In this installation on Governors Island, a Midtown vendor holds a sign advertising what might be a session with a psychic or perhaps a quick fix for iPhones. Only this vendor is himself a fortune teller: a mannequin with a card dispenser in his torso. The fortunes he delivers play meaning off nonsense, in a mix of NYC marketing vernacular, Markov-flavored spam phrasings, and a symbology of stale mysticism and Internet detritus. This event is part of 2013 New York Electronic Art Festival, produced in part through the Harvestworks Artist in Residence Program.
[Jun 15 – Sep 2 2013] Daniel Temkin: Internet Psychic Phone Repair
Opening June 15 2013, 2-5pm
Every Saturday & Sunday, Jun 15 through Monday, Sep 2 (noon to 6pm)
St Cornelius Chapel on Governors Island – http://govisland.com/html/visit/directions.shtml
[see map below]
A Midtown vendor holds a sign advertising what might be a session with a fortune teller or perhaps a quick fix for iPhones. Only this vendor is himself the fortune teller: a mannequin with a card dispenser in his torso. The fortunes he delivers play meaning off nonsense, in a mix of NYC marketing vernacular, Markov-flavored spam phrasings, and a symbology of stale mysticism and Internet detritus.
The Web serves as an uncanny place that obscures the divisions between the conscious and the inanimate, the personal and the commercial. Spam is perhaps the native commercial language of the Web — written by machines pretending to be human. Internet Psychic Phone Repair appears in the form of a Midtown street vendor — people who many are unlikely to engage with — holding exactly the sort of sign we are unlikely to look at twice, a way of hiding in plain sight. It uses this place to explore how we communicate with machines and with other humans through machines, in the urban spaces of Midtown and the Web.
BIO
Daniel Temkin is a Queens-based artist who makes images, programming languages, and interactive pieces exploring our inherently broken patterns of thought. He studies the interaction between people and machines to explore how computers teach us to think. His writing on Glitch Art has been taught at schools such as Bard College, Penn State, and Clark University. Daniel’s work is included in collections such as Rhizome-at-the-New-Museum’s ArtBase. He has spoken widely to both art and hacker audiences about programming languages as art, including at the Re:Wire (Media Art History) conference, GLI.TC/H conference, Notacon, and Hackers on Planet Earth. His work has been shown at Mass MoCA, American University Museum, and featured at galleries such as Higher Pictures and Carroll/Fletcher.
