FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, May 17, 2004

CONTACT
Rachel Greene, Rhizome.org
Phone: 212.219.1288 X208
Email: rachel@rhizome.org

NEW YORK, NY�Rhizome.org is pleased to announce that seven
artists/groups have been awarded commissions to assist them in creating
original works of net art through its Commissioning Program. Paul
Catanese, Warren Sack, Jason van Anden, Luis Hernandez Galvan and Carlo
Zanni will receive awards of $2,500-2,900 each. Commissions of $1,750
will be awarded to Kabir Carter and C-Level.

A panel of jurors�independent curator Yukiko Shikata, Francis Hwang of
Rhizome.org, Natalie Bookchin of The Art Center, and Rachel Greene of
Rhizome.org--selected six winners and one Honorable Mention from a pool
of about fifty proposals that were received by the March 7, 2004
deadline. Members of the Rhizome.org community participated in the
evaluation process through secure web-based ballots, selecting a
proposal by artist Carlo Zanni to win a commission.

Launched in November 2001, the Rhizome Commissioning Program makes
financial support available to artists for the creation of innovative
new media artwork via panel-awarded commissions. To keep the program
relevant and timely, requests for proposals (RFPs) will change from
year to year to reflect new developments in technology and the current
cultural environment. National Endowment for the Arts, the Greenwall
Foundation,the Jerome Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts. Additional support has been provided by members of the
Rhizome community.

This year, the RFP was sent out on January 21, 2004. Artists were
invited to submit proposals relating to the theme of Games. The
proposal asked artists to �propose projects that will contribute to the
art game genre, or reflect on broad interpretations of �game.�

�Since 1996 Rhizome.org has been supporting the new media art community
by providing a place where artists and others can exchange information,
share opportunities, present new work and engage in critical dialogue,�
said Rachel Greene, Executive Director of Rhizome.org. �We are thrilled
to be able to provide direct financial support to artists. Grants and
commissions are particularly important for new media artists because,
unlike artists who work with more traditional media such as painting
and photography, artists who work with new technologies have a limited
ability to sell their work. Giving these artworks an institutional
presence is a different but very important form of support for new
media artists.�

The chosen projects will be publicly exhibited on the Rhizome.org web
site at http://rhizome.org starting in November 2004. They will also be
preserved in the Rhizome ArtBase archive, and presented at a public
event in New York City.

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Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media art
community. Our programs support the creation, presentation, discussion
and preservation of contemporary art that engages new technologies in
significant ways. We foster innovation and inclusiveness in everything
we do. Rhizome.org is a not-for-profit organization.

+ + +
$2900 Awards:
MISPLACED RELIQUARY
by Paul Catanese (San Francisco/CA/US)
http://www.paulcatanese.com/rhizome/index.html
A collection of relics and their holy travels will be catalouged and
contained within a virtual repository which will take the form of a
gameboy advance ROM that can be viewed and "played" online. In
addition, instructions will be given for downloading the ROM file
itself and installing on gameboy advance hardware. Finally, an artist's
edition of 5 game cartridges will be created as well.

Paul Catanese is a hybrid media artist and Assistant Professor of New
Media at San Francisco State University. He received his MFA from the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he lectured for several
years. His artwork has been exhibited internationally, notably at the
Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Paris� Villette-Numerique,
Germany�s Stuttgarter Filmwinter and the Canadian New Forms
FestivalRecently, Paul became and artist-in-residence at the Kala Art
Institute in Berkeley, California through their fellowship program and
was awarded a net.art commission from Turbulence.org with funds made
possible by the National Endowment for the Arts.

OVERSATURATION
by Luis Hernandez Galvan with support from Gabriel Acevedo (Mexico
City/MX)
http://opensorcery.net/gaming
This game is about a small sphere (the player) trying to make its way
through a highly saturated, crowded system, and trying to postpone its
collapse.

Luis Hernandez Galvan is an artist and architect based in Mexico City,
Mexico. He was recently an Artist In Residence a the Centro de La
Imagen in Mexico. Other works include http://heterarquia.org and the
installation vitrinas/public art. Galvan studied architecture, and has
been published in architectural journals and worked with figures and
studios inlcuding Jaime Varon and atelier lcm.

FARKLEMPT
by Jason van Anden(New York/NY/US)
http://www.smileproject.com/farklempt
Managing feelings is essential to getting along in the world. Keeping
emotions inside can be just as damaging as just letting them flow.
"Farklempt" challenges players to manage their emotional-health and
maintain relationships through skillful manipulations.

