NYT obit #
Error: I'm afraid this is the first I've heard of a "html>" flavoured Blosxom. Try dropping the "/+html>" bit from the end of the URL.
Use Node.js with BBEdit text filters feature
I was poking around the jQuery git repo the other day and noticed that they’ve started using Node for all their build scripts (I’m assuming, or maybe remembering faultily, that they were using Ant or Ruby for the build stuff previously). Makes sense: jQuery — make it 100% JavaScript, even down to the build scripts.
Then a little bulb went off in my head. “Oh yeah,” I thought to myself, “with Node one can now use JavaScript to write shell scripts.” (Duh!? I know.)
Later that day I found myself needing to de/unencode URIs to be used as URI components. “Simple,” I thought, “I’ll just use JavaScript’s decodeURIComponent and encodeURIComponent methods via Node and a BBEdit text filter.” But. Um. Turned out it wasn’t that simple (or maybe I’m just dumb).
Anyway, after a bit of head-scratching and digging around Node’s and BBEdit’s documentation, I got it working. The two scripts linked below are very simple, single-serving tools. You can run JavaScript’s encodeURIComponent with one and decodeURIComponent with the other. That’s it. One can imagine that it will now be very easy to port many useful JavaScript programs to be used as BBEdit text filters. JSLint or JSONLint come to mind.
To use the scripts you need to:
RIP Steve Jobs 1955- 2011
NYT obit
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Manual Zoom Mirage
MTAA will be web residents on Lee Walton’s blog this month (or week or something). I have no idea what M.River plans to do but I’m thinking I might revisit some of our (what I consider) under-appreciated past work.
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The first piece in this little nostalgia trip is 2003’s IN PREPARATION FOR THE SUMMER AIR IN BROOKLYN TO RISE FROM THE CONCRETE IN A MANNER WHICH DISTORTS ONE’S ABILITY TO JUDGE DISTANCE AND MEANING (AKA MANUAL ZOOM MIRAGE).
We did this in the early summer of ‘03 for our friend Dan’s gallery, Rome Arts. The gallery was in a storefront on Havermeyer St. in Brooklyn.
It was a solo show! The catch? The gallery couldn’t really be open all summer so the show had to be viewable from the sidewalk. You’re thinking and we said at the time, “you must be joking.”
Yeah, anyway.
We decided the show would consist of 1 image. The image would be printed on a postcard announcing the show. The postcard WAS the show.
The piece was very formal in a way. It was very interested in where the digital image lies, where does it exist? We put a big print of the image in the gallery, yet everyone had the *exact* same thing on the postcards they received. In the gallery it was just printed bigger. It was also on the web, freely-licensed (Creative Commons licensing was very new at the time).
It’s purpose was to try to get the viewer to question their relationship to a digital, infinitely-reproducible image. To try to get them to notice that that the image exists in a sort of invisible blur across time and space. Except, it doesn’t. You and it are here and now. So in point 8 in the text in the image:
Due to the fact this artwork contains a 1:8 scale model card, the “actual artwork,” the prediction of the hottest temperature ever, and an act of looking through the window into Rome Arts, we need to note that the “really, really actual artwork” is the accumulation of all these objects and moments.
Super nice Beuys gif
By John Michael Boling, lot’s more here, check it out…
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links for 2011-04-29
MTAA claimin’
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more SNAD history…
Don’t forget this one!
http://544x378.free.fr/(WebTV)/simpleNETARTdiagram.html
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M.River gave me a troll for my birthday
Got this email from M.River:
Hey Tim
I know you’ve been wanting one, so I went all out and got you one of those ‘Old School’ or you might even say ‘Retro’ Trolls for you b-day. It’s in the comments section of this AFC post. Happy Birthday.
http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/03/25/introducing-the-graphics-interchange-format-exhibition-website/
Oh, and along with the Retro-Troll gift, you can scroll down and hit ‘Like’ on my M.River comment over and over… then watch your Troll go bananas.
Enjoy.
links for 2011-03-29
Speaking of SNAD remixes…
Here’s a one that’s new to me:
by Jon Cates.
Originally…
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Weird mix run
The app controlling the playlist on my iPhone died today while I was on my morning run. The iPod app took over and started playing from the last song, not from my running playlist, but from the entire library. The result was the strange playlist below.
Starting with Angel of Death, where the app died, here’s the list:
Angel of Death - Slayer (one of the best rock songs ever recorded)
(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes - Elvis Costello
Angie - The Rolling Stones
Annointing of Seer - High On Fire
Another Love Song - Queens Of The Stone Age
Any Day Now What the World Needs Now - Burt Bacharach
Apache - Sugarhill Gang
Apple Blossom - The White Stripes
Aquarian - Sleep
Are You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix Experience (one of the best rock songs ever recorded)
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MTAA in Milwaukee
Like Nathaniel says, we’ll be in Milwaukee this week telling everyone what awesome artists we are. And doing some other stuff too.
Here’s the info:
MTAA: a PowerPoint lecture + some other stuff
Wednesday, 12/08/2010, 7:00pm – 8:00PM
Arts Center Lecture Hall, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Part of the Artists Now! Lecture Series
Free and open to the public
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No Customs
We’re in a show in Abu Dhabi. It’s in the McCoys’ apartment.
Check it out… from the press release:
No Customs#
November 4-27, 2010
opening reception: Thursday Nov 4, 7-9 pm
curated by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy
an exhibition of transmissible ideas with:
Vito Acconci
Jason Robert Bell / Marni Kotak
Torsten Z. Burns
Jennifer Dalton / Susan Hamburger
Anthony Discenza
Melissa Dubbin / Aaron Davidson
Bill Durgin
Tara Fracalossi
David Grubbs
Sara Hubbs
Thomas Lail
Michael Mandiberg
MTAA
Marisa Olson
Jonathan Schipper
Mark Tribe
Karen Yasinsky
A common art-making strategy when one enters into new territory is to listen, to ask, and to wait. As newcomers to Abu Dhabi, we considered this strategy, but then rejected it. Instead of waiting to receive information, we begin our sojourn in the Emirates by making an offer. In curating this show, No Customs, held in our remarkably gallery like living space, we offer the work of artists connected to us from our home community of New York City. When they asked what life is like here, we answered we didn’t yet know. We told them to send what they could send via email, via instructions, via concept. We told them to send it fast. So then, what we have is a show called No Customs. This title is a double entendre. Practically, since no objects have been mailed, we were not slowed by the expense of shipping and the delays of customs. Metaphorically, the show is not about tradition or interpretation, but rather about mapping and transcription. How does form map onto landscape? How does it transform landscape? How do you demarcate space for contemplation, for understanding, for revolution? What happens to the body when its image occupies this demarcated space?
Landscape
First, the approach to a problem. This is what we hear when listening to Vito Acconci’s audio piece, Research Station, Antarctica, For Your Ears Only (2004-2010). How does an artist (here architect) turn a landscape into a series of constraints to be addressed, to create a form? In the photographs of Melissa Dubbin and Aaron Davidson, the long time collaborators use smoke bombs to test the landscape. They create form with weather, wind, light, and clouds. In a site specific project by Thomas Lail, a series of Buckminister Fuller domes are superimposed over the city view of Abu Dhabi, creating another take on the domes of the city and adding to the enormous architectural speculation already here. In another project, a memory sequence of images by Tara Fracalossi offers a counterpoint to the desert with images of most verdant spring and bleakest winter. These images purport to be memory, but their repetition on the wall creates matrices of classifications that map new space. In the end they are more like letters in an alphabet than like stories of particular landscapes.
Demarcated space
In answering a call to show work in Abu Dhabi, many artists considered the question of mapping, both graphically and metaphorically. In the work of Michael Mandiberg, the artist asked us to find an Arabic map of the USA in which we recreate the laser cuttings of print media that he is known for. In this work the message and the map collide. The artist duo MTAA and the sculptor Sara Hubbs sent ideas for works that, though they are generated very differently, come up with surprisingly congruent projects. MTAA asked us to find “the most colorful place” in Abu Dhabi. Then they provided software that translated this image into an abstract digital image (referred to as “the aesthetic object”). We could then display this any way we saw fit. In Sara Hubb’s project, an abstract form also results from a behind the scenes process. She photographed decaying areas of New York City and asked us to reproduce the patterns they create in plaster, building up a surface to form decoration from blight.
The projects of Jonathan Schipper and the collaborative team of Jennifer Dalton and Susan Hamburger ask us the audience to participate in the creation of the artwork by zeroing in on our patterns of behavior. In the ambitious project by Schipper, entitled A Million Dollar Walk, attendees of the opening reception will be given the opportunity to carry a briefcase full of money on a prescribed path through the building. Dalton and Hamburger ask participants questions about their behavior in Abu Dhabi, creating a changing sculptural bar graph that measures their assumptions about life in the capitol against actual practice.
Four artists in the exhibition deal with space by creating voids some for the viewer to inhabit speculatively others by creating spaces for lost objects. In her video mixtape project, Marisa Olson casts herself as an outsourced worker and creates a mash-up of Arab covers of American karaoke classics. The singers of course, are us by implication. In The New Revolution (2010), Mark Tribe creates an installation that invites spectators to consider their own ideas about revolution. David Grubbs, a noted musician, sent us instructions to render a beautiful wall drawing whose omissions create open spaces for meaning to drift. In an animation by Karen Yasinsky, You’d Better Be Careful, omitted objects and spaces set interpretation even farther adrift.
Bodies
Several of the artists in the show responded with work implying performative space. In the video Double Face Fantasy by Jason Robert Bell and Marni Kotak this space is a virtual one in that a portrait transforms through a technical gesture. Anthony Discenza’s video, The Future has Already Been Written creates a tour de force collage of science fiction, and we follow the body of Charlton Heston through alternate visions of the future. In the work of Torsten Burns, Resurrectables (Yellow-Mobilers), the artist asked us to curate a selection of performance stills from a huge array of images of costumes, props, and locations. We selected images of vehicles, conveying transmission, speed, and the framing of the body as it moves through space. Finally, the work of photographer Bill Durgin presents work that brings it all together. The body becomes a landscape of skin, finally an abstracted “aesthetic object”.
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No Customs is located at Sama Tower, Suite 3708, Abu Dhabi. Sama Tower is at the corner of Airport Rd and Electra Rd., near the NMC (New Medical Center). The exhibition will be open Saturdays from 1-5 through Nov. 27 and by appointment. Please contact Jennifer or Kevin McCoy with questions and image requests: info@mccoyspace.com
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Autotrace #2 (Nocturne; performative)
Artists MTAA’s Autotrace series is a group of prints, installations and performances where the artists take a digital reproduction (JPEG) of a well-known painting and then use Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace feature to automatically transform the digital bitmap image into a digital vector image.
Different strategies are then used to present a new, original artwork from the autotraced image.
Performative Autotrace
The performative variety of the Autotrace takes the form of a live, public demonstration of the technique. The mechanics of the autotrace are performed on the artists’ computer and projected before an audience. Usually the performance concludes after a single vector shape is randomly chosen from the autotraced bitmap and presented as a new work of art.
MTAA conducted their first1 performative autotrace during a lecture conducted for the Takeovers & Makeovers: Artistic Appropriation, Fair Use and Copyright in the Digital Age symposium at UC Berkeley on November 7th, 2008. A reproduction of Joan Miro’s Nocturne was used.
Autotrace #2 (Nocturne; performative) is freely available to download. Follow the link below to acquire the artwork.
Download the shape in SVG2 format.
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This JPEG reproduction of Joan Miro’s Nocturne was used as the base for Autotrace #2 (Nocturne; performative).
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ARTBarn: first day in San Jose
We arrived in San Jose around 11:30 AM PT and went straight to South Hall. The rest of the afternoon was spent arranging the barn-making materials into the ‘artful’ arrangement you see above (more photos).
We’ll be raising the barn tomorrow!
If you’re in San Jose (or thereabouts) you can come by South Hall any time from 11AM - 7PM. Register on-line if you can so we know how many folks to expect.
ALSO — we’ll be participating in an artist talk this evening in South Hall from 5:30 - 7:00PM!
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Random Friday post from T.Whid 4-23-10
Here’s some High on Fire for ya! FROST HAMMER!!!!!!!!
High on Fire: Frost Hammer at Pitchfork
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#class thesis response
William Powhida posted to the hashtagclass blog a call for reflections on the project. He specifically asked participants to respond to the original thesis statement:
Art is a luxury commodity for the wealthy that limits the possibility of ownership, understanding, and access based on class, education and geography.
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Guess they are random…
I guess M.River’s ‘random Friday’ posts really are random as he missed yesterday :-(
M.River’s random Friday…
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Reminder: Autotrace #4 at #class THIS WEEK!
Autotrace #4
MTAA will conduct a live demonstration of our art-making technique called “Autotrace.”
The performative variety of the Autotrace takes the form of a live, public demonstration of the technique. The mechanics of the autotrace are performed on the artists’ computer and projected before an audience. Usually the performance concludes after a single vector shape is randomly chosen from the autotraced bitmap and presented as a new aesthetic object i.e. work of art.
More on MTAA’s Autotrace series: Autotrace #2 (Nocturne; performative) and AutoTrace #1 (Full Fathom Five).
The performance will be followed by a Q&A.
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Random Video App
I’m happy to announce that we’re releasing an OS X application that does one thing: plays back a playlist of videos randomly until you make it stop.
We call it Random Video App.
If you want to play back a bunch of videos randomly from a Macintosh computer, this will do it for you. It uses the QuickTime framework so any video that QuickTime can play will be played by this app. We’ve used it to play SD and HD video in real-world gallery situations.
Most of the code was originally written by Alex Galloway for MTAA’s “One Year Performance Video (gallery version).” It was then updated for “Karaoke Deathmatch 100.” It’s been updated and used for other pieces over the years.
For this public release, I’ve updated and streamlined the software a bit and done other little adjustments to make it suitable for distribution.
Again, it does one thing: plays back a playlist of videos completely randomly. It’s been well-tested in the real world where it’s run video installations for hours and hours with no crashes, freezes, panics or other nasty things occurring.
Download Random Video App
It’s important that you read the readme.txt distributed with the software or you won’t know how to use it. If you find it useful and you use it, let us know. It would make us happy to know it was useful to you.
more notes
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7 years! blog-o-versary
Pathetically, not much has changed around here since last year. STILL haven’t moved this thing over to Wordpress. Maybe this year…
Luckily M.River’s keeping it running.
The required link to the first post.
More importantly, it’s Alligators in the Sewers Day!
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Happy Holidays 2009
This awesome video is from 2004 and was created by the wonderful and talented Bill Hallinan. It stars T.Whid as the guy on the tree.
Happy Holidays everybody!
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Urgent message from the TSA!
Captured by M.River’s phone at LGA.
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suicidemachine.org
The email reads:
Tired of your Social Network?
Liberate yourself and your ‘friends’ with a web2.0 suicide! The Web2.0 Suicide Machine lets you effectively delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your web2.0 alterego. The machine is developed in the moddr_lab at WORM (Rotterdam), and serves as a metaphor for the http://suicidemachine.org website which moddr_ hosts; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide-scripts are maintained…
Our services currently run with Facebook.com, Myspace.com and LinkedIn.com; simply enter your username and password for the required service, and our machine will systematically login to your account, change your profile picture, and then one by one delete all of your friends.
Artistic Licenses
Check it out! By Andy Deck.
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Pseudo-Futurist Video Game Improvisation Extravaganza
Generally, I hate Second Life art, but I love the 01s, so here ya go…
Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG#
Pseudo-Futurist Video Game Improvisation Extravaganza
Live in Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/35/25/22/
Monday Nov. 16, 5-6pm (EST time); 2-3pm (Second Life time)
Synthetic Performances are online live gaming sessions inside the virtual world of Second Life, performed by Eva and Franco Mattes through their avatars, which were constructed from their bodies and faces. The series arose out of the artists’ polemical stance toward performance art. This lead the Mattes on the one hand to breach the classic rules of performance, and on the other to present these works - the efficacy of which was based on the radical way they explored the issues of the body, violence, sexuality, identity and public space - in a context where these issues acquire completely different, paradoxical meanings.
Anyone can participate from all over the world by clicking the link above. If you don’t have a Second Life account you can sign up for free.
Presented by PERFORMA09 - www.performa-arts.org
Produced with the support of Eyebeam
Two new art blogs
The art market downturn hasn’t harmed one area of the art world — art blogs!
Two new ones made it into my feed reader recently.
The first is Idiom. Published by art lovers, art bloggers and art collectors (just all around awesome art dudes) Barry Hoggard and James Wagner, the site promises “a local, engaged counterpoint to the prevailing discourse of contemporary art.” And so far, so good with longer form, thoughtful articles.
The second is Hyperallergic. It’s edited by the well-known art blogger Hrag Vartanian and published by someone I haven’t heard of named Veken Gueyikian (who looks to be a marketing dude). This one promises “a forum for serious and radical thinking about visual art.” Sounds good!
Looking forward to what these two new sites will have in store and wishing them well.
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All About Greenpoint’s Rooftop Farms
This looks pretty cool, via press release no less (I (almost) never post PRs).
PIE IN THE SKY: All About Greenpoint’s Rooftop Farms
w/ Annie Novak
FREE LECTURE
MONDAY, Oct. 5, 7:30pm
PETE’S CANDY STORE
(709 Lorimer St., Brooklyn)
New York City is a Farmer’s Paradise! Just ask Annie Novak, one of the masterminds behind Greenpoint’s Rooftop Farms, a 6,000 square foot organic farm picture-esquely plopped on top of a warehouse overlooking midtown Manhattan. Her operation — founded in partnership with Ben Flanner, a neophyte to farming, and Goode Green, a green-roofing specialist — currently produces produce for a host of Brooklyn gourmandizers, including Anella and Marlow and Sons. They even run a farm stand featuring fresh picked produce every Sunday! Come hear how this urban Agronomist tells us the unlikely story of how she did it — and learn how you can too!
Vernacular Alien World Drawing Championship
Vernacular Alien World Drawing Championship, Maryland
M.River posted photos from our (using ‘our’ loosely as M.River conducted this one on his own) participatory performance coinciding with our show 2Live at The Electronic Gallery at Salisbury University, MD.
Check ‘em out…
Also, lots more at Jennifer Poe’s Flickr set as well.
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I find this hilarious
a J.Crew ad…
Should have pictured him with his fly open at least, wouldn’t you agree?
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2live @ Salisbury University Electronic Gallery
2live installation shot: "Want v3" and "(LOVE + HATE) x 100"
We have a solo show up right now. It’s in Salisbury, MD so you won’t see it. But it looks awesome!
…only have this one install shot thus far, more to come soon we hope.
More info on the show at this post…
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Pretty creepy
Yesterday I decided to look into buying a new domain. I have all my domains registered with Register.com so I logged in and checked out the prices on a domain. I decided that I didn’t want it and closed my browser window.
All pretty straigt-forward, except that a few minutes later I get a phone call. It’s Register.com! And they’re asking why I abandoned the purchase. Number 1: none of your damn business. Number 2: WTF?! OK, I was logged in, so they have my info… but still. To call me up because I abandoned a shopping cart. I thought it was pretty fucked up.
What do you think? Comment here.
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Want v2 (15min Dogpile June 27, 2009)
Want v2 (15min Dogpile June 27, 2009)
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Untitled Art Project — couple thoughts
If you’re not familiar with it, Paddy’s been covering the new art world reality series starting production soon (if it hasn’t already started).
I’m of a divided mind. On one hand, the general public doesn’t just simply not appreciate contemporary art — it actively has contempt for it. If UAP can help this situation even a tiny bit, it’s all good.
On the other hand, if the artists who are picked for the show don’t actively attempt to hijack it for their own agenda, then I have no respect for any of them. The thing should really never make it to TV. Every artist in the show should be disrupting it for their own purposes. This disruption should be so severe that no mere reality show producer could create anything significant from it. Seriously, any artist that allows their media image to manipulated by some producer is by definition a very bad contemporary artist.
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The DRINKERS DICTIONARY.
Ben Franklin’s The DRINKERS DICTIONARY.
A
He is Addled,
He’s casting up his Accounts,
He’s Afflicted,
He’s in his Airs.
B
He’s Biggy,
Bewitch’d,
Block and Block,
Boozy,
Bowz’d,
Been at Barbadoes,
Piss’d in the Brook,
Drunk as a Wheel-Barrow,
Burdock’d,
Buskey,
Buzzey,
Has
Stole a Manchet out of the Brewer’s Basket,
His Head is full of Bees,
Has been in the Bibbing Plot,
Has drank more than he has bled,
He’s
Bungey,
As Drunk as a Beggar,
He sees the Bears,
He’s kiss’d
black Betty,
He’s had a Thump over the Head with Sampson’s Jawbone,
He’s Bridgey.
C
He’s Cat,
Cagrin’d,
Capable,
Cramp’d,
Cherubimical,
Cherry Merry,
Wamble Crop’d,
Crack’d,
Concern’d,
Half Way to Concord,
Has taken a Chirriping-Glass,
Got Corns in his Head,
A Cup to much,
Coguy,
Copey,
He’s
heat his Copper,
He’s Crocus,
Catch’d,
He cuts his Capers,
He’s been in the Cellar,
He’s in his Cups,
Non Compos,
Cock’d,
Curv’d,
Cut,
Chipper,
Chickery,
Loaded his Cart,
He’s been too free with the Creature,
Sir Richard has taken off his
Considering Cap,
He’s Chap-fallen,
D
He’s Disguiz’d,
He’s got a Dish,
Kill’d his
Dog,
Took his Drops,
It is a Dark Day with him,
He’s a Dead Man,
Has Dipp’d his Bill,
He’s Dagg’d,
He’s seen the Devil,
E
He’s Prince Eugene,
Enter’d,
Wet both Eyes,
Cock Ey’d,
Got the Pole Evil,
Got a brass Eye,
Made an
Example,
He’s Eat a Toad & half for Breakfast.
In his Element,
F
He’s Fishey,
Fox’d,
Fuddled,
Sore
Footed,
Frozen,
Well in for’t,
Owes no Man a Farthing,
Fears no Man,
Crump Footed,
Been to France,
Flush’d,
Froze
his Mouth,
Fetter’d,
Been to a Funeral,
His Flag is out,
Fuzl’d,
Spoke with his Friend,
Been at an Indian Feast.
G
He’s Glad,
Groatable,
Gold-headed,
Glaiz’d,
Generous,
Booz’d the Gage,
As Dizzy as a Goose,
Been before George,
Got the Gout,
Had a Kick in the Guts,
Been
with Sir John Goa,
Been at Geneva,
Globular,
Got the Glanders.
H
Half and Half,
Hardy,
Top Heavy,
Got by
the Head,
Hiddey,
Got on his little Hat,
Hammerish,
Loose
in the Hilts,
Knows not the way Home,
Got the Hornson,
Haunted
with Evil Spirits,
Has Taken Hippocrates grand Elixir,
I
He’s Intoxicated.
J
Jolly,
Jagg’d,
Jambled,
Going to Jerusalem,
Jocular,
Been to Jerico,
Juicy.
K
He’s a King,
Clips the King’s English,
Seen
the French King,
The King is his Cousin,
Got Kib’d Heels,
Knapt,
Het his Kettle.
L
He’s in Liquor,
Lordly,
He makes Indentures
with his Leggs,
Well to Live,
Light,
Lappy,
Limber,
M
He sees two Moons,
Merry,
Middling,
Moon-Ey’d,
Muddled,
Seen a Flock of Moons,
Maudlin,
Mountous,
Muddy,
Rais’d his Monuments,
Mellow,
N
He’s eat the Cocoa Nut,
Nimptopsical,
Got the
Night Mare,
O
He’s Oil’d,
Eat Opium,
Smelt of an Onion,
Oxycrocium,
Overset,
P
He drank till he gave up his Half-Penny,
Pidgeon
Ey’d,
Pungey,
Priddy,
As good conditioned as a Puppy,
Has
scalt his Head Pan,
Been among the Philistines,
In his Prosperity,
He’s been among the Philippians,
He’s contending with Pharaoh,
Wasted his Paunch,
He’s Polite,
Eat a Pudding Bagg,
Q
He’s Quarrelsome,
R
He’s Rocky,
Raddled,
Rich,
Religious,
Lost his Rudder,
Ragged,
Rais’d,
Been too free with Sir
Richard,
Like a Rat in Trouble.
S
He’s Stitch’d,
Seafaring,
In the Sudds,
Strong,
Been in the Sun,
As Drunk as David’s Sow,
Swampt,
His
Skin is full,
He’s Steady,
He’s Stiff,
He’s burnt his Shoulder,
He’s got his Top Gallant Sails out,
Seen the yellow Star,
As Stiff as a
Ring-bolt,
Half Seas over,
His Shoe pinches him,
Staggerish,
It
is Star-light with him,
He carries too much Sail,
Stew’d
Stubb’d,
Soak’d,
Soft,
Been too free with Sir John Strawberry,
He’s right before the Wind with all his Studding Sails out,
Has Sold his
Senses.
T
He’s Top’d,
Tongue-ty’d,
Tann’d,
Tipium
Grove,
Double Tongu’d,
Topsy Turvey,
Tipsey,
Has Swallow’d a
Tavern Token,
He’s Thaw’d,
He’s in a Trance,
He’s Trammel’d,
V
He makes Virginia Fence,
Valiant,
Got the
Indian Vapours,
W
The Malt is above the Water,
He’s Wise,
He’s
Wet,
He’s been to the Salt Water,
He’s Water-soaken,
He’s very
Weary,
Out of the Way.
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Data center as art and architecture
The Times pays attention to something that’s intrigued me for a while — the aesthetics of data centers (here too). Having visited such places in my duties to commerce, I noticed how a standard rack of servers has the same sort of monumental minimalism of a Judd, but with lots of blinking lights and white fan noise thrown in for good measure.
MTAA has envisioned a sculpture that would comprise a standard 19” rack holding multiple computers running a small website hosting service. This rack would be installed in a ‘heroic’ manner in the center of a gallery raised on computer flooring above the normal floor. I think we wanted to call it “Monument.”
What the NYT article is doing and what “Monument” is intended to do is reveal these hidden systems that we all rely on. In the case of “Monument” — we’d attempt to aestheticize the purely functional (the NYT photos do something similar).
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Wheel of The Devil playlist
Below, most of the work that comprised The Wheel of The Devil at May’s OTO. Not screened in this order, links where we can…
Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine
This software claims “Intelligent, Unbiased and Instant Assessment of Photos.” As far as I can tell, it’s based on prior ratings from individuals, e.g. humans rate photos, algorithm rates similar photos similarly.
We all know where that gets us.
Aquine
(via /.)
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Are we still blogging? Um… yes?
Though we haven’t been posting much this May — don’t fear! We’ve been… ah, busy… yeah… busy.
T.Whid has been doing stuff that looks like this:
And M.River has been doing whatever it is that M.River does when he disappears for a while. I think that it may involve a lot of demolishing stuff and (I’m assuming) alcohol.
If you really miss MTAA you can follow our Twitter updates (M.River; T.Whid) and/or our delicious links (M.River; T.Whid). If you know us, you can find us on Facebook (I don’t accept requests from people I don’t personally know however).
We have some stuff coming up so watch this space!
m.river adds…
1. Done with demo for the next few months.
2. Here is a short loop about it.
3. I’ll facebook befriend almost anyone. Cuz I’m like that.
4. Don’t forget Flickr
5. Yes, new MTAA stuff soon.
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Wikipedia Threatens Artists for Fair Use
Can a noncommercial critical website use the trademark of the entity it critiques in its domain name? Surprisingly, it appears that the usually open-minded folks at Wikipedia think not.
Last February, a pair of artists, working with several collaborators, created a Wikipedia article and invited the general public to add to it, following Wikipedia’s standards of credibility and verifiability. The work was intended to comment on the nature of art and Wikipedia. But Wikipedia editors did not take kindly to the project, and it was shut down within fifteen hours for being insufficiently “encyclopaedic.”
Fast forward a couple of months. The artists, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, have created a noncommercial website that documents the project, called Wikipedia Art. The domain name for the project: wikipediaart.org.
Yep, they used the term “wikipedia” in their domain name. “Wikipedia” is a trademark owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. And now the Foundation has demanded that the artists give up the domain name peaceably or it will attempt to take it by (legal) force.
STAEHLE @ Postmasters
The one and only Wolfgang Staehle opens a new show at Postmasters this Thursday April 16, 2009! From the release:
April 16 - May 16, 2009#
WOLFGANG STAEHLE
A Matter of Time
Postmasters is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Wolfgang Staehle.
A Matter of Time is comprised of four real time projections of time-lapse photographic sequences and a premier video work of a Yanomami Village in the Brazilian rain forest. The show will be on view from April 16 until May 16, 2009. An opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, April 16, between 6 and 8 pm.
A Matter of Time draws upon mid-19th century painter Thomas Cole’s series The Course of Empire. Cole’s historically critical rumination views pastoralism as the ideal model for civilization, fearing that the ideal of Empire inevitably results in greed and decay. While A Matter of Time holds the mirror of this salient socio-political commentary up to our own time, it is one whose reflection is without indignation to the systems themselves. Perhaps, best encapsulated in the artist’s own 1989 work which avows, “Empires crumble, republics collapse, and idiots live on;” the posit follows that it is our own inordinate ability to destroy the sublimity of any civilization’s ideal that is put on the table.
However, Staehle’s work in no way relies upon homage to Cole’s series, a foray to pastoralism or political satire. Evident in his body of work, the form is always central; and previous works have underscored time-a one-to-one, linear time, a simulative “real time” or the contrivance of frozen time. In this exhibition, A Matter of Time broadly refers to the time lapse photographic sequences (approximately 15,000 photographs per day at 10 frames per minute) but presented here in real time-a rate so methodical that it denudes the image of its cinematographic aspect, while accentuating it pictorially. By allowing us to exact the machinations of nature, through figuratively arresting time, a perceptual shift is created that video does not pose, and thereby realigns our relationship with the real. Each contiguous moment pre-empts the prior, switching out the obsolete image for a perpetually updated “now.” Is it that the representation of an object’s stasis recalls the full force of its movement? Because ultimately, it is this indeterminate relation with time that drives our experience with these quietly unsettling works.
Mark Amerika in NYC tonight
OG net artist Mark Amerika’s Immobilité opens tonight at the Chelsea Art Museum. Amerika calls the work “[t]he world’s first feature-length mobile phone art film.”
More about the opening…
[…]solo exhibition of new work from artist Mark Amerika, opens Wednesday, April 8th, in The Project Room for New Media at Chelsea Art Museum and remains on view through May 9, 2009. […]
Amerika describes Immobilité as “a feature-length foreign film shot entirely on a mobile phone in Cornwall, UK.” The work includes an original soundtrack by renowned sound artist Chad Mossholder and introduces Camille Lacadee and Magda Tyzlik-Carver as on-screen personas that drift in and out of the film’s otherworldly landscapes and ghostly narrative sequences.
40th bday cake
Thanks M.River & Helen! I made sure to eat the lightening bolt (aka where the art happens).
Photo by Adam Hurwitz.
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Dolsot bibimbap
This person doesn’t seem to put any hot sauce on, which is a bit of a fail IMHO.
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Google’s design problem
Recently leaving Google, Doug Bowman writes:
Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that.
Allow directory browsing with .htaccess
Options +Indexes
Just so I remember…
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Smithsonian blog covers Cory
Nice write-up on Cory Arcangel at the Smithsonian’s Eyelevel blog. It’s interesting to see some perspective from someone who isn’t in the new media/net art/etc scene.
Check it out…
Don’t miss the videos of Cory’s presentation at the American Art Museum too.
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EcoArtTech’s Eclipse
Our awesome friends Cary and Christine have released some networked art! Check it out…
“Eclipse” is a user driven, networked-art application that alters and corrupts United States national and state park images from Flickr.com based on the real-time Air Quality Index (particle pollution data) provided by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) at the site www.airnow.gov.#
“We visit national parks to get away from traffic and smog. But the latter can be hard to shake, even in remote, pristine-seeming places. “Eclipse”, an open-source program created by Cary Peppermint and Leila Christine Nadir of EcoArtTech, will make air pollution’s presence visually — and viscerally — explicit.” Anna Lena Phillips, American Scientist
“Eclipse” is a 2008 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. [snip]
Progress Tracing… (Fitting Paths)
from MTAA’s “Live Demonstration of Autotrace #3 (Number 1A; performative)” last night during Theater of Code at Light Industry.
photo by Flickr username splnlss | link
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The Future Is Not What It Used To Be
Cool show opening @ Postmasters next weekend!
Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 6:00pm
Postmasters Gallery
459 West 19th Street (at 10th Avenue)
“the future is not what is used to be” brings together artists engaged in the Internet shaped culture. Through drawings, photographs, sculpture, video, and online projects they explore social interaction in a networked world, reflection in the times of speed, new communication tools and smart technologies affecting cultural and sociopolitical reality, sustainable strategies for contemporary life, connectivity and dis-connect, digital/analog divide, instantaneity and obsolescence, the web as the largest image depository ever, and new forms of appropriation, means of production, and modes of political engagement.
Uni plays Nightswimming for AFTP
A short video shot by by Peter Samis.
This video features Uni and her Ukelele. Uni played R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming” as part of MTAA’s “Automatic for the People: (We Solemnly Promise That No One Will Get Naked)” at SFMOMA.
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ATFP: (WSPTNOWGN) — photos
SFMOMA posted a flickr set of “AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE (We Solemnly Promise That No One Will Get Naked).” Check out the photos…
There’s a few more here too.
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6 years? Holy shit.
Yes, it’s the 6th anniversary of the MTAA Reference Resource. As promised, we didn’t forget it this year.
The required link to the first post.
We’ve been a tad remiss in our blogging and we’ll try to be better. We’ve been planning for years to move to a new platform and we hope to get that done this year at some point.
Thanks to everyone that visits here!
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Happy 10th Domain-iversary to us
10 years ago today, MTAA registered MTEWW.com.
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The humans are dead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY
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AFTP: ( ) update: BONUS POLL!
Hey! It was so fun… why stop now? Check it out: it’s a BONUS POLL!!!!!
~AND~
If you’re in San Francisco, CA don’t miss the performance on Feb 7th @ high noon! It’s at SFMOMA on the 3rd floor.
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An update on MTAA’s Automatic for the People: ( ) project
Artists MTAA will conduct a performance on Feb 7 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. What they do during this performance and how they do it is up for a vote.
Go here to participate: http://mtaa.net/vote/
+++
This is the situation:
Prologue - a live audience at SFMOMA votes that the Automatic for the
People: ( ) performance should happen in SFMOMA’s freight elevator
Poll 1 - the people decided that the performance should be titled: Automatic for the People: (We Solemnly Promise That No One Will Get Naked)
Poll 2 - it is decided that the duration of the performance should be “the exact same length as R.E.M.’s ‘Automatic for the People’ album”
Poll 3 - house plants, 2x4s, lawn chairs and a PA are to be used as props during the performance
Poll 4 - we’ve been directed to refer to these themes during the performance: Marcel Duchamp, chat rooms, ukuleles and take-out food
Poll 5 - we will game, build, dance and photograph (slowly) during the performance
Poll 6 - we’ll be dressed as robots
Poll 7 - the general public will be allowed to attend the performance
Poll 8 - and they’ve chosen to have wine & cheese for refreshment
Poll 9 - the nature of the space will be “all over the place”
Poll 10 - the performance will conclude in a dance party!
BONUS POLL!!!!! - Silent Mantra
MLK day 2009
update
AND, it’s Edgar Allen Poe’s 200th birthday!
…slideshow from the NYT
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AFTP: ( ) FINAL POLL #10: CONCLUSION! (Jan 15-21)
the CONCLUSION!
Here is the script as voted by museum and online viewers so far…
“Automatic for the People: (We Solemnly Promise That No One Will Get Naked)” will be held in SFMOMA’s freight elevator at noon on 02/07/09 and last for the exact length as REM’s “Automatic for the People.”
We will use house plants, 2x4s, lawn chairs and a PA as props. We will refer to Marcel Duchamp, chat rooms, ukuleles and take-out food. We will game, build, dance and photograph during the performance (slowly). We will dress as robots. This performance will be seen by the general public who will enjoy a wine and cheese refreshment. The character of the space will be “all over the place.”
This week’s vote…
the CONCLUSION!
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SFMOMA Artcast January 2009
Check out the new podcast from SFMOMA…
The curator Rudolf Freiling talks about “The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now,” we talk about our piece “Automatic for the People: ( )” and visitors to the museum talk about their reactions to the exhibition and how they feel about interactive art in general.
You can download the file in vanilla MP3, M4A (for iTunes; audio with images) or stream it from the SFMOMA website.
You can also subscribe to their RSS podcast feed and get updated auto-magically when they post a new one
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AFTP: ( ) Update! Poll #9: SPACE (JAN 8-14)
M.River is supposed to post these updates but he was really busy this week and didn’t get a chance to do it. So, in case you forgot to vote this week, here’s your reminder!
Here is the script as voted by museum and online viewers so far…
“Automatic for the People: (We Solemnly Promise That No One Will Get Naked)” will be held in SFMOMA’s freight elevator on 02/07/09 at noon for the exact same length as R.E.M.’s “Automatic for the People” album. We will use house plants, 2x4s, lawn chairs and a PA as props. We will refer to Marcel Duchamp, chat rooms, ukuleles and take-out food. We will game, build, dance, slow and photograph during the performance. We will dress as robots. This performance will be seen by the general public who will enjoy a wine and cheese refreshment.
This week’s vote…
SPACE!
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Robot costumes attack!
Yes. It is gonna get wacky.
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Tom Marioni at SFMOMA
“The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art,” a social gathering hosted by Tom Marioni at SFMOMA. The gathering is an artwork that is part of a current exhibition “The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now.”
via Rudolf Freiling on Facebook…
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Seasons Greetings ‘08
To accompany our well wishes, some winter-ish imagery:
Have a great 09!
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Support AFC
From AFC:
• My goal is to raise $6,000 by January 1, 2009.
• Momenta Art has generously offered to umbrella Art Fag City under their 501-C3 status so readers can write off their donations. They process all on and offline contributions, and ensure the funds are not used for profit purposes.
• By contributing to this fundraiser, donors are not only supporting the efforts of one blogger, but staking a claim for the value of independent blogs in a climate of mainstream media arts cutbacks.
Walton @ JetBlue
photo credit: Lee Walton’s mom
Lee Walton’s videos are being featured in the JetBlue Terminal 5 at JFK until January 1. Organized by Creative Time.
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Mandiberg’s Bright Bike
Bright Bike
More here: http://www.theredproject.com/brightbike
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dontletthedoorhityouonthewayout.com
From Sorrel Ahlfeld and Fred Benenson…
The joy created by George W. Bush’s impending departure from the Presidency could only possibly be overshadowed by the excitement of Barack Obama’s election.#
So now there are two reasons to celebrate!
I’m know you’ve already celebrated Obama’s victory but have you taken the time to really think about what the end of these last 8 years means to you? The end of an era?
I asked myself that question recently and decided that the best way to commemorate the long awaited date of 1-20-09 was to assemble a collection of images and words that could be presented to GWB upon his departure representing the feelings of the American people.
So, as a way to say goodbye to these last 8 years, my friend Fred and I have created a site called, “Don’t Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out” where we are collecting farewell notes for Bush. Think of it as catharsis politics:
http://dontletthedoorhityouonthewayout.com/
The basic idea is that you e-mail us images, words, and ideas and we’ll publish them into a book that we’ll try and get into Bush’s hands before Obama is sworn in. We’re looking for as much participation in this as possible, so please share this link far and wide.
I know it’s easy to put things like this off, but if you feel motivated to share your feelings about the last 8 years (I for one have been pretty steamed) please consider contributing something to the collection before the end of the year.
Location, location, location
We launched our new project at SFMOMA last Saturday with a lecture/performance/live poll at the museum. The performance consisted of a slide lecture where we gave some background on MTAA, explained the Automatic for the People: ( ) project and then conducted a live vote on where the Automatic for the People: ( ) performance would take place in the museum.
The vote was really fun and people really enjoyed it. (An image of the ballot we used is below.) We went over each location on the ballot and M.River gave a quick pro and con. Then we opened the floor to debate on each of the different locations in the museum. That went really well with the audience having lots of funny and interesting reasons to choose this or that location. In the end however, it was a landslide victory for…
The freight elevator
On Feb 7th, 2009 MTAA will be doing something in SFMOMA’s freight elevator. Help us decide what by voting at the AFTP website!
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AFTP() at SFMOMA 2
We suggest that you listen to the museum audio tour when visiting the Automatic for the People: ( ) website to vote.
First, go to mtaa.net/vote.
Then, dial: 415-294-3609, 424#.
Consider the choices very carefully while you listen to the audio tour.
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Automatic for the People: ( ) launches
Our new project is live! It was commissioned by SFMOMA for The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now.
Automatic for the People: ( )
Dictate the details of a contemporary art performance! Each week, from November 8 through January 21, vote in a new poll to determine different elements. On February 7, we’ll perform live using the script shaped by your votes.
So get on over there and vote! And then visit each week on Thursdays for the new poll. If you can’t remember to do that, subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified when a new poll goes live (there will be roughly one each week until Jan 21).
