Artist R. Luke DuBois chosen for first residency: Summer 2015 (June – August)
New York, NY – May 15, 2015 – Times Square Arts announced today that it will launch its inaugural Residency at the Crossroads program this June. The 2015-2016 program will consist of a series of four, three-month residencies focused on bringing artists back to Times Square. These residencies will allow artists time for reflection, exploration and experimentation in artistic spaces that are usually available only on the day of a performance or installation. New York City-based artists (or artist collectives) will meet with cross-disciplinary collaborators of their choosing and experiment and engage with Times Square’s unique urban identity, history and users.
Like many other parts of New York that have changed and become more expensive, Times Square’s transformation has reduced individual creative and artistic voices that were once so much a part of its identity. The Residency at the Crossroads program will bring these artists voices back to the district and focus on evaluating experimentation and collaboration in order to guide future programming in Times Square, New York’s town square. The results may take shape as interventions, performances, events, published findings or project proposals, which will all illustrate how people use or behave in Times Square’s public spaces through each of the seasons and inform future Residency applications.
Artist R. Luke DuBois is the Co-Director of the Integrated Digital Media at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering. DuBois will create a continuous video portrait of Times Square, relying on the matrix of webcams that already exist onsite, to create an accelerated video of 90 days’ worth of activity compressed into video art. As part of the piece, he will work with artists who will be performing simple, repetitive acts designed to be recognized within the accelerated video and contrast with the fast-paced bustle of Times Square all around them.
Tim Tompkins, President of the Times Square Alliance, said, “Residency at the Crossroads will bring the Arts back to Times Square by allowing the city’s most creative minds to uncover the neighborhood’s unique assets, explore its architectural richness, and probe the grit that still exists in the heart of New York City.”
Sherry Dobbin, Times Square Arts Director, said, “Artists always inform us about our everyday lives through new perspectives – no matter how we define our ‘community’ or ‘home.’ By inviting artists into this successful, thriving district, we demonstrate the value our creative sector breathes into Times Square’s sense of identity.”
Artist R. Luke DuBois said, “I am tremendously honored to be working with the Times Square Alliance as their inaugural artist-in-residence. I’m excited to make a portrait of such a complex, dynamic part of New York City. Also, I live nearby, and can’t wait to have a summer where I can finally walk to work.”
Times Square Arts Advisor Willy Wong said, “If we believe in the transformative potential of art and design to lead positive socio-economic, political and environmental change, then we must take seriously the commitment to embed artists and designers and their creative processes into society's core spaces and functions so that we can change the world for better, make living more meaningful, and impact the broadest spectrum of people possible, henceforth the Times Square residency will serve as a spectacular opportunity for urban inquiry and critical creative risk."
Times Square Alliance Board Member and Times Square Arts Advisor, Ellen Albert, Executive Vice President at Viacom said, “As an Alliance Board Director and with Viacom's headquarters being proudly in Times Square, I support the Public Art program bringing this opportunity to the greater district’s community. We always learn more about ourselves and our sense of place by inviting artists into our lives.”
Individual applicants or small collaborative groups of artists based in New York City may apply for the 2015-16 Residency at the Crossroads. The residency is open to artists of all disciplines who are interested in working in the public realm, not just those who already consider themselves public artists. Eligible applicants include visual artists, writers, poets, architects, designers, musicians, filmmakers, composers and choreographers. Multi-disciplinary collaborators are encouraged; the selection process aims to represent the greatest diversity of applicants and art forms. Details about future opportunities will be released by July 15 on www.TimesSquareNYC.org/Arts.
Times Square Arts is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information, please visit www.TimesSquareNYC.org/Arts.
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Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the Arts Program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity. Generous support of Times Square Arts is provided by ArtPlace America and ArtWorks. Visit TimesSquareNYC.org/Arts for more information. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @TSqArts.
R. Luke DuBois is a composer, artist, and performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has lectured and taught worldwide on interactive sound and video performance. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Todd Reynolds, Jamie Jewett, Bora Yoon, Michael Joaquin Grey, Matthew Ritchie, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Maya Lin, Bang on a Can, Engine 27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and was the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season.
Stemming from his investigations of “time-lapse phonography,” his work is a sonic and encyclopedic relative to time-lapse photography. Just as a long camera exposure fuses motion into a single image, his projects reveal the average sonority, visual language, and vocabulary in music, film, text, or cultural information. Exhibitions of his work include: the Insitut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain; 2008 Democratic National Convention, Denver; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; San Jose Museum of Art; National Constitution Center, Philadelphia; Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, Daelim Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul; 2007 Sundance Film Festival; the Sydney Film Festival; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; PROSPECT.2 New Orleans; and the Aspen Institute. His work and writing has appeared in print and online in the New York Times, National Geographic, and Esquire Magazine. A major survey of his work, NOW, received its premiere at the Ringling Museum of Art in 2014, with a catalogue published by Scala Art & Heritage Publishers.
An active visual and musical collaborator, DuBois is the co-author of Jitter, a software suite for the real-time manipulation of matrix data developed by San Francisco-based software company Cycling'74. He appears on nearly twenty-five albums both individually and as part of the avant-garde electronic group The Freight Elevator Quartet. He currently performs as part of Bioluminescence, a duo with vocalist Lesley Flanigan that explores the modality of the human voice, and in Fair Use, a trio with Zach Layton and Matthew Ostrowski, that looks at our accelerating culture through elecronic performance and remixing of cinema.
DuBois has lived for the last twenty-two years in New York City. He is the director of the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, and is on the Board of Directors of the ISSUE Project Room. His records are available on Caipirinha/Sire, Liquid Sky, C74, and Cantaloupe Music. His artwork is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City
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Media Contacts:
For Times Square Arts:
TJ Witham (212) 452-5234│ TJWitham@TimesSquareNYC.org
Marisa Wayne (212) 843-9216 │MWayne@rubenstein.com
