Art Review: Digital May 2012. Sole Survivor Film | A Documentary Film by Ky Dickens. Blotter Barn | LSD Blotter Art Archive. EMN8 Magazine: A Magazine for the Newest of New Media. Demolition of the Paris Metro | urban exploration | sleepycity. THE SAGAN SERIES (part 9) - The Humans. The Free Universal Construction Kit. Ever wanted to connect your Legos and Tinkertoys together? Now you can — and much more. Announcing the Free Universal Construction Kit: a set of adapters for complete interoperability between 10 popular construction toys. Fig. 1. The Free Universal Construction Kit. Overview Video by Riley Harmon for F.A.T. Lab + Sy-Lab. F.A.T. The Free Universal Construction Kit offers adapters between Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Motivation Our kids are already doing it! Opening doors to new creative worlds is one major reason we created the Free Universal Construction Kit.
The Kit offers a “best of all worlds” approach to play and learning that combines the advantages of each toy system. Finally, in producing the Free Universal Construction Kit, we hope to demonstrate a model of reverse engineering as a civic activity: a creative process in which anyone can develop the necessary pieces to bridge the limitations presented by mass-produced commercial artifacts. Download Figure 2. We (F.A.T. Fig. 9. Andy Warhol’s Best (and Most Bizarre!) Photos. Why 2012 will be year of the artist-entrepreneur. While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists. Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, in large part because the Internet has enabled them to do so. You see it in all forms of content, from books, to video to music. A few examples from this year: e-books: Probably the most active area in large part because there is huge shifts taking place in digital publishing.
From former mid-list writers like Barry Eisler to superstars like JK Rowling, writers are increasingly making waves in digital publishing. Video: The story of the year for artists-as-entrepreneur came at the tail-end, with Louis CK saying no thank you to corporate middlemen and putting his new concert video online for $5 a pop. So what is driving this movement towards the artist-entrepreneur that will give it huge momentum in 2012? The distribution chain is collapsing across content verticals.
Artists Who Make Instructions for Others to Make Their Art. Tomorrow is Yoko Ono’s 79th birthday. Can you believe it? Nearly 50 years ago, John Lennon visited London’s Indica Gallery and climbed a tall, white ladder, grabbed a magnifying glass that was dangling from a thread and read the tiny Ono Ceiling Painting… on the ceiling. It said, simply, “YES.” Moved, he demanded to see the artist. And that’s how they met. Or not. Ono’s written messages are a large part of her body of work, as are “Instructional Paintings.” Yoko Ono Despite your personal feelings about Yoko and whether or not she “broke up the band” or whatnot, you have to admit that many of her instruction paintings are kind of delightful.
Marcel Duchamp Let’s go way back, to the big daddy of Dada. George Brecht “Art by Instruction” blossomed in the mid-to-late 1960s, much to the earlier efforts of John Cage who taught at the New School for Social Research and laid the groundwork for Happenings and Fluxus. Lawrence Weiner Miranda July Piero Manzoni Well, what do you know. Sol LeWitt. My Whitney Biennial. Every two years when the artists list for the Whitney Biennial gets released, emotional and intellectual debates stir about who was left out and what communities went unserved. It was no different this time around as the museum released Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders’ selections for the 2012 version, likely to be the last in the Whitney’s current Marcel Breuer-designed building as it readies for the move to the meatpacking district.
My twitter feed and various art blogs streamed early opinions – some expressed relief to see deserving artists finally make the cut, others bemoaned the under-representation of women and minority artists, there was an observation that the list seemed “Artforum-y,” etc. All the attention is both a gift and a curse for its curators. The biennial, like the Oscar Awards, will always be judged harshly because its grand mission and history to survey the art of the contemporary (American?) Here’s my list: Like this: Like Loading... The Best Show At MoMA Is Not What You Think. Exquisite Corpse by Valentine Hugo, Andre Bretan, Tristan Tzara and Greta Knutson, "Landscape" (1933), colored pencil on black paper (via moma.org) With the hype surrounding the Cindy Sherman blockbuster retrospective on the 6th floor, which critics have almost unanimously praised, I was surprised to find that the most invigorating, exciting and generally mind-blowing exhibition at MoMA right now is Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration, a small drawing show on the third floor.
Proving the continued importance and relevance of Surrealist art, Exquisite Corpses demonstrates that exhibitions do not have to be the biggest or display the hottest contemporary artist to be invigorating. These works easily delve into important artistic issues about the representation of not only the human figure but also the thoughts, emotions, sexuality and experiences contained within it. Joan Miró, "Drawing – Collage" (1936), crayon and decals on paper (via moma.org) The Problem With The Whitney Biennial 2012 List. Today Herb Tam wrote about the problems already plaguing the 2012 Whitney Biennial since the artists names were leaked last month. Tam writes on his blog, "The biennial, like the Oscar Awards, will always be judged harshly because its grand mission and history to survey the art of the contemporary (American?)
