Tourists and Travelers Advisor

[with congratulations and best wishes to UNR Faculty Joe Delappe!]

Eyebeam
540 W. 21st St. New York, NY

Tourists and Travelers:
New commissioned works by Taeyoon Choi and Joseph DeLappe

June 21 - July 19, 2008
Opening reception: 6pm, June 21

"As many New Yorkers ready for the annual ritual of summer travel, Eyebeam presents Tourists and Travelers, an art exhibition resulting from Taeyoon Choi and Joseph DeLappe's 2007-08 residencies at Eyebeam. The show features an unlikely pair of projects that reflect the artists' interests in journeys across real and virtual spaces: a Second Life avatar modeled on Mahatma Gandhi and a tourist-chasing, robotic duck. Choi, from Seoul , Korea , and DeLappe, from Reno , Nevada , both traveled to New York City for their residencies as recipients of Eyebeam's inaugural Commission for Resident Artists.

Taeyoon Choi's electro-mechanical bird Camerautomata Charlie: Image Digesting Robotic Duck is unleashed in tourist-heavy habitats, such as New York City 's Central Park , to roam and snap-and then defecate-photos of its own. Born of a hacked digital camera, printer and vacuum cleaner, Camerautomata Charlie and its flock will be on display at Eyebeam alongside digital prints, drawings, and video documentation of interventions in public spaces.

Joseph DeLappe will present documentation, artifacts and new works derived from The Salt Satyagraha Online-Gandhi's Salt March in Second Life, his 240-mile reenactment of the walk in real life and in cyberspace. Over the course of 26 days in the spring of 2008, DeLappe walked the entire distance on a customized treadmill at Eyebeam, which was programmed to control his online Gandhi avatar in Second Life. A centerpiece of the Tourist and Travelers exhibition is a monumental cardboard replica-the same height, in fact, as Michelangelo's sculpture of David-created from a 3-D model of the Gandhi avatar. Large format prints, stop-action animations, and video from the performance piece will also be on view."

Eyebeam

[graphic from Eyebeam press release]