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JUBILATION!!!
Joy, joy, joy!
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Vote for Barack Obama
Yes we can!
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Two MTAA events in the bay area THIS WEEK!
Opening Performance Lecture & Museum Hall Meeting
as part of The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, curated by Rudolf Frieling
SFMOMA
Saturday Nov 8th @ 3PM
We’ll conduct the official launch of our new SFMOMA-commissioned project Automatic for the People: ( ) with a performative lecture, slideshow and drawing.
See SFMOMA’s website for more info about the exhibition and other events happening on Saturday, November 8th.
We’ll be announcing more info about Automatic for the People: ( ) on Nov 6th so stay tuned…
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The Name of This Band is Talking Heads MTAA
as part of Takeovers & Makeovers: Artistic Appropriation, Fair Use and Copyright in the Digital Age
Berkeley Art Museum on the campus of UC Berkeley
Friday Nov 7th @ 1:45PM
We’ll be presenting an overview of some of our work that deals with the themes of the conference. We’ll go over some of our oldies… the updates, The Pirated Movie and other pieces. Plus there will be something brand new.
This is a two day conference (Nov 7–8) with lots happening! Don’t forget to check out all the other speakers and schedule at the website.
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Rhizome membership drive Oct 29–Dec 31, 2008
Scrape together your pennies and then give ‘em to Rhizome!
Rhizome’s annual membership drive will run from October 29 through midnight December 31st, 2008. Our goal is $30,000 — a figure that is completely vital to our success amidst a particularly difficult year in the arts.
Now is the time to support Rhizome, to make a contribution towards an organization with an open and innovative structure and singular mission to further internet and new media art. Contribute now and help us keep this field moving energetically forward, through commissioning, preservation, criticism and participatory programs, in 2009!
pencil
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Pixish closing
Dumb web site designed to fleece desperate suckers out of free creative work, Pixish, is shutting down. I’ve discussed this site before here.
Derek Powazek, the guy that started the site, seems like an honest and smart person. Not sure why he thought this was a good idea. Luckily, there aren’t enough chumps out there to keep it going.
Usually I’m sorry to see indy web sites shut down. Not this time! Good riddance.
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The Reason Campaign redux
A 19 year old college student from Pennsylvania, Megan comes from a household of Independents. This being her first election, she has been trying to pay attention to the conventions and the debates in order to make the most informed decision possible.
You’ve heard a lot about this election from both the campaigns and the media. Now you can hear from your fellow citizens. Watch below as Republicans, Independents and conservatives explain their reasons for supporting Barack Obama.
TV panels on easels? ‘Scuse me while I barf
The same fool that would buy pre-paint-spattered jeans from J.Crew would think this cool:
Of course, all things art-lite and/or art-like are loved by Boing Boing, so they link approvingly.
More of this nonsense here.
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3K USD for a chapter on networked art
Check it out!
From turbulence.org:
+++
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
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A new idea…
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.
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I had sort of given up on politics…
… 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
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In the studio (9/23/2008)
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!
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Port Huron Project 6: Let Another World Be Born
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.
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BBEdit syntax coloring
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.
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EcoArtTech TONIGHT @ OTO
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.
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The Reason Campaign
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.
OTOs coming up
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.
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I should del.icio.us more stuff
And maybe you should too.
http://delicious.com/twhid/del.icio.us+stuff
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Bouncing, bouncing not fun, fun, fun
Dear anybody that cares,
My email was bouncing. It isn’t anymore. If you sent me email and it bounced. Send it again why don’t ya?
This annoying message was brought to you by T.Whid.
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Rocketboom sells out!
LOL. Just kidding. But they did sell worldwide distro rights to Sony for what NewTeeVee is reporting as 7 figures. And I’ll bet those figures are numbers with some commas.
Get the lowdown from the horse’s mouth.
Congrats to everyone there. Especially our old Eyebeam buddy Kenyatta!
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Art world reality redux — this time it’s for real
Sarah Jessica Parker’s “American Artist” reality show has been picked up by (who else?) Bravo. From The Hollywood Reporter:
Sarah Jessica Parker’s art competition reality show has found a home at Bravo.#
The network has picked up “American Artist,” from Parker’s Pretty Matches production company and wunderkin producers Magical Elves, as part of its development slate. Bravo is expected to announce the deal Sunday at the Television Critics Assn. press tour.
The hourlong show has been described by the Elves team of Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz as a “Project Runway”-style competition series that takes on the art world. Aspiring artists compete to produce various styles of artwork (painting, sculpting, etc.), which is then judged by a panel of experts. The network declined to comment.
MTAA and The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now
We’re very happy to announce that we’ll be taking part in SFMOMA’s “The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now” November 8 - February 8, 2009.
From the press release:
Organized by SFMOMA Curator of Media Arts Rudolf Frieling, this large thematic presentation gathers more than 70 works by some 50 individual artists and collectives, and will feature projects both on-site and online, as well as several new pieces commissioned specifically for the exhibition. From early performance-based and conceptual art to online works rooted in the multiuser dynamics of Web 2.0 platforms, The Art of Participation reflects on the confluence of audience interaction, utopian politics, and mass media, and reclaims the museum as a space for two-way exchange between artists and viewers.
The exhibition proposes that participatory art is generally based on a notion of indeterminacy—an openness to chance or change, as introduced by John Cage in the early 1950s—and refers to projects that, while initiated by individual artists, can be realized only through the contribution of others. This artistic approach entices the public to join in; questions the conventional divide between artists and their audience; and challenges assumptions about the symbolic value of art, as well as the traditional role of the museum as a container for objects rather than a site for social engagement or art production. Participatory art typically synthesizes a variety of artistic media, emphasizes process over object, and champions the idea of collective authorship.
Hirst: screw galleries
From The Art Newspaper:
The final frontier protecting contemporary art galleries from the relentless encroachment of the auction houses has been emphatically breached with the announcement that Damien Hirst is creating an exhibition of new works for display and sale at the London headquarters of Sotheby’s.
Touch My Bright Green Body (Green Screen Version)
Caspar Stracke responds (.mov 52MB) to Oliver Laric’s “Touch My Body (Green Screen Version)”.
I’ve mashed-up the two together. Here’s some of stills of the video:
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Suckers to tha side I know you hate my 98
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Epic net art
Another question raised at Rhizome’s Net Ae panel of a few weeks back was the idea of an ‘epic’ net art. Where is it? Is it possible? Who would want to do it?
Is pseudo.com an example of epic net art? Did we not know that we were in the midst of the most epic work of net art ever as it went on?
The first piece of net art that MTAA ever did, BUYING TIME: The Nostalgia-Free History Sale was done in conjunction with G. H. Hovagimyan’s ArtDirt streaming video show on Pseudo.com. (We didn’t know what the hell we were doing at the time.) There was a lot of art happening at pseudo’s offices (as well as really great parties). Jeff Gompertz (of Fakeshop) was heavily involved as well.
I’m bringing all this up as a way to help bolster Harris’ claim that pseudo.com was a ‘fake’ company and an elaborate piece of ‘performance art.’ Perhaps it was. Did he out-etoy etoy but not tell anybody until now? Can something be an art work if no one knows it’s an art work? Is he simply a revisionist fraud?
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Also on Rhizome; comment there if you like.
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Crazy art links!
Olafur Eliasson’s “Waterfalls” are ON! It’s rainy today so I didn’t bike and will miss out on checking out the perfect view of one of the falls from the Manhattan Bridge. It will suck to bike it if/when the tourists figure out you can get a great view from there.
UPDATE
Roberta Smith’s review of the Waterfalls…
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Josh Harris: still nuts; calls Pseudo.com “an elaborate piece of performance art.” Not so sure about that…
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Is it a Warhol? Who knows? Who cares? (Except for the chump that paid millions for it, his insurers, The Warhol Foundation, etc.) Me? I think it’s a damn good Warhol whether he did it, knew about it, or whatever.
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(I promise that) HARDCORE (conceptual art will make a comeback sometime very, very soon.)
Inspired by Nayland Blake’s merch (check out AFC’s interview), we’ve decided to notify our 10s of readers that we have a t-shirt for sale.
Buy it now!
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Is Beck following Cory Arcangel around?
It sort of feels that way to me…
Listen to a full track from Beck’s new album here (login required).
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More Loshadka @ OTO 
Petra Cortright has posted a big batch-o-pix @ flickr showing some behind-the-scenes footage of Loshadka’s show at Over The Opening.
Check it out…
m.river updates - also some shots from Kai
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Don’t go chasing…
…Olafur Eliasson’s New York City Waterfalls! (warning: dumb flash site)
The NYC real estate blog Curbed has been doing a good job of following the construction and tests (with some anti-art snark tossed in, but whatev) of Eliasson’s public sculptures. Check out the Curbed waterfall archives.
And don’t miss the Gothamist post on the Brooklyn Bridge Waterfall.
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post-net art…
…is a better label than net art 2.0.
not post-net.art…
not anti-post-net art…
…post-net art
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Kurtz wins
If you know the facts of this case there’s no way you can’t be angry about it. The witch hunt finally ends.
PR follows…
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 11, 2008
ARTIST CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE
Department of Justice Fails to Appeal Dismissal
Kurtz Speaks about Four-Year Ordeal
Buffalo, NY — Dr. Steven Kurtz, a Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY at
Buffalo and cofounder of the award-winning art and theater group Critical
Art Ensemble, has been cleared of all charges of mail and wire fraud. On
April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara dismissed the government’s entire
indictment against Dr. Kurtz as “insufficient on its face.” This means that
even if the actions alleged in the indictment (which the judge must accept
as “fact”) were true, they would not constitute a crime. The US Department
of Justice had thirty days from the date of the ruling to appeal. No action
has been taken in this time period, thus stopping any appeal of the
dismissal. According to Margaret McFarland, a spokeswoman for US Attorney
Terrance P. Flynn, the DoJ will not appeal Arcara’s ruling and will not seek
any new charges against Kurtz.
For over a decade, cultural institutions worldwide have hosted Kurtz and
Critical Art Ensemble’s educational art projects, which use common science
materials to examine issues surrounding the new biotechnologies. In 2004 the
Department of Justice alleged that Dr. Kurtz had schemed with colleague Dr.
Robert Ferrell of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public
Health to illegally acquire two harmless bacteria cultures for use in one of
those projects. The Justice Department further alleged that the transfer of
the material from Ferrell to Kurtz broke a material transfer agreement, thus
constituting mail fraud.
Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum sentence for these charges was
increased from five years to twenty years in prison.
Dr. Kurtz has been fighting the charges ever since. In October 2007, Dr.
Ferrell pleaded to a lesser misdemeanor charge after recurring bouts of
cancer and three strokes suffered since his indictment prevented him from
continuing the struggle.
KURTZ SUMS UP END OF FOUR-YEAR NIGHTMARE
Finally vindicated after four years of struggle, Kurtz, asked for a
statement, responded stoically: “I don’t have a statement, but I do have
questions. As an innocent man, where do I go to get back the four years the
Department of Justice stole from me? As a taxpayer, where do I go to get
back the millions of dollars the FBI and Justice Department wasted
persecuting me? And as a citizen, what must I do to have a Justice
Department free of partisan corruption so profound it has turned on those it
is sworn to protect?”
Said Kurtz’s attorney, Paul Cambria, “I am glad an innocent man has been
vindicated. Steve Kurtz stared in the face of the federal government and a
twenty-year prison term and never flinched, because he believes in his work
and his actions were those of a completely innocent man. Clients like him
are a blessing, and although I have had many important victories, this one
stands at the top of the list.”
As coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, a group organized to support Kurtz
from the beginning of the case, Lucia Sommer sees the end of the prosecution
as bittersweet, and like Kurtz, is thoughtful about the broader significance
of the case: “This ruling is the best possible ending to a horrible
ordeal—but we are mindful of numerous cases still pending, and the grave
injustices perpetrated by the Bush administration following 9/11. This case
was part of a larger picture, in which law enforcement was given expanded
powers. In this instance, the Bush administration was unsuccessful in its
attempt to erode Americans’ constitutional rights.”
Referring to the international outcry the case provoked, involving
fundraisers and protests held on four continents, Sommer said, “The
government has unlimited resources to bring and prosecute these kinds of
charges, but the accused often don’t have any resources to defend
themselves. This victory could never have happened without the activism of
thousands of people. Supporters protested, vocally opposed the prosecution,
and refused to let it go on in silence. And without their efforts at
fundraising, Kurtz and Ferrell would not have been able to defend themselves
from these false accusations.”
Sommer added that the next step for the defense will be to get back all of
the materials taken by the FBI during its 2004 raid on the Kurtz home,
including several completed art projects, as well as Dr. Kurtz’s lab
equipment, computers, books, manuscripts, notes, research materials, and
personal belongings. The four confiscated art projects are the subject of
an exhibition entitled SEIZED on view at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
in Buffalo, NY, through July 18:
http://www.hallwalls.org/visual_shows/2008/show_seized.html.
BACKGROUND TO THE CASE
The case originated in May 2004, when Kurtz’s wife Hope died of heart
failure as the couple was preparing a project about genetically modified
agriculture for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Police who
responded to Steve Kurtz’s 911 call deemed the Kurtzes’ art materials
suspicious and alerted the FBI. Kurtz explained that the materials (legally
and easily obtained basic life science equipment and two harmless bacteria
samples) had already been displayed at museums throughout Europe and North
America with absolutely no risk to the public. However, the following day,
Kurtz was illegally detained for 22 hours on suspicion of bioterrorism, as
dozens of agents from the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland
Security, Department of Defense, ATF, and numerous other law enforcement
agencies raided his home, seizing his personal and professional belongings.
After a federal grand jury refused to charge Kurtz with bioterrorism, Kurtz
and Ferrell were indicted on two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire
fraud concerning the acquisition of of harmless bacteria for one of
Critical Art Ensemble’s educational art projects. (Critical Art Ensemble is
the recipient of numerous awards for its projects, including the prestigious
2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression
Grant, in recognition of twenty years of distinguished work:
http://www.creative-capital.org/index2.html.)
The Department of Justice brought the charges in spite of the fact that the
alleged “victims of fraud”—American Type Culture Collection and the
University of Pittsburgh—never filed any charges or complained of any
wrongdoing, and the fact that in bringing the charges the Department of
Justice was acting completely outside its own Prosecution Policy Relating to
Mail Fraud and Wire Fraud
(http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/
foia_reading_room/usam/title9/43mcrm.htm).
For more information and extensive documentation, including the Judge’s
dismissal, please visit: http://caedefensefund.org
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Net Ae 2.0 postmortem
I was more obnoxious than I meant to be and I came off old and cranky.
All around a fine evening.
It was a bit of a set-up between artists of the older generation (T.Whid, the McCoys; artists who took part in ‘net art 1.0’) and artists of a younger generation (Petra Cortright, Damon Zucconi) with Tom Moody thrown in to prove that you can be over 30 and also a member of a surfing club.
But seriously, I was fairly bombastic at one point and it went something like this: “It seems like the artists that were involved in earlier stage of net art have given up on it to a certain degree, my question to the younger artists on the panel: why haven’t you figured out that it’s a dead end?”
This little rhetorical bomb was tossed specifically to spice up the discussion a tad. I’m going to try to expand and clear it up.
Before I get into it I need to make clear that when I talk about net art, I’m using the classic definition: “art that uses the internet as its medium and that cannot be experienced in any other way.” To me, this definition shouldn’t be diluted, it just leads to confusion. I use the term web art for art on the web that can exist entirely in one browser session. Note that I think blogs (including photo, video, or other media blogs) fulfill the classic definition of net art.
First, MTAA hasn’t given up on net art entirely. We’re working on a small piece currently that fits the classic definition of net art and our latest large piece, “Want”, has, at the very least, the possibility of fitting the ole skool definition. So my assertion that we’ve ‘given up’ on net art isn’t really true. Jenn McCoy also mentioned after the panel that she and Kevin haven’t given up either, she likened it to trying to get pregnant but it just won’t happen for whatever reason.
What we’re ‘giving up’ is the idea that this ‘pure’ sort of net art will ever enter the gallery in a way that makes any sense. Many net artists have come up with hybrid net art that does make sense in the gallery space. Examples of MTAA’s efforts in that direction are “Endnode (AKA Printer Tree)” and “Want.”
Second, the ‘dead end’ comment is a red herring. The younger generation never entertained these grand and flawed ideas of a ‘pure’ net art. The artists on the panel made it very clear that their work comprises video, looping animations, photography, holography(!), web sites, etc. I believe that Damon’s first comment was that his work is multi-disciplinary. The earlier generation of net artists learned the hard way that transitioning the ‘pure’ form of net art into the gallery is very problematic. The current generation of digital artists seems to have side-stepped this problem entirely.
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A few words on surfing clubs (PDF link to Marcin Ramocki’s thorough essay on the genre).
Mail art is to net art as graffiti art is to surf clubs.
The panel discussion bogged down considerably during the surfing club portion in my opinion. I’m guessing that since the clubs are by their nature somewhat insular and ‘insider-y,’ the audience felt it. There were 3 practitioners of the genre discussing it without a real thought to making it very accessible to the audience. During my live-twittering of the panel, I made a couple of comments to this regard (1, 2).
Apologies to anyone that was insulted by my tweets. It was a rather rude way of offering my criticism.
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Cross-posted to Rhizome; comment there if you feel the desire.
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Net Art 2.5 private beta
Apropos of my participation in the Net Aesthetics 2.0 panel with Rhizome this Friday, I typed out some words on why I think it’s a bad idea to version art periods. It’s just a couple paragraphs. Hopefully at the panel I’ll be able to flesh out my thoughts off-the-cuff.
Please don’t version art periods…
Oh, alright. I’ve resigned myself to using the term “Net Art 2.0” to refer to the current state of net art. But before I completely give in, I need to put up a bit of a fight.
The main problem with using a software versioning paradigm to distinguish art periods is the implied progression. When a developer delivers new versions of their software new features are added or enhanced, bugs are fixed, new problems are identified and addressed, formats are upgraded and interfaces are streamlined.
Some will say that the progression, though implied, isn’t what people mean when they use the term “Net Art 2.0.” But, when O’Reilly versioned the web with their Web 2.0 conference in 2004 (would there be a Net Art 2.0 without Web 2.0?) it was done specifically to denote that an improvement was happening in regards to business practices on the web. “The pretenders are given the bum’s rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other” (What is Web 2.0?). So when we describe the current state of net art as Net Art 2.0, the idea that it’s somehow an improvement to artistic or aesthetic practices on the net follows.
But, is so-called Net Art 2.0 a progressive upgrade? Does it add any new features? Does it solve problems that previous net artists ignored? Are there hidden regressions? Is it correct to even think of art history in terms of progression?
If we really want to give net art a number, just call it Net Art 2 — as in the sequel. Otherwise, M.River and I are going to launch Net Art 2.5 in a private beta, and you’ll need to email us for an invite.
update: AFC linked this up, so if you feel like commenting, you can do it there.
update 2: I posted it to Rhizome, you can also comment there.
(One day we’ll have comments back here I promise!)
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Net Aesthetics 2.0
T.Whid (Tim Whidden) of MTAA is on this panel Friday.
The upcoming program in Rhizome’s New Silent Series at the New Museum, Net Aesthetics 2.0, will examine the state of contemporary art engaged with internet art. Convening leading artists, critics and curators, this panel will explore salient topics such as the relationship of artists emerging now to the first generation of internet art, the correspondence between online art and offline exhibition (as well as the phenomenon of “internet aware” art), the current role of the artist on the internet, the position of explicit political content in internet art (and the question of whether internet art practice is undergoing a more “formalist” phase), among other directions and challenges faced by this expansive field.#
This talk will be the second in a series of Net Aesthetics 2.0 events. Panelists include artists Petra Cortright, Jennifer and Kevin Mccoy, Tom Moody, Tim Whidden and Damon Zucconi and will be moderated by curator, critic and Rhizome staff writer Ed Halter. Tickets available here.
Friday June 6th, 7:30pm
the New Museum, New York, NY
$8 general public, $6 Members (Rhizome and New Museum)
Presented in conjunction with Internet Week
http://www.newmuseum.org/events/190
Heeeeeeeeey Bo Diddley
You’re dead at 79.
:(
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Horvath gets BoingBoing’d
Always nice to see one’s friends get the props they deserve. BoingBoing turns on it’s massive readership to Peter Horvath’s Boulevard.
Congrats Peter, you’ve just gained an entirely new audience! Hope your bandwidth bill is paid up…
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AutoTrace #1 (Full Fathom Five), 2005
“AutoTrace #1 (Full Fathom Five)” (detail), 2005
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Blackboard pro = dumb
Why do two (1,2) über-geeks think this is a good idea?
It’s a mind-boggingly stupid idea: #1 chalked-up sleeves; #2 erased messages via the chalked-up sleeves; and #3 you can’t see the to-dos when you’re using your computer (assuming at least *some* of the to-dos would have to be done with the computer). update: Not to mention the dust problem that the Boing Boing commenters point out.
It’s only a good idea if you never, ever remove the laptop from your desk and never open it. Sometimes the techno-nerds really lose all perspective.
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Orphan Artworks Bill
Lessig disses the Orphan Artworks Bill (PDF of bill) in the NYT today. The bill is currently making its way through the US Congress on a fast track. Here’s a summary of what’s in it. Ed Winkleman has a post about it as well.
I have to admit that I have no idea what to make of this proposal. But I outsource all my opinions regarding copyright to Lessig so I guess I’m against it.
update
More on this from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (they strongly support it).
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Oreilly remix
This is pretty good.
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Chicago: feast on foie gras!
The evil Chicago foie gras ban has been overturned!
I only mention it now as it’s been discussed here before.
The thing that really irritates me about these foie gras bans is that the true food demons in our culture — large factory farms — have too much clout for animal activists to have any affect. So they end up picking on small, artisanal farmers creating a relatively rare delicacy.
M.River adds = Here is a NYT article on the “artisanal farmers” of foie gras -
No Days Off at Foie Gras Farm.
T.Whid adds… er, ah… oops
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Rauschenberg dead!
OH SHIT!
NYT gots the details…
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…as goofy and perplexing and overwhelming and sad as the Internet itself
WANT, a collaboration between MTAA and Radical Software Group, uses 900 video clips of actors to illustrate search-engine requests. It’s as goofy and perplexing and overwhelming and sad as the Internet itself. The next time you use a search engine with one of those “Other users are currently searching for . . .” features, you won’t be able to resist picturing the forlorn, chubby face that goes with the query for “SALMA HAYEK EATING COOKIES.”
Getty goat
Thought this was funny: Goats Eat Free at the Getty (NYT)
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Hasan Elahi on Colbert Report TONIGHT!
Just got this email from Hasan:
Tonight (May 7)
The Colbert Report
Comedy Central
11:30 (Eastern and Pacific)/10:30 (Central and Mountaln)
I’m going to be on The Colbert Report discussing my project, “Tracking Transience” and how do deal with being on a terrorist watchlist. Stephen Colbert is supposedly doing a little story on Nelson Mandela still being on the terrorist watchlist…I guess Mandela was unavailable, so they called me.
Ah, the good ole days
A Comparative Study of Apples and Oranges
Introduction
MTAA for Website Unseen #98 (ed: this piece no longer works in contemporary browsers FYI) with support from MT Science.
This introduction will cover the main themes of the larger study soon to be published. The comparison of apples and oranges should be viewed within the 3 main aspects of fruit usage in the United States. These aspects being (1) pleasure, (2) nutrition and (3) decorative display. This study compares apples and oranges within the cultural and national boundaries of the United States.
Areas used for comparison in this study.
1. Color
2. Shape and Texture (includes skin and meat)
3. Taste
4. Nutritional Value
5. Economics (includes price and availability)
6. Traditional and Non-Traditional Uses
I. COLOR
MTAA conducted comparison tests of the colors of the two fruits with these criteria in mind. 1) In what quantity does the fruit’s color promote appetite for it, i.e. does the red color of a granny smith promote greater appetite than the orange color of a Sunkist. (For the purposes of this study we’ve included only red apples and no golden or yellow.) 2) Does the color promote each fruit’s decorative display in a domestic or commercial setting, including dining room tables, sideboards, coffee tables, kitchen tables, etc in domestic settings and retail furniture outlets. Boardroom tables, reception desks and marketing and/or advertising materials were judged in non-fruit related industries. These studies involved interviews with lay people and professionals who generally use fruit as decorative devices. MTAA also used laboratory studies designed to elicit responses from subjects as to their proclivity to either apples or oranges as decorative devices. We used only color in these studies and experiments and did similar experiments using shape and texture as the criteria.
II. SHAPE AND TEXTURE
MTAA compared these characteristics using the same criteria with similar sampling and testing procedures as the color tests. We measured how the shape and texture promoted appetite and decorative display. These tests were conducted both through visual inspection of shape and texture as well as through a tactile inspection i.e. a “feel” test. With the tactile test MTAA added an identifier section, quantifying which fruit was more easily identified through touch.
III. TASTE
MTAA conducted numerous taste tests using people, monkeys, rats and parrots as testers. With each test group we tested which fruit was more preferred. A Crave Test was also conducted, which measured which fruit was more craved by the test groups. The Crave Test is methodologically very complicated and the details will be published in the full study but it measures how often the test subjects thought of, visualized, or sought after the fruit.
MTAA also tested the taste and crave-ability of prepared foods that use the two fruits as a main ingredient including juices.
IV. NUTRITIONAL VALUE
Using data from the USDA, MTAA compared the nutritional values of the fruits as well as a number of prepared foods that use the fruits as a main ingredient.
V. ECONOMICS
MTAA compared the availability and price during different times of the year in different parts of the US using empirical data provided by the National Apple Growers Association and the National Orange Growers Association. MTAA have also created a comprehensive price/nutrition ratio for all parts of the country for the year 1998.
VI. TRADITIONAL AND NON-TRADITIONAL USES
MTAA did extensive anthropological research into the uses of the two fruits in different cultural contexts such as ingredients in recipes, prominence in religious ceremonies, use as motivational awards, depiction in art and architecture, and general status symbols within different cultural categories. These categories included the contemporary dominant culture of the US, contemporary and historical subcultures, indigenous populations, and small-scale societies both contemporary and historical.
These studies yielded data with which MTAA could create an “Importance Factor” within each cultural category.
The wealth of information which these comparison studies yeilded is currently being analyzed at the MT Science Labs. MTAA forecast a 2004 release of the Comparative Study of Apples and Oranges.
published 2/28/00
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Cause Caller
The impressive Fred Benenson has released his ITP master’s thesis project.
It’s called Cause Caller and it makes it easy for anyone to call politicians and bug them about stuff they care about. One can also create a cause and get all one’s friends to bug politicians that might help the cause.
Lots more on the Cause Caller site, including a demo video, so check it out…
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Self-Selected SuperSt*rs TONIGHT!
Reminder: MTAA is doing a live demonstration TONIGHT!
On April 29 from 8PM to 10PM, in a Sunset Park factory, the artist collaboration MTAA shoot and simultaneously screen two films… starring you.
Two directors/camera operators will set up at Light Industry deep in the heart of Brooklyn. The space will have some cheap/random props and costumes. If you want some acting direction, we’ll have scripts and improv notes ready. If acting isn’t your thing, just come in and be your fabulous self. The shooting will be continuous and casual with both films projected live for your viewing pleasure. Join us for the entire shoot or just walk in for your close-up.
More info here…
Plus, as a SPECIAL BONUS, T.Whid will conduct a screening of contemporary loops. It’ll work like this:
while (!handsInTheAir) {loop;}
It will loop and iterate AT THE SAME TIME!
Be there or be something with 4 right angles!
FREE
lightindustry.org
Events take place in Industry City
55 33rd Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenue), 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11232
(directions)
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Charges against Kurtz dismissed
Finally some sanity…
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April 21, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUDGE DISMISSES MAIL FRAUD CASE AGAINST BIO-ARTIST KURTZ
Buffalo, NY—A process that has taken nearly four years may be coming to an end. On Monday, April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara ruled to dismiss the indictment against University at Buffalo Professor of Visual Studies Dr. Steven Kurtz.
In June 2004, Professor Kurtz was charged with two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud stemming from an exchange of $256 worth of harmless bacteria with Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
Dr. Kurtz planned to use the bacteria in an educational art exhibit about biotechnology with his award-winning art and theater collective, Critical Art Ensemble.
Professor Kurtz’ lawyer, Paul Cambria, said that his client was “pleased and relieved that this ordeal may be coming to an end.”
The prosecution has the right to appeal this dismissal. How the prosecution will proceed is unknown at this time. If an appeal were undertaken the case would move to the New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.
Lucia Sommer, Coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, which raises funds for Kurtz’ legal defense, said, “We are all grateful that after reviewing this case, Judge Arcara took appropriate action.” She added that “this decision is further testament to our original statements that Dr. Kurtz is completely innocent and never should have been charged in the first place.”
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Shvarts update: Yale wants it stopped
Stolen wholesale from the NYT:
Yale University said on Monday that it would not allow a senior to participate in a campus art exhibition unless she made a written statement that her “performance,” in which she repeatedly inseminated herself and then induced miscarriages, was a fiction that she had concocted. In an article on Thursday in The Yale Daily News, the student, Aliza Shvarts, right, was quoted as saying that she had inseminated herself “as often as possible” over several months while taking herbal drugs to induce miscarriages, which she recorded on video to display for her senior-year art project at a show beginning on campus on Tuesday. Her claim drew intense criticism. Yale said last week that Ms. Shvarts had told three university officials that she had not inseminated herself or induced abortions but had made up the story as part of the project. On Friday, however, Ms. Shvarts insisted she had really experienced “repeated, self-induced miscarriages,” although she said that she had not known if she was actually pregnant. Yale officials said the denials were part of the continuing art performance, and on Monday demanded that it end. Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, and Robert Storr, dean of the School of Art, also said that they had found “serious errors of judgment” on the part of Ms. Shvarts’s adviser and an art instructor who knew of the project. They did not identify the adviser or instructor, though Ms. Shvarts has said that her adviser was Pia Lindman. Mr. Salovey said that “appropriate action” had been taken against the two teachers, but did not elaborate. Neither Ms. Shvarts nor Ms. Lindman could be reached for comment.
(LOVE + HATE) x 100
New art! From MTAA! It’s on the web! You’ll need QuickTime!
click this: (LOVE + HATE) x 100
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Vote for us
Rhizome members!
MTAA has submitted a proposal for the Rhizome Commissions Program. If you would like to get yours truly some cash to make some damn art, then go here and vote for us.
Go here. Vote for us. It’s simple. It’s here.
You can vote for some other people too, but first, vote for us! If you’re not a Rhizome member, you can’t vote for us. You can become a Rhizome member if you have a burning desire to vote for us (and you should vote for us).
Stop reading this and go vote for us already!
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Starving dogs, aborting fetuses as art
Is any of it true?
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According to MTAA’s highly placed BIG media sources, Aliza Shvarts, abortion artist and Yale student, has said she never knew if she was pregnant and only took herbal abortifacients. Also the AP is reporting that it was a hoax. It’s always nice to see the right-wing blogs get punk’d big time so I’d give her a C.
update
There’s more here. According to Yale, it’s a fiction. Shvarts is trying to stick to her guns, but ends up sounding clueless. If she’s trying to play everyone, she’s pretty hamhanded. Someone needs to tell her that if you’re going to create fiction, you need to keep the fiction up for everybody.
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What about that starving dog? I can’t figure this out. Also seems like a hoax (or, perhaps, a fiction). Ed Winkleman covered this a tad and on his blog he posts a message from the gallerist that they fed the dog and it was only tied in the gallery for 3 hours during an opening. (Is it cruel to chain up a dog?) The dog subsequently got away.
Unless the gallery is lying (they could be, but I’ll take them at their word), I don’t see how this was cruel. Sounds less cruel than walking by the starving animal in the street and doing nothing. I don’t get it. The petition against the artist seems sort of like that right-wing punk of the left where folks signed a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide. But in this case you get to sign a petition against something that never happened to stop it from happening again, though there are no plans to make it happen again (and it never happened in the first place).
(Sorry M.River, stomped on your post, which was really, really funny.)
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Just to be clear…
T.Whid’s posts on this blog represent his opinions. There is no objectivity here. I’ll post notices for my friend’s shows but not your show; link to positive reviews of MTAA’s work, but not negative; link to positive reviews of artists I like, but not negative; support Rhizome uncritically; write exuberant things about stuff I love; post mean critiques about stuff I hate; write nice things about my friends, just because they’re my friends; narcissistically post lots and lots and lots of stuff about MTAA — sometimes to the exclusion of everything else; tell lies; and generally spout off all kinds of crazy shit.
I have no institutional affiliation to anything in the art world and my opinions are my own (so leave M.River out of it).
(I finally understand why so many blogs out there post these sorts of disclaimers.)
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Arc of “The Surrogates”
A contemporary performance art piece by Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG) via MTAA.
sur•ro•gate transitive verb: to put in the place of another: to appoint as successor, deputy, or substitute for oneself
On Friday April 11, 2008 as part of its monthly curatorial project, art collective MTAA premiered “The Surrogates,” a performance art piece exploring the nature of perceived identity and representation, credited to European-based art collective 0100101110101101.ORG (in absentia).
Presented at MTAA’s OTO art space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the two-hour piece began at 7 p.m. with an open bar and velvet rope welcoming attendees in the hallway.
Inside the OTO space proper, two rows of two chairs (numbered 1-4) faced a low stage featuring a 4’x6’ projection screen (center) and a small television monitor (stage right). Attendees entered the darkened room four at a time, their assigned seats facing a slightly delayed projection of themselves. The monitor revealed hallway activity in real time.
(click for a larger image)
The attendees (now participants) were given no explanation of the piece, though they were invited do as they pleased within the space and to leave at their leisure. Re-entry was not permitted however, and those exiting the piece were immediately replaced by those next behind the velvet rope.
“The Surrogates” reaches its 180-degree apex via this text. Please note that while the Mattes (0100101110101101.ORG.) are credited as the authors of this seminal performance, MTAA designed, built and executed this work in its entirety.
The Mattes graciously agreed to lend their identity to “The Surrogates,” and for their essential contribution, receive 50 percent authorship and financial stake in “The Surrogates.”
MTAA, 2008
http://tinajil.com/over_the_opening
http://mteww.com
http:// 0100101110101101.ORG
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The Surrogates — TONIGHT!!
A reminder to everybody — come to our studio tonight for some performance/video/something art!
Eva and Franco Mattes continue their investigations into power, authorship and identity with “The Surrogates” a new performance based video project. Combining elements of theater, video, surveillance, and social interaction, “The Surrogates” transforms OTO into an experimental social space questioning the distinction between the viewer and the viewed.
Creative Capital ! Wikipedia
Can it be possible that there is no entry for Creative Capital on Wikipedia?
I’ve tried a couple of searches. No dice.
Maybe someone less lazy than I will fix this egregious error.
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Want at the Beall
M.River is the official documenter of MTAA activities. Since he’s currently still on secret assignment on the west coast you may have to wait a bit for the photo documentation of the exhibition of Want as part of LIVE (more info) at the Beall Center, but here’s a quick shot from the opening (click for a larger image):
The show was a great success with lots of fine work and lots of folks showing up to check out the art. We were very honored to be included in the exhibition with the other great artists.
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LIVE @ Beall Press Release
MTAA + RSG’s new multi-channel video/software installation, Want, is being premiered at the exhibition LIVE at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, UC Irvine next week!
More on Want here and here.
Along with MTAA & RSG, LIVE includes artists Karen Finley, Siebren Versteeg, Natalie Bookchin, Ben Rubin, Aphid Stern and Michael Dale and is curated by David Familian.
Read the official press release (format smorgasbord):
Google doc
Word (.doc)
OpenOffice (.odt)
PDF
Excerpt below:
BRIEF OVERVIEW
What is the meaning of “live” in today’s virtual world? The Beall Center for Art and Technology is pleased to present LIVE, an exhibit which features nine artists who sample and transform data, photographs and video from the Internet and incorporate it into their sculptures and installations. The LIVE exhibit will be open to viewers April 3 – June 7, 2008.
[…]
CURATOR’S STATEMENT
The title of this exhibition poses a question—how do we define and experience what is live when the majority of our daily interactions are increasingly mediated and reconfigured by various technologies? And how does this change our perception of what is considered real or actual versus what is virtual? Līve features nine artists who sample and transform data, photographs and video from the Internet and incorporate it into their sculptures and installations. Either extracting live footage or transmitting data in real time, they cull from diverse sources including Congressional speeches from C-Span, websites with Iraqi war casualties, a critique of consumerism from a peer-to-peer network and on-line video surveillance. As the artists isolate ideas and images from the steady stream of unrelenting data, they produce thought-provoking, aesthetic and “līve” works of art that also challenge our ideas of real and virtual experience.
In 1889 in Time and Free Will, the philosopher Henri Bergson suggested that the “real” and the “unreal” do not exist, there is only the actual and virtual — the actual is that which science describes and quantifies, while the virtual is what we process in our minds. As we take in the input of the actual world through our senses and process a series of physical and quantifiable information, it is transformed into conscious and unconscious responses, as our minds become a repository of virtual experiences.
As communication technologies such as telegraph and telephone were invented, there was suddenly a great physical distance between the sender and the receiver. The innovation of radio and television broadcast media increased this spatial displacement even further, transforming one-to-one personal communication into live events experienced by masses of people. The advent of recording technology increased displacement not just the spatially but also temporally: recordings became like memories fixed in both form and time, just as writing allowed speech to be fixed as text. As Plato noted in his famous account of conversations between Socrates and Phaedrus, throughout history the direct experience and dialogical nature of live speech has always been privileged over recorded text.
Even today it is always emphasized and privileged when any event—a breaking news story, a natural disaster, a sports match or a performance is presented “live.” Since the 1990s with the omnipresence of the Internet and more recently, Web 2.0 technologies such as You Tube, Flicker and social net-working sites, the notion of live experiences has become more spontaneous and democratized. Artists noticed these changes in the mid-1990s in the first generation of web-based artworks.
The artists in Live build upon this early work, but expand that vocabulary, extending their art from the web page into the gallery. Their wide range of approaches, forms and methods explore the space/time displacements of mediated events and how those events are both transmitted and remediated.
Awareness Test
via Boing Boing
http://www.dothetest.co.uk/
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“Off the Grid” Exhibition @ the Neuberger
(…you know I only post about my friends.)
Via emailed press release:
EcoArtTech will be demonstrating their Environmental Risk Assessment Rover-AT at Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY each evening at dusk on 3/27, 3/28, and 3/29, 2008.#
Ecoarttech’s ERAR-AT is part of the Neuberger Museum of Art’s “Off the Grid” Exhibition, March 30 - June 1, 2008. “Off the Grid” features works that subvert and circumvent conventional infrastructures. Co-presented by the Neuberger Museum of Art and free103point9 and curated by Jacqueline Shilkoff, Galen Joseph-Hunter, Tianna Kennedy, and Tom Roe.
http://www.free103point9.org/events/1678
Participating artists: Benjamin Cohen, Dylan Gauthier, and Stephan von Muehlen, EcoArtTech, eteam, Max Goldfarb, Louis Hock, Nina, Katchadourian, Kristin Lucas, Joe McKay, Trevor Paglen, Temporary Services, Seth Weiner, Bart Woodstrup
NY art fairs 08
They kinda snuck up on me this year… looks like they’re next week. Sometimes I’m just a tad too out of touch with the art world.
…considering skipping them this year. Is it because I don’t care? Or because I’m just bitter at not being part of the market? Whatever. I hate art fairs — even work I like looks horrid in those packed little stalls. It reminds me of ogling animals in zoos; it always makes me sad.
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Creative Capital scores .5mil for new media
This is good. Via press release:
CREATIVE CAPITAL RECEIVES GRANT FROM THE TOBY FUND TO SUPPORT EMERGING FIELDS ARTISTS#
$540,000 to benefit artists working in alternative gaming, internet-based activism, new media installations, robotics, and more
NEW YORK, NY (March 20, 2008) — Creative Capital, the premier national artist support organization, is the recipient of a major, three-year gift from The TOBY Fund, established by collector, philanthropist, and former curator Toby Devan Lewis. This $540,000 gift specifically supports the production costs of Creative Capital emerging fields artists, a category that encompasses artists whose work includes imaginative uses of new technologies, as well as genre-blurring applications of familiar creative practices.
“From our very first grant round in 1999, Creative Capital was committed to artists whose work doesn’t neatly fit the usual discipline categories,” said Creative Capital’s president Ruby Lerner, “While the sometimes indefinable nature of these projects is tremendously exciting, it also creates a handicap, as this kind of work often lacks the support infrastructure of more traditionally defined disciplines. Ms. Lewis has always had a similar passion for artists who boldly cross all sorts of boundaries — discipline, aesthetic, thematic — and we’re thrilled that The TOBY Fund for Emerging Fields at Creative Capital will draw more attention to how these artists challenge the very landscape of the contemporary arts.”
The TOBY Fund grant will allow Creative Capital to support more of its emerging fields grantees at the $50,000 level, the organization’s maximum award. These artists will also benefit from the organization’s trademark program of artist services, which is valued at an additional $25,000 per artist. To date, Creative Capital has funded 48 emerging fields projects representing 65 artists, with $1.1 million in direct funding and more than $1 million in artist services. Artists previously supported through this category include Cory Arcangel, Luca Buvoli, Hasan Elahi, Marie Sester and art collectives such as The Yes Men and SubRosa. The organization is currently conducting a grant round that will result in another class of emerging fields grantees being announced in early 2009.
