[OAS NODE #1]: [TONIGHT!][Jeff Sugg: "Digitizing Theater"]

Jeff SuggOccupational Art School Node 1 at Bat Haus is honored to present Jeff Sugg: artist, theatrical projectionist, designer [+] on the topic of "Digitizing Theater," Wednesday, August 22 from 7-9PM. Tonight's discussion is the first OASN1@BH class session in our Fall 2012 course. 

[JEFF SUGG'S BIO]:

Jeff Sugg is a New York based artist, designer, and technical advisor. He is a co-founding member of the performance group, Accinosco, with Cynthia Hopkins and Jim Findlay and has co-designed their two critically acclaimed pieces, Accidental Nostalgia and Must Don't Whip 'Um. Other theater designs include: 33 Variations (projections: Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse), The Slugbearers of Kayrol Island (co-set & projections: The Vineyard Theater),¡El Conquistador! (lights: New York Theater Workshop), The Thomashefsky Project & Let Them Eat Cake/Of Thee I Sing (projections: San Francisco Symphony), Trece Días (sets & projections: San Francisco Mime Troupe) He has also worked as designer for multiple works with theater companies including: The Colllapsable Giraffe, Pig Iron Theater Company, DASS Dance, Transmission Projects. Music design: Natalie Cole (lights), and Natalie Merchant (lights).

In addition to his work as a designer, Mr. Sugg is regarded as a premiere technical consultant and system designer. Some credits include: The Wooster Group (technical artist), Laurie Anderson (video system design), Richard Foreman (video system design), Mikel Rouse (video system design), GAle GAtes et al. (effects designer/engineer), and The Baseball Music Project (video system design). Mr. Sugg has also taught Media and Technology at Swarthmore College. He has led several workshop/intensive courses in media technology at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Rude Mechanicals Theater Company, and others.

For his work on Must Don’t Whip ‘Um, Mr. Sugg received a 2007 Bessie Award and was nominated for a 2007 Hewes Design Award. He was also nominated for a 2007 Hewes Design Award for his work on ¡El Conquistador!.

For his work on The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, he received a 2008 Henry Hewes Award, 2008 Obie, and a 2008 Lucille Lortel Award.

A Jeff's-eye view of the stage.

[PROPOSITIONS]:

1. If drama is the lens through which humanity views itself, how will we see ourselves when that vision is mediated via networked computer arrays? Will theater inevitably become mechanized? 
2. How can or will acting, directing, scripting, blocking, audience interactivity and experience, etc., be affected by new media's intervention in the dramatic sphere?
3. Is there an emergent theater appearing or promised, driven, by the intervention of digital tools and techniques?
4. What does this phenomenon, the digital theater, mean for the economics of theatrical production?
5. How is movement on stage, and the dramatic imagination, adapting to 01 conditions?

One of the shows Jeff worked on.We'll be continuing a discussion started earlier this summer when OAS Co-organizer Paul McLean visited Jeff at St. James Theater to view a tech rehearsal for Bring It On - The Musical, while Jeff was working. We'll be talking about how the computer has shaped new theater practices and hierarchies.

QR Code for Facebook Event for OAS Node #1 @BH Launch with Eric Leiser

[OAS Node #1 [July 13]

Technical

[Session 5]

Today we visited the St. James Theater and a tech rehearsal for the "Bring It On - The Musical," at the invitation of designer Jeff Sugg.

[CONSIDERATIONS, OBSERVATIONS + CONJECTURES]

