We’re working on the video of the site launch presentation and will post a link as soon as it’s ready, but in the meantime, check out BestSmallBizHelp.com. It’s a great resource for anyone who runs a small business and needs some (or a lot of) help, as well as for those who have a business idea they want to bring to life.

One service we really love to provide is designing networked performances, where performers in geographically separated locations perform together live via streaming media. This month, I’m consulting with Hunter Reynolds, a multimedia artist who needed help setting up a performance between him at his studio and visitors to his gallery show at Momenta Art. Hunter wanted to tell the stories behind his artwork — he makes gorgeous “photo-weavings”, tapestry-size grids of photo prints sewn together at the edges — and talk with visitors in realtime.

Since Hunter had done it before (using Skype video chat), he knew what was needed (cameras, mics, a good Internet connection at each location) but not if what was available could provide a stable platform for the performance. He asked his friend Wayne Ashley for help — Wayne is a noted new media curator and arts director — which led to my involvement (via another helpful recommend). After determining Hunter’s needs, visiting the sites and testing, I was able to recommend a stable setup, including hardware, software, bandwidth upgrades and purchases, and guide Hunter and Momenta through the setup at the studio and gallery.

The first performance last Sunday was a success, despite limited holiday weekend attendance, and Hunter will be telling stories to gallery visitors for the next three Sundays from 12 to 6pm. If you’ll be in New York between now and June 15th, I highly recommend seeing his artwork and, if you can make it on a Sunday, hearing Hunter’s stories.

Here’s the exhibit description:

Momenta Art is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Hunter Reynolds, his first solo exhibition in New York in five years. Since 2001 Reynolds has experienced a series of life-altering events: 9/11, substance abuse, surviving AIDS, Hurricane Wilma, a close friend’s suicide, the collapse of his immune system, and four HIV-related strokes that left his right hand partially paralyzed. These events are the raw material out of which this exhibition was born. Viewers who enter the gallery will be surrounded by a series of large-format works called “photo-weavings” formed by physically sewing together hundreds of smaller photographs. Though stunningly beautiful, the photographs that make up these pieces document a cathartic meltdown during which Reynolds, together with Hurricane Wilma, destroyed his Florida studio in the fall of 2005.

The documented wreckage includes Reynolds’ own paint-splattered and water-damaged work from earlier series, artwork by other artists, CD covers, paper fragments, and shards of broken glass that were thrown and bonded by the forces of wind and rain. Bits of this detritus will be on view in the gallery along with the photo weavings. In addition, Reynolds will present several remote story-telling/conversation performances via Skype and a mini-documentary covering the hurricane and Reynolds’ salvage efforts in his studio, efforts that transform the wreckage and personal history into testaments of survival. All of these elements come together in a complete context; but even as they encompass, they break free. For almost thirty years, Reynolds’ work has engaged with gender identity, body politics, and personal histories. But it is the broad generosity of his work, and this installation in particular, that reveals the artist’s particular strength at forging hope and beauty out of the sometimes dark totality of life.

“Art has always been one of the tools I have used to heal myself and others and to find order in the chaos of my life, by not only telling the story through art, but by transforming myself in the process of making it, using it to rebuild my life, finding hope and beauty and a desire to be alive.”

– Hunter Reynolds