MTAA + RSG premier Want
Want @ Beall Apr 3, ‘08
We’re very happy to announce that in our first major collaboration with RSG, we’ll premier a new multiple channel algorithmic video installation entitled “Want” as part of the exhibition “Live” opening April 3rd, 2008 at the Beall Center for Art & Technology.
Watch the ‘teaser’ trailer above. And there’s more here: http://mtaa.net/want/…
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People want what they want NOW. Instinct tells us to get as much as we can as fast as we can – and the Internet obliges. Instant gratification meets infinite opportunity – be it information, commerce, employment, acceptance or love. And yet the majority of bandwidth is dedicated to base human behavior, i.e. celebrity gossip and pornography.
Nobody needs poorly Photoshopped pictures of naked Britney Spears – but hey! If they’re out there, why not look? The Internet gives our less-seemly desires space to grow, allowing us to anonymously indulge curiosities, perversions and fetishes that most would never pursue in a public space. And yet “virtual reality” has ceased to exist. What we think of as the “real world” now encompasses the Internet. We download movie clips and call our co-workers to watch. We shop online and have goods delivered to our home. We meet through matchmaking web sites. No more virtual vs. real. It’s all real now.
“Want” explores the current climate of society over-stimulated by the bombardment of technological instant gratification, and the very definite, yet-to-be-revealed implications and issues of accountability and responsibility surrounding virtuality. Here, the Internet’s underbelly is exposed; pushing the quiet, anonymous behavior that flourishes in cyberspace into public space, forcing us to reevaluate this behavior if it were to take place in the physical community.
The life-sized six-screen video display uses custom software to monitor real time Internet searches. When the software finds a programmed keyword, it triggers a video clip of one of several actors/avatars who translates the virtual request to reality.
A soccer mom says, “I want French.”
A rocker dude says, “I want Star Trek Enterprise.”
A nondescript middle-aged guy says, “I want Little Girl.”
A girl says, “I want Forever.”
The six video screens are triggered almost concurrently, causing the voiced requests to overlap. The result is an audio-visual cacophony of desire; an online echo chamber of warped reality.
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“Want” is funded by a grant from the Creative Capital Foundation.
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Rhizome’s widgets
Rhizome released a bunch of widgets for their site. You can now easily add bits of code to your web site that displays your portfolio, Rhizome news and lots more. Check it out…
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Rhizome Commissions Program
We’ve posted about this before, but here’s a reminder for everybody:
Deadline for applications: midnight, March 31, 2008
Rhizome says:
We support: New Media Art, by which we mean projects that creatively engage new and networked technologies and also works that reflect on the impact of these tools and media in a variety of forms. Commissioned projects can take the final form of online works, performance, video, installation or sound art. Projects can be made for the context of the gallery, the public, or the web.
Net art in polish
Ewa Wójtowicz’s book “net art” features MTAA’s Creative Commons-licensed Simple Net Art Diagram on the cover. It looks like you can get the book here.
Congrats on the book Ewa.
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Favorite color
As far as I can remember red has always looked good to me—on cars, on Detroit Redwing uniforms.
More on Büchel v. Mass MoCA
The NYT covers the “metaproject” that sprung from the “Training Ground for Democracy” debacle in this article: Accusations, Depositions: Just More Fodder for Art (don’t miss the slideshow).
(We’ve typed things about this fracas previously here and here.)
The work sounds and looks a tad tedious from what I can tell from the article, but one obviously can’t make an informed judgement unless one sees the work.
This quote of Büchel’s no artist should argue with:
“Who is going to decide what art is?” he wrote in an e-mail message. “For sure it is not the art institution if the authors are still alive and can speak.”
Light Industry
MTAA will be taking part in the inaugural season of Light Industry, a new screening/performance/lecture series covering film and new media. It’s being organized by Ed Halter and Thomas Beard.
Some press release below and lots more on the web site: http://www.lightindustry.org. Looks awesome!
“The Blazing World,” a screening to be held on March 25, marks the beginning of Light Industry, a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project will begin as a series of weekly events this spring and summer, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator, including Peggy Ahwesh, Cory Arcangel, Rebecca Cleman, Ben Coonley and Michael Smith, Bradley Eros and Brian Frye, eteam, Kendra Gaeta and Laris Kreslins, David Gatten, Lia Gangitano, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Nick Hallett, William E. Jones, Andrew Lampert, Dennis Lim, Mark McElhatten, MTAA, Marisa Olson, Jacob Perlin, Seth Price, Jennifer Reeves, Eddo Stern, and Dan Streible, among others.#
Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media. Bringing together the worlds of contemporary art, experimental cinema, new media, documentary film, and the academy, to name only a few, Light Industry looks to foster a complex dialogue amongst a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.
For its opening seasons, all events will take a place on Tuesdays at 8PM in Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn that’s home to a cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of rent-stabilized studios for artists in need of low-cost rental space. This program was conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial redevelopment—one that does not displace artists, workers, local residents or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that integrates cultural and industrial production.
Leap day! 2008!
It’s leap day! What are you going to do with your extra day this year? I’m not planning on doing much… pretty much just a normal day. Perhaps next leap day I’ll make some plans to do something that I would only do every 4 years.
[Image found here; #1 hit on Google image search]
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Andy Warhol eating a hamburger
via Rocketboom
update I
Kenyatta @ RB tells me they found the video on YouTube where it’s had over 200k views and over 800 comments.
I’m really curious as to the story behind this video… when it was made? where it was made? How this YouTuber got a hold of it…
For more famous artists doing fun things on video: Beastie Beuys.
update II (2/29)
Barry’s found another artist loving the Warhol eating a hamburger video.
And I received an email from Jacob Christensen with this info:
[…] It is an excerpt from a film made in 1981 by the Danish documentary film director and author Jørgen Leth called “66 Scenes from America”.
I remember seeing the excerpt at some time on Danish TV with Leth explaining the story - the point was quite simply to film Andy Warhol (an American icon) eating a hamburger (another American icon). Unfortunately, the film crew forgot to buy a soft drink along with the hamburger, but Warhol took — or rather ate —it in its stride.
Cory’s Colors
Cory Arcangel has released the Macintosh software that powers his “Colors” piece (first shown at Team in ‘06). Now anyone can make the work themselves.
Get it from his web site!
update
Rhizome has more info on this, including the fact that this piece is going to be shown at MoMA. If you hurry, you can exhibit it in your own apartment before it graces the mighty MoMA galleries.
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Boing Boing tv covers Brody
Brody Condon’s “Performance Modifcation (Nauman)” gets the BBtv treatment today.
10 performers outfitted in medieval/space/fantasy armor re-create Bruce Nauman’s 1973 work “Tony Sinking into the Floor, Face Up and Face Down”. Performed in slow motion and combined with movements based on computer game death animations, this piece is accompanied by a high volume binaural beats reputed to induce out of body experiences.
5 years of MTAA blogging
Nathaniel Stern reminds us *again* that our yearly blog-o-versary passed us by on Feb 9 without any wild celebrations.
Here’s the first post.
I’ve put it in my calendar so it we won’t miss it next time. (Isn’t technology wonderful?)
m.river adds - “OH YEAH! almost forgot, if you want a link on the side bar over there, let me know.” Yeah, never happened…or no one wanted to be in our side bar in the last 5 years.
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Lee Walton in Boston
Lee Walton’s going to be bombarding Boston with his Lee Walton-ness in the coming weeks.
If I was in Boston I would be there. Since I’m in New York, it might not be possible to attend :(
Two events:
an artist talk at the Art Institute of Boston…
and
a new performance at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.
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Various bits 2/15/08
Lots of cool stuff today.
First, don’t forget — Kriegspiel LAN party rescheduled for Feb 22! Check it out!
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Second, Montage: Unmonumental Online, Rhizome’s portion of the New Museum’s Unmonumental goes live today. Congrats to the curators Lauren Cornell and Marisa Olson and all the artists involved.
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Last, and certainly not least, MTAA has released a brand spanking new piece of web art for 2008! Check it out…
Yes & No
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update
Cool new app on Facebook called ArtShare created by a team working out of the Brooklyn Museum. Check it out if you’re on FB.
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CAE witch hunt continues
Federal harassment led one of the folks implicated in the witch hunt of Steven Kurtz to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge. The NYT reports that Dr. Robert Ferrell was sentenced today to one year of unsupervised release and a $500 fine.
Lots more at the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund web site.
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Spec-ish
update 2/12
The creator of Pixish, Derek Powazek, has responded to the spec-work criticisms.
more update
I can only ask myself, was Mr. Powazek expecting some other response from creative professionals? Do a search for pixish spec and you can see the design community hating on this idea big time.
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Any artist, illustrator or photographer that takes part in Pixish is either a rank amateur or an idiot.
From the site:
- Create an Assignment. Ask for what you want.
- Get Submissions. People create and submit their work.
- Peer Review. Community voting helps find the best.
- Pick Winners. Select your favorites and download.
- Rewards! Winners get prizes and rewards.
Robbers Steal $160m in Art From Zurich
I was in Brooklyn all weekend. I swear.
AP via HuffPo
update
Is it wrong that when I read that the paintings were stolen from a collection amassed by a nazi collaborator that my sympathies instantly shifted to the thieves?
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Can’t get riled over the Jetty
Note that this is only T.Whid’s opinion and M.River may, and probably, feels otherwise…
The NYT picks up on what the art blogs have been discussing over the last week or so: artists trying to stop oil drilling (or exploration) around the Spiral Jetty?
For whatever reason, I don’t really care. It was submerged for 3 decades because of poor planning (or ignorance) on Smithson’s part, there’s an argument whether he would want any preservation of the site and it is an earthwork after all. How ‘earthy’ can it be if it can’t stand a little oil drilling?
http://www.spiraljetty.org/
M. River adds - I’m fairly certain that Smithson knew what he was doing and was not ‘ignorant’ of entropy. Although, I’m not certain if T.Whid is being sarcastic in this post. “What good is a 20th century art icon if you can’t explore it for oil?” Yikes.
T.Whid responds - I didn’t mean to imply that he was ignorant of entropy, just that he may have been ignorant of the fact that the lake was low due to drought when the Jetty was built. Perhaps he wasn’t and part of the plan was that the Jetty would appear and disappear with the cycles of drought.
I’m not sure if I’m being sarcastic either. But I’m sure that I don’t really care about the Jetty drilling.
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M.River’s theme song
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Ukulele Style
M.River adds - Just in case you have not seen my all-uke all-m.river noise band, here is LOCU - League Of Crappy Ukes. Enjoy.
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Obama FTW
Note: I’m only speaking for myself here: T.Whid. This isn’t an official MTAA endorsement of a candidate. update - With M.River’s endorsement this is now the first ever official MTAA endorsement of a political candidate. We’re hoping that this brings Obama at least two votes.
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Not that anyone cares, but I’m voting Barack Obama this Tuesday.
I would vote for Kucinich or Edwards (even though they’ve dropped out of the race) if New York wasn’t Clinton country.
Sadly (or perhaps not), I’m being swayed more by emotional than intellectual reasons. Obama does inspire me. I think with him as President that perhaps the US can finally and completely leave our racial problems behind. Perhaps an Obama presidency would really create true equality and justice in the US. I know that that sounds all too optimistic, but he does give me hope — as cheesy as that might sound.
In addition, Clinton is just more corporate-rule-as-usual. And dynasties are as un-american as can be and we should resist them when we can. Other than that, their policies are very similar. Obama’s health insurance policy has issues, but I’m hoping that when he’s president pressure from the left will force him to make it better, i.e. closer to the Edwards plan.
M.River adds - For the first time, I have registered as a Democrat. The reason is to vote for Senator Obama. I have only one simple reason why. He did not support the war in Iraq and I hope that he will, as president, remove our military from this country. That’s it. It’s time to bring troops home.
Another update - Krugman on Obama’s health plan…
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The MS/Yahoo! thing
Gruber of Daring Fireball talks about exactly what I was scratching my head about when I heard this news.
I was hoping that some Yahoo! OSS goodness might rub off on MS, but it just ain’t gonna happen. I use both OSS stuff (PHP, JS libraries etc) and MS stuff (ASP.net, Visual Studio, etc) in my day-to-day and they are just completely different beasts. To try to cram the two together in the MicroHoo deal would result in a thing that no one wants to see. MS will kill what it can’t ignore and treat the rest like red-headed stepchildren.
Update - Helen A.S. Popkin of MSNBC (as well as MTAA’s pop culture guru)on MS+YAHOO
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OH SHIT! art-world ‘Runway’
Sarah Jessica Parker’s Pretty Matches shingle is teaming with reality factory Magical Elves to create a “Project Runway”-type show for the art world.Read all about it on Variety.
Potential skein would pit a dozen aspiring artists against one another, following the group as they attempt to produce various kinds of artwork — from painting and photography to sculpting and industrial design. Pieces would be rated by a panel of judges, as well as by the contestants themselves.
Nature Version 2.0
Our good friends Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir (aka EcoArtTech) have organized this exhibition and symposium at Colgate University. The exhibition features a great selection of new media artists.
Lots more info here.
Nature Version 2.0: Ecological Modernities and Digital Environmentalism
Jan. 21 - Feb. 16, 2008 @ Colgate University’s Clifford Gallery, Hamilton, New York.
http://www.ecoarttech.net/sustainablefutures
Featuring works by Natalie Jeremijenko, Brooke Singer, Joline Blais, Jane Marsching, Colin Ives, Alex Galloway, Amy Franceschini, Tom Sherman, Michael Alstad, Don Miller (aka no carrier), and Andrea Polli.
Curated by EcoArtTech (Cary Peppermint & Christine Nadir)
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Nature Version 2.0 is a survey of artists who reinvent environmentalism for a digital age in a number of ways: by examining how digital technologies can make ecological problems more salient, by reusing and recycling obsolete technologies for new uses, and by exploring how digital spaces and the public domain may require environmental protection much like nature. Re-imagining the relationship between nature and technology, Nature Version 2.0 suggests an ethics of the network and an environmentalism of natural, built, and digital spaces.
This exhibition is in conjunction with Environmental Art and New Media Technologies: Imagining Sustainable Futures, a two-day symposium on interdisciplinary, digital, and networked art and research that draws upon environmental science, computer science, design, hacking, gameplay, engineering, and ecocriticism. Following the Nature Version 2.0 artists’ reception on February 8, keynote speaker Natalie Jeremijenko will launch the two-day Environmental Art and New Media Technologies symposium in Golden Auditorium, Little Hall, at 7pm. “90 Degrees South,” a multimedia performance by Andrea Polli will follow at 9pm in the Clifford Gallery. The symposium will resume in Golden Auditorium on February 9 for a day of talks and presentations by critics and exhibiting artists, 9am-5pm.
Hosted by Colgate University’s Clifford Art Gallery, the Department of Art and Art History, and the Environmental Studies Program, these events were made possible through funding provided by the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts, the Film and Media Studies Program, the Environmental Studies Program, and the Center for Ethics and World Societies at Colgate University. All events are free and open to the public.
Pile on Beecroft
Via Paddy…
I’ve always detested Beecroft’s work. It’s pure vapidness masquerading as a critique of the same. And I hate it when one not-very-talented but high-profile artist does or makes stupid things thereby justifying all the morleys in the world (as the comments here exhibit).
Of course she tries to kung-fu her racist, colonialist and narcissistic attitudes by admitting that she’s just a messed up white girl:
“I thought, what a freak I am,” Beecroft says softly, almost a whisper. “But it was really me.”
3 Hours Of My Adolescence Verbatim
via here via boing boing
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Nauman FTW
Bruce Nauman representin’ USA at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
via NYT
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Understanding art for geeks Flickr set
This is pretty dumb, but I’ll link to it anyway.
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Bad sushi
Shit!
Recent laboratory tests found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.
EcoTechArt on BBtv
Our friends Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir’s video Wilderness Trouble is featured on Boing Boing tv today (permanent link to Boing Boing tv post).
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Art Wikimarathon
The Art Wikimarathon sounds like a good idea:
There’s a lack of art/artist info on Wikipedia, and we’re often too busy to find the time to contribute. So, we’re setting aside one day where a crew of people collectively drop serious knowledge into wikipedia about art.
Big changes afoot in web dev
First, the IEBlog describes how they ‘broke the web’ when they released IE7, then go on to explain how they plan NOT to do that with IE8.
Crazily enough, Zeldman and the WASP seem to be on board with a blog post and 2 (count ‘em 2) articles on A List Apart (1, 2).
I haven’t read about the new ‘version targeting’ scheme yet, but Microsoft’s ‘web standards guru targeting’ scheme seems to have worked wonderfully.
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Destroy bigotry
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2008
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Rhizome commissions not just net art
Rhizome has opened up their commission cycle for 2009. They plan on funding 7 new art works with awards ranging from USD3K - 5K. Go to Rhizome’s site for the details.
The big news is that they’re not just funding net art anymore. They’ve expanded the scope to encompass all new media art. From the announcement email:
Rhizome has expanded our scope, formerly focused strictly on Internet-based art, to encompass the broad range of practices that fall under new media art. This includes projects that creatively engage new and networked technologies, as well as works that reflect on the impact of these tools and media in a variety of forms. With this expanded format, commissioned works can take the final form of online works, performance, video, installation or sound art. Projects can be made for the context of the gallery, the public, the web or networked devices.
Frank (Again) stills
This afternoon EST MTAA performed our web performance called “Frank (Again)” at the Panoplie web site (more info here).
The performance was simple. We asked the on-line audience at Panoplie to give us suggestions on drawing a picture of a snowman named Frank. (The name comes from our last snowman who was built from $100 worth of deli materials.) The entire performance lasted 20 minutes.
Thanks to Annie Abrahams for having us. Twas much fun.
Check out some stills from the video:
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Heroic citizen stands up for the constitution!
I finally had to refuse the subway search today.
It was very anti-climatic. I just said that I couldn’t allow a search of my bag without reason and the cop said, “OK, you can’t enter the subway.” Then I left. And walked a half-mile to the next station on the line and came to work.
What a waste of time.
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Happy New Year 2008
(Image courtesy of Trevor; used because it’s currently the #1 hit on Google’s image search and I always like to let Google make my decisions for me.)
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MTAA’s creative practice
While M.River posts happy i-love-everybody posts about the new year I’m here to rant.
I’m not really sure what Roberta Smith is going on about with this column:
Another lamentable creeping usage is not only pretentious, but it distorts and narrows what artists do. I refer to — rather than reference — the word practice, as in “Duchamp’s practice,” “Picasso’s studio practice” and worst of all, especially from the mouths of graduate students, “my practice.” Things were bad enough in the 1980s, when artists sometimes referred to their work as “production,” but at least that had a kind of grease-monkey grit to it.
The MTAA Reference Resource (MTAA-RR) attempts to archive most information regarding the art duo MTAA’s creative PRACTICE.
It turns the artist into an utterly conventional authority figure. (emphasis mine)
[…] there’s the implication that artists, like lawyers, doctors and dentists, need a license to practice. (emphasis mine)
[…] the implication that an artist, like a doctor, lawyer or dentist, is trained to fix some external problem. It depersonalizes the urgency of art making and gives it an aura of control, as if it is all planned out ahead of time.
It suggests that art making is a kind of white-collar activity whose practitioners don’t get their hands dirty, either physically or emotionally.
13. to exercise or pursue as a profession, art, or occupation: to practice law.
Merry and etc
This is may favorite emailed holiday greeting. It’s from the Art Workshop Lazareti in Dubrovnik, Croatia. We showed some work there during the iCommons Summit ‘07.
Here’s wishing you good holidays and happiness.
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Williamsburg is hip! Film at 11.
How many times can the press discover Williamsburg? It’s seems it goes on forever and ever.
[…] Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood has in recent years become one of New York City’s hippest areas. And with its easy accessibility — just a short ride on the L train from Manhattan’s Union Square — Williamsburg also stands apart as an ideal destination for visitors looking to explore another side of the City.
“Williamsburg is a haven for the young and the hip,” said George Fertitta […]
Reminder: Mike Koller — TONIGHT ONLY!
Mike Koller’s “Holiday Rejects” tonight at Over The Opening.
Get all the details here.
This one is going to be great. Not to be missed :-)
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w00t! Websters is totally PWNED!
Thousands of you took part in the search for Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2007, and the vast majority of you chose a small word that packs a pretty big punch. The word you’ve selected hasn’t found its way into a regular Merriam-Webster dictionary yet—but its inclusion in our online Open Dictionary, along with the top honors it’s now been awarded—might just improve its chances. This year’s winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t (“leet,” or “elite”) speak—an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. Although the double “o” in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for “we owned the other team”—again stemming from the gaming community.Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year 2007 #
Merriam-Webster’s #1 Word of the Year for 2007 based on votes from visitors to our Web site:
1. w00t (interjection)
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word “yay”
open animated GIF frames in Photoshop CS3
Adobe, the jerks, removed functionality from Photoshop CS3. Specifically, you could, once upon a time, open an animated GIF in Imageready (free with Photoshop). You can no longer do this with CS3 since Imageready (and it’s tight integration with PS) no longer exists. Adobe’s own KB article on it tells you to buy Fireworks to get this functionality! WTF?!
Fuck that. I have a workaround. Note: this is for OSX only. This workaround works for Windows (my workaround is very similar). Here it is:
1. Open the animated GIF in QuickTime.
2. Choose ‘Save As…’
3. Select ‘Save as self-contained movie’ and save it.
4. In Photoshop, select File->Import->Video Frames To Layers…
5. Select your new animated GIF/QuickTime movie and configure how you want to import it in the Import Video To Layers dialog box.
6. That’s it. You should now have all the frames on separate layers and as frames in the animation palette.
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ArtFagCity does Miami
Paddy’s take on the art-fair-a-palooza sweeping Miami this week sounds a lot like how I would probably feel about it if I was there.
I’m really liking her cynical take on the whole thing. So far it’s the only coverage that sounds like a sane person is writing it (as opposed to a person lobotomized by a PR firm).
From: ArtNow Meets Low Expectations
Word on the street tells me ArtNow won’t be the worst fair I see this week, which frankly frightens me. I made it through the first floor of galleries before I gave up on the chance of seeing anything moderately interesting, and walked next door to Flow. […] Consider yourself warned.
Success in Rome
After speculating that M.River may have been abducted and sold into slavery since I hadn’t heard from him in a week. It now appears that the Super Slow 5K Roma edition was an astounding success!
M.River’s disappearance was due to the fact that he was being feted throughout Rome for the duration of his stay and he was too drunk to figure out how to work the laptop!
M.River is posting a bunch of JPGs on Tinjail of his adventures in Italy.
Check ‘em out… (start there and work back)
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Google Reader stats, or, I’m a total dork
Every other art blog is talking about the New Museum but I’m a dork so this art blog will talk about how to get feed stats from Google Reader!
You can see subscriber info and average number of posts per week. To see stats in Google Reader, do this: click on the ‘discover’ link next to the ‘add subscriptions’ link in the sidebar. Then click the ‘Browse’ tab, then do a search in the ‘Search and browse’ section. And that’s it! You’ll see a list of feeds that match your search criteria.
Interestingly you can snoop on other’s stats as well. For example, bloggy has 62 subs, Cory Arcangel has 141 and We Make Money Not Art has a whopping 2,466! Note that these are only Google Reader subscribers.
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In other news, M.River has gone missing in Rome. He seems to be maintaining radio silence (voluntarily or otherwise). Guess that’s what I get for giving him a laptop with a fresh install of linux (which he’s never used) and kicking him out the door.
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NuMu Calvin Klein billboard mashup
Cool?
Lame?
I can’t even tell anymore…
(Hint: you can see the profile of the New Museum’s new building in the un-dripped portion of the billboard.)
(via racked)
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Support Turbulence
They need $25K by the end of this year! Go to here to donate.
We need your support. If you:#
— are one of the thousands of people who regularly visit Turbulence.org, Networked_Performance, Networked_Music_Review and/or New American Radio
and/or
— are one of the hundreds of teachers who use Turbulence works in your new media/digital art courses
and/or
— are an artist who has received a Turbulence, Networked_Music_Review or New American Radio commission
and/or
— have presented at or attended Upgrade! Boston (Art Interactive or Massachusetts College of Art and Design), Floating Points (Emerson College), or Programmable Media (Pace Digital Gallery)
now is the time to give something back.
We cannot continue without your help. We MUST raise $25,000 by December 31, 2007.
Comments around the web
I’ve been taking part in two discussions on two different blogs today.
The first, on Chris Fahey’s graphpaper.com, where the discussion is about graphic design on the web. I don’t have time to summarize so please go to the thread and check it out. But my point wasn’t well made. If we’re going to discuss graphic design vis-a-vis the web, it doesn’t help to inject the web into what is a conversation about traditional graphic design.
If you want to crit Google’s logo, crit Google’s logo. What does the fact that Google makes its money via the web have to do with anything? Now. If you want to crit Google’s home page in regard to it’s visual design, that’s another story. The main design decision of Google’s home page isn’t the logo. It’s the singular search field. You could put any reasonably designed logo above this search field without significantly changing the function or feel of the page. This distinction, IMHO, embodies the disconnect between graphic designers critiquing the web and web designers critiquing the web.
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The other is at ArtFagCity. My comment is still waiting moderation (Paddy please fix these long waits… makes it hard to have a discussion) but here it is:
Tom Moody wrote: “Art about the art world inherently blows”#
I can never understand why some folks think certain subjects are inherently bad. It’s obvious to me that no subject is inherently bad — even the art world.
If a certain piece is naval-gazing bullshit, fine. If you think a certain subject is being over-explored (like skulls perhaps?), then say it.
But, to declare one subject off-limits because it “inherently blows” makes no sense.
Actually, good art about the art world is perhaps even harder to pull off because of the risks of a) naval-gazing and b) subject over-exposure.
Brody Condon, 3 Modifications
BTW, you’re a new media art chump if you miss Brody’s show at Virgil de Voldere Gallery. Opening tonight.
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iCommons auction
From the site…
The iCommons Auction runs from 19 November to 14 December, 2007. This is an innovative auction of paraphernalia from some of the world’s leading Internet figures. From Internet activist and Stanford Law Professor, Lawrence Lessig’s coat that he wore in countries around the world that invited him to talk about free culture; to pre-prints from best-selling novelist, Cory Doctorow’s forthcoming, to-be-Creative Commons-licensed novel, Little Brother; and from #13 of only 20 plush toys of Firefox Japan’s mascot, Fox-keh that took the world by storm, to four of Indian intellectual property expert Lawrence Liang’s favorite Bollywood films: this auction is a celebration of free culture from around the world from those who make it and build it every day. All the proceeds of the auction will go to developing and sustaining iCommons’ global projects.
Support Rhizome ‘07
The new media art site is looking to raise USD30K by the end of the year. Help ‘em out!
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Weezer cover of Pixies’ Velouria
I can’t help but post a link to this cover of Velouria by Weezer. I’m a big Weezer fan. I’m an even bigger Pixies fan. This tune squashes two of rock’s best together in massively awesome track. It came out way back in ‘99, but I just found it (the Amazonians seem to have hated it).
update
holy shit! There’s a video of the Pixies’ Velouria (found via Wikipedia). It’s real media and I can’t get it to play. Let me know if you have better luck.
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Marisa Olson @ Over The Opening
still from Marisa Olson’s “Performed Listening: H” (2007)
On Friday November 9th from 7pm to 10pm, Over The Opening is pleased to present “Performed Listening” by Marisa Olson
Marisa Olson’s work often grows out of fan culture and her Performed
Listening series explores the relationship between performer and
spectator by underscoring the performativity of listening and
watching. Began as a series of seemingly-silent performances in which
Olson would listen to music on headphones, in a public context, the
series has evolved into performances that sometimes incorporate other
spectators and an expanded series of videos. In these tapes of Olson
listening to music, the visual qualities are modified according to the
sonic elements of the music being listened to.
For her exhibition, Olson installs two previous works from the
Performed Listening series: “Easy Listening” (2005) and “Black and
White” (2006). Olson also debuts “Performed Listening: H” (2007). In
this new work, video of the artist listening to the Velvet
Underground’s song, Heroin, is distorted by an analog “colorizer.”
Marisa Olson’s work (marisaolson.com) has recently been presented by
the Whitney Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the 52nd
Biennale di Venezia, the Pacific Film Archive, Postmasters Gallery,
and the New York Underground Film Festival.
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Art blog questionaire
Paddy asks us to answer these questions.
Flattered that Paddy is interested in hearing MTAA’s views, but these questions aren’t very interesting to me. Plus they seem more focused on the critic/blogger as opposed to the artist/blogger. I did consider doing a snarky wise-ass reply to the questions, but I don’t have the time or energy right now.
Perhaps M.River will take a crack?
M.River Adds - Yes, Thanks PJ but I’ll pass as well. What I do here and on Tinjail makes little sense with this type of questions. The one thing I would say is that art/ review / crit blogs might want to avoid setting up standards and norms. Art needs a wide array of voices and styles. VVORKs, AFGs, MANs, ARTCALs, Reblogs, NNs, Rhizome Raws, Artnets and even Art Forum Diaries all have a role to play.
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Computerfinearts.com @ Haifa Museum of Art
We’re very happy and proud to be part of this exhibition in Israel:
“NETworking” is the first Israeli museum exhibition devoted to Net Art. It presents 12 works from the Computer Fine Arts collection of Doron Golan. The works included in this show highlight a number of the fundamental qualities that characterize Net Art: the visualization of data; open-code access and connectivity; hacking and online voyeurism involving critiques of authorities and economic powers; the creation of online behavioral codes and the negotiation of cyberspace from various perspectives.
Rhizome re-launches!
A superb upgrade of the new media community site
Some of the changes:
1. A major change (for RHIZOME_RAW email list subscribers) is the breaking up of the list into 3 different categories: discussion, opportunities and an arts calendar. This required me to redo my email filters a tad, but also gives me the option to filter categories I don’t want or filter them more granularly.
2. The member pages have been transformed into profiles pages with lots more features: enhanced portfolio section (unclear of whether the portfolio entries get added to the artbase automatically), ability to upload audio and video (very cool) and include the feed from your blog. The organizational improvements to the profile page makes it much easier to read and see how the person is interacting with the platform.
3. There has been a major visual re-design. The front page is easier to scan quickly and is laid out more logically. The top navigation has been improved.
4. The discussion board is much better. One can now drill way back in time very quickly. The only problem is that it seems to go back only to 2002. Also, it would be nice to filter these pages (Max Herman is just as annoying now as he was then) but I suppose that’s what the advanced search is for. Which brings me to…
…Bugs. I did run into some bugs. The biggest bug being that the advanced search form isn’t working (I’ve been waiting and waiting this feature). I’m hoping to see major speed improvements in the search. Also with search, it would be nice to have the same sort of pagination in the search results as we get in the discussion area.
But enough of bug talk. This is a major, major upgrade for Rhizome and a big improvement. Lauren, Patrick and Marisa should be very proud. Congrats!
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NYT’s Brooks: dumb or dumber?
[…] then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less.link
Paintings?!
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was an artist named M.River (or was it Mark River? or was it Mike Sarff?) who made… paintings?!
Yes. Paintings! And he’s posting them all on his blog!
Check ‘em out…
mriver adds - yep. paintings - thx. t.whid
Some context –
I started working on them in 2001 and have made 300 or so. They are all acrylic on canvass with the black line done with ink and a dip pen (bamboo). They are done in long series or sets (like one year was only painting heads using 3 colors). A good deal of them are based on NYT photos (not the ones on Tinjail so far).The reason I’ve been posting them on Tinjail is I’ve decided to try to document them all before Jan. I’m only a small way in so check back to that link in a few months and I will hopefully be done.
Oh…the other thing is that after painting consistently since 01, I suddenly stopped this summer. I think I’m using this time of documentation to reset / rethink the whole thing. Don’t know yet.
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Sponsored links — now in hebrew!
I’m a bit of a Google freak. I use Gmail and Google Calendar as my main mail and calendar apps. I’m desperately trying to get my wife to use Gmail as her main mail app and I’m always trying to get my collaborator M.River to use Google Docs instead of Word. I use the Gapps.
The other day I received an email from Doron (who’s living in Israel) that had a subject line in hebrew. There was really no text in the message — a quoted line also in hebrew — and one english line. This little bit of hebrew in the message triggered the ‘sponsored links’ section of the Gmail interface to display in hebrew.
I just thought it was kinda funny and it made me wonder how Google decides what language a message is written in.
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What Chris Fahey learned in art school
Chris Fahey has an interesting post up today about how designers think as opposed to non-designers/business people. His site seems to be down right now so I’ll post his bullet points below:
Without further ado: In art school, I learned:
- How to champion and defend my ideas.
- How to distinguish between personal and professional critique.
- How to respectfully and constructively critique my peers. How to attack the ideas of my colleagues and still have drinks with them that same night (and maybe even sleep with them — hey, it is art school)
- How to test drive a hundred different ideas through sketching, cobbling, and envisioning them, before finally settling on which one to go ahead and build.
- How to tell when I am done a project that could just as easily be improved endlessly.
- How to tell when an idea that is precious to me is actually holding me back. And then to feel good about throwing it away.
- How to have the confidence to present my ideas in public without fearing that they will be stolen. And how to take it in stride when they inevitably are.
- How to distinguish between taste, technical skill, and empirical efficiency.
- How to detect bullshit, and to avoid generating it myself (note that not all art school grads learn this).
- How to go the extra mile to make something high-quality.
- How to recognize talent in my peers.
- How to collaborate with my colleagues effectively to reach a common goal.
- How to be deeply competitive without being a dick.
- How to make something new just for the sake of being new.
- How to build off of, and give credit to, the ideas of my predecessors both contemporary and in history.
- How to save ideas that I’m not ready for and keep them for future use (usually in sketchbooks).
- How to start all over again from the beginning.
- How to teach all of the above.
TONIGHT! Over The Opening launches!
MTAA’s temporary gallery in their studio opens tonight for the first time with videos (and some other stuff) by Michael Sarff.
Where: 60 N. 6th St., 2nd Flr Williamsburg, Bklyn (directions)
When: 8 - 11 PM Friday Oct 12, 2007
Be there or be square. More info here.
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Untitled Landscapes for Portable Media Players
Loving the Untitled Landscapes for Portable Media Players series by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir AKA EcoArtTech.
My only quibble is that there should be a version just for Zunes™… j/k
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My Kid Could Paint That…
Paddy Johnson (aka Art Fag City) hits all the right points from an artist’s perspective in her review in The Reeler of My Kid Could Paint That. The NYT review is good too.
My 2¢? I’d never heard of the child before this movie’s PR kicked in. Was she really an art star? It just seems like a bunch of mainstream media hype trafficking on the general public’s ignorance of how actual contemporary art works. Sounds like a decent documentary though.
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New Baghdad Journal on-line
Check out Steve Mumford’s newest installment…
The artist Steve Mumford originally went to Baghdad in 2003 to work as a war artist, embedded with the U.S. military, both writing a journal and making drawings and watercolors of what he saw there. In early 2007 he returned to Iraq for approximately a month, where he worked at an army hospital. This is the second of three reports on that trip. The first, “With Good Company into Iraq,” was posted on Mar. 8, 2007. The archive for Mumford’s original “Baghdad Journal” can be found here.#
Airstream interior panorama
Last weekend a bunch of us went upstate to celebrate a birthday milestone of M.River’s.
Chris Fahey came along and created this awesome panorama of the interior of the airstream he stayed in with his wife Peggy. See Chris’ blog for lots more info and links to larger images on Flickr.
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gumbo@dumbo
G.H. Hovagimyan tells us…
gumbo@dumbo#
Art Under the Bridge Festival in Dumbo, Brooklyn
September 28, 29, 30th, 7pm to 11pm
Front Street & Adams Street, Brooklyn
Video Projection on the Manhattan Bridge Anchorage
I’ve been working with a group of artists over the summer. We have been finding ways to collaborate with each other through an open dialogue and discussion about art and group praxis. The name of the group is Artists Meeting;
Participating Artists include Leesa Abahuni, Nicole Abahuni, James Andrews, Daniel Blochwitz, Chris Borkowski, Ursula Endlicher, G.H. Hovagimyan, Thomas Hutchison, Lara Star Martini, Nsumi Group, [PAM], Joao Salema, Raphaele Shirley, Jason Wee, Lee Wells.
We will present our first public collaborative video installation this weekend at the Art Under the Bridge Festival in Dumbo, Brooklyn. We will project two 30 foot by 40 foot videos onto the south side of the Manhattan Bridge Anchorage from the loading dock just off the corner of Front and Adams.
‘Truth’ in photos?
I would like to write more about this, but time—work—blah.
Two articles in today’s NYT provide a strange contrast to one another. The first is filmmaker Errol Morris’ essay regarding a photo from 1855 by Roger Fenton. (I had never heard of Fenton before today and had never seen the photos discussed.) And the second is an editorial criticizing the idea that the dunes that inspired Edward Hopper should be protected from development simply because they were inspirations to the artist.
First, in the Morris article, I find it bizarre that there is even a debate as to the worth of a photo (or the talent of the photographer) if the photo was somehow staged:
[Songtag] mentions how one of the Fenton photographs was posed or staged. That we’re always disappointed when we learn that a photograph has been posed. Then she goes on to talk about the difference between fake paintings and fake photographs. Namely, a fake painting is a painting with faulty provenance — say, a painting that is purportedly by Vermeer, but turns out to be painted by somebody else. But according to Sontag, a fake photograph is a photograph that’s been posed.
Super Slow 5K — TOMORROW!
All the details here…
I’ve got a cold and feel crappy, M.River thinks it’s going to rain — but somehow we’re going to PULL THIS OFF!
I guess we have to because everybody knows about it…
Rhizome
AM New York
Curbed
LVHRD.ORG
RSVP on Facebook or email.
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Commons Art Diagram v2
This one was drawn by my niece Ivy from life, that is, from the t-shirt I was wearing.
Ivy didn’t specify what license she wanted to release this under, but I assume an attribution license would be fine ;-)
The original is here.
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The art season opens
The ArtCal calendar via Google Calendar shows that we’ll all be very busy around 6PM tomorrow.
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The King of Kong
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (official site; IMDB)
I can’t recommend this movie enough, it’s a great documentary. I was originally drawn to it because — hey, the classic arcade games are my generation — but the film goes far beyond any simple nostalgia kick. It’s hard to draw me completely into a film, but this one did it.
It’s not in very wide release (only 2 places in NYC are showing it) but check the web site, it’s being rolled out more widely over the coming weeks.
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Get yer sleep on…
…at the THE GREAT INTERNET SLEEPOVER!!!!!!!!
(Note: that’s the official title, multiple exclamation points and all.)
These crazy kids today:
Camp out with pro net surfers and net surfing clubs as we talk shop, play games, pitch tents, and make a hypertext mess big enough for mom to clean up in the morning.
Big news from Adobe
Adobe’s new flash player will support streaming or progressive playback of H264 encoded video files (.mp4, .m4v, .mov and more…).
There’s lots of very important info in the above link and anyone using video on the web should read it. This caught my eye:
Will it be possible to place H.264 streams into the traditional FLV file structure? It will, but we strongly encourage everyone to embrace the new standard file format. There are functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264 which we could not overcome without a redesign of the file format. This is one reason we are moving away from the traditional FLV file structure. Specifically dealing with sequence headers and enders is tricky with FLV streams.
San Jose Semaphore cracked
I hadn’t even heard of this project by Ben Rubin (of Listening Post fame), but it’s been solved.
From the artist’s web site:
San Jose Semaphore, by artist Ben Rubin, is a permanent public artwork commissioned by Adobe Systems Incorporated in collaboration with the City of San Jose’s Office of Cultural Affair’s Public Art Program.
Located within the top floors of Adobe’s Almaden Tower headquarters in San Jose, California, San Jose Semaphore is a multi-sensory kinetic artwork that illuminates the San Jose skyline with the transmission of a coded message. The content of the San Jose Semaphore’s message is a mystery; cracking the encryption technique and deciphering the message is posed as a challenge for the public. To the first person or group to successfully crack the code, Adobe will award bragging rights and acknowledgment on both the Adobe website (www.adobe.com) and the San Jose Semaphore website.
You’re living in a computer simulation
Back from vacation in Ohio (‘twas lovely), not much happening art-wise, thought I’d post this (in case you missed it in the NYT):
Check it out: Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch…
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims. Skip to next paragraph Viktor Koen#
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.
Cory Arcangel is finalist for Lucelia Artist Award
This year marks the seventh Lucelia Artist Award, an annual award in which the Smithsonian American Art Museum recognizes an artist under age 50 for his or her contribution to contemporary art. Funded by the New York–based Lucelia Foundation, the $25,000 prize is awarded to the winner by a distinguished panel of five jurors, who also nominate the finalists.
