jonCates ... New Media Artist - Organizer - Educator
BIO - BLOG - TWITTER - VIMEO - FLICKR - FACEBOOK - CV
jonCates makes, organizes and teaches experimental New Media Art. His projects have been presented internationally at various events in locations such as Beijing, Madrid and Mexico City; nationally in Chicago, New York and Boston and are widely distributed online. Art Games, experimental Machinima, Computer Witchcraft, digitalPunk and Noise music are some of the unstable categories that his work playfully moves through.
jonCates teaches in the New Media path of study of the Film, Video & New Media Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His research and writings are on Media Art Histories and related subjects. In 2007, he initiated the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive to archive and freely distribute the Media Art work of Phil Morton and associated research. He writes on these topics for Furtherfield.org as well as in other online and offline publications.
// REVIEWS
...
"The NMC Sci-Arc panel discussion started with Jon Cates presenting his work within game media and how it relates to other aspects of interactive art. Within the heart of Jon’s work is an ethic of play, not in just interactivity but in humor and pop cultural references. His presentation can be seen here. Jon asserts that his deliberate focus on early video game aesthetics and culture is because he sees it as paralleling the punk rock music scene. In the early days of the medium programmers and artists would create works from their bedrooms on store-bought electronic devices which would then be showcased in clubs and societies as well as distributed on very early versions of the internet. The business model was much more ‘underground’ and although Atari and Pong were in the ascendant culture, underneath it there lurked creators with fierce passion for experimentation and creating without the confines of profitability and sales. These “punk rock programmers” breathed life into the culture by usurping the dominant memes." - Video Games as Medium, Future Paradigms and Practices, Mike Salmond, 2009, media-N Online Journal, College Art Association, New Media Caucus http://www.newmediacaucus.org/journal/printable.php?f=papers&time=2009_summer&page=salmond
...
"Curated by local new media mavericks Nicholas O’Brien and jonCates, this program features a selection of work that is normally housed on the Internet. Tonight, these www-based projects will be screened outside of a computer space to begin a dialogue between new media explorations and the historical avant-garde cinema. The artists included utilize a variety of computer and digital applications (message boards, webcams, online communities, Wi-Fi) and are shown to share similar concerns with many different experimental film sub-genres. Themes are universal; tools and methods change. Included in the program are Petra Cortright, Dennis Knopf, Oliver Laric, Guthrie Lonergan, Travess Smalley, and Rick Silva. Screen Grab.1 is a benefit for Expressive Media Express, an upcoming October-weekend of workshops, screenings, and installations, which aims to introduce and provide hardware and software tools to youth. O’Brien and Cates will be in person." Screen Grab.1 (New Media/Experimental), Patrick Friel, 2009.08.14, CINE-FILE Chicago Guide to Independent and Underground Cinema, http://www.cine-file.info/
"Two other musicians doing an immense amount of community organizing are Mark Messing and Jon Cates... Cates has been able to bridge his interest in new media and noise music through the curation of a number of festivals such as r4WB1t5 and gatherings like the Upgrade Chicago and Dorkbot. Many of his most frequent collaborators are the people of criticalartware, a collective research project about the early history of new media and making art inspired by those traditions." - Critical Culture in Chicago – Article #5: Artists Making Community, Daniel Tucker, 2009.06.20, H-Art Magazine, http://www.kunsthart.org
...
"The avant-garde art/music space Lampo (219 W. Chicago Avenue, 2nd Floor) always attempts to bring new and unique experiences to the ears and minds of Chicagoans eager for something different, but Saturday's performance (9:00 p.m., $12 door) should prove to be especially engaging and unusual, especially for devotees of not just art and music, but the strange fringes of overloaded technology.
The event, loosely known as MAGIC MATRIX MIXER MOUNTAIN, is a collective ensemble of experimental musicians, software developers, visual artists, and circuit-bending mad scientists. The process sounds complicated, so I'm going to let the Lampo info sheet explain it:
During the performance and installation at Lampo, five of the artists will build the MAGIC MATRIX MIXER MOUNTAIN on-site while two are connected remotely via the Internet. All of the artists (foothills) will feedback and feedforward to expose the graceful musicality of faulty technologies. Decoding and rebugging digital media, the MAGIC MATRIX MIXER MOUNTAIN will exist for one night only but will be accompanied by an operator's instruction manual, to be written, arranged and printed live in realtime along with the performance of the audio, video and datastreams.
