Rhizome Commission 2007 Application
Melanie Crean
With Chris Sugrue and Paul Geluso
Application Index
Phrenology will investigate the perception of space, whether real, virtual or imagined, though writings created by incarcerated women, presented visually in a variety of platforms. The piece will consist of a series of 360 degree photographic panoramas that interconnect with one another through text composited into the environments. The writing will be created by women in a workshop I will teach at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, speaking about their relationship to space. The photographic panoramas are inspired by the writings. Viewers will be able to move through the different environments to read the women's writing in a form of spatial poem, accompanied by an experimental sound track based on the text.
The work will be presented online as a navigable Flash 8 site programmed by Chris Sugrue with stereo sound composed by Paul Geluso . A second version will be created in Second Life, where anyone experiencing isolation (the infirmed, incarcerated, socially immobile) would be welcome to create a module of the poem to share their experiences in an alternative space with a community that they have helped to create.
Phrenology was a Victorian pseudo-science of the brain, claiming to map one's personality according to the topography of their skull. If the psyche could be charted physically, then its alteration after a period of emotional stress could also be seen as the erosion of a physical landscape.
The text will be created in a writing workshop I will teach at Bedford Hills Correctional facility from late April to early June. Women will write about their past, present and imagined future relationship to space. The workshop will be divided into three sections: letter writing, fiction, and poetry writing, presenting authors who have written compelling work about space and creating beauty from the mundane. I will discuss possible photographic renderings of the women's writing with them, which will be shot over the summer.
I will continue my correspondence with the Bedford Hills group via post, and extend the opportunity to others who have no access to media but would like me to create a Second Life module for them based on their letters. The Second Life version will use shape based objects to create a network of connected silo shaped rooms whose interior will be mapped with the photographic panorama and contain the associated sound clips. I will create an in world tutorial for those with computer access to create their own photo/text/sound based module. The Flash programming and Second Life set up will take place in the fall. The project is being supported by a Harvesworks grant, which requires the work to be completed by December 2007.
The Flash piece can be housed on a single server, either the Rhizome server or my own if that's more convenient, though integration into the Rhizome site would be crucial for the work's dissemination. The project will be under 50 MB and require no continual background processes.
Melanie Crean will be in charge of the overall conceptual framework and management for the piece, producing the text via the workshop she is teaching, photographing the panorama and setting up the community module in Second Life.
Melanie is a media artist, teacher, curator and producer based in Brooklyn, New York. She teaches production and theory based classes in experimental video, digital media and software. As Director of Production at Eyebeam (eyebeam.org), she founded and managed a cooperative studio that supported the production of socially based media, working with new forms of moving image, sound, public art and open source software.
Previously, Melanie worked at the MTV Digital Television Lab, managing a team of artists while designing special effects, performance animation, motion capture and speech recognition systems. She produced documentaries in Nepal, India and the United States, on subjects that include women trafficking and the spread of HIV/AIDS along trucking routes in South Asia. Melanie received a BA in semiotics and film production from Brown University, and a MFA in computer art from the School of Visual Arts.
Crean has received fellowships and commissions from Art in General, Harvestworks , NYFA, NYSCA, and Creative Time and her video, sound and public projects have been exhibited internationally. Click here for RTF resume.
Chris Sugrue will be doing the Flash programming. Chris is an interaction designer, artist, teacher, and programmer. She is currently a Production Fellow at Eyebeam where she will continue her research into computer vision, eye-tracking and mobile phone technologies. Her previous work includes research at the Ars Electronica FutureLab in Linz , Austria, where she worked with computer vision, generative graphics, stereoscopy, and virtual simulations, and was the lead programmer and interaction developer for an interactive dance performance. She has taught web design and advanced visual programming in NY and Austria.
Paul Geluso , who Melanie worked with on The Luminists , will compose the sound score. Paul is a musician, sound artist, teacher and engineer. As the chief audio engineer at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts for more than 10 years, he worked with a vast array of emerging media artists who use sound in their creative work. His commercial mixing experience includes work shown on Network TV, HBO, PBS and MTV II. He has performed music and presented his sound art internationally, including a recent site specific sound installation at London's SPACE gallery last December. Currently, he is developing surround sound software for Digidesign's Pro Tools with Audio Research Labs , while producing new artists for Vurse , a music production and artist management company he founded with Manex Ibar of Sony Classical. Paul continues to teach music technology courses at New York University and coordinate the Tonmeister Technology Seminar , an intensive course specializing in recording classical music. Recent awards include individual artist grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and Meet the Composer. Click here for RTF resume.
The total project costs are $5,000. Harvesworks will defray $3000 worth of costs for programming and sound composition. The Rhizome Commission will contribute necessary funds toward the writing workshop and Second Life development, as well as provide a crucial web portal for project dissemination. Click here for XLS budget spreadsheet.
Sample photographic panorama can be found here.
Please see Luminist for recent moving image and sound design. The Luminist sound and video projects explore the nature of vision, based on phone calls I recorded with three artists who lost their sight but continue to make art. The Luminist sound project is an abstract 5.1 audio installation created with composer Paul Geluso . The Luminist video project is an experimental video produced in collaboration with three animators to visualize the audio's content in different styles, inspired by the personality of each artist. The project was commissioned by Art in General, where it will open for exhibition on April 21, 2007.
Please see Oculus and Golem (female) for examples of 3D work. Oculus was a two channel video installation commissioned by Creative Time, created in collaboration with architect Jordan Parnass . The piece was projected on the ceiling of Grand Central Station in the months leading up the Iraq war. Once channel depicted an oculus, or sky window, opening in the center of the station's famous constellation mural. The other channel depicted, with the help of a Catalyst rotating mirror assembly, doves flying in through the station's windows, circling the large American flag in the center of the main hall, and exiting through the oculus.
Golem (female ) is an interactive sculpture that echoes pre-cinematic devices, depicting a three dimensional character who moves in response to turning the hand crank in the piece's interface, created from an old wine press.