Mike Salmond - (c) Rule Britannia
25.01.08 - 29.02.08, opening: 25.01., at 5 p.m
Koscielak Gallery - 1646 N. Bosworth Ave., Chicago

Artists Talk
Saturday, February 9, 2008
12 - 2 pm

Michael Salmond is a digital artist and media theorist, he is Assistant Professor of Time Arts at Northern Illinois University, Illinois, USA. He received his B.Sc in MediaLab Arts from Plymouth University, UK and his MFA in 2003 from the University of South Florida where he specialized in Electronic Media. His thesis work focused on web-based performance, interactive video and networked art. Michael has exhibited his video and digital artwork nationally, internationally and online. He has published scholarly papers on video gaming and new media and has an active record of panel participation at conferences such as the College Art Association and Siggraph.

Michael has appeared on National Public Radio in Florida and Wisconsin and has been published in several design and 3-D industry magazines, as well as writing a monthly column for computercreative.com. He is an active video and interactive artist and educator with a research focus on the theory and practice of videogames and digital technologies within the fine arts. He is particularly interested in the intersections between art and technology and the possibilities this may have for creating new spaces of creative expression.

The works in this show are ostensibly about connections, similarities, differences and ultimately "foreign" places. Across global cities there exists a readable narrative in which similarities form a point of connection which spans geographical distance. In this series of video and interactive works UK artist Mike Salmond explores these cityscapes and their intersections through the similarities which render a place knowable yet different. To this end the threads in these images and visuals become part of a multi-layered narrative exploring global linkages, recording and memory; how we record only that which is different or unique to us. Traveling in these places becomes a performance of these points of intersection, both past and present.