Courtesy photo.

When you walk into an art exhibit, you probably don’t expect to go surfing.

But this is the case at “DANM Artists Take Over the Museum of Art and History.”

A virtual surfboard experience constructed by Daniel Christopher, Lyes Belhocine and Drew Detweiler illustrates the endless possibilities offered through the fusion of technology and art. This fusion is the focus of UC Santa Cruz’s Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) exhibit which opens tomorow.

The show features a variety of interactive technology and art by current and former DANM students. Mobile technology, interactive designs and web-based applications are just a few of the modes utilized to create interactive works. Not only does the exhibit offer a hands-on experience, it also explores the idea of seeing technology as art.

DANM’s exhibit opening will be a one-night affair at the Museum of Art and History (MAH) in downtown Santa Cruz on Friday from 5–9 p.m. A collage animation workshop will be held from 6–8 p.m., along with a guerilla grafting demonstration at 6 and 8 p.m.

DANM students have displayed work at MAH before, and it has since become a prime place for them to showcase student art.

“Artists want to show their work, and they want to show it in the best place possible,” said Felicia Rice, DANM program manager. “These students and alumni all have experience, so this is wonderful that they took the initiative to plan the event.”

“There are a lot of digital artists in the area working, so we were able to bring the alumni and current students together. It’s also a great way to reach out to the larger Santa Cruz,” said Drew Detweiler, a UCSC DANM research associate and 2010 graduate of the DANM program.

“It’s all interactive and hands-on,” Detweiler said. “It’s not like looking at art on a wall. You can pick up the objects, touch them … it’s a very participatory experience. I think people will be excited by the variety of work, from web-based applications to VJ tech to participatory activities. People will see things they wouldn’t be able to see otherwise.”

Although the exhibit explores the boundaries of technology and art, the pieces displayed are centered around themes different people can relate to, like music, skateboarding and animation. This means that the exhibit attracts an eclectic crowd, bringing people together to experience art through the eyes of digital artists.

“When you hear the word ‘digital,’ it brings up a lot of different ideas,” Rice said. “What you will learn is that the field is very broad. DANM is a wealth of possibilities for applying technology and rethinking how these tools are used in an art context.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at DANM Artists Take over Museum

Photo by Molly Solomon

The Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) workshop is cluttered with stacks of wood, dismantled computers, multi-colored wires, prosthetic limbs, empty cans of Mountain Dew and couches manned by fitfully sleeping graduate students.

For DANM’s ten participants, this represents two years of work coming to fruition. This year’s Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) new media exhibition, entitled “Permutations,” will be open to the public this Thursday through Sunday.

Those in the DANM program study digital media and the cultures they have created. According to the program’s website, faculty and students from a variety of backgrounds “pursue interdisciplinary artistic and scholarly research and production in the context of a broad examination of digital arts and cultures.”

“This is a very non-traditional program,” DANM student Andrew Pascoe said. “It crosses the boundaries of art by employing different types of technology.”

The yearly MFA presentation began in 2006, but has only been able to move onto campus since the completion of the new digital arts facility. Ten projects will be on exhibit, each with their own twist on DANM’s inventive sensibilities.

Pascoe composed a musical piece for “Permutations” entitled “God: The Opera,” which will be performed in the Digital Arts Media Center on Friday at 8 p.m. UCSC alumnus Jacob Cribbs wrote the libretto for the piece.

“I avoid spectacle. I avoid the dramatic. But my opera involves a wide variety of things,” Pascoe said. “Instrumentalists and singers will be reading the opera. I have a soprano, alto, baritone and bass all performing. I also have an oboe, string quartet and a piano playing. Then I employ computer electronics along with those.”

Exploring the relationship between art and technology can create varying theories, as the DANM participants illustrate through their unique works. Pascoe’s research has led him to a conclusion that might be inflammatory to some involved in the musical world.

“Music has no meaning,” he said. “My opera is based on the Book of Job. The piece parallels Job’s search for meaning in suffering by examining the search for meaning in music. Job doesn’t find any answers, and there are no answers in music.”

Pascoe said this doesn’t undermine the value of music.

“Music is still a worthwhile pursuit,” he said. “Stripping it of its meaning does not strip it of its beauty.”

Other DANM students chose to express their research through similarly unconventional means. Phoenix Toews wrote a programming language entitled “Palimpsest,” which he has used to create an augmented reality presentation for both iPhones and iPads.

“The type of program I’ve created places virtual objects at real GPS locations,” Toews said. “We’ll be loaning out iPads, and when you look at the screen you’ll see the camera’s view of the real world. But when you approach my virtual objects, they’ll appear as if they’re actually there.”

Toews’ augmented reality scavenger hunt may seem like a video game fanatic’s dream come true, but there are other elements as well.

