Welcome to the online home of the new media exhibtion RAM: Rethinking Art and Machine. Click through to experience a new visual appreciation of our technological world.
RAM: Rethinking Art and Machine is a museum exhibition exploring the origins and evolutions of new media art. Celebrating the pioneering artists of the twentieth century, RAM traces their changing relationships with electronic technology, light, graphics, robots, and sound. The exhibition includes historical works of computer art dating back to the 1970s, and culminates in the debut of the artists’ current projects. Highlighting how artists use the comptuer as a tool to translate human experience, RAM presents a new visual appreciation of our increasingly technological world.
Marla Wasser is President of curatorial and art advisory firm Pursuits Inc. She created RAM as an original exhibit for THEMUSEUM, Kitchener, Canada, and has adapted RAM for the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia to reflect the evolving impact and intersections of art and technology.
Pursuits Inc. combines Marla’s business savvy with her intellectual perspective. Marla has also created the Canadian museum exhibition The Art, Inspiration and Appropriation of Andy Warhol. Her longstanding relationships with top international galleries and foundations create unique opportunities within all of her projects.
For more information on Marla and Pursuits Inc., see www.pursuitsinc.com.
RAM is an interactive exhibit. A wide body of work will be presented from each artist, allowing the audience to understand the impact of evolving technology as it relates directly to the artist and their own personal vision and message.
Marla Wasser is the President of Pursuits, a consulting company specializing in art advisory. She has created RAM as an original exhibition for THEMUSEUM. This is the second collaboration between Marla and THEMUSEUM; the first being the highly acclaimed Andy Warhol exhibit that debuted last year. Marla's vast experience in the art world and her intense desire to bring the finest art to the widest possible audience gel seamlessly with THEMUSEUM's mission of presenting ideas that transcend objects.
Jim Campbell | Exploded View: Commuters, 2011
custom electronics, 1152 LEDs, wire, steel
2 in x 46 in x 38 in
Courtesy Museum of the Moving Image
Jim Campbell | Reconstructed Memory, 2011
2-dimensional moving image translated via LEDs onto resin block
11.5 in x 15.25 in
Courtesy Hosfelt Gallery
Alan Rath | Handful, 2010
Fiberglass, steel, aluminum, custom electronics, LCDs
80 in × 25 in × 48 in in
Courtesy Hosfelt Gallery
Alan Rath | Waiting, 1989
Custom electronics
17 in × 22 in × 12 in
Courtesy Hosfelt Gallery
Manfred Mohr | Cube Transformation Study, 1972
Digitization of original 16 mm film
Courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery, New York
Manfred Mohr | Example from P1622 Artificiata II series, 2012-2013
Courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery, New York
Manfred Mohr | Example from P1411 Parallel Resonance series, 2009-2011
Courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery, New York
Daniel Rozin | Rust Mirror, 2010
768 rusted steel tiles,768 motors, video camera, control electronics
96 in x 52 in x 6 in
Courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery, New York
Daniel Rozin | Brushed Steel Mirror, 2010
721 stainless steel discs, 721 motors, video camera, control electronics e
82 in x 80 in x 45 in
Courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery, New York
Daniel Rozin | Darwinian Straw Mirror, 2010
computer, custom software, video camera, screen display or projector
dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery, New York
These innovators have broken down the traditional boundaries that have existed between the artistic and technological disciplines. RAM the exhibit will survey the work and ideas of these artists and the understanding of its aesthetics and socio-cultural aspirations. Within each one of these unique artist areas the audience will learn how each artist integrates their personal life experiences through human-computer interactions and the humanization of machines.
Born in 1966 in Rainy River, Canada, Angela Bulloch plays with our perception of art through the manipulations of codes, creating immersive environments through sculpture, light, and sound. Incorporating myriad historical references and exploring how technology abstracts information, her work is aesthetically minimal but layered with conceptual and mechanical complexity.
Bulloch graduated from Goldsmiths College, London in 1988, and is considered part of the ‘Freeze’ generation of ‘Young British Artists’. Bulloch is known for her ongoing ‘Pixel_Box’ works, which are sculptural cubes, lit from within, to represent the single informational unit of the computer pixel. Bulloch is also a musician who runs her own record label, ABCDLP. Her evolving body of work incorporates a range of media, frequently using, sound, music, illumination, video, architecture and text.
