Photos from last nights OTO with Annie Abrahams now up at OTO’s Flickr Set permanent link to this post

Check it out!

From turbulence.org:

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Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)
A Juried International Competition
Call for Proposals

Deadline: December 15, 2008

http://turbulence.org/networked

Five writers will be commissioned to develop chapters for a networked book about networked art. The chapters will be open for revision, commentary, and translation by online collaborators. Each commissioned writer will receive $3,000 (US).

Networked Committee:
Steve Dietz (Northern Lights, MN) :: Martha CC Gabriel (net artist, Brazil) :: Geert Lovink (Institute for Network Cultures, The Netherlands) :: Nick Montfort (Massachusetts Institute for Technology, MA) :: Anne Bray (LA Freewaves, LA) :: Sean Dockray (Telic Arts Exchange, LA) :: Jo-Anne Green (NRPA, MA) :: Eduardo Navas (newmediaFIX) :: Helen Thorington (NRPA, NY)

More here: http://turbulence.org/networked permanent link to this post

Image from the performance “One the puppet of the other” with NicolasFrespech, May 26th 2007, Centre Pompidou Paris.

On October 10, from 7pm to 10 pm, Over The Opening is pleased to present The Big Kiss, a performance installation by Annie Abrahams.

What’s contact in a machine mediated world? What’s the power of the image? How does it feel to kiss without touching? Does the act change because we see it? What does it mean to construct an image with your tongue? And is there still desire? Does the act provoke it? What’s contact in a machine mediated world?

You are invited to participate in the creation of a communal kiss at OTO

Annie Abrahams is a Dutch artist living in France. Abrahams work is featured on her site “Being Human / Etant Humain”: a big interlinked universe that concentrates on the possibilities and limitations of communication as well as at aabrahams.wordpress.com

permanent link to this post

Two shapes randomly extracted from an autotrace of a JPEG reproduction of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. M.River randomly selected the top, T.Whid the bottom. It would be better if software did the random selection.

This is a sketch or mockup or whatever you want to call something that really isn’t a finished piece.

M.River adds — Two shapes painted directly on a wall. The heights of the shapes are equal to the height of the Last Supper (15’); may involve a live performance. permanent link to this post

… or at least given up on posting about them on this blog. But this has just got to be said…

McCain is such a fucking tool.


photo © Jill Greenberg permanent link to this post

M.River on the mic

update
Thanks to MTAA’s #1 fan you can see just how exciting the action is in our studio — ANIMATED!

permanent link to this post

Photos from last nights OTO with Mike Koller now up at OTO’s Flickr Set permanent link to this post

Lee Walton: Official Book Signing Event - Strand Bookstore, NYC - Lee Walton signs books form the Strand’s outdoor $1 book bins. (that’s Lee in the green hat)



This is the book I got for Lee to sign (not one from the $1 bin)



I had him sign page 148 on a the image of Manzoni signing one of his “Living Sculpture”. I think Tim and I will sign it on the page with Gilbert and George and then put it up for auction on eBay. permanent link to this post

On September 19, from 7pm to 10pm, Over The Opening is pleased to present Campfire Time, a new installation by Mike Koller. This marks his second exhibition at OTO.

“… either sitting around a campfire drinking beer and telling lies, or telling lies and drinking beer while sitting around a campfire. But I wasn’t there so I can only guess.” - from Bigfoot Has a Long, Lively Local History by Guy Barnes

OTO’s one night format provides an excellent forum to examine social situations and the various activities they surround. Koller’s 2007 instalation, “The Holiday Rejects” looked at the holiday season and the awkward obligations of our interactions during these familial events. In this spirit of experiment, “Campfire Time” examines the intimacy and spirituality of the campfire and our fascination with it. An installation featuring animated projections of the west at sunset, fake logs, terrain, a carefully edited mix of sounds, and of course the campfire itself, “Campfire Time” gives the opportunity for the viewer to develop their own ideas on the nature of our interactions around this timeless and supernatural centerpiece.

Drink beer, tell lies, sing songs, converse intimately, tell ghost stories, or quietly enjoy the recorded crackles and pops of a campfire as you sit beneath the projected sky. Stare pensively into the incandescent glow of the campfire, rest your head on a fake log, and bid a fond farewell to summer.

directions and info on OTO permanent link to this post

Astroland is now closed for the summer and forever. The 1970 dark ride Dante’s Inferno is up for sale ($225,000). Here is some video I shot on the ride a few years back. Tim and I took the video and looped it, slowed it, and ran it back and forth to make this 3 min film. For the most part, it’s just black with a person screaming. Go ahead and take one last ride.


