Since Leah Beeferman and Matthew Harvey met at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007, they’ve made the move to New York as individual artists and collaborators. Much like 3rd Ward itself--where Leah participated in a 2006 group show--they aim to collectively serve as an incubator for opportunity and possibility. It’s that like-mindedness that makes us want to shine a spotlight on the latest installment in their joint oeuvre, the thought provoking online publication and multi-artist project Parallelograms, which explores the relationship between images and interpretation.
Each week, they provide an artist, writer, designer, or collaborative team with an image found online. The contributor, in turn, creates a unique web project in response to the image. “We ask our contributors to make a site-specific piece where the ‘site’ is the Internet,” Leah explains.
The project, which started in late 2010 and will run for a year, was a natural extension of Tessellations, a blog where Leah and Matt had a one-year image posting conversation which had started just for fun on MySpace. They notify Parallelograms subscribers about new projects via straightforward weekly e-mails which include a short bio for the contributor and occasionally, a brief description of the project.
Parallelograms project by Pierre Le Hors
“We let our contributors decide how much they want to reveal about their piece. Our impulse has always been that there should be little to no information on the site itself—just the name of the contributor, the image, and the project. It's been like this since day one. We really liked the fact that there was something left to be desired and some confusion about what the site is or does. It forces one to think about what’s there and to form a response to it,” Matt says. “The Internet isn't really set up for that kind of mystery. Here, we present the beginning and the result with no answers about the in-between. We think the in-between is better left unexplained.”
To get a sense of what they’re up to with the site, check out one its most well received projects, a response by artist and computer programmer John Houck.
“We work hard to invite a diverse group of contributors working in different artistic fields: 2-D art, sound, graphic design, video, programming, writing, etc. This range of contributions has brought these various artists together in a way that doesn't often happen, and has created the potential for a varied audience that might not normally interact or look at all of these types of work,” says Matt. “And we certainly don’t claim ownership over any of the works made for the site, although they do feel ‘site-specific.’ We’re happy when the artists take our projects elsewhere. It was great to hear that one of our early contributors included his piece in his application for graduate school.”
The two share all decision-making for Parallelograms, from contributor selection to image selection to site design. As for their individual work, Leah is currently finishing up a residency at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace and participating in a few group shows around the city, and Matt is an understated photographer who takes “a few quiet photographs with my cell phone when I can.” Together, they’re changing the way we experience the constantly evolving medium of the Internet.
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Parallelograms project by Neil Freeman- Cara Cannella
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