For a sense of what the group's about, you can visit their blog, which includes a ton of images, short films, and things that twitch and bleep and follow you around the room with a stinky eyeball. The tone and texture of the piece, as well as the love of re-purposing dead/dying media reminds me of the project 8-bit Construction Set, not to mention dorkbot Chicago (with which this group shares members Jon Cates and Jake Elliott) or even the long-running trio I <3 Presets, whose ranks MMMM shares member Jon Satrom (also of Magic Missile) with this group and who are similarly devoted to technological obsolescences in their death-throes, turning error warnings into haikus and bluescreens into percussive solos." Oh to live on/computer mountain/with the barkers and the colored balloons..., Chris Sienko, 2009.06.03, Gapers Block, http://gapersblock.com/transmission/2009/06/03/post_42/
...
"In Chicago, there still exists a significant group of artists-developers who are active in the open source movement, and organize conferences and festivals (e.g. the annual Version Festival, which focuses on the interactivity of art, technology and activism). The most interesting innovators in the line of artists-designers include young artists and activists of the criticalartware circle who are following the pioneering initiatives of (not only) Chicago founders and attempting to develop a new media discourse. They conduct interviews with key personalities of early electronic art as well as with contemporary experimenters, which are available on their web pages as shared cultural sources and they consciously continue to support Sandin’s early attitude presented in his Distribution Religion. In 2003, Jon Cates of criticalartware created a film called Old School Revolutionaries produced in honor of Chicago experimenters and dedicated to the memory of Phil Morton. A computer introduction in the style of Morton’s videos is followed by a torrent composed of archive records of the early Video Area (works by the above-mentioned artists as well as scenes from performances or excerpts from lectures by Gene Youngblood, Steina and Woody Vasulka and Barbara Buckner) presented without any commentary, only accompanied by electronic music. The criticalartware group cooperates with the Busker gallery which opened its premises in a Chicago district called Pilsen in a former flower shop in the summer of 2006. These non-commercial premises run by artists (the gallery was established by Tamas Kemenczy and Nicholas O’Brien in 2005) represent a specific physical connecting point of Chicago new-media techniques. They organize real-time performances experimenting with new ways of interference of sound, images, exhibition, video projection, discussion, hackmeetings, etc. The activities of criticalartware theoretically as well as practically reflect the history of electronic art, and at the same time they transform this inspiration by means of the latest production equipment. By seeking the parallels between the early video art movement and the present state of artware/new media, they strive to connect contemporary activities with the past. Mapping out the early period of artware and video art can help disclose the technological visions which have not been fulfilled yet and contemplate the possibilities of implementing these visions using new equipment." - Lenka Dolonova, “We are all star stuff”, 2007, Umelec international 1/2007, http://www.divus.cz/umelec/en/pages/umelec.php?id=1088&roc=2007&cis=1
...
"Criticalartware’s approach is that of hybridization, a self-reflexive crossbreeding of interfaces and connected threads that becomes a social document in itself... The “re-mediation” unfolding in the above-mentioned projects takes the form of models for mediated exchange that transcend simplistic receiver / transmitter structures. These models explore inherent possibilities of media systems and offer alternatives outside of the media industry. The new “art media” may not radically redefine connections between art and media but they certainly have opened the field of artistic engagement and agency. Whether alternative media systems and artware projects will have a mass appeal
and profound impact on existing structures remains debatable. While they are mostly community-driven, they certainly can make use of a distribution system of unprecedented scale, and there is no doubt that art projects have been noticed by the industry. The rise of Linux (a topic in itself) is an indication that open-source systems can offer alternatives that are taken seriously and implemented on a larger scale. Even if the impact of artistic media reconfigurations remains limited, they are a much needed “reality check” — a critical examination of today’s media and proposal for alternatives." - “Not just Art” from Media Art to Artware, Christiane Paul, 2005, aminima Vol. 12, http://aminima.net/wp/?p=393&language=en
also as published in:
Digital Art/Public Art: Governance and Agency in the Networked Commons, Christiane Paul, "Digital Art/Public Art: Governance and Agency in the Networked Commons" First Monday [Online], Volume 0 Number 0 (4 September 2006), http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1616/1531
+
Digital Art / Public Art: Governance and Agency in the Networked Commons, Christiane Paul, Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television (September 7th, 2007), http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/81.php
+
Interface Cultures: Artistic Aspects of Interaction, edited by Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Dorothée King, 2008, http://www.transcript-verlag.de/ts884/ts884.php
...
"criticalartware (who many of you know as guests on -empyre- in May of 2004) is a Chicago based platform constructed to "examine the pre-internet era of early phase "Video Art" and the growth of software art in the channels of contemporary "New Media" theory practices." They use an online application / platform to enable an open, distributed practice that remains specific to the needs of their discussion. This particular aspect of their work is an interesting example for the development of future space. I've often seen an impulse online to encourage entirely open, unregulated space - but I think it is very helpful to form particular, mediated spaces that remain consciously open to any type of comment or contribution. Exhibition space can be an arena for meeting and discussion around particular cultural ideas - an opportunity to combine different views, material and publics within a particular (inherently educational) experience. I believe that criticalartware facilitates this." - Chris Molinski, -empyre-, 2007, DOCUMENTA MAGAZINE, http://www.documenta12.de/magazine.html?&L=1
...
