Mixtape Metaphysics' Final Night

A huge thank you to everyone who came to celebrate 8 months of Mixtape Metaphysics! And thank you to everyone who has come in here, listened, participated in the human algorithm, asked questions, shared their thoughts on technology, feedback on this project, confessions and anxieties, its all inspired a real live human connection, a network of experiences, ideas— which is to say a type of data that can’t be boiled down to ones and zeros.

Our encounters with others have been diminished over the past few decades, from bowling alone to scrolling alone to thinking alone with whatever AI assistant that appears on the screen at any given time. The analog sociality of the projects we’ve been doing at Modern Art— from the Vinyl Church to the Phonotel to Mixtape Metaphysics—these projects all use the medium, that is of vinyl records, a card catalog, and magnetic tape as a way to call attention to the medium itself: how the crackling expression of a family gospel band from Mechanicsburg from the early 1960s, to hearing the voice of Bertrand Russell set to original beats, alongside some of the most interesting contemporary thinkers and musicians, with the faint buzzing from the cassette in your headphones reveal the beautiful impurities, the beautiful meanderings, the beautiful inefficiencies, of the world.

It’s a reminder that human knowledge and intelligence, however you define it, can be revealed, captured and communicated in different ways—whether through participatory art, sound, visuals, math, stories, community engagement, or even a simple conversation. This installation was an experiment in the form and output of ideas by using a physical, social social space where you can participate in the exploration of complex ideas.

Even though the installation has closed, you can continue to listen to the Mixtape Metaphysics’ audio series online at the Institute of the Mechanical Surround.

This project was made possible by to the Henry Luce Foundation, the Luther Binkley Luther Binkley Fund in Philosophy at Franklin and Marshall College, the Charles and Barbara Kahn Endowment in Religious Studies, and the Office of College Grants at Franklin and Marshall College.

Modern Art Peep Show 4: Coming in October to a window near you.

Get ready for another Modern Art Peep Show!
October 1-31, 2025

Modern Art’s Peep Show is a studio within a studio, taken over by a new artist each day for a month. Thirty-one local artists are assigned a day to take over the 8x8-foot diorama and given freedom to use the space however they’d like: to display artwork, put on a performance, or work on their craft for the day. Unlike a traditional gallery/studio, the only way to view the artwork/performance is through small peep holes in the Pine Street window of our studio.

Interested in being in the Peep Show? Email Libby@itsmodernart.com for more information about how to participate. Slots are first come first served, so don’t sleep on it!

Mixtape Metaphysics Summer Office Hours

With news of the massive new $6 billion data center recently announced in Lancaster, you may want a place to come think about how we should think about all this new technology. We’ve got just the spot:

Join us on tuesdays from 6-9 pm for Mixtape Metaphysics’ weekly office hours with special guests Nick Kroll (professor of Philosophy, Franklin and Marshall College), John Modern (professor of Religious Studies, Franklin & Marshall College), Vincent Smaldone (sound ecologist, Franklin & Marshall College) and a host of other special guests.

Here you can participate in the human algorithm, listen to our mixtapes on technology, watch our new video Me & My Monkey and the Origins of Artifical Intelligence, and sit around and discuss our current state of mechanical surround.

Modern Art by Night

Wondering what it’s like to be working late at Modern Art? No? Well, I’m gonna show you anyway:

Mixtape Metaphysics/Processing Launch With David Chalmers and Grace Helton

What a great night for philosophy, weird art and interesting people! Thanks to everyone for coming to the launch of Mixtape Metaphysics and the release of our new jawn, Processing...A Philosophy Mixtape. Special thanks to David Chalmers and Grace Helton for their visit to Lancaster. To Nick Kroll, Franklin & Marshall Professor of Philosophy, and Vincent Smaldone, for imagining and producing Processing, to Jill Good, John Modern, Sara Code Kroll, Ron Leik, Ariel Kornhauser, and everyone who helped out with the installation and event. And to Institute of the Mechanical Surround staff photographer Jenny Schulder for these great photos.

