[ISEA2008] Curator Statement: Aotearoa Digital Arts — Cloudland: Digital Art from Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Curator Statement

Partner Exhibition. Venue: The Substation

Etherradio Live: Experimental music from Aotearoa new Zealand
Performance by Adam Willetts and PSN Electronic (Peter Stapleton, Su Ballard & Nathan Thompson)

Cloudland is a glimpse of the diverse terrain of electronic art-making in Aotearoa, New Zealand (located across two islands at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean) where the electronic arts scene is rooted in experimentations with film and sound, and uncertain connections across oceans and ether. Each of the artworks in the exhibition imagines and interpolates place. Error and mutability creep in, relations shift and reform. The spooky infrastructural magic of electricity flows, animating mist and dancing particles, drawing real conversations from artificial mouths and stories from artworks both lumpen and ethereal.
Cloudland is curated by Su Ballard, Stella Brennan and Zita Joyce for ADA, the Aotearoa Digital Arts network, a gathering point for artists in or from Aotearoa working with digital media and technology which was formed in 2003.

Len Lye – Free Radicals (1958/79)
Stella Brennan – South Pacific (2007)
Alex Monteith – Composition for farmer, three dogs and 120 sheep (2006)
Kentaro Yamada – Listening Heads (2006)
et al. – The social meaning of things (2008)
PSN Electronic, Bruce Russell & Adam Willetts – Etherradio (2008)

Organised by: Aotearoa Digital Arts in collaboration with Creative New Zealand, The Len Lye Foundation, Starkwhite  Gallery, Auckland Art Gallery, Otago Polytechnic, Asia N, AUT University, Auckland University, Canterbury University

ada.net.nz/events/projects/cloudland-projects/cloudland-2