2000Oct

KNOWMAD by MEL CHIN 
October 28 – December 31, 2000
Opening reception:
Saturday, October 28, 6-8 pm.
Frederieke Taylor gallery reopens October 28, 2000, at its new location at 535 west 22 st. in Chelsea with KNOWMAD, an interactive video installation conceived by Mel Chin and produced by the KNOWMAD Confederacy, a tribe of graphic designers and gaming engineers.

For this installation the gallery will host a tent replete with antique tribal rugs and a video arcade where any member of the audience can sit down, turn the key and drive through thirty-six 3-D digital rug inspired rooms. Players of the KNOWMAD computer generated game will have their test drive wide screen projected for the audience to judge driving skills.

KNOWMAD is mapped from a real world of tribal groups, which are currently threatened with eradication by political and civil change. KNOWMAD is a game to play that pays homage to both the tribal world and the forces of popular culture. The project was commissioned by the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis then exhibited at MIT University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Art Car Museum in Houston, Texas. It now makes its debut in New York City.

 

Mel Chin is well known for his large-scale projects that illustrate environmental and social issues, including “Revival Field”, a collaboration that has pioneered the development of ‘green remediation’, “The State of Heaven”, a project designed to visually describe the continuous threat of ozone depletion and “In the Name of the Place”, a collaborative venture between artists and prime-time television production. “Inescapable Histories” exhibited at Washington State University, charted Chin’s development as an artist from the 1970s on.

 
KNOWMAD