A part time resident of Kailua, Hawai‘i, for the past 14 years, Mark Amerika is having his first major show on the island of Oahu at the University of Hawai‘i Art Gallery. The show is titled CONVERGENCE: GLITCH_CLICK_THUNK, and opens on October 6th, 2013 (Sunday being a traditional exhibition opening day at the gallery).
The entire University of Hawai‘i Art Gallery press release for the exhibition is located here.
The digital version of the postcard announcement is here.
Here’s a quick summary of the announcement:
CONVERGENCE: GLITCH_CLICK_THUNK, Featuring Mark Amerika
October 6 – December 6, 2013 (opening reception on Sunday, October 6 from 3 to 5 pm)
The inaugural presentation of a series of new media exhibitions/installations at the University of Hawai‘i Art Gallery.
The CONVERGENCE series encompasses and explores the impact of Internet art, digital, electronic, sound and a wide range of new, traditional, and hybrid technologies on communication and art. Developed by the gallery system at the Department of Art and Art History, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), this extended, interactive installation engages visitors and students in hands-on exchanges between letter-press, litho-process, current computer-imaging, and audio-articulating workshop areas within the gallery.
The CONVERGENCE series’ first installation features noted author, professor, and multimedia artist Mark Amerika and his pioneering combination of animation, video, net art, hypertext, exprimental audio, and graphic layouts. Amerika’s GRAMMATRON (1997) is a landmark icon of hypertext and textual aesthetics in the history of internet art. The installation also showcases a selection of Amerika’s video work as well as multiple screenings of Immobilité, his feature-length “foreign film” shot entirely with a mobile phone.
Contributing in dynamic interaction with visiting artist Mark Amerika is the Lithopixel Refactory Collective (LRC), founded by Charles Cohan, Scott Groeniger, and Peter Chamberlain, professors at the Department of Art and Art History, UHM. LRC will set up a temporary production studio in the UH Art Gallery that is equal parts lithography, digital printing, live audio, print gallery, and shredding facility.
The elements of converging media are reflected in the exhibition’s title. Glitch refers to Mark Amerika’s glitch aesthetics that inform and react to LRC’s contemporary tools for imaging, denoted by Click of point and click computer technology. The traditional, transformative technology of printmaking presses is represented as Thunk — a playful reference to the sound of the heavy machine parts of working printing presses.
