Breaking news, one night only: “How To Build A Rocket Pack In Five Minutes Or Fewer” New art by Pete Ippel to be presented during John White’s curated 5x5x5 performance evening. The event will be hosted by Sylvia White Gallery in Ventura, California. The show begins promptly at 8pm on Friday, March 2nd 2012. Come on by for a unique contemporary art experience.

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MacGyvero (adj.) MacGyverismo (noun) is a portmanteau coined by Pete Ippel and Peter Roberge that aids English speakers in the United States to understand the Chicano concept of Rasquache, that is both functional in American-English and sounds like Spanish.

The intent of MacGyverismo is to create positive associations among Mexican-Americans (Chicanos), original problem solving, new methods, and creative thinking.

Ask an American-English native speaker to think of someone who did the most with the least in tough situations: MacGuyver, the pop culture reference of resourcefulness, comes up consistently…often with a half-smile of nostalgia.

The starting of a car with a cactus, a nickel, and a string may be a bit of hyperbole, and MacGyver has his fair share of parody…yet the general connotation is positive.

Why is that? Because the main actor is white? Because MacGyver isn’t poor or in a marginalized culture?

There is contradiction because when performed by a non-white American, innovative repairs are castigated by pejorative words such as ghetto, hack, and jury-rigged which often have a negative connotation.

MacGyverismo is functional in explaining a complex notion to someone who only has the capacity to describe objects with the aforementioned terms. MacGyverismo imbues an odd sense of respect to an oft-dismissed practice of solving problems with available materials…a key trait of artists in any culture.

Inspired by the exhibition at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, California entitled Chicano Visions

And this is my favorite piece of his work, as far as I know after this was auctioned by Sotheby’s it’s out of the public eye. Bummer.

Still Life with Oysters, Fish in a Bowl and Book

There are certain moments that drastically alter the trajectory of a life-path. Being open and aware to those instants is absolutely essential regardless of one’s career.

I returned from the Libre Graphics Meeting that was rife with inspiration. The event was hosted at the Pianofabriek in Brussels, Belgium May 27-30. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the experience, here’s what I learned:

Generosity is contagious
I had ordered a computer as soon as I found out that my talk The New Folk Tradition: Aesthetic and Community Resonance between Open Source Graphics and Fiber Arts was accepted at the beginning of May. It was to be my first new computer since 2004, and boy was I due! Unfortunately the delivery from Lenovo did not arrive by the 24th when I left. So in a bind I decided to stop by Fry’s on the way to LAX and pick up a little Acer Aspire One netbook.

I arrived in London, downloaded Jolicloud which is based on Ubuntu and started to play around on the train to Brussels. The issue was that I’d not used Unix/Linux since I worked in Motorola in 1999…my how things have changed, so easy to use (yes I like GUI)! So I thought that I was going to give my presentation using Open Office, well when I saw How to Run an Art School on Free and Open Source Software by Florian Cramer, Aymeric Mansoux, Michael Murtaugh I was blown out of the water by their image-centric presentation. I got to chat with them after the talk, and they told me about the FOSS program Impress!ve.

At this point, Christopher Adams showed me how to use a shortcut (alt + F2) to access the repository by calling on gksu synaptic.

So at that moment I scrapped my plans of the standard Power Point-esq (gasp) presentation. After just a few hours at the LGM I already knew how to utilize new tools, and put down some roots with other artist do-ers with similar interests. Rad.

After a vegan lunch we relaxed in the courtyard drinking Belgian beer (thank goodness for the Westmalle tripel) and getting to know our peers.

Another important aspect for me was the instant application of what I learned. WiFi was free and available all over the complex, so while you were watching a talk you could download and try out the software to apply the concepts that were being explained. In addition, birds of a feather (BOF) meetings were scheduled so that people with similar interests could gather to speak about a topic. In my case I was inspired by Susan Spencer’s talk and her project relating to OPEN FASHION. You can learn more at Sew Brilliant. In the BOF meeting, she pulled out one of the most amazing contraptions I’ve ever seen, it was a brass pattern adjuster, that would change scale by rotating a series of screws in a certain order. She even had the manual that dated from 1888.

