AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

It's the place where creativity and technology meet
By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent | April 26, 2007

CAMBRIDGE -- Dan Paluska rises in a crowded room. The lights dim,
and he starts up digital slideshow about Totemobile, a 50-foot-tall,
11,000-pound robotic sculpture -- a giant transformer that unfolds
from a car into a totem pole. Paluska got involved with the
Totemobile at artist Chico MacMurtrie's Amorphic Robot Works in
Brooklyn.

"It's the first time I worked on something that really frightened
me, which could have killed someone," Paluska begins. His audience
murmurs appreciatively.

Welcome to the Collision Collective. Once a month, two dozen or so
people show up at Jonathan Bachrach's Inman Square apartment,
bearing chips, beer, and sushi. They crowd onto the sofa and every
chair; they sit expectantly on the floor. Engineers and artists,
robotics specialists and printmakers, they've come to listen and
talk about the growing overlap between new technologies and art.
Their mailing list has 150 names on it. When they meet, it's a
Collision Collective Collusion.

Paluska was the speaker at the April Collusion. The members' main
agenda is to meet, talk, learn, and support one another, but also
high on the list is making and showing their art. It's one of
several art/technology collectives in the Boston area that have
sprung up in the last few years, in part because new-media art is
burgeoning, and it often demands collaboration.

"People work off variations of ideas," says Bachrach, an MIT
robotics researcher whose artistic alias is jackbackrack. With a
scruffy beard, an aw-shucks attitude, and a trademark slouch, he's
the collective's guiding light. "Certain themes get pushed. People
are confident with themselves, not afraid to make mistakes, and open
to others running with their ideas."

The group has been around since 2001, and it has a following. Last
weekend "COLLISIONeleven," its exhibit at the MIT Stata Center, saw
throngs of visitors. Almost as many kids as adults passed through
the show, part of both the Boston Cyberarts Festival and the
Cambridge Science Festival.

Nearly every piece begged to be played with: There was "ai8ball,"
Rob Gonsalves's high-tech, large-scale version of the magic eight
ball, and Bachrach's mobile podium "Sketchy," with a screen quickly
rendering in a rough sketch whatever's in front of it. People
patiently waited their turn and offered others friendly advice about
how best to work some of the art pieces.

"Collision shows were always packed," says Catherine D'Ignazio , the
former director of Cambridge's Art Interactive, where the group has
often held exhibits. D'Ignazio and Sasha Rasovic, both software
developers and artists, founded the Institute for Infinitely Small
Things, an artist collective of about 25 members, including
engineers, social scientists, and a professional hula hooper, around
the same time Collision Collective sprang up. The Institute's focus
is more on public performance and social criticism than new-media
art.

"We're looking at information culture and the fear instituted by
public campaigns, and they go hand in hand with the technologies,"
says D'Ignazio. The Institute's curatorial arm, iKatun, recently
sponsored a lecture on "You Culture," the social networking done on
YouTube and MySpace. And the Institute just published "The New
American Dictionary: Interactive Security/Fear Edition," cataloging
68 terms from "Islamofascist" to "waterboarding."

She sees collectives like hers as a necessity: "There's little
support for artists making work not readily saleable. You need to
build your own support networks. And with new technology, nobody
knows everything, so knowledge-sharing becomes important. Also,
these collectives show a commitment to a model of authorship that is
not the single male genius painting in a garret."

Even so, collectives also serve the individual artist by providing a
forum. In addition to "COLLISIONeleven," Bachrach has a show at the
Cloud Foundation through May 5, and "String Beings," his
collaboration with Snappy Dance Theater, will be at the Virginia
Wimberly Theatre May 30-June 10. Meanwhile D'Ignazio is in the midst
of a high-tech solo performance, running through Boston's entire
evacuation route system while broadcasting and monitoring her
breath, available by podcast at ikatun.com/evacuateboston.

There are local collectives, and then there are global ones.
Turbulence.org, which has a main branch in Boston, is an online
gallery and gathering space under the auspices of New Radio and
Performing Arts Inc. It commissions Web-based art and runs Upgrade
Boston, an unfunded monthly gathering and lecture series at Art
Interactive. On May 3, new-media artists Jane D. Marsching , Cary
Peppermint , and Brooke Singer will discuss technological
interventions in the wilderness.

"Because we've been an online community for so long, there's a real
need for people to get together in physical space," says
Turbulence's codirector, Jo-Anne Green . "Just like globalization,
it's driving people to act locally and connect physically. I did
[Upgrade] for selfish reasons. I felt a need to connect with local
artists."

Visual artists aren't the only ones gravitating toward techy
collectives. The Glitch Crew and Sosolimited are audio-and-video-
oriented groups; the Glitch Crew comprises primarily VJs.
Sosolimited crosses over into art; member Eric Gunther has a
sculptural and sound piece in COLLISIONeleven.

These groups are not reinventing the wheel. The science-oriented
Nature and Inquiry artists group , founded by Donald Burgy and John
Holland, has been meeting every Wednesday for more than 20 years.

The conversation there is more philosophical and less nuts-and-bolts
than at Collision Collective or Upgrade Boston. Earlier this month,
says member Margot Anne Kelley , the group discussed open-
mindedness, closed-mindedness, and how they might both be
genetically selected.

Back at the Collision Collusion, Paluska wrapped up his talk and the
group milled about, chatting. Bachrach took a pull of his Sam Adams
and looked around at his crew.

"We're off the regular chart of the gallery system, which is not
completely representing what art is now," he said. "We're an
underground, creating an art more integrated into our lives, and
more democratic."

If the size of the crowd at COLLISIONeleven was any indication, he's
right.

COLLISIONeleven (C11) runs through Tuesday at the MIT Stata Center
Balcony Gallery, 32 Vassar St., Cambridge. collisioncollective.org.

Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

This was posted on the Art4Development Yahoo! groups listserv.