University News

"The Cartographer's Dilemma"; Jan. 27 Gallery Walk, Lecture

January 26, 2010

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MACOMB, IL - - "The Cartographer's Dilemma," an installation/exhibition by three guest artists - - Paul Guzzardo, Jesse Codling and David Walczyk - - plays with maps, myths and machines. The show runs through Thursday, Feb. 18.

Curators of the show are guest artists Paul Guzzardo, Jesse Codling and David Walczyk. Their respective works include urban and graphic design, documentary film, music-video remix and computational media. They use wall graphics, multimedia projections, sculpture, painting and touch screen technology in the exhibition.

Guzzardo, the main organizer and guest curator of the exhibition installation, is a lawyer and media activist/artist. His new media artworks probe the effect of emerging digital information archives on the design and occupation of public space. He examines the relationship between this current wave of digital information technology and the street, which he says is a good place to examine how digital information technologies change us. His work is part of the communication discipline of media ecology.

Guzzardo will present a gallery walk at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27. At 7:30 p.m. (Jan. 27) Walczyk will give the lecture, "Print on the Brink: New Tools For Hard Times," in the University Union Sandburg Theatre. Both events are open free to the public.

Walczyk is an assistant professor at Pratt Institute's School of Information and Library Science (SILS) where he coordinates the Cultural Informatics Studio Lab, which he designed and supervised its building. At Pratt SILS he introduced both design thinking and Buckminster Fuller's comprehensive anticipatory design science into the curriculum. His work at the lab focuses on the intersection of cultural information, computational design, and urban public space. It is at the lab that he and his students are prototyping new forms of digital interactions with cultural information in urban public space.

Walczyk completed his doctorate in media ecology and interaction design at Columbia University. He has served as a visiting scholar at the Library of Congress; a brand strategist on Madison Avenue; a designer at General Electric Research and Development; and a Policy Fellow at the United States National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., where he helped to create the interdisciplinary field of information technology and creative practices (ITCP). He is also a member of the board of the Buckminster Fuller Institute where he serves on the executive committee and as a reviewer for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

Codling is a graphic designer and video artist. Originally from the Quad Cities, he is currently based in Seattle.

Other artworks are by Alan Brunettin, a Chicago area painter and digital artist. In this exhibition Brunettin creates portraits based on the Facebook "fan page" of A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's Nuclear Bomb. Emily Grothus is a jewelry designer in Seattle. Jordan Morrell is currently pursuing a Master of Design in design objects at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Guzzardo, Codling, Grothus and Morrell are all Western Illinois University alumni.

The University Art Gallery, located just north of Sherman Hall, is open free to the public from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays and from 6-8 p.m. Tuesdays during exhibitions. For information about the Art Gallery, exhibition schedules, special events and collections, contact the gallery at (309) 298-1587 or visit the gallery website at wiu.edu/artgallery.

This installation/exhibition is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.


Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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