Stanza at Tate Britain. Stanza: Touchscreen generative artworks and code systems
Stanza at Tate. Stanza: Touchscreen interactive artworks
Stanza at Tate
Stanza at Tate. Stanza: Touchscreen artworks

[ Stanza: Touchscreen artworks. 2004]

Stanza authored several artworks and these are available as touchscreen editions. Each edition of ten contains a suite of artworks from the project of the same name. The touchscreen units are custom built and configured to load works automatically (viz. plug-n-play). For installation, they can be hung on the wall like a painting or they can mount with screens flush to the wall, or other surfaces.  They have been made as editions so collectors may purchase the work and galleries may exhibit more easily. The illustration computer below shows the first silver prototype, they are silver steel framed (see image below) and are also available in a mounted wooden framed box or set square to the wall.

Stanza uses computers to develop expressive possibilities between himself and his audience. And, underlying these simple interfaces and engaging forms are sophisticated formal and technical structures, including software agents, custom hardware and complex networking. His self-generating artworks contain the essential pleasure of digital playfulness, while also approaching deeper issues about people and information networks. This singular process of participation and inquiry can be scaled to large networks or to individual users, and it can also support live performances and large-scale installations. Stanza's interactive digital artworks from the past decade relate to wide ranging technical and cultural concerns. Since 1994, he has produced numerous bodies of work, each of which is described briefly below: these are also now made exclusively for this touchscreen machine and available in very limited editions.

There is a suite of works within each edition. You can find the works by moving your fingers down to the bottom of the screen. The previously hidden menu then appears. You can then select a new work by touching the screen. Within each work there are several layers of interactivity. Some works have hidden areas, in some the interactivity is more clear, and in others one has to explore to find and experience different parts of the artwork. And in other works such as Biocity there are generative areas, ie, if left alone the artworks will generate on their own over time.

Stanza: Touchscreen artworks
Stanza Images from exhbition at Venice Biennale 2007. shown at New Forest Pavilion, 52nd international Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia.

Images from Late at Tate Britain event: 2007 (Shows touch screen artwork in a plynth) Stanza Images from exhibition at Venice Biennale 2007. Shown at New Forest Pavilion, 52nd international Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia.

Exhibitions of Stanza touch screen interactives and generative artworks have taken place at the following selected venues:-

Venice Biennale 2007. Inner City and Biocity 52nd international Art Exhibition Thanks to Helen Sloan and Scan.
Tate Britain. (Part of Late at Tate Britain series, by Cybsersonica) Thanks to Lewis Sykes 2007.
Artsway Plymouth, New Forest Pavillion. 2007
Blip Festival Brighton. 2005.
The Dana Centre London. Organised by Cybersonica. 2005
Folly Gallery Lancaster. Thanks to Taylot Nutall 2005
The Watershed Media Centre. Thanks to Dick Penny 2005
Cut and Splice at Jerwood Space, London. 2005
Arts Depot, London April 2005
Active Interiors: 10 Years of Stanza's Interactive Art E.S.P. Media Lounge, Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood USA. The first showing and sales of the touchscreen editions where supported, curated by David Mather in 2004 in LA.
Siggraph USA 2004
EMAF Germany  2004
Videoformes France.2004
Watershed Media Centre UK 2004
Museum Of Moving Image NY. USA 2004
Viper Switzerland. 2004
Dana Centre Cybersonica UK 2004
Scope Art Fair Regents park UK 2004
Samsung Media Centre Senef Korea 2004
Futuresonic 04 Manchester UK 2004
Ciberart-bilbao.net. Spain 2004
The 3rd Seoul Indievideo Festival. Korea.2004
Boston CyberArts festival, USA 2003
Art in Motion (AIM) USA 2003
The Digital Hub Dublin Ireland 2003
Respond by Future Physical . Cambridge UK 2003
Digifest 2003 Toronto Canada 2003
Susquesuehanna Art Museum. AIM Genomixer. USA 2003
Colchester Art Gallery UK. 2003
ICA. Cybersonica UK 2003
Mostyn Open in Wales 2003
Immedia Festival USA 2003
Fluxusonline Internet Festival event Sao Paulo Brasil. 2002
Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo. Mexico. 2002
Nimes Ireland.
Emaf . Amorphoscapes. Germany
Siggraph The Central City USA
Fused USA.
Sao Paulo Bienale . Internet urban works Brasil
Zeppelin Barcelona featured all Stanza net art works. Spain
Net.art in 4L Istanbul. Turkey.
Immedia 2002 USA
Net-working 2001
Net art Japan 2001
Generative Art 4th Milan showed Amorphoscapes. GA2001
A Fair Place Turkey.2001
McLean Project Casting a Net USA 2001
Art Image Graz Austria 2001
Cynet art Dresden Germ nay . 2001
Video Brasil . Internet 2001
Impakt Holland. The Central City internet 2001
Mc Lean Centre for the Arts USA multimedia 2001.
Video Lisboa Portugal 2001
Urban Myths The Central City. Israel 2001
Dlux Australia 2001
Netz Lab Germany 2001
Moscow International Film Festival. Russia. 2001
Sonar Spain 2001
Media Terri Greece 2001
Art And Image Austria . 2001
Vdor/ Break21 Slovenia 2001
Thaw USA 2001
Arco. Spain 2001
Transmediale Germany 2001
Cynet Art Dresden 2000
Architecura Video Player Installation Italy 2000
Urban Futures Internet. 2000
Macromedia Peoples Choice Multimedia. USA 1999
Seafair. Multimedia. Croatia 1998

