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Adam Trowbridge and Jessica Westbrook are multidisciplinary artists, and co-founders of Channel TWo [CH2] and Array [ ]. They are also professors at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL (2010–present) where they teach research and studio courses in the Department of Contemporary Practices and the Department of Art and Technology Studies. Born in the 1970s, Trowbridge and Westbrook lived through the emergence and evolutions of personal computer, video game, and internet technologies. They grew up in suburban Orlando, FL, and earned BFA and MFA degrees in studio art. They spent the late 1990s working as web developers for major corporations and internet startups in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area, and are currently doing research at the intersection of art, design, media, sociopolitical concerns, and code literacy.
Contents
- History of Collaboration
- Channel TWo CH2 About
- Channel TWo CH2 Projects
- Array new media foundations for art and design edu
- References
In a 2001 Washington Post interview, Trowbridge describes their formative 20th century experiences, "I’ve been in the tech industry at least five or six years. I've been using the Internet since before the Web existed. In her bio Westbrook describes their working relationship, "collaboration is important because ideas, material, and motivations are inherently networked and social," and "togetherness transgresses the obvious and produces something beyond the scope and limits of individual expression/will." Trowbridge and Westbrook and have been partners since meeting in high school in 1990. Oskar Westbridge, their dotcom inspired baby, was born in Y2K, 10 years after they first met.
Adam Trowbridge [b 1972, San Diego, CA] is a code media artist, programmer, researcher, and a published author. In 2008 Trowbridge received an MFA in Electronic Visualization from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL. In 1996 he earned a BFA in Sculpture and Painting from the University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL. In his early work (video, performance, and sound art) Trowbridge was interested in exploring the "aesthetic possibilities that arise as communication breaks down" and "inventing incidents and simulations that occur slightly above the noise level, between words that organize our communities and the chaos that lies beyond them." In 2015 Adam Trowbridge presented a lecture on his computational research/practice called, "Everything Will Be Fine" for the After Extinction Conference at the Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.
Jessica Westbrook [b 1974, Pittsburgh, PA] is a media artist, graphic/information/interface designer, researcher, and a published author. In 1998 Westbrook received an MFA in Photography from Temple University, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA and in 1996 she earned a BFA in Photography from the University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL. Westbrook continues to be interested in "systems, desire, visual cues, language" Her thinking is "influenced and informed by everyday cultural landscapes, the mundane, observations, conversations, rules, routines, and habits of lived experience filtered through timing, probability, and gender and class constructs." She is "attracted to the impossibilities of binary reasoning (real and virtual, fact and fiction, data and narrative)" and uses "design [legitimacy] to negotiate and organize the joys and struggles of information and understanding."
History of Collaboration
In 2009 Trowbridge and Westbrook wrote a critical essay on the "Creative Class®" called "Lost South" that was published in "Art Work: A National Conversation About Art, Labor, and Politics" a newspaper produced by art group Temporary Services that included the writings from artists, activists and academics on the topic of working amidst depressed economies and how that impacts artistic process, compensation and artistic property. "Art Work" was distributed and exhibited throughout the United States and Puerto Rico and featured the writings, images, and work of Julia Bryan-Wilson, Holland Cotter, Tim Kerr, Nance Klehm, Harrell Fletcher, Futurefarmers, Robin Hewlett, Nicolas Lampert, Lize Mogel, Dan S. Wang, Gregory Sholette, Dylan A.T. Miner, Christina Ulke and Marc Herbst of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, OurGoods, Chris Burden, Scott Berzofsky, John Duda, InCUBATE, Linda Frye Burnham, ILSSA, Cooley Windsor, Brian Holmes, Nick Tobier, Lolita Hernandez, Stacy Malasky, Nate Mullen, Aaron Timlin, Harold Jefferies, W&N, Damon Rich, Teaching Artist Union, FEAST, 16 Beaver Group, W.A.G.E., Chris Kennedy, Nato Thompson, Carolina Caycedo, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Anthony Elms, Adam Trowbridge, Jessica Westbrook, and many other artists, art workers, curators, interns, volunteers, writers, and activists.