Basically it was a slide rule for tailors and seamstresses. Susan’s and her partner Steve Conklin (who is a developer for Ubuntu) have a vision where a designer can upload a pattern, another person (who may not be the same size) can adjust it to fit using the program which is based on scalable vector graphics, print and tape up the pattern and sew the custom garment. What an excellent idea, so naturally I included it into my talk. Now check out the video of Pete Ippel relating Asian stitching, 80′s sweaters,Tron, quilts, and weaving to open source graphics.

Great planning matters
Each day of the conference the organizers kept the program on schedule, and the diversity of the talks really demonstrated an expanded view of Libre Graphics. Thanks to River Valley TV for archiving all the LGM 2010 talks.

In addition to software development, there were presentations about metaphor, Tight Pants, Community, publishing, font design,multimedia sound performance, and some miraculous demos. I was particularly impressed with Laid Out and the new brushes for Krita.

Confused? Ask for help
It is incredible how generous people were at the conference, as a n00b it was invaluable to be able to ask a question and get a straight answer, and if the person asking didn’t know, they would refer you to someone who did…The organizers wore aprons and buttons and were always available for help.

Reclaim your tools
I began to understand this overarching theme after a few days into the conference. Formerly I’d been envisioning code as magic. After seeing the Nodebox 2 demo, I downloaded the beta and was able to modify an image or a line of code to make changes to an output. That was a huge breakthrough for me I saw directly that through transparency comes understanding. That’s what F/LOSS gives when code is viewable and modifiable the developer and user are on an even plane, and both can create new tools to suit their needs. There exists a sense of community that is absolutely impossible with closed code.

Work together
I’ve been licensing my art under Creative Commons for a few years, and I am confident that as the young people who have “grown up digital” and the first generations of free culture pioneers continue to push for more openness and transparency on many facets of life from government to software, clipart to color we are in for a very exciting ride.

Please visit the review page for other articles, photos, and a video archive of all the Libre Graphics Events.

If you find yourself in Brussels, use the map below to visit the Pianofabriek. It’s an amazing arts / culture venue with a lovely courtyard, gallery space and cafe.

View Libre Graphics Meeting, 2010 in a larger map

Resources for downloads mentioned in this post
Desktop publishing Scribus
Vector graphic editing Inkscape
Bitmap editing Gimp
Bitmap editing and painting (check out the new brushes) Krita
3d modeling and animation Blender
A new software application for creating generative art using procedural graphics and a new way to approach graphic design Nodebox 2
Ditch hierarchy Peer-To-Peer Design Strategies

How I got involved in Free Culture / F/LOSS / Creative Commons
Often growth is sparked by a change in community…prompted by a different geographic location.

In October 2002, I had just moved to San Francisco and was looking for community. Leaving the comfort of my undergraduate institution and support network in New York, I was seeking attachment to my new home.

I initiated a project called “Free Memory” where the intent was to give away an anonymous gift that brought attention to technology and our relationship with memory both on a disk and in our mind. Looking back at the task I stated that free meant free from price, obligation, need to pay, and also free content.

I desired to connect with the folks on the street, and get out from behind the computer screen…to enrich online life with offline life and vice-versa. Looking back, mobile computing was not an option for me, I had a desktop computer. That project grew and spread so that I even got a video response from across the country:

The Free Memory Project from Thorsten Claus on Vimeo.

Alan Toffler states in his book Future Shock from 1970, “…that enormous changes ahead…overthrow our values with respect to money and success.”

After creating the project OBAY.INFO I was contacted by council for Ebay.com and subsequently looked to Lessig’s Group at Stanford (which lead me to Creative Commons), was fingered in a Canadian Ad Campaign, and was invited to the To Share Festival in Turin Italy. Read all the posts about Obay.

Following Obay project I took a job working as a mentor for pre-professional dancers at the San Francisco Ballet. Over the six years I was there, I learned that a robust community was built with freedom. What I found was that kids would act more like adults when they were given the opportunity to do so. The same was true when I coached high school basketball for 4 years.

I left the Ballet at the end of 2009, and when I moved from San Francisco to Ventura, California, I began an intense production phase to kick-start my full-time art career. By comparing pixels to patchwork, vectors to stitches, bitmaps to patterns, and layers to quilts, I started to discover the aesthetic and community relationships between open source graphics and the fiber arts.

So why does all this happen? Enjoy the following video to gain some insight on the cognitive reasoning:

Thank you to Jon Phillips, Barry Threw, Christopher Adams, Femke Snelting and everyone else at LGM 2010 for helping me feel so welcome in this amazing community.

