MFA Photography, Video and Related Media hosts media artist Robert Bowen, and musicians Jason Smeltzer, Julian Sparacino, George Quasha and Charles Stein for this transmedia event, in which Bowen’s stereoscopic film NY Background is soundtracked with a real-time musical score. Through sensations of depth, sound and movement, this uniquely collaborative experimental media work is an instrument to view the city, as it examines the iconic geopolitical landscape of Lower Manhattan in ways not previously experienced.

One day in 1903, filmmaker J. B. Smith, on assignment for the Edison Manufacturing Co. of West Orange, New Jersey, took a boat ride down the Hudson. NY Background presents a digital stereoscopic conversion of what Smith saw, what he didn’t see, what we see now, what’s missing, and what we’re likely to see in the not-too-distant future. By varying the modes of perception, viewers experience trans-temporal drift. New York City is revealed to be a panopticon of frenetic urban renewals culminating in postmodern hyperspace, geopolitical tragedy and the entropic effects of climate change. Ultimately a future city emerges in a meta-model interface, and the background merges with the foreground.

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Screening

"NY Background": Robert Bowen Film Screening and Performance