First up, let's talk about Automatic Update, a interdisciplinary look at new media art from 2000 or so onwards organized by Barbara London, Associate Curator for the MoMA's Department of Media. The basic idea for the show is that technology and society entered a wholly new realm with the emergence of the internet, generating a massive and often confusing churn of ideas, themes, technologies, aesthetics, and media. While much of the early media art from the mid-1990s became obsolescent as the technology evolved and adoption by the public shaped this process, later new media experiments settled into a more formalized mode of social commentary and play. As the show's literature attests: "By the year 2000, this quasi-revolutionary aura had dissipated and media art had settled into the mainstream... eas[ing] the somber mood of the times with entertaining presentations. Nevertheless, their humor does not soften their biting commentary on our social milieu. What at one time was Pop art has now become pop life." The show features work from Cory Arcangel, Xu Bing, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, and Paul Pfeiffer as well as the films Crash by David Cronenberg, Pi by Darren Aronofsky, the documentaries 8 Bit and Synthetic Pleasures, and six shorts by Ericka Beckman, Laurie Anderson, Miranda July, John Pilson, Pipilotti Rist, and Kristin Lucas. The show also features a more experimental program of screenings entiled The Artist and the Computer, which includes short films and animations by the likes of Arcangel and Paperrad.
Pop Rally is a program of MoMA and its affiliate PS1 focused on younger museum goers. For Automatic Update, Pop Rally has recruited Arcangel and Paperrad to curate a program of new media visuals and musical performances by Ben Jones of Paperrad, Cory Arcangel, Extreme Animals, Slow Jams Band and DJ Jazzy Jexxx and tickets include a chance to run around the Automatic Update exhibition afterhours.
The Automatic Update show runs through September 7, 2007
Pop Rally takes place Tuesday July 24
Tickets are available here.
Posted by James Friedman
