Founded in 1971, Trinity Square Video is one of Canada’s first artist-run centres and its oldest media arts centre. We are a not-for-profit, charitable organization.[1]

For 50 years, Trinity Square has been a champion of media arts practices. Our activities are guided by a goal to increase our members’ and audiences’ understanding and imagination of what media arts practices can be. Trinity Square strives to create supportive environments, encouraging artistic and curatorial experimentation that challenge medium specificity through education, production and presentation supports.[1]

As video-based practices have become increasingly present across disciplines, Trinity Square engages artists and curators in critical investigations into the changing conditions of perception, materiality and the virtual. We consider all of our artistic activities and structures through a process of critical self-reflection, continuously evaluating the ethical positioning of our programming, jury structures, inter-organizational relationships, et cetera. In addition to holding aesthetic worth in its own right, our artistic programming extends our education and production activities in order to generate new knowledges.[1]

Trinity Square’s programming is guided by three priorities: 1) promoting an expanded definition of media arts; 2) promoting the meaningful engagement of diverse voices in all levels of our operations; and 3) supporting and nurturing the production of new works by artists and curators. Our membership represents the diversity of the city and honours the original mandate of the organization—seeking to reduce barriers to access related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and socio- economic and physical ability. [1]

From Ars Electronica:

Art, technology, society. Since 1979, Ars Electronica has sought out interlinkages and congruities, causes and effects. The ideas circulating here are innovative, radical, eccentric in the best sense of that term. They influence our everyday life—our lifestyle, our way of life, every single day.

The Festival as proving ground, the Prix as competition honoring excellence, the Center as a year-‘round setting for presentation & interaction, and the Futurelab and Ars Electronica Solutions as as in-house R&D facility extend their feelers throughout the realms of science and research, art and technology. Ars Electronica’s divisions inspire one another and put futuristic visions to the test in a unique, creative feedback loop. It’s an integrated organism continuously reinventing itself.

From Wikipedia:

Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center, which houses the Museum of the Future, in the city of Linz. Ars Electronica’s activities focus on the interlinkages between art, technology and society. It runs an annual festival, and manages a multidisciplinary media arts R&D facility known as the Futurelab. It also confers the Prix Ars Electronica awards.

Clocktower Productions is a non-profit art institution working in the visual arts, performance, music, and radio. Founded in 1972 in Lower Manhattan by MoMA PS1 Founder Alanna Heiss, Clocktower is the oldest alternative art project in New York, and its radio station, Clocktower Radio, was founded in 2003 as one of the first all-art online museum radio stations in the world. The institution functions as a laboratory for experimentation, working closely and collaboratively with artists, musicians, curators, writers and producers to develop, realize and present innovative and challenging work in all media, ranging from installation to performance and from experimental music to radio theater. By engaging both the physical resources of its partner organizations and Clocktower Radio’s access to a broad and international online audience, Clocktower disseminates experimental work to numerous communities, and promotes a rich cultural and social dialogue between artists, audiences, and institutions worldwide.[1]

Clocktower produces multidisciplinary art projects all over the city through creative collaborations with Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Knockdown Center in Queens, and Times Square Arts, Red Bull Studios, and Jones Day in Manhattan. These spaces host Clocktower exhibitions, performances, residencies, radio, and administrative activities. While Clocktower examines opportunities for a permanent long-term home, administrative offices are located in the Jones Day office building on East 41st Street, with a satellite studio for full-time radio production and broadcast at Pioneer Works, in Red Hook.[1]

VIVO Media Arts Centre, a member of British Columbia Museums Association, brings together artists, video and filmmakers, researchers and activists interested in the history of video-making and its evolution towards the art form. VIVO’s educational program extends beyond the boundaries of video distribution and video archiving. The workshops program offers beginner and intermediate level classes on programming, projection mapping, lighting, sound recording by local experts. VIVO accepts research applications to work closely with the Crista Dahl Media Library and Archive thus contributing to the local and international art and research community and encouraging curatorial collaborations.[1]

VIVO’s mandate is to directly support artists and independent community-based producers to develop, exchange, and disseminate their skills in a supportive environment through accessible services and programs. Our vision is a robust, diverse, and vibrant media arts sector: a catalyst for critical and innovative engagement with the material forms and cultural meanings of media and technology. VIVO’s programs offer a broad range of services and opportunities to artists and the public. They include:

• Access to the material necessities for quality production through affordable equipment rentals, editing 
facilities, software, and production space.
• A broad range of skill development and education opportunities that encourage the exploration of 
technology and aesthetics within a critical, artistic framework.
• Public programming: events, exhibitions, residencies, co-productions, and critical forums.
• International distribution, work exchange, and media art preservation which supports the aspirations and 
livelihood of artists.
• Western Canada’s largest public reference library and archive of media art, independent video, and 
related publications, documents, audio recordings, and photographs.

