SIGNALS: An Installation by Nick Bontrager February 6 - February 13 Friday, February 6, 6-9:00PM Opening Reception Artist talk with Nick Bontrager, 7:00PM Free Admission
Texas artist and New Media Art professor Nick Bontrager returns to Aurora Picture Show with SIGNALS, a new media project where the audience participates in creating the work by interacting with the artist on screen. Toying with the interaction of a virtual self and the idea of the Mechanical Turk, SIGNALS is an interactive video installation utilizing artificial intelligence, allowing the viewer to visually communicate directly with a projected entity while bridging the gap of science-fiction and near-future technology. An opening reception will take place on Friday, February 6th from 6-9PM at Aurora Picture Show (2442 Bartlett) with an artist talk at 7PM. Then the installation will remain on view through February 13th daily from 11AM to 2PM.
By sending a cellular text message, visitors will create morse code messages that are flashed to a virtual representation of the artist on screen via a military signaling lamp. The artist will then respond from an unseen location, signaling back to the participant through video in morse code with a similar lamp. Visitors are invited to decode the video response, thus customizing the content and crafting a unique exchange. Taking place in different biomes and locations reminiscent of film history (forests, deserts, an iconic bridge from the 1986 film Stand By Me, etc), SIGNALS creates the illusion that the character in the film is communicating directly with visitors in real time.
Of the project, Bontrager says, "I feel like this may be encompassing the different levels of interdisciplinary relations, as you'll have the cinematic/film aspect of the video projection, the sculptural beauty of the signal lamp, and the communication that would exist between the viewer and the video."
Bontrager has previously curated a program for Aurora Picture Show called "One Second Film Festival" featuring one second films from students in his New Media Art program at Texas Christian University, was featured as a guest artist for CAMH Video Jam, and has had a short film screened as part of a 2010 program curated by University of Houston professor Stephan Hillerbrand.
There is no specific start or end time for this project, just come in and experience the installation for a long you like. SIGNALS is funded by the TCU Research and Creative Activities Fund.
Nick Bontrager is an interdisciplinary artist whose work and research explores the physical and conceptual nature of the moving image, game-based interactions and exchanges, and the idea of replicas or facsimiles as tools of preservation. Bontrager is interested in the intersection of real and virtual spaces, and how those spaces can harbor a memory. By openly questioning this conflation of these memories and locations, he hopes to engage in a dialogue between artist and viewer which results in a unique and evolving experience on behalf of any involved parties. Bontrager’s studio practice engages thematic elements of failure, chance, autonomy, and agency while fusing emerging technologies with traditional tools and techniques.
Bontrager received his MFA from The Ohio State University for studies in Art & Technology and his BFA at the University of Houston in Photography & Digital Media. He is an interdisciplinary artist whose work and research explores the physical and conceptual nature of the moving image, game-based interactions and exchanges, and mankind's struggle to discover the vast unknown. While developing the New Media Art program at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Nick has built bridges between the Arts & Sciences while infusing traditional techniques with new and experimental methods.
