Cyber Dada Retrospective at New Low #cyberculture #cyberpunk #cyberart #cyberdada #Melbourne #geekgirl

tumblr_troy_dale_cyberdada 1991

Retrospective exhibition of animation, video, installation and publishing created by Cyber Dada (Troy Innocent & Dale Nason).

Opening at New Low on Tuesday 5th June at 6pm
Exhibition runs 3rd – 8th June 2012
http://cyber-dada.tumblr.com/

‘If Stelarc was the poet of the body electric, helping to define cyberculture as a new phase in human evolution, the Melbourne-based Cyber Dada collective provided its manifesto and audiovisual style’

The cyber dada manifesto defined the cyber art scene in the 1990s. Like a meme it emerged in professional, cultural and student publications simultaneously; travelling internationally via fax and other technologies – prefiguring the viral networking of today. Now it has come back to Melbourne.

The cyber dada manifesto (1990) was a key international video work that captured the spirit and audiovisual aesthetics of the emergent digital world. A powerful engagement with the paradigm of information and virtual realities, it anticipated the connected world that we now take for granted. In the critical and scholarly writings on cyberculture and digital media it is recognized as a landmark work.

The retrospective exhibition includes this work alongside animation, video, installation and publishing projects produced by Cyber Dada during a five year period between 1989 and 1994.

The exhibition is opening on Tuesday June 5th between 6:00 – 8:30pm at New Low.

The retrospective will show works that have since been archived at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the international Cyberpunk Project, an archive of cyberculture.

Troy Innocent
Dr Troy Innocent is a world builder, iconographer and reality newbie. His artificial worlds – Iconica (SIGGRAPH 98, USA), and Semiomorph (ISEA02, Japan) – explore the connections between artificial systems such as language and natural processes abundant in life. Innocent co-founded the digital arts collective Cyber Dada in 1989 and through pioneering works such as Idea-ON>! (1992) contributed to the Australian new media arts practice during the 90s. His most recent works are urban art environments: an interactive sculpture garden entitled Colony (2008) in the Melbourne Docklands and Urban Codemakers (2010), an Alternate Reality Game that reinvents the history of Melbourne. He has received numerous awards, including Honorary Mention, LIFE 2.0: Artificial Life, Spain (1999); Foreign Title Award, MMCA Multimedia Grand Prix, Japan (1998); First Prize, National Digital Art Awards, Australia (1995); and Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica (1992). Innocent is currently Senior Lecturer in Games and Interactivity, Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University, Melbourne. Innocent is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery.

::: iconica.org | ludea.net | troyinnocent.net :::

Dale Nason
Dale Nason is an active participant in creative subcultures in Australia & internationally. This practice is supported by his long term role in art and design education. Nason has created art, design and media works ranging from texts though to kinetic performance actions. His zines are recognized in major exhibitions and public collections. Intermittently a VJ, mobile projectionist, photocopy artist, new media artist, musician, and guerilla gardener, Nason is cited as being part of the Australian new media avant garde, having co-created Cyber Dada, an influential early example of internet culture art. More recent video works have been described as ‘dark wave’, and feature of this work being the human handling of dead animals. A masters degree in Public Art brought focus to a critique of national identity & public symbols of power. This helped establish a long term project identity, Zero Dollars. A future project will take him to visit the second site of British Atomic Weapon tests in Australia which were responsible for the radioactive poisoning of Aboriginal people & army personnel in the 1950’s. This is at a place called Emu Field, South Australia, named after one of the animals on the Australian Coat of Arms. More recently, independent research into design, teaching & learning has been published. ‘Crisis Drift: A Meta-gogical Glue for Learning & Teaching Design’ attempts to focus on contingency and trajectory, in particular ‘crisis drift’.

New Low
Basement, 746 Swanston St, Carlton, VIC, Australia
http://n-e-w-l-o-w.tumblr.com/

New Low is a new artist run initiative in Melbourne. Quite literally underground, in the basement of Good Time Studios, New Low is not a standard white cube. With short curated solo shows under the direction of Tara Cook, the initiative aims to provide a professional and significant space for contemporary ambitious, emerging, expanded and experimental projects. The gallery uniquely has short shows; this recognises the context in which the audience and focus is placed on the opening night as an event, while seeing documentation online as a space with greater longevity and outreach.