October 3, 2007
Grand Text Auto: San Andreas
Finally, it arrives.
EXHIBITION: Grand Text Auto
LOCATION: The Beall Center for Art and Technology, UC Irvine
OPENING RECEPTION: October 4th, 6:30pm-9:00pm, Beall Center
SYMPOSIUM: October 5th, 1:00-5:00pm, Studio Art Bldg. 712, Room 160, UC Irvine
PERFORMANCE: October 5th, 6:00-8:00pm, Winifred Smith Hall, UC Irvine
GENERAL CONTACT: (949) 824-4339 or http://beallcenter.uci.edu
OVERVIEW
Many blogs have become books – from The Baghdad Blog to Belle de Jour. But Grand Text Auto is the first blog ever to become a gallery exhibition. It opens October 4th and runs through December 15th at UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art and Technology. The exhibition features the work of Grand Text Auto members Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Andrew Stern, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and their collaborators.
Grand Text Auto is a blog about the potential of digital media, from literary websites to experimental computer games. At the exhibition, the blog members will put these ideas into practice, showing a variety of cutting edge works. Some use the latest in artificial intelligence technology, such as Mateas and Stern’s interactive drama Façade — of which The New York Times says, “This is the future of video games.” The Beall exhibition will feature the first public showing of a life-sized “augmented reality” version of Façade, created in collaboration with Georgia Tech’s GVU Center. Virtual reality is also on display, as with Wardrip-Fruin’s collaborative work Screen, a literary game played with 3D text — never seen before outside of a research lab and presented with support from UC San Diego’s Center for Research in Computing and the Arts. On the other hand, some works in the exhibition use decidedly do-it-yourself techniques, such as Montfort and Rettberg’s Implementation, an experimental novel distributed around the world on mailing labels. Others are quirky, such as Flanagan’s [giantJoystick], a replica Atari 2600 joystick so large that two people must work together to play (this has its North American debut at the Beall show).
In addition to the gallery show, the members of Grand Text Auto are working together with the Beall Center to present a live symposium and performance evening, both on October 5th. The afternoon symposium (1-5 p.m.) will discuss the power of collaborative blogging, new directions for computer games, and the place of language in digital media. The evening performance (6-8 p.m.) will feature the disturbing and humorous interactive cinema experience Terminal Time (which automatically creates outrageously biased documentaries of the past millennium) and a live performance of the award-winning hypertext novel The Unknown (which tells the tale of a rollicking cross-country book tour). Parking for these events is available in the Student Parking structure at the corner of Campus Drive and West Peltason.
Online, Grand Text Auto (http://grandtextauto.org) is a blog with more than 200,000 visitors a month, collectively authored by six artists and scholars. Offline, Grand Text Auto members have been shown in major art museums, been written about in leading national periodicals, and shipped games that have met wide acclaim and sold millions of copies. The Grand Text Auto exhibition is the first time that these artists will show their work together. Delve into Grand Text Auto’s digital depths October 4 – December 15, 2007 (closed November 22-26) and witness the live debut of blog-meets-reality.
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Wish I could attend the opening!
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:41 pm
So for those of us hamstrung by geographical location/commitment to saving the planet by cutting down on unnecessary travel/other mitigating reason; is there going to be a short video of the events?
This is what YouTube was made for!*
*Well, this and flagrant copyright violations.
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Wish you both could make it!
Yes, the Beall is making a video. We shoot tomorrow…
October 4th, 2007 at 12:11 am
wonderful! congrats GTA!
October 4th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Yay! I’m looking forward to tonight :)
October 4th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
[…] 007/10/04/grand-text-auto-exhibit/”> You got your blog in my gallery exhibition! Spry […]
October 4th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
I’m a new student at UCI. This exhibition is my first time to anything like this. I was especially impressed by the Facade exhibit, a lot of them required a bit of explanation to understand.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
It is exciting to see this show and especially mary’s joystick. Pictures don’t do it justice.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
I can’t wait to see AR Facade. Now if only the symposium was on a Saturday instead of Friday afternoon so the otherwise gainfully employed could go.
:)
October 5th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Looks wonderful. Looking forward to the video.
October 5th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Loved the show!
October 6th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Thanks folks for attending and participating with the works! we had a great time meeting you and sharing our work!
October 6th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
This rocks! Of course, I am totally biased about some of the works (Noah’s in particular) but I have to say, making centipede a full-body experience and playing with drama in the frame of a real space with virtual characters… wow. Sharp writing, good stuff, lots of fun.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
[…] my “future directions” presentation at the GTxA symposium, held the day after the group show opened. I had pre-written this as a blog post, in the spirit of […]
November 30th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Liz Losh posts some commentary about the symposium and the show.