[2]

Benjamin Fry (born 1975) is an American expert in data visualization. He is a principal of Fathom, a design and software consultancy in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a co-developer of Processing, an open-source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the basics of computer programming in a visual context. The Processing design environment developed together with Casey Reas won a Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2005.[1]

Aram Bartholl’s work creates an interplay between internet, culture and reality. How do our taken-for-granted communication channels influence us? Bartholl asks not just what humans are doing with media, but what media is doing with humans. Tensions between public and private, online and offline, techno-lust and everyday life are at the core of his work and his public interventions and installations, often entailing surprisingly physical manifestations of the digital world, challenge our concepts of reality and incorporeality. Bartholl has exhibited at MoMA Museum of Modern Art NY, Skulptur Projekte Münster, Palais de Tokyo, Hamburger Bahnhof and the Thailand Biennale among other as well as conducting countless workshops, talks and performances internationally. Bartholl lives and works in Berlin.[1]

Jan Robert Leegte is among the first artists who were involved in the 90s NetArt movement. Since 1997, he creates art in the form of websites, which he connects to art historical movements such as minimalism, land art and conceptualism. Leegte also translates the themes of his work to offline media such as print, sculpture and projections. A reoccurring theme in his work is the sculptural materiality of interfaces of computer programs. Like the early graphic design of cursors, selection boxes and menu bars that were to give the user the impression of actually physically pressing the buttons with graphic shadows. Leegte often uses these components and by placing them in a new context, giving them their own, sculptural legitimacy. [1]

From Wikipedia:

Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950, Gallipolis, Ohio) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick Falls, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces.

Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Her contemporaries include Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Louise Lawler.

The public dimension is integral to Holzer's work. Her large-scale installations have included advertising billboards, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, and illuminated electronic displays. LED signs have become her most visible medium, although her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including street posters, painted signs, stone benches, paintings, photographs, sound, video, projections, the Internet, and a race car for BMW. Text-based light projections have been central to Holzer’s practice since 1996. As of 2010, her LED signs have become more sculptural. Holzer is no longer the author of her texts, and in the ensuing years, she returned to her roots by painting.

From Wikipedia:

The idea for Line Describing a Cone came to McCall on his voyage from London to New York, where he produced the film in 1973. Though he had already created a number of other 16mm films, Line allowed him to actualize his ideas on the relationship between viewer and film and the medium of film itself. The thirty-minute film begins with a single white dot projected onto a black surface. As time progresses, the dot begins to form a curved line, tracing the circumference of a circle until the end of the line reaches its starting point. Meanwhile, particles in the air reveal the path of light in the space between the projector and the wall, making visible a cone of light. If the artist's display specifications are met, this beam of light projects between thirty and fifty feet. The circle that is projected onto the surface sits approximately twelve inches above the ground, and its diameter spans seven to nine feet. The exhibition space lacks seating, inviting the viewer to interact with the ray of light beaming from the projector to the screen. When multiple spectators view the piece together, these encounters with the light, at once an interruption and component of the piece, become an interaction with other audience members.

Line Describing a Cone reflects McCall's interests in film and sculpture. Line addresses the medium of film by removing the narrative demands and addressing the specific properties of the medium itself such as projection, frames, and light. Moreover, by emphasizing the physical space between the projector and screen McCall calls attention to the sculptural dimensions of projection. In his artists's statement written to judges of the Fifth International Experimental Film Competition, McCall writes:

"It deals with the projected light beam itself, rather than treating the light beam as a mere carrier of coded information, which is decoded when it strikes a flat surface… Line Describing a Cone deals with one of the irreducible, necessary conditions of film: projected light. It deals with this phenomenon directly, independently of any other consideration. It is the first film to exist in real, three-dimensional space."

Cory Arcangel (born May 25, 1978) is a Brooklyn, New York post-conceptual artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance art, and video game modifications, for which he is perhaps best known.

Arcangel often uses the artistic strategy of appropriation, creatively reusing existing materials such as dancing stands, Photoshop gradients and YouTube videos to create new works of art. His work explores the relationship between digital technology and pop culture. He is a recipient of a 2006 Creative Capital Emerging Fields Award. [1]

Notable Works:

Super Mario Clouds Arcangel's best known works are his Nintendo game cartridge hacks and reworkings of obsolete computer systems of the 1970s and 80s. One example is Super Mario Clouds (2002), a modified version of the video game Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo's NES game console in which all of the game's graphics have been removed, leaving a blue background with white clouds scrolling slowly from right to left. [1]

Pizza Party Pizza Party (2004) was a free, functional software package that could be used to order Domino's Pizza through a command-line interface. The program allowed users to order pizza by typing in commands such as pizza_party -pmx 2 medium regular, which - according to the artist - would order two medium crust pizzas with pepperoni, mushrooms and extra cheese. The piece was commissioned by Eyebeam and implemented by Mike Frumin. [1]

Punk Rock 101 Punk Rock 101 (2006) is an example of Arcangel's work with the web as an artistic medium. For this piece, he re-published Kurt Cobain's alleged suicide letter alongside a series of Google Ads. The ads are tailored to the content of any given page, and the piece juxtaposed Cobain's angst with ads selling social anxiety treatment and motivational speaking. Art critic Paddy Johnson wrote of the work, "This is quite possibly the most brilliant subversion of the medium I have seen." [1]