Stanza Images from exhibition Stanza Images from exhibition Stanza Images from exhibition Stanza Images from exhibition Stanza Images from exhibition Stanza Images from exhibition  011 Stanza Images from exhibition fred Stanza Images from exhibition Stanza Images from exhibition Stanza Images from exhibition

Some images from "Active Interiors: 10 Years of Stanza's Interactive Art" exhbited at E.S.P. Media Lounge, Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood, Curated by David Mather. 2004

Stanza touch screen art
Stanza touch screen art
Stanza touch screen art
Stanza touch screen art. Generative art systems

These are limited edition artworks. They are all individually numbered in each edition.

For provenance, the sold copies have an individual number of the edition in the bottom of the main opening screen. This is a unique number. This number also matches the number and title on the signed cd rom. This work cannot be copied as it is the only one with a unique number and the same number on signed disk. A number of demo copies are available for viewing only. See above in Los Angles USA. Active Interiors: 10 Years of Stanza's Interactive Art E.S.P. Media Lounge, Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood USA. The first showing and sales of the touchscreen editions where supported, curated by David Mather in 2004.

www.stanza.co.uk

Generative artworks series.

 

 

Beautiful Maps 2005

A series of generated paintings, whose forms are dictated by mathmatical behaviours. The vast range of colors and shapes is visually exciting triggered by touch and movement on the screen .

 

 

Spider Maps 2006

The variations are a series of generated paintings, whose forms are dictated by mathmatical behaviours.

The vast range of colors and shapes is visually exciting triggered by touch and movement on the screen. 2

 

 

 

 

Nanocities 2005

The variations are a series of generated paintings, whose forms are dictated by mathmatical behaviours. 2005

 

 

 

Codified 2000- 2005

The variations are a series of generated paintings, whose forms are dictated by mathmatical behaviours. This work was originally made in 2000. The vast range of colors and shapes is visually exciting triggered by touch and movement on the screen. There are twenty different artworks in the touch screen edition. 2000 - 2005

 

 

Elasticity.2006

The variations are a series of generated paintings, whose forms are dictated by mathmatical behaviours.

The vast range of colors and shapes is visually exciting triggered by touch and movement on the screen 2006.

 

 

 

I Will Follow You To The Edge Of The World NO 1

A series of generated paintings, whose forms are dictated by mathmatical behaviours. This work was originally  made in 2000. The vast range of colors and shapes is visually exciting triggered by touch and movement on the screen . 2004

Amorphoscapes 2000

These colorful abstractions mutate endlessly from precise contours and kaleidoscopic mosaics to amorphous, transient shapes. The vast range of colors and shapes is visually exciting triggered by touch and movement on the screen . 2000

 

Entropy II 2003

Active patterns propogate over mutating fields of color in this abstract series of finely detailed icons shifting quickly and over time. 2003

Actions and Consequences In A Minor Sy

 

Biocity 2003

 

Data grows and evolves in this complex project of visual elements and sounds that pulse with intriguing behaviors like networks of living information based on city structures. 2003..

