Kit Hughes: UGA Amazing Student

April 29, 2004
UGA Amazing Students Web feature
link to original article

Kit Hughes

Kit Hughes has shown his conceptual art projects at venues throughout the southeast region since 1998, including the Fugitive Art Center in Nashville and the Murfreesboro Art Center, also in Tennessee. He is also a net artist who has received a grant from the UGA Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) for his Tagging project, an online tool for covering downtown Athens in virtual graffiti.

Expected Graduation: May 2005

Degree Objective: Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital Media

University highlights, achievements and awards:
Hughes has won numerous awards and recognition including being named a 2003 CURO Summer Research Fellow, ICE (Ideas for Creative Exploration) Project Grant Recipient, and 2004 VIGRE Program Participant (Mathematics and Visualization Seminar). He is also a Presidential Scholar and on the Dean’s List.

Current employment:
I work as a design consultant for a high profile design firm in Atlanta. Our clients include the brands of Budweiser, Bud Light, Gillette, Lipton, and BPAmoco. In Athens, I work for a different firm that designs sports collateral for UGA and many other schools with successful sports programs. I also have freelance clients throughout the country.

High School: Lone Oak High School

Hometown: Paducah, Kentucky

I choose to attend UGA because…
…when I decided to return to art school I began by visiting the top art schools in New England. They all overwhelmingly suggested UGA because of its reputation with digital media. After I visited the newly formed Digital Media program, I knew immediately that UGA was where I belonged.

My favorite things to do on campus are…
1) Experience the Student Learning Center. Since I am a transfer student and have first hand experience at another school, I am especially sensitive to the university’s investment in its students. To me, the Student Learning Center reinforces UGA’s investment in the student experience. When a building of this magnitude-interior and exterior-sits in the landscape of a campus like the SLC does, we have something we can touch and say, “This is our university.”

2) Visit the galleries on campus. There are numerous gallery spaces on campus, not to mention the Georgia Museum of Art, that rotate exhibits, sometimes weekly. A lot of the work is from students so it is great to see a few fresh ideas as some of the artists are working through aesthetic issues for the first time.

3) Walk around campus at the busiest times. My first semester at UGA was abroad, so I didn’t go through a real orientation. During my second semester, I had class only on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. in the same room. For one full year as a UGA student, I essentially had no idea what the on-campus experience was like. Now I walk around and ride packed buses as much as possible.

The craziest thing I’ve done is…
…grow my hair out to donate it to Locks of Love. I’m about 3 inches away from having a 10 inch pony-tail. Two years ago I decided that I wouldn’t have much time to do volunteer work since I was trying to juggle a career, spend time with my wife and go back to school. So I decided to grow my hair out to donate it to children with cancer. I knew this was something that might make me a little uncomfortable but would bring joy to someone faced with so much more than me. It has been very tough dealing with long hair, but it has been worth it.

My favorite professor is…
…Mark Callahan, Laleh Mehran, and Michael Oliveri. I know I’ve listed three people here. However, I asked them to wrestle each other for the title of “Kit’s Favorite Professor” and they all declined. So then I told them I was going to nominate Woody Beck or John Morrow instead since I knew that they’d be willing to wrestle. Needless to say, these three are my primary professors and each has helped me out immensely. Word to Beck and Morrow, though.

If I could share an afternoon with anyone, I would love to share it with…
…Malcolm X. To have undergone such a dramatic transformation through one’s life is absolutely amazing; I want to know what that is like. I read his autobiography in high school and became fascinated with his tact and disposition.

If money was not a consideration, I would love to…
…create a Rural/Urban Design Initiative very similar to Dennis Ruth and Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio at the Auburn University School of Architecture. This initiative would connect architecture, design, and art students with communities in low-income urban and rural areas. These students would be able to offer low cost architectural and graphic design solutions to emerging businesses as well as enrich the community identity through aesthetics. Take this same idea and apply it to public policy and there is a chance that communities would flourish based on common principles united in a common direction.

