NEXUS/foundation for today's art in Philadelphia, in conjunction with The Hacktory, presents "Unintended Uses," an exhibition of hacked and repurposed video games, electronics, kinetics, musical instruments, motion sensors, painting, computers, circuitry and public spaces. The artists are utilizing technology as their palette to open up worlds of new possibilities. The exhibition includes Michiel van der Zanden, Don Miller, Reade Vaisman, Sarah Muehlbauer, Kathy Marmor, Fernando Orellana, Zachary Stadel, Wil Lindsay, Chris Vecchio, Joey Mariano and David Horvitz. (Click each artist's name to see representations of their work and statements.)

"Whatever code we hack, be it programming language, poetic language, math or music, curves or colourings, we create the possibility of new things entering the world. Not always great things, or even good things, but new things. In art, in science, in philosophy and culture, in any production of knowledge where data can be gathered, where information can be extracted from it, and where in that information new possibilities for the world are produced, there are hackers hacking the new out of the old. While hackers create these new worlds, we do not possess them. That which we create is mortgaged to others, and to the interests of others, to states and corporations who control the means for making worlds we alone discover. We do not own what we produce--it owns us."

-- from "A Hacker Manifesto" by McKenzie Wark

Michiel van der Zanden

In my work, I import the world of digital media into painting, and vice versa. I use images of digital entertainment, such as video games and YouTube videos, or 3D software like Blender. These images are reproduced and reworked on the computer and used as a starting point (or sketch) for my paintings. On the other hand, I enlarge the role of painting in the world of that same digital media: In the reality of mainstream video game environments, painting –and art in general–only has a decorative function, whereas in my clip "Pwned Paintings #2,” the paintings become the main targets. By doing this, I'm breaking the video game's original intention. As in this example, I take elements out of a video game and give them a new function and context. I manipulate settings and space, with one or more characters, events, and/or objects. But I also have a run at traditional painting (techniques), such as portraits and landscapes.
www.michielvanderzanden.nl/
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Don Miller

The Pulsewave ROM invitations are an ongoing series of artistic collaboration created each month to promote Pulsewave, a New York City chip music event. Each month a uniquely designed and coded NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) or Commodore 64 program is released. These invitations can be played back on the classic consoles or viewed on modern computers via emulation. They serve as distinctive promotional material while paying homage to the classic invites created by demoscene programmers of the 1980s and 1990s.

The ROM invitations are the very essence of unintended use: commercial gaming and computer hardware subverted for DIY promotion of underground music events. The punk scene has its photocopied flyers attached to telephone poles–and the chip music scene has its electronic flyers plastered on TV screens and computer monitors.
www.no-carrier.com/
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Reade Vaisman

I completed this machine in spring 2008. I started with a cassette recorder and a radio Frankensteined into a more "traditional" circuit-bent noisemaker. I then added the Coke can sequencer and un-dead toy toucan. Finally I built a little trigger circuit to control the bird's motor and mounted it all on the outside of a plywood box.

Building such a gizmo is tricky to direct. Before the rebuild around the box, the electronics were all glued and screwed to a flattish piece of scrap wood. After arranging it all on the box and rewiring the whole mess, it seemed to have lost much of the sensitivity and variety of glitches that had been the inspiration for the bird! Over time much of the piercing squeals and machine gun chatter came back but it takes a bit more poking about to get a big reaction. The ghost in the machine!

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Sarah Muehlbauer

The pan pipe is an ancient musical instrument mythologically associated with the Greek god Pan, symbolic of pastoral life and fertility.  This piece is a modern adaptation of the instrument constructed from lucite tube and wood. It is wearable and portable, relating to the body in a way that suggests it is a fashionable extension of the wearer.  

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Kathy Marmor

FANs’  do-it-yourself amateurism and its humorous combination of high and low technologies offer a commentary on modern culture and the psychological and cultural constructions of identity. My installations are environments that depend on the participation of the viewer to underscore the dynamic interchange between an organism and its environment.
www.kathymarmor.com/portfolio/garden.shtml
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Fernando Orellana

"Looking for God" is an installation that considers the notion of the God idea. The basic setup consists of an old General Electric radio, a microphone, an electronic odometer, an electronic bell, a microprocessor, and a mechanism that is able to tune the radio. The mechanism turns the dial of the radio slightly either to the left or right. The microphone then captures a three-second sample of the audio signal coming out of the radio. This captured signal is then compared with a signal of the word "god" saved in the microprocessor's memory. If the new signal captured by the microphone is not equal to the signal in memory, the mechanism turns the dial again and the process is repeated. If the signal captured is equal to the signal in memory, the piece deduces that it has found the word "god." It then triggers the electronic bell and marks one unit on the electronic odometer. In this way, "Looking for God" tries to metaphorically replicate humanity's own pursuit of understanding the world.
www.fernandoorellana.com/
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Zachary Stadel

I examine conventions of construction and presentation in various media (painting, photography, sculpture, architecture, etc.) to try to find the tipping points where a work in one medium will suddenly or partially register in another.  Lately I've focused on one series, in which I consider the anatomy of painting and its relationship to sculpture. One way I approach this is through a reorganization of materials within painting's conventions.  To this end, I transpose, shift, or eliminate the functions of the materials that comprise a painting—the stretcher bars, canvas, and paint—to arrive at something simultaneously recognizable and foreign.
www.zacharystadel.com

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Wil Lindsay

An unusual device from the early 1970s, recently discovered in an abandoned building in upstate New York. Once restored to operating condition, the device was determined to be an attempt at early computerized psychological analysis. The device reads galvanic skin response from the fingers, much like an early lie detector. That data is then used to create a "map" of the user’s psychological makeup.
It is unclear how many of the devices were manufactured, or if they were widely accepted as a profiling tool.
www.straytechnologies.com/
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Chris Vecchio

Walking down the street one day, I found in the gutter a small circuit board attached to a broken fragment of plastic. At the end of the one still-attached wire was a terminal of the sort used to connect to small speakers. Patterns on the board suggested spots where two small button cell batteries had once been connected and three locations were etched to accept input from rubber membrane contact switches. I attached a speaker between the wire and ground, applied 3 Volts to the battery terminals, and used my finger to engage one of the switch locations. Re-animated, the board spoke to me, saying the words: “You shall perish.”
www.noisemantra.com
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Joey Mariano

The Gameboy Foot Controller allows the user to trigger musical loops from foot pedals attached to the gameboy running Nanoloop or LSDJ. The foot pedals essentially replace the buttons on the gameboy. Power is sent up to the Gameboy via the DB28 cable [old computer printer cable] and a better sound output is sent down through the cable. The controller is useful to musicians who have their hands busy playing another instrument, but still want to incorporate 8bit sounds into their musical performance.
www.animal-style.com
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David Horvitz
My most recent project is a "show" that takes place inside a one-hour photo store, mainly those found in major US drug stores. People email their addresses to me and I upload the prints via the Internet to a store near them. I am interested in turning the anonymous of the Internet into the personal, generating events and situations that the audience finds themselves in (inside a photo store in their town), and also infiltrating existing spaces and repurposing them for playful and disruptive purposes.
www.davidhorvitz.com
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