Moment makes it among the most prestigious group exhibitions to be included in, and also sets up an impossibly ambitious thesis to satisfy. " This is, sadly, true. I don't envy the position that curators Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sander were in, because inevitably many well-known artists were miffed that they weren't chosen. So what are we missing from the list? We've included some of the breakout artists on Tam's list in the slideshow below, which range from a wild, gender bending performer to an artist who resurrected the art of silhouettes.
W.A.G.E. Searches for a Fair System to Pay Artists, Artists Space to Be Test Case. The W.A.G.E. roundtable at the "#Class" series at Winkleman Gallery, March , 2010. (photo by Hrag Vartanian) The incentive behind this presentation was to set the tone for a much larger debate concerning the fair and systematic payment of artists.
W.A.G.E. describe themselves as, “An activist group of artists, art workers, performers and independent curators fighting to get paid for making the world more interesting.” Where I am often wary of workers unions becoming hamstrung by bureaucracy, W.A.G.E. seems to be very clear about positioning themselves in a sphere that is realistic for the creative field and with viable and attainable goals. The question now it seems is how to make a payment system sustainable. In order to get the ball rolling on implementing a standard system (and hopefully writing in artist payments as a line item within organizational budgets), W.A.G.E. partnered with Artists Space who agreed to be the test case and potentially to become the first W.A.G.E.
Wp-content/uploads/2011/03/CriticalDance-Blinking-Review.pdf. Video Essay: “The Martin Scorsese Film School” For the past couple of weeks, movie buffs have been tweeting, discussing, and analyzing this piece from Fast Company, which distilled a four hour interview with Martin Scorsese into a list of 85 films “you need to see to know anything about film” — Mr.
Scorsese’s mini-film school, if you will. There are some real surprises on the list: no Kubrick, no Fellini, no Kurosawa, no Peckinpah, very little French New Wave, only one Hitchcock. Meanwhile, there’s more Altman than we might have anticipated, as well as copious amounts of Welles and Rossellini. If Marty is like us — and we’d like to imagine he is — there’s also a very good chance that these are just the 85 movies that were on his mind that day. Your list of favorite films is a living thing, always changing and amending, growing and revising; we’d bet good American money he thought of five films he should’ve included the second he walked out the door. Video Essay: “The Martin Scorsese Film School” from Flavorwire on Vimeo. 10 Works of Art We Can’t Believe They Got Away With. Controversial Afro-Swedish Artist Speaks, “It’s a Disturbing Picture But It’s Also a Disturbing Subject”
A photo of the Swedish minister feeding the artist some of the cake (image via friatider.se via Facebook) In the last few days, Afro-Swedish artist Makode Linde has learned the power of the viral web. His controversial cake performance at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet has ricocheted around the world and has garnered reactions of all types from support of his edgy gesture to raise awareness about female genital mutilation to the denunciation of the artist and the Swedish culture minister pictured in the event photos as racists. Linde spoke to Hyperallergic about the controversy and he was happy to explain the context for the piece and how commenters have not wanted to delve deeper into the work and what it has to say. Artist Makode Linde speaking to Al Jazeera via Skype (via aljazeera.com) As one of the only Afro-Swedish artists it is perhaps no surprise that Linde has made race a central focus of his body of work.
His Afromantics series, which began in 2004, totals roughly 700 sculptures. In Response To Bruce Sterling's "Essay On The New Aesthetic" Zigelbaum + Coelho, Six-Forty by Four-Eighty. Photo by James Medcraft. Early Tuesday morning my friend Matt IM’d me with a link to Bruce Sterling’s “Essay on The New Aesthetic”, a 5,000-word rant about a (potentially) emerging new movement in visual culture.
“Is this a thing?” Asked Matt. Quickly scanning Sterling’s dense, meandering essay, the best answer I could come up with was, “I think so?” This was a good thing. Sterling had some shining praise and encouragement for the New Aesthetic, as well as some biting criticism (he seemed to want to give the movement some tough love, nudging it to grow into itself, to stop gawking at tech and grow some teeth). To that end, we’ve asked a few of our tech art friends to weigh in on the New Aesthetic and Sterling’s assessment.
Marius Watz, “The Problem with Perpetual Newness” Kyle Chayka, “The New Aesthetic: Going Native” Jonathan Minard, “Straining to Envision the New Aesthetic” Greg Borenstein, “What It’s Like To Be A 21st Century Thing” An Essay on the New Aesthetic | Beyond The Beyond. An Essay on the New Aesthetic Bruce Sterling I witnessed the New Aesthetic panel at South by Southwest 2012. It was a significant event and a good thing to see. If you know nothing of the “New Aesthetic,” or if you have no idea what “SXSW” is, you should repair your ignorance right away. Go peruse this: Now, I know full well that many people never returned from that link I placed up there. You people are either exceedingly determined blog-readers, or else you already know something about the New Aesthetic.
