Questions Without Answers for John Baldessari John Baldessari, Portrait: (Self) #1 as Control + 11 Alterations by Retouching and Airbrushing, 1974. A major exhibition devoted to the mercurial conceptual work of John Baldessari is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here, on the occasion of that retrospective, the master painter David Salle puts some probing questions to Baldessari, his friend and former teacher. I have always felt a deeply humanistic undertone in your work, despite its use of irony and obliqueness. Is a Conceptual artist different from any other kind of artist? A lot of ink has been spilled about art as the new religion, with the museum as its church. Here's a fan question: How did you come up with the idea of singing LeWitt? What’s the one thing an artist must never do? Harold Brodkey once said that people don’t like to be outshone—they’ll kill you if it bothers them enough. John Baldessari, Noses & Ears, Etc.: Blood, Fist, and Head (with Nose and Ear), 2006.
Miniature Postal Service In San Francisco Miniature Postal Service In San Francisco Posted on 30 March 2011 Crni In San Francisco you can find the World’s Smallest Postal Service which actually is up and going. It only cost $8 dollars to use their service, and it’s worth it, because why not receive a tiny tiny letter in the mail than the ordinary boring ones. Some of the letters are so small that they can get lost because no one pays attention to them, but that’s something that the traditional mail can worry about.
3D printer could build moon bases (PhysOrg.com) -- An Italian inventor, Enrico Dini, chairman of the company Monolite UK Ltd, has developed a huge three-dimensional printer called D-Shape that can print entire buildings out of sand and an inorganic binder. The printer works by spraying a thin layer of sand followed by a layer of magnesium-based binder from hundreds of nozzles on its underside. The glue turns the sand to solid stone, which is built up layer by layer from the bottom up to form a sculpture, or a sandstone building. The D-shape printer can create a building four times faster than it could be built by conventional means, and reduces the cost to half or less. There is little waste, which is better for the environment, and it can easily “print” curved structures that are difficult and expensive to build by other means. The printer can be moved along horizontal beams and four vertical columns, and the printer head is raised by only 5-10 mm for each new layer. More information: D-shape: d-shape.com/
Just the fax Most of us associate the word “fax” with that big machine that sits — largely unused — in the corner of the office. A device for sending documents over a phone line, it seems to belong to an era when cell phones were the size of walkie-talkies. Indeed, the machine’s mechanical and chemical antecedents go all the way back to 1843, and the first wireless transmission of a photo facsimile was sent from New York to London in 1924. (A picture of President Calvin Coolidge.) Now there is a very modern twist to an old technology: “FAX,” a traveling art exhibit on view through April 10 at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. The fax was a foreshadowing of Twitter and YouTube, said Joao Ribas, creator and curator of the original “FAX” exhibit in New York, and it represents the beginning of when artists got the tools to create communication networks. The work, beamed to a fax machine in the gallery, is posted on the walls. As Ribas spoke, someone was just getting over the hiccups.
Defend Your Research: Commercials Make Us Like TV More The finding: Though people say they prefer to watch television without ads, they sometimes enjoy programs that have commercial interruptions more. The study: Leif Nelson, in collaboration with Tom Meyvis of New York University’s Stern School and Jeff Galak of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School, showed subjects three kinds of TV shows: Taxi episodes, nature documentaries, and Bollywood programs. Some watched the shows with commercials, some without. Subjects who watched TV with commercials reported greater enjoyment—and were willing to pay more for DVD collections of shows by the same director—than subjects who watched without interruptions. The challenge: Could those annoying ads actually enhance television shows? Professor Nelson, defend your research. Nelson: Not only did people report greater enjoyment when shows were interrupted by commercials, but they did so regardless of the quality of the commercials. HBR: Frankly, we’re struggling with this finding. Nothing, actually. Age.
Skeleton Keys to New York's Secrets, Free While Supplies Last This summer hundreds of New Yorkers will be seen hastily undoing padlocks, ducking through creaky gates, and rifling through strange P.O. boxes. Do not be alarmed! The city-wide security breach is part of the public art project Key to the City. Anyone can simply retrieve free keys at a kiosk in Times Square (pictured above), and those keys unlock 24 locations across the city's five boroughs, which are listed on the Key to the City website. Since it launched last Thursday, hundreds of New Yorkers have already participated in the large-scale scavenger hunt, which borrows its name from the symbolic welcoming gesture relegated to visiting dignitaries and heads of state. The piece was conceived by Honduran-born artist Paul Ramírez Jonas, who has worked with keys before, to symbolize ownership and civic pride. Key-masters are busy documenting their experience on Flickr, and here are a few of the quirkier locations that are being unlocked as we speak.
Alliance of European Republican Movements Angela Merkel reveals her East German food stockpiling habit She may be the most powerful woman in Europe but that does not stop her from stockpiling food and cleaning products. German chancellor Angela Merkel, who spent her first 35 years in communist East Germany, where people often queued for food, has admitted that the fear of running short of consumer goods continues to haunt her 20 years after unification. In a magazine interview today, Merkel said that try as she might, she cannot break her hoarding habit. "I still buy something as soon as I see it, even when I don't really need it. It's a deep-seated habit stemming from the fact that in an economy where things were scarce you just used to get what you could when you could." The leader, on an annual salary of €303,000 (£257,000), said that her diet continues to be shaped by foods with an eastern European flavour which were typical in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). She said she also still uses a brand of East German washing up liquid out of habit.
A Swedish brownshirt jailed for plotting the theft of the Auschwitz entrance sign. An interesting way to become famous: A Polish judge has jailed a Swedish man for two years and eight months for plotting the theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" Auschwitz entrance sign. Anders Hoegstroem, a former neo-Nazi leader, admitted theft under a plea bargain last month and will be moved to Sweden to serve his sentence. The infamous sign was stolen in December last year and recovered in three pieces three days later. The judge in Krakow also jailed two Poles for up to two-and-a-half years. One of the pair, named as Andrzej S, apologised in court for the offence, Polish media report. The 5m (16ft) wrought-iron slogan which translates as "Work sets you free" is a potent symbol of many of the Nazi-era atrocities. The sign has since been repaired although it now hangs in the Auschwitz museum and has been replaced by a replica at the entrance to the former death camp. Three other Poles were given prison terms earlier this year for the theft which was thought to have been ordered by another Swede still at large.
Why Doesn’t Facebook Look Like This? As you may be aware, tomorrow, Facebook kicks off its big f8 developer conference in San Francisco. We’ll be there to cover what’s going on, but it looks like a lot of the information is already out there — Inside Facebook, All Facebook, and GigaOM have good write-ups of what we can likely expect. We’ve previously reported on a bunch of these possible announcements such as the Meebo Bar-clone, the “Like” button for the Internet, and auto-logins for Facebook Connect. Obviously, I’m interested in any location announcements the company may make tomorrow — but it’s not clear if Facebook will actually announce anything yet as their plans have been fluid, and possibly still aren’t solidified. These grandiose plans are great and all, but as I sit here the night before f8, I find myself wondering something very simple: why does using Facebook frustrate the hell out of me? And then I see something like this. Sure, it’s a bit Outlook-inspired, but wow do I wish I could navigate Facebook this way.
313 1. No moment in technology history has ever been more exciting or dangerous than now. The Internet is like a new computer running a flashy, exciting demo. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. — David Gelernter