“Today, there is no ‘offline,'” Anthony Antonellis tells ANIMAL. “The internet is always there, it just gets smaller.”
Last year, we documented Anthony Antonellis getting a tiny RFID chip surgically implanted into his hand with his 10-frame, 6-color, 1-kilobyte gif signature favicon. It was the world’s first net art implant (and, allegedly, “the Mark of the Beast!!!”). Antonellis’s first US solo show opens this Saturday at Brooklyn’s Transfer Gallery. For the exhibit, Antonellis produced a series of moving images and paintings based on brainwave recordings of spatial movements experienced inside his dreams.
I wish I could be on the Internet with my eyes closed, sleeping in bed
— Anthony Antonellis (@a_antonellis) December 25, 2011
All day, he’s shifting his focus from computers to mobile devices and this is the natural next step. “I wear a wireless EEG headset while I’m sleeping and it transmits realtime data to my computer,” Antonellis explains. “The headset has been designed for the consumer market; its primary applications are for hands-free gaming, remote controlled devices, and aiding those that are wheelchair bound. The headset software is trained to consistently interpret specific brainwave combinations. In one of my setups, I have thought patterns for navigation mapped to WASD keyboard commands. I am essentially key logging my dreams and visualizing the movement.”
The gallery describes this as “an exhibition of paintings rooted in digital wanderlust” and “collapsed dichotomies: digital and physical, conscious and unconscious. . This new body of work locates Antonellis’ practice squarely within the intersection of ubiquitous data and the ineffably human.”
In addition to the opening, Transfer is throwing its first birthday party! We’ve seen some amazing work there over the year — Rollin Leonard, LaTurbo Avedon, Lorna Mills and more. Oh, and of course, the other, always-traveling exhibit inside his hand, readable like a key fob by compatible phones, tablets, card readers and the Arduino microcontroller. It’s all healed up. “The implant is great and the curatorial began this January, and I have a bunch more artists lined up.” Antonellis says. :There won’t be a tie in to the exhibition, however, wherever I go it goes, so there will be two exhibitions happening at Transfer Gallery this Saturday.” “Internet of my dreams,” Anthony Antonellis, Mar 8 – Mar 29, Opening/party Mar 8 7-11pm, Transfer Gallery, Brooklyn.
(Photo: Anthony Antonellis)