You people already know who you are. Joanne McNeil of Rhizome was right when she said at SXSW that things like the New Aesthetic often happen. The New Aesthetic is image-processing for British media designers. This is one of those moments when the art world sidles over toward a visual technology and tries to get all metaphysical. The New Aesthetic concerns itself with “an eruption of the digital into the physical.” He has company. It’s also deep. #sxaesthetic. Report from Austin, Texas, on the New Aesthetic panel at SXSW. At SXSW this year, I asked four people to comment on the New Aesthetic, which if you don’t know is an investigation / project / tumblr looking at technologically-enabled novelty in the world.
(Previously: the original blog post, the main tumblr, my talk at Web Directions South.) I opened the panel by talking about the origins of NA, in a frustration at retro-ness (the belief that authenticity can only be located in the past)—best encapsulated by Russell’s post here: Every hep shop seems to be full of tweeds and leather and carefully authentic bits of restrained artisinal fashion. I think most of Shoreditch would be wondering around in a leather apron if it could. With pipe and beard and rickets. But what has also been brilliant is that other people have pitched in. Names have power (I showed a slide of Aleister Crowley at this point; hell, I’ll show it again—). They are all smart and good and you should go and read them now. Naked Before the Camera: A Selection of Vintage Nudes [NSFW] New Data Reveals Artists Aren’t Gettin’ Paid. Wasted Rita has a whole selection of hilarious works exploring the life of the broke artist like this one, “I am…” (via ritabored.blogspot.com) Tonight, the group W.A.G.E.
(Working Artists and the Greater Economy), will release the results of the artists survey they conducted with Artists Space, a gallery in Soho. The survey found that 58% of the nearly 1,000 artists interviewed (including visual and performing artists) received no compensation at all for exhibiting or presenting their work at nonprofits in New York. In the weeks prior to these survey results being released I had been conducting my own, informal survey of the artists participating in this year’s Whitney Biennial, and found that none of those exhibited in the galleries that I exchanged emails with were paid to include their work — arguably one of the most important exhibitions of young and contemporary artists in the city.
Many of the people I tell this to have no idea that artists aren’t paid for exhibiting. Why Are (Most) Artists (So Fucking) Poor? A detail of William Powhida and W.A.G.E.'s "“Why Are (Most) Artists (So Fucking) Poor?” (2012), graphite on paper (all images copyright W.A.G.E. and the artist) (click for the whole image) On Friday evening W.A.G.E. presented the results of its 2010 survey of payments received by artists who exhibited with nonprofit art institutions in New York City between 2005 and 2010. The survey found that 58% of artists who responded received “no form of payment.” The audience, including Artists Space director Stefan Kalmár, asked questions critical of the survey methodology, but did not refute the group’s findings.
W.A.G.E. has partnered with Artists Space to explore the development of a self-regulatory model, mandating the implementation of a fee schedule within the institution. Presenter A.K. The general counter-arguments include the belief that artists will eventually be paid through the sales of the work in the commercial market and that nonprofits do not have the budgets to pay artists. Artists You Thought You Knew Go Sci-Fi. What we tend to think of when we think "hologram" is this scene from the original Star Wars film, and what they really look like in a gallery is like the James Turrell on the right (via artnewyorkcity) If you’re a Star Wars fan, have noticed the reflective stickers on your credit card, or have ever worn those weird spooky glasses with eyes on the outside, you know what a hologram is.
But what about holograms as fine art? This summer the New Museum is presenting Pictures from the Moon, a small exhibition of rarely seen holographic works by several major artists including Bruce Nauman, Louise Bourgeois, Eric Orr, Ed Ruscha and James Turrell (who had a large Large Holograms show at Pace Wildenstein in 2009, video below). Bruce Nauman, "Hologram H from Second Hologram Serie: Full Figure Poses (from A-J)" (1969), Holographic image on glass, 10 x 8 in (20.3 x 25.4 cm). © 2012 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (via New Museum) What?! Exactly. Related links: Artist Sleeps Outside Till the Grass Grows.
Artist Payments at Nonprofits, By the Numbers. In Response To Bruce Sterling's "Essay On The New Aesthetic" An Essay on the New Aesthetic | Beyond The Beyond. Required Reading (April 8, 2012) Yung Jake Gets Embedded With An Anthem To Virality. Mark Ronson's Royal Ballet Piece 'Carbon Life' Features Otherworldly Costumes By Gareth Pugh (PHOTO)
Www.nudenite.com/media/How to Create an Artist Brand.pdf. Www.nudenite.com/media/How to Submit to Art Shows.pdf.