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Contemporary Jewish Museum

The Body as Tool: Creating New Media

Thursday, Jun 21, 2018 | 6:30–8pm

ADMISSION: Free with Museum admission

Media artists Laetitia Sonami, M Eifler, and Camille Utterback use technological contraptions, such as video, electronic processing, and computers to explore the boundaries of art, and discuss their use of modern day contraptions. Presented in conjunction with Contraption: Rediscovering California Jewish Artists and The Art of Rube Goldberg.

Accessibility Info

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Laetitia Sonami is a sound artist, performer and researcher. Sonami's sound performances, live—film collaborations and sound installations—focus on issues of presence and participation. She has devised new gestural controllers for performance and applies new technologies and appropriated media to achieve an expression of immediacy through sound, place, and objects.

Best known for her unique instrument, the elbow-length Lady's Glove, which is fitted with an array of sensors tracking the slightest motion of her hand and body, she has performed worldwide and earned substantial international renown. Her most recent instrument, the Spring Spyre, applies neural networks to real time audio synthesis and her latest sound installation, in collaboration with Eliane Radigue and Bob Bielecki, has imbued sounds throughout the Rubin Museum (NYC) for the past year.

Sonami has received numerous awards among which the Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Awards.

M Eifler is an artist and leader in XR design working in the ecotones of art and technology to create new tools, and forms of research, as well as sculpture, video and virtual, and augmented reality technology. They are currently focused on incorporating embodied cognition fundamentals into an XR operating system and set of creative tools in order to free users' bodies from the physical malpractice of desktop computing. M is a vocal disabled, transgender, and bisexual person interested in inbetweens, chimeras, and grey areas.

Camille Utterback is an internationally acclaimed artist and pioneer in the field of digital and interactive art. Her work ranges from interactive gallery installations, to intimate reactive sculptures, to architectural scale site-specific works. Utterback’s work explores the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and physicality in visually layered ways. Utterback's extensive exhibit history includes more than fifty shows on four continents. Her awards include a Creative Work Fund Media Arts Grant (2015), MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2009), Transmediale International Media Art Festival Award (2005), Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship (2002), and a Whitney Museum commission for their ArtPort website (2002). Public commissions include works for the Liberty Mutual Group (2013), the FOR-SITE Foundation (2012), City of Sacramento, California (2011), the City of San Jose, California (2010), and the City of St. Louis Park, Minnesota (2009). Utterback’s work is in private and public collections including The Smithsonian American Art Museum; The Orange County Museum of Art; Hewlett Packard; Henderson Development Corporation in Hong Kong, China; Itaú Cultural Institute in São Paolo, Brazil; and La Caixa Foundation in Barcelona, Spain. Utterback holds a BA in Art from Williams College, a Masters degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Art and Art History Department at Stanford University. Utterback is represented by Haines Gallery in San Francisco.

Accessibility at The CJM

Contraption: Rediscovering California Jewish Artists, an original exhibition of The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM), was organized in association with the Fine Art and Jewish Studies departments of San Francisco State University. The exhibition is presented on the occasion of The CJM’s Tenth Anniversary in its Daniel Libeskind-designed building.

Major sponsorship is provided by Gaia Fund, the Taube Philanthropies for Jewish Life and Culture, and Dorothy R. Saxe. Patron sponsorship is provided by Fred Levin and Nancy Livingston and The Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson. Supporting sponsorship is provided by Riva and David Berelson, in memory of Gita and Henry Baigelman; Howard and Barbara Wollner. Additional support is provided by Doug Mandell and Scott Ullman.

Generous support is provided by The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Bernard and Barbro Osher Exhibition Fund.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum thanks The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for its lead sponsorship of The Museum’s exhibition program.

The Art of Rube Goldberg was conceived by Creighton Michael; developed in cooperation with Heirs of Rube Goldberg, LLC, New York, New York; and curated by Max Weintraub. The tour was organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC. The Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco’s presentation is presented on occasion of The CJM’s Tenth Anniversary in its Daniel Libeskind-designed building.

Lead sponsorship is provided by Gaia Fund, Maribelle and Stephen Leavitt, and Nellie and Max Levchin. Major sponsorship is provided by Dorothy R. Saxe. Patron Sponsorship is provided by Fred Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson; and Amy and Matt Berler. Supporting sponsorship is provided by David Agger; Riva and David Berelson, in memory of Gita and Henry Baigelman; Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery; Joyce B. Linker; and Marilyn and Murry Waldman. Additional support is provided by Ron and Barbara Kaufman and Scott Ullman.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum thanks the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for its lead sponsorship of the Museum’s exhibition program.