David Rokeby exhibition

If you're interested in David Rokeby after seeing the show at Interaccess, there will be a new exhibition of his work opening this week.


David Rokeby - Time and Place
October 19 to December 31, 2005
Opening reception Wednesday, October 19, 5-8 pm

Pari Nadimi Gallery
254 Niagara Street
Toronto, ON M6J 2L8 Canada
gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday 11-5 pm
Tel: 416.591.6464
www.parinadimigallery.com

Time is one of artist David Rokeby s primary materials. Time as the landscape traversed by memory. Time that is the difference between a slap and a caress. Time liberated from determinate sequence. Time folded upon itself, events layering into shapes and forms.

For Machine for Taking Time (2001-4), David Rokeby set up a system that recorded a daily panorama of 1000 images of Gairloch Gardens for 3 years. The installation continuously draws from its million images to construct a seamlessly flowing pan across a garden unanchored in time. Seasons melt into each other, Sunday painters and weddings appear and fade, a year flickers by like a shift in light. Machine for Taking Time was the first in an ongoing series of works that attempt to record the activities and the passage of time in particular places. Rokeby will continue this exploration, using the unlimited patience of the computer and surveillance camera to capture and record the ephemera of passing time, drawing out patterns, forms and traces invisible to our human eyes rooted in human time.

David Rokeby has been creating interactive sound and video installations with computers since 1982. His early work Very Nervous System(1982-1991) is acknowledged as a pioneering work of interactive art, translating physical gestures into real-time interactive sound environments. Very Nervous System was presented at the Venice Biennale in 1986, and was awarded the first Petro-Canada Award for Media Arts in 1988 and Austria's Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Interactive Art in 1991.

Several of his works have addressed issues of digital surveillance. Watched and Measured(2000) was awarded the first BAFTA award for interactive art from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2000. Other works engage in a critical examination of the differences between human and artificial intelligence. The Giver of Names (1991-) and n-cha(n)t(2001) are artificial subjective entities, provoked by objects or spoken words in their immediate environment to formulate sentences and speak them aloud. David Rokeby's installations have been exhibited extensively in the Americas, Europe and Asia.