Page 13 - Boca Club News - December '23

Boca Club News, Page 13

Boca Museum of Art’s New Exhibit from page 12 for solo exhibitions throughout the United States and is for espionage in the real world.
currently one of America’s most internationally exhibited The exhibition also features an homage to one of the
has always loomed large, and this exhibition takes this idea one artists (with solo shows in more than 25 countries). most notorious investigators of the paranormal, James Randi
step further, revealing strong connections between today and Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund’s installation In (a.k.a. The Amazing Randi, 1928-2020). Randi lived near the
earlier periods in history when crises led to magical thinking. Event of Moon Disaster was made using sophisticated deepfake Boca Raton Museum with his husband and life partner of 34
Art itself is a process of alchemy, transforming physical technology. In 1969 most of the world celebrated the Apollo years, the artist Jose Alvarez D.O.P.A. Randi was known for
medium into illusions of beauty, messages that have the power 11 crew’s first successful moon landing, the exceptions being sponsoring the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge,
to both inspire and manipulate audiences.” conspiracy theorists claiming it was all staged. In this work, offering one million dollars to anyone who could prove a
Exhibition Highlights. The largest gallery in the exhibition Panetta and Burgund ask: what would have happened if the supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific
is transformed by Tony Oursler into an otherworldly landscape mission had gone wrong? testing criteria.
titled Creature Features. The Museum has commissioned Two timely experiences will confront museumgoers in this More than a thousand people applied to this challenge
several new installations by Oursler, exploring what the artist exhibition: one is an artwork by Jacob Hicks utilizing ChatGPT between 1964 and 2015, but none were successful. Randi
calls the “delicate balance between creativity, mysticism and Artificial Intelligence, and the other is a video about deepfakes originally defined himself as a conjuror and began his career
scientific ingenuity.” Based on American folklore, legends, and edited by the Museum team. The new artwork by Hicks allows as a professional stage magician and escape-artist in 1946. In
hoaxes likened to today’s urban myths, viewers will walk into viewers to ask questions to a virtual magician and receive later years he preferred to call himself a skeptical educator,
a dream world where the artist’s collection of the unbelievable answers generated by the ChatGPT A.I. Jacob Hicks trained and was a MacArthur Fellow “Genius Grant” winner. He
comes to life. the ChatGPT A.I. to imagine itself as an ancient entity capable maintained that magicians are honest liars because the audience
Tony Oursler is one of the world’s foremost pioneers of telling the future, to be aware that it is an art project, and is in on the deception. The section in the “Smoke and Mirrors”
of video art, working with moving images, installation and to be aware that Hicks wants it to present as a false persona. exhibition honoring the life of The Amazing Randi includes
projection. His inspirations include conspiracy, mysticism, For the deepfakes video encounter, the Museum team will ephemera from his storied career, including his numerous
narrative evolution and facial recognition technologies. regularly update a video screen titled DEEPFAKE-O-RAMA television appearances on NBC’s Tonight Show Starring Johnny
Viewers are often disoriented and disarmed upon entering his with the latest deepfakes in the political news cycle during the Carson, and never-before-seen curiosities from Randi’s life-
installations. run of the exhibition. long collection of arcana, including his tour with the wildly
Imponderable, Oursler’s cinematic 5-D experience, has The Museum commissioned the artist Jeanette Andrews theatrical 1970s rock star Alice Cooper.
only been exhibited at MoMA in New York and was created (also a professional magician) to create a new interactive work About the Museum. Founded by artists, the Boca Raton
using Pepper’s Ghost, a mirror illusion technique first used titled magi.cia.n, inspired by the recently declassified CIA Museum of Art was established in 1950 as the Art Guild of
in the 1800s in theatrical ghost plays. Other installations Manual of Trickery and Deception, written by two professional Boca Raton. The organization has grown, now in its eighth
in Oursler’s Creature Features landscape include: Fairy (a magicians. She created a “clean room” in the museum – an decade, to encompass a Museum, Art School, and Sculpture
fantasy projection of a performance by Katiana Rangel); enclosed, transparent box with two holes equipped with gloves Garden. As one of South Florida’s leading cultural landmarks,
Cardiff Giant (Oursler’s never-before-seen life-size recreation used by the viewer to flip through a blank journal that visually the Museum provides educational programs and a robust
of one of the most famous archaeological hoaxes in American transforms into a magic book and then into a spy craft technical exhibition schedule to the community, and to visitors from
history); Flatwoods Monster (a re-living of the 1952 legendary manual before one’s very eyes. The installation, surrounded around the world.
UFO extraterrestrial folklore encounter); Alice Cooper Head by black curtains, also includes a video in which Andrews
(inspired by The Amazing Randi’s infamous creations for Alice oscillates between her intricate sleight-of-hand as a stage
Cooper’s concert tour in the 1970s); Crystals (created in part magician, and then into a CIA agent that uses the same skills
with artificial intelligence,
exploring the digital
divine, 5-D technology,
near-death experiences,
and hallucinogenic states),
and more.
In 2000, Oursler
was awarded the U.S.
Art Critics Association
ICA New Media Award. Imponderable, by Tony Oursler. Film still, 5-D feature-length
Oursler has been selected The Amazing Randi Imponderable Still 5, by Tony Oursler. film, 90 minutes (2015).