Out There
On NJN’s State of the Arts
Friday, July 14 at 8:30 pm; and Wednesday, July 19 at 11:30 pm

Program earned two 2005 Emmy Award nominations

STATEWIDE – NJN’s State of the Arts looks at creative work that takes unusual directions in Out There. The program focuses on the curious and the fascinating from the cult magazine Weird New Jersey to a new ballet inspired by the music of The Lounge Lizards. Out There was nominated for a 2005 Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for outstanding magazine; and one of the stories, Weird New Jersey, was nominated for outstanding feature: informational. This encore presentation airs on Friday, July 14 at 8:30 pm, with a rebroadcast on Wednesday, July 19 at 11:30 pm.

• Weird New Jersey
First there was Weird NJ, a homegrown magazine and travel guide for people interested in things like abandoned asylums, backwater roadside attractions and other hallmarks of modern folklore throughout the Garden State. Then there was Weird NJ: The Exhibition at the HERE Art Center in New York City, featuring 17 artists whose work is inspired by and connected to all things Jersey – from the industrial landscapes surrounding the New Jersey Turnpike to the mythologies of the Pine Barrens. State of the Arts producer Christopher Benincasa talks to magazine founders Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran, curator and frequent Weird NJ contributor Phil Buehler, and one of the weirdest of the Weird NJ artists: self-proclaimed “techno visionary king of art” Stephen “Hoop” Hooper.

• Vista
Graham Lustig has created a physical, colorful, jazzy, multi-movement new dance work called “Vista,” choreographed especially for the elite professional dancers of the American Repertory Ballet based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where Lustig is the artistic director. The work is set to the music of the eclectic jazz group The Lounge Lizards. State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz visits the troupe in rehearsal and interviews Lustig about the choreographic process.

• Ebony Hillbillies
African-American music usually evokes jazz, gospel, or rhythm and blues. That is, until you hear the Ebony Hillbillies – a modern country string band that plays old-time dance music on banjo, mountain dulcimer, fiddle, string bass, as well as Ricky Gordon's homemade percussion set consisting of a washboard, an array of cymbals, triangles and chimes, and a pair of tambourines strapped to his feet. State of the Arts producer Amber Edwards caught up with the Ebony Hillbillies at a concert at The Newark Museum.

• The Bots
Eva Sutton and Sarah Hart are an artist team who create “bots” – robots that are art and can even make art! For instance, “Chance Transmission: An I Ching Reading With Two Small Robots” has the bots painting symbols with sumi ink. State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz visits the artist team in their New York studio, and finds out more about how and why they create their robots, which were featured in a 2005 group show at Clinton, New Jersey’s Hunterdon Museum of Art: called “Almost Human: Dolls and Robots in Contemporary Art.”

State of the Arts, the award-winning, half-hour arts magazine airs every Friday at 8:30 pm, followed by an encore presentation each Wednesday at 11:30 pm.

The current episode of State of the Arts can be viewed online at www.njn.net. Individual stories will be available to view online following their broadcast by visiting the program online at State of the Arts.

Funding for State of the Arts is provided by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. The series producer is Susan Wallner and the executive producer is Nila Aronow.