Phillip Stearns

Bio: 
Phillip Stearns is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist and electronics art educator. His work lies at the intersection of art, philosophy, and science, drawing upon a variety of disciplines including installation, audio-video work, circuit sculpture, writing, performance art and musical composition. His work deals primarily with the topic technology, at times approaching electronic technologies as complex artificial living systems, organisms existing within interconnected economies and ecosystems. The core of his creative process lies in creating generative systems using electronics, crowds, or plants to explore the expressiveness within the act of allowing a system to come to its own conclusions. What are the implications of applying contemporary technological thinking to more primitive techniques and technologies as new starting points for re-conceptualizing the present and re-imagining the future? 

Artist Statement: 
The DCP Series of Digital Images are direct visualizations of data generated by a digital camera as it takes a picture. Electronic processes associated with the normal operations of the camera, which are usually taken for granted, are revealed through an act of intervention. The camera is turned inside-out through complexes of short-circuits, selected by the artist, transforming the camera from a picture taking device to a capturing device that renders raw data (electronic signals) as images. In essence, these images are snap-shots of electronic signals dancing through the camera's circuits, manually rerouted, written directly to the on-board memory device. Rather than seeing images of the world through a lens, we catch a glimpse of what the camera sees when it is forced to peer inside its own mind. 

Benton-C Bainbridge

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Artist Statement

I was basking in one of NYC's great pleasures-Summerstage- floating along with the interweaving lines of guitar and mandolin at a performance of jazz and Indian classical music. And then one of New
York's great headaches burst our bubble - we all cringed as a car alarm went off and blared its discordant two-tones. John MacLaughlin's fingers paused as he turned and shared a smile with U. Shrinivas and
then began plucking a lazy, daydreaming mimic of the siren. The audience laughed and was drawn back into the music as its fabric shifted to accomodate the rude guest until it went silent.

'Impromptu' means 'done without planning or rehearsal' but the Latin root "in promptu" means 'in readiness' - a more or less opposite meaning which lays bare the underlying reality; spontaneous creation requires a lot of preparation.

When dancers talk the conversation always comes around to the classes they've taken that week. Musicians, we know, constantly rehearse to maintain fluency. And exhibitions of painters and sculptors often include numerous quick sketches, 'studies' which feed into a final product, however improvised the final work may appear.

Constant study is also key to my practice.

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Bethany Shorb

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Artist Statement:

Schooled in both sculpture and photography, Bethany Shorb creates elaborate prop, costume and set constructions that blur the line between both editorial fashion photography and performance art documentation.

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