Port Huron Project in NYTimes
Congrats to Mark and his great project for this coverage!
check it out: Giving New Life to Protests of Yore (NYT)
First few graphs:
WASHINGTON, July 26 — It’s not an unfamiliar tableau these days: people gathered on a grassy expanse of the National Mall here, listening to someone deliver an impassioned antiwar speech with phrases like “aggressive, activist foreign policy,” “the war we are creating,” “vigorous governmental efforts to control information” and “distorted or downright dishonest documents.” At some point, the crowd breaks into applause and a young woman yells out, “That’s right!”
She shouts this, however, just after the speaker behind the lectern refers to men with last names like Johnson, Rusk and Bundy and to the destinies of the Vietnamese people. And at its high point, the crowd numbers only about 30 people, many of them involved in videotaping, recording and photographing the event as flags snap majestically in the wind around the Washington Monument.
In other words, if you had wandered into this spectacle on Thursday evening, you would have found yourself not exactly in the midst of an actual protest but somewhere slightly removed, in the disorienting territory where art meets political engagement.
Rhizome adds Creative Commons
Press release follows…
Rhizome is proud to announce its integration of Creative Commons licenses into its online archive of art, the Artbase. As of today, artists have the option to license their work under Creative Commons Licenses. This suite of licenses allows creators to shift the terms of copyright from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved,” therefore enabling authors, scientists, educators and artists, amongst others, to mark their creative works with the cultural freedoms they abide by. Rhizome’s hope is that through the use of these licenses, artists will have greater access to each others’ work in furtherance of their goals.#
Rhizome would like to thank Wendy Seltzer, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, for her guidance and Fred Benenson, Creative Commons Cultural Fellow and student at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, for his coordination of the project. “By implementing Creative Commons, Rhizome aligns itself with sites like Blip.tv, Flickr and Digg, who nurture not only a community of free creativity, but of free culture,” says Benenson. Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome, adds that “It’s in the spirit of Rhizome to foster collaboration amongst artists. I’m happy that Rhizome is able to make these licenses available, and to support the practice of sharing cultural material within the arts.”
About Rhizome
Rhizome is an online platform for the global new media art community. Our programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.
http://www.rhizome.org
About Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach.
http://creativecommons.org/
MASS MoCA: Project Is Not Art
MASS MoCA is shooting itself in the foot face if they think artists are going to look kindly on these claims…
More alarming is MASS MoCA’s argument that they are the lawful owners of the materials which are the subject matter of this dispute, and thus allowed to display them publicly.
But this isn’t the end of this wonderful yarn of fiction. MASS MoCA further argues that Büchel’s work is not even art, but simply a compilation of materials which, if accepted by the Court, would not be granted protection under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA). If in fact the Court decides that VARA does apply, MASS MoCA argues that any modification to the “materials” which may have happened is allowed by VARA under the “conservation or placement” exception, and/or that the doctrine of “fair use” would allow MASS MoCA to display Büchel’s project without infringing the Copyright or VARA Acts.
Steam pipe explosion
If you’re like me you’re wondering why there are steam pipes running under New York City. As always, the tubes have all the answers.
I found this:
Some 30 billion pounds of steam every year flow beneath the streets of Manhattan from the Battery to 96th Street. While it is unknown to most New Yorkers, Con Edison’s subterranean steam system is the biggest steam district in the world. There are 7 plants in NYC — five in Manhattan and one each in Queens and Brooklyn. On a cold winter day, nearly 10 million pounds of steam at 350 degrees Fahrenheit flow each hour through 105 miles of underground mains. Steam is efficient and cost effective for high-rise buildings and most of it is used for heating and cooling.
The city’s infrastructure is old, with much of it being built 50 to 100 years ago. Just maintaining this system, which cracks and breaks every day, is a monumental task.
In case you somehow missed it: James and Barry
James Wagner and Barry Hoggard are profiled in Brooklyn Rail this month.
Of course, as always, MTAA was way ahead of the curve (note: the date on the linked post is wrong, it was actually from June 13, 2005).
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MTAA’s Portable First Solo Show Audio Tour & Extended Dance Mix
The true MTAA-headz (is there such a thing?) out there will appreciate this (I hope).
Back in January 2000 MTAA had a solo show at a small gallery on the Lower East Side called Walden. The place is long gone, but evidence of our show persists.
For the show we created an audio tour. MP3s of the audio tour have been offline for a while, but I decided to put them back online (unsure why they were offline in the first place). Anyway, here they are:
MTAA’s Portable First Solo Show Audio Tour & Extended Dance Mix.
(Note: each track name links to an MP3 audio file.)
Track 1: The MTAA Promise (it looked more or less like this (PDF))
Track 2: TIME!® @ PS1 aka The Big Blue Summer (this piece had to do with our TIME® project)
Track 3: DYHAP Museum Plan (this piece related to Direct To Your Home Art Projects)
Track 4: V-TAV: "Group Text" Hard Copy Version (check out the exhibition)
Track 5: Site Unseen Tracking Poster (a sculptural version of Website Unseen)
Track 6: 99 Steps to Contemporary Art in Your Bedroom (check out the 99 Steps online)
Bonus Extended Dance Mix: Empty You by Yab Yum (Johnny Gould & Chris Flam)
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All the tracks were mixed by Cary Peppermint (working under the alias CP_V70), except the bonus track which was created by Yab Yum.
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iCommons Summit videos
iCommons iSummit07 - AiR panel - MTAA’s Tim Whidden
Last month MTAA participated in the iCommons Summit ‘07 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. I attended as MTAA’s representative and spoke on two panels (we also put an entire exhibition together while we were there).
Videos of the panels are online. You can download the QuickTime versions: The Artist-in-residence panel where all the artists spoke (83MB) and another panel (that was sort of strange and contentious) called Why Don’t Artists Use More Free Software (93MB).
There are also flash versions available via Vimeo:
1
Paddy Johnson (moderating),
Nathaniel Stern
http://www.vimeo.com/234407
2
MTAA’s Tim Whidden
http://www.vimeo.com/234421
3
Kathryn Smith
http://www.vimeo.com/234440
4
Jaka Zeleznikar
http://www.vimeo.com/234483
5
Joy Garnett
http://www.vimeo.com/234487
6
Ana Husman
http://www.vimeo.com/234494
7
Q&A
http://www.vimeo.com/234530
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Eyebeam featured on Channel 10
Channel 10 is Microsoft’s videoblog, billing itself as:
[…] a place for enthusiasts with a passion for technology. Through a world-wide network of contributors, Channel 10 covers the latest news in music, mobility, photography, videography, gaming, and new PC hardware and software.
Kimmelman on The Splasher(s)
Until the pranks turned ugly, it was heartening to follow the dust-up between a bunch of street artists and their nemesis or nemeses, identity unknown. As The New York Times reported this week, for some time works of stenciled graffiti art and wheat-pasted posters slapped onto walls in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan have been splashed with paint and scrawled with messages of protest.
Mumford’s better
There’s another "embedded artist" out there in the world documenting wars the old fashioned way. The differences between Richard Johnson and Steve Mumford? Johnson is Canadian, he’s in Afghanistan and he sucks.
All right, he doesn’t suck (I was just being a dick). But his drawings look much less inspired to my eye than Mumford’s. Johnson’s stuff looks overly illustrative and picky. In short, his drawings lack the confidence of Mumford’s field sketches.
via Boing Boing
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Shortlisted by NYMag
MTAA is honored to be taking part in Postmasters summer group show "Not Your Parents’ MTV: Music Videos From Hell" and New York Magazine seems to think it’s a damn good idea as the show has been added to their arts shortlist!
NYMag’s blurb on KDM100 makes me chuckle:
An eight-hour, booze-fueled karaoke face-off. In other words, Saturday night in Chinatown.
Not Your Parents’ MTV
click for larger image
We have two pieces in this show opening next week at Postmasters! Note: the opening is JUNE 28, 6-8PM (it was misprinted on the postcard).
We’ll be showing ‘gallery versions’ of Karaoke DeathMatch 100 and 25 Concrete Examples Why John Cage Is Not Our Father.
More below:
Postmasters Gallery is pleased to present our final, not to be missed, show of this season:#
Not Your Parents’ MTV: Music Videos from Hell
June 28 - July 28, 2007
opening reception Thursday, June 28 6-8 pm
- a group exhibition featuring unorthodox music videos and related projects by the following artists:
MICHAEL PAUL BRITTO
I’m a Slave 4U
The Super N Word
KENNETH TIN KIN HUNG
Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People
KATARZYNA KOZYRA
Cheerleader
Diva Reincarnation
CHRIS LARSON
Shotgun Piano
ABE LINCOLN & MARISA OLSON
Abe and Mo Sing the Blogs
MTAA (M.RIVER & T.WHID ART ASSOCIATES)
Karaoke Death Match 100
25 Concrete Examples Why John Cage Is Not Our Father
Kimchi alert system!
This is great! Hope this system makes it to K-town here in NYC because I like my kimchi hot!
Under the measure, kimchi will be labeled as mild, slightly hot, moderately hot, very hot or extremely hot to indicate spiciness. The index is based on the amount of capsaicin and other substances contained in the chili peppers added to the cabbage to make kimchi.
Artificial legal add-ons to art
MTAA have been supporters of Creative Commons since the project was launched. When we can, we release versions of art works with CC licenses and our web sites (both mteww.com and mtaa.net) have CC licenses attached to them. Our digital image ‘Manual Zoom Mirage’ was released under a BY-NC-SA 1.0 license way back in ‘03 (just a few months after the initial license releases according to Wikipedia). And our Simple Net Art Diagram has had various versions of licenses attached to it until we settled on the Attribution 2.5 license.
I say all this to establish MTAA’s street cred when it comes to artists engaging with the ideas that Creative Commons embodies. Also to contextualize where I’m coming from when I try to point out the deficiencies that CC may have for fine artists or how I think most artists of this ilk will respond to CC. Which brings me to this article by Paddy Johnson: Defining Moments at the Artist in Residence Panel. She describes the iCommons Summit 07 artists in residence panel, I’m interested in this part…
[…] according to [T.Whid], no work of art is made better for having a CC license applied to it. Now, this point is clearly debatable, and having observed just yesterday that I liked his work On Kawara Update better for the license I tend to think there are exceptions to this statement, as did a member of the audience who cited the same work. That said, I still suspect most artists would generally agree with his statement.
onKawaraUpdate (v2)
MTAA has released a new net art project entitled onKawaraUpdate (v2).
This piece updates and automates the process-oriented nature of On Kawara’s date paintings. The artist’s labor is essential to process-oriented art. What happens when that labor is removed?
If the web site is visited by anyone on a particular day, a date page is created. If no one visits on a particular day, no date page is created.
It is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL. (Download the source code.)
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Pix of opening in Croatia
Joy Garnett has uploaded a Flickr set of the “The Art Happens Here” at the iCommons Summit ‘07 in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
photo by Joy Garnett
Check out the photos…
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iCommons Summit AiR Flickr group
If you’re interested in following the action in Dubrovnik for the iCommons Summit 07 AiR program check out these photos!
Go to the iCommons AiR Flickr group. We should be updating it often over the course of the summit (until June 17) :-)
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M.River wins KDM100 Champion!
The impossible has come to pass with M.River winning the highly coveted (by me) title of Karaoke DeathMatch 100 Champion. By visiting the previous link, you can view the victory and defeat songs and comment if you like.
It was a rough and grueling championship consisting of 50 rounds of karaoke done over one day while the competitors got progressively more drunk. It was an endurance competition and M.River seems to have endured better over the long haul.
M.River’s victory speech consisted entirely of the following: “Blow me Tim. I won. Fuck you, ha!”
There will be no rematch (unless, perhaps, we can get funding for it).
M.River update:
Although, as Tim points out on the MTAA-RR blog today, my short, sweet and to the point victory speech goes down on record as “Blow me Tim. I won. Fuck you, ha!” I would have rather it been one of these 2 quotes from the fighting wordsmith Muhammad Ali
“Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.”
or
“If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.”
It kinda work both ways.
Actually, good job and well played Tim.
No rematch.
Also, again big thanks to all who voted and posted. You are the true KDM100 champs.
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KDM100 FINAL ROUND!
Fuck!
With one round to go the score is:
M.River: 24 | T.Whid: 23 | Ties: 2
The only thing I can do is tie it up :(
M.River sucks and doesn’t deserve to win, but a tie would be worse. If we tied, we might need to do this again! That’s not going to happen.
Anyway… this is the last day to vote, so get on over there. You can always visit the archives too.
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Bill Shackelford’s Blogged
From: http://billshackelford.com/home/portfolio_blogged
“Blogged” is an interactive installation artwork and one day net event dealing with the concept of being ‘blogged’. It attempts to pop 6 feet in diameter red balloon by using traffic from blogs linking to this page.
BBurg news — Galapagos moving
Holy shit! moving to DUMBO… and I had to read it in the NYTimes :(
I haven’t been inside Galapagos for years. But this is still big news to me as it represents what I consider the ‘old days’ of Williamsburg.
Galapagos grew directly out of the roving rave/art/performance warehouse parties of Williamsburg’s glory years as an artists’ bastion in the early to mid 90s. It was started by Robert Elmes to be a legit version of Mustard, which was an illegal art/exhibition space that he helped run out the Old Dutch Mustard factory on Metropolitan Ave. Mustard itself grew out of a huge warehouse art party/rave at the factory called Organism.
What is Galapagos going to do without its moat? I hope there are plans for a new moat.
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Source Code: Programming Eyebeam Style
Adding to this post.
Here’s the lowdown on “Source Code” opening this thursday at Eyebeam:
The first in a series of three retrospective exhibitions celebrating Eyebeam’s contributions to the art and tech field
Eyebeam is pleased to announce a special exhibition of 14 projects from 10 years of residencies, fellowships and commissions in Eyebeam’s labs. The pieces featured have developed since their life at Eyebeam and/or will be reactivated with events, performances, and workshops demonstrating and sharing the process of their creation.
[…]
The noteworthy lineup of artists, technologists, hackers and programmers in Source Code demonstrates diverse and vibrant genres of creative exploration that defy easy categorization. The artists and collectives participating in the exhibition are: Cory Arcangel, Carrie Dashow, eteam, Nina Katchadourian, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, MediaShed, neuroTransmitter, Steve Lambert, Alex Galloway and artists using Galloway’s Carnivore client — a surveillance tool for data network that serves that data to various creative interfaces called “clients” to make their work: Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Golan Levin, MTAA and Mark Napier.
Slideshow of Napier’s work on Wired.com
Cool :-)
Net Artist’s Power Shift
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KDM100 hits 40!
Who knew we could make it this far?
The Karaoke DeathMatch 100 is in it’s 40th round! Only 10 more days to experience the horror that is KDM100!
Go there now. Vote T.Whid.
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Elahi on Wired
Check it out…
Hasan Elahi is a Creative Capital 2006 grantee and we met him at the art camp last summer. Not only is his project fascinating, but he’s a great guy (not like I thought a terrorist would be at all).
From the article:
Elahi’s site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you’re on, it’s hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials can go to his site and see where he is and what he’s doing. Indeed, his server logs show hits from the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.#
Let’s call our fuck up ‘art’
But there is a catch, one that seems in keeping with the surreal nature of the artwork itself. Because of concerns about legal action by Mr. Buchel, the museum will shield all the huge objects in the warehouse from view with tall plastic tarps, as if Christo and Jeanne-Claude had intervened at the last minute. Viewers will be allowed to wend their way through the cavernous hall but they will have to rely on their imaginations, mostly, to appreciate the show.
The decision is intended as an artistic and provocative solution to a difficult situation […]
A short review of T.Whid’s Hey Joe on KDM100
Today, you have a rare opportunity to see M.River and I go head-to-head with the same song on KDM100…
[..] this just gets better & better, & we should be grateful for the scientific precision afforded us here by the simultaneous rendtion of the same song.M.River update: I lost 5 to 6? Robbed! #
T.Whid had it for me, but only by a whisker.
I did love M River’s upstaging hand jive & the advanced catatonia/maddened elephant polarity which seems to get more marked, the more alchohol consumed. The same circumstance, as AnnieA observes, makes T Whid kind of puppy doggish, but of course a puppy dog who has stared straight into the heart of darkness & lived to tell the tale.
Oh & don’t get me started on timing/phrasing: - people would kill for what T Whid is doing here…it’s like we have been hard wired into his soul. Splendid. Splendid & uplifting.
New Baghdad Journal
Steve Mumford is back from Iraq (thankfully) and has posted a new installment of his Baghdad Journal on artnet.com.
The new piece describes getting back to Iraq via Kuwait and introduces us to some of the interesting characters (journalists and bloggers) that he meets along the way. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the very black humor of Caleb Schaber:
[…] a very tattooed blogger, artist, musician and bartender who once ran for mayor of Seattle and writes for something called the Northern Nevada Newswire. He shows off his latest tattoo: a dotted line around his neck, with the inscription “cut here” (also in Arabic, helpfully, on the back) […]
KDM100 — halfway home
HALFWAY THERE! CHEERS!
Today, the 25th round of MTAA’s Karaoke DeathMatch 100 went live!
After almost 4 weeks of warbling, shouting, shrieking, wailing, whispering, screaming, screeching, whooping, bellowing, braying, yawping and yelping the score is T.Whid: 12 and M.River: 11 with 1 tie.
We mark this inauspicious occasion with M.River performing Sweet Dreams and T.Whid performing We Got The Beat.
If you haven’t been listening everyday, we understand. But you should vote everyday!
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Commons Art Diagram
MTAA is releasing a new ‘art diagram’ today.
Introducing the Commons Art Diagram!
Download: commons_art_diagram.zip (1.5MB)
This package contains the diagram in these formats: .ai, .pdf, .eps, .svg, .gif, hi-res .jpg and hi-res .png.
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This new art diagram illustrates how different forms of creativity — on being funneled through the CC process — arrive at the place where the ‘art happens.’
This diagram is the second in a series of “art diagrams” that MTAA began with the Simple Net Art Diagram.
We hope to distribute this diagram at the iCommons Summmit in June ‘07 :-)
update
We were very successful distributing the image at the iCommons Summit. The image was reproduced on t-shirts, bags and stickers and was basically impossible not to see everywhere you looked!
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AFC interviews MTAA for iCommons
Check it out…
Art Intercom is a six part series conducted by Art Fag City blogger Paddy Johnson, who will be interviewing the iCommons Summit Artists in Residence. In the weeks leading up to the conference, interviews will be posted once weekly, profiling the artists’ work and describing their approach to Creative Commons licensing. Artists to be interviewed include Ana Husman, Jaka Železnikar, Joy Garnett, Kathryn Smith, Nathaniel Stern and this weeks interviewees, Mike Sarff and Tim Whidden (who go by the names M.River and T.Whid), of MTAA. Tim will be representing MTAA as one of the Artists in Residence at the iSummit in Dubrovnik.
KDM100 current score
For those keeping score at home…
The ‘current score’ section of the KDM100 has reflected the current winner of the round — even for rounds that are still open to votes. I changed that today.
Now, when the ‘current score’ is calculated, the current round isn’t counted. This makes more sense to me as there is no winner of a round unless the voting is over.
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Various Creative Commons matters
Obama calls for debates to be licensed under Creative Commons. He wants either public domain or the Attribution license to be applied. Rock on Obama!
Creative Commons and iCommons need support for their scholarship program. MTAA is one of the artists-in-residence at the iCommons Summit this year.
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Artkrush #57
Ed Winkleman reminds me that I should link to Artkrush because our little effort here is included in their list of art blogs (we’re in the new media category).
So check out their feature on art blogs! It includes VVORK and Art Fag City. ‘Nuff said.
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Goddamn motherfucking stormtroopers
We love LA.
Land of the free!
Olbermann
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Rick Silva’s Rough Mix
Just want to hook Rick up with a link to his new video project: A Rough Mix.
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Digg revolt
This is pretty interesting. Digg users have staged a rebellion of sorts over the deletion of stories and comments that contained the 16-digit hexadecimal number that is used to lock HD-DVD movies. For the record, here’s the illegal number: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0.
Digg.com is a social news site founded by Kevin Rose. He finally capitulated to his users demands proving that web 2.0 can bite small smart companies in the ass just as easy as big lumbering companies.
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John Cage has a secret
Here’s John Cage performing Water Walk in January, 1960 on the popular TV show I’ve Got A Secret.
via Rhizome…
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KDM100 @ del.icio.us
by bohaganjr to art karaoke video
by somebaudy to karaoke deathmatch art audio image movie quicktime video
by rimapra to vlog_art
by lafundicio to art karaoke drinking drunk
by harloholmes to admirable hotttt audio image internets art?
by cory_arcangel to art karaoke movie quicktime video
by mccoyspace to art video netart karaoke mtaa
by mjh to karaoke quicktime video movie
by 53os to netart art
by barryhoggard to art netart
by m.river to mtaa netart07
by twhid to mtaa karaoke netart net_art_07 art
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KDM100 on Rhizome News
Thanks Rhizome!
Link to the news item and below…
Karaoke Or Die
Have you already subscribed to the video feeds of ‘Karaoke Deathmatch 100’? If not, do it now, as you don’t know what you are missing. ‘Karaoke Deathmatch 100’ is perhaps the most significant project ever from MTAA (artists M. River and T. Whid). Well-regarded within the new media community for works such as ‘1 year performance video (aka Sam Hsieh Update),’ it is with ‘Karaoke Deathmatch 100’ that they reach an audience beyond this field. Unfolding over 50 days, the ‘Karaoke Deathmatch 100’ features both artists in an ‘alcohol-fueled blood feud […] 50 rounds of sing-along fury,’ to use their own words. Taped live over an 8-hour period, these sessions are screened everyday at midnight (New York time). One sees both artists—one singing, the other seated in the back of the studio—both in front of typically cheesy karaoke videos. Viewers can post comments on the performances and vote on the best performer. T. Whid won the first round (with 21 votes) after singing Guns N’ Roses’ Welcome To The Jungle. One reader commented, ‘It’s like American Idol, only different. I feel like my vote counts here.’ Another noted, ‘You suck and so does Guns N’ Roses.’ The current score is tied at M. River: 6/T. Whid: 6, but the contest is just beginning. The artists, themselves, beg the question,’Who will emerge victorious?,’ decrying, ‘Only YOU can decide.’ So don’t miss any other face-off. Log-on today and participate in ‘the most brutal performance art smack down of the new millennium.’
- Miguel Amado
TACTICAL MEDIA CONFERENCE
Marisa Olson organized this event coming up this weekend FYI…
I’ve organized a conference for my grad students, which is taking place this Saturday, in Williamsburg. These are some of the best students I’ve ever taught and this is certainly the best class ever. In a word, it’s been *legendary* and this conference will be a fun, provocative way to end the semester. It’s my hope that you can join us to participate in lively discussions, offer feedback on artists’ works in progress, and perhaps consume a few bagels and coffees.#
TACTICAL MEDIA CONFERENCE
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Presentations on the theory & practice of tactical media and contemporary protest art, by graduate students in the ITP program at NYU’s Tisch School of the arts.
The presenters’ talks will be grouped into three panels, to be moderated by their Professor, Marisa Olson (Editor & Curator, Rhizome), on the topics of Play & Consumption; Fear, Spectacle, and the Media; and the Interfaces and Architecture of Control. These panels will consist of both artist talks and analytical essays and audience members will be invited to give feedback on a few works in progress.
Venue:
The Change You want to See Gallery
84 Havemeyer @ Metropolitan, Brooklyn, NY 11211
L to Bedford o Lorimer, G to Metropolitan, J/M/Z to Marcy
http://www.thechangeyouwanttosee.org
Hours: 12-5 pm, Saturday, April 28, 2007
KDM100 on Rocketboom today
The ground-breaking videoblog Rocketboom gave a shout-out to the KDM100 in today’s show (Apr 23, 2007).
Check it out…
Thanks to Andrew, Joanne and everybody else at Rocketboom for the hook-up!
M.River adds - also thanks to Kenyatta. My next song going out to you and the rest of the RB folks.
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Timex Sinclair 1000
Slashdot reminds us that it’s the 25th anniversary of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
Ah. Good days. My first computer was the Timex Sinclair 1000, the US version of the UK Sinclair.
From Wikipedia:
The TS1000 sold for $99.95 in the US when it debuted, making it the cheapest home computer to date at the time of its launch. The black and white display showed 32 columns and 24 lines (22 of which were normally accessible for display and 2 reserved for data entry and error messages). The limited graphics were based on geometric shapes contained within the operating system’s non-ASCII character set. The only form of long-term storage was to plug into an often unreliable home tape cassette recorder.
On KDM100 [part 1]
MTAA’s Karaoke DeathMatch 100 has been live on the web for about a week. As the project progresses I thought I would do a post now and then discussing how I think it’s going and my thoughts on the project.
As with any creative project, the creator doesn’t truly understand it until it’s released to the public.
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Contemporary karaoke has been debased. The point of karaoke isn’t to entertain strangers with talented renditions of popular songs. It’s point is to entertain your friends with drunken and humiliating destructions of popular songs. Karaoke is best experienced in a private room with close friends who are all completely and totally wasted. Each takes their turn destroying a song with their drunken, fervent attempts at entertainment.
This is Karaoke DeathMatch 100. The web, in general, and net art specifically are MTAA’s best friends. We want to entertain you World Wide Web. We’ll entertain you by humiliating ourselves in drunken buffoonery like good friends should. But, if you deserve this gesture of friendship you have obligations. Art obligations. One or two or even three rounds of drunken, ear-piercing foolishness isn’t enough. You need to commit World Wide Web. This is pop endurance performance art. You need to endure this performance just as much as MTAA if we’re going to have some art happen here.
It’s up to you World Wide Web. Like 1YPV, this thing only works if you’re there for us. We’re there for you. You must watch every day. You must vote every day. If you do, the art WILL happen. If you don’t, the art won’t happen. It’s simple really.
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MTAA action figures
For MTAA’s 10th anniversary our friend Bill Hallinan created these amazing MTAA action figures! This has completely blown our minds :-)
The two action figures (in the collector’s packaging) on the wall of our studio (click for a larger image).
Below are small JPEGs of the packaging. Click each one to see a larger, more detailed image. What kills me is the action figures in the playsets hahahahah.
front
back
front
back
Thanks again Bill! This is one of the coolest presents ever!
M.River adds - When I opened it, I was awe struck. Best gift ever. Thanks B n’D. Now I want to make .5 scale MTAAs now for a show.
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Re-Staging, Re-Enactment, Remix and Mimetics
G.H. Hovagimyan has a new post over at thing.net about re-stagings of artworks called Re-Staging, Re-Enactment, Remix and Mimetics.
snip-a-roo…
What is apparent is that none of these artists are doing exact copies of the works they are referencing. They are however playing with the signature style and brand names in varying degrees. The discussion is not however a blatant crowbar tactic of prying out and smashing property rights. It is an understanding that intellectual property has different degrees of meaning and use. While Tribes’ Port Huron project seems to be a desire to get at the emotional heart of a signifier, Kulik’s re-staging of the Beuys work is an escalation. In Kulik’s piece the animal and the human combine. MTAA seems to be researching the banal in Conceptual Art, updating it and presenting it on the networks as a pointer to the earlier works and yet the meaning is lost in a language game. Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley are doing what can only be called remixing by taking Acconci and porno and mixing them together.#
Best MTAA review EVAH!
DVBlog reviews KDM100 and I love it!
From the bastard progeny of Marcel Duchamp & the Marx Brothers, the splendid & singular MTAA, comes Karaoke Death Match 100.
[…]
It’s great stuff & clearly one to follow closely — we’ll be returning to them here ‘ere close of play in 50 days. Just want to sneak in, though, that actually I found this quite ahem…er… moving: — the sheer effort invoked in the act of singing; T.Whid’s strange shambling captive bear dance & M River’s weird but somehow totally appropriate sudden & violent changes of dynamics. A bit like Bas Jan Ader falling over, there’s something more here than originally meets the eye & ear, & it’s a lot human & a bit wonderful.
The LOT-EK lean
LOT-EK’s design for 87 Lafayette (just below Canal St.) is NUTS!
via Curbed (lots more renderings and other info so go there).
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TRACEPLACESPACE
New audio by Cary Peppermint, check it out…
TRACEPLACESPACE
seven audio works .mp3 - Cary Peppermint 2007
The audio works of TRACEPLACESPACE were formed loosely in response to ever-accelerating technological developments, passing time, urgent ecological issues, and remarkable events of our globally connected system in process long before but brought to the forefront since the latter part of the year 2001. The works of TRACEPLACESPACE are components of a digital, multi-media, network-infused performance of the same title.#
I like to perform this work in small community venues, outdoor gatherings, art-spaces, and galleries where everyone is welcome and can sit on the floor, talk to one another, and drink green tea. However I will perform TRACEPLACESPACE approximately anywhere.
1. curse go back.mp3 - 5.4mb : a utopian template
2. uncanny situation.mp3 - 10.1mb : for Jean Baudrillard, 1929 - 2007
3. mary gone deep.mp3 - 6.4mb : because “we cannot fall out of the world”
4. unreasonable things.mp3 - 3.7mb : democracy containment
5. technics and time.mp3 - 7mb : let it take you as far as you can ride it
6. big.mp3 - 4.2mb : exciting times / exciting life
7. six years.mp3 - 7.8mb : …the dematerialization of… - Lucy Lippard
MTAA’s Karaoke DeathMatch 100 UNLEASHED!
Karaoke DeathMatch 100 (AKA KDM100)
New rounds daily from April 15 2007 - June 4, 2007!
hype:
Artist collaborative M.River & T.Whid Art Associates face off in the most brutal performance art smack down of the new millennium…Karaoke Deathmatch 100! This alcohol-fueled blood feud features 50 rounds of sing-along fury (taped live over an 8-hour period with hardly any pee breaks). No Carpenters hit too cheesy, no heavy metal lyric too trite for these teleprompter warriors to hurl in a battle to the end. Who will emerge victorious? Only YOU can decide.
description:
MTAA’s Karaoke DeathMatch 100 is a video blog performance that takes place over 50 days starting April 15th, 2007 and ending June 4th, 2007. Each day, a new round is posted pitting M.River & T.Whid against each other in drunken karaoke competition. Visit the web site daily to view the sets of videos, vote for your favorite and discuss the artists’ performances. At the end of the competition, the votes will decide who is the Karaoke DeathMatch 100 Champion.
The web version of KDM100 is an official selection of Visual 07. 7º Festival De Creación Audiovisual Ciudad De Majadahonda. The gallery version of KDM100 premiered at the Leonart ‘05 art festival in Leonding, Austria.
KDM100 was shot in May 2005 over 8 hours.
credits:
video production:
Bill Hallinan, Andre Sala and George Su
web production:
MTAA; developed using open-source software: Wordpress, X-Poll and embedthevideo.
URLs
web site: http://www.mteww.com/kdm100/
iTunes Store: click here
QuickTime feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/kdm100m4v
Windows Media feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/kdm100wmv
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Tribe & Jana release New Media Art as an open-source wiki
Mark Tribe and Reena Jana have released their survey of new media and net art, New Media Art (Taschen, 2006) as an open source, cc-licensed wiki. Rock on!
Check it out…
From the preface…
This open-source wiki book is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. It is based on the manuscript of New Media Art, a book written by Mark Tribe and Reena Jana and published by Taschen in 2006. The Taschen book is available in French, German, Italian and Spanish in addition to English. This wiki book is not intended as a substitute or replacement for the Taschen book, but rather as an expandable educational resource to which artists, curators, students and others may contribute.
T.Whid’s day job: TVTonic
This is a demo of TVTonic (the software that I help develop as my day job) and an interview with our company’s president, Michael Sprague.
If the embedded player isn’t working (or you’re reading this via a news reader that doesn’t support plug-ins) try this link.
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Vonnegut dead
I’m sure everyone that isn’t dead knows this already. I just couldn’t let it pass without a mention in this space. He’s one of the great Americans of all time.
NYT obit…
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Napier @ Bitforms
Mark Napier’s new show is opening at Bitforms gallery tomorrow April 12!
Be there or…don’t be cool.
From the PR…
April 12 - May 19, 2007 bitforms gallery nyc
bitforms gallery is pleased to announce a third solo exhibition with Mark Napier, April 12 – May 19. This exhibit marks the New York debut of his new software art and print work.
One of the select few artists whose Internet art has been collected and commissioned by prominent art institutions, Mark Napier is known for creating work that challenges traditional rules of ownership, authority, and permanence. Over the past decade he has developed custom software as an art medium, and this exhibition features virtual objects that hover between the material and immaterial.
“Increasingly we live and navigate in a world composed of energy: electrical, magnetic and light,” says Napier. “Digital media infuse our lives as never before. In this media environment, power is no longer associated with physical objects, but with the persistence of ideas in the collective consciousness of the media.”
[lots more at the gallerie’s web site]
JODI in NYC @ vertexList
Rock on!
The low down at vertexList’s blog…
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LeWitt is dead
Long live LeWitt!
NYT obit…
mriver adds:
I Promise
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Fight art with art
That’s my new motto.
If M.River agrees, it can be a new MTAA motto. Whaddya think?
m.river adds - Sure. I think this is the list so far:
The Art Happens Here
Save Free TV
Meaning in Misunderstanding
Fight Art with Art
Also, speaking of fighting, I had a dream last night that we remade Jodi’s bomb work with flowers.
twhid update
Cool. A new official motto! BTW, are these slogans or mottos? Probably a motto.
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DRM dam has burst
EMI and Apple to sell non-crippled MP3s audio tracks (according to the official press release the tracks will be in the AAC format) via iTunes.
(No, it’s not a late April Fools Day joke.)
This is it folks. The beginning of the end of DRM.
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GTA4 in NYC
It looks awesome!
Predictably, NYC politicians don’t like it. What a bunch of n00bs. I give some props to Vallone for knowing what Halo is…
Setting Grand Theft Auto in the safest big city in America would be like setting Halo in Disneyland.#
T.Whid is 38 years old this week
I was born this week in 1969 in Elyria, OH. I lived in Elyria until 1987 when I moved to Columbus, OH to attend college. In 1992 I moved to Brooklyn, New York City and have been here ever since.
Can my life be summed up in a Google Map?
+++
More detail: every place I’ve lived in Brooklyn.
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Rhizome Benefit!
Image by Takeshi Murata
Purchase Tickets Now
RHIZOME
Affiliated with the
NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
presents a Benefit Concert featuring:
GANG GANG DANCE
PROFESSOR MURDER
YACHT
M.C. CORY ARCANGEL
&
A SILENT AUCTION
On April 16, 2007
at the Hiro Ballroom
in the Maritime Hotel
371 West 16th Street
Doors at 8pm
Tickets:
VIP - $75 / General Audience - $35;
Member & Group - $25
Purchase Tickets Now
Note: MTAA has donated a piece to the silent auction.
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Apple rips off Marclay?
First, read this (and watch the videos), then come back. I’ll wait.
…
…
Everybody back? OK.
This is the key paragraph:
[Marclay] says he looked into legal action but was assured by his lawyer “there’s nothing I can do about it. They have the right to get inspired.” Of course, in other cases, such obvious “inspiration” might be called copyright infringement. In this instance, however, Marclay’s rights may be limited as his own film consisted of copyrighted works by other artists.
More mtaa in Swahili
Received an email this morning providing more info about the word ‘mtaa’ in Swahili:
Here’s the complete definition of mtaa in Swahili:
[link to definition]
Here’s how to pronounce it:
[link to pronunciation guide]
Cheers,
Martin
________________________
Dr. Martin Benjamin
Yale Council on African Studies
http://www.yale.edu/swahili
Burn in
This is interesting. Two pieces of art about screen burn in:
from 2005, Steven Read’s Screen Burn (please wait)
and the other, from 2007, Cory Arcangel’s Panasonic TH42PV60EH Plasma Screen Burn
+++
What strikes me most about these two pieces is that they are so similar, yet Arcangel’s piece is so much better. Lots better. Infinitely smarter, funnier and more engaging.
Arcangel’s “Panasonic TH42PV60EH Plasma Screen Burn” is brash and bold, it says ‘fuck you, I’m fucking up this expensive piece of equipment. Why? Because I’m motherfucking Cory Arcangel that’s why!” Steven Read’s piece is nitpicky and fussy. His piece says “look! I wrote a program to destroy an obsolete piece of hardware. Why? Because I’m a geek.” Arcangel’s piece is about fucking with consumer dreams. Read’s piece is about… time and phosphors?
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Mtaa in Africa…
I’ve noticed for a long time that the string ‘mtaa’ shows up very often in african blogs and web sites. There is also a web radio station called MTAA FM that focuses on African music. I was very curious to know what ‘mtaa’ meant, but I didn’t even know what language I needed to look into.
Today I figured it out (with some help from Google of course). Mtaa means ‘street’ in Swahili. That rocks!
…wonder how the hell you pronounce it.
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Support The Artist Deduction Bill
It’s good for everybody!
via Newsgrist
The Artist Tax Deduction Bill is finally up for action. Please take the time to support this important bill as its passage will impact all individual artists. Go to the link below to send a message to your representatives and senators. Please forward this information to your mailing list!#
Artist Deduction Bill Introduced in the House
03-19-2007: After announcing at the Congressional Arts Breakfast on Arts Advocacy Day that he would be the lead sponsor for the Artist Deduction Bill, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) introduced the bill on March 14, 2007, joined by Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-MN). Identical to a Senate bill introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Robert Bennett (R-UT), the bill supports individual artists by allowing them to take a fair-market value tax deduction for tangible works they donate to nonprofit collecting and educational organizations, and it benefits the public by giving them access to more art.
Send a message to your members of Congress asking them to be a co-sponsor of this important bill, H.R. 1524 (House) and S. 548 (Senate).
Slandered!
MTAA has not, I repeat, NOT! been surgically combined on the body of a female bodybuilder.
See the entire ghastly photoshop monstrosity here…
more here, but there’s no permalink so you may want to scroll down.
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Get yer net art on 2007 (2)
Rhizome has an open call for net art commissions. You could score between US$1k and US$3K to MAKE SOME GODDAMN NET ART FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
Deadline is April 2, 2007 and that ain’t no joke.
Get on over there and find out how to submit a proposal for chrissake! Do it now! Do it now!
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OS X: capture DVD stills — no 3rd party software
CLI to the screen cap yo!
Works like a charm on Mac OS 10.4.9. Nice.
Don’t tell M.River about it, he likes to exploit the analog hole.
update
I had no idea that M.River had just posted about his project when I posted this. Synchronicity…
m.river adds - yes, strange synchronicity. i was just getting ready to add this note - the goal is not to document the dvd’s nor is it about “cool” or even “good” films. the goal is to make interesting images with what’s at hand. it’s a document of some time spent. the tools for this document are distortion and editing. but thanks for the teck tip. it may come in hand with some other projects I’ve been thinking about.
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Random old video stuff
In my wanderings through MTAA’s art life today, I found these two things. One, never really publicly released and one released a year ago this month.
1. STEAL_THIS_VIDEO
This page was used to illustrate to some students how one could steal videos from our 1 year performance video and re-mix them. It’s a collection of all the easter eggs in 1ypv.
2. An interview with us by Mica Scalin
We talk about our piece 10 Pre-Rejected, Pre-Approved Performances: Midnight In The Deli. It was recently re-posted to Doron Golan’s DVBlog.
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MTAA at iCommons Summit 2007
This isn’t happening until June, but we’re very happy and very excited to be artists-in-residence for the iCommons Summit this year. Check out the announcement. The other AiRs are: Ana Husman, Jaka Železnikar, Joy Garnett, Kathryn Smith and Nathaniel Stern.
iCommons Summit 2007 is from June 15 - 17 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The artist-in-residence program is being coordinated by Nathaniel Stern.
Unfortunately, only one of us can go. My whining skillz worked to full affect and M.River relented and is letting me go. We’ll keep you updated on what’s happening and what we plan on doing. Should be fun.
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McCoys in London
Tiny, Funny, Big and Sad at the BFI Southbank through May 28.
check it out…
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Hook me up with an EDU?
Does anyone want to give me an EDU email address so that I can score some free TimesSelect?
Email me! (POP3 access preferred.)
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CO presentation
A video of our presentation at University of Colorado is online.
Check it out…
You can also download a standalone QuickTime version if you don’t like in-browser video viewing: .mov 93MB.
I’ve also been finding some reviews of our work and presentation by CU students (thanks Google Alerts!). The consensus? Thumbs down Mixed. Links: one, two, three, four.
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Help da police
hahahahahahahahahaha
via Kottke
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Have you heard my funny faggot joke?
By now anyone interested in (what passes for) political discourse in the USA is aware of Ann Coulter’s bigoted ‘joke’ in which she called John Edwards a faggot. This is what she said:
I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.
More from CO
Pix from MTAA’s Colorado trip taken on my phone. If I was cool, I could have SMS’d these right from my phone to this blog, but I’m not that cool (yet).
Denver International Airport tram
Denver Art Museum
M.River pretending he’s a hardcore hiker/mountain man
JonBenet Ramsey’s house
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Back from CO
Just back from Boulder today where MTAA did some visiting artist duties at The University of Colorado. M.River’s got a bunch more pix at his tintype blog (start here and work back).
We hope the students appreciated our input on their projects and enjoyed the presentation of our work. It was also great fun hanging out with Rick Silva, Mark Amerika and Anne-Marie Schleiner and all the other interesting folks we met.
The most importnat thing I learned? Never to do my Werner Herzog impersonation in public ever again.
m.river adds – or at least no Herzog impressions after two large margaritas at high altitudes. I regret no documentation of this performance.