“With this particular piece I’m talking about memory and place,” Toews said. “I’m collapsing space into the moment, taking a single space and making it a multiplicity. This is a way to tell many stories about a single location.”

Levi Goldman, another DANM student, created an interactive exhibit entitled “Completion Inc.”

“My piece represents a fictitious corporate entity,” Goldman said. “I have a fantastical collection of human parts, presumably ready for sale.”

Cameras will sense the movement of viewers and a variety of different body parts will move and shift accordingly.

“Subtle movements and heartbeats represent the life within the objects we consume,” Goldman said. “Commodity items try to fit the average body, but when people use those products, their identities meld and become average. It produces homogeneity, or monoculture.”

But monoculture is nowhere to be found in “Permutations.” These ten demonstrations of creativity are made all the more impressive when compared to the unorganized and chaotic corner of the digital arts building in which they were produced.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The Future of Art

The Digital Arts Research Center, which gathers the art department under one roof, officially opened after a six-year construction period. Photo by Isaac Miller.

The digital age gave art a new lease on life, and for six years UCSC has been building to accommodate it.

The Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) is the structure currently blocking the art studios’ ocean view. Set to open on April 29, the building’s debut will be the subject of much pomp and ceremony. Speakers, lecturers, and student artists have been scheduled in honor of the grand opening, ushering in a new age of artistic partnerships. The building has been in the works since 2004.

“What makes it an exciting building is having lots of different departments in the same spaces,” said David Yager, Dean of the Art Department. “For instance you have music, theater, art, digital art, and new media, so you have a lot of collaboration that takes place just because they’re in the building together, and they see each other and meet each other.”

Bringing minds together was more difficult under previous working conditions. The Masters of Fine Arts program was fragmented across Porter and Kresge Colleges, and undergraduate art departments were likewise scattered. The new building will now house classrooms for drawing, theater, photography, music, digital arts and new media majors.

Yager stated that art students were previously using a theater space for drawing classes, citing the necessity of building projects for programs with different spatial needs.

“I believe there’s been a transformation from more traditional to digital, so having the new building allowed all that to happen at the same time,” Yager said. “Both create more space for students that was needed, and also to create very specific kinds of spaces, so many of them don’t look like normal classrooms.”

The rooms are large, airy, and equipped for large scale electronic work. They are mostly empty, waiting for artists and departments to finish moving in. But once the migration has ended, Yager predicts a landscape far different from the two-dimensional.

“Versus sitting here and looking at [art], many times you’re interacting with it, so you’re participatory relative to the artwork,” he said.

Graduate students Christopher Molla and Jessica Hayden had similar thoughts. On Monday afternoon they parked a reflective bullet-trailer in front of the DARC, preparing it for the student art exhibit in honor of the grand opening. Based on the 50’s American nuclear age, the trailer holds period furniture and images.

“It’s partially fiction, partially documentary,” Hayden said. “It’s a space that you enter, and there are a number of devices, like a radio, that you can actually play with. They trigger sound, audio, music, video. It’s kind of like a history museum that’s interactive.”

Although their installation will be residing outside, both artists appreciated the more extensive darkrooms and spaces for the theater arts.

“Once everybody gets settled, it’s going to be pretty fruitful, I think,” Molla said. “They’re still figuring out how to use all the space, how to manage it … it’s been really good for collaboration.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Making the Arts More Artistic

Illustration by Kiri Rasmussen.

Illustration by Kiri Rasmussen.

From the iPhone to the Kindle to the iPad, the literate world has seen a diminishing need for print media as technology continues to advance.

The UC Santa Cruz theater arts department will collaborate with the digital arts and new media department, starting Feb. 26, to present an experimental show titled “Stop the Press!” The production will show how the world of print has transformed over the years as more and more new technology develops.

Jim Bierman, UCSC theater arts professor and one of the faculty members involved with the show, explains why “Stop the Press!” is important at this time.

“We’re on the cusp of a paradigm shift from print media to digital media,” Bierman said. “This show addresses the emotional anxiety that people feel in moving from newspapers to newsreaders.”

With newspapers like the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle struggling to survive, print media is in decline. While they all recognize this, the performers and producers of the show have different opinions about the current state of media and its transition.

Brian Luce, a fourth-year theater arts student and assistant director of “Stop the Press!,” feels that it is simply more convenient to access newsreaders.

“I like actually holding a newspaper, but I normally don’t get my news from a newspaper,” Luce said. “I get it online.”

The production comes at a time when people can read anything they want to know on an electronic device hardly larger than the palms of their hands. Amazon’s electronic reading device, the Kindle, is currently being shipped to over 100 countries.

Kimberly Jannarone, theater arts professor and the show’s director, said it is important to find a way to live in a world of decreasing print.

“This piece speaks to exploring new ways of people interacting with new technologies,” Jannarone said. “This isn’t a play in the traditional sense. It’s structured more like a Disney ride.”

