Another Romp Thru the IP (Times Square Edit)

Cory Arcangel, a pioneer of technology-based art, takes over Times Square every midnight in March with Another Romp Thru the IP (Times Square Edit). Arcangel revisits his 2009 improvisation made on a Sandin Image Processor (IP), an analog computer invented in the 1970s by graphic artist Dan Sandin. Using this precursor to the digital video revolution, Arcangel creates a vibrant throwback to technology of a bygone era across the iconic landscape of Times Square.

“In our era of phones, screens, Zooms, etc., I wondered what Times Square — the mountain top of today's media landscape! — would look like if we rewound about 50 years and filled it with imagery made on an artist-built tool from the 70s — the Sandin Image Processor. Where would we end up? Could we tell the difference?”
— Cory Arcangel

Embodying Arcangel’s signature approach to art-making, Another Romp Thru the IP manipulates analog computer technologies and raw data into visuals that are at once striking and nostalgic. Created during a residency at the Institute for Electronic Arts, SOAD, NYSCC at Alfred University, Arcangel’s original improvisation in this series appeared in his 2011 solo exhibition, Pro Tools, at the Whitney Museum. The title of the work references Five Minute Romp Through the IP, a 1973 video made by Sandin in which he explains the possibilities of the instrument. An advocate of education, Sandin freely published schematics and other documentation of the Sandin Image Processor.

Arcangel’s work often centers on video games and software for their ability to rapidly formulate new communities and traditions and, equally, their speed of obsolescence. Reconfiguring web design and hacking as artistic practice, Arcangel also remains faithful to open source culture and makes his work and methods available online, thus superimposing a perpetual question-mark as to the value of the art object.

Cory Arcangel is a contemporary American multimedia artist. Best known for his post-Internet video art that conflates digital schema and contemporary culture, his work explores nostalgia and the shifting boundaries of online space. It was in 1996, while studying classical guitar at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, that he first had a high-speed Internet connection – inspiring him to major in music technology and start learning to code. Both music and coding remain his key tools for interrogating the stated purpose of software and gadgets. Outcomes can be surprising, funny and poignant, whether in the final form of installation, video, printed media or music composition, in the gallery or on the world wide web.

His fame and critical acclaim have only grown over the course of his career, highlighted by exhibitions like  Topline, CC Foundation (2019), All the small things, Reykjavik Art Museum (2015), Pro Tools, Whitney Museum (2011), Beat the Champ, Barbican Art Centre (2011), The Sharper Image Moca Miami (2010), and Nerdzone Version 1 at Migros Museum (2005).

Lisson Gallery is one of the most influential and longest-running international contemporary art galleries in the world. Today the gallery supports and promotes the work of more than 60 international artists across two spaces in London, two in New York, one in Shanghai, as well as temporary spaces opened in 2020 in East Hampton and London’s Mayfair district. Established in 1967 by Nicholas Logsdail, Lisson Gallery pioneered the early careers of important Minimal and Conceptual artists, such as Art & Language, Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Donald Judd, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long and Robert Ryman among many others. It still works with many of these artists as well as others of that generation from Carmen Herrera to the renowned estates of Leon Polk Smith, Ted Stamm and Roy Colmer.

In its second decade the gallery introduced significant British sculptors to the public for the first time, including Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Shirazeh Houshiary and Julian Opie. Since 2000, the gallery has gone on to represent many more leading international artists such as Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, John Akomfrah, Susan Hiller, Tatsuo Miyajima and Sean Scully. It is also responsible for raising the international profile of a younger generation of artists led by Cory Arcangel, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Ryan Gander, Haroon Mirza, Laure Prouvost, Pedro Reyes and Wael Shawky.