Fill In the Blank Gallery spent the month of January teleporting a Youtube video into their Chicago art gallery. You can find additional documentation on FIB's Webcam at JustinTV.
Please visit asquare.org to see a highlight of this Textaport project.
Garrett Lynch's Network Research is a weblog gathering and archiving information concerning the use of networks in new media / contemporary art. It’s function is as a thinking space and testing ground for on going research into artistic practice and works created by Garrett Lynch.
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To commemorate their 1-year anniversary, Fill in the Blank Gallery invited Textaport to write a descriptive text that would keep them busy (collaborating together) for the entire month of January for an exhibit they would entitle 'Culmination'.
The five featured artists; Kristen Althoff, Mary Ayling, Katie Hogan, Whitney Larson and Kelly Tucker didn't miss a beat in following Textaport's labor-intensive instructions for the construction of the mystery object. Part 1 ,
Part 2 ,
Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6
Visit Fill In the Blank Gallery to learn more and to view more documentation of the project.
In addition to the Textaported object, 4 audio artists Textaported the sound of the video. This footage is currently being compiled.
David Castillo
Scott Cortez
Paul Giallorenzo
Dan Godston (via cell phone from Milwaukee)
Here are some highlights of the project: (images from FIB Gallery web site)
January 4 "We are building something. We don't know what it is. Each week we will be given a new set of instructions on how to build this mystery object..."
January 8 "Today Katie and I completed part 2, which was creating a small-scale model of our object. Once we completed that, we were told to re-create that model 20-times larger. We didn't have cardboard large enough so we paper mached 3 large boxes together. We finished one side of one piece of part 3. We still have 3 more to make as well as assembling it. This could take a while...
January 17 "So if you have been following us for the past week you may be wondering what exactly we are doing. Good question. Answer: we have no idea! Last Tuesday we were given a set of instructions from our Textaport headquarters, which had us making a smaller scale version of what is now giant paper mache sides taking up all the floor space in our gallery..."
...how crunchy our pants are sounding...we have also begun to wonder why we are subjecting ourselves and our poor hands to such treatment...
Wish us luck as we encounter these next few steps, my guess is that this is where we may cry...started work on PART 5! We read through all of the instructions, and boy is it a doozy! Apparently our box is getting some legs! Whitney and I measured and cut out the two side pieces, and tomorrow we'll start bracing them together...
January 19 "Today I came in to do some wheat pasting and reinforcing. I got to the gallery at noon, and 7 1/2 hours later I am still here. Still wheat pasting. Still reinforcing...an anonymous entity ordered us a pizza!...figured out how to make a non-chunky wheat paste in a hot-pot. I also succeeded in wheat pasting my glasses to my face, my socks to my feet and my pants to my legs. All in all it's been a very productive day..."
January 29 "We thought we were basically done making all the pieces of our object on Saturday when something new was thrown into the mix... cookies! Not real cookies...but circles cut out of cardboard...Lets sidetrack for a minute and talk about the emotional aspect of this project. You're being given instructions piece by piece, you have no idea what you're making, and when you're just about sure suddenly something else is thrown into the mix that doesn't fit your expectations. Its both a joyous and extremely frustrating process. The cookies totally threw off our idea of what we thought this object was and for a second we all stopped and stared at each other... and got a little angry...Up until this point we felt ownership over the object because we had created each piece of it from scratch and spent 3 weeks assembling and wheat pasting. I think we were angry because it was at that moment that we realized we didn't own this object, that ownership could be taken from us at any moment simply by being told to do something different. We could have been told to tear the whole thing apart and we would have done it because we don't know any better. We really have to trust that [Textaport] isn't just messing with us and that at the end we will actually have made something...Ownership is a strange, and I believe intentional, part of this process. ..[Textaport] doesn't really own this object any more than we do because without us carrying out their instructions there is no object. Ownership lies in some strange in between place..."