Introducing 11 Different, Unique, Original, Hypermodern Artists: Pete Ippel

Thank you to Stew Birbrower for creating the concept for this poster. Thank you to the GIMP for being rad and open source.

Check it out, I’m having an open house during Ventura Art Walk Saturday April 17th 1:00-9:00pm Sunday April 18th noon-5:00pm. Also I will be open for First Fridays Ventura, and for more info on where I live, Working Artists Ventura, check out the overview on WAV

This is a big weekend for me, and my MOM Diane Ippel is featured in the special dedication event for WAV.

The last time so many artists lived and worked in the same building was 100 years ago in Paris. That building was called La Rouche. This building is called WAV, Working Artists Ventura. Pete Ippel is one of 77 emerging artists from 21 countries with radically different styles. So the next time you want art, come to our house.

Contact Pete Ippel

175 S. Ventura Ave
Studio 213 North Building
Ventura, CA 93001

Dial 1 (234) Pete-Art to order your free educational report: 7 THINGS YOU MUST KNOW BEFORE BUYING CONTEMPORARY ART.

Earlier this month I participated in SOMArts Community Center’s show “MOMENTS (Bringing Back the Now)”. At the opening, Justin Hoover, the newly hired director of the gallery space, re-created the 100 Performances for the Hole that he formerly curated out of his Garage San Francisco’s Pacific Heights Neighborhood.

For 100 Performances for the Hole Take-Two, the dimensions of the hole were expanded, and moved from an automotive trench to a sand casting pit.

I issued four instructions to the group:

• The hole is defined as the cut in the cement.
• You may not get in the hole.
• Any bill that lands outside of the hole must be kicked into the hole.
• Any bills that you snatch with your sticky hand are yours, any bills left in the hole after the two minutes are mine.

“Free Money, Stick Fingers” involves the art market, memory of childhood games, issues of control, gift giving, and philanthropic aims.

A Day in San Francisco from Rossita Dove on Vimeo.

In addition, there is a cameo appearance of “Free Money, Sticky Fingers” toward the end of the short video “A Day in San Francisco” by Rossita Dove.

Check out the Photos and the press release (below) for more information about the exhibition.

100 Performances for the Hole – Take Two is the opening event (#1 of 3) of a month long exhibition called: MOMENTS (Bringing Back the Now). This show features a series of live art events that transform the gallery into a contemporary art laboratory exploring the intersection between visual mediums, performance art, and time-based sculpture.

Conceived of by SOMArts Curator and Gallery Director Justin Hoover, this exhibition examines the state of contemporary live art in the Bay Are by inviting the collaboration and participation of over 100 performance artists working in a variety of styles and methods. MOMENTS (Bringing Back The Now) is structured around three events examining performance art today: a series of 100 two-minute, site-specific performances performed one after another, a ballet with heavy machinery that was inspired by a previous performance choreographed by youth in a housing complex, and a series of time-based and mobile/ephemeral sculptures.

According to curator Justin Hoover “the lived moment is often greatly under-appreciated, in life and in the arts. Largely, in the mind of the public, fine art is relegated to objects and environments, and rarely is the emotionality and the nuance of a lived moment evidenced as an artwork. In the contemporary moment, art has long surpassed the realm of objecthood and some of the most innovative new forms reside i experience. By highlighting local performance artists and performative installations, SOMArts gives Bay Area artists and audiences a chance to exchange ideas and build attention around a developing form that rarely finds its way into a gallery. MOMENTS (Bring Back the Now) brings immediacy back to the experience of contemporary art viewership.”

Additionally, this exhibition will work in conjunction with the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) to upload this live program directly to cable television.

100 Performances for the Hole – Take Two breathes fresh life into a formerly disused part of the SOMArts Main Gallery, namely what remains of the mechanics pit from the building’s former life as the Union Machine Company. Through a simple hole and an open call for ephemeral performance artwork, 100 Performances highlighting the contemporary timescape of today and invigorates a wide swath of the performance art community, one that is vibrant, innovative, playful, and elusive. This tour-de-force of the ephemeral is juried by Kevin B. Chen, Peter Foucault, Justin Hoover, Jackie Im, Lex Leifheit, and Lucy Kalyani Lin.