A Place for Every Piece Opening

A huge thank you to all of the Lancastrians, and all of the Amtrak-ians for a wonderful opening of A Place for Every Piece: Lancaster’s Living Quilt, on January 28, 2025 at the Lancaster Amtrak station. This public art work, commissioned by Art at Amtrak and curated and produced by Debra Simon Art Consulting, is a collaborative project that tells the story of our city through the pieces of our lives that matter most. 

This first phase of this installation, a community quilt, weaves together nearly 700 pieces of fabric, each piece donated by Lancastrians and collected during community workshops and through partnerships with local organizations. These contributions– wedding dresses and favorite t-shirts, cherished heirlooms and garments memorializing lost loved ones– are artifacts of the lives and histories of our neighbors. You can read some of the stories from our participants, see some of the submitted pieces and follow the project’s process here. 

Keep an eye out in late spring 2025 for phase 2: large scale window designs incorporating enlarged segments of the quilt’s reverse side, with the Lancaster landscape peeking through— further allowing the City to become part of the art.

Thank you to Nick Gould Photography for the beautiful photos (and all his help during the install!) .

A Place for Every Piece: Lancaster's Living Quilt

Modern Art is very, very excited to announce that we have been commissioned to create a new public artwork at the Lancaster Train Station as part of the Art at Amtrak program. Our installation, titled “A Place for Every Piece: Lancaster’s Living Quilt” consists of 16 large-scale window designs and a community-engaged quilt, fabricated from resident’s fabrics and stories, all to be on display from Fall 2024-2026. Follow our progress at @aplaceforeverypiece on instagram, and read more about the project, and how you can participate, here.

Art Peep Show Part III: Revenge of the Peep

The Modern ART PEEP SHOW came back with a bang in September 2024 👀👀
Modern Art’s Peep Show is a studio within a studio, taken over by a new artist each day for a month. Thirty-one local artists were assigned a day to contribute to an 8x8-foot diorama and given freedom to use the space however they’d like: to display artwork, put on a performance, or work on their craft for the day. Unlike a traditional gallery/studio, the only way to view the artwork/performance was be through small peep holes in the Pine Street window of our studio. The nature of the unusual set-up invites curiosity and creates an interactive dynamic between the art and the "peeper". It allows passers-by to engage in a new piece of art everyday, delighting in the surprise of an art intervention.

A big thank you to all of the wonderful artists. We had established artists, young and old emerging artists, neighbors, families, performers, photographers, writers, poets, school district of Lancaster students, and even a chef who served up snacks and postcards for mailing inside the show. We are so appreciative of all the neighbors and friends who safely walked by, peeped, and supported the project through the month of March.

Oh What a Day at the Vinyl Church

Celebrate the triumph of the radical new technology, Infinity 88’s Rosary 1653 beta test at the Vinyl Church! Captured on film by Machines In Between staff photographer, Jenny Schulder, the results were transformative.

Check out a real live video of real live versions of John, Libby, and a full cast of local characters as they gathered to celebrate machines here—->

the ART bARTer mART is BACK!

The ART bARTer mART has returned from it’s extended vacation at Franklin & Marshall’s Phillips Museum and is back in front of Modern Art. Come on over and check it out!

Whether you want to take some art, make some art or leave some art, we’ve got it all right here in this handy cabinet. It’s all free, and open all day, everyday for all your art swapping needs.

A Strange Occurrence at the Vinyl Church

A cache of photos from the Vinyl Church have been found on the camera roll of Machines in Between staff photographer, Jenny Schulder Brant. We are developing them slowly, given their fragility and mystery. The images are of unknown origin and depict another world- one both utterly strange and frighteningly familiar.

Machines in Between and the Vinyl Church Announce Spring 2023 Events!

Please join us for a series of on-beat and off-beat performances, lectures, and live music in the Vinyl Church. Check out our Events Calendar for more information, and keep an ear to the ground for more exciting announcements as we roll into spring.

