lead for the Design Studio for Social Intervention . Most recently he has been a trainer and a consultant, primarily on issues of organizational development and community building.

Nova Benway is a local arts administrator with an interest in collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas.

Neil Coletta, chef for Meet Me at the Table: Public Art & Technology, is a local chef, DJ and food writer.

George Fifield is a media arts curator, writer, teacher and artist. He is the founder and director of Boston Cyberarts Inc., a nonprofit arts organization, which produces the Boston Cyberarts Festival.

Liz Geller is Manager of Clark Gallery in Worcester, MA, devoted to the works of New England artists.

Jock Gill is President and Founder of Penfield Gill, Incorporated , a consulting firm specializing in New Media communications, marketing, and strategic planning. The firm also provides its clients with special scouting services: people, ideas, and companies. Currently, Mr. Gill is a cofounder of the not-for-profit Grass Energy Collaborative and the for-profit Biomass Commodities Corporation -- both registered in Vermont.

Natasha Khandekar is Director of Art Interactive, a non-profit arts space in Cambridge that provides a public forum that fosters self-expression and human interaction through the development and exhibition of art that is contemporary, experimental, and participatory.

Brian Knep is a new media artist who lives and works in Boston. His large-scale interactive exhibit Deep Wounds , 2006, recently won an AICA/New England award for Best Time Based Work.

Judith Leemann is an artist, writer, and educator invested in creating objects, texts, and environments that interrupt habitual thinking. She frequently works in collaboration with others and with system-based methods of inquiry, poaching structures from outside of the arts in order to create things that do not behave as proper art objects.

Meg Rotzel a founder, former director (2002-2006) and currently
co-curator of the Public Art Incubator of the Berwick Research
Institute. She is also Curatorial Associate at the Center for Advanced
Visual Studies at MIT where she coordinates Fellow and Visiting Artist
programs. As an artist, Rotzel coordinates public projects and gives
private gifts. Rotzel is currently a candidate for Brown University's
Masters in Public Humanities.

Susan Sakash acts as the Associate Director of Development at Raw Art Works, an art therapy youth arts organization ( www.rawart.org). She is also a street band trombonist.

Phaedra Shanbaum is Co-Director of Axiom Gallery in Jamaica Plain. AXIOM's mission is to provide space to foster the growth of new and experimental media through exhibition and presentation of new media art and artists. www.axiomgallery.org

Matthew Shanley, artist for Meet Me at the Table: Public Art & Technology, will be the Berwick's Artist in Research for Fall 2007.

Stay tuned for thoughts and reflections by dinner participants...  
 

 For this second of five dinner conversations, the Berwick called together a diverse group of individuals who are using technology and new media to push the notions of public and community access within their specific disciplines or  fields.

Over three courses, this dinner's chef and artist team (Matthew Shanley, the Berwick's AIR artist this fall, and Neil Coletta, a local chef/DJ) challenged the format of the dinner party, while still encouraging a delicious dining experience! We hope that these differing perspectives will help inform the ways in which our PAI "artists in residence" think about and utilize technology in their public art works.
 

We invited guests to share proven practices from their respective fields (education, community organizing, urban planning, health care, etc.) to explore ways in which public art might use new media technology as a effective tool for stimulating dialogue across disciplines.

The dinner site, Art Interactive, was chosen because it highlights the city of Cambridge’s support of and instigation of projects promoting the intersection between art and technology. However, we attempted to open up this conversation to include the perspectives of groups and individuals not from art or new media backgrounds who see public art as a powerful strategy to convey their work to a wider audience.
 

Some questions that interested us going into the dinner include:

Within these shifting modes of communication and representation how do our traditional understandings of public spaces and communities change?

Who is the public for new media public art and how might this public be engaged within a widening digital landscape?