Michael Sarff
Brooklyn, NY
Artists Michael Sarff and Timothy Whidden formed MTAA in 1996 and soon after began to explore the Internet, video, software and sculpture as mediums for their conceptual art. The duo’s exhibition history includes group shows and screenings at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Postmasters Gallery and Artists Space all in New York City, and at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. International exhibitions include the Seoul Net & Film Festival in Korea and Videozone2: The 2nd International Video Art Biennial in Israel. In New Media Art (Taschen, 2006), authors Mark Tribe and Reena Jana describe MTAA’s One Year Performance Video (a.k.a. samHsiehUpdate) as ”a deftly transparent demonstration of new media’s ability to manipulate our perceptions of time.” The collaboration has earned grants, commissions, and awards from Rhizome.org, Eyebeam, New Radio & Performing Arts, Inc. and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Want
Want is a six-channel video installation about contemporary desire. Want explores the current climate of society over-stimulated by the bombardment of technological instant gratification, and the very definite, yet-to-be-revealed implications and issues of accountability and responsibility surrounding virtuality. Here, the Internet’s underbelly is exposed; pushing the quiet, anonymous behavior that flourishes in cyberspace into public space, forcing us to reevaluate this behavior as if it were to take place in the physical community. The life-sized video displays use custom software to monitor real time Internet searches. When the software finds a programmed keyword, it triggers a video clip of one of several actors/avatars who translates the virtual request to reality. The videos are triggered almost concurrently, causing the voiced requests to overlap. The result is an audio-visual cacophony of desire; an online echo chamber of warped reality.