Thursday, March 9:
PUBLIC TALK: AN EVENING WITH CHARISMATECH BY DONAVAN SCHAEFER

Saturday, March 18:
WEIRD MIRROR AT THE VINYL CHURCH

Thursday, March 23:
PUBLIC TALK: PREACHERS AND THE TALKING MACHINE WITH DR. LARONE A. MARTIN

Thursday, April 20:
PERFORMANCE: CORY MCABEE PRESENTS "CULTURED CELL CULTURE"

Friday, May 19:
THE NIELSEN FAMILY BAND AT THE VINYL CHURCH

Welcome to the (Analog) Neighborhood at Franklin & Marshall's Phillips Gallery

Modern Art’s work as part of the City of Lancaster’s PACE Neighbors Program will be on display at Franklin & Marshall’s Phillips Museum from February through May of 2023. Featuring the Phonotel, Maps of Neighborhood Delights, Narrative Delights, Analog-gram, and the ART bARTer mart, the project explores how we think and use our neighborhood in light of this era of technological saturation.

Opening reception on Thursday, February 9 from 4:30-6:30 pm. See you there!

It’s been an honor working with this talented group of community artists: Teatro Paloma, Matty Geez, Sir Dominique Jordan and Shauna Yorty, as part of the first cohort to go through Lancaster’s PACE program. (click on the link to learn more about each of our projects.)

Through a series of surprising, curious, and unconventional installations, events, surveys, performances in and around my studio in the West End, I’ve worked to reintroduce my neighbors to the beauty and magic of their neighborhood— the people in it, the spaces, and the small, magical things we often miss when we are connecting only via screens.  I’ve been working to engage people’s attention from a structure outside of an algorithmic architecture —unmediated by an institution—and one that they don’t have an obvious category for. This can catch people off guard, giving them an opportunity to think about, and interact with their neighborhood differently. Ideally with  poignancy, humor, delight, and agency, rather than rage, angst and frustration with an imperfect world. 
Through the collaborative projects of Welcome to the Analog Neighborhood, I’m exploring how participatory art can lead neighbors in the collective art of community building. I encourage participants to experience their essential role in the neighborhood, to take ownership of it, to care about it and care for it. Whether it’s following a map of delights around the block, imagining secret portals to other worlds, checking your phone into a hotel, putting a line from a poem on a sign in your window, writing love notes, listening to a record with a stranger, making, sharing and talking about art, these projects open doors that beckon people to enter, engage and enjoy.

Music For Everyone: Songs for Justice Volume 1 Event

On Tuesday, January 31, Modern Art and Machines in Between had the pleasure hosting Music For Everyone Songs for Justice Volume One artists Terrian Mack, Le Hinton and Gerry McCritty to the Vinyl Church for an evening of inspiration.

“Songs For Justice is a convergence of music, spoken word, visual art, poetry, history as well as discussion questions into a series of vinyl 45 records that include inspiring and educational information and resources to stimulate dialogue and, ultimately, healing and change. These records are released periodically on significant historical dates in the struggle for civil and human rights. Each record features various leaders, events and narratives around an array of civil and human rights causes and issues.”

And mark your calendar’s for the last Tuesday of every month for more Music for Everyone Songs for Justice programming.

House of Poetry Open Mic at Modern Art's Vinyl Church

A big thank you to the wonderful folks from Nobody’s Pen, and all of the talented poets who showed up to share their energy, words and warmth at the Vinyl Church.

Machines In Between Episode 1: Saturation

We are proud to announce the release of Machines in Between’s first episode. Available on www.machinesinbetween.com or wherever you download your sound.

Machines in Between is a genre-bending serial audio drama that considers our present state of technological saturation. It is part mixtape, surreal performance, and philosophical experiment. Hosts John and Libby Modern guide the listener through a scintillating sonic landscape—an accumulation of bent stories, surprising cultural analysis, historical reflection, lush soundscapes, and beats sampled from obscure religious records. And along the way John and Libby negotiate their own relationship and their own sense of reality as they confront the creeping influence of the world’s leading tech-wellness group, Infinity 88, and its mysterious CEO Kelvin Trinsel.

