Grant Recipients Grants to Artists Visual Arts 1998

Riverbed Media

A split portrait with Shelley Eshkar on the left and Paul Kaiser on the right. Eshkar stands in front of a stone wall and turns to look directly at the camera. He has short curly dark brown hair and wears thin brown glasses and a brown t-shirt. Kaiser is in front of a white background. He has short gray hair and wears wire rimmed glasses and a collared brown shirt. He looks directly at the camera and smiles.
  • 1998 Grants to Artists
  • Visual Arts
  • Live in New York, NY
  • Shelley Eshkar
    Born New York, NY 1970

    Paul Kaiser
    Born Munich, Germany, 1937

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  • Additional Information
  • openendedgroup.com

[Part of the funds] bought an LCD projector, traveling case, video amplifier, and spare bulbs for our Ghostcatching installation… The remaining funds were paid out in salary to both of us, allowing us to devote ourselves fully to revisiting and expanding our projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped (1999).

- Riverbed Media, May 17, 2000

Artist Statement

Shelley Eshkar

My work as a collaborator in digital art and experimental animation has often taken three signature turns: the capture of bodies and spaces in our world through sensors, lenses, and other means; the translation of this data into non-literal, expressive 3-D virtual worlds; and the presentation of these immersive works in as many contexts as possible outside the computer.

Since the late 1990s, this body of work has matured through interaction with many fine collaborators, notably Paul Kaiser and Marc Downie as part of OpenEndedGroup, and with our earliest encounters with choreographic legends Merce Cunningham and Bill T. Jones.

Paul Kaiser

My work arises from the years I spent teaching students with severe learning disabilities in the 1980s, with whom I made multimedia depictions of their own minds. It was from working with these students that I derived two key ideas— mental space and drawing as performance—which became the points of departure for much of the work I have pursued since then. What fascinates me above all is the awareness of consciousness: my own and that of others.

It was from these students that I also learned the value of collaboration, a practice central to my work ever since. Much of my work would be inconceivable without my current colleague Marc Downie (with me at OpenEndedGroup) as well as with Shelley Eshkar, with whom I worked for many years. I've also enjoyed extraordinary collaborations with various choreographers (Merce CunninghamBill T. JonesTrisha Brown, Wayne McGregor).

Recent work has centered on non-photorealistic 3D projection, which seems to have the viewers' eyes touching the imagery as much as seeing it; on a new form of visual documentary, which dispenses with talking heads and scrutinizes imagery derived both from cameras as well as from other data probes; and on a new form of writing and interrelating texts for a work-in-progress called Among Others.

- 2014

Biography

Riverbed Media was a collaboration between digital artists Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser. Their work explored the integration of digital art, dance, drawing, and computer animation. The two artists continue to work collaboratively and independently.

As Riverbed Media, Kaiser and Eshkar created the FCPA-supported work, Biped (1999), for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and provided the visual décor for the dance of the same name. Biped is a digital animation of the choreography derived from movement capture of the phrases. The movement capture process resulted in a series of abstracted and hand-drawn images of the dancers that were projected on a huge transparent scrim covering the front stage, giving the illusion that of floating in front of, and among, the live dancers behind it. With FCPA support, the duo also created the graphics for Bill T. Jones's Ghostcatching (1999), through similar motion capture techniques.

Shelley Eshkar is a digital artist whose research explores drawing, computer graphics, and human motion. One of his primary tools is motion capture, a technology that digitally captures the movement, but not the physical likeness, of human motion. Eshkar creates new digital bodies and spaces to host these motions. The motions are radically recomposed and altered; creating a work of performance that could exist only in virtual form. Following the 1998 Grants to Artists award, Eshkar received awards from Ars Electronica (1999 and 2004), the New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Awards (2000), the New York Foundation for the Arts (2001), New York State Council for the Arts (2001), and a Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation (2006). Eshkar was a Lubalin Fellow at Cooper Union in 1997, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (1999), the University of California, Irvine (2001), Arizona State University (2003-2005), and Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, France. He received his B.F.A. from Cooper Union in 1993.