• OWS has been characterized as an art medium, and analyzed relative to performance, performance art, relational art and other modalities of staged expression or exchange. Precursors to the Occupation like Zefrey Throwell's naked staged intervention on Wall Street ("Ocularpation: Wall Street") expand the set of considerations, as do the actions of the original Arts & Culture group/gamers and the Aaron Burr Society, suggesting that there is something to it. Many kinds and instances of performance, often involving professional performers, were and continue to be integrated into Occupational activities, such as "The Tax Dodgers," the Brecht performers and so on. One of the most compelling collective circle-discussions hosted by Hrag Vartanian during the Spatial Occupation @Hyperallergic centered on these phenomena. Where does performance (as situated in entertainment or artifice) stop and Occupation-as-performance begin and/or end? Does the conflation of performance and occupation diminish the latter and trivialize it, by compressing the redress of grievances into a modality of coded narrative for desire-satisfaction? Etc. Certainly this is fertile territory for analysis with tactical or strategic implications. [David Graeber has written on this subject relative to protest, police, puppets and media propaganda, which we also attempted to address in SO@H residency reading group. Graeber's text(s) indicated the anarchist's jaundiced and limited vision for art in conjunction with direct action, minimizing art into a protest utility functionary, and redefining it to the extent that art is a fungible creativity applicable to all activities human, an absurdist conjecture ultimately. Is falling down art (if an art does it)? And, if everyone is an artist, is all falling down artistic? 
• The observation of the "Bring It On" tech rehearsal was profound for this viewer, who has been away from professional theater for the most part for the past decade, with some notable exceptions (Circle X at Ford Theater in LA, and other theatrical entertainments covered elsewhere). The opportunity to assess the evolving role of electronics in the medium led to the formation of some important seams of conjecture, mainly pertaining to the reformation of hierarchies in production, and the staged spaces in which artifacts from old, even ancient, models of dramatic transmission are being fundamentally redesigned, reoriented or constituted as ana-spaces for performance, due to the intervention of computer-sited processes in play-making and/or 4d presentation. Jeff and I briefly discussed these "advances" and related effects, and committed enthusiastically to further explore their significance. The power of theater in revolutionary change cannot be underestimated. These developments potentially point toward new theatrical practice that obviates the insipid corporatized "creative" economic content that passes often for top-shelf theater, now. Like similar spectacle-ism in sports, music, art, political races, war coverage, etc., the need for dimensional veracity for collective sharing of imaginary-real experience as vision is vital in reclaiming a democratic commons for us all. This is a key in expelling propaganda in all its insidious iterations from the field of dimensional perception. 

[Session 6]

Art Gatherings, Community, Exchange

• SLAG Gallery, Bushwick
• Opening for Claudia Chaseling, "Infiltration"

This communique is a stub. The subject is the continuing progressive evolution of Bushwick, Brooklyn as a locus for an international art community and market, and much, much more. [Full disclosure: The author is represented by SLAG] OAS Node #1 will host Bushwick-focused study and celebration of the dimensional "art scene" materializing in the neighborhood, which is our neighborhood. Bushwick's emergence is THE art story of the moment, now. Chronicling its "happening" is vital, and must not be left to the 1% or corporate media. Each OAS Node will be encouraged to analyze and document the art topology(-ies) it inhabits. The accumulation of data drawn from this analysis and documentation we hope will eventually yield a database that in its totality will paint a very different picture than the one(s) that exists now about art, artists and especially art-/artists-in-community. 

WS2MS: Mark Skwarek to Launch "King's Boat!"

[From Mark]

so... I'm kind of in the boat..
screen capture
but I have perfected the technology and will skipper a much larger boat at my upcoming Wall st to Main St show in Catskill NY- "the King's Boat" http://thekingsboat.blogspot.com/

Click to read more ...

ATDD @EYEBEAM [Video]

Great footage of Seth Wulsin powering direct democracy [J28] about a minute in.

More Photos from the Activist Tech Demo Day at EYEBEAM

OwA co-organizer Seth Wulsin generates energy during ATDD at EYEBEAM. (PHOTO: Chris Cobb)

Activist geeks talk shop at ATDD at EYEBEAM. (PHOTO: Chris Cobb)

Update: Activist Technology Demo Day & Other Occupy Art News

At EYEBEAM, on Saturday [j28], Occupy with Art participated in the Activist Technology Demo Day, along with other occupiers like the OWS Tech Ops, and the folks who McGyvered the bicycle-driven generators at Zuccotti Part during the occupation last fall. Some amazing apps were on display, with the app-makers on-hand to answer questions and bandy around new ideas for collaborations and exchange. It was a really great event! OwA co-organizers Chris Cobb, Paul McLean and Seth Wulsin passed out Yoko Ono/OWS Wish Tree cards to the many attendees packing the workshop/presentation space, and talked about the projects we're working on for 2012. Paul Talbot came by to photograph the event (we'll post those when they're processed), and CO-OP/Occuburbs/-fest coordinator Chris Moylan came by as well. Quite a few folks from OWS and Arts & Culture supported, too, including Owen, who's working with Rachel Shragis on translations of the Declaration Flow Chart, and Jez of Archive WG, who was still wearing the (fake) bloody shirt he'd worn for his kickoff performance at the previous evening's Occupy Museums intervention at MoMA. We displayed the new blanks of the Declaration with the finished print at our table (see photos), along with handmade signs by Chris Cobb, some flyers from the occupation, relevant texts, and Adrian Rocchio's GA hand signal prints. An informal panel inspired some passionate conversation about technology's impact on activist praxis, at one point almost switching to People's Mic mode, when the wireless microphones glitched out.

