[ISEA97] Artists Statement: Susan Dallas-Swan & Gerald Horn – EQuinox ’97

Artists Statement

EQuinox ’97 is the 8th year of an annual project evolving within a large expanse of time, in various distant locations, with a diverse population of peoples, languages, and ages. EQuinox’90-2000 is a decade long International Arts/Communication Project. Participants receive a Call for Entries and are invited to send Messages to a site by all communication forms concerning what they wish, want, hope, fear, believe the future will be. This fin de millennium art work, receives and publishes what an international random group of people believe about their future during rapid societal change. A broad range of human beings send Messages as drawings, handwritings, faxes, poems, notes, and musical scores to this global conceptual time capsule.
EQuinox ’90-2000 speaks of time, duration, change, and communication. Events in which people come together to discuss and witness have occurred for thousands of years. EQuinox ’90-2000 is a unique arts/communication event exploring the speed and protocols of the current revolution in electronic technology and communication which has not existed before. As the immaterial, non-physical engages the perception, previous notions of ownership and authorship dissolve. Robert Stearns in Dialogue Magazine writes that are bringing together thousands of people around the world to count down the last few years to the future through EQuinox ’90-2000′. ‘That the work derives”some of its strategies from the schools of mail and correspondence art of the 1960’s, off-shoots of Fluxus that, in turn, drew its inspiration from the Dada and Surrealist artists of the early 20th century. Mail art consciously avoided preciousness by dodging the distribution hierarchy of the gallery and museum system”.
The natural branching inherent in electronic art lends itself to collaborations and networks. The computer interactive installations of EQuinox ’95 at the Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miro in Spain and EQuinox ’94, at SPACES in Cleveland were collaborations involving artists Gerald Horn, Jamy Sheridan, and Dallas-Swann. EQuinox ’96 on the Web involves participation from Prague to Puerto Rico.

  • Susan Dallas-Swan is an internationally exhibited artist exhibiting real-time multimedia interactive installations of sound, light, movement, animation, holography and sculpture. She is an Associate Professor and Co-Program Coordinator in Art and Technology at The Ohio State University Department of Art and Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD). Recent exhibitions and panels include EQuinox ’96; WWW and The Funnel, Prague, Czech Republic, and The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, Ann Arbor Michigan w/Gerald Horn and Jamy Sheridan,’96; College Art Association, New York; Crossing the Boundaries: Electronic Art Within and Without, New York, NY, February,’97; EQuinox ’95, Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miro a Mallorca, Spain, w/G. Horn, Mar-Apr ’95, Tracor School of Art, Madrid, Spain, Arte Nuevas Technologias y Ciberespacio, ’94,Hogeschool Katholieke Leergangen, Tilburg, Holland, and many others. Grants include New Forms Regional Grant, New York State Council for the Arts, Art Awareness Residency, Artist’s Space Exhibition Grant, P.S. #1 Artist Materials Program Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Fellowship Grant. Collections:International Museum of Electrography Collection, University of Spain at La Mancha, Quinca, Spain, and Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miro in Mallorca, Spain.
  • Gerald Horn (U.S.A.) Ohio State University