Hi, my name is Benton C Bainbridge. I'm a media artist living and working in The Bronx. I'm new to Steemit; I welcome your comments and suggestions. I've long said that social media participants should participate in the value they create so I'm super excited to join the Steemit beta. My New Year's resolution was to ditch Facebook by the end of 2016, so I'm curious if Steemit could become my new primary social media platform?
My art medium is 'media' - the electronic moving image, often made realtime in a visual performance. I'm best known as the video artist and VJ for two Beastie Boys world tours and as the analog video synthesist for TV On The Radio's "Staring at the Sun" My video ensemble The Poool had the best-ever attended show at Whitney Museum's performance series. I have been the resident media artist for American Museum of Natural History's monthly event "One Step Beyond" since its inception a decade ago. Right now, I have work in two galleries at Cornell University for the Rose Goldsen Media Archives "Signal to Code" exhibitions: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/signaltocode and http://museum.cornell.edu/exhibitions/signal-code
For the past 7 years I have been co-developing systems for the authentication, archiving, distribution, sale and resale digital media art on the blockchain, 'fingerprinting' the artworks and tracking provenance via public ledgers. I've worked with ConsenSys, Ascribe.io and Artlery on this project. I am co-developing artHash - a free open-source tool for artists to make a unique code from any digital media file. I co-founded http://MovingPictures.Gallery to explore the symbiotic relationship between digital art and cryptocurrency. You can read about this project here: http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/a-new-model-for-selling
My passion is realtime media performance. I and my colleagues around the world are committed to seeking ways to 'play' moving pictures like a visual form of music. Like music, our work is often made collaboratively with fellow media artists, and with performing artists in theatrical, dance and musical settings. As much as we are inspired by painting, sculpture and other established ways of making pictures, we are also inspired by the ways music is improvised, composed and performed.
I've been making realtime media since high school, when video technology became accessible. I had a revelation at 15, when I was studying piano and making experimental Super-8 films. I finished a piano rehearsal, then threaded my latest film that had just come back from the Kodak lab. The film was underexposed and had to be redone. I said to my Mom - "how could I ever learn to play piano if I had to wait a week to hear the notes I played?" I dedicated myself to electronic cinema and its realtime feedback and have been exploring the possibilities since.
I'll be posting about my life and art here on Steemit. I look forward to making new friends, meeting new colleagues and collaborators and sharing with you all.
Looking forward to the future mainstream
~Benton C Bainbridge
The Bronx
Me, my verification and my Video Synth