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Graffiti War
According to Curbed, there’s a graffiti war going on in Williamsburg between the dumbass dubbed The Splasher and other street artists.
Ground-zero seems to be the front of the building where our studio is located! Yikes!
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The NYC fairs
Before beginning this little post about my thoughts regarding the NYC art fairs, let me disclaim thusly: MTAA isn’t represented anywhere in any fair so my envy, jealously and resentments may color my reflections on the fairs.
The Armory Show (web site)
The line was too long so we skipped it, therefor, it sucked.
Scope (web site)
Bryce Wolkowitz had a well-installed booth with interesting work. For my taste, the highlight of this fair. The fact that we’re currently in a group show at the gallery isn’t coloring my impressions at all.
Otherwise, I wandered about Scope hoping desperately for something interesting to look at but generally being disappointed. PAM was in effect, but the installation was tiny compared to their heroic environment of last year and I’m afraid that the majority of fair-goers had no idea what was actually going on with it.
Pulse (web site)
If there was a fight between Pulse and Scope, Pulse would kick Scope’s ass for two reasons: better quality work overall and more interesting international galleries. The highlight for me was Brody Condon’s DefaultProperties(); at Virgil de Voldere’s booth. But I’m a sucker for Brody’s stuff.
Fountain (web site)
Fountain is tiny compared to the other fairs but FREE. There was interesting stuff going on in all the galleries represented. Glowlab is always smart and were representing some of MTAA’s friends like Marisa Olson and Lee Walton. It’s definitely worth a visit.
Overall impressions and realizations
We need to start working this blog to get press passes for these damn fairs.
There was some McCoy influence in evidence. We saw it at Fountain in a piece called “All Mel’s Kills” and at a piece at Pulse that was a sad knock-off of the McCoy’s scale-model-with-tiny-camera sculptural/media strategy.
Unless you’re being extremely clever and unique or can attain true beauty, then your abstraction is simply decoration. There isn’t much of any art that challenges anyone these days, but abstraction seems like a particularly difficult way to achieve anything more than good-looking decoration.
I didn’t realize this at the fair, but it was underscored. The fact that we make videos that make noise that you need to hear will be detrimental to our showing in fairs and group shows. They want art that is quiet, doesn’t need its own space and easy to ship.
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MTAA in CO
We’ve been invited by Rick Silva to give a little talk about our work next week at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It’s open to the public, so if you’re in the area, come on out!
Here’s the 411:
Who: MTAA
What: bloviations and show-n-tell
Where: CU Boulder Campus, Humanities 1B90
When: Thursday March 1st, 5:30PM
How: after drinking lots and lots of vodka
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Lamentations of Williamsburgs past
The Washington Post published an article today exploring (what is called) the new type of gentrification happening there. It’s entitled “A Condo Tower Grows in Brooklyn.”
A wall of luxury glass towers is rising for 25 blocks along the “East River Riviera.” Wander inland and check out the needle condo towers with three-bedroom places retailing at $1,135,000.
4 years of MTAA blogging
Nathaniel Stern reminds me that the MTAA blog’s (MTAA-RR) 4-year anniversary came and went on February 9 of this year without so much as a mention from us. Meh, who cares anyway, right? Here’s the first post if you’re interested.
Note that our archives are totally screwed and that a bunch of posts got shoved into Feb 06. Some day I’ll fix it (if I have the data).
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AIOTD - Why Should You Be In This Piece?
The artists ask random people they encounter to answer the question “why should you be in this piece?” and videotape the replies.
The resulting video is an always random playback of the responses (controlled via custom software).
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Get yer net art on 2007
Rhizome has an open call for net art commissions. You could score between US$1k and US$3K to MAKE SOME GODDAMN NET ART FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
Deadline is April 2, 2007 and that ain’t no joke.
Get on over there and find out how to submit a proposal for chrissakes!
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We made some prints for Rhizome…
…but you can’t get any unless you have already donated some dough to Rhizome.
“iPhil Stills”
edition of 10 (1 AP)
archival inkjet on watercolor paper
2007
Background info here and here.
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Boston Lite-Brite™ freak-out
I pretty much agree with everything about this fiasco stated in this post:
[Boston mayor] Menino is going on TV and insisting he’s going to send a 27-year old artist to jail for not breaking any law, because his police department overreacted and wasted a million dollars feeding a media frenzy and terrorizing the population of his own city. That’s a cowardly act of self-preservation, and were he not threatening the life of an innocent young man it would be laughable.
Yahoo! outrageous? Don’t think so…
In regards to Yahoo’s Wii site; Flickr users go nuts.
If you don’t want Yahoo using your photos for commercial purposes, don’t put them on Flickr. And no, it isn’t outrageous. It’s completely predictable:
9. CONTENT SUBMITTED OR MADE AVAILABLE FOR INCLUSION ON THE SERVICE
Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:
[…]
With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service. (emphasis mine)
Funding cuts for NYC arts institutions
On WNYC this morning, I heard a report on how the reorganization of The Altria Group (parent of Phillip Morris and, until today, Kraft Foods) will adversely affect arts funding in NYC. This NY Sun article has a good rundown of the institutions that receive large funds from this company and how they’ll be affected. The NY Sun article is 3 weeks old, but I haven’t heard much about it until today. Today is the day that Altria is announcing exactly how they’re restructuring.
Some that may see this funding disappear: The Whitney, BAM, Brooklyn Museum, and The New Museum, of which Rhizome.org is part (no!).
The report on WNYC suggested that The Whitney at Altria is a goner.
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T.Whid sticking his tongue out
by M.River, taken at Spike Hill in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on 1/27/07
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Good texts today
Some interesting on-line texts have been published today.
First, Turbulence.org and New Media Fix have teamed up for “3 x 3: New Media Fix(es) on Turbulence.”
From Turbulence:
[…] three texts about works from the Turbulence.org archive. The texts—published in English, Italian and Spanish—were written and translated by members and affiliates of New Media Fix. They include “The Body in Turbulence” by Josephine Bosma; “Narrating with New Media: What Happened with Whatever has Happened?” by Belén Gache; and “Turbulence: Remixes + Bonus Beats” by Eduardo Navas. The translations are by Lucrezia Cippitelli, Francesca De Nicolò, Raquel Herrera, and Brenda Banda Corona & Ignacio Nieto. Ludmil Trenkov designed the PDF and HTML documents.
MO & Jon in WaPo
Artists ponder future of digital Mona Lisas
“We see the world not through a lens anymore but through a monitor screen,” said Marisa Olson, a curator of Rhizome.org, a Web platform that has archived 2,500 digital artworks online.
“Museums have to start paying attention,” said Jon Ippolito, former associate curator at the Guggenheim. “They risk not preserving the most relevant aspects of 21st century culture and, thus, their own relevance.”#
Cory Doctorow. I don’t like him.
I remember the main reason that I don’t like Cory Doctorow.
He’s a hugely overrated writer. That’s annoying. Luckily he gives his books away for free. I would be mighty peeved if I had to pay for them.
But that’s not the main reason.
The main reason (as I was reminded by typing up this post today) is that he called for the destruction of a public art work in Chicago. Why did he want it destroyed? Simply because he didn’t agree with the artist’s view on the artist’s rights concerning copyright of images of the sculpture. He wrote (in this post on his very influential blog), “they […] should melt the goddamned sculpture down for scrap.” He was talking about Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate.”
I happen to agree with him re: the right of the public to photograph things in, um, public. The artist and city officials are dead wrong on this issue. But to call for the destruction of what is a very beautiful work of art, especially from another creative — Doctorow’s a writer remember — is really sickening. He probably wasn’t serious. It was all probably just a bunch of hype. But really, it’s sad. He’s taken his copyright dogma to fundamentalist extremes if he really thinks it’s OK to destroy art work as an option in copyright disputes.
What’s next? book burnings of non-creative commons licensed books?
update
Rob Meyers doesn’t agree with me (and it is me T.Whid, not MTAA (MRiver has an annoying habit of not having the opinions that I want him to have)).
Rob sounds like he’s OK with destroying Kapoor’s stuff because he doesn’t like the artist’s work. He says Doctorow was being rhetorical, which is true. But it’s the kind of rhetoric I find repulsive. And then there’s this:
[..] I would say in all seriousness that if a work of art is that harmful to society (in a practical rather than a symbolic way), destroying it is the less harmful option for art itself.
WTF Claes?
A while back I posed the question of whether or not Anish Kapoor is a dumbass for restricting photographs of his ‘bean’ sculpture in Chicago. (Background here.)
So. I ask again. Are Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen dumbasses? Probably not.
Some of the comments on that Stranger post linked above, I DO NOT agree with. Fantasizing about vandalizing or destroying art I find offensive. Also, I like the piece, it’s fun. This pic shows how it’s situated on a small rise so it looks like it’s rolling downhill.
But this new copyright fascism does seem particularly offensive considering that Oldenburg makes his sculptures by copying designs that may be copyrighted or even patented!
Perhaps it’s the city officials negotiating the sales of these things need some education? They should make certain that they get the rights for the citizens to photograph these pieces. If the artists are going to be so greedy, it’s seems the only alternative.
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More Character Reference
M.River took a snap of our piece:
Additionally
The show makes it to Rhizome’s official news, penned by director Lauren Cornell no less.
And
Tom Moody’s take:
they might to be holding poses for some future dystopian hologram ID gone all glitchy due to budget cuts in the security ministry
reminder: Character Reference tonight
Character Reference is opening tonight. If yer in NYC, be there or be a…whatever.
===
WHAT:
Character Reference — a group show
WHO:
MTAA, Lee Walton, Marina Zurkow, Julian Opie and Oliver Laric.
curated by the smart and talented Caitlin Jones
WHERE:
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
601 W26h St. ste 1240 (btw 11th Ave and West Side Hwy)
NYC
WHEN:
opening - Jan 18, 6 - 8PM (tonight)
thru Feb 24
2007
HOW:
Everything is plugged in — electricity!
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Networked Nature
Made the opening of Rhizome.org/Foxy Production’s group show entitled Network Nature last night.
The place was packed (see below) and the work was great.
M.River and I were confused that we weren’t in the show. We thought there was an unwritten rule that Marisa puts us in everything she curates. I guess we were mistaken ;-)
One more thing, check out JMB’s flickr set of the opening…
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iPhone
Apple has released the iPhone. I sorta called it a few months back in this Digg comment.
Sure, I was wrong about the name and the way it would be hyped. But I got the gist right IMHO. The important part was my follow up pointing out the patent on ‘dynamic and configurable touchscreen interfaces.’ Or maybe I’m just delusional; everyone and their dog was predicting this damn thing.
PS, I needed to post something again today to push M.River’s cat post down. I hate cat blogging.
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Sherman: Paik as first video artist is a myth?
I just saw the short essay by Tom Sherman, The Premature Birth of Video Art, on the iDC list and found it very interesting. Sherman’s conclusion:
[…] the myth of Paik’s first work of video art appears to pre-date its own possibility. While Paik undoubtedly was a pioneer user of portable video equipment, he probably shared the original moments of video art with other artists, including Frank Gillette, Ira Schneider, Les Levine, and Juan Downey. The mythic story of Nam June Paik shooting the first Portapak-generated video art out of the back of a taxi in 1965 is apparently just that, a myth.
I […] welcome information that supports or undermines this challenge of the myth of the birth of video art.
Spitzer slashes sick tax
It’s nice to see government working for the people once in a while. And Eliot Spitzer, brand new Governor of New York, is just the guy to do it.
Since 2003, NY state has had a sick, demented tax on people who’s friends and families happen to be in prison. Oh, and the government was sharing the spoils with for-profit phone company Verizon. This is how this disgusting shake-down worked:
In court papers, lawyers for Verizon/MCI said the state Public Service Commission directed them in 2003 to charge a tariff that includes the “jurisdictional” rate plus the “DOCS commission.” That included a flat rate of $3 per call and 16 cents a minute thereafter.
That meant collect calls have been charged at a rate of 630 percent more than consumer rates, of which 57.5 percent is “kicked back” to [the Dept. of Correctional Services] for operating expenses such as health care that should come out of general tax dollars, [Center for Constitutional Rights] officials said.
[via]
Dept of Homeland Security: NYC highest risk
Well, we all knew it to be true but now our trusted civil servants in the DHS have confirmed it:
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, seeking to avert a repeat of last year’s furor over counter-terrorism grants to U.S. cities, announced Friday that New York, Washington and four other “highest-risk” metro areas will receive $411 million to subsidize their efforts to guard against terrorist attacks.
It’s freakishly warm in NYC today
According to my little OS X weather widget, it’s 67ºF outside right now and the high is to be 71ºF!!! Is this June or January? Outside, most people are in shirt sleeves, no jackets, no coats, no scarves, no hats, no mittens. Freaky!
I know that, scientifically, these warm (or cold) outliers don’t mean anything in the larger global warming trend. But here in NYC, winter seems to be coming much later and ending much sooner. Days like this are exclamation points on that trend.
I know what M.River is saying, “Vive La Global Warming!” Perhaps we should all start keeping canoes on our roofs — just in case?
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Character Reference
We’re in a group show opening January 18th at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery here in NYC with a bunch of other interesting artists.
We hope that if you’re in NYC that you can come out and see the show!
Character Reference#
January 19 - February 24 2007
Opening Reception: January 18, 6-8pm
The Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery is pleased to present “Character Reference”” a group show featuring an international group of contemporary artists.
The portrait as a genre has enjoyed an enduring popularity throughout the history of art. As depictions of power and wealth, or socialist realist studies, through its current pervasiveness in contemporary photography, the portrait has long played a key role in creating and questioning identity. Through the works in “Character Reference” the artists Oliver Laric, MTAA, Julian Opie, Lee Walton and Marina Zurkow all mine this rich genre. These artists do not simply employ the portrait as a means to depict specific individuals but rather use the form to represent broader cultural types.
Oliver Laric’s “787 Cliparts” uses as building blocks the “clip art” which can be found embedded in Microsoft Word documents and Power Point presentations world over. These prepackaged images are seamlessly streamed together in a continuous dance to convey and question how diverse cultures and activities are stereotyped in the name of convenient communication.
MTAA’s “Infinite Smile” is a video portrait in which the artists’ faces hold a smile in an infinitely repeating loop. Their expressions, appear to change from glee to agony and back, highlighting the artifice of the smile and its function as a seller of goods and ideology, an indicator of happiness, and how we project our own assumptions on to the ubiquitous happy face.
In Julian Opie’s “Suzanne Walking in Leather Skirt” and “Sarah Walking in Bra, Pants and Boots”, female characters are rendered in the artist’s signature generic, minimalist style. These sexually charged portraits of women in underwear and short skirts conveys a connection to the specific subjects while simultaneously representing the stereotypical and loaded symbols of female sexuality.
To create Lee Walton’s “The Serial Conversationalist”, Walton targeted park benches throughout New York City on specific dates and times and initiated conversation with whoever happened to sit down. Often awkward and pained, Walton’s recordings of these conversations with random strangers about kids, dogs and other New York wildlife help inform a portrait of a city and how it establishes and solidifies our understanding of the characters around us.
Likewise, Marina Zurkow’s animated “Boom!Darling” looks at the formation of character against the backdrop of a hyper-active urban environment. Through this short animation we see a girl on the edge of puberty exploring her own identity in the booming metropolis of current day Shanghai - a city which is similarly experiencing “growing pains” in the current global economy.
Seen as a whole the works in “Character Reference” represent a broadened view of the portrait genre. Using this historically rich convention in new ways the artists are able to portray their subjects as much more than they appear.
Happy New Year 2007
Now get out there and go get drunk!
Or at least spend the evening and New Year’s Day with your loved ones :-)
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House music making a comeback?
Cory Arcangel is probably the hippest person I know. If he’s linking to Brooklyn Bounce videos from his del.icio.us feed, perhaps BIG house music is ready for a comeback? I have to admit, listening to Get Ready To Bounce really made me want to dance; more than current dance music.
Maybe jungle will come back with it? ;-)
Or maybe I’m just a nostalgic old geezer.
Merry Christmas!
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Copy-paste (net.)art
It seems particularly apt that I simply copy and paste this post from We Make Money Not Art…
Epilogue: The copy found its way into relevant “kunst.historisch” literature and is still accessible on the author’s internet server. Being a legitimate and conceptual work it has been exhibited many times, also at the Venice Bienale in 2001.
During the exhibition of Fluxus in 2005, Gordan Karabogdan and Nikica Klobučar snatched a few of Beuys’ videos, copied them at their home and returned the “originals” without anyone noticing it. They even produced free copies and the media comprehended this deed as a criminal act. Please address me thusly
My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
His Excellency T.Whid the Loquacious of Molton St Anywhere
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title…
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Automate QuickTime video on OS X
This post may be helpful for artists and other creatives that need to automate the launching of digital video files using QuickTime on the Mac OS.
MTAA is in a group show in January and we’re showing a simple digital video loop. The goal was to automate the launching of the video full screen and looping when the computer starts up. The strategy was to use an AppleScript as a login item to achieve this.
The straightforward way to do this is to create a script that tells QuickTime to open the file, play it full screen and loop by pointing to the explicit path of the file on disk, e.g bootdisk:path:to:foo.mov. The problem with this is that if the file is moved QuickTime can’t open it. To make it more error-proof I wanted to make one application package with the video inside it. This allows there to be one file that can be moved to any Mac and double-clicked to start the video playing with all the properties I need.
After a bit of research and trial-and-error I think I came up with a decent solution.
I should note here that you can set QuickTime movies to play full screen on launch in the Movie Properties/Presentation panel of QuickTime Pro, but I couldn’t find a way to tell it to always loop so I took the approach below. If there is a way to tell a QuickTime movie to loop on launch then I wasted a bunch of time ;-) On the other hand, for a video that QuickTime can play but isn’t wrapped in the QuickTime container (like a straight-up MPEG4) this is probably the only way to do it.
Regardless, this is what I did:
First, in Script Editor (/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor), I created a new script and saved it as an ‘application bundle’ (making sure to uncheck ‘Startup Screen’). This created an application package — basically, a special folder — almost every OS X application is this format. By control-clicking this application in the Finder, I selected ‘Show Package Contents’ in the contextual menu. This opened a new Finder window with a folder called ‘Contents.’ Inside Contents was a folder called ‘Resources’ (and some other files). I copied my video file into the Resources folder.
Back to Script Editor, I typed a script very similar to this:
--set path to video file set _f to ((path to me) as string) ¬ & "Contents:Resources:foo.mov" -- open and play it tell application "QuickTime Player" launch activate stop every movie close every movie saving no try my play_movie(_f) on error (* in case the file has been moved or deleted for some reason *) choose file with prompt ¬ "File not found! Please locate it:" set _f to result my play_movie(_f) end try end tell on play_movie(_file) tell application "QuickTime Player" open _file tell movie 1 (* you can put any properties you need in here *) set looping to true present scale screen end tell end tell end play_movieNote: this script doesn’t work when run from Script Editor. It needs to be saved and launched by double-clicking the application bundle.
applet.icns in the Resources folder in the application bundle. I used CocoThumbX to create a new icns file.
main.scpt file in the [app bundle]:Contents:Resources:Scripts folder instead of editing the actual app bundle file. If your video file is large, it takes a long time to save the script when you’re editing the bundle as opposed to the script on it’s own.
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We meet Rick Silva in person
The other night M.River and I attended Dorkbot with presentations by (among others) Rick Silva and Marisa Olson.
M.River snapped this pic of me, Marisa, Tom Moody and Rick Silva:
Special bonus, more studio tests:
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MTAA in Miami
Not!
For some reason or another we never find our way to Miami Beach for the December art fairs. This is probably a good thing for those that might otherwise catch a startlingly bright glimpse of our NTSC-illegal-white bodies burning like phosphorous on the beach.
Hoping everyone has fun.
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CC v Zune
Wired.com’s Listening Post blog touches on the back-asswards Zune player and its non-compatibility with Creative Commons licenses. The crux of the issue is that the Zune will apply DRM to any song that is shared (or, um, ‘squirted’) between Zunes via the wifi feature regardless of what license is applied to the song. Creative Commons is adding language to their licenses that will explicitly make it a violation of the license to do this.
Read the story (with comments) here.
It will be interesting to see if any lawsuits result because of this. Have there been any CC-related lawsuits yet?
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Whitney at the High Line
I’m sure everyone that reads this web site probably already knew…
[via NYT]
A month after the Dia Art Foundation scrapped its plans to open a museum at the entrance to the High Line, the abandoned elevated railway line that the city is transforming into a public park, the Whitney Museum of American Art has signed on to take its place and build a satellite institution of its own downtown.#
The Whitney recently reached a conditional agreement on Wednesday night with the city’s Economic Development Corporation to buy the city-owned site, at Washington and West Streets in the meatpacking district, officials at the museum said yesterday. Plans call for the new museum to be at least twice the size of the Whitney’s home on Madison Avenue at 75th Street, they said, and to be finished within the next five years.
Parachute fails
The Canadian contemporary art magazine PARACHUTE ceases publication. This sucks.
From the press release (available in PDF: english | french):
Montreal, 20 November 2006 — The contemporary art magazine PARACHUTE, founded in 1974, has taken the difficult decision to suspend its activities. Despite the success of its new format, introduced in 2000, and its international recognition, funding levels no longer make it possible to ensure a reasonable level of quality and stability.#
Despite its determination and efforts to maintain the journal’s presence on the contemporary art scene and to continue operations, PARACHUTE’s board of directors was obliged to take this last-resort decision after examining all the economic and social factors which would have enabled the journal to extract itself from the impasse facing it. The journal had recently succeeded in increasing its sales by more than 200% while at the same time cutting expenses and trimming budgets. Major fundraising efforts over the last years have produced significant but insufficient results. As well, the repeated demands on government agencies have been unproductive. An overall drop in subsidies, in tandem with the current funding structure of the journal and the media environment today make the task that much more complex. Despite PARACHUTE’s exceptional longevity in a highly competitive milieu — a longevity owing to the enthusiasm of its contributors and readers and to the unflagging determination of its director — its suspension of activities at this time highlights the precariousness of cultural organizations in Quebec and the rest of Canada.
MartinLutherKing[dot]org run by racists
MartinLutherKing[dot]org is run by racists. If you go to the site (don’t go there) there is a link at the bottom of the page that says it’s hosted by Stormfront, a racist group. A quick Google search for “Martin Luther King” provides a link to martinlutherking[dot]org in the first slot.
Here are some better links, that should really make up the first page of results on Google:
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
[via] | [digg it]
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BuzzFeed
Jonah Peretti’s new venture, BuzzFeed is live. Sure, there are other people involved (John Johnson and Kenneth Lerer of The Huffington Post) but this thing has Peretti’s fingerprints all over it.
I don’t want to be a buzz kill, but I’m unsure how this is going to be different from Technorati or Digg. They’ve added editorial oversight and commentary it seems, but is that a just throwback to pre-crowdsourcing techniques?
They’re in the early stages of this thing and I’m sure Jonah and the gang have a lot up their sleeves.
Congrats!
update
Looking over BuzzFeed a tad more I’d like to amend my first response. BuzzFeed is doing something different than Technorati and Digg. Where Technorati will tell you there are n number of links to story x, BuzzFeed is focused on larger trends. It gives you relevant links to the larger meme. Also, the archives are great.
I’d like to know more about it though. Are they only analyzing the sites under ‘sites making buzz’? Oops, I guess I should have read the about page, it says they track 50,000 sites. That doesn’t answer what the ‘sites making buzz’ list is however.
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Last minute reminder: 3x3 tonight!
The world premier of The Un-scary Movie! A very, very short video by MTAA at:
3 Minutes : 3 Hours
Wednesday November 15 – 7pm
EFA Gallery | EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor, NYC
More info here.
Be there or be a rhombus.
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Artist billboards of gay Poles banned
Billboards of portraits of gay Poles by Polish artist Karolina Bregula were censored by Lamar Outdoor Advertising.
Edward Winkleman has the lowdown (along with a call to action). There’s info on Newsgrist as well.
Institutionalized bigotry against gays, lesbians and transgender people really needs to end. Now. How long can we continue to treat a good portion of our population like second-class citizens?
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Wiley Wiggins comments on Cory
Wiley Wiggins, star of Dazed and Confused has commented on Cory Arcangel’s Untitled Translation Exercise (scroll down). Read Wiggins’ blog post.
Note: “Untitled Translation Exercise” is Cory’s video that re-dubs Dazed and Confused using Indian outsourcing workers.
Also, Cory would, presumably, be publicly executed under the Realtime Art Manifesto.
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Realtime Art Manifesto
It’s safe to say that I disagree with the majority a whole bunch of this (including the idea of writing a manifesto at all…).
An interesting read none-the-less.
+++
Realtime Art Manifesto by Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn
1. Realtime 3D is a medium for artistic expression.
2. Be an author.
3. Create a total experience.
4. Embed the user in the environment.
5. Reject dehumanisation: tell stories.
6. Interactivity wants to be free.
7. Don’t make modern art.
8. Reject conceptualism.
9. Embrace technology.
10. Develop a punk economy.
[via]
m.river adds:
“including the idea of writing a manifesto at all…”
We did write one.
[Artainment]
twhid responds:
Yeah, but ours was ironic.
Irony, under the Realtime Art Manifesto, is punished by having kneecaps shattered.
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computerfinearts.com @ [DAM] Berlin
This is a tad late, but the show runs through December 5th.
COMPUTER FINE ARTS COLLECTION OF DORON GOLAN
Internet Art / Software Art
www.computerfinearts.com
Exhibition 06:
10th November 2006 – 5th December 2006
Doron Golan collects artwork, which have been developed for the internet. He concentrated on an aspect of contemporary art, which was consindered as not marketable. The different pieces, which were developed specifically for the Web are free available for everybody. In many cases the internet, with its specific possibilities, is an integral part of the artwork. By aquiring these pieces he enables the persistence of these artworks online. The collection is internationally and you´ll find some important artists, which were already known for internet-art in the 1990s. We present his collection as a projection in the gallery.
[DAM] Berlin
Digital Art Museum
Tucholskystr. 37
D-10117 Berlin
Tue- Fri 12-6 pm | Sat 12-4 pm
Rumsfeld: force quit
Too funny not to republish! (via boingboing)
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MTAA At The Art Opening [part 9]
Part 9 is ready for download. (MP3, 10.2MB, 16’00)
In which M.River and T.Whid blather on about inane stuff as they count down to the end of this torturous exercise. Lauren Cornell pops in at the end to provide some much needed relief.
This is the final installment in this series.
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FUCKING FINALLY!
Dems win House!!!
CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and even FOX news call the house for the Dems.
The beginning of the end of the nightmare called the Bush Administration is at hand.
update
It’s the morning of the 8th now and it looks like a great win! As I’m writing this the Democrats have picked up at least 27 seats in the House (as reported by the NYT and the WaPo) and it’s looking good for the Senate too. Webb (D) is up by only .3% (7847 votes)! and the Democrat Tester in Montana is up by .4% (1735 votes)! If the dems can hold on there (and that’s a big ‘if’ because we all know how good the repubs are at cheating and lying) then the members of the reality-based community get a win (almost) beyond our wildest dreams :-)
I’m from Ohio and the map below (from NYT) illustrates just how far the Democrats have come in just two years. Look at all that blue :-)
For more maps like this go here, select ‘state by state’ then select a state on the left.
update 2
Holy shit! Rumsfeld is out! Almost better news than the Congressional revolution.
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MTAA At The Art Opening [part 8]
Part 8 is ready for download. (MP3, 11.2MB, 16’36)
In which T.Whid chats with Marisa Olson.
And in case you’re wondering, there’s only one more after this. I suppose that’s either good news or bad news depending on your point-of-view.
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MTAA At The Art Opening [part 7]
Part 7 is ready for download. (MP3, 10.1MB, 15’28)
In which M.River talks to some guy that seems to really hate art, artists and anything to do with art and artists except for the free drinks at openings (which he can’t drink because he’s training for a marathon). Helen chimes in now and then with wisecracks.
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MTAA At The Art Opening [part 6]
Part 6 is ready for download. (MP3, 5.5MB, 8’07)
In which T.Whid talks to Tinydiva (AKA Margaret Jameson). Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch, a good portion of the interview was lost :(
Make sure to listen to Tinydiva’s submission (entitled Running — direct link; MP3, 35MB, 15’16) to To Be Listened To…
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Pickle passion
If you love, or even like, pickles. Then run, don’t walk, ah… somewhere to pick up some of Rick’s Picks. Be warned though, they ain’t cheap (11 bucks a jar on the web site).
The newly (re-)opened Cobblestone Foods in my neighborhood in Brooklyn started carrying them and I picked up a jar of the Spears of Influence last night. It was a really fucking good pickle. It was, perhaps, even better than Guss’ Pickles. But I think I should treat my wife and myself to a taste test to decide.
Mmmmmmmm, test taste… I mean mmmmmmm taste test…
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MTAA At The Art Opening [part 5]
Part 5 is ready for download. (MP3, 5.3MB, 8’26)
In which M.River talks with the one and only Mark Napier as T.Whid goes AWOL in order to smoke.
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Olia Lialina in NYC
A Conversation with Olia Lialina
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
601 W 26th Street, Suite 1240
New York, NY 10001
212-243-8830
November 2, 2006 6:30PM
In conjunction with the exhibition On and Off at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, celebrated artist and net.art pioneer Olia Lialina will discuss her work with curator Caitlin Jones. Using her iconic work “My Boyfriend Came Back from the War” as a springboard, Lialina will address issues such as the changing aesthetic and thematic landscape of the web, new models of authorship and participation; and the outward expansion of network based ideas and practice into off-line spaces and contexts.
MTAA At The Art Opening [part 4]
Part 4 is ready for download. (MP3, 11.6MB, 17’23)
This one features MTAA babbling about the opening and a short interview with Patrick May, artist and Rhizome’s Director of Technology.
Also, some files were uploaded to 2bl2 that we think are in arabic (and look to have been uploaded from an ISP in the United Arab Emirates). The uploader neglected to add them to a feed so I added them to the ‘…in a park in Europe as you wait for the sun to rise and the snow to stop’ feed. If anyone knows arabic, please enlighten us as to the content. We’re curious.
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MTAA At The Art Opening [part 3]
Go there now! Get your iTunes on.
Part 3 is ready for download. (MP3, 4.4MB, 06’52)
This one features GH busting some Dan Graham moves.
We have a few more parts to go. So settle in…
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NEW MEDIA ART
THE LAST AVANT-GARDE
Rough version of an interview with Mark Tribe & Reena Jana, authors of NEW MEDIA ART (Taschen, 2006). A shorter version has been published in Flash Art Italia, Issue 260, October - November 2006, p. 73.
Domenico Quaranta: Even from an editorial point of view, your book describes new media art as a movement (such as Surrealism or Conceptualism) rather than a mere possibility of the medium. This is a very interesting point. Do you believe in it or is this a marketing strategy? Is new media art the last avant-garde, and why?
Mark Tribe: Before we discuss New Media art as a movement, we describe it more generically in terms of “projects that make use of emerging media technologies and are concerned with the cultural, political, and aesthetic possibilities of these tools.” I think this is more-or-less what you mean by “a possibility of the medium.” […]
keep reading… NEW MEDIA ART
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MTAA At The Art Opening [part 2]
Get up on it!
Part 2 is ready for download. (MP3, 15MB, 13’11)
Go to To Be Listened To… and upload your own stuff for crying out loud!
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MTAA At The Art Opening [part 1]
The title of a series of audio files we’re releasing has been sort of up-in-the-air so I decided (unilaterally btw (sorry M)) that I’m going to call it “MTAA At The Art Opening.” It’s a series of audio recordings that we’ll be releasing via our podcast website “To Be Listened To…”. (See this for more info.)
You can download part 1 of “MTAA At The Art Opening” now! (MP3, 14.4MB, 12’39)
Please stare at this image of MTAA as you listen to part 1. Also, subscribe to the podcast feed in iTunes (iTunes link) or other podcast client (RSS link) to get future parts as they’re released.
Note: alternately, we’ve been calling this piece “2BL2 Rhizome Reception” and “A Live Demonstration of MTAA Art Practice At Rhizome’s Reception For The 2005 - 2006 Net Art Commissions” and having no title at all. It’s all very confusing.
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Dangling Between The Real Thing And The Sign In The Window
Barry Hoggard and James Wagner have released a very thorough and extensive web site documenting their curatorial effort, “Dangling Between The Real Thing And The Sign In The Window” at Dam, Stuhltrager in Brooklyn.
It’s a shame that most art exhibitions don’t have such a great resource accompanying them.
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MTAA @ NuMu last night
More at: M.River’s Tinjail/tintype photoblog. Start here and work your way back.
See this and this for more info.
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McCoy lite™ ?
Friday the 13th: In 7 Minutes is a video on YouTube that…
[…] features every on-screen death in the film series FRIDAY THE 13th, displayed back to back and in chronological order.
2BL2 live demo
Cutting-edge cute!
Making fun… for everyone!
Back from decrepitude!
YES! The long-awaited live demonstration of “To Be Listened To…”!!!
>>> Listen to the exciting announcement in MP3 format <<<
When? Tomorrow Oct 24, 2006, 6:30PM - 8:30PM
Where? New Museum bookstore (google map)
Why? ask Rhizome
How: 1 mic, 1 MTAA, 1 laptop, 1 crowd of new media swells and their hangers-on
>>> Listen to the exciting announcement in MP3 format <<<
As part of the reception for the 2005-2006 Rhizome Commissions.
Be there or be a parallelogram!
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MTAA’s studio on a top block in NYC?
According to TimeOut NY, MTAA’s studio (at 60 N.6th St. btw Wythe & Kent) is on the 40th best block in NYC. It’s true, they said that (scroll down)!
What they said:
40. North 6th Street between Kent and Wythe Avenues, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Near the waterfront, this block affords unobstructed views of Manhattan in a quintessential Williamsburg setting, near cutting-edge restaurants, cooler-than-thou bars and trendy boutiques.
McCoys in WaPo
Our favorites, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, are profiled in the Washington Post today.
The article bounces back and forth from bio piece:
Kevin, who is 39, is in torn jeans, a plain black T-shirt and scuffed black running shoes. He has long, unruly locks and a mustache that crawls, sluglike, down the sides of his chin. He could pass for a stoner selling used guitars.
His wife, 38, is notably more tidy. She sits near him wearing fresh khakis, a flowery green vest over a clean white shirt (untucked, because she’s pregnant with their second child ) and sparkly little flats. Her straight hair is cut at girlish shoulder length.
[Their recent show in LA] is typical McCoy. It’s built around the cultural theories they were both schooled in in France — structuralism and its descendant, deconstruction — which emphasize the constructedness of all experience. The theories insist, that is, that culture, including silly children’s books, conditions everything we think we know about our world, such as what counts as “special” and “scary,” and maybe also how girls and boys will “naturally” think. (The installations, say the McCoys, were partly inspired by watching Ginger, their 2-year-old daughter.)
But instead of mouthing off about such things, the McCoys’ art tries to flesh them out and test them: If our mental and cultural world is supposed to be constructed, then they’ll craft building blocks of sense and a machine that lets us watch them being put together into an edifice of meaning.
The MAMP is phat
If you need a quick and not-so-dirty way to set-up a MySQL, Apache and PHP system on your Mac, then MAMP (Macintosh, Apache, MySQL and PHP) can’t be beat for speed of set-up and ease-of-use.
There’s universal, powerpc and intel disk images available. The current (1.3.1) version installs MySQL 5.0.19 (with phpMyAdmin 2.7.0-pl2), PHP 4.4.2 and 5.1.4 (you can choose which to use in a simple preference panel) and Apache 2.0.55. It installs itself on non-standard ports so you can use OSX’s default web config alongside it if you like or, you can set Apache and MySQL to use their default ports (80 & 3306 respectively) and leave the OS X version of Apache off.
The developers recommend their product for local development only. You don’t want to use it as a production web server (especially with the out-of-the-box settings).
It looks like this nice piece of software has been around for about 2 years (Oct 2004 was their initial release). Not sure why I hadn’t caught wind of it until now. Rock on MAMP!
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Join the foie gras rebellion!
More on the haters trying to tell you what to eat in Salon today (must click through the ad to read the article).
The money quote:
[…] these ducks aren’t doing anything that a porn star doesn’t do on a regular basis.
Billions of chickens, hogs and beef are being harmed — that’s carnage on a far vaster scale — but big agribusiness is a difficult and powerful target. They don’t get much bang for their buck, from a political standpoint. It’s much easier to go for the small artisanal farmer with little resources and no lobbying group in D.C.
Google’s not punk
Cory Arcangel’s “punk rock 101” (recently talked up here) has been shut down by Google. I don’t know the details, just received this brief email from Cory:
google shut off the cobain thing :(
And of course
The show that we’re not in is opening tonight :-)
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GH reports from Split
check it out… Split Festival Quick Report
G.H. Hovagimyan reports on the Split Festival of New Film in which MTAA’s “1 year performance video” was shown. There’s a text review as well as an MP3 interview (direct link) with Branko Karabatic, the head of the festival.
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1ypv reviewed (hebrew)
If you know hebrew you can read an article about our “1 year performance video” written by Avi Rosen.
Here’s the link. According to Avi this is a “a major Israeli computer & culture site”.
Avi was the first person to view 1ypv for an entire year. Thanks for the ink dude!
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AFC reviews 8 BIT
(Following Moody’s lead…)
check it out: Art Fag City: Video Game Culture Thrives in New Documentary
The film premiers this Saturday at MoMA.
If you’re planning on going note that MoMA has a really inconvenient admissions policy for their films. You have to buy the tickets in person; there are no phone orders nor online orders. You also need to get them the day of, except “[a] limited number of advance tickets are available, no more than one week in advance of a film” and you pay a buck fifty for the privilege.
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Cory makes Digg front page
(Yes, this is Cory Arcangel week on the blog (as it always is when Cory has a show opening).)
Just in time for Cory Arcangel’s opening at Team Gallery tonight his net art piece “punk rock 101” made it to Digg’s front page (931 diggs at the time of this posting 959 diggs at the time of updating this post).
Check out the Digg post… (with the lame commentary and all)
This net art work is brilliant. Cory has, with one simple gesture, created a work of art that brings into stark relief both mass media’s lurid fascination with celebrity downfall and the commercialization (monteziation in the parlance) of private lives via web sites and services like MySpace and Gmail. We’re both repelled and fascinated by it.
update:
I fixed the title of the piece, originally I had it as “Kurt Cobain’s suicide letter vs. Google AdSense.”
According to Cory, he made 92USD from the page yesterday (when it first hit Digg) and has made 230USD since he launched it.
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Cory @ Team this Friday
Swiped straight from Cory’s blog…
So, Ive been pretty quiet for about the last 4 - 5 months,…no new projects posted to the web, … even my delicious linking fell off … well that cause I have been working on an art show I have opening this Friday :-) the show is called “subtractions, modifications, addenda, and other recent contributions to participatory culture”. I am happy to be opening Team’s NEW SOHO GALLERY!! There are some new videos, a few computer hacks, and even a 12inch vinyl record. Source code for the projects will appear here eventually, but for now there is just a real world version. So please come and check it out. Here are the details:
Team Gallery
83 Grand Street, between Wooster and Greene
Friday, September 29, 6:00PM - 8:00PM
and here is the press release.
Rough Want
Our first rough steps into turning Want into the world-conquering video installation that we envision…
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Warhol documentary part 1
Well, it definitely seemed like a documentary about an artist. I always find it weird when art historians give great weight in dating things really, really specifically (“he started using silk-screen in april of ‘62”). Of course you want to know when things happened, but to use the fact to prop up the fallacy of a progressive linear continuum in art isn’t good history.
Still, I enjoyed the documentary very much.
One thought I had while watching is that what Warhol did for the mechanical image in art still hasn’t been done for the digital image.
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Burns’ Warhol tonight
Ric Burns’ (no not his brother Ken Burns. I was confused too…) Warhol documentary is airing tonight and tomorrow night on PBS stations (NYT).
Go here to find the schedule on your local station.
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In the future everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes
Look. There are lots of photos of Bansky’s opening in LA (scroll down past the celeb photos for the actual art work).
My fave? the bobbies grappling with wildstyle graffiti.
And, of course, the update of Warhol’s prediction.
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Walton leaves Union Square…
…never to return.
(open image in new browser window for full-size)
Background info
here.
Photo provided by Marisa.
addendum:
I’ve decided that it is now my life’s mission to trick Lee Walton into entering Union Square again.
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Conflux Festival this week
Powered by Glowlab, from the PR:
Conflux is the annual NYC festival for contemporary psychogeography where international artists, technologists, urban adventurers and the public put investigations of everyday city life into practice on the streets. Currently in its third year, Conflux will take place September 14 - 17th in Brooklyn. Over 80 artists from across the US and countries including Canada, UK, Spain, Germany, Finland, Sweden and Australia will come to Williamsburg to present projects including experimental walking, biking, boat and public-transport tours; street games and tech workshops; mobile broadcasts, performances and temporary installations.
Sept. 11, 2001
Fuck you George Bush and fuck you to your criminal administration.
Fuck you Dick Cheney.
Fuck you Karl Rove.