After graduation, I plan to…
…attend graduate school for architecture.

Loss Pequeño Glazier

ICE is pleased to welcome Dr. Loss Pequeño Glazier – poet, Professor of Media Study, and Director of the Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY Buffalo – as a visiting artist and lecturer April 7 -9. Dr. Glazier has widely published both his poetry and his theoretical writings on the electronic text and has created performance-based works that present “a reading and projection of visual, kinetic, text, and Java-based compositions for electronic space.” His most recent book of poetry, Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm, was published by Salt Publishing in 2003, and has been described by Charles Bernstein as ‘flying through the textual air and landing on all three sides of every border crossing.’ Digital Poetics: The Making of E-Poetries was published in 2002 by University of Alabama Press and has become one of the most significant examinations of the intersection between poetics and technology. Glazier is a thoughtful scholar and pioneer of the textual condition, exploring languages as they overlap in the accelerating border-crossings of the global age, including his childhood in bilingual South Texas and his extensive travels, and languages as they warp and adapt in the materiality of new technologies.

On Thursday April 8, Dr. Glazier will speak about his experience as Director of the Electronic Poetry Center at 11:00 AM in Park Hall room 261. An informal reception with refreshments will follow. At 7:00 PM he will give a public lecture and reading in the Visual Arts Building room 117.

On Friday April 9 at 1:00 PM, Dr. Glazier will lead an open workshop at the ICE Studio, Tanner Building room 101. Dr.

Glazier’s visit is sponsored by the Lanier Speaker Series and ICE. All events are free and open to the public. For more information about Dr. Glazier and the Electronic Poetry Center visit http://epc.buffalo.edu.

Expanding ICE

April 5, 2004
Columns UGA faculty/staff newspaper
link to original article

Mark Callahan
Mark Callahan

Expanding ICE
Ideas for Creative Exploration’s assistant director, Mark Callahan, discusses its future
By Beth Roberts

Mark Callahan
Ideas for Creative Exploration-ICE-is an interdisciplinary program for advanced research in the arts. The first ICE project was the Web site, which launched in fall 2001. Columns talked to assistant director Mark Callahan about ICE’s first two years.

Columns: ICE has been covered in Columns before, but it seemed time to catch up.

Callahan: Yes-I remember reading the first story before I came to UGA, when they first considered the idea of a program like this. I thought it sounded great. At that point I was finishing up my master’s, at Cranbrook, in Detroit, and my own practice as a studio artist had ceased to resemble any category or discipline. Hearing about this idea, I felt Athens was going to be a great place to be.

Columns: How is it going? How do you spend your ICE time?

Callahan: We’ve given out what are essentially seed grants to do projects, and mostly what I do, day to day, is help people manage those projects. And I’m constantly working on expanding our Web resources. But we’re also exploring what the future will be-how ICE will become more formalized. That time is here.

Columns: But you already have several projects in the works.

Callahan: We felt we needed to create some kind of track record, some kind of concrete example of what we would do. And we wanted to take a survey of what resources already exist. So the project grants served several functions. One is getting people’s attention. Of course the big benefit is that we’re creating works that have a life of their own. Right now we have 10 or 12 projects in various phases of development, and I’m excited about those projects going to venues beyond Athens. That will raise our national profile.

In a couple of weeks I’m going to be going to New York to a meeting of the National Art and Technology Network, which is a consortium of institutions-venues, museums, academic programs. I’ll be making a presentation about ICE alongside institutions such as MIT and Carnegie Mellon.

Columns: There was a lot of emphasis at the beginning of ICE on drawing in different kinds of artists.

Callahan: The steering committee for ICE has always been very well balanced among the arts. The digital media area in the School of Art, the Interactive Performance Laboratory in drama, the Center for New Music in the School of Music, the Creative Writing Program in English, the Core Concert Dance Company-it makes sense for ICE to be a place where they’re going to exchange ideas and find support.

Columns: How about students?

