Reception: 17 June 2011, 5:00pm—8:00pm

On View: 17 June 2011—30 July 2011

Curated by Chaz Evans and Lorelei Stewart. The specificity of work in electronic media warrants investigations that refine categories past “the digital” or “the internet.” File Type is an exhibition which analyzes the cultural character of digital file formats such as the .pdf, .tiff, .jpeg etc. These and many other file types contain narratives that give specific bodies to the often invisible entities that construct electronic culture. Formats and file types represent ways that artwork in digital or internet media create particular standards of representation. What is often regarded as the minutiae of computer science have now become the parameters given to cultural agents. Or to put it in different terms, computer science is now a direct player in the construction of cultural identity, intentionally or not. File Type explores the kinetic relationships that construct a network of electronic exchange. How have file types worked their way into, or in many cases have become, our cultural metaphors? What are the politics of implied aesthetics hidden within file formats that are regarded as transparent? What are the effects of expediency in using different formats in communication and exchange? Or perhaps most importantly what is the relationship between electronic formats and artistic practices, electronic or otherwise? Are these adjuncts and extensions of artistic practice necessarily a breakage from non-electronic media, or are they possibly fluid and interchangeable? Featuring the work of Jon Cates, Channel TWo, Anthony Discenza, Eric Fleischauer, Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin, Todd Mattei, Jesse McLean, Chris Meerdo and more.