Fuck you Donald Rumsfeld.
Fuck all the motherfuckers that took this heinous crime and used it for their own pathetic political powerplays. Their cheap and disgusting tactics have done more harm to the US and the world than 1000 Osama’s could ever hope to do.
Congratulations motherfuckers! Happy September 11!
update 9/12:
A less hysterical take: Olbermann
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Cory Arcangel using AppleScript?
It’s right here in his del.icio.us osx category.
He says:
dont tell anyone, but i might be using applescript for a project……
Have you no sense of decency, sir?
Keith Olbermann on Bush’s disgusting speech of yesterday:
It is to our deep national shame—and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret—that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies—or even question their effectiveness or execution—to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.
Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 — without ever actually saying so—the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”
Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”
The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.
Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:
The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media”—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.
That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.
More moolah for artists
United States Artists is going to start dropping $50k on individual american artists as reported by the NYT. Nice.
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McCoys first solo show in LA
If you’re in LA this coming Friday brings the opening of the McCoys first solo show in your city! It’s at Fringe Exhibitions:
For their first solo Los Angeles exhibition, the McCoys present two new works. Both pieces are inspired by the language and themes of childhood. In the upstairs gallery, their project Special Things explores a super-charged utopian childhood of cavorting lambs, romping youths, and chiffon rainbows. All of this is rendered sculpturally in fragments across sixteen small hanging sculptures. Each sculpture consists of a miniature scene, a small video camera, and a mirrored word layered across the front of the sculpture. On a nearby screen, images of the sixteen scenes and their words are rapidly intercut, creating new sentences and shifting meaning: “The children feel special today” or “You can smell the flowers”.#
In the downstairs gallery, the McCoys present Scary Things whose images come from simple elements of nature that can be frightening to children. This sculpture uses a similar technique of tiny cameras, sculptural miniatures, and acrylic text, but here the terrain is one integrated platform. Although the sculpture contains only ten words, hundreds of sentences are created, forming a reduced poetry of fear: “Dogs are fighting scary things” or “Lost birds are scary “.
Sol LeWitt on new materials
Robbin Murphy reminds us of LeWitt’s warning…
New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. There is nothing worse than seeing art that wallows in gaudy baubles. By and large most artists who are attracted to these materials are the ones who lack the stringency of mind that would enable them to use the materials well. It takes a good artist to use new materials and make them into a work of art. The danger is, I think, in making the physicality of the materials so important that it becomes the idea of the work (another kind of expressionism).
Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”
Schlock artist actually a con artist
The LA Times writes..
The FBI is investigating allegations that self-styled “Painter of Light” Thomas Kinkade and some of his top executives fraudulently induced investors to open galleries and then ruined them financially, former dealers contacted by federal agents said.
[…]
“It was a program of lies and deception, predicated on Christian values that weren’t there,” said Joseph Ejbeh, the Michigan attorney who tried the arbitration case.
Critics - including highbrow art aficionados, satirical bloggers and starving artists annoyed by Kinkade’s marketing success - snicker at his work.
My question is, which category are you in, honey? All three I suspect…. :-)
The Stuckists?
Edward Winkleman blogged about Stuckism today.
I think I missed the joke. Reading the later comments on the post, it looks like it was a ‘movement’ started by Tracy Emin’s pissed-off ex-bf, Billy Childish.
It seems that perhaps it became a real ‘movement’ of not-so-talented painters and that’s when the one of the co-founders (Childish) left. This comment claims to be from the the other co-founder of the group, Charles Thomson.
Regardless of the sincerity of its inception, the painting examples linked from Ed’s blog post are all entirely horrible. Perhaps on purpose? (Who cares?)
You can go to the Stuckism web site (which has a marquee! Is it an ironic marquee? (Who cares?)), or read about it on Wikipedia.
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Foie gras rebellion
I love foie gras unapologetically. My wife and I dined on it almost every evening while in Paris on our honeymoon so it will always hold a special place in my heart.
It’s now officially illegal in Chicago to sell it. How stupid. The NYT reports on the foie gras rebellion taking place in the city!
In one of the more unlikely (and opulent) demonstrations of civil disobedience, a handful of restaurants here that never carry foie gras, the fattened livers of ducks and geese, featured it on the very day that Chicago became the first city in the nation to outlaw sale of the delicacy.
Gnarls Biggie
Gnarls Biggie
by Sound Advice
…Gnarls Barkely mashed-up with Biggie Smalls
phat
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New York Mag does Creative Capital
…with an article full of tired cliches.
Or perhaps they’re just trying to be funny?
Whatev.
Check it out…
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The Times UK does new media
It’s sort of a weird article that seems to mostly diss new media. Check it out…
I’m proud to say that this…
So are artists at the cutting edge of new-media technology? No, says Charlie. One of the problems is that other stuff on the net is so much more mind-blowing. A site such as Google Earth is so much more awesome and thought-provoking than something an arty hacktivist can knock up on her PC.
New media art shouldn’t suck
AFC has a good post today about the realities of new media artists crossing-over into the larger art world. Here’s the bit that should be common sense to new media artists (but often isn’t):
Unlike many professions, there are a great number of people within the art world who could give a shit about the Internet. […] This sort of thing can create problems for artists who are making work in the medium because the people who understand it best are often the sixteen year nerds [sic] who spend 18 hours a day in front of a computer, as opposed to art world professionals who are responsible for the evaluation of art.
MTAA’s Limited Edition Business Card #1
MTAA needs to get professional. To that end, we made some business cards. These just aren’t any business cards however. They’re a limited edition print — signed and numbered on the back.
How can you get a free limited edition business card print from MTAA? You must meet us in person and give us some reason to think that you can help us professionally.
This is the first in a series.
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The dot.com burst and the net art fizzle
There’s been discussion on Rhizome about whether or not Rhizome is covering net art well enough. This discussion led into a debate on the robustness of net art. Amongst this discussion, there has been several assertions made that the dot.com bust poured cold water on the movement but I wanted to look at it a little more closely.
As some of you know, M.River and I were very much involved with the net art movement from 97 onward. I was also working within the dot.com bubble at the time and was very attuned to its movements.
I remember knowing there was trouble with the bubble in mid-‘00. Then, by late 00/early 01, it was obvious to everyone that the burst had happened. (See this graph of the nasdaq.)
I was out of work in early/mid 00 and it was super-easy to get a dot.com gig at the time due to the fact that the forward momentum of companies isn’t as easily stopped as the rise of their stock price.
Remembering the crash, I was thinking at the time that it would throw cold water on the net art movement and thinking that it didn’t seem to be happening.
Probably due to the fact that museums and art institutions are even slower-moving than businesses, it took a good year or two after the dot.com burst for the net art fad to fizzle in the art institutions. Not to say that the dot.com collapse didn’t help cause it, but it took a while for it to be felt.
m.river adds:
I’ve always thought that the linking of the dot.com boom/bust and the art world’s early interest and then abandonment of net art is a red herring. I feel something else was in play. A clue may be found in the recent championing of art works and artist that use the net as a reference or source but do not use the net as the primary site of the work.
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The Warriors free screening
OK, I know this is total corporate PR bullshit…
But! The Warriors! AT CONEY ISLAND!
Wish I was in town :-(
All details here (Netflix promo FYI).
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Artkrush does digital art
There’s a bunch of new media stuff in the current issue of Artkrush (issue 37):
An interview with Lauren Cornell, Executive Director or Rhizome.org (in which your humble net artists MTAA are mentioned)
A profile of Cory Arcangel
A review of Jon Ippolito and Joline Blais’ book “At the Edge of Art”
And more! Check it out…
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Some cools things recently found
i use this
A Digg-like site similar to MacUpdate or VersionTracker; find the software you need.
freenigma
A Firefox extension to easily and freely encrypt email sent via popular web mail services like Gmail. It’s in beta so you need to wait for an invite once you sign up, I’m still waiting…
American King
A cool new videoblog documentary
Goatse Polo
I want one!
plus
A great Rocketboom today
An interview with David Cronenberg on the opening of his curatorial effort, “Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths and Disasters, 1962-1964” at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
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A short interview with RSG about LCL
(via IM)
MTAA: why is it ‘liberated’?
RSG: politically liberated
MTAA: how so?
MTAA: (this is an interview for the blog now)
RSG: lol RSG doesn’t do interviews :-)
MTAA: too late
(a few minutes pass)
MTAA: ok.. i guess i’ll have to print that…
RSG: haha
Check out Notes for a Liberated Computer Language…
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Notes for a Liberated Computer Language
New from RSG: Notes for a Liberated Computer Language
From the Control Structures section:
Historic
Executes a code block by evaluating an entity according to its current value as well as all previous values.
Exceptional
Designates an abnormal flow of program execution and guarantees that it will never be handled as an error.
Flee
A branching construct that moves flow control from the current instruction to a stray position in the program.
Maybe
Allows for possible, but not guaranteed, execution of code blocks.
Never
Guarantees that a block of code will never be executed. This is similar to block quotes in other languages, except that “never” blocks are not removed during compilation.
Potential
Evaluates an entity only according to as yet unrealized possibility.
Designers diss Bush
Rock on!
Because the Awards program was originally conceived as an official project of the White House Millennium Council, the First Lady serves as the honorary chair of the gala at which the winners are celebrated. She also traditionally hosts a breakfast at the White House to which all the nominees and winners are invited. That breakfast was today.#
This year, however, five Communication Design honorees decided to decline the invitation. They wrote a letter to Laura Bush explaining why.
MTAA’s gallery reception desk intervention series
Well, that’s not the actual title of the actual series… or perhaps there is no series? It seems to be more of a pattern. Eh.. what am I babbling about? Oh yeah! Our new piece (that M.River conceived, and today, built at Aljira in Newark as our submission for E7: Aljira Emerge 7 Exhibition (more here)) is pictured below.
3’ High and Rising, Newark
Wood platform, gallery reception desk
2006, MTAA
(Note: this is just a quick pic that M.River took after completing the installation, better documentary photos coming later this month…)
We’ve done this sort of thing in the past when invited into galleries. (Silly gallerists, don’t you know you shouldn’t invite filthy net artists into your pristine white walls?).
Prior gallery reception desk interventions include:
In Preparation For The Over-Running Of White Columns By Hordes of Bloodthirsty Barbarians (AKA Bunker Flood) (In which, we walled in the reception desk of White Columns with cinder blocks and sandbags.)
~and~
In Preparation For An Attack By Mobs Of Hideously Deformed Radioctive Mutants On 31 Grand (AKA Cage Match) (In which, we caged in the reception desk of 31 Grand with chain link.)
The opening for “E7: Aljira Emerge 7 Exhibition” is Thursday July 20 from 5:30 - 8:30 PM at Aljira’s space in Newark.
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Some MTAA exhibition news
We have a few things coming up exhibition-wise…
July 20th, 2006 - September 30th, 2006
E7: Aljira Emerge 7 Exhibition
opening reception: Thursday, July 20, 5:30-8:30PM at Aljira in Newark, NJ.
This is a big group show of a bunch of artists (see link above for a full list of artists) that have taken part in Aljira’s Emerge professional development program.
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Split Film Festival
It looks like we’re also be included in the Split Film Festival in Split, Croatia. Unfortunately they don’t have a travel budget so it looks like we won’t be able to attend :-( We’ll be showing 1 Year Performance Video.
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2006 - 2007 Rhizome net art commissions announced
The new Rhizome net art commissions for 2006 - 2007 were announced today.
Rhizome is pleased to announce that eleven international artists/groups have been awarded commissions to assist them in creating original works of Internet-based art. Each commission will range from $2500 — $1000. The selected artists are Annie Abrahams and Igor Stromajer, Nadia Anderson and Fritz Donnelly, Adam Brown and Andrew Fagg, Corey Jackson and Aaron Meyers, Zach Lieberman, Michael Mandiberg, the Institute for Applied Autonomy and Trevor Paglen, Evan Roth and Ben Engebre, SLOWLab (Carolyn Strauss and Julian Bleecker), Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg and YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES.
Jill Greenberg’s End Times series
image © Jill Greenberg
See more at Paul Kopeikin Gallery web site…
There is a bit of controversy on-line regarding the End Times series of photographs by Jill Greenberg. The photographs depict a series of children in differing stages of frustration and rage. It’s basically a bunch of toddlers screaming and crying. Thomas Hawk has gone so far as to call for her arrest on child abuse charges.
The use of a child in any media endeavor (film, tv, theater, art installations, child beauty pageants, etc) is exploitative. Obviously, a young child can’t make an informed decision as to their participation in a particular enterprise so they are all being ‘used’ to some degree.
The question of whether or not the children in Jill Greenberg’s photos are being exploited is simple. Yes they are. But why does Thomas Hawk see this as any worse than the thousands children being exploited everyday in our media? Why does he perceive child abuse in these photographs?
My answer is that the power of the photos overwhelms him; he’s a naive viewer. He sees compelling photos of distressed children and can’t separate the fiction of the photo from the reality of its making.
Hawk is simply a fool. He has no idea what went on in Greenberg’s studio, but that doesn’t stop him from screeching “child abuse” as loud as he’s able. He has no facts, he only has the photos — a fiction — but he recklessly calls for the artist’s arrest. It’s inexcusable. In fact, according to Greenberg’s husband (Hawk posted a comment from him at the bottom of this post), the children were made to cry by having lollipops taken away from them. If that’s child abuse we’ll need to lock up 99% of the parents in this country. Greenberg’s husband goes on to say that this is the industry standard method of getting kids to cry on camera. I have no idea, having no experience and the source of this info is obviously tainted.
This is the part of the post where I’m a dick. I’m trying to figure out why Hawk went ballistic regarding Greenberg, when this sort of thing goes on daily in the media industry. My guess is that he’s jealous. He’s an amateur and not very talented photographer whereas Greenberg is a very successful and enormously talented commercial and fine art photographer. Her End Times photos are incredibly well crafted, beautiful and powerful, whereas his answering photo is trite and cliche.
Note: In the time it took me to start and finish this post (a span of a few days), Jill Greenberg and her husband have done a few not-so-nice things to try to shut Thomas Hawk up. They should have kept the moral high-ground, but they decided to try some bully tactics. Their actions are inexcusable. But Hawk’s a self-rightous fool so I guess it evens out.
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Will MTAA ever post again?
That is the burning question… will MTAA ever post to this blog ever again?
The answer: probably.
In the meantime, read this: Raising the Reblog Bar (AFC).
I’m writing a slightly longer post regarding this controversy, but haven’t finished it yet.
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I want video angels
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Back to Ubuntu
Long, long ago (unsure when; the dates got messed up on this blog) I tried to get into Linux with the Ubuntu flavor. It seemed to work OK for a while, but it eventually failed to boot and I got sick of re-installing it, so I finally gave up on it.
Yesterday, I installed Parallels on my Macbook Pro. Parallels allows you to run different OSs simultaneously. I didn’t have a copy of Windows, so I downloaded Ubuntu and installed it as a ‘guest os.’
Ubuntu has come a long way (I installed 6.06). The installer is easy and user-friendly. It’s basically a liveCD that, once booted, has a one-click installer on the desktop.
According to Parallels, Ubuntu isn’t officially supported, but it works wonderfully. There are some complaints on the forum that folks can’t get it to use the airport card, but it automatically bridged my airport connection and I was on-line with no configuration. There’s also issues with running it at a higher resolution than 1024x768. That’s the default resolution I’m getting, but I haven’t looked into that issue yet.
What am I going to do with it? I’m not sure. I’m also not sure I want to shell out the 50USD for Parallels. Installing Windows on Parallels would be more practical for me (obviously) and may make it worth the 50 bones. Plus, how cool would it be to be a triple-threat: OS X, Linux and Windows all on the same hardware, at the same time! I think I’ll attempt a Vista install, stay tuned.
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The Fair Use Network
A new on-line resource from the Free Expression Policy Project at the Brennen Center of Justice at NYU School of Law, The Fair Use Network introduces itself thusly:
How much can you borrow, quote or copy from someone else’s work? What happens if you get a “cease and desist” letter from a copyright owner? These and many other questions make “intellectual property,” or “IP,” law, a mass of confusion for artists, scholars, journalists, bloggers, and everyone else who contributes to culture and political debate.
The Fair Use Network was created because of the many questions that artists, writers, and others have about “IP” issues. Whether you are trying to understand your own copyright or trademark rights, or are a “user” of materials created by others, the information here will help you understand the system — and especially its free-expression safeguards.
If you have received a “cease and desist” letter from a copyright or trademark owner, or a notice from your Internet service provider about a “takedown” letter, you’ll also find useful information on this site.
Let’s get to Home Depot — quick!
Last week, a contractor bought a bathroom vanity at a Massachusetts Home Depot and discovered two 50-pound “bricks” of grass inside. Elsewhere in the state, a plumber purchased a similar product at an unnamed “hardware store” and opened it to find 40 pounds of weed plus 3 kilograms of cocaine. Police and DEA officials have swept a dozen Home Depots in the state and found other loaded vanities.
Vote for Bill
MTAA’s friend Bill Hallinan directed a music video for the musician Maggie Kim. It’s in competition to launch on MTV’s new Korean-American channel: MTV-K. Follow the instructions below to help his video be released on MTV. Watch the video too; it’s really good.
Please go to www.mtvk.com and vote for Maggie Kim’s video for “Obvious (Want You)”.#
Don’t vote for Yeah Yeah Yeahs, because they get ALL the candy. They don’t need any more candy. Let someone else have some candy for a change. Let that someone be Maggie Kim.
So, please vote, and help re-distribute the candy.
AFC: Geeks in the Gallery
“Geeks in the Gallery” is a three part discussion with artists Michael Bell-Smith and Tom Moody, which will run on Art Fag City from Monday June 12 – Wednesday, June 14, 2006. A recurring theme of the talk is how technology informs artistic production, as both artists have individually exhibited work usually described as New Media, yet also seem somewhat skeptical of “tech art.”
Want shoot pix on tintype
Some of you may know that MTAA is collaborating with RSG on a networked video installation with the working title “Want.”
This weekend we did the video shoot at a studio in Williamsburg and M.River has posted some pix on his Tintype photo blog.
Check it out…
Big thanks to Bill Hallinan, Margaret Jameson and Sarah Hendrick, our professional and talented crew :-)
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I want…
i want forever
i want the full version
i want company
i want michelle marsh
i want amateurs
i want jennifer lopez
i want bibcams
i want taylor hicks
i want robbie williams
i want old school
i want people
i want a special edition
i want perfection
i want 640x480
i want love
i want the original
i want the french
i want donkey kong country
i want robert kiyosaki
i want greatest hits
i want christmas
(a random sample from the shared script)
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6-6-6
6/6/6
Satan’s tuesday MUTHAF*CKERS!
(Sorry to knock M’s post down, but I had to do it.)
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Interview with Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson interviewed by Jonah Brucker-Cohen. One of my favorite artists interviewed by one of my other favorite artists.
In the generic “plastic brick” design world of game console hardware, the passive player is usually subjected to standardized devices that they may choose to augment with their own “case mods”. Although extremely creative, most of these modifications are embellishments that have no connection to the games themselves. Exploring this contextual rift between mass-produced consoles and their software counterparts is Brooklyn, NY based artist, Paul Johnson. Johnson creates work that challenges traditional console forms by integrating the goals and virtual landscapes of games into the physical realization of the hardware. His projects examine the inherent conflicts between constructed systems and their emotional proclivity. Gizmodo spoke to Johnson about the future of gaming, interactivity, and why the physical design of consoles should be closer tied to the games that they support.
Brokeback Mountain & the same-sex marriage ban
My wife and I watched Brokeback Mountain last night and it was a really great flick. We were both kicking ourselves that we didn’t see it in the theater. The beautiful shots of the western landscape would have been so much more impressive on the big screen, but then we realized that we probably wouldn’t want to by sobbing in public at the end of the movie.
Brokeback doesn’t go for cheap sobs however (you can imagine what lesser filmmakers could have done with it). It goes for the real heartbreak; the “I’ve wasted my life because of fear and bigotry and now there’s nothing I can do about it” kind of despair and tragedy.
Which brings me to the recent news that Bush “is beginning a major push for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage” (NYT). Some discount it as just a cynical political ploy that won’t be passed and it is. But just the talk of it leads to the stigmatization of homosexuals.
Most of the christian right in the USA wraps their homophobia in “hate the sin, not the sinner” claptrap. I’m sure the backers of the same-sex marriage ban will bend over backwards to pretend that they don’t wish to persecute gays, just defend marriage. Even many on the center left (like Kerry) don’t want to use the marriage word, but will endorse civil unions which carry all the rights and responsibilities of marriage except for the crucial semantics. This is all complete and utter bullshit.
Unless you endorse complete freedom for gays and lesbians to marry you add to the persecution of a minority. Even when you endorse civil unions, what you’re saying is “You’re different. You need to be treated differently. You’re not a complete and equal member of this society.” And that, to put it simply, is bigotry, institutionalized bigotry, the sort of bigotry that can lead to an empty and broken life as depicted in Brokeback Mountain.
Signing off (as M.River likes to say) as just another straight white man for gay marriage.
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Lee Walton in Belgium
check it out…
From what I can gather, there will be postcards and some low-key, almost invisible, art situations in the true better-look-now-or-you’ll-miss-the-art-or-perhaps-you-
just-need-to-look-very-closely Lee Walton style.
There’s a PDF (6.8MB) that sort of explains things.
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Taschen’s “New Media Art” @ NuMu with Rhiz too
Meet the trailblazers of the online collaborative revolution.
Taschen’s “New Media Art: Art in the Age of Digital Communication” is a history of net art movement written by one of its grand poobahs, Mark Tribe along with Reena Jana, Wired reporter and one of the first witnesses (and reporters) of this digital revolution.
Hosted by: Rhizome.org and the New Museum Store
Location: The New Museum of Contemporary Art
556 W 22nd Street at 11th Ave, NY, NY
When: Friday, June 2, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
via: dailygotham
AIOTD: abandonedcomputers
(If you’re new to the MTAA-RR, AIOTD = Art Idea Of The Day.)
The other day I saw a great still life of an abandoned computer, desk and monitor. The entire set-up was sitting on the sidewalk in the west village. I suppose it was a beige box at one point, but all the plastic (and even the formica desk) had become a sickly yellow color with light tan blotches. It’s hard to describe, but it was amazing and I was kicking myself for not having a camera.
Then, a day or two later, I saw another little set-up on the sidewalk in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. This one was different, a later model that was still a nice chalky light grey. The cheap box had a little blue accent on the front which perfectly matched the little blue VGA connector on the monitor. Again, no camera.
So I thought, “Hey! wouldn’t it be cool if someone created a series of photos of abandoned computers?”
Then I thought, “Hey! Fuck that. This is a networked culture! Wouldn’t it be cool if someone created a web site where anyone could post photos of abandoned computers?” Maybe I, being a net artist, could do that?
But then I thought, “Damn, that would be a lot of work to build a web site for people to upload photos when there’s already Flickr! All we need to do is get the idea out there that people should post photos of abandoned computers on Flickr and tag them: abandonedcomputers.
So. Go do that. Presently there is nothing there.
update
From Marisa: something similar…
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Two on NYFA
Discourse Is a Weapon: a Legacy Continues by Paddy Johnson (Art Fag City).
The history of most artistic disciplines is full of figures that fulfilled several roles at once, often out of necessity. When mediums or concepts are new and inaccessible to the writers, curators, and producers who can help solidify and critically frame a discipline, it’s often left to the artist to explain the new thing. Here, Paddy Johnson surveys various New Media artists who, faced with chronic lack of institutional recognition, have proactively shaped the discourse around their medium through writing and curatorial work.
G.H. Hovagimyan is a New York-based artist, one of the first to begin experimenting with digital and online work in the early ’90s. He has curated and participated in shows since the early ’70s and his practice has encompassed poetic manifestoes, “faux conceptual art,” and a notorious 1994 public billboard commissioned by Creative Time titled Hey Bozo, Use Mass Transit, among many other projects. The co-creator (with Peter Sinclair) of the “techno-driven word jam” Rant/Rant Back/Back Rant, it seemed clear that Hovagimyan would be a natural ranter and raver.#
And even more random bits
del.icio.us network
I just discovered the network feature in del.icio.us. Add me to your del.icio.us network if you want lots of links to js news and tutorials, php news and tutorials, web video, net art and other crap.
If you maintain del.icio.us bookmarks, let me know and I’ll add you to my network :-)
Michael Bell-Smith
MBS has a show up at Foxy Production (ends May 27 extended through June 3 (thx Barry)) and he’s had a review of it in the NYT. Congrats! Read Tom Moody’s take on it.
The GIF Show
A very belated link. oops.
The GIF Show, an exhibition opening May 3rd, at San Francisco’s Rx Gallery, takes the pulse of what some net surfers call ‘GIF Luv,’ a recent frenzy of file-sharing and creative muscle-flexing associated with GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format files).#
Cork’d
Sweet (or dry, depending on your taste): Cork’d!
According to their propaganda:
The simple way to review and share wine.
Cork’d is making life easier for wine aficionados. And it’s completely free. Become a member today and …
* Catalog, rate, and review wines in your Wine Journal.
* Find out what your buddies are tasting.
* Discover and keep track of new wines you’d like to buy and try.
Free screen capture utility
A good and FREE (while it lasts) alternative to Snapz Pro:
iShowU by shinywhitebox
check it out… (1.2MB DMG; software is Mac OS X 10.4 only)
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Marc Garrett interview on Art Dirt Redux
G.H. Hovagimyan interviews Marc Garrett of Furtherfield fame via an ultra-cool (and cheap) Skypecast.
Check it out…
direct link to the MP3… (30 min; 22MB)
update
Part 2 of the interview posted (MP3 link, 24.1MB)
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Americans = 41% sheep
This poll is really sad. Technically, a ‘majority’ do indeed disapprove, but I guess I have a higher standard for the American people. Of course, it doesn’t matter if 99% approve of this illegal program, it’s still a criminal infringement of people’s privacy — or so says the US Constitution.
Has the Bush administration gone too far in expanding the powers of the President to fight terrorism? Yes, say a majority of Americans, following this week’s revelation that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of U.S. citizens since the September 11 terrorist attacks. According to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, 53 percent of Americans think the NSA’s surveillance program “goes too far in invading people’s privacy,” while 41 percent see it as a necessary tool to combat terrorism.#
Brooklyn College bullshit
Most of the folks that read this blog are probably already familiar with the Brooklyn College fine art MFA exhibition being closed by the NYC Parks Dept. You can read all about it at the student’s web site, Plan C(ensored) (warning: the trolls are a real piece of work).
I just need to go on the record: what is happening is completely outrageous, disrespectful and disgusting. Argh! James Wagner says it better than me: Brooklyn College: the assault of the philistines continues.
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Practical Performances In The Wilderness Part II
More of Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir’s series of
performance-art videos begun in 2002 are now on DVblog.
Check it out… (direct link to DVblog post)
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NYTimes on art fabricators and etc
The NYTimes is running a story today on the “army of technicians, studio assistants, artisans and engineers” who do the actual work of putting together large-scale (and some small-scale) art works.
I find this article very interesting as we’re working on a fairly large-scale video shoot right now that is requiring lots of folks to help and I was wondering how to credit them. I’m thinking that a large wall label will be sufficient…
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Is LOST a repeat?
http://www.islostarepeat.com
One of the reasons the web was invented…
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New Media Art by Tribe and Jana
Mark Tribe and Reena Jana’s book “New Media Art” published by Taschen is coming out soon. I’m unsure of when it’s being released in the USA, but I received a letter a few days ago that MTAA would be receiving our comp copies soon since we’re included.
Here’s a complete list of the artists in the book:
Cory Arcangel, Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Vuk Cosic, Mary Flanagan, Ken Goldberg, Paul Kaiser and Shelly Eshkar, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Mouchette, MTAA, Keith and Mendi Obadike, Radical Software Group, Raqs Media Collective, RTMark, and John F. Simon Jr.
There are lot of duos and collectives. I guess it’s the nature of new media. Congrats everybody!
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Bway April 29, 2006
Cross-posted from tinjail.
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Godamnit Apple! stop being a dick
This from a company that’s says “Think Different”:
A California court in San Jose on Thursday is scheduled to hear a case brought by Apple Computer that eventually could answer an unsettled legal question: Should online journalists receive the same rights as traditional reporters?
Apple claims they should not. Its lawyers say in court documents that Web scribes are not “legitimate members of the press” when they reveal details about forthcoming products that the company would prefer to keep confidential.
Miro estate axes Google logo
Yesterday, Google was using a logo inspired by the work of Juan Miro, but Miro’s estate complained and Google removed it.
What a bunch of dopes — the Miro estate I mean. According to the estate, the logo uses elements of Miro’s paintings, ie, it wasn’t simply ‘inspired.’ I call them dopes because not only is it an ad for Miro with the sort of reach that his estate could probably never hope to attain but it was selfish of them as well. They harm all artists with this censorious action. The visual arts are so marginalized in contemporary culture that a high profile homage to a great artist helps all artists.
The bright side is that it will probably get more attention because of this little spat.
More here… and here (digg comments).
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rantapod
GH Hovagimyan’s rantapod, now on iTunes.
Check it out…
(you must have iTunes installed for the link to work)
Here’s a direct link to the XML.
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To Be Listened To…
We have a new(-ish) web project on-line called “To Be Listened To…” (aka 2BL2) and we need you to help it grow.
2BL2 is a collection of podcast feeds that anyone may add to. It’s very simple to add new audio files to the feed and you can even upload MP3s (10MB limit) to the site and add them to a feed.
Upload your audio, add it to a feed, tell your friends!
Check it out…
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Go to tintype
I haven’t been posting much, but M.River has been posting up a storm over at his tintype photoblog. Check it out…
Why are all those people on Franklin Street?
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Weil takes over Artists Space
According to Artnet.com’s ArtNet News for April 04, 2006, Benjamin Weil has been named director of Artists Space.
Benjamin Weil, the founder of the pioneering digital art website ada web in the mid-1990s and adjunct curator of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has been named director of Artists Space in SoHo. He succeeds Barbara Hunt McLanahan, who was recently appointed director of the Judd Foundation.
This guy is my hero
Check it out…
He told Bush to his face:
Okay, I don’t have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate…And I would hope — I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself…
Boot Camp — holy shit!
On Apple’s site: Boot Camp Public Beta, boot Windows XP on your Intel-based Mac! Holy Shit again!
More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.#
Back from Ohio
Just got back from Ohio where I gave a short talk on MTAA’s art work at MTAA’s alma mater (both M. and I attended CCAD and received bachelors degrees).
We had a great time and (I hope) fun was had by all. The faculty and staff were also very gracious and welcoming and the school seems like it has come a long way since I attended.
We also had (surprisingly, for Ohio) good food. (Yes, I let a tad of the NY snob creep into that last sentence.)
There was also a video tape made of my presentation. If there are any tasty bits perhaps they’ll be posted on this site in the future.
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It’s my birthday
On this day in 1969, I was born.
So far I’ve gotten an Airport Express, a DeWalt cordless drill and 3 nice shirts. Plus, nice cards and well-wishes.
Off to Columbus, OH tomorrow to speak about net art and MTAA at my alma mater. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Baghdad: peaceful, calm
I’m not sure many of my loyal readers know that I’ve just returned from an extended trip to Iraq. What I found was surprising. The right-wing is right, there is no civil war in Iraq and what violence there is, is being greatly exaggerated by the media. Below is proof!
enlarge image
Look how calm, orderly and peaceful this downtown intersection in Baghdad is!
(If you don’t get the joke, see this, this, this and this.)
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Paddy interviews Cory
Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City has an interview with everyone’s favorite computer-geek/artist Cory Arcangel on a web site called Fanzine.
Check it out…
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graphpaper.com: no graph paper for sale
Chris Fahey: artist, information architect and all-around über-geek has transformed his graphpaper.com into a well-written and insightful blog on just about everything to do with web tech and design.
Check it out…
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busy, busy, busy, busy, busy
Been busy.
Robbery
They might have caught the guy that stole our stuff. Not sure if/when we’ll get the stuff back.
I scored a new Mac mini g4 to replace one of the one’s that got stolen; these things are getting harder to find now that the intel version is out.
Birthday
My birthday is the 31st of this month, feel free to send me money via paypal.
I’ll be 37 and that’s getting pretty old.
For the last two years we’ve done the Drinkin’ and Drawin’ Championship on my birthday but we’re not doing it this year. If anyone wants to steal the idea you have our blessing.
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The fucking USA is nuts
When a citizen can have more faith in their slot machine than their voting machine, you know you’ve got a problem.
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Bloggy has a ton photos from the fairs
Check out Bloggy’s Flickr set of the recent New York art fairs. He’s got a ton of great shots, it’s almost like you didn’t even need to go yourself…
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Paddy’s day is the 18th
Not *St.* Paddy’s day, I’m talking about Paddy Johnson. The Art Fag City blogger wants to stay in the States (with the Bush admin ruling it’s unclear why) and you can help her out!
To find out how, go here for the more details… (direct link to the invite)
(I was thinking about posting this but once I read AFC’s interview with ARTList, in which she mentions MTAA as one of the most influential artists working today, I just had to didn’t I? Thanks Paddy :-))
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McCoys interviewed on Artinfo
Their latest exhibition, “Directed Dreaming,” opened at Postmasters Gallery in New York on March 4.Check it out… #
It comprises a series of complex, kinetic sculptures that are covered with tiny tableaux that they call “fragmentary, miniature film sets.” An array of tiny cameras are trained on these tableaux, and, as part of each installation, a sequence of greatly enlarged images are projected on to a wall of the gallery. The works are at once funny, bizarre and somewhat worrying. Immediately after the opening at Postmasters, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy spoke to ArtInfo about their work.
Oil Standard
Michael Mandiberg’s new net art project: Oil Standard. Check it out!
This is a wonderful piece of net/conceptual/political art. Good job Michael!
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MTAA in the studio
Check out this interview with us: MTAA in the studio on “Hello?” a video blog by Mica Scalin.
We talk mostly about “10 Pre-rejected, Pre-approved Performances: Midnight In The Deli.”
This video will eventually be posted to DVBlog, we’ll update when it happens. It’s up on DVBlog, check it out…
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MTAA has bad luck
Installing at Rhizome’s All System’s Go at the ~scope New York art fair yesterday, could more have gone wrong?
Things seemed to go fine until the entire building was evacuated by the FDNY. That wasn’t horrible, except that it pre-empted the press preview.
The bad part was after we got back. Our piece, 1YPV, had been shut down by someone and rebooting the computer wouldn’t work. I’ve never had this happen on a Mac before. On boot, I kept getting an error message telling me I needed to reboot the computer. Disk utilities supposedly fixed problems, but the computer wouldn’t read the hard disk as the boot disk or even recognize the hard disk as a drive capable of installing an OS. It seems the hard drive died :-(
Luckily, Jason Van Anden was there and offered to loan us a Mac mini for the duration of the fair. I’m heading over there soon to set it up. Keep your fingers crossed!
Thanks for all the help Jason!
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Two openings last night
Saw some good, good work in Chelsea last night. My beautiful wife and I attended 2 openings, both of friends of ours.
The first was Inka Essenhigh at 303 Gallery. Inka’s a long-time friend (I’ve known her since college) and her current show is really fantastic.
“In Bed,” 2005 (link to larger image)
I’m unclear as to when Inka moved from painting with household paint to oil (the paintings at 303 aren’t the first, but I think the earlier ones were shown in Europe). Inka’s use of line has always been phenomenal and now with the oils, she has added brilliantly executed volumetric forms and space. For me, this creates a richness to the picture, a greater depth and complexity.
It also allows her to add more detail to the faces, fingers, toes etc. Which is interesting, since they seem to be more and more resembling her figurative work from college. (The more things change…) Her work in undergrad was very figurative and I’m proud to say that one of the only portraits in existence by Inka is of yours truly. I’m continually conniving a way to gain possession of it but it belongs to her parents! :-(
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The next stop was Jennifer and Kevin McCoy at Postmasters for their exhibition entitled “Directed Dreaming” (press release).
The show consisted of two major new pieces: “Double Fantasy II (sex)” and “Dream Sequence.” Both pieces follow the formal and technical achievement of their seminal work “Soft Rains.” They are mini-sculptural tableau’s with bunches of tiny video cameras driven by software algorithms to cut together never-ending cinematic narratives.
image of “Double Fantasy II (sex)” photo courtesy of Tintype
The McCoys’ work is great, in my opinion, for their formal technical achievements. Their work effortlessly marries sculpture (sometimes kinetic, bonus!), video, film and new media. There is a lot of complex technology going on, but it never interferes with the work. The way their work externalizes the usually hidden processes of film-making I find endlessly fascinating. The twisted metal tubes that hold the cameras and lights reminds one of those robots from “The Matrix” and work as a metaphor for the hungry beast of the entertainment-industrial complex, greedily and endlessly slurping up images.
image of “Dream Sequence” photo courtesy of Tintype
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MTAA @ Upgrade! Joburg
Check it out: a wrap-up of Nathaniel Stern’s presentation of our work at Upgrade! Johannesburg.
Thanks again Nathaniel, wish we could have been there.
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Some early Whitney Biennial posts from blogs
There’s bloggy’s post (includes a pic):
My first impression is that there are a lot more artists with whom I was unfamiliar, unlike the previous one. I’m pleased to see that, because I don’t want the Biennial to show a lot of work that regular New York-based gallery-goers have already seen.
2006 Whitney Biennial. Actual artists statements mixed with Rob & my comments. The first mash-up of its kind. The statements are as inane as the exhibition. Oops, am I being insensitive? The political stuff was OK. Deep Dish TV was great. The big deal was the remake of Di Suvero’s Freedom Tower from the 1960’s protest days. It’s a simulation of an actual protest piece.
Near perfect commute
Every once in a while an NYC commuter falls into a little eddy of calm in the maelstrom of rush hour. You can’t plan it — don’t even try — just enjoy when it happens.
Today I had that pleasure. First, the train arrives just as I’m walking onto the subway platform (2/3 Borough Hall station in Brooklyn). It’s timed perfectly: I don’t need to rush; I don’t need to wait. Entering the train, a prime end seat in the sparsely populated car presents itself. Before sitting down, it’s offered to an older woman; she declines. What luck! a perfect guilt-free seat.
After that, nothing happens — that’s the point. I sit quietly listening to my iPod (The Brian Jonestown Massacre) and reading my book (“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” — yeah, I might be going thru a 90s revival…). Arriving at the 34th and Penn station, it’s also quiet and easily navigated, practically ushering me with white gloves to my comfortable office where I sit typing this.
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MTAA in South Africa
Well, we won’t actually be there in person, but we’ll be there via the mediation of Nathaniel Stern. He’ll be presenting our work at the Upgrade! Joburg.
Check out the cool poster:
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McCoy’s @ Postmasters 2006
I don’t try to hide that the McCoys are one of my faves. Opening soon:
March 4 - April 8, 2006#
JENNIFER and KEVIN McCOY
“Directed Dreaming”
Postmasters Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Directed Dreaming, the third New York solo exhibition of Jennifer and Kevin McCoy. The show will open on March 4 and will be on view until April 8, 2006. The reception is planned for Saturday, March 4, between 6 and 8pm.
In Directed Dreaming, the McCoys present four new sculptures that use movement to explore anxiety. The title of the exhibit refers to practice of willing oneself to dream about specific situations in order to resolve conflicts in one’s waking life. The works in Directed Dreaming fuse cinematic, personal, and historical images to become visual records of those conflicts, with the question of resolution left open to the viewer.
The two major sculptures in this show expand on the McCoys’ 2004 installation Our Second Date by further exploring the artists personal history, fantasies, and memories. Second Date incorporated miniature models of Jennifer and Kevin intercut with views of a meticulously crafted miniature scene from Godard’s Weekend. The works in Directed Dreaming splinter the couple’s shared autobiography.
In Double Fantasy II (sex), the McCoys represent themselves as nine year olds, drawing on a child’s scant sexual understanding to generate fantasies of their adult selves. With this technique they each reach back to a time when their ideas about love and sex were created from an amalgam of observations from television, popular culture and playground gossip that was hopelessly far from reality. In that these sources provide only the broadest of gestures, Double Fantasy II is an autobiographical take on the importance of genre. Formally, the work is a two-sided sculpture containing miniature film sets that fragment and isolate bodies at once fetishized and romanticized. The images captured by the tiny cameras cut together quickly to form a stream of consciousness meditation on the elusive subject of nascent sexuality and childhood imagination.
In Dream Sequence, the McCoys examine how sleep becomes a filter through which objective reality becomes fantasy . The work consists of a two-sided, 3 feet in diameter revolving circle, each side corresponding to the dream world of one of the artists. Using an obsolete trick of early cinema, a partially reflective mirror superimposes the sleeping artists against mutating landscapes. The resulting double projection physicalizes the dream worlds of each artist’s psyche. Kevin sees a helicopter unloading soldiers in a bleak landscape. Jennifer dreams of floods that segue into suburban resort swimming pools. The artists abandon the cinematic idea of editing with its jarring ruptures and discontinuities and instead set in motion a fluid self-sustaining world in front of the camera and in front of the viewer.
Included in the show are two wall mounted sculptures from the Clouds series that explore the vocabulary of a unending one shot film. In Clouds 9 and Clouds 10, cameras are trained on moving cloud formations to create suggestions of unknowable and yet moving and possibly ominous events.
