ART IN ODD PLACES presents
Andrew Demirjian’s
SCENES FROM LAST WEEK: W 14th St
July 15 – August 15, 2011
Rags A GoGo at 218 W14th Street and directly across the street, 14th Street Framing Gallery, 225 W14th Street. Both between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.
Opening reception: Friday, July 15 6-8pm at Rags A GoGo, 218 W14th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=145612528846797)
Art in Odd Places is pleased to present Scenes from Last Week: W14 St, at 218 W 14th Street. This new public media installation kicks off the AiOP festival exploring rituals of the everyday. Scenes from Last Week: W14 St examines the nonverbal gestures of the urban landscape and the tension between fear of surveillance and love of being on camera.
In a city constantly moving forward and erasing its relationship with the past, this video installation flips that experience by re-inserting the past into the present. Comprised of two video monitors in two storefronts directly across the street from one other, this installation displays synchronized surveillance camera views recorded from the previous seven days. Scenes from Last Week: W14th St creates a perceptual trip wire into the past, intended to reawaken our senses to the randomness and ritual in our daily environment.
Scenes from Last Week: W14th St is a new work by media artist Andrew Demirjian in collaboration with Art in Odd Places and the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center where he is currently an artist in residence. In this work, surveillance – a constant yet hidden aspect of daily life in New York City – is made apparent, uncovering the archeology of the everyday. The hashtag #sflw is being used on Twitter for passersby to post their photos and comments on the work. The Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/sflw/ and QR code allow participants to see their contributions and explore the growing database of visitor’s interaction with the piece. The mobile phone and Internet extension of the work takes the concepts of looking at looking and expanding reflections in a digital hall of mirrors into a virtual environment.
Inspired by traditional painting genres like portraiture and landscape, Andrew Demirjian’s work explores boundaries between psychological and physical environments using contemporary technology, like surveillance video, motion tracking, and data gathering. His work has been exhibited widely including international exhibitions in Belgium, England, France, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland, and Russia as well as many galleries in New York City. He is currently an artist in residence at the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center and has been awarded a Puffin Foundation Grant, an Artslink grant, and a 2006 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His current work involves creating computer programs to delay, synchronize and juxtapose multiple long-term video streams to reveal hidden patterns in the everyday. http://www.andrewdemirjian.com
