About

CAM RALEIGH PRESENTS
ID:ENTITY SELF : PERCEPTION + REALITY
A GROUP EXHIBITION OF CUTTING-EDGE INTERACTIVE ART WORKS BY ARTISTS AND FACULTY AT NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

November 18, 2011 – February 13, 2012

OPENING RECEPTION ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2011

Raleigh, September, 2011 – On view at CAM Raleigh from November 18, 2011 through February 13, 2012, is the third installment of the Emerging Artists Series featuring a group exhibition by the following artists, faculty, and students affiliated with the North Carolina State University College of Design, Department of Art+Design, and the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Ph.D. program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences: Kevin Brock, Lee Cherry, Patrick FitzGerald, McArthur Freeman, II, David Gruber, David Millsaps, Cecilia Mouat, Carol Fountain Nix, David M Rieder, and Marc Russo. An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 18 from 6:00–9:00 p.m. in conjunction with CAM Raleigh’s Third Friday events. The reception is open to the public and free with museum admission. ID:ENTITY is curated by Kate Shafer, Exhibitions Manager at CAM Raleigh.

ID:ENTITY is a group exhibition which explores the complex dichotomy between the public and private versions of “self.” Radical changes are emerging at the technical, cultural, and aesthetic intersections of contemporary life due to the speed and prevalence of digital media. ID:ENTITY investigates the vicissitudes which occur across the boundaries of self and world. “I am thrilled to support innovative thinking about art, technology, and design. Our new home for contemporary art and design, CAM Raleigh, aligns with both the College of Design’s curriculum and the ambitions of the many artists and designers that we showcase,” said North Carolina State’s College of Design Dean Marvin J. Malecha, FAIA.

Artists featured in ID:ENTITY use a wide range of cutting-edge software technologies (including Microsoft’s Kinect) to create dynamic, interactive imagery, inspiring environments, and to engage viewers with sensory experiences. Interactive, thematic videos will be projected on the walls of the gallery, creating internal and external views. Visitors will experience large-scale interactive installations, short experimental films and digital sculpture. The exhibition brings to the center the ways in which identity is augmented, multiplied, and mashed-up by digital technologies. Most of the projects require user interaction, and many are projected on large surfaces, some angled, others textured. Kate Shafer, Exhibitions Manager at CAM Raleigh, says, “The artists and designers in this exhibition are pioneers in new media arts. Thy repurpose familiar technologies to engage the visitor in unexpected ways. CAM Raleigh seeks to present the unexpected and to deliver on that mission- we are an ever changing experience like no museum.”

A number of the ID:ENTITY projects are based on open-source hacks of the Microsoft Kinect. Due to the ways in which the Kinect can identify human movements in a three-dimensional space, these works will dramatize the extent to which the assumed boundaries dividing self and world are transgressed by digital technologies. Several new works by Patrick FitzGerald and Lee Cherry demonstrate the opportunities for experimentation introduced by the Kinect.

One more work making its museum debut is David Rieder and Kevin Brock’s Floating Signifiers, a Kinect-based exploration of embodied textuality. Rieder and Brock’s project uses the sensor’s depth-tracking capabilities to allow users to engage with a dynamic, three-dimensional textual space on a projected screen.

The exhibition ID:ENTITY SELF : PERCEPTION + REALITY is generously supported by North Carolina State University’s College of Design and NC State’s Art+Design Program. Additional supported is provided by the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Ph.D. program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.