Eathon G. Hall, Jr. 1965 - 2006
Horrible, horrible news!
Eathon Hall 1965 - 2006
Received from Aljira where Eathon was the Program Director:
It is with deep sorrow that we must inform you of the passing of Eathon G. Hall, Jr., who died in a tragic accident on Friday, February 17, while on vacation in Brasil. Eathon returned to Newark last year as Program Director of Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art (from March 1996 through January 1999, he was Assistant Director of Education at the Newark Museum) following his tenure at the Bronx Museum of Art where he served as Curator of Education for five years.
On Thursday night, February 16, at a V.I.P. reception on the occasion of Aljira’s most recent installations—Sudan: The Land and The People; Children of Darfur: Gen Genocide; and Khalid Kodi—Eathon was publicly recognized by Aljira’s Board Chair Charles Russell and Executive Director Victor L. Davson for his innovation and for the engaging experiences in visual culture that were under his development at Aljira. Future collaborations he intitiated include Mexican Vogue with the Newark Museum, Planet Hip Hop with New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and Do You Think I’m Disco?/B-Side with Longwood Arts Project.
His passing is a great loss to Aljira and to the larger cultural community, and we will all miss his spirit, commitment and leadership.
A memorial service for Eathon Hall will be held on Monday, February 27, 11 a.m. at the Macedonia Baptist Church in Harlem. It is located at 452 W. 147 St. between Convent and Amsterdam. Phone: 212 283-7973. Further information about the interrment and reception will be available at the church.
One of those why-I’m-not-posting posts
I’m not posting here, I’m not posting there or there either.
There’s just to many places to post these days. And I’m busy.
Gotta get the thing done for Rhizome, gotta revise the budget for that grant, gotta cash that check, gotta buy a new studio computer (2 actually and a monitor), gotta call that place and get that information so I can revise that budget, gotta do something for my Mom’s birthday (already got most of that done Mom don’t worry), gotta call that other place, gotta print that thing, gotta figure out how we’re gonna show that piece at that fair, gotta get ready for the Ohio thing, gotta do my taxes, gotta book summer air fare, gotta gotta watch LOST and I’m probably forgetting stuff…
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Fuck the fucking fuckers
MTAA’s studio was burglarized the other night. We lost about $1600 worth of equipment: 2 computers, a monitor and a small PA speaker.
It really sucks.
I’ve been fearful of this happening, and now it has. Luckily our projector wasn’t there and nothing that was stolen isn’t replaceable; but laying out dough to replace it is going to be painful.
m.river adds -if you find on-line or on the street, someone trying to sell a mac mini with the case sprayed silver or one with KDM 100 software installed. Send us a line. Yeah, 1 to 1,000,000 chance but it could happen. Thanks
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ma.gnolia.com
Does ma.gnolia.com want to lay a bouquet on del.icio.us’ grave?
Similar name (the dot thing), similar service (social bookmarking), schmancier design (by zeldman’s Happy Cog) and you can import from del.icio.us. Hmmmmmm.
I leave it to the you to decide…
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Found on Eyebeam’s reBlog today
sledgehammer-operated keyboard, 2005
silicone, wood, computer, projector
It actually looks more like a rubber-mallet operated keyboard, but why split hairs?
It also reminds me of Perry Hoberman’s Cathartic User Interface which was fun, fun, fun!
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If you’re reading this…
…then you’ve successfully found your way to the new home of the MTAA Reference Resource. Congratulations.
Be sure to update your bookmarks! The new URL is: http://www.mtaa.net/mtaaRR
We had some issues with our other server where MTEWW.COM resolves. I didn’t really want to move everything (including the domain) over to this server, so I just moved the blog and fowarded it from the old domain to this domain.
Is this a big deal for MTAA? Not really. It’s just a pain in the ass.
If you see any problems, please let me know.
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You, Motherfucker
We realized today that this is probably our best piece EVER!
“The You, Motherfucker Flag”
See the online version, The Webpage For Planned Self-Obsolescence (AKA Even In The Line To The NYC DMV, One May Think Of Art).
Update
The flag was sold to someone in Canada. If it was you, please contact us. If you know who has it, please contact us. Thanks.
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Yet even more Artstar.tv
On the RHIZOME_RAW list, Marisa Olson asks this question (re: this post),
I feel compelled to ask (of him or anyone here who cares) what comprises this “fine line” between the two extremes of “good Pop Art and a sickening psychophantical [sic] homage to the dominant media culture”..? And must all art that appropriates the form and/or content of popular media fall into one or the other of these extreme categories?(As soon as I saw my words quoted back at me I thought, “Psychophantical? That’s not how you spell sycophantical.”)
Where does parody fit in, because to me, for something to be truly successful, on a parodic level, it has to be highly imitative—and, hence, to some degree, reverent, even if only in the sense of (let’s say) what Jameson calls “nostalgia films,” which are not necessarily acting in praise… To me, it is this act of shadowing (miming, resulting directly from, yet in contrast and however shape-shifted) that best affords the opportunity for critique. Admittedly, it is sort of an act of relinquishing some of the sense of “value” implied in models of authority (read: authorship), in order to sort of free one’s speech, ie to protest.What comprises the fine line? I don’t know, but I know it when I see it. Parody, it seems to me, is neither Pop Art or ‘sickening’ sycophancy. Good Pop Art doesn’t seem like straight-up parody to me as it’s critique isn’t as implicit. You’re not quite sure if Warhol is critiquing popular culture or celebrating it. His best pieces (and his life) seem to have a conceptual shimmer. One is unsure of his intentions. Nonetheless there always seems to be a critical text in there somewhere… it’s just hard to pin down sometimes.
But anyway. I also wonder how TWhid (& MRiver) would situate their 1 year performance project re: reality tv—and if they see similarities, then have they given us “good Pop Art [or] a sickening psychophantical homage to the dominant media culture”? ;)1YPV doesn’t have anything to do with reality TV or Pop art IMO. Since reality TV is so heavily edited there isn’t really any formal connection. The closest thing it comes to is the 24/7 web-cams that Big Brother used to have online.
Yet more MTAA hype
Yes, this is MTAA’s blog and we’ll hype ourselves if we want to.
The other night at a small reception for Rhizome ArtBase 101 at the New Museum I got some very good news.
First, I learned that Rhizome had considered making 1YPV its first ever limited edition art work. For some reason it couldn’t work out. Sucks that it didn’t happen (yet), but it’s nice to know people are thinking about ya.
Second, Mark Tribe told me that he thought 1YPV was one of the best New Media artworks ever. No offense to Mark, but you just can’t tell an artist something like that. Our egos are big enough already :-)
Third (and the really, really good news), Mark said that he’s including MTAA in a book on New Media art that he’s writing with Reena Jana for Taschen. That rocks.
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Yes, this Williamsburg
Talk about hopelessly clueless. Check it out: Williamsburg, Brooklyn is full of hipsters! Quite the scoop.
We bought a couple of Zywiec beers and some pirogi, then headed for the gilt-framed stage. Packed onto the honey-colored wood floor (polished by the polka?), hundreds of jeans-clad fans waited for the headlining act, Spoon. Touted as the next big thing for years, the Austin-based art rockers took the stage, all sharp drums and crisp guitar riffs, sounding like they’d finally arrived. This corner of Brooklyn felt like it had, too.
The Yes Men’s hi-jinks
The Yes Men bill themselves as “honest people [impersonating] big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them.”
Their latest prank was infiltrating a Heritage Foundation conference in Chicago and making fools of the fools. From the Yes Men web site:
At the Heritage Foundation’s annual Resource Bank meeting in Chicago last Friday, protesters masquerading as a right-wing think tank took the stage and announced that in light of Bush’s shortcomings, they were nominating former Reagan Attorney-General Ed Meese for president.Read all about it and see pix and video at the Yes Men’s web site. #
The audience applauded for nearly ten seconds.
Yahoo! APIs
Yahoo! has released their Developer Network. The Developer Network provides documentation and an SDK to help folks get started using the new APIs they’ve released to access Yahoo! web services. The APIs allow anyone to get results for an image search, video search, web search and more. All query results are delivered in an open XML format:
The results returned by the service are in XML which varies per service.There has been lots of net art which uses search queries or results as the basis of the project (Cory Arcangel’s Dooogle and Thompson & Craighead’s Beacon being two recent examples). And now Yahoo! is making it super easy to use dynamic, live results in any sort of web-based art work. They provide examples in the SDK in a number of languages including Javascript, PHP, Python and Perl.
These rate limits are imposed independently for each service and are typically in the thousands-per-day per user range. See each service’s documentation for the individual limits.This might be a problem for web-based software. The rate is limited by IP#, so a web site would look like one user to the system. The Image Search is limited to 5000 queries per 24 hour period. That doesn’t seem to be a great deal of queries for a popular web site. #
It Felt Sooooooo Good
I called the evil XO this morning and canceled my account.
Baby. It felt soooooooo good.
Our loyal followers will remember that XO is the POS hosting company that has been robbing us (well, me) blind with their service fees. You can read all about it here.
This morning I finally —finally— escaped their grasp, this is how the call went:
them: Good morning, how can we help you this morning.
us: I want to cancel my account
[bunch of gibberish that isn’t interesting]
them: May we ask why you are canceling your account today?
us: Because you provide horrible service [pause] and it costs too much.
[bunch more gibberish of no interest]
I know, I know, he was just some schlub answering the phones, but it still felt soooooo good. They’ve cost me at least a few hundred dollars in overpayment over the years (compared to other hosting companies) and it felt nice to finally get away from them.
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What a bunch of losers!
Wrapping crappy XP in an aqua-like look don’t make it a Mac.
Try the real thing why dontchya? Truly pathetic.
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XML translation of Dan Graham’s “Schema”
Found An XML translation of Dan Graham’s “Schema” via the netoworked_performance blog.
Hardcore conceptual art of the 60s meets hardcore information geek technologies of the 00s.
Ya gotta love it!
See the original Schema at ubuweb.
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www.pulp.href - +(a)(b)(c)(d)(e)(f) - #########0|\|E
http://www.jimpunk.com/www.pulp.href/
randWin 8or9 albat blue sxtunt rewnd xxxx3_ Narn_ secret security sirene theykee toon (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) pressent cmcstrp drugs maltese g-h.ref p4r4ch boxdogs poseid_ p_jack Robert paint_ vendetta wind (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) benicio hido inthestre j-m-He jodie error flight93 tiiiitprnt twcemrB x oopentry gundown_ N_C (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) john Michell plane pulp1 mywav TaxiDriver thegrey EE ttiiuhi phne MDasn mi4mi blank (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (d) (e) (f) (X)
Work sample video
Download the video here (03’28, 27.4MB, .MOV).
MTAA is applying to a ‘professional development’ program. They accept all sorts of artists, but they take only slides or video for documentation in the application.
d’oh!
So we whipped up a video showing samples of eight pieces of ours: The Simple Net Art Diagram, Endnode, 1 year performance video, The Drinkin’ & Drawin’ Championship, Pirated Movie, DC 9/11 EDR, Infinite Phil, and Five Small Videos.
Download the video here (03’28, 27.4MB, .MOV).
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Williamsburg + space elevator = bad
Join the fight!
(Unashamedly reblogged from reBlog who reblogged it from BoingBoing who got it from somewhere else.)
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Wordpress and DreamHost
M.River’s site, tinjail.com, was moved over to a new hosting service recently. It’s now being served by DreamHost.
DreamHost really rocks, I recommend them (tell them twhid referred you please). One of the many niceties they offer is one-click Wordpress installation.
I hadn’t played around with Wordpress before, but it is really nice. Makes me wonder if I should move this blog over to it. Right now we’re running on Blosxom, which I like very much, but it’s written in Perl, and I don’t know Perl very well. Wordpress, on the other hand, is written in PHP. I know PHP much better and could possibly hack it more easily than Blosxom.
Hmmmmmmm.
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Wide-angle will work? Yes it will.
This post is for mriver, it won’t be very meaningful to anyone else.
I did some tests with the wide-angle lens I borrowed from Bill with good results. I posted a JPG that you can check out, follow this link. This is simply cropped from a still I took from the video camera. I didn’t capture any video and test it yet. The frame of reference in the still may be different than the video. But the wide-angle lens looks like the way to go. We can get a lot closer. There is a bit of fish-eye effect, but I don’t think it’s horrible.
update: I examined a still I grabbed from the video as well. It looks good as far as cropping it the way we want it (didn’t post this image, sorry). I’m going to experiment with the actual video next using the tools we’ll use for the final output. It’s looking pretty good. I’ll put a flash video version of it online when I’m done.
Let me know what you think. If you go to the studio, don’t move the tripod (or mark it before you do).
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Wild speculation
Is Eyebeam behind Arianna Huffington’s soon-to-be-released HuffingtonReport.com?
According to paidcontent.org (via a Business 2.0 article), HuffingtonReport.com will be,
[…]in the mold of Slate and Salon, with, get this, guest bloggers ranging from Sen. Jon Corzine, Larry David, Barry Diller, Tom Freston, David Geffen, Vernon Jordan, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Harry Evans and his wife, Tina Brown.Also, according to paidcontent.org, HuffingtonReport.com is registered to none other than our favorite contagious media geek and Eyebeam R&D Director: Jonah Peretti! (confirmed through whois.)
Her business partner is Ken Lerer, the head of AOL-TW’s corporate communications in the Bob Pittman era.
Along with the celebrity cred, these super-busy bloggers may not actually blog, but e-mail or phone in their posts: “We’re setting up a system wherein you’ll be able to e-mail or phone in your latest take, which our editorial team will fact-check and turn into a blog post.”
The site’s soft launch is apparently set for April.
Why show in a gallery?
In the comments of this post, an anonymous reader writes:
I’d be interested to know why you made the decision to try and show in galleries. Do you feel you are having to find ways to “shoehorn” your stuff into a format that fits.Good question.
Wichita State backs down
Wichita State University has announced that the Emily Jacir exhibition scheduled to run January 20 - March 6, 2005, at the Ulrich Museum of Art will do so without any conditions.It’s good to see that all involved came to their senses. #
Elizabeth King, Vice President for University Advancement, released the following statement late this afternoon:
“Wichita State University is aware of the discussion generated by the scheduled exhibition of work by artist Emily Jacir at the Ulrich Museum of Art. The University is committed to going forward with the exhibition without conditions or limitations that could be considered to compromise the integrity of Ms. Jacir’s work as an artist. The University appreciates the widespread interest in the artist and the exhibition.”
via: From the Floor: Emily Jacir Exhibition to Proceed without Conditions
White people are mutants
This is pretty old, but I thought it was interesting and I haven’t posted much this week…
Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology’s most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity’s greatest sources of strife.
The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person’s offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world’s races.
What is Karaoke Deathmatch 100?
Artist collaborators MTAA (M.River and T.Whid) went head-to-head in a karaoke deathmatch over the weekend as they both performed 50 songs in a row while drinking heavily and gargling Chloraseptic®.
M.River’s drink of choice was a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. T.Whid swilled sake from a champagne flute (he doesn’t recall the brand).
The video footage taken of the event will be assembled into an installation video as well as an online artwork.
Think of this as the trailer to the video: KDM100 - behind the scenes (quicktime 7 required (sorry Windows users), 37 seconds, 9.8MB)
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Which NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist Are You?
Take the test here.
I’m embarrassed to say that I’m Maureen Dowd. I knew choosing the lottery numbers for the fortune cookie question and ‘The appalling machismo of the Bush administration’ for the last question would push me into Dowd-ism. I wanted to be Krugman of course.
Fun, but easy to game if you read the NYT Op-Ed page often.
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Welcome to t whid’s Homepage
This is NOT t.whid’s home page.
Strange.
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Welcome to the police state
Just heard on Air America that there will be random searches on the NYC subways.
Link to the NYTimes article
From the NYTimes article:
[MTA spokesman] Mr. Kelly acknowledged that the random searches were without precedent, but added that he hoped riders would not consider the actions an inconvenience.
Weird NYT arts article
A group of established artists have been gathering for invitation-only figure drawing sessions, an exercise that had fallen out of fashion.via: Trendy Artists Pick Up an Old-Fashioned Habit
[…]
Only a few years ago, the idea of artists gathering to paint from a model would have seemed impossibly old-fashioned and hokey - and if the model was female and nude, sexist to boot. Yet for nearly three years now, a number of artists - not students putting charcoal to paper for the first time, but successful artists with established styles and audiences of their own - have flocked to Mr. Cotton’s weekly invitation-only sessions
Welcome 2 my Artshow!!!!!!!!!
Cory Arcangel at Team.
Opens January 13th, 2005. From the press release:
This exhibition, entitled Welcome to myMore at Team Gallery #HomepageArtshow, is the first solo show in New York by Arcangel, a founding member of the Beige Programming Ensemble. The show includes a number of new hacked Nintendo game cartridges - the work that Arcangel has become known for - and a number of new works in the medium of video. In the former group are a fully interactive Ipod® programmed for the Nintendo® system and an absurdly slowed down version of Tetris®. In the latter group are Sans Simon, a video of Simon and Garfunkel in which the artist uses his hand to hide Simon’s presence, and Geto Boys/Beach Boys in which videos by the two eponymous bands are played side by side creating an oddly harmonic synchronicity.
[…]
The show at Team […] marks the launch of dooogle.com, a search engine which only yields results about Doogie Howser, M.D. Also available is a new piece of software called T.A.C. (Total Asshole Compression), a program which increases the size of any file passed through it.
Weather Data for the Masses
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week began providing weather data in an open-access XML format, alleviating concerns that commercial providers would continue to play a dominant role in how weather data gets to the public.Get your weather data here. It’s in a format called NDFD XML (National Digital Forecast Database XML)
via: Wired News: Weather Data for the Masses
We’ve HAVE been making net art, but s.l.o.w.l.y
In September we’ll be releasing a new net art work (probably our only one of the year). We’ve been working on it on and off since early in 2004 and we finally got to do some test shooting today (it’s a video project; it will be flash video as the final).
M.River has been building the set and I’ve been lazing around waiting for him to finish. But now we’re almost there. Today we bought a Panasonic GS120 and did some test shooting.
I’m not going to describe the piece right now but I wanted to post this still as I’m excited with how it’s coming along.
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wappening #2! Get Rob an orange — QUICK!
Lee Walton:
At this very moment, Rob Bohn is holding a red jacket in his hand and standing on the corner of 23rd and Broadway near the Flatiron Building.
He is excruciatingly cold for he cannot wear his jacket unless he is given an orange.
Simply find a way to get an orange to him and he will thankfully put on his red jacket.
He will be standing on the corner until the sun sets - wearing or not wearing his red jacket.
He is depending on you.
Villette Numerique
Jonah Brucker-Cohen on coin-operated:
The Villette Numerique media arts festival opens tonite in Paris! Featured in this huge show includes “Listening Post” by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, “Bondage” by Atau Tanaka, an installation that turns still imagery into soundscapes, and “Unprepared Piano” by Thomson and Craighead - which presents a Yamaha MIDI grand piano connected to found mp3 files from across the web. Also, this show features the first ever install of “Carnivore” (by RSG) that includes all 16 clients installed in the same venue!Jonah’s Carnivore client, “Police State,” is included as well as MTAA’s own client “The Gordon Matta-Clark Encryption Method.”
American Art Is Adrift for Biennale in Venice
American Art Is Adrift for Biennale in Venice
American representation at the prestigious arts festival is in turmoil as the State Department looks to find someone to run and help pay for the exhibit. [NYT: Arts]
Desperate to find a quick solution, late last month officials from the State Department approached the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which owns the pavilion, about organizing the American exhibition at the 2005 BiennaleHmmm, not all bad, maybe M.River will get a free trip to Venice… #
…
The State Department’s decision to ask a museum to organize the pavilion rather than let a committee decide is viewed by many in the art world as undemocratic and scandalous.
…
“If the Guggenheim does it,” [Robert Gober] said, “it will become an arm of the museum.”
“The ‘Velvet-Strike’ underground,” article on Salon
Why does so much writing on new media art wind up being written by tech writers whose knowledge of contemporary art is so sourly lacking?
This article in Salon (reg rqu) isn’t horrible (it does give a decent account of contemporary hacktivist-like uses of the game genre) but lacks any reference to other political or protest art.
I’ll go on the record. I don’t want a tech writer covering my work. I’m an artist first, a programmer second; MTAA’s work should be included in the discourse of contemporary art. We need new writers and critics who know BOTH digital culture and contemporary art instead of one or the other.
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Ubuntu: a Linux noob’s story
What the hell is ‘Ubuntu’ you ask? According to Ubuntu Linux’s web site,
“Ubuntu” is an ancient African word, meaning “humanity to others”. Ubuntu also means “I am what I am because of who we all are”.Very cool word.
Unmerry Prankster in NYTimes
This is a strange story of a prank gone bad at a gallery opening in Williamsburg a few years ago. It involves 31Grand and it’s co-director Heather Stephens, an old friend of mine.
EVEN now, four years later, people who know Simon Curtis still can’t believe the odd series of events that led him to spend the last year in jail. And although Mr. Curtis readily admits that he was living recklessly, drinking too much, taking drugs and spraying graffiti on the Lower East Side, he didn’t exactly see a state prison in his future when he went to an art opening on the night of July 14, 2001.My fiance (girlfriend at the time) and I, along with our friends Bill and Dawn, were at the opening earlier that evening. We were just leaving dinner at Relish in Williamsburg when we saw a scuffle at the corner of Wythe and Metropolitan. I noticed that our friend Heather was involved in the fight so we went over to see what was going on.
[…]
A good-size crowd had turned out, and a loose, partylike atmosphere prevailed. As the evening wound down, Mr. Curtis, then 31, found himself nearly alone inside the gallery and eyeing his favorite photo, a self-portrait of Ms. Cortez that showed her topless and wearing ripped stockings. He was feeling contented and mischievous and also a little drunk. It suddenly occurred to him that it would be funny to show up with the photo at Max Fish, a Lower East Side bar where Ms. Cortez had gone with friends. As a group of people stood outside smoking cigarettes in the sticky air, he reached up, plucked the photo from the wall and shuffled out.
(via)
U2 vs. Negativland vs. Apple
Here goes nothing: The Unauthorized iPod U2 vs. Negativland Special Edition, removed from eBay last December due to Apple’s objections, is now available for auction here on my own site. Bidding is open until March 14, 2005. This auction period is quite a bit more than what would be offered on eBay, because bid handling will be much less automated. Get your bids in now!#
Via: U2 vs. Negativland vs. Apple vs. eBay vs. me, take 2
Reblogging this week
Might be a little short on the posts to the MTAA-RR this week as I’ll be spending my blogging minutes over on Eyebeam’s Reblog.
I spent some time planning some mischief, but decided to play it straight. I was going to try to post more often during the day but the process sort of precludes that as one needs to rebuild the MT-powered Reblog every time one wishes to update the site. We probably would like to keep those rebuilds to a minimum; and it takes a while.
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Tweedy and Lessig to Speak at NYPL
Stolen from Newsgrist…
On April 7, the New York Public Library and Wired Magazine will present musician, songwriter and author Jeff Tweedy and Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig in a discussion moderated by Wired Magazine contributing editor Steven Johnson. The engagement Who Owns Culture? will explore the artistic, commercial and legal issues that surround the Internet-enabled freeing of culture. It is part of the new series Live From the NYPL.Read the entire release: Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig to Speak at New York Public Library on April 7.
Turbulence call for entries
In my in-box today:
CALL FOR ENTRIES: Turbulence Juried International Net Art Competition#
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. is pleased to announce that with the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 5 net art projects will be commissioned for the Turbulence web site in a juried international (open to everyone) competition. Each commission will be $5,000 (US).
DEADLINE: March 31, 2005
GUIDELINES: http://turbulence.org/comp_05/guidelines.htm
JURORS: Wayne Ashley (US), Arcangel Constantini (Mexico), Sara Diamond (Canada), Melinda Rackham (Australia), and Helen Thorington (US).
Turbulence and MTAA Need Your Help
Please reBlog…
From Jo-Anne Green at Turbulence.org:
Despite the expansion of our projects and the acceleration of our support for net artists over the past two-and-a-half years, Turbulence has not seen a parallel increase in its operating support. The situation has become critical during the past month because two recently launched projects—ASCII BUSH and 1 Year Performance Video—have made greater demands on our server than ever before. Both projects have exceeded the limits of our monthly bandwidth; ASCII BUSH will re-launch soon after having been taken down for three weeks. [The piece had received close to 20,000 visits.] 1 Year Performance Video, by MTAA, is also a huge success. However, if we don’t find immediate support—either in the form of server co-hosts or financial contributions—this piece, too, will have to be taken down.#
Please consider helping Turbulence keep 1 Year Performance Video alive! Send the artists an email (twhid@mteww.com) if you can co-host the project, or go to http://turbulence.org and click on the PayPal button.
Turbulence 2005 Fundraiser
The great web site the commissioned MTAA’s own 1 Year Performance Video needs your support!
December 1, 2005 New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc./Turbulence Fundraiser http://turbulence.org/fundraiser_05/index.html
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA) will be 25 years old in 2006; Turbulence will be 10 years old. Despite the expansion of our projects, the acceleration of our support for net artists, and the valuable resources we provide in our networked_performance blog and New American Radio archive, NRPA has seen a decline in its operating support. As a result, much of our hard work forgoes compensation. Of equal concern is the dual role our server is forced to perform: archiving work produced since 1996 and supporting new commissions that require cutting edge technologies and later versions of its current software. It s time for a new server.
We need your support. Please help us preserve our archives and support emerging artists and technologies. Numerous Turbulence artists have generously donated DVDs, CDs, archival prints, T-Shirts and more. Choose from this impressive array or simply make a donation today. http://turbulence.org/fundraiser_05/index.html
Art work donated by Cory Arcangel, Kate Armstrong, Andy Deck, Jason Freeman, Mariam Ghani, Peter Horvath, Yael Kanarek, Michael Takeo Magruder, Michael Mandiberg, MTAA, Yoshi Sodeoka, Helen Thorington and Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga
Tsunami relief efforts
Inspired by many other web sites I thought I’d do my small part in spreading the relief message.
Some links for giving:
USAID
American Red Cross
Unicef
ReliefWeb
AmeriCares
Oxfam
Sarvodaya
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Tom Moody does 1YPV
Tom Moody (we’ll be on Rhizome’s Blogging and the Arts panel together this Tuesday; be there or be square) posted a few comments on MTAA’s 1 YEAR PERFORMANCE VIDEO.
I’ll quote bits, then comment (read the entire post here, I can’t figure out if it’s positive or negative, but it’s thoughtful and honest so you can’t ask for more than that).
Tom Moody:t.whid:
Pieces that refer so specifically to known, past artworks, satirically or otherwise, are problematic—more on this below—but there’s much to think about here. Unlike the Globe and Mail, I’d discuss the work in terms of voyeurism, and artist recuperation of the part-guileless, part-sleazy home webcam phenomenon. In real (Internet) life, the only reason a surfer would stay with a site like this for hours was in the hope that the subjects might do something kinky. I know there are people watching this for art, but why? Perhaps the presence of white plastic buckets in the rooms creates some morbid curiosity about how the artists handle basic elimination needs, but frankly I didn’t stick around to find out.
Like Penn and Teller explaining a magic trick, the artists reveal—on a related web page—quite a bit about the scripting and webserving mechanics behind their simulation. This geeks-only backstory actually makes for fairly fascinating reading. [snip]He’s referring to this page. It was important to include that material for three reasons: (1) We back open source software initiatives especially in relation to technical arts and artworks (the The Open Art Network is doing great work and we hope to add what we can from 1YPV to it soon), (2) we didn’t want anyone to mistake the webcam for something real; it’s important to the piece that the viewer knows they’re watching canned clips and (3) I had a secret private hope (that I’m first sharing now) that someone would re-mix/re-purpose/re-use the video clips.
For sure the technology changes the Hsieh piece quite a bit, which did allow observers, but only at specified times, like a prison visit. Ultimately the MTAA work’s relationship to current tech-shaped behavior patterns and pop culture tropes feels more compelling than its parody of the Hsieh performance, which is almost by definition an art world in-joke, with a singular interpretation: that when computer-age art revisits the physically demanding, emotionally wrenching work of yesteryear, an insincere, fast-food facsimile inevitably results. Sorry to leach the humor out of it, but there it is.We received the same criticism from Kevin McCoy (discussions with Kevin during the building of the piece were invaluable). The crit being that by making it simply an ‘update’ (or parody or satire) of Hsieh didn’t do justice to the piece. That it ‘stands on its own’, why quote Hsieh at all?
Big news for Mac OS X users today
Apple released a sneak preview of Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger (what a lame name) today at their World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
I have mixed feelings about some of the features, not because I don’t think they aren’t cool, but because it looks to put small 3rd-party Mac developers out of business.
Safari will contain a built-in RSS reader which looks to widen the RSS audience but at the same time force NetNewsWire and PulpFiction out of the market.
Dashboard looks cool; did Apple buy Konfabulator? Dashboard is a complete and utter rip-off of Konfabulator.
The changes to iChat AV look very exciting. It sports a new, very cool 3d interface for group video conferences. To bad there isn’t a way to use the power of the video conferencing abilities of this app as a 3rd-party developer. Imagine the possibilities for real-time streaming performances and etc which would be open to net artists…
There was a bunch of other stuff too, check it out.
update:
WHOOPS. I missed some fairly big news. The server edition of 10.4 comes with a Weblog server “based on the popular open source project ‘Blojsom.’” Blojsom is written in Java but is based on Perl-powered Blosxom which this web site is built with.
update deux:
Looks like Apple didn’t buy Konfabulator, it’s developer calls Apple’s Dashboard ‘insulting’ (link to C-Net, which is notoriously anti-Apple).
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tehchingHsiehUpdate update
Worked my ASS off over the weekend getting the Flash bit of our current project, tehchingHsiehUpdate, working correctly.
And I gotta say, Flash’s video format has got a looong way to go. My problem was that I needed to load a video right after one completed playing. But in my Flash videos (FLV) encoded using Macromedia’s FLV encoder 1.2 the videos would never officially ‘end’ so the media wrapper holding the video would never send the ‘complete’ event. In other words, the FLV encoder is broken and I had to figure out a workaround. I finally settled on using duration (accessed via onMetaData) and comparing it to the time the video has been playing to decide that the video has ended and load a new video.
Then I tackled loading the video playlist via an external XML file. That whole process is well-documented and the XML file is simple so that was pretty easy. Except that if the XML file had any breaks in it Flash would see those as extra nodes. The problem is easily fixed by making the XML one long line of text with no breaks.
Now we have a SWF that loads an external XML file, builds a playlist, and plays all the videos in it one after the other. When it reaches the end of the list, it reloads the XML file. This XML file will be dynamically generated so in the end we’ll have a year-long movie built from about 12 hours of video.
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This week sucked
I was supposed to be at the University of Maine today and through the weekend for the Conference on the Intellectual Commons. But instead I’m here in New York still recovering from a nasty cold or flu that had me down the entire week.
The conference sounded great and I was really looking forward to it. I was supposed to be on a panel tomorrow with Jon Ippolito (artist, curator, educator), Neeru Paharia (Assistant Director, Creative Commons) and other luminaries. We’re doing an iChat video conference so all is not lost I suppose.
We’re planning on re-scheduling my visit. I should be up there either in the next few weeks or after the first of the year.
Damn flu! Very disappointing.
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This art is the bomb
Via Gawker, It’s Art So Long As You Don’t Detonate It via NY Observer, The Transom
Continuing with our insistence that FEAR IS BACK, today’s Transom has a downright disturbing item about Brooklyn artist Chris Hackett […], who is constructing a fully-functional suitcase bomb. The piece is courtesy of the Madagascar Institute, a radical art organization which is organizing an exhibition to be shown at either Cooper Union or South Street Seaport the week of September 11. Here’s to the power of perfect timing:I cry BS or “conceptual hoax” as the Observer writer puts it. But at the same time I’m morbidly fascinated. Plus, it seems the artist has a bit of a violent streak. According to the Observer article:[Hackett] said the strength of the bomb would be equivalent to “about four pounds of TNT. It doesn’t sound like much,” he allowed, “but it’s enough to kill everyone in the gallery.”
Mr. Hackett was the victim of one of his own art works early last year. The graphic description in a New York Post story on Jan. 25, 2004, was that Mr. Hackett “blew up part of his face” while rigging a propane tank to fire a confetti cannon. Mr. Hackett’s jaw was broken in the explosion.
Thingist discussion on Napier’s new stuff
There’s some good discussion happening on Thingist around Napier’s new body of work now showing at Bitforms.
A note from Rob about finding the discussion:
[…] people have to login as guest then go to “threads” to find it.
The Yes Men movie
The Yes Men movie opened yesterday in New York and Los Angeles.
It’s going to be opening in a bunch of other theaters around the country on October 1st too. Check out the dates and locations here.
Who are The Yes Men? According to their site:
Identity Theft:#
Small-time criminals impersonate honest people in order to steal their money. Targets are ordinary folks whose ID numbers fell into the wrong hands.
Identity Correction:
Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.
The Yes Men:
The Yes Men have impersonated some of the world’s most powerful criminals at conferences, on the web, and on television, in order to correct their identities. They currently have hundreds of thousands of job openings.
The Year In The Internet 2005
Michael Bell-Smith and Cory Arcangel compiled a list of what some folks thought was best about the Internet in 2005.
I’m proud to say that MTAA made Marisa Olson’s top 10:
MTAA’s 1 year performance video (aka samHsiehUpdate) One of the smartest, most interesting, art historically important works of internet art ever. Honestly.
The Shock of the New Entry Fee
MoMA will raise the basic price of admission an eye-opening 67 percent, to $20, making the Modern the most expensive major art museum in the United States.[ From: The Shock of the New Entry Fee :: The New York Times > Arts ]
the Pool Featured on Wired
The University of Maine’s Joline Blais and John Ippolito have created a project called the Pool which is, according to the article:
a collaborative online environment for creating and sharing images, music, videos, programming code and texts
I saw John Ippolito, Joline Blais and Lawrence Lessig speak at Eyebeam a few weeks back about their respective projects. Lessig is, of course, behind Creative Commons; Blais presented the Pool; and Ippolito presented his own project for encouraging artists to go one step farther and open source their project’s source or “mother” files.
I like Ippolito’s ideas about sharing these more valuable “working” files as I call them. It would mean making your .FLA, Final Cut source files, .PSDs, .AIs and so on available freely to the public. There is a problem however when it comes to bandwidth and storage for what could be massive working files (especially for any project which uses video).
So, one piece of the puzzle is to have *free* storage space on public servers for artists to store their working files along with a searchable database of all the stuff and where it is. I’ve been toying with the idea of taking up the cause…
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“The Scream” stolen
Edvard Munch’s paintings “The Scream” and “Madonna” were stolen from an art museum Sunday while armed men threatened the staff at gunpoint.[LINK to full story in NYTimes]
The Plaza protest
There was an intervention on the side of The Plaza Hotel this morning. I haven’t seen this anywhere else in the media.
See the pix here.
From an eyewitness:
[…] two men hanging off the side of the building on ropes, with tons of police cars below. So I go into my building (which is directly across the street, the FAO Schwartz building) and up to the 10th floor where I work and tell everyone what is going on. We all run to the window and watch as these two men are dangling outside the Plaza trying to hang an anti-Bush sign. The cops were reaching out the window after them, it was quite a scene!Thanks Marcia ;) #
The oh-so-lame-i-gotta-post-on-the-blog-cuz-i-got-a-blog blog post
Well, it’s not that lame, we do have some news: we were invited to apply for a grant where we could score $35k.
Who the hell would even consider giving us $35k you ask?
This org.
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The most blogged artist EVER!
I follow a few art feeds and in the past week the amount of Cory Arcangel postings has been overwhelming. He’s definitely the art-blog superstar.
First, MTAA has posted at least five posts ourselves (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
James Wagner busted out a couple over the weekend: Cory Arcangel travels with sound and light and Paper Rad and Cory Arcangel.
Bloggy chimed in with Cory Arcangel at Team Gallery.
And Tom Moody has been all over it with 3 posts, Detail of Super Mario Movie Poster, Super Mario Movie, Super Heads of State and Notes on Arcangel Show.
So what do you all think? Is Cory the most blogged artist to date?
Oops, just found another at a blog called cheesedip: cory arcangel week
I should not have done the google search… one more, Cory Arcangel @ Team Gallery, NYC.
Feel free to send me more links if you like.
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The Infectious Nature of Holiday Cheer
Just in time for Xmas 2004! Starring yours truly in a big budget holiday extravaganza!
The Infectious Nature of Holiday Cheer
Download medium version (.mov, 320x240)
10.9MB
Quicktime required - get it here
Download large version (Divx, 640x480)
84.6MB
Quicktime required - get it here
Divx codec required - Mac | PC
Download the entire file to your hard drive and play in QuickTime player on a Mac or Divx Player on a PC. To Download, Mac: control-click the link and choose to save link or file; PC: right-click and choose to save the link, target or file.
Credits
A B&D Handmade production
Written & Directed by Bill Hallinan
The Players
T.Whid as John Q. Public
André Sala as Mr. Gift Boxes
Dawn Winchester as Fay Wray
Bill Hallinan as Pointer
The Crew
Photography by George Su
Prop Master, André Sala
Prop Support, Elece Blumberg
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The Contagious Festival
Hosted on Huffpost, check out the new Contagious Festival.
From the site:
Do you enjoy Rumors on the Internets, Mr. Pibb + Red Vines, and brilliant political strategy? Do you have what it takes to create the next JibJab, Numa Numa Dance, Detroit Project or Black People Love Us?#
The Huffington Post Contagious Festival is a unique opportunity for talented designers, political activists of any persuasion, filmmakers and comics to reach millions of people with creative, viral online work. The contestants that create the best projects get Internet fame and the chance to meet with friends of Huffington Post from the worlds of entertainment and politics to discuss future projects and opportunities.
ENTER THE FESTIVAL NOW
The first round of entries will go live starting February 1, but you should Enter Now to reserve a spot on the official Contagious Festival server. You simply create an account, build your project on the server and launch your site. Then you can watch the live rankings to see if your entry is being forwarded, linked, and IMed around the Internet. At the end of the month, we award two prizes:
The People’s Choice Award for the contestant that creates the entry that gets the most total traffic during the month. The winner dines with Arianna Huffington and receives $2,500.
The Jury Prize for the favorite entry of our jury is a meeting with the judge most interested in their work and receives $2,500. Judges will vote based on creativity, originality and social commentary.
The Huffington Post | Raw Feed!
After a day and a half of subscribing to the Huffington Post | Raw Feed (xml link), I’m sort of drowning in information. But I’m a sucker for punishment. I’ve been a subscriber to Rhizome_RAW for years and that list could generate 30-40 emails a day!
Most of the Huffington Post posts are very good. But I have to admit, it’s the first time I scan the author in my aggregator (as well as headline) to decide if I would like to read a post.
I wonder if they’ll keep up the amount of and rate of posting or if it’s just that it’s a shiny new thing and everyone is excited by it. It is a group blog, so if it seems like they’re not getting the volume they’d like they can always just add more people.
Overall, a very good job with one small exception: why use Flash™ on the little animated logo? That could have easily been done with an animated GIF.
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The anti-Laguna Beach
Watched Country Boys tonight on Frontline.
It would be interesting to watch 1/2 segments interspersed with Laguna Beach episodes.
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The 2nd Annual DRINKIN’ & DRAWIN’ CHAMPIONSHIP
note: m.river posted this already but I’m including the entire announcement for ease of linkage.
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MTAA and Bar Matchless present:
The 2nd Annual DRINKIN’ & DRAWIN’ CHAMPIONSHIP
http://www.tinjail.com/drinkAndDraw
GRAND PRIZE: $100 bar tab
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What?
A one-night only contest to crown the 2005 Drinkin’ & Drawin’ Champion!
When?
Thursday, March 31, 2005 8PM - 11PM.
No pre-registration necessary; free drawing materials provided.
Where?
Bar Matchless, corner of Driggs and Manhattan Aves.,
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NYC (directions at the bottom)
Who?
Open to all professional and amateur artists, designers, architects, curators, craft-persons and barflies. No entry fee, all comers welcome.
Celebrity Judges?
Inka Essenhigh
The internationally exhibited painter and draftsperson (learn more at inka-essenhigh.com), is preparing for her upcoming show at Victoria Miro Gallery, but will take time out to judge your drinkin’ and drawin’ skills.
Steve Mumford
He put the graphic arts back on the media map with his Baghdad Journal, which will be published as a book in fall 2005 by Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal. He’s drawn under fire, let’s see what you can do!
DJ?
tinydiva
Why?
It might be interesting if an art idea conceived in a bar could use a bar as a site and context for said art idea plus, it’s been a long hard winter.
More?
Contestants are provided with sheets of 8.5x11 paper and a #2 pencil.
Or BYOM (bring your own media, must be paper)
Pass this URL around: http://www.tinjail.com/drinkAndDraw
Contact mriver@mteww.com for more info.
For more info on the promoters, MTAA: http://www.mteww.com
For more info on the venue: http://www.BARMATCHLESS.COM
Directions to Bar Matchless:
From Manhattan:
Take the L train to Bedford Ave. North on Driggs Ave. (past McCarren Park) to Manhattan Ave.
