Perpetual Art Machine [PAM] is a living archive of 21st century international video art featuring over 2000 videos and over 1000 artists from over 50 countries.[PAM]’s rapid growth leverages the full potential of convergent media, advanced computing and database technologies not only to stream video artist’s work online, but also to exhibit video in large-scale interactive installations. Created in December 2005 as a collaboration between the artists Lee Wells, Raphaele Shirley, Chris Borkowski and Aaron Miller, [PAM] democratizes the curatorial process for both the artists and for the viewer/user through an open submission policy, social tag-ging and touchscreen/keyword access during display.

A sample of the [PAM] video grid

 [PAm] Installation View 

New York International Fringe Festival

Founding Member

Director Of Fringe Al Fresco - Outdoor Events 1997-1999 

In 1997, Raphaele's long time collaborator in theater works, Aaron Beall invited her to join him and a few others in the creation of  a Fringe Festival in New York City. At the time only Philadelphia and Seattle had a Fringe festival in the US.

He also added to the invitation a challenge: "to wrap the Lower East Side" as Christo would a building. Raphaele accepted. How to do this with no budget and only 8 months lead time? The conclusion: the wrapping had to be metaphorical and punctuated as opposed to literal and continuous. For this she teamed up with Q Williams, in charge of out door performances and with the summer architecture program of Pratt University and a number of visual artists. They named the project FringeAlFresco. Below a few examples of the works installed summers 1997,98 and 99.

"Show World Center"

Aaron Beall  and Raphaele in 2001 migrated to the creation of a new project. The Fringe was established and running smoothly in its third year. Enter "Show World": Due to the 40%/60%  law established by Rudy Giuliani all Adult entertainment had to devote 40% of their business real-estate to endeavors other than adult entertainment. They proposed to the management to build an experimental arts club. A place where performance, theater, film, contemporary could meld, and this seated in the heart of one of the most notorious adult entertainment centers "Show World".The team: Aaron Beall, Caraid O-Brian, Raphaele Shirley and sound engineer Sean McFAul succeeded in building the club,  inviting artists and by 2003 the space was thriving. The Scope Art Fair's first opening party was held in the space from which the below photographs were taken.

More details can be found on this project in the book "The Devil's Playground" by James Traub. 

"Transits in e "

"Transit in E" was a live  2 hour  Sound and Video  performance conceived and realized with Dino Lupelli. The duo performed live the project in several venues, new media art festivals and theaters in Italy from 2002 to 2004.