Cover Photo Credits Front and Back Covers Compositions created by Chris Kemp. Details of images from the following: Townhouse Revisited, 1999 Thomas J. McLeisch, Ellen Sandor, Fernando Orellana, Nichole Maury, Todd Margolis, and Janine Fron, (art)n. 25”x40”x10” Digital PHSCologram Sculpture. Passive Erschliessung (Passive Development), 2007 Gerhard Mantz; Ellen Sandor, and Chris Kemp, (art)n. 40”x30” Digital PHSCologram, Duratrans, Kodalith, Plexiglas. The Other Window II: Distortion ‘07, 2007 Jim Zanzi, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Ellen Sandor, (art)n. Special Thanks to Janine Fron and Lisa Stone. 20”x24” Digital PHSCologram, Duratrans, Kodalith, Plexiglas. Political Agenda, 1999 Institution Web Sites Charles Csuri and Matthew Lewis, ACCAD, The Ohio State Univer- sity; Ellen Sandor, Stephan Meyers, Janine Fron and Craig Ahmer, www.artn.com (art)n. 24”x20” Digital PHSCologram, Duratrans, Kodalith, Plexiglas. www.kasiakayartprojects.com http://intelligentdesignproject.com Cryptobiology: Reconstructing Identity, 2001 Ellen Sandor, Keith Miller, Fernando Orellana and Janine Fron, (art)n; Catalog design by Chris Kemp Kathleen Helm-Bychowski, DePaul University. Special thanks to Stephan Meyers. 30”x40” Digital PHSCologram, Duratrans, Kodalith, ® 2007 Copyright Ellen Sandor and (art)n. All rights reserved. Plexiglas. _____________ ___________ _________ _________ _______________________ Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1 New Perspectives in Virtual Dimensions 2 by Audrey Michelle Mast ______ About Ellen Sandor Founding Artist & Director, (art)n 10 Exhibition Checklist 11 Commissions, Collections, Gallery Affiliations, and Selected Exhibitions 13 (art)n Contributing Artists and Major Collaborators 16 Acknowledgements _________ I would like to thank the numerous individuals, institutions and collaborators over the years for all of their help and support. Special thanks to Kasia Kay, Jeff Bourgeau and the staff at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery and The Museum for New Art for organizing the Intelligent Design exhibition. Special thanks to Audrey Michelle Mast for her essay contribution to the catalogue and to Janine Fron for sharing her continued passion, dedication, __________ and intellect toward the historical contributions of (art)n since the beginning. A very special thanks to Chris Kemp for all of his hard work and dedication on the exhibition, catalogue and works in the show. Special thanks to all of our collaborators who contributed to works in the exhibition, including James Bellingham, Alex Betts, Kathleen Helm-Bychowski, Yi Chao, Donna Cox, Chuck Csuri, Janine Fron, Nick Gaul, Matt Hall, Lorne Leonard, Stuart Levy, Matthew Lewis, Gerhard Mantz, TJ McLeish, Thomas Meeker, _____________ Stephan Meyers, Keith Miller, Fernando Orellana, Robert Pat- terson, Lisa Stone, and Jim Zanzi. I would also like to thank the craftsmen and artisans at National Graphx and Imaging (National Photo), and Spectrum Color for their tireless effort and assis- tance. With special love and appreciation to Richard, Julie and Penya Sandor; Jack, Elijah and Justine Ludden; Eric, Caleb, and Oscar Taub; Jeffrey Simon; and Rick and Joanne Ferina. _______ _______________ 1 New Perspectives in Virtual Dimensions _________ “The boldest experiments of today are the ac- quisitions we will be accustomed to tomorrow.” -- Man Ray Today, nearly twenty-five years after the Chicago-based multimedia art collective (art)n produced its first PHSCologram, wide-ranging forms of new media–particularly those con- cerned with virtual reality–are often met with the sort of thorny questions previously asked about early conceptual works of Dada and Surrealism: Who are the artists? What are the objects? How can we imagine their longevity when our media and mores transform so quickly? It is appropriate, then, that (art)n founder Ellen Sandor’s initial inspiration was the expansive oeuvre of modernist icon Man Ray, as well as his contemporaries Marcel Duchamp and László Moholy-Nagy. Although we think of him as primarily a photographer, Man Ray initially took up photography in order to reproduce his other work, including paintings and mixed media. Gegenseitige Unabhängigkeit (Mutual Independence), 2007 One of his chief innovations, the Rayograph Gerhard Mantz; Ellen Sandor, and Chris Kemp, (art)n. 40”x30” Digital PHSCologram, Dura- or photogram, was a camera-less process that trans, Kodalith, Plexiglas. captured the form of objects as well as their shadows, creating ambiguous images and 2 creating a new, subjective photography. The modernist experiment as undertaken by Ray– with its enthusiasm for diverse media, emphasis on process, embrace of technical advances–and perhaps most importantly, a spirit of irrever- ence–is the driving force of (art)n team. As a major