Paul Kaiser is a digital artist, filmmaker, and writer. With his OpenEndedGroup colleague Marc Downie (and formerly with Shelley Eshkar), Kaiser has created works that span a wide range of forms and disciplines, including 3-D film, dance, installation, music, and public art. Outside collaborators in the performing arts have included Robert WilsonMerce CunninghamBill T. JonesTrisha Brown, the Flux Quartet, and Wayne McGregor. In 2008, Kaiser received FCA's biennial John Cage Award. Since receiving his 2008 John Cage Award, Kaiser has held residencies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2009-2010), Georgia Institute of Technology (2011-2012), The New School (2012), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (2012-ongoing), and the Arts and Humanities Departments at University of Michigan (2011-2013). Prior to his 2008 FCA grant, Kaiser held university residencies in the Computer Music Department at Columbia University (2001-2003); the Dance Department at University of California, Irvine (2001); Institute for the Arts at Arizona State University (2002-2005); and art and research residencies at Cooper Union (1998), MASS MoCA (1999), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab (2001). In 1996, Kaiser was the first digital artist to receive a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Kaiser received a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1978 and an M.Edu. in Special Education from American University in 1984. Kaiser has been a guest lecturer at Wesleyan University, Columbia University, Harvard University, and Le Fresnoy in Lille, France; he was an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University.

Two performers stand in the lower left of a large dark space. They are on their tip toes and face each other. They wear leotards with a metallic blue toned abstract pattern on them. Above them, a large sketch of a human figure in blue is projected onto an otherwise black background. This human figure appears to be lunging to the right.
FCPA-supported digital projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped, 1999.
Two performers are in the center a dark stage wearing leotards with a metallic blue toned abstract pattern on them. Looking directly at each other, they lean to the side on one leg while lifting their other leg. They are mirroed. Behind them, a blue sketch of a human figure is projected onto the otherwise black wall. This figure is upside down and only its legs are visible.
FCPA-supported digital projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped, 1999.
Two performers stand in the center of a dark stage wearing leotards with a metallic blue toned abstract pattern on them. Both peformers face the right side and step towards it, lifting their arms by their sides. A large gold sketch of a human figure is projected onto the otherwise black wall behind them. This figure leans towards the right.
FCPA-supported digital projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped, 1999.
Three performers are in the lower left of a dark srage. They wear leotards with a metallic blue toned abstract pattern on them. Two performers face the left side and leap towards it. A third performer leaps forwards from the background of the stage. A large gold toned sketch of a human figure leaning to the left is projected onto the otherwise black wall behind them.
FCPA-supported digital projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped, 1999.
One performer dances in the lower left of a large dark stage. They wear a metallic leotard. Resting only on the left leg, they lift both arms up and hold their right leg out behind them. Projections of scattered lines fill the back wall. On the left, the lines are mostly red with a few gold and white ones and on the right, the lines are mostly white with three blue ones scattered in.
FCPA-supported digital projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped, 1999.
One performers dances in the lower middle of a tall dark stage. They stand on only one leg and bend towards the right with the rest of their body. In the background, there is a projection of a red and purple sketch of a human figure lunging towards the right.
FCPA-supported digital projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped, 1999.
Five performers wearing multicolored metallic full body leotards dance within a large dark stage. Two performers on the left hold hands as they lean outwards and away from one another. Three performers on the right lunge forwards as they lift their arms above their heads. Multicolored lines and squiggles are projected onto the front of the space.
FCPA-supported digital projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped, 1999.
A light blue sketch of a human figure leaning forward within a rectangular box is projected onto an otherwise black space.
FCPA-supported motion capture graphics for Bill T. Jones's Ghostcatching, 1999.
A sketch of a human figure lunging towards the left on one hand and one knee is projected onto an otherwise black space. The figure is given shape with lines in orange, gold, silver, and lavendar. A cluster of blue lines is in the bottom of the scene.
FCPA-supported motion capture graphics for Bill T. Jones's Ghostcatching, 1999.
There is a horizontal band divided into six sections all with black backgrounds. On the left, a person poses, wearing a black t-shirt and black shorts. Beside this section, the same person is seen wearing only short and dotted with several white spheres around their body. The section next to this shows no person and only the white dots against a black background. On the next section, a human figure is shown rendered in green and purple lines. In the next section, a human figure is rendered in green, blue, purple, and orange lines which are more curved and abstract. In the last section, a human figure is rendered in all abstract silver lines.
Sequence of motion capture for Bill T. Jones's Ghostcatching, 1999.
Sequence of motion capture for Bill T. Jones's Ghostcatching, 1999.
FCPA-supported digital projections for Merce Cunningham's Biped, 1999.