Photo Credit: R.J. Sanchez

Sanctum is a public art work by James Coupe and Juan Pampin. It uses the persistent flow of people around the Henry Art Gallery as input, extracting narratives from the demographics of passers-by and the patterns of their movement. The flow of people is used as a physical analogue to another type of crowd, the virtual inhabitants of social networks such as Facebook.

As a person approaches the gallery, they are tracked, analyzed and recorded by video cameras programmed to identify people according to their age and gender. They hear a cacophony of voices, all telling stories. As they get closer to the gallery, the voices become clearer, gradually becoming a single voice that matches their age and gender, and telling a story composed from demographically-appropriate Facebook status updates. A grid of 18 large video monitors on the façade of the gallery picks their face out of the crowd, automatically integrating footage of them with a variety of live and pre-recorded footage from around the gallery façade.

The installation aims to create a locus of complex and intense social networking activity, reaching out of the gallery to embed the passer by. As unexpected flâneurs, people passing by the Henry are assaulted by a multitude of voices, videos and text, of which, as they approach the façade, they will eventually become the focal point.

Join the Sanctum Facebook application [here]. By joining, your Facebook status updates will become content for Sanctum’s narrative system. All posts that you make to Facebook will remain anonymous – they will be tagged with age and gender, but no other personal data will be used. If you visit Sanctum at the Henry Art Gallery, you can potentially see your status updates used as parts of the stories that are generated.

Sanctum opens May 4, 2013 and runs until November 5, 2015. More information at http://www.sanctum.io

Exhibited at the Phillips Museum of Art,
Franklin and Marshall College,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania

February 9 – April 7, 2013

Video cameras, monitors, computers, electronics

This installation is inspired by Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s novella, The Assignment. One of the novella’s major characters, Tina von Lambert leaves behind a diary entry that says, “I am being observed.” It is unclear if this refers to the meticulous studies her psychiatrist husband is making of her, or if it is a positive acknowledgement that, at last, someone is paying attention to her. This paradox applies to surveillance now more than ever. With the advent of social media, cell phone cameras, webcams and YouTube, is being ‘seen’ confirmation that we are meaningful, or something to avoid?

The text used in this installation is derived from Chapter Five of the novella, a chapter in which a logician develops a theory of observation that connects war, science, terrorism, marriage and God. The installation merges surveillance video with a self-help style voice-over, a psychology experiment, and a religious sermon. The installation is comprised of thirteen specially constructed rooms, incorporating a total of fifty high-definition webcam feeds and fifty monitors. Each room contains a ring of cameras that capture a 360-degree panorama that is then displayed on a row of screens. Each camera runs computer vision algorithms that determine what they display and what they ignore, enabling the monitors to display a panoramic view of the gallery space that is asynchronous, a composite that has been reconstituted from multiple different moments in time. The algorithms are unique to each room – some require the displays to always show two people in the room, others five people, or one, or none. Some blend staged footage – the Asch conformity test, a religious sermon on God as voyeur – with real-time footage of visitors to the installation. The result is a series of fixed narratives, an endless succession of the same event, each one a new version rather than a looped repetition. These narratives are then brought together, unified via a series of spoken instructions derived from the logician’s theories, into a single cinematic video projection.

Catalog essay, “Waiting to be seen” by Johanna Gosse

With thanks to DXARTS, Rus O’Connell, Yi Ding, Eliza Reilly, Johanna Gosse, James Hughes, Jimmy Johnson, Ron Leik, Erika Herrera and Sunny Waap

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Exhibited at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery,
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons The New School for Design,
2 West 13th St, New York City.
Part of The Public Private February 7 – April 17, 2013

Video cameras, monitors, computers

In this installation, a ring of five cameras is configured to continuously monitor a 360-degree field of view. The resulting panorama is then displayed on five screens on a wall. Software filters the video captured by the cameras to show only one person’s face on each screen. The footage of each person loops, only being replaced once a new person stands in front of one of the cameras.

The software demographically profiles these five people according to their age and gender and adds subtitles from corresponding Facebook status updates. For example, a 25-year-old male in the gallery is conjoined with text from a 25-year-old male on Facebook. The status updates function independently for each individual person, yet also work together as a narrative of five chunks of text representing the five demographics shown on the screens. Each time a new person enters the picture, the narrative is reconfigured without compromising the narrative across the five screens. Hence viewers find themselves in spatial and narrative dialogue/contact with four other previous occupants of the gallery, unable to remove themselves from scrutiny until somebody else puts themselves on display.

