About

ASPECT Magazine is a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art.

ASPECT is notable for being one of the first DVD-based chronicles of time-based media. ASPECT’s DVD format offers artists using installation art, performance art, animation, sound, and visual techniques a way for their work to be recorded and distributed to the greater art community. Each submission has an audio commentary by an expert in the field, and each issue is identified by a common theme.

The publication is used largely as an educational tool, but is also available for subscriptions and for purchase in art museums like the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum in NYC. ASPECT provides those working in new media art with access to their contemporaries’ work and grants them a critical take on the work to help contextualize it within the larger art world.

Since its founding in 2003, ASPECT has published 9 volumes, each one featuring 5-10 artists and addressing a specific theme. Past themes include: ‘Artists of the Boston Cyberarts Festival,’ ‘Artists of the West Coast,’ ‘The Artist as Content,’ ‘Text and Language,’ ‘Joie de Vivre,’ ‘On Location,’ ‘Personas and Personalities,’ ‘Early Works,’ and ‘Performance.’

In addition to the biannual magazine, ASPECT occasionally creates and distributes other DVDs of a single artist’s work, which lend outside of the periodical format. Past features include monographs of Douglas Weathersby’s "Environmental Services: Projects for TV" and "The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson."

In October 2006 ASPECT released ‘The Tipping Point,’ a documentary of a large scale collaboration which chronicles the lives of four artists living in South Boston as they create an interdisciplinary interactive artwork based on their own health narratives. [1]

History

ASPECT was founded in 2003 by artist and educator Michael Mittelman. The mission of the publication is to distribute and archive works of time-based art. Each issue highlights artists working in new or experimental media, whose works are best documented in video or sound. ASPECT began when Mittelman was frustrated with the lack of teaching materials available in the field of Interrelated Media. After meeting with leading curators such as George Fifield, Director of the Boston Cyberarts Festival, and Bill Arning, Curator at the List Visual Arts Center, led Michael to the conclusion that curators and artists would gladly participate in a DVD publication of their work, and Volume 1: Artists of the Boston Cyberarts Festival was born. Rooted in its mission of distributing and archiving art that is best documented in video and/or sound, ASPECT has become one of the most well-established and respected DVD magazine in its field, having featured over 50 works and artists in its four-year history.

In November 2006 ASPECT was honored by the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, MA as part of an exhibition celebrating their 30th Anniversary, “PRC/POV Photography Now and The Next 30 years.” [2]

Volumes of ASPECT

Volume 9: Performance

In this issue, ASPECT focuses on performance art—from traditional interpretations of performance to those integrating advanced technologies, inanimate objects, passersby, and site.

• Marilyn Arsem, commentary by Alexander Del Re
• Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, commentary by Marjory Jacobson
• Rob List, commentary by Jed Speare
• Jamie McMurry, commentary by Natalie Loveless
• Julia Oldham, commentary by Julie Rodrigues Widholm
• Marisa Olson, commentary by Mathew Lyons
• Tanja Ostojic, commentary by Pamela Allara
• Stelarc, commentary by Christiane Paul
• Peter Welz, commentary by Bill Arning
• Nina Yuen, commentary by Joe Gibbons

Volume 8: Early Works

This issue focuses on artists who have had an impact on the development of new media.

• Doug Back, commentary by Caroline Langill
• Robert Beck, commentary by Bill Arning
• Cai Guo Quiang, commentary by Jane Farver
• Joan Jonas, commentary by Ute Meta Bauer
• Tony Oursler, commentary by Marcia Tanner

Volume 7: Personas & Personalities

This volume of ASPECT features artists working with issues of identity and personality. All the works in this issue examine the role of personal psychology in how we interact with others and our surroundings on an everyday basis.

• Anthony Goicolea, commentary by Terri Smith
• Sachiko Hayashi, commentary by Nicholas Economos
• Lynn Hershman Leeson, commentary by Claudia Hart
• Kristin Lucas, commentary by Marcia Tanner
• Jill Magid, commentary by Jelle Bouwhuis
• Christian Jankowski, commentary by Bill Arning
• Elizabeth Smith, commentary by Elizabeth Smith
• The Yes Men, commentary by Marisa Olson
• Adrianne Wortzel, commentary by Christiane Paul
• Carianacarianne, commentary by Julie Rodrigues Widholm

Volume 6: On Location

This issue explores the the themes of location.

