Released: December 6, 2010
Lincoln, Neb. - The work of 12 students in Assistant Professor of Art Jeff Thompson's Digital Arts Initiative class will be featured in a new exhibition entitled "Ctrl/Alt/Esc: Technology and the Landscape." The exhibition opens Dec. 3 at the Drift Station Gallery + Performance Space at 1746 N St. in Lincoln and continues through Dec. 17.
"Ctrl/Alt/Esc: Technology and the Landscape" is an exhibition that represents a semester's work by 12 of University of Nebraska-Lincoln undergraduate students as part of a course titled "Technology and the Landscape." The works included in this exhibition range widely from video, sound, performance, photography, sculpture, painting, drawing and music.
In his book Great Plains, Ian Frazier "[fears] for the Great Plains because many people think they are boring. Money and power in this country concentrate elsewhere."
The work in this exhibition, however, proves that the Great Plains is a vital and fascinating site; the artistic investigations in this exhibition depict a place full of subtle changes in texture, in wild leaps of geological history, and of social and political complexity.
Formulated as a "research studio," students investigated the ways that technology allows us to document, transform, experience and otherwise interact with the landscape, specifically that of the Great Plains (though attentions necessarily wandered as specific projects demanded). Rather than focus on specific or directed outcomes, the course was designed to be an open forum to explore approaches to the land through historical/cultural research, reading and discussion and most importantly artistic production - all with an expanded idea of what might constitute a 'technology' that included GPS and Google Maps as well as simple technologies such as a rock or plow. This exhibition functions similarly, including many works throughout the semester, to give an overall picture of the collective creative research.
The exhibition features the work of the following students: Spenser Albertsen, Keegan Baker, Christie Brazer, Ella Durham, Aaron Jarzynka, Bryan Klopping, Jesse Kudron, Tony Nguyen, Jon Porter, Kan Seidel, Josh Sisco and Devin Thomas.
The Digital Arts Initiative of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts is a collaborative effort among facuty from the Department of Art and Art History, the School of Music and the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film to provide interested students from all majors hands-on experience applying current technology to the arts. These elective classes bring together students from various disciplines to share their unique perspectives.
The Digital Arts Initiative is sponsored by the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and funded, in part, by the Hixson-Lied Endowment and Program of Excellence funding from the UNL Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.
For more information on the Digital Arts Initiative, visit www.unl.edu/digitalarts/ or contact Assistant Professor Jeff Thompson at jthompson9@unl.edu.
For more information on this exhibition, visit www.driftstation.org.