Panoptic Panorama #2 juxtaposes the oppressive qualities of centralized control—from surveillance to profiling—with the persistent urge to broadcast oneself through status updates, and explores the resulting narrative (im)possibilities.

With thanks to DXARTS, Yi Ding, James Hughes, Jimmy Johnson, John Robinson and Reid Swanson

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Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery
The New School
66 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10011

February 7 – April 17, 2013

Opening reception: Wednesday, February 6, 6:00 – 8:00 pm

The Public Private will be the first New York exhibition of contemporary art to explore the impact of social media and new technologies on the relationship between the public and private realm.

The artworks brought together in The Public Private—several presented for the first time in the United States—address these issues from psychological, legal, and economic perspectives and use strategies ranging from hacking to self-surveillance to reflect upon the profound changes in our understanding of identity, personal boundaries, and self-representation.

Works on view include Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico’s Face to Facebook, a multimedia installation of one million Facebook profiles, which were appropriated” by the artists, filtered using facial-recognition software, and then posted on a custom-made dating website sorted by facial expressions. Eva and Franco Mattes’ The Others is a video installation composed of 10,000 photos the Mattes have acquired through a software glitch that gives remote access to personal computer files. The core of the work is not just the presentation of these images, but the act of “stealing” and moving them from the private into the public realm.

Other artists and works represented in the gallery include Jill Magid’s Evidence Locker, Luke Dubois’ Missed Connections, Wafaa Bilal’s 3rdi, Carlo Zanni’s Self Portrait with Friends, James Coupe’s Panoptic Panorama #2: Five People in a Room, Paulo Cirio’s Street Ghosts, and Ben Grosser’s Facebook Demetricator.

The Public Private is curated by Christiane Paul, an Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School and Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Radical Art Caucus
Politics of the Panoramic: Spectacle, Surveillance, Resistance
Friday, February 24, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
West Hall Meeting Room 502B, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Chair: Alan Wallach, The College of William and Mary

Abstract
The techniques and apparatus of surveillance and the panoptic gaze have played a provocative role in art of the last fifty years; from the peephole voyeurism of Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, Bruce Nauman’s video corridor installations, to a more recent wave of new media artists who examine the ever-expanding regimes of digital surveillance in the 21st century. This paper will examine the work of British-born, Seattle-based artist James Coupe, who uses advanced digital technologies to explore the public and private implications of surveillance culture. Coupe’s upcoming project, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers, is a site-specific installation of CCTV cameras on a small liberal arts college campus, located in a city which is itself monitored by an elaborate municipal CCTV network. Operating at the intersection of the virtual, the cinematic, and the panoptic, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers will pose a range of ethical and political questions about the encounter between the spectators and subjects of surveillance.

Commissioned by Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore USA
Exhibited as part of Undercover January 27 – March 11, 2012

Video cameras, monitors, computers

It is that way with me: before me always an empty space; what drives me forward is a consequence that lies behind me.
- Kierkegaard

Five cameras are located in the center of the gallery, panoptically configured to continuously monitor a 360-degree field of view. Computers process the video captured by the cameras and filter out any footage that contains movement. Five screens on the wall of the gallery construct a panoramic representation of the gallery via the camera feeds. Regardless of the number of people in the gallery, it always appears empty in the video footage. Although the panorama seems unified, each screen is temporally inconsistent and discontinuous with the others. People who stand alone and motionless for long enough create glitches in the system and are momentarily inserted into the panorama, before being gradually replaced by an empty gallery once they start moving. Rather than capturing people’s actions, it erases them altogether.

With thanks to DXARTS, James Hughes, Jimmy Johnson and Johanna Gosse

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Henry Announces a New Commission: Sanctum by James Coupe and Juan Pampin to be realized in 2012

At the end of last year the Henry Art Gallery issued an open international call for artists, soliciting proposals for a site-specific, large-scale temporary media project to transform the façade of the museum’s main entrance. The ultimate goal of this project is to engage an artist or artist team to create a visually striking and attention-grabbing work that exhibits a unique and captivating artistic vision, while engaging the thousands of UW students, faculty, staff, and visitors who pass by the Henry every day. The call resulted in 91 entries.

