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Selections from the Archive: Bill Seaman Print Retrospective

Published By Duke Arts / published on: February 1, 2023

On display at the Rubenstein Arts Center through Sunday, March 12, "Selections from the Archive” is a print retrospective of the work of media artist, researcher, and Duke faculty member Bill Seaman.

Duke Arts is excited to announce

Selections from the Archive:
Bill Seaman Print Retrospective

February 1 – March 12th, 2023

Public Reception: Friday, March 3 from 5:00-8:00 p.m.

Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University

2020 Campus Drive, Durham, NC 27705

Admission is Free & Open to the Public
Mon-Fri: 10am-8pm | Sat-Sun: 1pm-6pm

Selections from the Archive is a print retrospective of the work of media artist, researcher, and Duke faculty member Bill Seaman. The retrospective covers nearly five decades of creative work, beginning with photographs taken in 1975 during Seaman’s early years as an undergraduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and video work beginning in 1983. The exhibition will also feature the debut of Facets of the Ruby (2022), a new site-specific work featuring a generative poetic text about the Ruby and the diversity of the arts that are explored in the space.

“Selections from the Archive” is the first retrospective of Seaman’s career and the largest single-artist exhibition to be installed in the Rubenstein Arts Center since it opened in 2018. The exhibition begins on Wednesday, February 1, and will run through Sunday, March 12, with selected artwork remaining on display through May. A catalog for the show will become available in late February 2023.

“We are excited for the opportunity to transform the beautiful spaces within the Rubenstein Arts Center into a weeks-long celebration of the acclaimed work of our colleague, Bill Seaman. We hope that students and community members across Duke and Durham take this opportunity to visit the Ruby and immerse themselves in Bill’s work.”
– Vice Provost for the Arts, John V. Brown

From the Artist:

“The show is made up of an unusual variety of prints. For this show I have made a series of new, still, print versions drawing from specific selections from the archive of stills documenting selected generative works… I have attempted to include salient aspects of each chosen piece, which become individual works in and of themselves. Here, the works are embodied via a different state of media — in selections of photographic stills. Often these works explore image — text relations. Sometimes they are a series of works that have related media-elements that have been combined and recombined via algorithms as part of historical generative works; sometimes they are displaying a major interface for an interactive work. I have also included many of my historical computational print works. Additionally, I have chosen to combine a set of documentations of a site specific work in large grid images. “I have selected to give both the original date of the work and the date that the work was re-composed out of selections from the archive… and printed.” – Bill Seaman

About the Artist:

Bill Seaman’s work often explores an expanded media-oriented poetics through various technological means in a method termed Recombinant Poetics — exploring the combination and recombination of media elements and processes in interactive and generative works of art. He has also been exploring recombinant informatics – researching a new form of search engine/visualization system. He is self-taught as a musician/composer. Early on he discussed his notion of Structured Improvisation, employing specific fragments of his own improvisations and musical constructions as a compositional method. In 2021, Seaman received a Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art from ACM Siggraph for Recombinant Poetics / Recombinant Informatics / Neosentience /.

Bill Seaman is a Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies; an active member of the Computational Media, Arts and Cultures PhD program, and Professor of Music in Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University. He is also a member of DIBS. billseaman.com

Plan Your Visit:

Admission to this show is free and open to the public from 10am-8pm every Monday through Friday and from 1pm-6pm on Saturdays and Sundays. The Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University is located at 2020 Campus Drive, Durham, NC 27708, at the intersection with Anderson Street. For more visitor information, including details about parking, visit: https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking/

Acknowledgements:

This exhibition was supported by Duke Arts. The Catalogue was supported by the TDE Art Fund, Office of the Dean of the Humanities.