Thinkbox

www.thinkbox.ca

LOLA Project Description

In response to the vaguely brutalist structure in downtown London, ON, we are proposing a large scale, three panel projection – using the blank surface of the side of the building as our canvas/screen. While the building is tall, the screen treatment (i.e. aspect ratio) will be wide screen –with only a small gap between the three projections. They will resemble three long, horizontal stripes – arranged towards the uppermost section of the structure.

Each panel offers a different – but interconnected tableaux. The top panel features a fragmented series of images from a number of 1950’s and 1960’s era Brittanica films that all deal with urban planning and renewal – a popular subject in post corbussier mid century America. These films tend to champion the propensity to tear down the slums and put up new, socially engineered high rises. The large, faceless surfaces of poured concrete and brick are reminders of this brief period of optimism that was quickly replaced by a very long period of urban failures.

The central panel is a series of portraits. The faces look directly into the eyes of the viewer – young and old, they are all lit with the same soft, frontal light – that suggests that they are possibly lit by the glow of a laptop – or perhaps a movie screen. Perhaps this is the reverse shot – revealing the subjective responses to the films that are playing on the screens above and below them.

On the lower panel, we feature a montage of cinematic scenes, entirely constructed with toy train layouts. Snow covered streets and turn of the century buildings glow cheerily and gloomily – falling into an alluring degree of intentionally designed disrepair. Fog rolls in – enveloping our city – and then clearing to reveal the shapes again.

THINKBOX MANDATE

Thinkbox is a self-curating media collective, created to explore technological works and contemporary media in relation to both gallery and commercial distribution networks. Thinkbox reflects the varied interests of its members. As an enterprise, it is centred on the exploration and innovative use of material and technique to produce works that develop complex questions to simplified answers about art, technology, and the nature of multi-media creation.

Many of the strategies employed by the artists involved question preconceived notions of the categorical limitations of music, audio, noise and sound, often in relation to video, film and the moving image. The primary aim of Thinkbox is to promote and advance the new media artist as content provider / cultural producer in the changing art landscape of the new century. The members of the collective are dedicated to the production and dissemination of non-categorical contemporary art creations.
Through the initiative of member artists, Thinkbox intersects with mass culture through gallery installations, performances, festivals, and the release of audio/video products.

Artist Biography

Thinkbox is a loosely structured Windsor based sound and visual art collective.

Current members include:

Christopher Bissonnette, a sound artist and graphic designer whose installations have been exhibited in both Canada and the U.S. Since 1996, Bissonnette’s audio performances have been programmed into many festivals and events, and he has performed live alongside experimentalists such as Scanner (UK) and Thomas Brinkmann (Germany). In September 2002, he participated in The Digidome Festival, in Saskatoon SK. Two full-length CDs of his work have been released by Kranky.

Mark Laliberte, an independent curator, project-based artist and experimental poet currently based in Toronto. Primarily an exhibiting artist, Laliberte’s complex installation works & independent objects have been shown in exhibitions throughout Canada and the U.S. Laliberte is the Managing Editor and Designer of Carousel Magazine.
Christopher McNamara, a Windsor-based video artist, writer and DJ, who teaches new media at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He and collaborator, artist Dermot Wilson have worked collaboratively under the corporate art moniker Machyderm Inc since 1994, and together they have shown extensively in both Canada and the U.S. (most recently at Mercer Union, Stride Gallery and The Western Front). In October 2002, McNamara exhibited at Stiftung BINZ 39, in Zürich, Switzerland.

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