David Bermant Foundation the past, present and future
May 28th at 1:00pm PDT // 4:00pm EDT
COLOR, LIGHT, MOTION
EPISODE 12
TONI DOVE
"Motion as Sentience and the Pygmalion Complex"
COLOR, LIGHT, MOTION is an online series featuring media artists and scholars in dialogue about artworks from the Bermant Collection of media and kinetic arts. Each featured presenter will discuss selected artworks in history and context and in relation to their own work and connections. This series is produced in collaboration with Harvestworks NY and the David Bermant Foundation.
Toni Dove is considered an innovator in the field of interactive and immersive narrative, New York-based artist Toni Dove creates hybrid performance, installation and screen-based art that fuses film, game or instrument-based interaction with experimental theater. In her work, performers and participants interact with an unfolding narrative, using technologies such as motion sensing or machine learning to connect with on-screen characters.
Projects include Spectropia: feature length live-mix movie performance: premiered: Wexner Center for the Arts; REDCAT, LA Nov 2007; EMPAC, Troy NY, 2008, the Kitchen, NYC, 2010, Roulette, NY, 2012. Lucid Possession, a live mix music cinema performance, a co-production with Issue Project Room, Roulette and HERE, premiered in NYC in 2013 after a preview show at Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech. An interactive cinema and robotics installation ‘The Dress That Eats Souls’, premiered in a survey of 20 years of Dove’s interactive work “Embodied Machines” at The Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, 2018.
Dove was Hirshon Artist/Director in residence, New School for Social Research in Media Studies 2014/15. She has received numerous grants and awards including support from the Rockefeller Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts. She received the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from M.I.T. And a lifetime achievement award from I.D.M.A.a. Dove was appointed to the 2000/2003 Government Advisory Committee on Information Technology and Creativity, National Research Council, USA. She was Artist in Residence at Bell Labs E.A.T. Program 2020, Pioneerworks Immersive Lab 2019, and Integrated Digital Media, Tandon, NYU, ongoing. Her current project uses motion and machine learning to animate responsive characters in a narrative and is a collaboration with Yale CCAM, Brown CRCI and The Fralin Museum at UVA.
Installation Sketch for Sunjammer Six (in development)
Costume design for Lucid Possession
The Dress That Eats Souls, 2018, The Ringling Museum
RESPONDENTS
Kim Whiteneris an independent creative producer, working in the contemporary opera-theatre, music-theatre, and other multi-genre landscapes through her company, KiWi Productions. From early 2007 to late 2018, she was the Producing/Executive Director at HERE in NYC, and was a founding co-director of the PROTOTYPE opera-theatre festival, along with partners at Beth Morrison Project, collectively directing eight festivals through January 2020. Prior to joining HERE, Ms. Whitener spent six years as an independent producer with KiWi Productions, working with a range of US artists in the contemporary theatre, opera- & music-theatre, dance-theatre, and multimedia worlds, including The Builders Association, Big Dance Theater, Toni Dove, Martha Clarke, Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 33 Fainting Spells, among others. She was Managing Director of The Wooster Group for four years, and held other theatre management and producing positions in NY, Boston, and Philadelphia with a specialty in new music-theatre. She has served on many grant panels and taught seminars nationally and internationally on production, management, and development of projects for touring. CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS>>
Matthew McLendon, PhDan art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art, became the director and chief curator of The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia on January 9, 2017. An energetic and influential leader, McLendon is widely recognized for his cross-disciplinary curatorial practice, an emphasis on community engagement and education, and activating marginalized voices in the museum setting. In 2010, McLendon was recruited by The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art to revive its dormant modern and contemporary program. In 2011, Joseph's Coat, the largest Skyspace to date by artist James Turrell was opened under McLendon's leadership and his original exhibitions began drawing increasing regional and national audiences. McLendon inaugurated and co-directed the Art of Our Time initiative, focused on living visual and performing artists, beginning in 2011. This cross-disciplinary programming series helped lead the way in The Ringling setting new records in attendance, membership, and support. Other high profile major exhibitions included the first museum survey of artist, composer, and performer R. Luke DuBois and an examination of living artists working with found objects, in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, in Re:Purposed. McLendon's survey of interactive cinema and live-mix performance pioneer Toni Dove was scheduled to premiere at The Ringling in February 2018. CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS>>
Foundation director Bess Rochlitzer with Executive director of Butler Institute Dr. Louis Zona visited the Butler museum to see how the collection gifted to the museum was installed. She was very pleased with the new home for these historic works!
The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion was established in 1986 with the mission to encourage and advocate experimental visual art which draws its form, content and working materials from late twentieth-century technology. The working materials include physical sources of energy, light, and sound. The resulting artworks question and extend the boundaries of the visual arts. To learn more about The David Bermant Foundation and its collection, visit the foundation website DavidBermantFoundation.org.
The Lasso, Alejandro and Moira Sina, 1997
Thomas Wilfred- "Lumia"
Susan Hopmans feeling the NanoMandala projection on sand by Victoria Vesna at the Bermant foundation gallery.
Clavilux Junior, First Home Clavilux, Thomas Wilfred, 1930
The collection of 98 works valued at several million dollars includes pieces created by many of the pioneers of technologically based art such as Marcel Duchamp (above image), Nam June Paik, Jenny Holzer, Jean Tinguely, Pol Bury, George Rhoads, John Deandria, James Seawright, and dozens more.
ABOUTDAVID BERMANT
David Bermant was one of the most admired collectors of avant-garde art in the United States. His collection of kinetic art includes works which employ both virtual motion as well as actual motion. Art which utilizes video, holography, magnetism, electronics, robotics, chemistry, and various types of light provide a look into the fourth dimension.
The late David Bermant was born in New York City and grew up in Manhattan. In January of 1941, six months after graduating cum laude from Yale University at age 21, he joined the U.S. Army. He ended his army career as a major of artillery in Patton’s Third Army, earning a bronze star with an oak leaf cluster for his actions. In 1947, he married Ruth Jesephson, and later divorced after 46 years. They had four children: Ann, Jeffrey, Wendy, and Andrew. David then married Susan Hopmans and established homes in Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez valley where he created and maintained facilities to house a large and significant art collection.
David had two great interests: building shopping centers — on the East Coast and in California — and collecting art. Technological art was his favorite because it utilized modern science and technology and was more dynamic than other art that just hung on the wall Bermant felt that such art should be shared in public spaces other than museums and galleries. He established and funded the David W. Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion to ensure the art form most dear to his heart would thrive beyond his lifetime.
Indestructible I, George Rhoads, 1970
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