PORT: Navigating Digital Culture Organized by a r t n e t w e b MIT List Visual Arts Center January 25 through March 29, 1997

PROJECT DESCRIPTION The camera moves from our eyes to our mouths to our hands to the work, as Nina sculpts Emily drawing Nina. The female gaze is accepted as observation in the artmaking process. The cameras establish a rhythm with their movement; they record the physical process of perception and representation. Eyes move to observe and record, mouths move involuntarily, hands move to coax form out of media, and the work records the materialization of the process. Through observing another we discover ourselves, and as the piece progresses each artist appears on the opposite screen, in the hands of the other. The process is heightened by their awareness of unseen Web voyeurs, who observe the process remotely. While 1997 marks the third season of ArTisTheater, our weekly live Web video performance series, Touch is our first multi-page Web performance, a site-specific installation designed to be projected on the four screens of PORT.

NINA SOBELL Nina Sobell, an interactive computer and video installation artist since 1970, was recently nominated for a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. ParkBench evolved from her collaboration with Joseph Beuys' Free International University, Documenta VI. EMILY HARTZELL Emily Hartzell is an artist and curator who collaborates with Sobell in Web performance and telerobotics. She teaches digital media at the International Center of Photography and consults for the NYC Board of Education as a media specialist. They are Artists-in-Residence at NYU Center for Advanced Technology.

SPONSORS New York University Center for Advanced Technology http://www.cat.nyu.edu