Sunday August 3, 4:30pm
Nina Sobell
GammaTime
With Ed Bear and Lucinda Jacobson
Admission is free
Microscope is pleased to present the NY premiere of the performance GammaTime by New York-based artist Nina Sobell in collaboration with Ed Bear and Lucinda Jacobson, as part of the current exhibition at the gallery “The First Circle: Radical Humanism,” curated by Claudia Hart and Natasha Chuk.
From the curators:
“This interactive, real-time participatory “BrainWave Drawing” performance explores non-verbal communication through the synchronization of brain waves, a concept Sobell has been investigating since 1973, steeped in the perception of thought. GammaTime allows participants to experience and understand Gamma brain waves and other brain activity through art and music. As they engage with the installation, participants can observe their own brain wave patterns and their connection to others, while also benefiting from the cognitive and emotional effects of 40 Hz gamma stimulation.
Currently, Sobell is concentrating on visualizing and materializing the infinite relationship between the corpus callosum, DNA, the Möbius strip, and the epigenetic connection between DNA and brain waves — ideas she seeks to explore through GammaTime. All of her work invites creative exploration and contributes to the dialogue between art and neuroscience, highlighting the universal nature of non-verbal communication across all living beings.”
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Nina Sobell is an intermedia artist who pioneered the use of video, computers, and interactivity in art, as well as performance on the Web since 1969, when she first used video to document participants’ undirected interactions with her sculptures at Cornell University. Sobell originated the “Brain Wave Drawings” through the synchronization of brainwaves between two or more people, creating a combined physical and mental portrait by visualizing non-verbal communication interactively. She was part of the feminist video performance movement of the 1970s with works such as “Chicken on Foot” (1974) and “Hey! Baby, Chicky!!” (1978), and she pioneered video, Brain-Computer Interfaces and created the first live interactive web performance at NYU’s Center for Advanced Technology in collaboration with Emily Hartzell and worked collaboratively on the first mobile telerobotic webcam with the historic internet collective ParkBench. Sobell was invited by Joseph Beuys to speak about her social sculpture, Videophone Voyeur, London at Documenta 6. GammaTime recently premiered at Lexical Gallery in Santa Cruz, Ca. Sobell was in Radical Software: Women, Art and Computing 1960-1991 at Luxembourg Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Kunsthalle in Vienna. Her work has been shown at or is in the collection of: Microscope Gallery, Memoire d’Le Avenir, Jane England Gallery, The Menil Drawing Institute, DIA, the Whitney, Hammer, LACMA, LAICA, LBMA, CAM Houston, Blanton Museum, MIT, Getty, ZKM, Whitechapel, Zwirner, WP Phillips Gallery, Louisiana MoMA, Denmark, Kunst Forum, Cornell and the Kramlich collection, among others. She has taught at UCLA, SVA and received an Arts Council of Great Britain, CAPS, NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, Turbulence, Franklin Furnace and Acker Awards, and a NYSCA/WaveFarm Grant for GammaTime. She holds an MFA in sculpture from Cornell University, and a BFA from Tyler School of Art Temple University.
Ed Bear is an American performing artist, educator, and engineer. His work with robotics, sound, video, transmission and collective improvisation investigates the questionable calibration of social relationships with material technology. As an educator and designer committed to an equitable, open source world, he researches and practices material reuse as a civil and professional responsibility. He has toured extensively in the Americas, Asia, and Europe as a musician, technologist, and teacher.
Lucinda Jacobson is a multi-faceted artist-performer from New York City. She studied dramatic arts at Laguardia High School and has since gone on to study film and digital art, as well as being the captain of the dance team at Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently working as an artist assistant/collaborator and editor for various artists based in New York.