Steve Or Steven Read has relocated to Miami Beach! Holy crap stop the presses! Whoa man its true, after 10 good years in Colorado I have moved back to my dear native Florida. During the process many Coloradans were asking me "Why?" and "What are you going to do there?" or even "Why not NYC?" which are tough yet nonsensical questions. Needless to say I loved Colorado, both landscape and people, the art/music scene was excellent and 'per capita' is easily one of the most vibrant in the US. I don't think you can find a community with a more open, experimentalist mindset anywhere else. Perhaps its the altitude. I'll be in debt for life to certain people there (you know who you are) who reached out to me and acted lovingly. Well at any rate here are some belated updates on things I did in Colorado before leaving on the mighty cross-country trek...
Finished a year long studio residency grant at Redline Denver, an incredible facility with incredible artists! (no comment on the management though...) This studio was a fantastic thing for me to have had, am grateful for it, and will truly miss fellow resident artists.
Before leaving Redline was involved with a big event there put on by Illiterate Magazine and showed a recent 8-bit video projection of animated hummingbirds. Its a small but large software driven animation using painfully obvious generative algorithms, with nods to web GIFs and vintage PC software demos. Seems like people dug it. Actually not as low-tech as it appears because my software pushes the limits of the DIY hardware tools used by maximizing the available size, speed, resolution, and color depth. And folks this is post-pre-DVD video art! (fuck spinning discs)
My Super Monkey Kong LED video game got blogged at a whole bunch of places including Engadget, Joystiq, OhGizmo, Offworld, Rubbishcorp, and GameSetWatch. Thanks bloggers! So glad that people have been playing it (or at least watching the video) and find it funny that some gamers are underwhelmed by such low-tech graphics. But people who know that I made one of the early electronic/videogame/gadget websites on the Internet (miniarcade.com) which took an essentialist bent, should not find this project surprising.
Participated in the Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage fundraiser, not only to support this media arts nexus but also because I've always been a sucker for the Million Dollar Homepage! I stumbled upon that one at the beginning when it only had a few pixel ads, thought seriously about buying some but didn't. Then a few months later I discovered to my surprise that it had sold out and I was kicking myself. So I couldn't resist the Rhizome take on it and made this anti-puzzling icon by copying these weird retina-seizing buttony color 'blocks' from the original homepage that I've always liked. Let's not forget that the kid who made a million off this probably got the idea from early Internet artists (see the Communimage for instance) so its only fitting that they borrow it back. Looks like Rhizome sold about half still resulting in some decent funds and a cool socio-temporal-portrait of sorts, you can see mine out there in open frontier space in the middle-left region. [Update: decided to make a browser icon out of it]
Showed my LEO (light emitting oven) piece in the large Colorado Art Open 2009 show at the Foothills Art Center curated by Michael Chavez and the Denver Art Museum's Christoph Heinrich. Was pleasantly surprised when many people commented that based on photographs they had expected the light oven to be full size, when in actuality it is about 1 foot tall and stood on a standard white gallery pedestal. I suppose this one has become a favorite of mine... a simple, pattern looped, conveniently sized, easily operable, recycled art gadget toy existing as both object and space... sensory & consumptive, confused but happy to be lost in old and new technology.
Also played a wonderful gig at the Bluebird Theater opening for Stereo Total doing my patented finger drumset thing with the band B.Sous. Chris on horns from Devotchka also joined us! (see photo) Leslie and the Lys also on the bill and they were truly something. Thanks goes out to Brandi, Johnny, Saigon will miss y'all! Stereo Total of course rocked. (and there really were more than 2 people in the audience too)
OK so now I'm fairly settled in Miami Beach it is time to make new, and document old. And I'm surrounded by bright tropical modernist COLOR! (among other things)