By taking creative action through expressive discipline, artists generate experiences where a viewer’s sensitive, aware perception illuminates the path to relief in the global economic crisis. Art will inspire a solution.

Download Selected Findings Artists and the Recession Survey 2009 sponsored by LINC Leveraging Investments in Creativity.

Sensing demands a market. Values are automatically assigned to a stimulus as a function of their reception. This fundamental law of being, embodied at an unconscious level, manifests in every aspect of human existence.

To have a body unaware of the market of stimulus is to have a body damaged by its environment. In a fleeting glance to the heavens to spy a bird taking flight, a sunbeam hits our eyes. Do we not cower to the ray’s power to blind yet marvel at the universe it illuminates? The internal mechanisms built to protect our vision restrict the size of our pupil because our unconscious knows the cost of failing to do so. Staring directly into the sun is a sizzling reminder of blue spots that a retina is merely the ant on the sidewalk and our natural lens a child’s magnifier.

It’s no wonder that we fall prey to the intoxicating glow of the liquid crystal display. We are drawn to the screen as a moth to a lamp. Attracted by the promise of information, yet burned by the theft of time. It’s our choice to turn on the back-lit window, to navigate it. Yet within the journey to the content of our desire, there exists distractions at every turn.

The conscious and the unconscious market are always present, and it is the charge of the sensor to be present and aware in each moment. Unlocking myriad economies is the crux of Market Forces.

The exhibition commands the attention economy, the cognitive economy, and the social economy by parting space into three distinct arenas.

Attention Economy

Physical objects in space, whirring – clicking – bouncing, emulating natural systems in their fabrication demand the viewer at an unconscious level to observe.

Cognitive Economy

When objects are common, uniform, static they become background. Cans on a supermarket shelf, the logo of the auction where you bid daily, the face of the homeless man you constantly ignore. In the cognitive economy artists succeed when they inject just enough dissonance to be perceptible, so that the viewer becomes aware of the behavior in question.

Social Economy

At times Utopian in its scope and generosity, the social economy succeeds when sharing concepts, ideas, and experiences trumps individualistic, ego-based thinking. Cultural posturing, intellectual flexing, and acute misunderstanding, while uncomfortable, are the necessary market pull-backs obviating utter collapse. Only through rigorous effort will the social economy transcend the emotional rise and fall of communication-breakdown and maintain a positive trajectory.

As a whole Market Forces reverberates with the promise that each economy, attention, cognitive, and social, is a valid space for artists to operate.

So the Headlands Center For The Arts has a new online application program called “SlideRoom” it’s super easy to use, and it works great. I really hope more organizations start to use it. I imagine it would really work well in the art school application process…it makes a slide list receipt/confirmation of upload that you can print out as well. How handy.

The one thing that I wish was that it was more intuitive to shuffle the order around. Once uploaded, the images were not easy to move, so they stayed in the same sequence as they were uploaded.

I just finished up the application for the Tournesol Award ($10,000.00 and a studio in the Marin Headlands *my favorite place to bike*) below you will find the submitted letter of interest.

Dear Tournesol Award committee:

The Headlands has been an integral aspect of my life in the Bay Area. I am an avid cyclist, and last Saturday I was riding my mountain bike on the Miwok trail north of the stables, when I encountered a rough-skinned newt sauntering across my path. I took pause to study his movements and the intricate texture of his skin. It’s experiences like these that ONLY the Headlands can offer and inspire the way I think about the world.

I have an expanded view of works on paper, and as such I have executed projects that integrate digital drawing techniques, various mounting methods, collage, and found objects. My work is simultaneously influenced by technology, while intuitively responding to the embodied experience of life.

Each work has a self-contained reality and often a forthright sense of place. Through the choice of bright colors, condensation of space, and manipulation of visual cues, I create experiences that imply phenomena and images that exude their thing-ness. That is, the unique properties of the subjects depicted are emphasized. What my artwork lacks in verisimilitude, it gains in joyful complexity and honest wonder. I have been gradually getting larger with my practice. Presently I am working on an ambitious four by eight-foot piece of paper, and I want to move even larger, yet I have run out of wall space in my bedroom.

The beauty of our earth inspires me, and I strive to acknowledge the wonders of the natural world by expounding on intuition while maintaining a clear focus on my life as an artist.