Some notable activist tech people/projects:

• Vibe app: a new GeoSocial App with which users send Mini-Blogs with Anonymous and Self-Destruct options.  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vibe/id433067417?mt=8

• Augmented Reality Activists: an archive, a meeting place, and a  knowledge center for activists working with augmented reality  http://augmentedrealityactivists.blogspot.com/

• Signal Strength:  It consists of modules for ad-hoc social networking that let people in an urban area interact offline, leveraging their mobile phones for untraceable communications. http://www.ameliamarzec.com/signalstrength.html

We were able to meet-up with these folks to talk about their participating in some of our 2012 programs, like Wall Street to Main Street and CO-OP, and the Space Team residency at Hyperallergic (which starts on Wednesday - more details soon).

>>

Other Occupy Art News:

• Occupy Museums is on a tear! Check out the latest news, photos and video HERE.
• Occupy Town Square is happening right now at Washington Square Park! Get on over there!
• The Novads' Salon IV was, we heard, "loads of wild fun - think all the freedoms we enjoyed in the park this Fall, but indoors :)" - kudos to the Revolutionary Gamers and all who joined in on another memorable occupy-fun happening!
• The Tax Dodgers hit one out of the park last week & are planning a doubleheader for next week. Stay tuned for details!

OwA @Activist Technology Demo Day [EYEBEAM] Tomorrow!

Occupy with Art will be participating in Activist Technology Demo Day, hosted by EYEBEAM, tomorow [Saturday, January 28 from 3-6PM]. Come down, get your Occupy activist geek on, and meet/swap ideas with our team and other similarly occupied peeps (like the Tech-op wizards of OWS). We'll be talking about the upcoming OwA projects like Wall Street to Main Street, Low Lives: Occupy, CO-OP/Occuburbs/-fest, the OWS Spatial Team residency at Hyperallergic, passing out the Yoko Ono/OWS Wish Tree for Zuccotti Park multiples, and swapping info on how OwA and Occupy artists around the globe are imagining new models for 99% economies, exhibitions, alliances, and more, and how today's latest technologies are enabling our efforts and the movement as a whole. Come & join us!

Here's the press release:

Activist Technology Demo Day
http://demo-day.org

Saturday, January 28 3-6pm

Urban Research Group 

Eyebeam Art + Technology Center

540 W 21st, New York, NY 

http://eyebeam.org

From Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, technology has played an important role in shaping contemporary resistance and the representation of these events in the media. What new tools of protest and occupation have emerged over the past year? How does their use help to shape tomorrow’s democracies? The Urban Research Group @ Eyebeam and The Public School New York  have invited activists, technologists, artists, designers, and community organizers who have a working prototype of an activist technology to occupy a worktable at Eyebeam and share their work with the public. Drawn from proposals submitted through an open call, we have selected a group of projects and communities that extend the creative use of technology and its social implications. Our interest is in creating a platform for encounter, conversation and collaboration. Visit http://demo-day.org/projects for participating project information.

This public event will culminate with a panel discussion at 5pm with special guest Stephen Duncombe, Associate Professor at the Gallatin School and the Department of Media, Culture and Communications of New York University and co-creator of the School for Creative Activism; Mary Mattingly, Eyebeam Fellow and the creator of  Waterpod; and moderated by Taeyoon Choi, Eyebeam Fellow and member of The Public School New York committee.

OwA @Activist Technology Demo Day [EYEBEAM]

Occupy with Art will be a presenter at Activist Technology Demo Day.

Saturday, January 28

Jan 28 3~6pm at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center 

[Details TBA]

From Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, technology has played an important role in shaping contemporary resistance and the representation of these events in the media.

We do not believe technology is the main force behind these events and disagree with mainstream media’s phrases such as “Facebook Revolution” as it can lead to a misguided perception of the different movements in general and overshadow the more complex social conditions and regional characteristics specific to each. However we do believe technological innovation has always played a role in social movements and there is a need for collective investigation into the current potential of technologies deployed for activist purposes. Learning from Occupy Wall Street in the fall of 2011, we can collaboratively plot a blueprint for works in near-future.

  

                 

By using the term Activist Technology, we want to focus on tools of protest and occupation for this event.  We are curious about anything from strategic use of social networking sites to bicycle powered generators, instant architecture to anti-police violence suits, real-time video streaming to counter-surveillance tools. Our interest extends to the creative use of technology and designing its social implications.

We invite activists, technologists, artists, designers, and community organizers who have a working prototype or a proposal for collaboration to occupy a desk at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, NYC on Jan 28 3~6pm. The Activist Technology Demo Day will be open to the public and promoted through Eyebeam and collaborators’ media channels. It will be an opportunity to meet with other makers with similar interests. The day will culminate with a discussion with members of the Eyebeam Urban Research Group and The Public School New York at 5pm.

Eyebeam Urban Research Group and The Public School New York

For more information on the organizers 

Tue - Sat, 12 - 6PM / 212.937.6580 / 540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011

(map)