"“The early experimental video art scene in Chicago, and its indispensability in developing an understanding of contemporary New Media practices, is something that I learned from jonCates and that jonCates learned from Phil Morton. Well, maybe it's not quite that simple, but that is one possible set of connections that can be traced from jonCates' COPY-IT-RIGHT project... Because COPY-IT-RIGHT is a project that seeks to freely distribute media art, as well as
create a networked discourse around it, we are invited to explore ideas such as influence and the generative origins of our knowledge. This process eclipses antiquated visions of the archive as a static source of 'knowledge' or 'history'.
COPY-IT-RIGHT's latest web entry is a transcript of a talk jonCates gave at McGill University on anti-copyright approaches to media. In that talk, he refers to "the artistic role of archives". jonCates provided some further examples of "artistic archives", such as Emily Jacir's Material for a Film and Walid Raad's The Atlas Group, which both seek to illuminate history and contemporary contexts through materials that might not be automatically absorbed into our stateliest cultural institutions. They represent an independent approach to information collection, at the same time that they contain material that is itself a challenge to dominant cultural and historical knowledge. Likewise, COPY-IT-RIGHT is a lesser-voiced exploration of Chicago's art history, but also an open-ended call to discuss and develop material on the future of media copyright attitudes." - Marisa Plumb reviews COPY-IT-RIGHT: The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive, Furtherfield, http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=335
...
“Nerds are cool, haven't you heard? They can also be stunningly artistic. Check out this technologically advanced art exhibit featuring a mix of digital media – samplers, computers and more – that would make any A/V club president proud. I Love Presets, Total Gym! and The Faultless are among those showing work.” - Chicago Tribune, Arts and Entertainment Section, 2005.05.25, http://www.chicagotribune.com
...
“Memo to DJs: Other artists can use computers, too, and they're taking back the CPU for a bounteous display of bit-related bedlam with the (A) r4WB1t5 Festival. Check out audio and visual works involving computers, samplers and other digital media in this art-meets- technology geekfest (no offense). Featuring I Love Presets, Total Gym!, The Faultless and more.” - Metromix Chicago, 2005.05.25, http://metromix.com
...
“ART H4X0R5: (A) r4WB1t5 micro.fest (in English, the Rawbits Microfest) showcases what happens when coders turn their Red Bull-damaged attention from programming to aesthetic concerns. In addition to digital art and video presentations, the event includes live music by Teleseen, Chris Bravo and more.” - Chicago Reader, Critics Choice, 2005.08.26, http://chicagoreader.com
...
“In a very hot, very darkened apartment on Washtenaw, kids are crushed shoulder to shoulder in a narrow hallway, dripping sweat and trying not to move. At least not too much, having picked a vantage from which to peer between heads at the brightly projected image manipulation happening on the wall. It's an art performance, bitmapped scenes flying past at the speed of a VJ flipping dials. On a table across from the entrance, a full stack of pro-grade editing components sit stacked next to a young man hunched over his laptop. In a side room, a video projector mounted on a plastic pedestal beams images transmitted rapid-fire from an Xbox onto a spot in the middle of a picture frame hung on the wall. A boom box on a shelf across the room plays a soundtrack of similarly cut-and-pasted audio files. "Bits" from each converge in a cinematic "mash-up" of visual and audio files, both compiled from works sent in by a total of nearly 100 artists, each frame shown according to an arbitrary duration that's divided by the number of artists. In the middle of it all, a bearded twentysomething wanders through, chugging a tallboy. It's an apartment art show. It's a geeky tech showoff party.
It's the R4wb1t5 (codespeak for "rawbits") microfest, which you can check out online at http://R4wb1t5.org/2005.08.27. Organized by partners Jon Cates and John Satrom, the R4wb1t5 microfest first hit the scene on May 25 at hipster dive hangout the Mutiny, and has since branched out to include tonight's event, held in an abandoned apartment that the organizers are squatting. That free-form approach is an important element of the show, something Cates hopes that he can offer as "a microfest framework that we want to encourage others to use when staging these festivals themselves." So far, they've had interest from a gallery in Knoxville, Tennessee called, appropriately enough, The Gallery of Knoxville, and are fielding invitations from curators as far away as Strasbourg, France and Brazil. "We just started the project and it's important to keep it small-scale and manageable," explains Cates, "so it can be fast and happen in such a way that it can be realized easily and simply." Why so? "That ethic is central to, or at least embedded in new media, digital art and a kind of hacker ethic; this idea of transparency, and the ability to realize things on your own--all that's important. We decided to do the first one at the Mutiny, for instance, because they've had this 'bands wanted' sign in the window for years."