As an athlete I understand the rigors of repeated practice, and it is undeniable that creativity and discipline go hand in hand. A residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts will have a profoundly positive effect on my artistic endeavors because I will have a studio that will be a consistent environment in which to work, as well as a nourishing community of peers that is following a similar life path.

Formerly, I have worked up to four jobs at once to pay for the extensive debt I incurred during my tenure at Cornell and the San Francisco Art Institute. I have continued to create new art through all of this, and still maintain an exhibition record complete with solo shows.

Starting in June, I will be working solely for the San Francisco Ballet as their residence manager, and as such, I will be free from noon to seven daily to work in the studio. It will be the first time since graduate school that I will have a block of time dedicated to artistic creation. I aspire to spend that time working at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

My commitment to pursuing a life as an artist is unquestionable. By winning the Tournesol award I will engage in a more complete art practice. It will be my distinct honor to represent the Headlands Center for the Arts as I continue to move forward with my professional art career. Thank you for your consideration.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Ippel

Preblog: Time capsule to Midwestern Teenage Life Before the World Wide Web – Blogging as a 15-Year-Old and 30-Year-Old at the Same Time

San Francisco based artist Pete Ippel travels to rural Illinois to unlock the fire-proof safe that’s been buried in the closet of his childhood home since 1997. Ippel investigates and interprets nearly three years of the pre-web, Midwestern teenage experience of the middle 90s contrasting it with his technology-laden life in Northern California. Ippel will “Preblog” his journals and images systematically posting a transcription to http://hypermodern.net/tag/preblog/ three times daily.

Project Description

Inspiration:

The Atlantic magazine has asked the question “Is Google making us stupid?” Don Tapscott in his text Grown Up Digital argues that “If you understand the Net Genration, you will understand the future”.

My personal history has a fortunate crossroads in it that is incredibly stark: life experience pre vs. post Internet access is divided and recorded.

In “Preblog” I will be simultaneously blogging as a 15-year-old boy and 30-year-old man.

The core concept of the “Preblog” is to explore the following dichotomies: childhood/adulthood, private/public, rural/urban

Transcribing and analyzing nearly three years of daily writing (30 months Dec 1995-August 1997) in one year will be a challenge. I take solace in author Jim Collins’ statement that, “Creativity and discipline go hand in hand”.

Each Preblog post will be composed of the following:

1.) A tagged and linked WordPress entry of the handwritten text
2.) A scan of the actual journal document in .pdf format
3.) Access to a downloadable .doc transcript of the journal entry
4.) Accompanying analog photos, rephotographed or scanned
5.) A contemporary response to the text by the artist
6.) A community comments section

Content will be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License

Preblog entries are located in a Sentry fireproof file safe in Morris, Illinois.

Artist and athlete Pete Ippel lines up for a race in Morris, Illinois, April 1997 Photo: MCHS yearbook staff

Production Timeline

1.) January 4-10 Fly to Chicago, drive to Morris, Illinois. Document surroundings photographically.
2.) January 11-17 Gather analog photos, prepare for transport of documents.
3.) January 18-24 Fly to San Francisco, California. Document surroundings photographically
4.) January 25 – December 31 Actively transcribe, preblog, analyze, share, and reply to comments.

Process:

1.) Journal pages will be removed from their spiral binding
2.) The frayed edges will be cut off
3.) Supplemental inserts (playbills etc will be unfolded and unstapled)
4.) Utilizing the Fujitsu ScanSnap, both sides of the sheet will be scanned in one pass
5.) Each page will be placed in a sheet protector and clipped into a three ring binder
6.) Each journal entry will be given an accessioning number
7.) A corresponding transcript will be typed for each handwritten journal entry
8.) The text of the transcript will be posted to hypermodern.net with the downloadable .doc file and .pdf scan

The Preblog process will be successful because I have great familiarity with the tools I will be using, and I have the discipline to transcribe three entries a day. Each entry to the original journal is one hand written page which translates into approximately 150 words, so three posts a day at 35 words per minute typing speed plus formatting, analysis, and scanning will take approximately 1.5 hours per day.

Project Budget

1.) Round trip airplane tickets San Francisco to Chicago $500.00
2.) Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M for document .pdf file creation and analog print photography digitization $500.00
3.) Artist Fees 13.30 dollars / day for 300 days. $13.30 / 3 posts a day = 4.4 dollars per post. $4000.00

Total commission $5,000.

