Sensible Concepts: Mediation as a Way of Being

Category: Exhibition
Year: 2015
Institution: IFAC Arts NYC/Athens, NYC
Comment: We are always in partnership with someone or something. The issue is what we are explicit about; who, what we collaborate with.For more than 25 years Patrick Lichty has created work about mediation, networked society, and how that process of translation creates its own reality for humanity. He is considered an important part of the early internet and progressive new media art movements of the late 20th century and has been a leader at the crossroads of technology, performance and contemporary object making. Often torn between the unreal virtual/digital/media world of spectacle and that of the everyday, Lichty attempts to create links both individually and societally in the ever-changing post-internet world.The objects presented in Sensible Concepts are mediated by the process of creation by machines that Lichty has built, operate, or employ after shaping the image on the screen. These include laser cutters, drawing robots, Jacquard looms, all of which have varying levels of precision or uniqueness as medium. It is this imperfection of translation between the digital and physical that is another part of Lichty’s process, whether aesthetic in this show, or performance (Second Front), or activist (RTMark, The Yes Men).