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CentralTrak, the University’s artist residency and gallery, takes another look at new media and sonic art  this week and also plans a one-night showing of video game designs created by UT Dallas students.

The CentralTrak gallery and residency are both located at 800 Exposition Ave. in the historic neighborhood of Deep Ellum, near downtown Dallas. For more information, check the CentralTrak website or call (214) 824-9302. These events are free and open to the public.

Next Topic — Thursday, Nov. 8 at 7 p.m.

CentralTrak Talk Series: Next Topic aims to culminate in-depth discussions about art and art practices. This fall, Next Topic examines new media art.

New media artist Alejandro Borsani will discuss his works, which explore the nature of perception and media representation. Borsani holds a MFA in electronic arts from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and an MFA in electronic visualization from the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

ex mus – Friday, Nov. 9 at 8 p.m.

ex mus is an experimental music concert series that will highlight the works of both local and international composers and musicians.

The collective of experimental musicians, Andrew Jordan Miller, Jonathan Jackson, Chaz Underriner and Martian Back will kick off the series with their interpretations of Anatassis Phillippakopoulous, a contemporary Greek composer.

This event will be live-streamed at ustream.tv/channel/ex-mus.

Tiny Thumbs — Saturday, Nov. 10, 5-8 p.m.

CentralTrak will present a one-night-only showcase of game design from UT Dallas students. Tiny Thumbs is a pop-up video arcade of sorts, curated by PhD student Kyle Kondas.

CentralTrak, UT Dallas’ artists residency in Deep Ellum, has launched a bi-weekly talk series titled Next Topic. Each session features an artist and culminate with an in-depth discussions between artists, art enthusiasts, and art students and educators from across the Metroplex.

This fall, Next Topic will examine new media art.

Please join us this upcoming Thursday, Oct. 25 for a talk by new media artist Paula Gaetano Adi. Gaetano Adi is an artist and researcher working in sculpture, performance, interactive installation and robotic agents. Using the human and nonhuman body as a point of departure, her work deals with different cultural studies of technoscience, particularly in regard to human subjectivity and how they can be reflected through art. Gaetano Adi holds a MFA with emphasis in Arts & Technology from The Ohio State University. She is currently Assistant Professor of New Media in the University of North Texas – College of Visual Arts and Design.

CentralTrak, UT Dallas’ artists residency and gallery in Deep Ellum, is launching a series of talks among artists, art enthusiasts, and art students and educators from across the Dallas area.

Not So Indifferent is a multi-media collaboration between Arts and Humanities faculty members Frank Dufour and Thomas Riccio.

This year’s series, which is titled Next Topic, will examine new digital media art. The series opens Thursday, Oct. 11, at 7 p.m. with UT Dallas School of Arts and Humanities professors Frank Dufour and Thomas Riccio. They will be discussing their collaborative multi-media exhibition Not So Indifferent, which is currently on display in the CentralTrak gallery. The exhibit combines digital media with site-specific design to create an existential drama – a performance that features the viewing public as lead actors in the projected video.

“The exhibit can be experienced as an interactive multimedia poem. A film is continuously read and analyzed by a program installed on three computers. Each computer generates sounds extracted from the film, or inspired by it, and displays images from a large database of clips that represent our collective visual and televisual memory,” said Dufour.

The bi-weekly art talks scheduled for this fall also include:

• Oct 25: Paula Gaetano Adi, an artist and researcher working in sculpture, performance, interactive installation and robotic agents. Using the human and nonhuman body as a point of departure, her work deals with different cultural studies of technoscience, particularly in regard to human subjectivity and how they can be reflected through art. Gaetano Adi holds a master of fine arts (MFA) with emphasis in arts and technology from Ohio State University.

• Nov 8: Alejandro Borsani,  a new media artist whose work explores the nature of perception and media representation. He holds a MFA in electronic arts from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., and a MFA in electronic visualization from the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago

• Nov 29: Brittany Ransom, an artist and educator working in interactive installations, electronic art objects, and site-specific interventions that probe the lines separating human, animal, and environmental relations while exploring emergent technologies. She received her MFA with a focus in new media arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

CentralTrak is located at 800 Exposition Ave. in the historic Deep Ellum neighborhood near downtown Dallas. For more information, check the CentralTrak website or call (214) 824-9302. These events are free and open to the public.

Deborah Aschheim’s art crosses boundaries and traditional subjects – she connects the invisible worlds of memory and sound with the tangible reality of bodies and buildings. Her exhibit, Method of Loci, opens at CentralTrak on Saturday, March 10, at 8 p.m.

The song begins in the horn, forms at either end of this 16-foot-long structure, and moves to 14 speakers in the "body" of the piece as the music swells and distorts.

The show takes it name from a method of memory enhancement that uses visualization to organize and recall information. The project has led her to collaborate with musicians as well as neuroscientists.

“I’m very excited to be presenting Deborah Aschheim’s work to the Metroplex. Her work illustrates a very contemporary way of incorporating scientific data and research into her studio practice,” says Heyd Fontenot, director of CentralTrak, a UT Dallas art gallery and residency in Deep Ellum.

“Her approach illustrates the nature of the Arts & Technology program at UT Dallas, so our students will enjoy it very much as well,” Fontenot says.

On display will be Aschheim’s Earworms series. The installation, produced in collaboration with musician and composer Lisa Mezzacappa, explores language and memory through sound and space.

Method of Loci will also feature new works that explore the relationship between architecture, memory and public space. Above: After Goldberg (Unrequited No. 5) 2012

“The Earworms series is named after the German word Ohrwurm, which is a fragment of song that becomes stuck in a person’s head and repeats endlessly,” Aschheim says.

“The project began as an experiment to cure aphasia by embedding words in memorable songs.”

Inspired by stories of stroke patients who had regained the ability to speak by remembering words buried in song lyrics from their past, the installations employ a list of Aschheim’s favorite words.

Mezzacappa composed and recorded a song for each word, and Aschheim built a sculpture for each song. The artists reimagine the sound and sculptural elements for each space they inhabit.

Method of Loci will also feature new works that explore the relationship between architecture, memory and public space.

“To me, modern architecture is a means to explore a narrative, drawing on the concepts of memory and history. Some of these buildings are about my same age, so they can be seen as a kind of self-portrait,” says Aschheim.

Aschheim has a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and studio art from Brown University.

ATEC Graduate Student Weaves Rich Creations of Color With Thread

Gabriel Dawe, a student in the Arts and Technology (ATEC) MFA program at The University of Texas at Dallas, has been busy. He is involved in two concurrent exhibitions in Dallas: a one-man show at Guerilla Arts, Plexus No. 3, and an installation, Plexus No. 4, at the Dallas Contemporary. Both are site-specific installations made from thread.

Plexus No. 3 by Gabriel Dawe is on display at the Guerilla Arts gallery.

Dawe explains, “These installations are about the human need to shelter from the elements. Architecture and fashion partly come from those needs. I am taking the main material clothes are made out of – thread – and making an architectural structure with it. By reversing material and scale, I ended up with something ethereal that speaks to the need for social structures that we require to survive as a species.”

His work can also be seen in the “Indig-nation” exhibition at UT Dallas in late October, as well as a group show in November at the Kellogg Gallery at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.

He is an artist in residence at CentralTrak, and will have his MFA show there in April.

Plexus No. 4 (shown here in detail) is on display at the Dallas Contemporary museum.