Bulloch has exhibited widely in venues including Tate Modern in London, Witte de With in Rotterdam, the Power Plant in Toronto, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She is a recipient of the Whitechapel Artists’ Award and the Vattenfall Contemporary Art Prize, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1997. She currently lives and works in Berlin.
Jim Campbell was born in 1956 in Chicago, Illinois. He received degrees in both electrical engineering and mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1978. As an engineer, Campbell holds more than a dozen patents in the field of image processing and HDTV technologies.
Originally a filmmaker, Campbell transitioned from film making to interactive video installations in the mid 1980's. His custom electronic sculptures and installations have made him a leading figure in the use of computer technology as an art form.
Campbell combines more traditional media, such as video with his own inventions. He uses custom-made electronics to explore the relationship between information and knowledge, examining how we translate and understand the data that we receive. His work is deeply immersed in new technologies of software, electronic components, programming languages, the physics of waveform and light, transmission and frequency. Although his works are technologically complicated, the concepts such as memory and intimate familial relationships are a constant theme and humanize the machines for the audience to participate with their own very personal interpretations.
His electronic artworks have been exhibited and collected in Museums throughout the United States and Europe, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Campbell is currently living and working in San Francisco, California
Born in 1938 in Pforzheim Germany, Manfred Mohr is considered a pioneer of computer-generated art. After discovering Professor Max Bense's Information Aesthetics in the early 1960's, Mohr's artistic approach was radically changed. Within a few years, his art transformed from abstract expressionism to computer-generated algorithmic geometry. Encouraged by the computer music composer Pierre Barbaud, whom he met in 1967, Mohr programmed his first computer drawings in 1969 using the Fortran programming language to write algorithms as a vehicle of formal procision.
In 1971 Mohr exhibited “Une Esthétique Programmé” at the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris, considered to be the first museum solo show of works entirely calculated and drawn with a computer.
The rules of geometry, logic and mathematics are fundamental to the custom-authored algorithms that generate Mohr's artwork. His pieces are based on the logical structure of cubes and hypercubes.
Mohr's work is housed in the collections of major museums across Europe including the Centre Pompidou, Paris. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Los Angeles, and many others across North America. Mohr has lived and worked in New York City since 1981.
Born in 1959 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Alan Rath received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1982 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rath brings a unique perspective to his art making: a knowledge of historically important sculpture, a deep understanding of technology, creative experience and the human condition. He is committed to experimentation and the usage of new materials in art making that create sculptures that remain on the cutting edge of both scientific and artistic innovation. Motion sensors in his sculptures allow for interaction between art and audience, countering technological alienation by breaking down the barriers between human and machine while simultaneously questioning the positivity of society-wide over-familiarity and identification with technology.
Rath is a comprehensive designer, making interdisciplinary art that incorporates his studies of human behavior, sociology, physics, chemistry, art history, artificial intelligence, and a fair dose of humor.
He has had several solo museum exhibitions and group shows. Highlights include: Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, Whitney Museum, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and many more world wide.
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Daniel Rozin, born in Jerusalem in 1961, is an artist, educator and developer, working in the area of interactive digital art. Trained as an industrial designer, Rozin creates installations and sculptures that have the unique ability to change and respond to the presence and point of view of the viewer. In many cases the viewer becomes the content of the piece and in others the viewer is invited to take an active role in the creation of the piece. While computers are often used in Rozin's work, they are seldom visible.
As an educator, Rozin is Associate Art Professor at ITP, Tisch School Of The Arts at New York University where he teaches a range of classes that investigate the relationship between art and technology such as The World- Pixel by Pixel, Project Development Studio and Toy Design Workshop.
Rozin’s work has been exhibited widely with solo exhibitions in the US and internationally and featured in publications such as The New York Times, Wired, ID, Spectrum and Leonardo. His work has earned him numerous awards including Prix Ars Electronica, ID Design Review and the Chrysler Design Award. Rozin currently lives and works in New York City.
Jim Campbell
Jim Campbell
Alan Rath
Alan Rath
Manfred Mohr
Manfred Mohr
Manfred Mohr
Daniel Rozin
Daniel Rozin, 
Daniel Rozin