PHACAEANS

PRESS RELEASE

What is it like to not recognize your hometown? Phoenix artist Sloane McFarland and Homer's hero Odysseus shared this dilemma - McFarland as he grew up in the exploding metropolis of greater Phoenix and Odysseus when the Phaeacian people helped him finally reach home after many journeys.

PHACAEANS is the artist's first museum exhibition and is named with Homer's Phaeacian people in mind. It opens at Arizona State University Art Museum's Experimental Gallery at Matthews Center on April 1. A free opening reception will be held from 7 - 9 p.m. on March 31.

In a series of short snippets of life, desktop video artist Sloane McFarland superimposes the Homeric tale on the Valley of the Sun's melding of untouched land and concrete cityscape. PHACAEANS assumes the perspective of those living in an exploding desert metropolis, according to exhibition curator, John Spiak.

"PHACAEANS explores the phenomenon of a city growing around an individual at such a rapid pace that he constantly does not recognize it as his own" Spiak said. "It is as if Sloane had an internet vacuum and sucked up all of Arizona's culture, stories and lifestyles then presented them online, allowing individuals to experience moments in a calculated order and pace."

Almost two dozen short videos will be displayed on a laptop in this exhibition. McFarland likens his videos to calculus, saying they allow him to take one item from a mass and define it. In this case, the mass is the fluid story of Arizona.

"The movies are shorthand for a particular experience, a particular story," McFarland said.

McFarland is uncomfortable applying the term "video art" to his work, which he edited on a computer using the Adobe Premiere software, then saved as compressed files to be played back via computer.

Instead, he and Spiak use the term "desktop video with laptop projection," to describe the work exhibited on a single laptop in the gallery. The videos in the exhibition were created with a consumer-available digital camcorder and a computer cobbler together by the artist several years ago when no personal computer had the 30-gigabyte memory necessary to achieve his goal.

PHACAEANS will run from April 1 - May 20.
a free opening reception to be held on March 31 from 7 - 9 p.m.
For more information, members of the public should call the
ASU Art Museum at (480) 965-2787.
http://herbergercollege.asu.edu/museum/phacaeans/main.htm

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