History

After being dumped at the holiday dance when I was a sophomore in high school in 1995, I was searching for answers…I wanted to figure out why it happened and to grow from the experience. I took to writing. I updated my journal every night before bed. If I was away, I wrote on napkins or hotel paper. Ticket stubs and playbills were stuffed between pages. I wanted to document my thoughts to grow.

I recorded events in order to better understand my world, when I left for college in upstate New York, the hundreds of pages of documents were packed in a fire-proof safe in my bedroom in Morris, Illinois.

Two days before my departure for college, I received a Compaq 1535DM as a gift from my parents. I didn’t sleep for the next 36 hours because I was exploring my new Pentium 133mhz laptop and how to use it.

A few days later during Cornell University orientation week’s, “Travelers of the Electronic Highway” course, my journaling practice would be forever altered. It was the first exposure I had to the Internet.

I received a network id and an email address in August 1997. The computer replaced the hand written pages of my journal as I began to think of my emails as a flowing life record that I could index and search. My behavior changed, and I frequently scrutinized my new college friends’ status on Instant Messenger.

By 1999 I was hand coding HTML documents and posting my art to the web. I explored broadcasting live videos online through my web cam, and delved into Yahoo Personals with the thought if I was doing this and posting as my “real self” I’d find people with the same commitment to authenticity online and offline. At this point, meeting people online still was perceived as socially dubious.

In 2001 during a graduate seminar on human computer interaction I was introduced to social networking and created a profile. This was a key moment as the personal vs. public social space continued to merge as peer-use of social networking sites exploded.

In 2002 my undergraduate studies culminated in a thesis presentation that presented sexualization of technology, questioned romantic distance relationships mediated by the Internet, and explored instant creation and sharing of experiences both online and offline (Priorities).

Graduate studies in art took me to San Francisco the following August, a drastic change from the rural life in Ithaca and Morris. It was here I discovered the blog. In fall 2002 I made the switch from a standard hand coded HTML, to Blogger. I began questioning issues based on the commodification of objects (Obay), as well as the anonymous gift (Free Memory), and began quantifying social networks (Age Hotness Correlate).

In spring of 2003 I purchased a Nokia 3660 camera phone that could upload images, video, and text instantly to the web thus making mobile and “studio-less” art creation a reality. That summer I also began working as the residence manager for the San Francisco Ballet School, and started to become very aware of the way young people create and consume media.

Presently I run WordPress and have benefited greatly from the open source community. I am confident that there is much insight to be gained from looking back at both sides “being digital” and critically analyzing the texts from December 1995-August 1997.

Over the past twelve years I’ve experienced profound changes in the way I live, think, and navigate in the world as my experience has become more connected, more open, and more collaborative. I intend to combine curiosity with disciplined research. By sharing my data, it is my desire to gain a greater understanding of the longitudinal effects of Internet use.

Curriculum Vitae View long version or Download Pete Ippel’s resume

EDUCATION
SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE, San Francisco, California
M.F.A., New Genres, 2004

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, New York
B.F.A., Combined Media, 2002 (photography / digital art)
B.A., Psychology, 2002 (perception, minor concentration: cognitive science)

ADDITIONAL STUDIES
City College San Francisco, 2005-2007 (advanced classes in conversational Spanish, culture, and civilization)

HONORS
SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE
Student Leadership Award, 2004
Board of Trustees 2003-2004
Graduate Council 2002-2003

CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Dean’s list, spring 2001, spring 2002
Edith and Walter King Stone Memorial Prize for Promise in Art, 2001
National Dean’s List 1998-2001

TEACHING POSITIONS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, Berkeley, California
Academic Talent Development Program, summer 2008

MARIN SCHOOL OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY, Novato, California
Art instructor, Fall 2004

SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE, San Francisco, California
NASA Space Practicum Teaching Assistant, spring 2004
Video Editing Teaching Assistant, spring 2004

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, New York
Cornell Adult University, instructor, website design, summer 2002

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
ICTHUS GALLERY, San Francisco, California
2008, The Fantastic Solution to Global Warming and other Conundrums
2006, Metaphors Be With You
2006, Hypermodern Art Show

EXPERIMENTAL GALLERY, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
2002, Priorities: Installation, Audition, and Digitalia