And the R4wb1t5 microfest--much like the currently inchoate technology-based art culture it's meant to evoke--certainly screams DIY. That approach, however, may limit the scope of the audience whom they can expose and educate about new media. Problem is, new media's often so new, and some of its conventions so unfamiliar, that when first confronted with it, most have no idea what they're looking at. When Cates first posted an announcement for the R4wb1t5 fest on a popular local visual-art listserv, for instance, the announcement was so riddled with codespeak, a text difficult to read at first glance as graffiti lettering, that he was mistaken for a hacker and banned from the list. On the flipside, that approach has also helped them establish criteria for staging the fest elsewhere: an artist in Strasbourg interested in putting on the show asked if there was any funding available, a question that led to a conversation about how there's a general lack of arts funding of the U.S. That conversation, in turn, helped them explain that the proper way to stage the show was to seek out a basement or an abandoned apartment, print up some flyers and then, explains Cates, to consider how to book the show, "based on a network or digital culture: how do you shift and adapt? How do you work in these different systems? What does that allow you to do in terms of the commentary you want to make on the socio-political culture you're working in? Asking those kind of questions are what's really at the heart of our efforts."
Their socio-political approach clearly has implications for visual art as well. By seeding their approach in a digital punk culture, they're making a commentary on the kind of cleanliness inherent to digital work. "That's another critique I hope we're mobilizing, that there can be a kind of rawness to the work," says Cates. And it's difficult to disagree. As one girl in a sticky T-shirt raises her arms above her head and sways her hips in a dance to what's essentially a silent room, it suddenly becomes hard to imagine new media going very far without it.” - Michael Workman, T3ch S44vyy, 2005.08.30, NewCity Chicago, Art / Eye Exam Section, http://www.newcitychicago.com
...
"Memo to DJs: Other artists can use computers, too, and they're taking back the CPU for a bounteous display of bit-related bedlam with the (A) r4WB1t5 Festival. Check out audio and visual works involving computers, samplers and other digital media in this art-meets- technology geekfest (no offense)." - Metromix on (A) r4WB1t5 Festival, 2005, http://metromix.com
...
"Randomness rules at Wicker Park's Enemy gallery courtesy of R4wb1t5, the byte-sized techno-geek organization with the funny name, as they host another experimental audio- video-digital noise fest." Flavorpill on (A) r4WB1t5 Festival, 2006, http://flavorpill.com/chicago
...
"Across the spectrum to contemporary art, we have the r4WB1t5 mAcro.Fest, a tech-art event organized by Amanda Gutierrez, Jon Cates and Jonathan Satrom, this time focusing specifically on work by Mexican artists. Writing about this group, it's necessary to explain every time that the odd letter-character/number spelling combination is an example of "leet speak," with the word "leet" derived from the word "elite," originally a way of using ciphered spelling to recognize those "in the know," mostly in the gaming and online worlds. This special r4WB1t5 festival's focus has attracted the attention of Mexican art boosters across the city and netted sponsorships from the likes of Mexican government organizations such as the Consulado General de Mexico, the Secretaria de Relaciones and under-recognized tech-art consortium Centromultimedia. The Art Institute has also thrown in its support with the involvement of Internet radio station Free Radio SAIC. Running from Thursday through Sunday, this installment takes place at four different locations, starting with Pilsen's Chi-Town Futbol Arena, where artist-programmer Arcangel Constantinni will curate "a live Net Art wrestling match." Constantinni will also present his Infomera VS CH1C4G0.COM project, and "the Mexico City based dønut project will go head to head against PIRANACON.EXE in an experimental electronic music battle." In the days that follow, the r4WB1t5 festival kids will take their show to three additional locations: the Busker space (http://buskerchicago.com) at 1087 North Hermitage on Friday, EN3EMY (http://cranksatori.net/enemy) at 1550 North Milwaukee on Saturday and back to Pilsen and the Polvo gallery (www.polvo.org) at 1458 West 18th Street on Sunday. A full schedule of festival events is available--where else?--online at http://r4wb1t5.org/2006.04.05-2006.04.08 (note to the organizers: try making your web addresses a little less bulky next time, please?). Try to make at least one night of this fest, since this art's very young and still forming, offering a rare chance to view a new art form in its infancy." - Michael Workman, Past, Present and Future, 2006-04-04, NEWCITY CHICAGO Eye Exam, http://www.newcitychicago.com
