PRESS RELEASE:

     Continuing Postmasters Gallery interest in new media and Internet
     art we will present exhibitions/events timed and
     intended as complimentary to the net.art inclusion in the Whitney Biennial

     April 1 - April 22, 2000 (reception Saturday, April 1 6 - 8 pm)

     "Behind the Firewall"
     an exhibition of four new media installations

     prototypes by Sawad Brooks
     Welcome to the World of VinylVideo by VinylVideo
     Text Rain by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv
     skinonskinonskin by Entropy8Zuper!

  
     Postmasters Gallery, located in Chelsea at 459 West 19th Street
     (corner of 10th Avenue), is open Tuesday through Saturday to 6 pm.

     Please contact Magdalena Sawon with any questions.

     e-mail: postmasters@thing.net or magda@thing.net
     www.postmastersart.com

     prototypes by Sawad Brooks
     Between the artwork and the product it is possible to think about
     something called a prototype that also emerges from a creative
     process. The prototype is often as close as we are allowed to the
     post-industrial or information-age product before distance is
     infinitely distorted by mass reproduction, made recuperable only
     through fetishization.

     The lamp prototypes in this show investigate our relationship to
     the future.
     Light is often employed as a means of signaling warnings.
     Warnings, like prototypes, announce something before it arrives.
     These objects are designed with the capability to assess the
     viewer's distance from them, and react accordingly.
     They incorporate small computers, and respond to one's proximity,
     displaying a variety of responses by turning on and off
     their micro bulbs. Constructed in large part from corrugated
     cardboard, they employ material often used for packing and
     protecting something -- a product -- more valuable than itself.

     Welcome to the World of Vinyl Video by VinylVideo
     This will be the first New York exhibition of the VinylVideo and
     the first time the records and "Home Kit" (the translation device)
     are available. VynilVideo is an ongoing project, where members of
     the Austrian group regularly invite Artists to produce new work
     for the VinylVideo system .There are 20 records produced up to
     date, the last one by Kristin Lucas has just been released.

     VinylVideoTM - an invention by Gebhard SengmŸller, in cooperation
     with GŸnter Erhart, Martin Diamant and Best Before -
     is a new, wondrous and fascinating development in the realm of
     audio-visual media. For the first time in the history of
     technological invention, VinylVideoTM makes possible the storage
     of video (moving image and sound) on analog LP records. Playback
     from the VinylVideoTM picture disk is made possible with the
     VinylVideoTM unit which consists of a standard turntable,
     a special conversion box and a television set. In it's combination
     of analog and digital elements VinylVideoTM is a relic
     of fake media archeology. At the same time, VinylVideoTM is a
     vision of new live video mixing possibilities.
     By simply placing the tone arm at different points on the record,
     VinylVideoTM makes possible a random access manipulation
     of the time axis. With the extremely reduced picture and sound
     quality, a new mode of audio-visual perception evolves.
     In this way, VinylVideoTM reconstructs a home movie medium as a
     missing link in the history of recorded moving images while
     simultaneously encompassing contemporary forms of DJ-ing and
     VJ-ing.

     Text Rain by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv
     Text Rain is a playful interactive installation that blurs the
     boundary between the familiar and the magical. Participants in the

     Text Rain installation use the familiar instrument of their
     bodies, to do what seems magical - to lift and play with falling
     letters
     that do not really exist. In the Text Rain installation
     participants stand or move in front of a large projection screen.
     On the screen they see a mirrored video projection of themselves
     in black and white, combined with a color animation
     of falling text. Like rain or snow, the text appears to land on
     participants' heads and arms. The text responds to the
     participants' motions and can be caught, lifted, and then let fall
     again. The falling text will 'land' on anything darker
     than a certain threshold, and 'fall' whenever that obstacle is
     removed.
     If a participant accumulates enough letters along their
     outstretched arms, or along the silhouette of any dark object,
     they can sometimes catch an entire word, or even a phrase. The
     falling letters are not random, but lines of a poem about bodies
     and language. As letters from one line of the poem fall towards
     the ground they begin to fade, and differently colored letters
     from the next line replace them from above. 'Reading' the poem in
     the Text Rain installation, if one can do so at all, becomes a
     physical rather than cerebral endeavor.

     skinonskinonskin by Auriea Harvey (entropy8) and Michael Samyn (zuper!)
     e-love, cyberlove, the web goes multysensory
     the underlying emotions 'forced' the development of a media rich
     language that is developed continuously through a series
     of dialogues. skinonskinonskin is the first of these exchanges.
     skinonskinonskin has been developed while both of the artists were
     members the creative net group 'hell.com'
     and been made available through ICA London as the first
     pay-per-view web piece.
     
     http://www.entropy8zuper.org/skinonskinonskin
     artist statement: how does one and one become one? two
     net.entities roaming around through the wires unexpectedly
     connect in a place that turns out to be hell in so many ways.
     communicating in the only way they can, through visions,
     transmitting emotions through the files. a stream of electricity
     carrying bits back and forth.
     an ongoing dialog which forms a bond between them. a two way river
     becomes an ocean flowing through the data.
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     an ocean of desire, an ocean of lust, an ocean of selfishness.
     reciprocal to the point of ecstasy. recognizing the other as
     the one they were looking for. all they've known, all they've
     done, all they've felt, was leading to this. two bodies in the
     network:
     longing, desiring, missing, caressed in the code, hurt by the
     sharp edges of pixels, floating on dhtml. desperation,
     deprivation, ecstasy. skin, on skin, on skin.
     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     if ( 1 + 1 == 1 ) { e8z = true; };