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
GARAGE BIENNALE, San Francisco, California
2008, Weather Reconnaissance
2008, 100 Performances for the Hole
2004, Party for Benevolence

PACIFIC SCHOOL OF RELIGION, Berkeley, California
2005, Art and Spirituality

ANTI – CONTEMPORARY ART FESTIVAL, Kuopio, Finland
2004, Yuk Video Screening

NEW LANGTON ARTS, San Francisco, California
2004, The ‘How To’ Intensive

FORT MASON CENTER, San Francisco, California
2004, San Francisco Art Institute MFA graduate show

PACE DIGITAL GALLERY, New York, NY, 2004
2004, e Bay–Buy or Sell or Buy

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS, San Francisco, California
2004, Playshop

CELL SPACE, San Francisco, California
2003, San Francisco Art Institute Print Show,

SAN FRANCISCO BUREAU OF URBAN SECRETS, San Francisco, California
2003, Creative City

BOOM TECHNOLOGY FAIR, Cornell University, Ithaca New York
2002, Sound Thinking: computer as creative audio tool
2001, Fine Art Applications of 3D Internet

WORK EXPERIENCE
SAN FRANCISCO BALLET, San Francisco, California
Residence Manager 2003-present

UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL, San Francisco, California
Coach (Basketball, Track & Field) 2005-present

HYPERMODERN.NET, San Francisco, California
Independent Contractor, 1999-present

UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHY, Ithaca, New York
Darkroom Assistant, Photographer, summer 2002

SIGNAL INTERACTIVE, Chicago, Illinois
Production Artist Intern, summer 2000

MOTOROLA, INC., Arlington Heights, Illinois
Web Design Intern, summer 1999

PALEONTOLOGICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTION, Ithaca, New York
Assistant to the Director of Collections, 1997-1999

Work Samples

FREE MEMORY (2002-Present) Launch FREE MEMORY Project

The Free Memory Project from Thorsten Claus on Vimeo.

FREE MEMORY is an event created to open a dialog between what memories consists of in terms of ephemeral human thought, and that of a data driven memory model of a computer. The event is initiated by the anonymous gift of a floppy disk to passers by and concludes when the box of disks is empty. Unbeknown to the receiver, the artists memories, documented in photographic form, are present on the disk thereby transferring both ephemeral, and concrete memory.

OBAY (2002-Present) Launch OBAY Project

Obay.info screen capture

More About Obay, the legal battle, anonymous late night phone calls, and Canadian bus stop mystery. For certain individuals Ebay has become a lifestyle, an extreme use of the service where people are a slave to their auctions, so dependent on checking up that it interferes with daily functioning. According the DSM-IV, the manual for diagnosing psychological disorders, this would be a criterion for a type of obsessive-compulsive behavior. Commodiphilia, diagnosed as assigning value to valueless objects in the off chance that it may be worth something to another disparate individual, is an artist coined term that references both the commodity, and the sexual perversion of pedophilia. Obay.info critiques the mega-consumerist culture that surrounds Ebay, and is both a visual pun and a cautionary piece that succeeds when the user questions why they are so involved with buying and selling of the most mundane possessions.

LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF THE AGE HOTNESS CORRELATE (2001-2004) Launch Age Hotness Correlate

PRIORITIES THESIS SHOW (2002) Launch site

Sound Thinking DJZN TBA Album limited edition of 10 disks,Priorities: Installation, Audition, and Digitalia. Pete Ippel Bachelor Of Fine Arts Thesis Show. Cornell University, May 2002.

Love Box exterior installation view,Priorities: Installation, Audition, and Digitalia. Pete Ippel Bachelor Of Fine Arts Thesis Show. Cornell University, May 2002.

Priorities: Installation, Audition, and Digitalia. Pete Ippel Bachelor Of Fine Arts Thesis Show. Cornell University, May 2002.

Chatting installation view, Priorities: Installation, Audition, and Digitalia. Pete Ippel Bachelor Of Fine Arts Thesis Show. Cornell University, May 2002.

DJZN and Cynical music and video webcast,
Priorities: Installation, Audition, and Digitalia. Pete Ippel Bachelor Of Fine Arts Thesis Show. Cornell University, May 2002

Love Box interior installation view,
Priorities: Installation, Audition, and Digitalia. Pete Ippel Bachelor Of Fine Arts Thesis Show. Cornell University, May 2002