THE MINDED SWARM
Four artists collaboratively produce large-scale sculptural installation through science fiction-inspired “Communal Consciousness”

+ Exhibition opens Wednesday 29 June from 7 - 9 pm
+ Exhibition runs Wednesday 29 June – Sunday 4 September 2005
+ The Minded Swarm science fiction reading group – Friday 15 July at 7 pm

PRESS CONTACT – Matt Lipps 323-957-1777 x.17

Los Angeles, 1 June 2005 – Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) is pleased to announce The Minded Swarm, a collaborative, large-scale sculptural installation organized by Karl Erickson with Consulting Curator Irene Tsatsos. Science fiction (SF) enthusiasts and artists Andy Alexander, Kathleen Johnson, Jennifer Lane, and Halsey Rodman are attracted to the genre’s social and political models, and its exploration of the human condition. The artists have met for some years in a science fiction reading group, absorbing SF’s mode of fantastic speculation into their own practice. Assuming the model of a Gestalt Organism (Theodore Sturgeon, More than Human, Vintage, 1998.) where individual capacities merge to create a single distributed intelligence, the artists have enacted a state-change, adopting a communal consciousness (Olaf Stapledon, Starmaker, Wesleyan University Press, 2004 (1937), p. 271.) as a means of artistic production. Their resulting environment will comprise two zones or microclimates—the Zone of Encounter, a transitional domestic interior, and the Zone of the Superstructure, an unstable architectural form seemingly in flux and embodying the amorphous spirit of the Utility Fog ( Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Penguin Putnam, NY, 2000, p. 145.). The work reflects both the utopian, speculative impulses of SF and a celebration of the everyday reality of the existing built world. As these four superpowers merged, the subsequent hive mind has harnessed group energy to address the psychological, psychosexual, phenomenological and formal properties of materials and built form, both real and imagined.

As part of The Minded Swarm, the artists invite the public to join them for their regular July book club meeting. They have chosen Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan and invite all interested parties to read the book and join them for the discussion on July 15 at 7:30 pm in the LACE galleries. The artists will also publish the list of books the club has read to date on LACE's website, www.artleak.org.
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The artists wish to acknowledge collaborators Andy Goldman, Wook Kim, Geoff McFetridge, and Mike Holz whose creative contributions have greatly expanded the Swarm consciousness, as well as the ongoing inspiration provided by fellow sfbc member Alisa Loftin.

SFBC Book Log and Meeting Minutes

Related Public Programs

Friday 8 July at 7pm
Writer Mark von Schlegell will read from his first sci-fi novel, Venusia.

Friday 15 July at 7pm
The artists of The Minded Swarm invite the public to join their regular sci-fi reading group. Interested parties should read Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan and engage in discussion.

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