BAM - Under_score: Net art, Sound and Essays from Australia

[anna balint]

http://www.bam.org/under_score/

The Brooklyn Academy of Music   
Under_score: Net art, Sound and Essays from Australia exhibits the works 
of nine Australian artists for whom the internet has emerged as one of the 
most significant arenas for artistic experimentation and multimedia production. 
Under_score is part of Next Wave Down Under, the month-long Australian focus of 
BAM's Next Wave Festival 2001. From Francesca da Rimini's diary-like reflections 
taboo in GashGirl, to the richly layered dream-like 3D spaces and 
soundscapes in Melinda Rackham's empyrean, Australian artists are 
helping to define new modes of electronic writing and reading, multimedia, 
performance, image making, and sonic production.
The works presented here represent a vast diversity of approaches, technologies, 
applications, and aesthetics, but with few exceptions, coalesce thematically 
around "the body", a theme which at the beginning of the new millennium 
is present more than ever in discussions of art, the sciences, and the media.
In addition, Under_score provides related links to fourteen works 
by Australian artists working in a variety of new media formats including 
CD-ROM, installation, and performance. There are two innovative online 
broadcasters delivering some of the most compelling sound work in Australia 
and New Zealand, and select audio pieces from The Listening Room, the 
Australian Broadcasting Corporation's award sound art program.
In order to enhance the discussion of these works and their significance 
BAM has commissioned online essays by Allen Feldman, an American cultural 
and political anthropologist, Australian new media theorist Darren Tofts, 
and Australian writer and media critic McKenzie Wark.
In developing Under_score, BAM worked together with and received recommendations 
from Australian curators, educators, media theorists, and producers: Alessio 
Cavallaro, curator, Cinemedia; Leah Grycewicz, curator, dLux media arts; 
Kathy Cleland, curator and President dLux media arts; Honor Harger, curator, 
r a d i o q u a l i a; McKenzie Wark, lecturer and author; Amanda McDonald-Crowley, 
Associate Director 2002, Adelaide Festival of Arts; Lisa Colley, Manager, 
New Media Arts Board, Australia Council; Robyn Ravlich, Executive Producer, 
The Listening Room, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. RealTime editors 
Virginia Baxter & Keith Gallasch produced a beautiful printed documentation 
of Under_score for Working the Screen available as a PDF file from RealTime.
Due to the technical complexity and experimental nature of some of these sites, 
we have provided a list of programs, browsers and plug-ins that should 
enable you to view the work optimally. These are listed as technical requirements 
for each artist in the Profiles drop-down menu.
Wayne Ashley, Organizing Curator and Manager of New Media, BAM