In the first episode of this off-kilter variety show, the listener is treated to a lush array of samples, original beats, and eclectic stories that take up the question of what is happening now. What is to be done as we grow entangled with machines, their pleasures, their economies, and their conditions of possibility? Smart devices. Sex toys. Robot intimacies. Kitchen appliances. Religious technics. Urban cyborgs. And machines that rust and wound and bleed into the ground. In Saturation hosts John and Libby Modern invite world-renowned philosophers, historians, and musicians to consider how machines reveal something about who we are and who we imagine ourselves to be. With appearances from Joan Scott, William Robert, Maia Kotrosits, and Ahmad Greene-Hayes, the premier episode of Machines in Between is also the first public demonstration of the Rosary 1653, a new sonic-emotional-spiritual technology provided by series sponsor Infinity 88.

Thank you, analog neighbors!

A big shout out to all the wonderful people who helped out, participated, came to visit, gave their phones a vacation, performed, paraded, waved, bellhopped, concierge-ed, lobby boy-ed, interviewed, photographed, hosted signs in their yards, braved the heat to walk the maps of delights, set up neighborhood delights along the way, and so much more, during Modern Art's Welcome to the Analog Weekend. We had a blast!

Shout out to Michelle Johnsen for all of the amazing photos below (and for stepping in to help out along the way), to Matt Johnson, Lina Seijo Herbert, Gabrielle Buzgo-Martin, Kerry Sherin Wright, Michele Lombardo and family, Dennis Herbert, Lauren Snell, and Nicole Michels for volunteering, Cristian Toro Meza for interviewing and interpreting, Jill Good for inspiring, Mary Smucker Schroeder , Jenny Schulder Brant and Sidney Brant for helping me pull this together, John Modern for all the love and audio fixing, Scott Bookman and Laura Roberts for setting up their wacko sidewalk boutique, Streetbeans for the fabulous music and parade and not flinching despite the heat, Dawn Cox for feeding me, Shauna Yorty for almost getting stuck in the portal to Nebraska but finding her way out (!), thanks to the Lancaster's Chestnut Hill Neighbors for hosting the 40+ signs in your yards, to Stephanie Bradford, Michele Lombardo, and Erik Anderson for your narrative delights, to Ron B Leik for cutting wood for the Phonotel sign, Amanda Barber for creating a chalk amusement park on the path, To Matty Geez for his magical cacti, to Mean Cup for offering fist bumps and stickers to participants. And a big thank you to the City of Lancaster, PA and Neighborhood Engagement Lancaster for supporting this project through their PACE Neighbors program. (and thanks to all the people I know I'm forgetting!!)

Welcome to the (analog) Neighborhood

After a long winter of being stuck inside with way too much time on various screened devices, it’s time to get out there and experience all that the real live world has to offer! Bring yourself, and your devices, on over to Modern Art for a weekend a screen-free neighborhood delights. You can check your phone into the newly-remodeled Phonotel, drop your iPad off at the CrashPad, and we’ll provide you with everything you need to enjoy the people and world around you.

Machines In Between

Modern Art has been quietly working behind the scenes to make disturbing sense of our present state of saturation. Our new collaborative project, Machines in Between, will soon ask you to grow differently entangled with machines, their myths and their promise. It will soon invite you to imagine things otherwise.

Made up of a collective of artists, musicians, and writers, MACHINES IN BETWEEN is a network phenomenon, a variety show for those bored with hot takes and corpse-cold orthodoxies.

Mark your calendars for Fall 2022 for the launch of sound and spectacle. (Until then, spend a little more time with your this machine while you check out the website.)

PACE Neighbors

Modern Art is super pumped to be participating in Lancaster’s PACE (Public Art Community Engagement) Neighbors residency-signed to support a cohort of local artists in making temporary public art projects to engage Lancaster city residents in discovering the connections between art and civic government. Keep an eye out for new projects, conducted in and around Lancaster’s West End.

PACE Neighbors is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; Franklin & Marshall College; The City of Lancaster’s Comprehensive Plan, the Lancaster County Community Foundation; the High Family Foundation; and the Rick and Gail Gray Fund.

One of many Neighborhood MAPS OF DELIGHTS