In 2009 Trowbridge and Westbrook began working closely (through IRC/freenode) with Philadelphia-based Basekamp, an artist-group researching and co-developing interdisciplinary, self-organized art projects with other individuals and groups in various authorship-blurring configurations. With Basekamp, Trowbridge and Westbrook primarily focused on the production of Plausible Artworlds, a project to collect and share knowledge about alternative models of creative practice, "From alternative economies and open source culture to secessions and other social experiments, Plausible Artworlds is a platform for research and participation with artworlds that present a distinctly different option from mainstream culture." Plausible Artworlds involved a year-long series of IRC and Skype conversations and interviews. Guests included E.A.T.(Experiments in Art and Technology), b.a.n.g. lab, Ultra-red, IRWIN, etc. The project ultimately culminated in a Plausible Artworlds book (ISBN 978-1-300-72426-1) made possible by the financial support of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Plausible Artworlds was featured at the 2010 Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice in New York in 2010
In 2010 Trowbridge and Westbrook formally initialized Channel TWo [CH2], their new media art and design studio, as a means to de-compartmentalize everyday life and channel their interests into experimental, self-initiated projects. Channel TWo [CH2] is named for the idea of "transmission" or "distribution" (Channel) and for the people involved (TWo): Adam Trowbridge, Jessica Westbrook, and Oskar Westbridge. In their Rhizome.org bio Trowbridge and Westbrook state that, "We believe collaboration is a priority because media practices are situated across relationships, disciplines, cultures, complexities and economies and it is friendship/connection, not competition or hierarchies, that defines authentic, constructive, accessible, supportive and sustainable conditions for artists, designers, scholars functioning outside the market." This same year Trowbridge and Westbrook used an opportunity to edit the inaugural print edition of Media-N, Journal of the New Media Caucus (a College Art Association affiliate organization) to focus on two-person collaborations. They titled the edition, "Dynamic Coupling," interviewed living artists, and put together a series of dialogues, or models, for reference. From their editor statement, "In breaking with conventional (collaboration) analogies and metaphors, we can now begin to ask bigger cultural and pedagogical questions: What responsibility do we have to encourage experimentation in collaborations as our 21st Century students come of age in the culture and economy they have inherited: post-author, post-structure, post-material, post-market, and potentially pre-collapse? What can we share? How much existing structure do we need to revise or throw out so that artists as groups can go about inventing a place for themselves and establish their own diverse and sustainable art worlds?" Interviews in the collection included a dialogue with Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG. In 2012 CH2 was invited back to Media-N to write an essay for "Tracing New/Media/Feminisms" (SPRING 2013: V.09 N.01). Their piece, titled "Radical Togetherness.pervasiveFeminism" explores language and foregrounds feminism as a primary motivation in CH2.
In 2013 Trowbridge and Westbrook co-founded Array [ ] new media foundations for (critical) art and design edu. This project, originally called "textbook/toolkit," was initially funded by a 2012 Rhizome.org commission (member selection category), through the New Museum, New York, NY.
Channel TWo [CH2]: About
Channel TWo [CH2] is an art, design, and research studio initialized in 2010. CH2 is focused on themes of mixed reality (MR), authorized formats and unauthorized ideas, systems of control and radical togetherness. Attracted to contemporary concepts like overidentification, CH2 at times references Slavoj Zizek or Laibach in describing tactics intended to reveal the hidden nature of dominant ideologies not by pointing at them, but by becoming extreme forms of them (dominant ideologies). CH2 projects intersect play-oriented experiences and user interface with critical undercurrents. Channel TWo [CH2] handles all aspects of project research and production in-house including conceptual development, coding, aesthetics, visual/sound/media design, networking/configurations, and technology development. CH2 is thematically interested in luck, levels, and trespassing through the contexts of visual and cultural landscapes. CH2 frequently produces, game environments, apps, and visual communications to reveal paradigms, complexity, contradictions, and cognitive dissonance. CH2 has art work in permanent collections at the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, Reproduction Collection, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. CH2 has lectured at universities and symposiums nationally and internationally including presentations and programs for the @gli.tc/h/ Symposiums Chicago, IL 2010, and 2012. CH2 has exhibited projects in galleries and museums, has screened video and animation nationally and internationally, and has received a number of art awards including: SPACES R+D 2014, Turbulence Commission, New Radio and Performing Arts Inc. 2010, and a Terminal Net Art Commission, APSU Center of Excellence 2009
Channel TWo [CH2]: Projects
Array [ ] new media foundations for art and design edu
After teaching upper division art, graphic design, new media, and social practices at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, TN for several years Trowbridge and Westbrook recognized culture shifts and evolving curricular needs. In 2010 they began researching the history and state of art and design foundations and were offered 2 positions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their intent was immersive research and experimentation in a large foundations department. In 2011 they were invited to present their foundations observations and questions at "Mobility Shifts, Politics of Digital Culture, The New School, New York, NY" during the panel "Free iPads!?: Scalable Digital Pedagogies for Undergraduate Education, with Hasan Elahi, Tiffany Holmes, Elizabeth Losh, Adam Trowbridge, Jessica Westbrook.