After earning a BFA in Sculpture from Syracuse University and attending
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Jason Van Anden moved to
New York. Surviving New York became his preoccupation as he built a
successful career designing software systems for clients as diverse as
Citibank and Duggal, eventually incorporating as Quadrant 2, Inc.
Recent artwork portrays human behavior in an ongoing series of
artificially intelligent, interactive robotic sculptures that express
themselves emotionally through body language, sound and facial
expressions. This body of work is called The Smile Project
(www.smileproject.com).

AVERAGE SHOVELER
by Carlo Zanni (New York/US and Milano/Italy)
http://www.zanni.org/rhizome/
Average Shoveler takes its aesthetic inspiration from the adventure
game �Leisure Suit Larry.� The goal of the game is to shovel the
falling snow in front of the user�s home. Each flake of snow contains
an image taken live from the CNN.com news site, turning the project
into a comment on information overload and media colonization.

Carlo Zanni (La Spezia, 1975) is an Italian-born artist whose work is
focused on the intersection of computation and representation. He
paints landscapes and he programs portraits. His work has been shown at
the P.S.1 Museum NY, the 1st Tirana Biennial, Bitforms gallery, the 3rd
Biennale de Montreal, Canada and at Analix Forever gallery in Geneva
among other physical and net places. For more information about Zanni,
please visit: http://www.zanni.org/

$2,500 Awards:
AGONISTICS: A LANGUAGE GAME
by Warren Sack
http://www.hactivist.com/proposals/proposal_rhizome.html
The images and actions used as metaphors by Chantal Mouffe and other
theorists of "agonistic democracy" can be instantiated as interactive,
graphical objects and dynamics. This "literal" instantiation will then
be a computer game that can played by posting messages to a public,
online discussion forum.

Warren Sack is a software designer and media theorist whose work
explores theories and designs for online public space and public
discussion. Before joining the faculty at the University of California,
Santa Cruz in the Film & Digital Media Department, Warren was an
assistant professor at UC Berkeley, a research scientist at the MIT
Media Laboratory, and a research collaborator in the Interrogative
Design Group at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He earned a
B.A. from Yale College and an S.M. and Ph.D.from the MIT Media
Laboratory. More information about his current work can be found at
this website: http://people.ucsc.edu/~wsack

$1,750 Awards:
ENDGAMES
by C-level (Los Angeles/CA and New York/NY/US)
http://www.waco.c-level.cc/rhizome/proposal.html
C-level will work on the next installment of the Endgames project, a
multi-part series in which the artists incorporate elements of
subjective documentary and pure fantasy with experimental technologies
to create a visceral gaming experience based on psycho-social
phenomena. Having addressed the 1993 Waco, Texas government/cult
showdown, C-level is currently developing works addressing the MOVE
conflict of 1985 and Ted Kaczynski (aka "The Unabomber").

C-level is a cooperative public and private lab formed to share
physical, social and technological resources. Its members are artists,
programmers, writers, designers, agit-propers, filmmakers and
reverse-engineers. Part studio, part club, part stage and part screen;
C-Level has a space in an isolated basement in Chinatown Los Angeles
which plays host to various media events such as screenings,
performances, classes, lectures, debates, readings and tournaments.

LISTENING (Working Title)
by Kabir Carter (New York/NY/US)
http://effects.blogs.com/rhizomeproposal/
Carter will construct and deploy a non-competitive and non-linear goal
oriented interactive text game. Whereas most games involve the
deployment of a single subject interacting with a written description
of a visual space, Listening will concentrate on the description of
acoustic phenomena. Descriptions of sounds will be the vehicle that
guides the game player through the environment.
Kabir Carter's work focuses on urban environmental sound, acoustic
feedback, analog sound synthesis, transmissive acoustics, specialized
microphone technologies, and the presentation of live electroacoustic
work in public spaces. Kabir lives and works in New York City, has
studied electroacoustic composition with David Behrman and Richard
Teitelbaum at Bard College, and currently studies privately with
composer and performer Joan La Barbara. He was recently selected by
Robert Ashley to attend a composers' residency at Atlantic Center for
the Arts, and received a Media Alliance Independent Radio and Sound Art
Fellowship for his project Shared Frequencies.

Honorable Mention:
Linkhunters.net
by Kerstin G�nther
http://tandk.homeip.net/k/linkhuntersNet.html

Rachel Greene
Executive Director, Rhizome.org
New Museum of Contemporary Art
583 Broadway, NYC, NY 10012

tel. 212.219.1288 X 208
fax. 212.431.5328
ema. rachel@rhizome.org