USM from mriver on Vimeo. permanent link to this post

Mark Tribe’s Port Huron Project today in NYC!!

Here’s the info:

Public reenactment of a 1967 speech by Stokely Carmichael

Sunday, September 7, 2008, 5:00 PM
East 43rd St. at Tudor City Place, New York, NY
All the way east on 43rd Street
Subways 4, 5, 6, 6, S to Grand Central

Lots more info here. permanent link to this post

Now up on OTO’s Flickr set
permanent link to this post

Meta: haven’t done a good old geek post on the MTAA-RR in a while…

I really want to go back to using BBEdit. Overall, it’s better than TextMate (especially the search). But it’s got this syntax coloring problem when editing JS in the head of an HTML page that DRIVES. ME. NUTS. Is pictured below:



BBEdit 9 is a better than the previous version, but it gets tripped up on parans in the string if you put a forward slash in it as well (if you take the parans out it works correctly). As you can see, if you’re putting HTML tags in the string (which is probably a pretty common thing to do) it breaks the syntax coloring for the rest of the JS in the doc. This happens if the doc is set to ‘html.’ If you set it to ‘JavaScript’ then the JS is OK but the HTML doesn’t get proper syntax coloring.

Does anyone know how to fix this? It’s driving me nuts and back to TextMate. permanent link to this post

On September 5 from 7pm to 10pm, OTO kicks off their second season with EcoArtTech’s performance Externalities: Wilderness and its Others.

More info: http://www.tinjail.com/over_the_opening

EcoArtTech (Christine Nadir & Cary Peppermint) continue to rethink relations between humans, technics, technology, and the environment with Externalities: Wilderness and its Others a networked, video-based performance piece. The performance will examine the conditions of possibility for getting back to “nature.”

Friday, September 5, 2008 Starts at 7:00pm
Over The Opening (AKA MTAA’s studio)
60 North 6th St.
Brooklyn, NY (gmap)
Take the L train to Bedford Ave. permanent link to this post

Photo of Kate’s big win in MTAA’s Super Slow 5k durring Conflux 07

Conflux is an “art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space.” Last year, MTAA performed the Super Slow 5K as part of the festival. This year, I was asked to be part of the juror committee. Here are a few (of the many ) 08 projects that I’m looking forward to checking out.

Lee Walton: Official Book Signing Event - Strand Bookstore, NYC - Lee Walton signs books form the Strand’s outdoor $1 book bins.

Woody’s Ghost - Preston Poe performs the songs Woody wrote in the very locations where he wrote and sang them.

Open House - Finishing School opens the home of Matt Fisher and Todd Cooper.

C-Town Echolocation - Jeff Sisson and Bennett Williamson tour and map NYC’s C-Town supermarkets.

Speculation Station - The Eh-Team builds a faux subway entrance.

permanent link to this post

On September 5 from 7pm to 10pm, OTO kicks off our second season with EcoArtTech’s “Externalities: Wilderness and its Others”

EcoArtTech (Christine Nadir & Cary Peppermint) continue to rethink relations between humans, technics, technology, and the environment with “Externalities: Wilderness and its Others” a networked, video-based performance piece. The performance will examine the conditions of possibility for getting back to “nature”

Co-founded in 2005 by Christine Nadir and Cary Peppermint, EcoArtTech works with digital, networked, and sustainable technologies and contemporary environments to create art about the environmentality of modern life. Drawing on a wide range of literary, artistic, and theoretical fields, our aim is to imagine new, healthy, and sustainable relationships between animals, humans, and their environments and technologies.

ecoarttech.net

About OTO - Each month the artist collective MTAA convert their N6th St. Brooklyn studio into a venue for the presentation of time-based art.

map and directions

Next up on Sept. 19 - OTO’s 2nd September show with Mike Koller permanent link to this post

Back in 2004, MTAA launched the 1 year peformance video (1ypv). A few months ago the finish sequence became buggy (AKA stopped working) due to ‘undiagnosed server configuration issues’ (yeah, yeah MTAA — excuses, excuses). Although this has been a drag (mostly for T.Whid, all I do is ask Zoolander-like questions, “You mean the files are IN the computer?”) it has given me a chance to chat with a recent 1ypv Hall of Famer named Blake. Up until now, I’ve more or less avoided contact with 1ypv viewers. The silence is for no other reason than the fact that automation is an important part of the work. The wall came down when Blake and a few other recent Hall of Famers contacted us about the bug. It seemed like a good time to ask some basic questions of someone who felt the need to watch T.Whid and I sit around for a year. Following is a brief Q and A with an actual 1ypv survivor. Warning: 1ypv spoilers ahead!

