Fwd: BIOINFORMATICA (long post)

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From: Paula Davidson  <tarr%MERCURY.INTERPATH.NET@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Multiple recipients of list FUTUREC <FUTUREC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 20:42:02 -0500
Subject: BIOINFORMATICA (long post)
>From the newsboard at Post Modern Culture Moo
telnet hero.village.virginia.edu 7777

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     Paula Davidson
        T h e    A l t e r n a t i v e    R e a d i n g   R o o m
          an unconventional library <> free & open to the public
                      Wednesday - Saturday   11 - 9
       40 Wall St.  Asheville, NC 28801   USA   (704) 252-2501
                       tarr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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,,,CALL FOR PARTICIPATION,,,


BLAST 4: BIOINFORMATICA - an exploration of the interconnections
between biospace and information space

WE INVITE YOU to participate in an upcoming issue of the art journal
BLAST, through an exhibition to be held simultaneously in New York City
and on the PMC-MOO, December 3, 1994 through January 14, 1995.
Completed projects that are part of this exhibition will be
indexed as editorial content of BLAST 4: BIOINFORMATICA.

ABOUT BLAST:

BLAST is a boxed publication containing unbound printed matter, objects,
computer programs, and other materials, produced by individuals not only
in the arts, but in scientific and technological fields. Distributed at
bookstores worldwide, BLAST is, according to HIGH PERFORMANCE, a
"metamagazine"--"a system of discovery" that "may shock and surprise
you." THE VILLAGE VOICE calls it "the newest of the new...the magazine at
its point of origin...you don't turn pages in BLAST so much as poke through
its assembled widgets." The Editorial Council of BLAST includes artists
such as Jenny Holzer, Laurie Anderson, Robert Wilson, and Joseph Kosuth;
theorists such as Trinh T. Minh-ha, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Donna Haraway,
and Andrew Ross; editors Thomas McEvilley (ARTFORUM), Jonathan Crary
(ZONE), Silvia Kolbowski (OCTOBER), and Sylvere Lotringer (SEMIOTEXT[E]),
as well as curators and representatives of such institutions as the
Stadelschule, Germany, the New York Kunsthalle, The New Museum of
Contemporary Art, the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, MIT,
Columbia University and New York University. BLAST is perhaps the only
current publication of its kind in the collection of the Museum of Modern
Art.

ABOUT "BIOINFORMATICS":

"Bioinformatics" builds on "informatics"--defined by Katherine Hayles
(following Donna Haraway) as "the technologies of information as well as
the biological, social, linguistic, and cultural changes that initiate,
accompany, and complicate their development." It marks an exploration of
the interconnections and increasingly porous boundaries between biospace
and information space. As the topic of this BLAST, "Bioinformatics"
positions the project within the negotiatory field where embodiment
interacts with systems of representation, where the essential meets the
constructed, where materiality meets code.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:

The exhibition will be held at the Sandra Gering Gallery, a vanguard
gallery of contemporary art actively engaged in the critical issues
defining our culture. "If Leo Castelli and Mary Boone represent the art of
the '60s, '70s, and the '80s, Sandra Gering is surely the heir apparent to
the art of the '90s" writes Gerard Goodrow in the German art magazine
JUNGE KUNST, April 1990. As a component of BLAST 4, the exhibition will
expand the gallery space and occur simultaneously at the Sandra Gering
Gallery: 476 Broome Street in New York, and at the Sandra Gering Gallery:
hero.village.virginia.edu 7777 in the PMC-MOO. The exhibition will be held
from December 3, 1994 through January 14, 1995, Tuesdays through
Saturdays, 11 am-6 pm. An interface built into the gallery will allow
participants at 476 Broome Street to communicate with those at
hero.village.virginia.edu 7777, and vice-versa. Neither completely physical
nor completely digital, both the exhibition and the BLAST 4 project in its
entirety will exist in the overlap of these spaces and systems. BLAST,
then, is marked by an interstitiality and incompleteness: it exists in the
traversal of the interfaces devised and in the modalities that constitute
its nodal points.

We encourage everyone to visit the exhibition, online or in person.
Participants will be requested to "wear" colorful capelike vestures called
PARANGOLES, originally developed by the late Brazilian artist Helio
Oiticica to intimately integrate individuals and social groups in the
process of constructing and inhabiting space. Requiring direct corporeal
participation, the PARANGOLE embodies "structure-action," relating body
to environmental structure, self to sociality, movement to speech,
"watching" to "wearing," across the physical and digital landscape,
weaving a network of participation that BECOMES "the work."

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

1. CREATE AN OBJECT. The MOO allows programming and presentation of
objects and features that can modify interpersonal communication. These
objects are the informatic mediators of the interactions among MOO
participants. Sometimes documented as +generic+, these code fragments
have the potential to become sites of personal expression and, within the
MOO, they can have real actions. We encourage the development of such
objects in relation to the theme of "Bioinformatics." These objects will be
exhibited in the Sandra Gering Gallery on the PMC- MOO, and visitors to the
exhibition will be able to view and activate these objects. As a further
challenge, we encourage participants to consider these objects as both
physical and digital, and to consider manifesting a material component in
the 476 Broome Street gallery space.

2. STAGE A LIVE PERFORMANCE. Such performances may help to define the
parameters of performance online or encourage participatory drama. As
the perfomance functions in both gallery spaces, its social dynamics can
span the interface, functioning in both biotic and informatic systems.
Performances may also be documented and presented as text/object
descriptions on the MOO and/or incorporated in the BLAST box.

3. PARTICIPATE IN DIALOGUE.  A discussion may be developed, oriented
toward an aspect of the Bioinformatics topic, during exhibition hours on
the PMC-MOO. Prepared texts may also be presented at this time.

All accepted contributions will be considered editorial pieces and indexed
as part of BLAST 4: BIOINFORMATICA.

HOW TO CONTACT BLAST:

If you wish to participate, or would like more information, please send
email to:

        John F. Simon, Jr.
        jfsjr@xxxxxxxxxx

        and/or

        Jordan Crandall
        jordan.crandall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ABOUT THE X-ART FOUNDATION:

BLAST 4: BIOINFORMATICA is produced by The X-Art Foundation in
collaboration with Jeffrey Schulz and John F. Simon, Jr. The project is
produced in association with the Koelner Kunstverein, Cologne, where it
will be exhibited in early 1995. The exhibition at the Sandra Gering
Gallery is produced in collaboration with Jordan Crandall, Laura Kurgan,
Jason Pilarski, and John F. Simon, Jr. The X-Art Foundation is a nonprofit
organization and artmaking collective that aims to engage individuals
and organizations at the intersections of art, cultural studies, and
information technologies. Bringing together such collaborators to produce
work as art, the Foundation explores the processes through which such
work is produced, the modes of its circulation, its artistic and societal
functions, and its constitutive social relations. A full list of Editorial
Council members and BLAST contributors is available upon request.

An ongoing discussion of Bioinformatics is taking place in the Intershop
forum of THE THING BBS (modem: USA: 212/431-6787; Cologne:
221/7392450; Dusseldorf: 211/9913642).

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