• Kenseth Armstead, commentary by Andrew Perchuk
• C5, commentary by Christiane Paul
• Richard Clar, commentary by Jean-Luc Soret
• Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser, commentary by George Fifield
• Pete Gomes, commentary by Jelle Bouwhuis
• MTAA (M.RIVER & T.WHID ART ASSOCIATES), commentary by Marisa Olson
• Douglas Weathersby, audio commentary by James Hull

Volume 5: Joie de Vivre

Joie de Vivre explores levity and humor in art and demonstrates how broadly that concept can be interpreted.

• Harvey Loves Harvey, commentary by Jeff Stark.
• David Lachman, commentary by Lisa Dorin
• Toni Latour, commentary by Coleen Heslin
• Liz Nofziger, commentary by Leonie Bradbury
• Lee Walton, commentary by Marisa Olson

Volume 4: Text and Language

This volume contains artists exploring the understanding of text as a mutable element in their work.

• Tony Cokes, commentary by Bill Arning
• Bernhard Gal, commentary by Howard Stelzer
• Kanarinka, commentary by Natalie Loveless
• Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv, commentary by George Fifield
• Noah Wardrip-Fruin et al, commentary by Christiane Paul

Volume 3: The Artist as Content

The body, actions, ideas and personas of the artist can now be expressed and explored in many subtle and evocative ways.The artists in this issue appear in the artworks in vastly different ways, and at times you may have to look hard to find them, but their presence has an unmistakable impact on the work.

• Jim Campbell, commentary by Marisa Olson.
• Juan Delgado, commentary by Dr. Elizabeth Cowie
• Charles Gick, commentary by Elizabeth K. Menon
• Denise Marika, commentary by George Fifield
• Christopher Miner, commentary by Bill Arning
• Erika Van Natta, commentary by Denise Markonish

Volume 2: Artists of the West Coast

The works in this issue represent artists who are innovating in new fields and have established paths for future artists to follow.

• Anthony Discenza, commentary by Marisa Olson
• Carole Kim and Jesse Gilbert, commentary by Julie Lazar
• Scott Snibbe, commentary by George Fifield
• Survival Research Laboratory, commentary by Susan Joyce
• Brent Watanabe, commentary by Bill Arning

Volume 1: Artists of the Boston Cyberarts Festival

The 2003 Boston Cyberarts Festival is an international biennial festival that brings together artists in all media who are using computers to advance traditional artistic disciplines and to create new interactive worlds. The Festival will take place at museums, galleries, theaters, educational institutions, and public spaces in and around Boston.

• Christy Georg, commentary by Roland Smart
• Ravi Jain, commentary by James Hull
• Henry Kaufman, commentary by Denise Markonish
• Peter Tucker, commentary by Bill Arning
• David Webber, commentary by Dana Moser

Environmental Services: Projects for TV

Douglas Weathersby creates site-specific installations by combining artmaking with the business of cleaning, home repair, art installation, and other services. Weathersby uses his commercial enterprise, EnvironMental SerVices, as a means to support and create his art. Clients hire him to perform an agreed upon service while giving him permission to make art. Using light and the dust and detritus accumulated while performing these services he creates temporary installations which he documents with video and photographs.

The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson

Lynn Hershman Leeson's groundbreaking installation, performance, photography, video, digital, and film works have earned her an international reputation as a prodigious and innovative artist. This collection of her work brings nearly forty years of creative output into focus by tracking the development of her constant themes through each medium. Hershman Leeson's work explores vision, spectatorship, and the construction of subjectivity, touching on the lived experience of the physical body and the body as a medium on which social law and values are inscribed. Her projects of self-analysis and self mythification explode stable notions of identity.

The Tipping Point: Health Narratives from the South End

Health narratives from artists living in the South End neighborhood of Boston become content for building an interactive sculptural installation. The complex relationships between body, health, self, and community are examined from a combined anthropological and artistic perspective. This interdisciplinary team has worked to discern what small events (tipping points) in the lives of artists have changed their understanding of self, health and body. From this research an interactive robotic sculpture was designed to respond to these individual narratives.

• Jen Hall
• Ellen S Ginsburg
• Blyth Hazen
• Arnaldo Hernandez

References

• http://www.aspectmag.com
• http://www.bu.edu/prc/prcpov/artists/a03.html

External Links

• http://www.aspectmag.com
• http://www.myspace.com/aspectmag
• http://www.bu.edu/prc/prcpov/artists/a03.html
• http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/04/22/a_magazines_new_way_to_cover_new_media/

Category:Publications Category:Live Media Category:Digital art Category:New media Category:Interactive film