Institute for Electronic Arts and Burchfield Penney Art Center Launch Collaboration

The Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State and the Institute for Electronic Arts, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (IEA) today announced the launch the Electronic Arts Alliance. Through this formal alliance, the two institutions commit to shared performances, research, production and distribution of electronic arts to harness a standard of excellence in interpreting the media arts worldwide.

As an immediate expression of the joint venture, the Center and Institute will partner to present exhibitions by Ann Hamilton, Xu Bing and Song Dong, each past resident artists at the Institute who completed their work in concert with Alfred faculty and students. This will be followed by an ongoing rotation of exhibitions and programs. The openings are part of Cycles at the Center, the next chapter in a series of quarterly launches at the Burchfield Penney April 11 – 14, 2013.

“We do this by acknowledging that the strength of the Alliance is a shared reliance upon the studio and equipment assets of the Institute for Electronic Arts, and the aptitude of the Burchfield Penney to realize and implement presentations of work made as consequent to the research and production at Alfred. To achieve these objectives, we will work together as situations dictate to market and fund these endeavors,” said Peer Bode, co- director of the Institute for Electronic Arts.

Dr. Anthony Bannon, Burchfield Penney executive director, said: “The Burchfield Penney has a long history of cooperative excellence with colleagues around the world. Working with Alfred and the Institute for Electronic Arts fulfills SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher’s challenge for collaborations between SUNY units – as it continues a tradition of cultural leadership in Electronic Arts in Western New York.”

Don Metz, Burchfield Penney associate director confirmed: “This alliance will uphold our commitment to an integration of ideas that leads to presentations of the highest quality. Electronic media has produced an ever growing global format for sharing, and this partnership continues our stake in recognizing the significant work of Western New York artists working in the electronic medium. ”

In 2002, the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State and Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred embarked on a collaboration that began a relationship between the two institutions with the exhibition Signals From the Electronic Cloud, organized by Burchfield Penney curators Scott Propeack, John Opera and Don Metz in concert with Andrew Deutsch and Peer Bode from Institute for Electronic Arts .

This exhibition brought to the Burchfield Penney work from the founding faculty of the IEA, as well as artists who participated in the Institute’s highly acclaimed artist-in-residence program. The comprehensive exhibition included video projections, digital prints and interactive computer art, and provided space dedicated to historical objects significant to the development of the IEA and electronic media. Participants included founding members Peer Bode, Joseph Scheer and E. Jessie Shefrin, who were creating and presenting art using Amiga computers at Alfred in 1993. Also included in the exhibition were Andrew Deutsch, Will Contino, Tetsu Inoue, Woody Vasulka and Ann Hamilton.

Over the next 10 years, the two institutions shared expertise developing exhibitions by Harald Bode, as well as Steina, and collaborated on diverse, presentations of artists including Tony Conrad, Stephen Vitiello, Andrew Deutsch, Peer Bode, Aaron Miller and Michael Basinski, E. Jessie Sherin, Jan Nagle, Barbaral Lattanzi, and Joe Sheer.

The Institute for Electronic Arts is dedicated to the integration of electronic media within the fine arts disciplines. It achieves this through a focus on art making, research, and education. In recognition of this integration, the Institute for Electronic Arts develops working partnerships with industry and other organizations. To identify the needs of contemporary artists, the Institute supports evolving electronic studio research labs, hosts national and international conferences, and establishes artists’ residencies and workshops. The Institute for Electronic Arts encourages and supports projects that involve interactive multi-media, distance communication systems, experimental music/video environments, and publications. The Institute for Electronic Arts is dedicated to the global interactions of technological experimentation and artistic investigations.