Modeled after Disney’s “Carousel of Progress,” an attraction based on both nostalgia and futurism, the production begins by inviting audience members to walk into a hall. There they can approach different stages set with scenes portraying the death of newspapers and print media.

Audience members can have their fortunes told, enter the room through a “digital environment,” and even see a performance in which a theater arts student dances with a 3-D image.

“It has been pretty exciting to figure out ways for [the dancer] to interact with something that’s not actually in the room,” Luce said.

The idea for the show first arose last spring. Its creators were initially inspired by a photo of the old Santa Cruz Sentinel building downtown. Through the windows of the building, the image showed where the printing presses used to be, outlined on the walls by years of splattered ink. The powerful image of the shadow of the presses presented the idea to create a show based around the death of print and the coming “golden age” of technology.

Members of the collaborating departments then sat down together to discuss their ideas and what they wanted the show to encompass.

“This is really something quite different from starting with the script of a Shakespeare play or something that is already written,” Bierman said. “The script itself is largely assembled of electronic artifacts. It includes websites, blogs and online forums.”

Producers of the show all have different opinions about the transition from print media to digital media. These differences of opinion cause the show to address both sides: the arguments for and against emerging media technology. Some people, including Jannarone, feel that the tangibility of print is priceless.

“I’ve never found anything better than a book in my hands, and there’s nothing more comfortable or pleasurable than lying on a sofa reading,” Jannarone said.

Jannarone’s major concern is that media technology will lead to the demise of investigative journalism. As news begins to circulate entirely on the Web, she says, journalists will have less incentive to go out into the field to report.

“And that’s what scares me,” Jannarone said. “The idea that we are going to have less in-depth coverage of the news in the world, and therefore less knowledge.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at As Print Dies, an Experimental Show is Born

Photo by Olivia Irvin.

Along with its permanent rooftop sculpture exhibit and other modern art pieces, the Museum of Art and History (MAH) at the McPherson Center is currently offering a space for UC Santa Cruz students to display their work in an upcoming presentation by the Digital Arts and New Media Master of Fine Arts degree program (DANM MFA). 

DANM will present the work of 10 graduate students in a two-part exhibition. The first part, called “interACTIVE,” runs through June 24, while the second, called “interACTIVATE,” will open May 29.

“We were lucky to be invited to show the work of our DANM graduates at the MAH,” said Felicia Rice, media representative for the DANM project. “This is our fourth graduating cohort, and we have previously shown at the Digital Media Factory on the Westside and … a huge digital arts festival in downtown San Jose.”

The pieces are created with digital and new media technologies, creating new sights for museum visitors not familiar with art media.

Nada Miljkovic, who is completing her final quarter in the two-year DANM master’s program, will have work showing in both parts of the interactive exhibition. For interACTIVE, she will be presenting a Balkan folk song about the emotion and pain of arranged marriages in the style of sevdah, a traditional Bosnian musical form.

“Coming from the Balkans, my own family is full of forced marriages,” said Miljkovic, who was born in the former Yugoslavia. “I chose to do this piece in hopes that through the experience of the endurance piece some liberation may occur both for myself and the participating audience.”

For interACTIVATE, Miljkovic produced a short film on forced marriage — “Eva on Marriage” — that she also submitted to the Santa Cruz Film Festival at the Del Mar Theatre.

“It’s a real honor to bring this very specific music tradition, that some may categorize as folk music, into a institution of high art,” Miljkovic said. “My aim is to educate and entertain.”

Providing UCSC and Cabrillo artists a venue to display their work has allowed the MAH to promote art in the community. The museum currently holds the one-of-a-kind artwork of various regional, local and college artists from Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, as well as the greater Bay Area. 

One of the current exhibits is showcasing the work of Bay Area artist Jerry Ross Barrish, whose medium of choice is reconfigured and recycled plastic sculptures.

The MAH is doing well despite financial troubles statewide. Membership fees and donations by visitors fund exhibits and new attractions, which in turn draw more total visitors.

“We’re aware that people are struggling in the community,” said Theresa Myers, the public relations and marketing manager of MAH.

Myers said that she does not anticipate an increase in the price of admission in the near future.

The MAH, which does not receive money from the state or county, receives funding solely from community-based grants. The majority of the museum’s funding comes from membership fees and the annual Stars fundraiser gala and auction. The auction, held every year in December at the museum, sells work donated by local artists. 

The MAH museum holds permanent and touring exhibits of regional artists, along with the rooftop sculpture exhibit. Many of the exhibits are composed of contemporary artworks and historical pieces owned by the museum. Throughout the museum’s three stories and rooftop, dresses constructed of Bubblicious gum wrappers are displayed next to old photographs of Santa Cruz residents at the wharf.

“By offering a place to hold the various artifacts,” Myers said, “the community is still able to interact.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at MAH: Undiscovered Haven for Arts