SLOW SCAN TELEVISION (A MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY)

Patrick Lichty

WEST WARD WORKS - PART OF THE GROUP EXHIBITION MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY: EXCAVATIONS
Guthrie Street
DD1 5BR

Artist/curator/researcher Patrick Lichty has been investigating the history of Slow Scan Television. He will present his project “The Night Before Tomorrow/Duntoria 2017 – A telematic performance” described as part of “24 Hours Later”, inspired by Robert Adrian X.

In 1982, Robert Adrian X, as part of the Ars Electronica Festival and four-yearly “Wien-Couver” telematic performances, created “The World in 24 Hours”, in which he had 16 satellite-connected performances from around the world in Linz, Austria. As part of Patrick’s performance-based media archaeological research, undertaken with Dutch critic Josephine Bosma, Patrick will connect to Victoria, BC (one of the original areas of W24H) for a tele-happening, using period Slow Scan equipment. Invited artists include members of the Second Front Virtual Performance ensemble, BC artist Kerri Flanagan, and original artists Hank Bull and Bill Bartlett. This is a sequel to the event in August 2017, “Vicapore 2017”, and a prequel to the proposed “24 Hours later” performance at Ars Electronica 2018, on the 35th anniversary of the Adrian X performance.

Vicapore playfully refers to the intermedia performances called Wiencouver that took place from 1979-1983. Set in a fictional net.City called Vicapore, located online somewhere between Victoria, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, Vicapore is an intermediated space of sound, images and crash aesthetics broadcast over the low-bandwidth slow-scan channels. Vicapore 2017 merges media art history with contemporary media culture.

About the artist:

Patrick Lichty (USA/UAE) is currently Assistant Professor of Animation/Multimedia at Zayed University, UAE. Patrick is an animator, media artist, curator, and theorist exploring how media shape our perception of reality as well as the borders between the digital and the material. He is best known for his work with the virtual reality performance art group Second Front, and the animator of the activist group, The Yes Men. He is a CalArts/Herb Alpert Fellow and Whitney Biennial exhibitor as part of the collective RTMark. He has presented and exhibited internationally at numerous biennials and triennials (Yokohama, Venice, Performa, Maribor, Turin, Sundance), and conferences (ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Popular Culture Association, SLSA, SxSW). His book, “Variant Analyses: Interrogations of New Media Culture” was released by the Institute for Networked Culture. He is included in key books on Virtual and Augmented Reality, including the Oxford Handbook of Virtuality.