M.River - So, how was the work?

Blake - Honestly, I found it amusing on a few levels: me actually looking at it for lengths of time (more on that with the next answer), the fact of timing it so one sees certain “time appropriate” sequences, (dark at night, etc), and the overall idea of someone (you folks) actually putting the “success” of the execution on the viewer.

MR - What made you decide to attempt a year with it?

B - I thought it was a fun idea; that seems so “unartistic” a response, but hey, that’s the truth of it. I liked the idea of committing myself to something like this (even if passively) for a year just to see if I’d remember to do it.

MR - How did you do it? I mean did you just turn on an old laptop, stick it on a shelf and check back in a year? I think that’s how I’d try it.

B - At first I turned it on everyday at work and let it run for the 8 hour day, checking here and there. off and on (probably for the first half of my viewing) I’d forget a day or two and come back to it. Then, when I decided to quit my job I started running it 24 hours a day in the background, and I was excited when the screens would “buffer” for hours because then I could listen to music without the sounds of the piece. The last 20 or so days were run almost nonstop on my laptop, but I’d take breaks for fear of overheating (I obviously wasn’t concerned with the work computer…ha!). When I realized I could time it to Marilyn’s death date, I started getting strict about keeping stuff running. Also, for the latter half, I’d sometimes watch for 15 or so minutes at specific intervals just to see what loops came up (tossing the wallet and toilet paper rolls were probably my favorites, why I don’t know…)

MR - Is your understanding of the work different after a year than what you expected? I mean, was doing the project different than understanding the project?

B - Well, I liked the ideas behind Tehching Hsieh’s year art, and I knew that since I was only seeing recorded loops (and not even “watching” the whole thing for an entire year) I wasn’t expecting some revelation at the end. I have thought more about time / duration and what delineates art from life (I know, gettin’ arty again), but overall, I am down with the idea of having gotten my name on the wall, as it were. Oh yeah, as a side note, I was kinda hoping that the last minute would have been yet another pre-determined / triggered loop so that no matter what time it was it switched to a sequence where you both approached the camera (breaking the 4th wall / 4th computer screen) to say “congratulations” and then blackout, but at the same time it was almost better that the time just kept rolling as if to say “it’s been a year; so what? think about ~that~, pal!” permanent link to this post

Foto di Achille Filipponi

James Powderly was detained by Chinese authorities in Beijing early Wednesday, according to a message received by Students for a Free Tibet around 5PM Beijing Standard Time, said an SFT spokesperson. The message, sent through the social networking site Twitter, read “held since 3AM”, said friend and SFT board member Nathan Dorjee. Powderly has not been heard from since-more than 24 hours later-and his whereabouts remain unknown, he said.

Photo - GRL in Rome (Enzimi 07)
Students For a Free Tibet (SFT)
Graffiti Research Lab (GRL)


Update According to BoingBoing it looks like Powderly and a few others are going to do 10 days in jail… permanent link to this post

I know that I promised to lay low for the rest of August, but this needs to be blogged!

My friend and über-talented film director Sorrel Ahlfeld has launched a great new video series promoting Barak Obama’s candidacy. Via video interviews, normal American’s give their reasons for voting Obama this year.

It’s called The Reason Campaign.

From the site:

The Reason Campaign aims to encourage substantive and productive dialogue between Americans - red state or blue - concerned about the issues facing our country today.

Currently there’s QuickTime video on the site, but they’re planning on expanding to different formats and streams soon.

Check it out… permanent link to this post

We’ve got two (count ‘em 2) Over The Opening exhibitions happening in September! The first is the 5th with EcoArtTech (aka Christine Nadir and Cary Peppermint) and then on the 19th we’ll be showing Mike Koller (his 2nd show at OTO).

Stay tuned for more details coming soon.

Otherwise, MTAA is going to be laying low until after Labor Day. We encourage everyone to be as lazy as possible for the rest of August. permanent link to this post