Mission
iota is a public benefit, non-profit arts organization founded in 1994. Our mission is to inspire both new and existing artists in a historically dispersed and constantly changing technological environment. We aim to do this by foregrounding and contextualizing historically underrepresented experimental works, enriching current scholarly and academic inquiry into the artists and works in our collection, and providing our community of patrons with a foundation with which to a) study historical work and b) create new work. In other words, the end of one work’s life cycle can inspire the beginning of another.
iota is dedicated to fostering a community of artists by engaging them with our four programs: community, exhibition, research and preservation. We work with other like-minded organizations to exhibit and distribute underrepresented experimental works; foster research and discovery by maintaining an archive, on-site library and website; and preserve the films, artwork and paper material in our collections.
Collections and Curatorial Focus
Although iota’s interests span many interconnected areas of historical experimentation, the medium for which we have the richest collections and resources is experimental film and video work with a special emphasis on abstract film, animation, and films from West Coast artists.
Abstract Film and Animation: Historically, the artistic exploration of abstraction in the moving image has taken on many forms with a wide variety of names: Lumia … Visual Music … Mobilcolor … Absolute Film … Video Synthesis … Rhythmic Light … Abstract Animation. Today the medium is commonly referred to as “Visual Music”. We believe that there is a vast amount of interconnectedness between these varied techniques and titles, and that their common artistic goals can unite them into a single art of light and movement. As the first arts organization to dedicate its mission to visual music, we continue to expand our resources and collections in this area.
West Coast Experimental Filmmakers: According to the bulk of literature covering the history of avant-garde filmmaking in the US, New York filmmakers constitute the bulk of the canonical filmmakers in this genre. In his 1960 graduate thesis for UCLA, Robert Pike wrote about the “West Coast Experimental Film Movement” as a movement distinct in form and focus from its east coast counterpart. Pike later formed a distribution company called Creative Film Society, which collected (among other genres) a substantial number of experimental works with a distinct emphasis on West Coast artists. In 1996, iotaCenter worked with Pike’s wife Angie to negotiate the donation of of a large number of these films – including works from such artists as Pat O’Neill, Kenneth Anger, John and James Whitney, Ernie Pintoff and Patricia Marx – to our collection.