The selection committee that juried the proposals comprised: Sylvia Wolf, Director of the Henry Art Gallery; Elizabeth Brown, Henry Chief Curator; Sara Krajewski, Henry Curator; Christiane Paul, Whitney Museum Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts and Director of the Media Studies Graduate Program at The New School; Daniel Friedman, Dean of the University of Washington’s College of the Built Environment; Bill True, Henry Board of Trustees Chairman; and Linden Rhoads, Vice Provost of UW Tech Transfer; Sarah Barton, MD, and Richard Barton, co-founder of expedia.com, zillow.com, and pozit.com

In late spring 2011, the jury selected three finalists, who were each given a stipend to further develop their concepts. Those three were Nataly Gattegno and Jason Kelly Johnson, design principles of Future City Labs; James Coupe and Juan Pampin, who are currently both Professors at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), University of Washington; and Ed Purver, a New York-based artist whose practice includes participatory, interactive and site-specific installations with an orientation towards public art. The candidates made final presentations to the jury on Friday November 18th.

After careful consideration of all three proposals, the jury selected Sanctum, a project proposed by James Coupe and Juan Pampin that will investigate the narrative potential of social media as well as raise provocative questions about profiling and privacy in our day. Their project will create a locus of complex social networking activity that reaches out of the Henry Art Gallery to engage the passerby, whose demographic profile activates and gives shape to an emerging audiovisual narrative.

As individuals approach the Henry façade, they will see a bank of video monitors apparently reflecting faces from the crowd. They soon hear a curious cacophony of murmuring voices, that follows them as they walk by. Meanwhile, video surveillance cameras and computers with facial recognition software are analyzing them, using their demographic data to retrieve Facebook status posts and tweets from users with similar profiles.

As they stop to look at the monitors they will see collected texts in narrative streams that appear as subtitles. These texts overlay live and archived video footage captured on site. The narrative becomes a new form of oral storytelling as it is recited by text-to-speech software and beamed at passersby via ultrasound. Sanctum will be initiated and realized in 2012.

Coupe and Pampin are Professors at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington. James Coupe received his PhD in Digital Art and Experimental Media from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of Edinburgh, UK. He works with systems, autonomy, and networks. His recent works (re)collector and The Lover use computer vision software to extract demographic and behavioral information recontextualized into narratives. Juan Pampin is an Argentine composer and sound artist with a Master of Arts in Computer Music from the CNSM de Lyon, France and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in composition from Stanford University. His work explores the territory delineated by the concepts of site, memory, and materiality, considering listening as an active process of self reflection.

The jury for this competition offered the following: “It was a pleasure and a privilege to review three such rich and varied projects. We express our thanks and appreciation to all three finalists for the thought, intelligence, and creativity that went into their presentations. Ultimately, we selected Coupe and Pampin’s Sanctum for its artistic and conceptual merit. This work integrates sound, visuals, and text to engage with highly relevant issues surrounding surveillance and profiling. By developing stories based on Facebook posts, it explores the ambiguity of how we negotiate identity in social media. It also questions how computer-based systems create narratives on the basis of collected data. An interactive piece, it investigates the paradoxical relationship between voyeurism and exhibitionism. Sanctum has the potential of engaging every member of the University of Washington community, by opening a productive space for a critical encounter with contemporary technology.”

Henry Director, Sylvia Wolf, adds: “We are particularly excited to launch this project in 2012, which marks the Henry’s 85th anniversary. From it’s founding in 1927, the Henry has championed contemporary art and fostered a campus- and region-wide culture of creativity. By commissioning a work that engages current topics in art and technology, the Henry fulfills its mission to advance the art, artists, and ideas of our time. We are deeply grateful to Sarah and Rich Barton, and to Linden Rhoads, for being the catalysts and benefactors of this important initiative. Their vision and support will provide a provocative and transformative experience for all who encounter Sanctum.”

Henry Art Gallery Announces Façade Window Project Finalists

Thousands of students, faculty, staff, and visitors walk past the Henry’s entrance every day. To better engage these passersby and make the public face of the Henry more dynamic, the Henry Art Gallery initiated the Façade Window Project. In late 2010 the museum issued an international open call to artists soliciting proposals for a site-specific, large-scale media project that would transform the façade of the museum’s main entrance. The goal of the Project is to create a site-specific installation that is visually striking and attention-grabbing, arousing interest in and curiosity about the Henry and presenting a unique and captivating artistic vision. This new art installation will serve as a beacon for the museum and as an invitation to the campus and larger community to come participate in the art and dialogue happening at the Henry.

Sarah and Richard Barton (Barton Family Foundation) and Linden Rhoads, Vice Provost of UW Tech Transfer, in an exemplary display ofleadership and commitment, funded the initiative with significant lead gifts. Both Linden and Sarah have been longtime friends and supporters of the Henry Art Gallery; both have served multiple terms on the Henry Gallery Association Board of Trustees.