Callahan: There’s a project called E.L.I., done by a current graduate student in drama and a recent B.F.A. graduate from the School of Art. ICE helped them go to a summer institute in New York. From that experience they came up with this project, and when they came back, they submitted a proposal for it to be an ICE project, and it was accepted. Now they have built it and shown it.

One current undergraduate joined up with us in the process of a project we did with the New Media Institute last year, building a prototype for mobile wireless net art-works of art designed for handheld computers. He built a project in that extracurricular environment, and with that he applied for and got a CURO summer fellowship. Another project idea grew out of that, and this year he got an ICE grant. He has showed the project at Athens Institute of Contemporary Art, and now has this installation that can travel.

That’s where I see this program working. It’s mentorship, making sure that they know that those opportunities exist.

CURO is a really nice match for ICE. We’ve had some great involvement from students in the Honors Program. Last fall we did a seminar-from ICE to CURO-on research in the arts.

Columns: And how about the future?

Callahan: It’s hard to say exactly how this structure will evolve. ICE could become more like a studio or a laboratory. We’ve looked a lot at the model of the sciences.

Like the Faculty of Engineering and the New Media Institute, ICE is involved in new technology, both in an academic environment and outside it. But with the arts there’s always that factor of the audience. If it’s not out there in the world then it’s not really entering the larger discourse, and unlike the sciences-where professional lines are clearly marked through journals and organizations-art is everywhere.

Columns: Do you see funding coming to ICE directly? Or does the funding come through projects that people find their own funding for?

Callahan: That’s a good question. In the nebulous form we’re in now we’ve seen the advantages and disadvantages of those modes. I’m interested in the model of Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon, which, like ICE is now, is an autonomous unit. An independent artist can dream up a project and go out and find funding. We see that happening through the resources we provide-expertise, the network, the facilities and resources in the university-which can help an individual create what we would call an ICE project.

Columns: And ICE support makes it more likely that a project could get outside funding.

Callahan: Yes, absolutely. As our reputation grows an ICE proposal will have some resonance. But we also need institutional support, for the day-to-day stuff. And of course those kinds of funds are harder to get. They tend to be shared among institutions, and that’s why it’s important for us to join with other programs, like this meeting of the National Art and Technology Network. It’s a bit like a startup business.

Columns: But startups are going to be making the same thing over and over, and you’re precisely not doing that.

Callahan: Right, the mandate is to evolve and never be the same.

Scenes from the X-Ray Cafe, Vol. 1

2003-2004 ICE Project Grant
JoE Silva
Producer, WUGA’s Just Off the Radar

The first in a series of several CD compilations of local sound and digital media artists participating in regular performance events at the X-Ray Cafe.

The CD contains unreleased/exclusive tracks, multimedia elements and original artwork and will culminate in an annual performance event. Now available for purchase online at  http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/xraycafe.

Beginning in November 2003, several musicians producing experimental, ambient, and pop electronica in Athens, GA began holding monthly multimedia gigs at a local coffee shop owned and operated by Paul Thomas. As the shows grew in size and scope, the idea of taking a recorded snapshot of the events soon took hold. Laid down along with snippets of conversations and native ambience, Scenes From The X-Ray Café, Vol. 1 captures some of the vibe of those evenings by focusing on a few of the regular artists that made these performances special. Included herein are local ambient Gods (the Noisettes), the best kept pop secret in the city (Green Lawns), cut and paste wizards (Paul Thomas, Manipulated Sound Source), one psychedelic big beats lover (The QRM), and various sirens of abstract circuitry (MonkE, Felt Battery, Crunchifus). This first release also contains two specially produced Quicktime films, and a nifty Flash instrument for listeners to play along with. It’s as close to having been there as you can get without a TARDIS.

ATHICA installation ‘All day and All night’ wallows in consumerism

December 11, 2003
Athens Banner-Herald
link to original article

ATHICA installation ‘All day and All night’ wallows in consumerism
Shop till you drop

By Melissa Link

As masses head out to malls and markets to participate in the hallowed tradition of holiday shopping, art enthusiasts are invited to ATHICA to participate in a conceptual mock shopping spree that demonstrates the pervasiveness of consumerism in contemporary culture.

