#ryancompton

Note posted April 10, 2020: the Arts & Sciences Projects website will be transitioning entirely to Tumblr as of May 1, 2020 due to our web host shutting down. We are posting images and texts from previous exhibition, events, and publications. 

Hypothesis Testing 2: Instant Media Dispatch (redux)

Arts & Sciences Projects, NY

October 13-14, 2011 6-8pm (both days)

For the second round of Hypothesis Testing, our on-going series of events designed to test ideas and concepts in the public realm, freelance photographer Miles Dixon will collaborate with Martin Masetto and Philip Tomaru in producing Instant Media Dispatch (Redux), a photo zine centered on Chinatown and TriBeCa (the two neighborhoods closest in proximity to Arts & Sciences Projects).

With Instant Media Dispatch (Redux), we aim to explore a hybrid model of new media production that bridges analog, digital, and performance-based modes of production/dissemination. The project draws its inspiration from the original Instant Media Dispatch (also known as the Journal of Quick Art), an obscure, scrappy DIY newsletter published in 1978 by Andrew Nevai and Buster Cleveland, now in the Franklin Furnace artists’ publication archive at the Museum of Modern Art.

For Instant Media Dispatch (Redux), Arts & Sciences Projects will temporarily transform itself from primarily a site for the exhibition of art to a site for the rapid conceptualization, production, and circulation of art. In the first 4-hour phase of the project, Dixon will arrive at Arts & Sciences Projects, where he will be dispatched to the surrounding area to collect primary source material via the medium of instant photography. The project proceeds with a rapid-fire editorial selection process with Masetto and Tomaru, and then a short-run production of Instant Media Dispatch (Redux). Real-time posts of images, text, and video will reveal the performative aspects of art production. The project concludes on the same day with multiple modes of dissemination -- including a public exhibition, free circulation of the zine, and distribution of images via social media (Tumblr, etc.).

Updates: Ryan Compton joined the project midway through the day by contributing several line drawings and texts (some derived from his 2010 zine NYC Subway Text Collage). The final zine, titled I.M.D. (Redux), presents an instantaneous perspective on the raucous Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests, located 10 blocks south of Arts & Sciences Projects. The jagged lines, grids, and subverted advertising texts featured in Compton's pieces provide a conceptual counterpoint to the imagery of corporate America and discontented youth found in Dixon's instant photographs.

October 13 and 14, 6-8pm: stop by for free copies of Instant Media Dispatch (Redux) and an exhibition of instant photography by Miles Dixon.

Visit our Tumblr for additional photos posted in semi-real time documenting the process of producing I.M.D. (Redux) on October 13, 2011.

Originally from New Hampshire, Miles Dixon is a freelance photographer in New York. His work has been featured in the New York Times and the New York Post.