 

 

Inner City 2001

Maps, buildings and geographic symbols meld into patterns of dense urban space. This journey invites exploration and discovery amid varying degrees of order and chaos. 2001.

 

Subvergence 2000

This self-referential explosion of data uses computer icons, scripts and codes that grow exponentially to create intense desktop feedback.

 

 

 

Coded Behaviour

The following text is by Charlotte Frost for the Artsway catalogue to accompany work to the Venice Biennial.

Biocities (2003) and Inner City (2002) are audio-visual, interactive, digital paintings. They form part of Stanza’s Amorphoscapes series (which he has been working on since 1997). Unlike existing web-based incarnations, these are limited-edition touch-screens which better demonstrate Stanza’s uncompromising ability to craft technology. These works are exquisitely executed. Aesthetically and technologically they are flawless, standing out vividly against a backdrop of new media art which can be clunky and ill-defined. Even to the untrained eye, or those uninitiated in new media arts, Stanza’s skills and outputs as an artist working with electronic technologies are apparent.

These works present two predominant devices to actively trace urban topographies. One is a seeping aesthetic, where blank screens are gradually flooded with colour and texture which appears to perpetually map and re-map its terrain (as seen in Biocities); it is American-Action-Painting-meets-London-Underground-cartography as the city is given life through visual veins and audio arteries. The other is a stamping aesthetic where heavily-stylised city corners, crevices and conversational off-cuts are sporadically overlaid causing a constant collaging (as in Inner City). Harder to characterise, this effect is something like a strobe inflicting O’Keefe’s eye for detail on a minimalist canvas. Such effects are heavily indebted to Modernism but no less impressive in their new media incarnation.

For me, what is most striking about these pieces – and indeed Stanza’s present work The Emergent City – is its reference to ritual, or socially-loaded, repetitive behaviour. The rituals I find implicit in these works are both urban and artistic. Each of the works amasses aural and aesthetic details which loosely depict a range of city-specific behaviour. However, and this is key, Stanza does not tell us what these behaviours are. He provides a montage of animate archaeological evidence which evoke the comings-and-goings of a city and its inhabitants. The effect is somewhat like sitting at a central hub of city activity and watching the constant ebb and flow of people, trains or traffic, feeling both integral and irrelevant as the movement occurs both because, but also in spite of your presence.

They also refer to the type of behaviours encoded in the ritual of art gallery attendance. They demand that the audience co-author not just their meaning, but also their audio-visual output, which requires a different level of interactivity on the part of the audience. This is art about active not just intellectual engagement. This is art which does not exist without a willing participant. Yet having asked the audience to behave differently, Stanza immediately puts them at ease by offering these works as editioned objects which might well sit alongside paintings and perhaps discuss the aesthetic common-ground of paint and pixel. It seems Stanza intends to build a new relationship between artwork and audience, but not by reconstructing the physical architecture of art history which he leaves very much intact.

The art historian Dana Arnold claims that the architecture and associated activity of the art gallery generate “the cultural life of a society”. With these works Stanza provokes the participants in the ‘cultural life of society’ to reconstruct a range of naturalised urban behaviours whilst rebuilding not just a few of their ideas about art production and presentation.

 

PERFORMANCES USING TOUCH SCREEN. 2005

Steve Tanza performanceStanza performance using three interactive touch screens and projected images. Arts Depot North London. 2005. Images shows screens mounted into plynth. They can also be wall mounted, or fixed ino the wall. Amorphoscapes: photo below taken in Korea at Samsung Media Centre. Touch screens works with projection onto wall. Sizes variable. 2004.

Stanza generattive artwork with comoputer code 2004
Steve Tanza. 2004.
   
Stanza touch screen art
Stanza touch screen art

 

If you want to exhibit these artwork, or buy them get in touch..........STANZA

www.stanza.co.uk

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