Artist Kit Hughes originally submitted the concept of the interactive installation ”All day and All night” to be considered for ATHICA’s ”Product: Comments on Consumer Culture” exhibit, which had a successful run at the non-profit gallery earlier this year. Due to the scale and ambition of Hughes’ project, he was offered a solo exhibit to allow for a complete execution of the work.

”All day and All night” features an altar-like display of hundreds of products, all advertised on a single channel within a 24-hour period.
Participants are invited to scan the bar codes to trigger a multimedia series of audio-visual responses that include large-scale projections of edited commercials as well as recordings of hilarious crank calls made to the 1-800 Consumer Information numbers.

Participants are then given a receipt that allows them to ”buy” paintball ammunition to shoot at a blank canvas and aid in the creation of haphazard abstract art.

Hughes, who continues his career as a designer for a high-powered packaging and industrial design firm in Atlanta as he pursues an art degree through the University of Georgia’s digital media program, certainly is well-informed on the powerful alliance between image and impulse fueling contemporary consumerism.

”Graphic design has evolved into this amazing art form, people can’t get enough of it,” says Hughes, who in recent years has undergone somewhat of an epiphany of purpose that clarifies his corporate career as well as his artistic identity.

”I finally found this connection – this is a viable artistic media,” he says.
Yet despite the artist’s personal peace with consumerism, the installation’s inclusion of the blatantly violent act of shooting a gun alludes to an underlying angst.

”At one point in my life, I had negative feelings for capitalism, but I don’t so much anymore,” says the artist. ”I intended this installation to be an unbiased commentary,” he continues, refusing to offer his own interpretation of the rifle-range aspect of the exhibit, instead inviting each individual participant to form his and her own opinions from the experience.

Temporal Excursions with a Relative Departure in Mind

2003-2004 ICE Project Grant
Bala Sarasvati
Professor
Dance

A collaborative project that involves artists and performers from music, dance and art disciplines, joined together to create and present a performance featuring original choreography, stage design, and live renditions of Philip Glass compositions.

Temporal Excursions with a Relative Departure in Mind is a collaborative project developed with the support of a project grant from ICE and additional funding by The Friends of Dance at UGA. The project features original choreography by Professor Bala Sarasvati, new digital animation by artist Mark Callahan, and compositions by Philip Glass performed by the UGA Philip Glass Ensemble, led by Ryan Burruss, an undergraduate student in the School of Music. The work has been performed at the New Dance Theatre (UGA Spotlight!2003, CORE Concert Dance Company: Spring Collection 2004), the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) Mosaic 25th Anniversary Celebration at Judson Memorial Church in New York, and a series of cultural festivals in China.

MOSAIC 2005, an annual performance series in New York, featured Bala Sarasvati and the CORE Concert Dance Company in November 2005 in an event titled The Aesthetics of Difference: Dance and Identity, where they performed excerpts from Temporal Excusions with a Relative Departure in Mind.

The work is treated as an interdisciplinary performance piece, drawing upon mid-century Laban Movement Theory, 70s post-modern concepts in dance (in which Judson Memorial Church figured prominently) and reflecting opera, film, and dance projects that have featured the music of Philip Glass. Curators John Chanik and Philip Horovitz chose portions of the work to be included in LIMS Brand New, an evening of six performances featuring the dialogue between established and young choreographers. The company of six dancers contains current undergraduates from the Department of Dance, recent UGA graduates, and members of the Athens community.

Dancers: Laura Glenn, Laura Henry, Joseph Hutto, Gwen Phillips, Julie Rothschild, and Lindsay Spilker. Musicians: Ryan Burruss, Eddie Jennings, Michael Napolean, Dan Nash, and Jason Wallace.

Music by Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 3 (Mishima), Escape!, Metamorphosis Three, Melodies for Saxophone. Copyright 1983, 2002, 1989, 1996 Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc. Used by permission.