In 2012 Trowbridge and Westbrook proposed and were awarded a Rhizome Commission for "textBook/toolKit" new media foundations research. That same year they organized their initial foundations research in a paper, "Writing Your Own Instructions, New Media Approaches for 2022" which was presented at "Rethinking Foundations: Ideals, Purposes, Needs" during the 2012 Middle America College Art Association Conference at Wayne State University, in Detroit MI, published through Furtherfield.org, and delivered at Processing Chicago, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory to engage in a conversation with the Processing community in Chicago, IL 2012.
Some of the motivations underlying Array [ ] are cited in, "The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued. 2 vols. Edited by Kathy High, Sherry Miller Hocking, and Mona Jimenez. Bristol and Portland, OR: Intellect Books, 2014." Westbrook and Trowbridge, "We believe that as companies like Apple turn from education and full operating systems to iDevice designed for consumption and as megacorporations like NBC Universal (Comcast GE) abandon support for any sort of open Internet in favor of intellectual property control, young artists should be introduced to the technologies and approaches behind the constant manipulative media stream they are subject to from birth and should have some agency in making digital art and design work free of corporate influence and constraints."
In 2013 Trowbridge and Westbrook began production on the Array [ ] repository and content management system while continuously testing/observing curriculum and ideas in classrooms. This dev process and backend details were shared in a presentation at the MidCamp Drupal Conference in Chicago, 2015. From the Array [ ] website: Array [ ] is a repository of entryways into new media craft, processes, materials, cultures, and contexts specifically geared towards beginners (both teachers and students). The title Array [ ] is inspired by a concept common to programming languages that generally means, "a systematic arrangement" or "a variable that can be indexed." Array [ ] is committed to accessibility, literacy, and criticality, translated into agency. Array [ ] information is free, friendly, and open to everybody interested in learning. Array [ ] concepts prioritize the kind of information beginners need to get acclimated while introducing contexts and suggestions for further engagement.
In 2015 Trowbridge and Westbrook presented Array [ ] at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education [FATE] Tectonic Shifts Conference, Indianapolis, IN, March 25 – 28, 2015 on the panel "4D Foundations: New Media in an Old Media Classroom."
In 2015 Trowbridge and Westbrook extended participation in the Array [ ], by launching arrayList, an email listserv for ongoing topic-based community discourse hosted on Riseup. Each month a new theme is announced and invited guests post threads for subscriber discussion. Scheduled themes include: fabrication, code, sound, electronics, games, performance. 2015-2016 posted guest threadleaders include: Thomas Albrecht, Amy Alexander, L[3]^2 (Lee Blalock), Ricardo Dominguez, Kirsten Leenaars, Ellen Mueller, Heather Warren-Crow, Nathaniel Stern, Angela Washko, Theresa Devine, j.duran, Patrick Jagoda, Alex Myers, Phoenix Perry, Scott Richmond, Brian Schrank, Alejandro Borsani, Dawn Hayes, Justin Lincoln, Brittany Ransom, Chris Reilly, Erin Gee, Catherine Pancake, Deborah Stratman, Benjamin Thorp, Beth Warshafsky, Ubi de Feo, Evelyn Eastmond, Ira Greenberg, Rebecca Miller-Webster, and Daniel Shiffman, Tom Burtonwood, Jenna Frye, Taylor Hokanson, and Meg Mitchell
In 2015 Trowbridge and Westbrook received National Science Foundation funding, "Computational Art and Creative Coding: Teaching CS1 with Processing," in support of their research into teaching code literacy through art and design contexts. This award was supported in part by the National Science Foundation awards DUE-0942626 (CS1: Creative Computation in the Context of Art and Visual Media) and DUE-1323463 (CS1: Creative Computation in the Context of Art and Visual Media), and by Bryn Mawr College and Southern Methodist University.