411: New Media with a mission

Catherine Forster, "They call me theirs," multimedia installation

While it’s busy giving celebrities and sycophants outlets like Twitter to share banalities, new media does have uses that do actually benefit civilization. Since 2005, Upgrade! Chicago has been part of an international network of individual groups that marry artistic inspiration with cutting-edge technology. The group consists of active members in the Chicago contemporary art community as well as scientists, tech wizards and more. “What we want is to create a dynamic space to stimulate our artistic community,” says Sara Schnadt, “and have artists collaborate with people from different disciplines, blurring lines and distinctions, which is something that new media art is doing frequently. Schnadt and other participants in Upgrade! Chicago meet the second Tuesday of every month to showcase work and create different exchanges through new media art. “There’s a close affinity to the open-source movement that Wikipedia and Flickr come out of,” Schnadt says of Upgrade! The project is inclusive by nature and predicated on the collectivity of art as opposed to the collection of art. The June Upgrade! will feature a presentation and discussion of the work of Catherine Forster. Forster, curator of Live Box gallery, formerly worked in microbiology, which informs her work as an artist. “We’re looking forward to seeing her perspective of art from this really broad vantage point that she has,” says Schnadt. The next Upgrade! Chicago meets on June 8, 7pm, at The Nightingale, 1084 North Milwaukee, and is free. (Andrew Rhoades)