The Burchfield-Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College will present Signals from the Electronic Cloud: Recent Work from the IEA January 26 through April 7, 2002. The exhibition, which focuses on recent works from the Institute of Electronic Arts (IEA) at Alfred University, will include video projections, digital prints, and interactive computer and sound art by faculty members and those who have participated in the Institute's highly acclaimed artist-in-residence program. Artifacts and historical objects significant to the development of the IEA and electronic media will also be included. Featured artists will include IEA founding members Peer Bode, Jessie Shefrin, and Joe Scheer.

Since its inception in 1986, the program at the IEA has grown significantly and - with major funding from numerous corporations, foundations, and private donors - has allowed artists from the around the world to produce work at this unique center for creativity.

Artist Jessie Shefrin has said, "My art has always been predicated on the movement between different mediums and processes because in the process of translation from one expression to another, there is an alteration of sense and the possibilities for interpretation become extended. These ideas about translation and interpretation make visible the periphery of experience where things do not necessarily cohere, where interruptions reveal what is most often hidden from perception. The visible trace connects with the invisible thing. I have kept written journals as part of my studio practice ever since I can remember because for me, the word harbors the voice and becomes a place of improvisation within the image, like snails crawling backwards inside their shells."

Joe Scheer is a professor of print media and the chair of the division of two-dimensional studies and electronic arts at Alfred University. His current works, including his recent series of digital prints of scanned moths, span print media and video and Web-based technologies. He uses technology to re-examine nature through interpretive collecting and visual recording.

Peer Bode's art continually expands electronic media practices in video, sound, printmaking, and installation work both in its production and exhibition. Bode, along with his father, Harald, invented many early equipment prototypes for video including Design Labs' Frame Buffer. The exhibition features recent video pieces by Bode including a large scale, two-projection work entitled Silicon Alley Alleghany Highway, as well as early computer prints and videos that were produced using his Frame Buffer.

Work by Will Contino, Andrew Deutch, Pam Hawkins, Tetsu Inoue, Mary Lum, Woody Vasulka, and internationally renowned artist Ann Hamilton will be included in the exhibition, which is curated by Don Metz, John Opera, and Scott Propeack.

Funding for the exhibition comes from an anonymous donor, Boynton Studios, and the James Cary Evans Endowment. Media sponsorship comes from WBFO 88.7.

Programs complementing the exhibition include lecture/screenings each Thursday in February at 6:30 p.m. and, as a finale, a sound/art mini-festival from April 4 through April 7. Participants will include Steven Vitiello, Tetsu Inoue, Andrew Deutsch, Tony Conrad, the Casiophonic Marching Band, and the Electric Eclectic Orchestra. Details will be announced separately. Images from the exhibition and interviews with participating artists or curators are available.



In conjunction with this exhibition are the following:

Thursday, February 7, 6:30 p.m. - Jessie Shefrin

Thursday, February 14, 6:30 p.m. - Joe Scheer

Thursday, February 21, 6:30 p.m. - Andrew

Deutsch

Thursday, February 28, 6:30 p.m. - Peer Bode, and

Sound/art mini-festival, April 4 - 7; e/screening series are free andopen to the public, donations are greatly appreciated.

Where: Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Third Floor of Rockwell Hall, Buffalo State College

Museum hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m.