Submissions were received from ninety-one artists, architects, and art-making teams. The selection committee that juried proposals comprised:

After careful debate the jury has selected three finalists, who will each be given a $5,000 stipend to further develop their concepts before the final commission is awarded. The finalists will be asked to complete a site visit before making their final presentations to the jury in November. The commission of $45,000 with an additional $15,000 artist honorarium will be awarded in December and construction willbegin shortly thereafter. The completed project will be unveiled in spring or summer 2012.

The finalists:

Nataly Gattegno and Jason Kelly Johnson are the design principles of Future City Labs, an experimental art, design, and research office based in San Francisco, California and Athens, Greece. Both hold a Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University. Gattegno also holds a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University, St. Johns College, UK; Johnson received his BS from the University of Virginia. Their work has been published and exhibited worldwide. Most recently Gattegno and Johnson were the 2008-09 Muschenheim and Oberdick Fellows at the University of Michigan; the 2009 New York Prize Fellows at the Van Alen Institute in New York City; and haveexhibited work at the 2009-10 Hong Kong / Shenzhen Biennale, the Extension Gallery in Chicago, and the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco.

James Coupe and Juan Pampin are Associate Professors at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington. James Coupe received his PhD in Digital Art and Experimental Media from the University of Washington and an MA in Creative Technology from the University of Salford, Manchester, UK. His recent works (re)collector and Surveillance Suite use computer vision software to extract demographic and behavioral information that he recontextualizes into narratives. Juan Pampin is an Argentine composer and sound artist with a Master of Arts in Computer Music from the Conservatoire National in Lyon, France and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in composition from Stanford University. His work explores the territory delineated by the concepts of site, memory, and materiality, considering listening as an active process of self reflection.

Ed Purver is a New York-based artist whose practice includes participatory, interactive, and site-specific installations with an orientation towards public art. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Oxford University and a Master of Arts from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He recently completed In Residence, a site-specific video installation commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial. He held a 2010 Fellowship in Video from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has collaborated with and consulted for leading companies in the fields of lighting, theatre and architecture.

About the Henry Art Gallery:

THE HENRY ADVANCES THE ART, ARTISTS, AND IDEAS OF OUR TIME

Since its founding in 1927, the Henry Art Gallery has served the Pacific Northwest as a pioneer in bringing contemporary art and ideas to the region. The Henry is a hub for audiences of all ages to experience the discovery, wonder, and surprise that contemporary art, artists, and ideas provide. The Henry staff, board, and community are committed to taking risks, and fostering dialogue and debate. Exhibitions,collections, and public programs at the Henry stimulate research and teaching at the University of Washington, provide a creative wellspring for artists, students, and educators, and reveal a record of modern artistic inquiry from the advent of photography in the mid-19th century to the multidisciplinary art and design of the 21st century.

HOURS:
The Henry Art Gallery is open 11-4, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday and 11-9 on Thursdays and Fridays; closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Holidays closed: Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year’s Day, and Independence Day.

ADMISSION
By suggested donation: $10 general, $6 seniors (62 and older); free to Henry Art Gallery members, UW students, faculty and staff with high school and college students with ID; children 13 and under.

CONTACTS
Henry Art Gallery Information
206.543.2280,
info@henryart.org
Web: www.henryart.org

Thursday, August 11, 2011, 7:00 – 8:00 PM

Henry Auditorium
Henry Art Gallery
University of Washington, Seattle

The Henry Art Gallery invites you to join artist James Coupe for a screening and discussion of the artist’s recent work with ‘surveillance cinema’ in (re)collector, Surveillance Suite, and the web-based work Today, too, I experienced something I hope to understand in a few days.

James Coupe is an artist whose work focuses on emergent systems, aesthetic machines, autonomy, and networks. His recent work with ‘surveillance cinema’ explores the witting and un-witting relationship between the artist/participant and the viewer/participant. This method of ‘surveillance cinema’ utilizes computer vision software to extract demographic and behavioral information from video footage from a variety of sources including YouTube clips, studio footage, and surveillance camera feeds. The footage is then algorithmically reorganized and recontextualized into narratives, often using cinematic ‘templates’ such as Antonioni’s classic film Blow-Up.

James Coupe has exhibited both nationally and internationally, receiving awards from the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Board Innovation Award, Creative Capital and Artist’s Trust.

The Talent Show is organized by Peter Eleey for the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and is made possible by generous support from the David Tieger Foundation and Ann M. Hatch. Presentation at the Henry is supported by ArtsFund and the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Special thanks to media sponsor Seattle Weekly.