collector of 20th century fine art, photography, sculpture, outsider art and new media, Sandor’s sense of historical context is as strong as her creative drive as an artist to move forward with technical innovation. (art)n, with its unique studio processes, diverse collaborative projects, and strong sense of cultural context, has responded vigorously to these issues–if not transcended them–to truly begin an earnest, relevant dialogue between new media and the evolving art historical canon, while retaining a modernist sense of experimentation and play that make us want to look–and look again. Formed in 1983 by Sandor with her peers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, (art)n Political Agenda, 1999 has evolved into an international, interdisciplin- Charles Csuri and Matthew Lewis, ACCAD, The Ohio State University; Ellen Sandor, Stephan ary collective of artists, scientists, and engineers Meyers, Janine Fron and Craig Ahmer, (art)n. 24”x20” Digital PHSCologram, Duratrans, Kodalith, Plexiglas. whose works have been collected by institutions and individuals worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary 3 Art, Union League Club of Chicago, the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows, and numerous private collections. Public commissions include the Battle of Midway Memorial for the Public Art Program, Department of Aviation and the City of Chicago; Nuveen Investments; and the State of Illi- nois Art-in-Architecture Program for the National Center of Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. (art)n’s works have been included in recent exhibitions at the Chicago History Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center and Kemper Room Art Gallery, Paul V. Galvin Library, at the Illinois Institute of Technology. (art)n’s collaborative process of problem-solving and technical innova- tion is a model for artistic creation in a multimedia age. Each project is the collective effort of a team assembled specifically to execute it, yet each finished piece expresses a singular vision, focused and subject/object-ap- propriate. (art)n’s portfolio is exceptionally wide-ranging, including PHSCo- lographic renditions of iconic works by the Chicago Imagists; site-specific, visual history installations for major museums, such as virtual recreations of barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of an installation for the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York; and biology-based works, including reveal- ing depictions of the confounding, dazzling structure of our DNA and bodily viruses. Sandor and (art)n’s patented invention, the PHSCologram (an acronym for photography, holography, sculpture and computer graphics, pronounced skol-o-gram), which Sandor describes as a sort of “daguerreotype of virtual reality,” is a unique analog-meets-digital method of capturing immersive Cryptobiology: Reconstructing Identity, 2001 digital environments in a physical object. PHSCologram imagery is Ellen Sandor, Keith Miller, Fernando Orellana and Janine Fron, (art)n; Kathleen Helm-Bychowski, DePaul University. digitally rendered, sculpted, lit, and captured at as many as 64 slightly differ- Special thanks to Stephan Meyers. 30”x40” Digital ent positions across a horizontal plane with 3-D software applications, such PHSCologram, Duratrans, Kodalith, Plexiglas. 4 as Autodesk’s Maya. Then the frames are woven into an logram image invites our visual–even physical–participation, interleave with (art)n’s proprietary art program for final output because it transgresses the boundaries between dimensions. to transparent film. (art)n’s software generates a matching We investigate it up close, from a distance, from multiple linescreen that allows our eyes to interpret the final lightbox- angles. Even one’s smallest interaction as a viewer–a slight tilt mounted photograph (also a patented apparatus) as a three- of one’s head, perhaps–elucidates a dramatic new detail and a dimensional sculpture. captivating play of light. How do we as viewers experience a PHSCologram? Here One of the key advantages of the PHSCologram format, as we are conscious of not only the history of photography, well as a chief talent of the (art)n team, is developing an aes- but the roots of modernism itself, as well as the immediate thetically elegant, conceptually cogent visual shorthand. While forebears of Sandor and her colleagues. In a catalog essay this physical “hard copy” of a multimedia experience is ideal for for the 2001-2002 Whitney retrospective Into the Light: The depicting complex information contained in visual histories and Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977, curator Chrissie scientific imaging, the PHSCologram’s backlit drama also trans- Iles notes that artists working with film, slides, video, holo- lates brilliantly