From Brooklyn or Queens:
Take G train to Nassau. Walk one block east on Manhattan Ave. to Driggs Ave.
map:
mapquest
Who will be the 2005 Drinkin’ & Drawin’ Champion?
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Tell us what to do
MTAA’s “10 Pre-Rejected, Pre-Approved Performances” is a project that allows you, the dirty mob of the unwashed Internet public, to decide what performance we do for an upcoming show!
Break down the clean, white walls of the rarified New York gallery world by telling us, MTAA, the elitist NYC net art snobs, what to do (via a simple on-line form)!
It’s fun! Go there now and vote!
It’s easy! Go there now and vote!
It’s anti-establishment! Go there now and vote!
You get to pick from a selection of 10 titles and descriptions. Your choice is the performance we’ll complete! The curator of the show and gallery directors have already agreed! (Suckers.) The best part? All these ideas have already been rejected by other curators! Haha — suckers2!
MTAA’s “10 Pre-Rejected, Pre-Approved Performances” will be exhibited at Artists Space in a show entitled We Are All Together: Media(ted) Performance curated by Marisa Olson, which is in turn part of Empty Space With Exciting Events which is itself presented in partnership with Performa ‘05 The Performance Biennial. (Damn the NYC gallery world is complicated — it’s like a mystery wrapped in an enigma then slathered with special confusion sauce.)
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update
Looks like Null And Void is barely holding onto the lead! Go vote.
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Th W bp g F r Pl nn d S lf- bs l sc nc
A fun remix of MTAA’s Webpage For Planned Self-Obsolescence (AKA Even In The Line To The NYC DMV, One May Think Of Art) by the master of net remixing: jimpunk!
Th W bp g F r Pl nn d S lf- bs l sc nc ( v n n Th L n T Th N C DMV, n M Th nk ()
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What we’re working on
Here’s some more info on what MTAA is working on:
tehchingHsiehUpdate
I’m going to remain coy and not explain the entire project.
[Related info here, here and here]
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Tax the rich!
Jason Van Anden’s submission to the Huffington Post’s Contagious Festival:
>> Tax The Rich! <<
Tax the Rich is an online political campaign hosted by the The Huffington Post. It stars the adorable, animated “Baby Liberty”, an innocent talking head who dreams of a better future. Baby Liberty wants “Tax the Rich” to become part of our common vernacular, believing in her heart of hearts that this will positively change the world for rich and poor alike.
TAC Compression (Total A##hole Compression)
http://www.TACcompression.com
(serial no. RSG-TAC-1)
From Beige and RSG:
Why make files smaller, when you can TAC them?™
TAC* is the best compression format available for the web today! By using revolutionary scientific methods, research teams at RSG and the Beige Programming ensemble were able to a compose a complex software tool that expels many of the myths that surround modern file compression techniques. The secret of TAC compression is not that it makes files smaller, but that it makes files bigger, much bigger.** This provides the end user with a compression tool to meet almost any need in today’s bandwidth and gig overloaded computing world.
Support Rhizome
Rhizome has launched their membership drive (as of September 19th — would have posted about it sooner but I was busy marrying my love and kicking back in Europe with her).
They’ve got some great Thank You gifts, one of which is being donated by MTAA. For just 500 bucks (Rhizome calls it the Root level) you get to support this great new media org and you also get a copy of 1 Year Performance Video Art Data (read more about what 1YPV Art Data is). The only other way to get the 1YPV Art Data is to watch 1YPV for one year (or buy one of the gallery versions).
So, let’s do the math. For 500 USD, you get 1YPV Art Data OR you can watch it for a year and get it for “free.” Unless your time is worth less than 6 US cents an hour, this is a really, really good deal.
Go! Go now and give Rhizome some dough and get to be a collector of a piece of one-of-a-kind MTAA Art Data!
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Superbowl
So… like…
Was that Janet Jackson’s breast? Did Justin Timberlake just rip her top off?
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Super Mario Movie
Alex Galloway published the text below to the Rhizome list and I stole it to publish here.
The text will accompany the release of the source code for “Super Mario Movie.”
“The Mario Movie,” Deitch Projects, New York City, January 2005#
Cory Arcangel (Beige) and Paper Rad
This is a group effort, so let me first introduce the principle actors. Paper Rad: Benjamin Jones, Jacob Ciocci, and Jessica Ciocci. Beige: Cory Arcangel, Paul B. Davis, Joe Bonn, and Joe Beuckman. They work in collectives for the same reason that punks play in bands: it’s funner that way, and it’s easier to make more noise. There is the Lennon/McCartney question of who is responsible for what, and I can’t make head nor tails of it. But from what I know Ben and the Paper Rad kids have a shameless affection for dirt-style, fan fiction comics about Garfield and Howard the Duck. And then there’s Paul who I am told once entered the DMC turntable competition under the DJ name “Spin Laden.” (He advanced through the opening heats, a challenge in itself, before being thrown off for scratching in the Notorious B.I.G. lyric “Time to get paid / blow up like the World Trade.”) The clothes that the Paper Rad kids wear they sew themselves. Cory wears them too, I think, when he’s not wearing pizza-shaped animal pullovers knit at home with his other chums. And on more than one occasion, I’ve been present when, sauntering past a stray guitar, in a Kmart aisle or friend’s house party it doesn’t matter which, Cory has spontaneously tapped out the full arpeggios of Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption” with ten fingers at full frills. Then there was the music performance in Brooklyn when the Paper Rad three sat cross-legged on the floor performing a pretend recital on some Sony “My First Laptops,” while the music was droning on prerecorded throughout. I thought electronic music was the one thing you didn’t have to lip-sync? Oh well. Here’s how I understand it: I’ve done way more ecstasy than Beige and Paper Rad put together, but they’ve done way more acid. And that makes all the difference. As Ben scribbled in a comic once, “Can one be tanned at night by stars?”
But it gets weirder: “The Mario Movie,” Deitch Projects, New York City, January 2005. There is not much a rational person can say about a psychedelic rave fantasy, with messed up graphics, with castles floating on rainbow colored clouds, with dance parties and raves in underwater dungeons, all starring Mario the plumber who does little more than weep through the tumult. And the whole thing plays live off a hand-soldered video game cartridge. Gosh. But if I may observe one thing it would be merely the following: this is the real deal. Which is to say that it’s not the real deal. This is computer code. But what you see is not what you get. To watch the code itself would bore to distraction. Instead this code runs on a video game console that converts it into sound and image. The game console is the Nintendo Entertainment System, known affectionately as “the NES” to every youngster lucky enough to receive one for Christmas in 1985. (Raised by hippies in Oregon, we were not so fortunate.) The NES is a magical device, for given the proper code it can synthesize any sort of video signal from scratch. This is not the sort of video made with a camera and edited on a computer, mind you. How do we know? First, the compiled Mario Movie is 32 kilobytes in size, or about twice as long as the few paragraphs you are reading now. Even compressed, a ten minute video is roughly a thousand times larger. Second, the movie runs directly off the customized game cartridge pushed into the socket of the NES console—without, Cory is keen to observe, altering the factory-soldered graphics chip shipped on the original ’80s cartridges. “Yo sound the bells / school is in sucker,” MC Hammer would come to say a few years later. “U can’t touch this.” This is the real deal.
Because of this, computer art is more like sculpture than like painting or video. In making the work computer artists actually fabricate the substrate of the medium, they don’t apply things to surfaces or use prefab tools to move images on a screen. The code is the medium. So in writing code, and running it, the computer artist builds the work from the ground up. It’s all math and electricity. To engineer the soundtrack, Cory pokes the audio registers on the NES’s chip in specific frequencies. When he does they chirp. To get the video, he writes hundreds of lines of code, code like “lda $2002” (translation: load the value from memory position 2002 into the “a” register in the processor), or like “jsr vwait” (translation: jump ahead to the subroutine called “vwait” to stall for a few milliseconds while the television’s electron beam repositions itself). What appears on the screen is the image of pure data. It is, in a manner of speaking, what numbers look like (if they could). Translation: this is not video art. Maybe call it math art, geek art, whatever. The Mario Movie makes tedium profound, and the other way around.
They say everything becomes interesting in the long run. Super Mario Bros might be nostalgia to you. But it’s not to them. All media is dead media, that’s what Paper Rad and Cory understand. It’s all garbage from the beginning—so don’t yearn for a time when it was otherwise. When you understand media as trash then there is no nostalgia. If there is any shred of longing that remains in the work, it’s not for our childhood friend Mario. It’s for an acid high, for a simulated hiatus in a far off land that no one has ever been to. It’s for watching a cartoon schmuck trip rather than you. It’s nostalgia for raves sucked from the fevered brains of raver-haters. Everything is as new as it is old. Everything is as sucky as it is good. This is the movie.
— Alex Galloway, January 12, 2005 3:08:50 PM EST
Subway images
I came across this piece on the NYTime’s website this morning (reg requ). It’s an interview and slide show (flash) with the photographer Bruce Davidson regarding his late 70s/early 80s photographs of and in the NYC subway system.
It reminded me of David Crawford’s ‘Stop Motion Studies’ series.
As some may know, MTAA is interested in ‘updates’ of older art work and it’s interesting to read Crawford’s work as an update of Davidson (though I’m certain that Crawford didn’t intend it to be).
If you compare Davidson’s photos to Crawford’s animations both formally (still photo as opposed to sorta-still) and you compare how the subject has changed over the intervening years, you will see a greater narrative develop which neither of the two projects could achieve on their own.
Don’t misunderstand, both projects are brilliantly executed on their own, but the comparison creates a historical arc that adds another fascinating layer.
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Suggestions for Rhizome
First a disclaimer: I’ve been a Rhizome member for years (since ‘97), have personal friendships with all the main people who manage it (both past and present), and have recently done paid work for them. These suggestions are in the spirit of dialogue and openness and are not intended to demean or diminish the challenges the directors face in keeping Rhizome afloat and relevant.
Rhizome should adopt a shareware model as opposed to a publication model. With their new policy, Rhizome has adopted what we’ll call the NYTimes model: new content is free, older content is behind a fee firewall. This is a reasonable model for a publication that commissions original writing and art. For the most part, Rhizome doesn’t commission writing (except Net Art News). So the NYTimes model isn’t a reasonable model for Rhizome, below I’ll outline more of a shareware model that I think would make the constituency happy as well as bring some revenue into Rhizome.
This idea centers on giving people more and easier ways to access Rhizome content while always leaving a base level of free content outside of any firewall. We add value by applying filters and enhancements for a fee.
First, we need to define a reasonable free service. Access to all text and artbase entries should be free forever. I think the membership would agree with this as a base service. This would include access to the Rhizome_RAW email list, the RARE feed with excerpts, the art + text sections of the web site and newer Net Art News items. It would be free to submit text and art.
After a member becomes a paying member they receive a few enhancements and services:
1. Access to Rhizome_RARE mailing list.
2. A full RARE RSS Feed, this would allow one to read all of RARE without visiting Rhizome.org.
3. Advanced search capabilities: search by year, artist, region. Search only the artbase or search only text, etc.
4. Members are allowed to curate online exhibitions.
5. Enhanced text handling on the site. Currently there are some really funky text handling (since most text comes in via email), making this smarter for paying users would be a great enhancement.
6. Provide bare-bone discussion spaces (blogs).
7. Access to Net Art News archives.
This isn’t supposed to be an exhaustive list, it’s sort of off-the-top-of-my-head. But if the policy were “all content is free, but you pay to get the content in more convenient ways,” then I think it would serve the community better.
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Stuff I found while ego-surfing
Recently, while I was rooting through the 1YPV database, I noticed lots of login email addresses with .cz at the end — near the bottom of the list of users.
“Hmmmmm,” I thought, “This must mean there was recently an article on a Czech language web site.”
So this morning I fired up Google and started searching the Czech language web for any mention of “1 year performance video.”
Sadly, I found jack. But I did find some other fun stuff and I’ve listed it below.
1. Nathaniel Stern’s blog
Nathaniel Stern is a South African artist, poet, and educator who has been around the net art scene for quiet some time. His blog is a good read. Plus he loves MTAA so I figure I needed to give some of the love back :)
2. The GalleryDriver art blog page
I remember a while back being asked if the MTAA-RR could be included on this page and evidently I said yes.
According to their site GalleryDriver is “Headquartered in Albany, New York, GalleryDriver markets and provides a web presence for Art Galleries and Artists.”
And they seem pretty smart about it by providing this round-up of art-related RSS feeds all on one page. It includes many of the art blogs I read (NEWSgrist, James Wagner, Bloggy and Greg.org) and some other interesting blogs I didn’t know about, like Megan and Murray McMillan.
3. Something about 1YPV in italian
Hmmmm.
4. Newish blog on new-ish media: See Art, Make Art
It’s a group blog that looks to be only four months old. It’s culling together a bunch of different sources of online new media art info in a pleasing design. Pros: A post about MTAA; Cons: They didn’t put that post in the ‘supercool’ category.
5. Something about 1YPV in french
Hmmmm.
6. Something about 1YPV in japanese
Double Hmmmm. And filed under “Strange” too!
OK kids, that’s it: Stuff I found while ego-surfing “1 year performance video.” Off to clean the bathroom.
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Studio update
First…
Happy Mother’s Day!
Now to the post…
In this post’s comments, Kevin asks “Where are you at with the idea of an off-line, gallery version of [1YPV]?”
(I’m not sure who this Kevin is. I believe it’s Kevin McC of “Jennifer and” but it could be Kevin McG of Rhizome.)
Anyway, where are we? We’re done ;-) We have two versions of the gallery version: the software and the entire installation (set, props, software). The software is a Mac OS X application (written by Alex Galloway) that displays two channels of MPEG4 video on one display.
We need a place to show it. We’ve been invited to show at FILE 2005 so we’re hoping that the software version will be shown there. But we’ve yet to find a place to show the installation version, but we’re working on it.
It’s currently installed in our studio and we show it to people who come over. We still have a few loose ends to clean up. We need to shoot the “last” shot (what folks see when they reach a year’s worth of viewing). We need to do this soon because we’re going to need to uninstall it to shoot a new piece at the end of this month. More on that later.
We’re also working on some other stuff. M.River has been working on some drawings having to do with Drinkin’ & Drawin’. I’m supposed to work on that too. And I’m attempting to make something out of this idea we’ve had for while now called AbEx Auto-Trace.
The idea behind AbEx Auto-Trace is to complete the promise of automatic drawing. What goes beyond automatic drawing? Automatic tracing of course! We use a computer program to automatically trace abstract expressionist paintings.
The plan was to display a print (sized as the original) of this auto-traced painting or drawing alongside a print (same size) of computer code that describes the image (we chose SVG since it describes vector art and is human-readable). But I’m working on the first one (taken from Pollack’s Full Fathom Five) and have run into a problem. This painting is about 51 inches high by 30 inches wide. The SVG code requires 27 sheets of paper at that size to display it all (typeset in 6pt Monaco, 8 columns per page)! In BBEdit the code is 19,049 lines long (one tag per line) and takes up 6.4MB of disk space. We need to rethink this idea a bit…
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Artists’ Seek Studio
You’re beloved MTAA (for those not in-the-know: the people who run this website) are looking for a STUDIO.
YES!
If you know of a space in Brooklyn or (dare I say it?) Manhattan please let us know the vital info including: price, square footage, location (incl subway stop if you can), and contact.
We have two scenarios we’re looking into:
1) MTAA sharing with our friend Alex Kim. We could afford $800 total and the space would need to be a minimum of 600 sq ft.
2)MTAA by themselves. We could afford $400 ($450 max) and the space would need to be a minimum of 300 sq ft.
We would need broadband availability, privacy, security, and un-stinkiness.
Please let us know, we would like to take a space by Feb 1st.
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Sounds like a good party
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey pulled the permit on an art exhibit at Kennedy Airport after an opening-night party left a landmark terminal strewn with cigarette butts, broken glass and empty liquor bottles.[ link: Newsday.com - AP Regional ]
The exhibit in the 42-year-old former TWA terminal, designed by Eero Saarinen, featured the work of 20 contemporary artists, including Kendell Geers, Jenny Holzer and Tom Sachs.
Port Authority spokesman Pasquale DiFulco said guests at Friday’s opening-night party had been illegally smoking inside the terminal, and that liquor had been sold without a permit. He said a door had been broken, walls were covered with graffiti and vomit was found on the floor.
Open-source artwork
With the release of Paperrad’s Tux Dog, I was inspired to post a reminder that MTAA’s historic Simple Net Art Diagram is free (as in speech), not as open-source, but under a very liberal Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license. Easily editable vector art available for download :-)
update:
After thinking this over briefly, I’ve decided to change the Simple Net Art Diagram license to the CC Attribution 2.0 license. This provides the most liberal use of the image. The change is reflected above.
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Sleep late, avoid bombs
Starting back to work after my week-long vacation, as I was waiting for my subway to arrive, the London bombing came to mind. “Hey,” I thought, “I could get blown up this morning.” The NYC subway system is an obvious terrorist target, so the thought crossed my mind, then I dismissed it and went back to my book (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoapuffs — it’s great).
That evening on my way home, another thought crossed my mind “Hey,” I thought, “I don’t have to worry about getting blown up today — they always bomb in the morning.” Which led me to wonder, if one was to do a study of terrorist attacks in Europe and the USA, what time did most of the victims get up that morning?
I bet they all got up before 9AM.
If you use mass transit to commute in a major metropolitan area, I suggest you start getting to work no earlier than 10 or 10:30AM. Sleeping in should ensure your safety more than any bomb-sniffing dogs or automatic rifle-packing para-military will.
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Settling In
From my little corner of the internet MTEWW.com is now being pointed to it’s new server. And if you’re reading this, then you too are seeing the new server.
If you are an avid reader of the MTAA-RR (MTAA Reference Resource) news section there are a few things that you might like to know:
First, the URL has now settled down. If you would like to bookmark the homepage do not be afraid to bookmark it now:
http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/
The RSS feed’s URL has changed, this is it:
http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/news/index.rss
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Senate Bill: Artists Can Claim Full Deduction for Gifts
This important message is to make you aware of an opportunity you have to influence the way your art is treated in the tax code. There is a bill just passed in the Senate that would expand the deductible amount of donated artwork to its full value. Currently the only allowed deduction is cost of materials. However, THIS BILL HAS NOT PASSED THE HOUSE. That’s where you come in. The bill will be hashed out in a House/Senate committee that begins to meet soon. Here’s how you can help:Go to NEWSgrist - where spin is art: Senate Bill: Artists Can Claim Full Deduction for Gifts to find out what you can do. #
Senate Bill Lets Artists Claim Price for Gifts
Finally, the gov’t seems to be doing something good for the arts. Schumer is one of the senators that introduced the bill.
Living writers, musicians, artists and scholars who donate their work to a museum or other charitable cause would earn a tax deduction based on full fair market value under a bill just passed by the Senate.#
via: Senate Bill Lets Artists Claim Price for Gifts - New York Times
Schedule conflict
Damn.
Two things happening this Thursday and I want to go to both!
There is the Upgrade! with Michael Mandiberg at Eyebeam (organized by Yael Kanarek) and there is also the Low Level All Stars at Dietch (organized by Cory Arcangel and Alex Galloway).
Man! What is a new media/net art scenester to do? We really need to coordinate this stuff :)
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Searches in NYC subway
I have yet to be approached by the police and asked to be searched. But, I have to say, I’m now much more stressed when I commute. I wonder what I’ll do if they ask to search my bag? Will I stand on principle, refuse, and maybe have a walk to work? Will I refuse and walk to the next station and try there? (According to the NYCLU, if you refuse a search and try to enter anyway you can be arrested.) Or do I knuckle under for convenience and act cowardly?
It’s stressful. Much more stressful than worrying about random bombings…
Know Your Rights: Stops and Searches On The MTA (from the New York Civil Liberties Union)
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Robot train to ferry hipsters
Automated trains will run this month on a 22-mile line that intersects Manhattan and Brooklyn. L-line trains with no conductors will move at preordained speeds and stop at preset stations, but some worry about safety.The L is the line that goes to Williamsburg, Brooklyn — also known as hipster ground zero. It must be hip, it’s where MTAA has our studio :)
via: NYC Subway Gets Computer Facelift
Rudy’s Cakewalk
Not sure if this is new, but 8-Bit Construction Set has a track included as part of a new net art show called “Why rock?”
The track is titled Rudy’s Cakewalk (MP3, 4.8MB) and it’s pretty snazzy (better than Beck’s 8-bit effort that’s for sure).
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RNC NODE at postmasters
Postmasters gallery
459 W. 19th St. (at 10th Ave.)
New York, NY 10011
postmasters gallery will serve as a physical node of an ad-hock public broadcasting system of online, real time protest performances, alternative news actions, a transatlatic, multimedia protest jam during the Republican National Convention, from August 29 to September 2
the gallery will be coordinate and disseminate a program of online events for re-presenting in public spaces
BE A PART OF THE NETWORK! go to: www.postmastersart.com/RNC_NY.html for instructions.
the gallery will be open to the public, visitors will see the many channels and can interact with various groups and initiate their own channels
PARTICIPATE! bring your laptop, phone, camera phone, camera, be part of the dialog
the gallery will host performances,screenings, presentation
SHOW UP! August 29 - September 2 4-11pm
some of the programs (look for updates on the site):
“DC 9/11 - The Evildoers’ Remix” by MTAA, bodyatomic & tinydiva
Screening of the video with live audio accompaniment.
Duration: 1’10”
Remixed by: MTAA, bodyatomic, tinydiva
Audio by: tinydiva (Margaret Jameson)
Description: Fight propaganda with propaganda.
Download: http://www.mteww.com/dc911/
August 30 8pm
Post-performance Talk, Anne-Marie Schleiner with Collaborators
The Upgrade hosted by Eyebeam,
Postmasters Gallery
http://treasurecrumbs.com/theupgrade
Sept 2, 2004, 7:30
one of the programs for broadcasting:
us- uk dialog every day 4pm-11pm
DissensionConvention- Programme
===================>
Sunday 29th August
4-7pm NY (9-12pm BST) Maya Kalogera & Marc Garrett
7-10pm NY (12-3am BST) Moport & Glowlab
Monday 30th August
4-7pm NY (9-12pm BST) Chris Webb & Sim (Soy.de)
7-10pm NY (12-3am BST) Patrick Lichty (tbc) & Lewis Lacook
Tuesday 31st August
4-7pm NY (9-12pm BST) Helen Varley & other Avatar Body Colliders
7-10pm NY (12-3am BST) Joseph and Donna McElroy
Wednesday 1st September
4-7pm NY (9-12pm BST) Neil Jenkins & Roger Mills
7-10pm NY (12-3am BST) Digitofagia vs. Autolabs
Thursday 2nd September
4-7pm NY (9-12pm BST) Michael Szpakowski & Ruth Catlow
7-10pm NY (12-3am BST) Ryan Griffis & Mark Cooley
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RNC protest march
And a good time was had by all, except those fucking republicans.
I took some photos, but they mostly suck.
Good luck to Joshua Kinberg, hope he gets his bike back.
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Rhizome redesign
Rhizome’s got a fresh, new look just in time for the holidays.
There’s a couple of changes and new features too. Rhizome’s Director Lauren Cornell outlined them:
First, we changed the title of ‘Superusers’ (those who filter messages from RAW onto the front page and to the mailing list RARE) to ‘Site Editors.’ This decision came out of a conversation with (those formerly known as) the Superusers in which we decided that the title Site Editor more accurately and clearly described the work they do.
We also changed the ‘Community Directory’ to the ‘Member Directory’. Under the new membership policy, Rhizome’s community — defined here as people who participate in email discussions and our various programs — is now made up of Members and non-Members. So, again, we thought Member Directory was more accurate.
We also introduced the idea of RhizPaper which refers to the background image on the site. We’d like to turn this image over periodically with a new image by a different artist. The starting image is a rendition of root by our designer, Sarah. I should credit Marisa here: She came up with this idea as a way to have artists participate in the design..
Also, we didn’t switch over the title for Net Art News as we are still mulling over feedback and there are a couple of related technical issues we need to address that that got laid to the wayside as we headed towards the launch. So, stay tuned for that.
Right-wing nut may be on to something
This winger, for instance, wants the US to expell the Blue States:[ via: DailyKos: Wingnut wants to secede ]
Yet, there are 38 states today that may be inclined to adopt, let us call it, a “Declaration of Expulsion,” that is, a specific constitutional amendment to kick out the systemically troublesome states and those trending rapidly toward anti-American, if not outright subversive, behavior. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. Only the remaining 38 states would retain the name, “United States of America.” The 12 expelled mobs could call themselves the “Dirty Dozen,” or individually keep their identity and go their separate ways, probably straight to Hell
Rhizome reBlogs
Yesterday, Rhizome changed the way their front-page is built. The site now uses “a heavily-modified version of Eyebeam’s ReBlog software” to publish content to the front page of the site. It’s unclear whether or not the published content goes into their Rhizome RARE email list.
Director of Technology, Francis Hwang, wrote this about the change:
The goal is for the front page to become a quick, easy filter for the entire field of new media arts online—both for our current Rhizome users and Members, and for anybody else who might be interested in the field but not know where to start looking.
Rhizome looking for tech director
Looks like Francis is leaving Rhizome; I received this in my in-box today:
Rhizome.org, a non-profit organization focused on new media art, is currently seeking a Director of Technology.#
One of Rhizome’s goals is to connect the worlds of contemporary art and online discourse. The Director of Technology plays a major role in meeting this goal, by taking part in the organization’s strategic decision-making and implementing the technology behind new initiatives. The position also involves helping manage partnerships with other arts and technical organizations, and may include curatorial, critical, and artistic opportunities.
The ideal candidate will be a self-motivated, highly organized individual with strong technical, analytical, and communication skills. Familiarity with both social software trends and the field of new media arts is vital.
This salaried position with benefits is approximately 30 hours/week.
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES:
* Set strategy for overall technology development
* Support current web site features and services, which are written using Ruby, PHP, and Perl on MySQL, Apache, and Linux.
* Develop new web site features and services.
* Manage technical interns, vendors, and software consultants.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
* Experience in software engineering, particularly with object-oriented design, agile methodologies, and dynamic languages.
* Demonstrated interest in new media art.
* Experience with Linux system administration.
START DATE:
February 1, 2006
LOCATION:
Chelsea, New York City
COMPENSATION:
Commensurate with experience
TO APPLY:
Please email a detailed cover letter and resume to Lauren Cornell, Executive Director, at laurencornell@rhizome.org. The deadline for application is January 1, 2006.
ABOUT RHIZOME:
Established in 1996, Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media arts community. We support this community through a number of programs, including: online discussions, publications, an events calendar, opportunity listings, archiving of new media art, commissioning of new artwork, and offline and online exhibits. Since 2003, we have been affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art.
Rhizome net art commissions CFP
Rhizome announced the call for proposals for their 2005 net art commissions.
Read more about it.
The deadline is March 23rd, 2005 and there is no required theme this year (good).
Prizes range from $1500 - $3500 (hint: just put all that booze under “bandwidth” in your budget) and they will commission 8 - 10 new pieces.
There is (sort of) a fee to apply; you must be a Rhizome member which costs all of 5 bucks.
The jury is Rachel Greene and Francis Hwang of Rhizome; Eduardo Kac, Art Institute of Chicago; Melinda Rackham, Sydney-based writer and curator; and Jemima Rellie, curator at Tate Online. Plus, the Rhizome community will play a part in the decision process.
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Rhizome commissions 05-06 voting
The voting for the Rhizome ‘05-‘06 Net Art Commissions is underway.
You can look at all the proposals here. You have to be a Rhizome member to vote on the proposals.
There’s already been a bit of discussion on Rhizome_Raw regarding the proposals. From Jess Loseby:
just gone through the submissions for this years commissions. I would be interested to know what proportion of the submissions people approve….??Backed up by Annie Abrahams:
I must have approved about 6
does that make me discerning or arch-bitch - (rhetorical - I know:).
I tried to look at as much and be as fair as possible but I admit after the first 15 anything with the word “mapping” or whose abstract looked like it had been written by curt’s “market-o-matic” went into auto-no. *yawn*
I ‘saw’ them all too and had the same kind of reactionI must admit to be underwhelmed by the proposals as well. This doesn’t mean that many of the projects couldn’t or wouldn’t be good. It’s just that for one reason or another the proposal isn’t interesting. Maybe the author simply doesn’t know how to talk about their work? Maybe the proposal just doesn’t transfer well into a description?
finally said ‘yes’ to 6 propositions , same as you.
Rhizome drops membership fee — sort of
It’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement. Rhizome.org is down right now as they update the site to take into account the new membership policy. But the new director, Lauren Cornell, posted the plan for the new policy to the email list this morning. Here’s the summary:
Under our new policy, anyone, regardless of whether they have donated to Rhizome or not, will be able to post or access Rhizome content from the last year simply by signing up. It’s completely free to sign up - all you have to do is register an email address and password.It’s not clear if things fall into the archive automatically after they are a year old or if everything added before May 23, 2004 goes into the archive and everything after is out. I assume the former. So there will be a moving archive deadline I’m assuming.
Artworks and texts that are *more than one year old* will reside in the Rhizome Archives. Only Rhizome Members will be able to access the Archives. Members will also be able to maintain a Member Page in the Community Directory, create Member-Curated Exhibits, and use special features such as Advanced Search. In the coming months, we will roll out innovative features to keep our membership program dynamic and worthwhile.
All current Members will retain their membership status under the new policy. When your membership expires, you will still be able to subscribe to Rhizome lists and browse the site. But, in order to retain member benefits, you will be asked to renew your membership at an annual level of $25. I hope you will consider continuing your membership at this level. Rhizome is just as reliant on our base of Members for financial support now as ever before.
Rhizome ArtBase 101 opening 6/22
The opening of Rhizome ArtBase 101 at the New Museum of Contemporary Art will be next Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005 starting at 6:30PM.
MTAA is included in the show with our piece entitled 1 Year Performance Video.
Be there or be a rhombus.
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Rhizome ArtBase 101 NY1 video
I’m back from Ohio just in time to do some own-horn-tootin’ for MTAA.
I’ve posted a quicktime version of the NY1 report on the Rhizome Artbase 101 exhibition at The New Museum.
Download it here (quicktime, 02’33, 8.2MB)
And my name isn’t Tom!
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Rhizome ArtBase 101
Received the official press release for the Rhizome ArtBase 101 show that will be opening at the New Museum on the 22nd of June and which MTAA is included.
It’s long, so I’m linking to a PDF, but I’m posting the facts and some tasty bits below.
Rhizome_ArtBase_Release.pdf (108KB, this was updated on 6/6/05)
Here’s a list of all the artists, ARTBASE_ARTISTS.pdf
Rhizome ArtBase 101Download the PDF to read more! #
Forty Selections From Rhizome ArtBase Demonstrate Scope of a Decade of New Media
June 23 - September 10, 2005
[…]
The Rhizome ArtBase is a respected online archive of new media art containing some 1,500 works. Founded in 1999, the ArtBase is unique because of the wide variety of new media art forms that it includes, such as software art, games and moving image, and also for its international scope. The 40 works selected for the New Museum exhibition are outstanding examples culled from the ArtBase and grouped by ten unifying themes: Dirt Style, Net Cinema, Games, E-Commerce, Data Visualization and Databases, Online Celebrity, Public Space, Software Art, Cyberfeminism and Early Net.Art. Rhizome ArtBase 101 includes seminal pieces by early practitioners such as Alexei Shulgin’s Desktop Is (1997) and Heath Bunting’s _readme (1998), as well as projects by more of the most pioneering emerging talents working in the field today, such as Marisa Olson, Cory Arcangel and Paper Rad.
[…]
Data Visualization and Databases create unexpected relationships between informational entities. Mark Dagget’s Carnivore Is Sorry (2001), for example, uses RSG’s network surveillance program Carnivore (2001-2003) to track individual users as they navigate the web. The resulting web data is compressed into a jpeg resembling an abstract artwork, and then e-mailed to the user to offer them an alternative look at the information that recently passed along their browser. One Year Performance Video (akasamhsiehupdate) (2004) sources prerecorded clips of Brooklyn-based collaborative MTAA into a streaming video diptych that simulates a fictional narrative of the artists living in adjacent, identical white cells for the duration of a year.
Rhizome.org Announces Winners of 2004 Net Art Commissioning Program
(The following has been edited from a Rhizome.org press release).
NEW YORK, NY—Rhizome.org is pleased to announce that seven artists/groups have been awarded commissions to assist them in creating original works of net art through its Commissioning Program. Paul Catanese, Warren Sack, Jason van Anden, Luis Hernandez Galvan and Carlo Zanni will receive awards of $2,500-2,900 each. Commissions of $1,750 will be awarded to Kabir Carter and C-Level.
A panel of jurors—independent curator Yukiko Shikata, Francis Hwang of Rhizome.org, Natalie Bookchin of The Art Center, and Rachel Greene of Rhizome.org—selected six winners and one Honorable Mention from a pool of about fifty proposals that were received by the March 7, 2004 deadline. Members of the Rhizome.org community participated in the evaluation process through secure web-based ballots, selecting a proposal by artist Carlo Zanni to win a commission.
The chosen projects will be publicly exhibited on the Rhizome.org web site at http://rhizome.org starting in November 2004. They will also be preserved in the Rhizome ArtBase archive, and presented at a public event in New York City.
+ + +
Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media art community. Our programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that engages new technologies in significant ways. We foster innovation and inclusiveness in everything we do. Rhizome.org is a not-for-profit organization.
+ + +
$2900 Awards:
MISPLACED RELIQUARY
by Paul Catanese (San Francisco/CA/US)
OVERSATURATION
by Luis Hernandez Galvan with support from Gabriel Acevedo (Mexico City/MX)
FARKLEMPT
by Jason van Anden(New York/NY/US)
AVERAGE SHOVELER
by Carlo Zanni (New York/US and Milano/Italy)
$2,500 Awards:
AGONISTICS: A LANGUAGE GAME
by Warren Sack
$1,750 Awards:
ENDGAMES
by C-level (Los Angeles/CA and New York/NY/US)
LISTENING (Working Title)
by Kabir Carter (New York/NY/US)
Honorable Mention:
Linkhunters.net
by Kerstin Guenther
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Rhizome 2005 commissions announced
Download the PDF to read the entire release:
Rhiz_Commissions_05.pdf (56KB)
I’m happy to report that MTAA received one for “To Be Listened To…”
Here’s the first graf of the release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE#
Monday June 6, 2005
CONTACT
Lauren Cornell, Rhizome.org
Phone: 212.219.1288 X208
Email: laurencornell@rhizome.org
NEW YORK, NY - Rhizome.org is pleased to announce that eleven artists/groups have been awarded commissions to assist them in creating original works of net art. Each will receive awards ranging from $2000 - $900. The selected artists for the 2005-2006 commissioning cycle are Hans Bernhard, Annie Brissenden, Dave Burns, Jason Corace, Andy Deck, Victoria Fang, Jason Freeman, Ethan Ham, Peter Horvath, Sean Kerr, Thomas Laureyssens, Alessandro Ludovico, MTAA (M.River & T.Whid Art Associates), Tony Muilenburg, Adriaan Stellingwerff, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young.
Review of Internet Art by Rachel Greene
Eduardo Navas has posted a review of Rachel Greene’s “Internet Art” on his net_art_review web site.
[…] the book does have a specific position worth deconstructing. To begin, it imposes a post-conceptual narrative on many of the works discussed, as Greene states, “I relate the ways in which internet art is indebted to conceptual art through its emphasis on audience interaction, transfer of information and use of networks, simultaneously by passing the autonomous status traditionally ascribed to art objects.” (10) This can mean one of two things, either that all the artists who make internet art have an implicit relation to conceptual art or that only those artists who have such connection are included in the book. The problem behind this statement goes further if we consider the possibility that some of the artists included in the book may not actually have any relation to conceptual art; this would mean that an ideological imposition is at work.More at netartreview.net… #
Review of 1YPV
Eduardo Navasse has posted a review of MTAA’s 1 year performance video on his excellent site, netartreview.net.
Here’s a bit:
[…] the strain of the performance is on the viewer now, not the artist; but this strain is a virtual one, one that is no longer concerned with the body but with the dematerialization of such into a new type of action—a meta-action— in art making, and art viewing. In a way, this not only updates the passive demand that a work of art has always had on the viewer: that it be completed by the viewer’s gaze, but it also makes obvious the interactive demand of any art object since minimal art emerged.Read the entire article here. #
Review of “Five Small Videos…”
Recently UK artist Michael Szpakowski posted a review of MTAA’s “Five Small Videos…” to the Rhizome RAW list. He has graciously allowed it to be republished here.
I meant to post awhile back to say how much I’d liked the MTAA “Five Small Videos About Interruption and Disappearing.”Read the rest of the RAW thread here (1st page free, members-only after that). #
Like them very much I do; but they also intrigue me. The blurb says they are inspired by early performance videos - a genre and a period which I enjoy a lot. There was a marvellous exhibition at the ICA here about a year ago of single channel video works - lots of Acconci, Baldessari and also early Nauman -wonderful stuff.
One thing that occurs to me about the MTAA response is firstly how *elegant* it is - & this is a quality of all their work - elegance and thoroughness, or perhaps elegance due to thoroughness - one could never accuse them of a lack of craft. This is in stark contrast to the sheer edginess and sense of ( often literal!) danger in much of that early video work. Doing my sums I can’t put this down to the newness of video as a medium - actually I suspect that the technologies used by MTAA are newer relative to them.
There’s a temptation to see this piece ( and others such as the one year performance piece) as a sort of conceptual post modernist whimsy, beautifully made but essentially a clever formal exercise.
I think this would be wrong - actually there seems to me to be a feel of “classicism” about this work - the elegance seems not a symptom or a bolt on but a very much integral part of the work.
I see this happening quite a lot -its as if in the shadow of high modernism it wasn’t quite respectable to use the methods and the language of the past without being *ironic* or having a high concept. Now all those barriers have long been broken we can simply move on to using a good move no matter when or where we saw it.
SO specifically here it’s as if the artists of the seventies having blazed a trail, created edgy stuff in a kind of white heat, MTAA are examining the language and the practice with the benefit of a couple of decades of hindsight and appropriating *what fits*, *what works* into their own practice.
And the resultant work for me isn’t simply clever or knowing but actually quite touching - I’m quite moved by these two characters in the videos ( and there are longer backward shadows cast here - Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, the *comic film duo* , spring to mind).
Certainly the piece feels to me to have many resonances that go beyond the intellectual, the clever, the knowing and enter the world of the affective.
Reverend Billy featured in NYTime’s Magazine today
Reverend Billy is a street performer/guerilla theater actor whose anti-consumerist message is delivered in the style of a street preacher.
NYTimes article | Visit Rev. Billy’s website
If you’re in the art scene in NYC you’ve run into Rev. Billy at least a few times over the last few years.
My favorite memory of Rev. Billy — and it may be the first time I encountered him— was at the Brooklyn Museum rally in support of the ‘Sensation’ exhibition.
You’ll remember that then-mayor Giuliani had whipped up some controversy by complaining that a certain painting in the show was anti-catholic and was threatening the museum with funding cuts &c. At the rally there was a small space cordoned off by the cops for a counter demonstration by catholics. Rev. Billy jumped on their side of the barricade (there were perhaps 10 people in the counter-demonstration) and entertained the pro-art crowd for a few minutes until the cops figured out he was on the wrong side and asked him to leave.
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MTAA-RR redesign
Hell Yeah!
Look! It’s all redesigned! If you’re reading this from a news reader, go here to check it out. And speaking of feeds, this one still works but that is just for the news and comment section. There is also a BRAND NEW FEED that covers the entire MTAA-RR. Which means, if you subscribe to this new feed, you’ll also get up-dated when we add new documentation to the off-line art and on-line art sections as well as other sections.
So, please, visit the web site and poke around a bit and let us know if there is anything acting funky or not looking right because, ya know, we do it all for you. (Wasn’t that a McDonald’s slogan?)
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Respect Kimmelman
Fairly scathing article by Michael Kimmelman in today’s NYTimes basically saying that the Chanel show at the Met is below a review. He just rips into the whole ‘sponsored’ exhibition thing that major NYC museum’s have been doing for a while.
Now comes the Met with its current Chanel-sponsored Chanel show, a fawning trifle that resembles a fancy showroom. Sparsely outfitted with white cube display boxes and a bare minimum of meaningful text, this absurdly uncritical exhibition puts Coco’s designs alongside work by the current monarch of the House of Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld.I found this interesting:
via: Art, Money and Power
The Chanel show avoids mentioning her activities during the war, when she maintained a life in Paris as the lover of an SS officer and, according to her biographer, Janet Wallach, tried to exploit Nazi laws to wrest control of her perfume business from her Jewish partners.I have to admit having an apologist steak for museum’s that need to do this. It’s usually obvious when an exhibition’s been bought and paid for. When it’s a pay-off, you don’t expect to see art, you expect to see an ad. Hopefully they only need to this once every few years. The rest of the time they hang shows with integrity.
Get more from your MTAA-RR
If you append “?recent=n” (where n is a whole positvie number) to the base URL of this site (mteww.com/mtaaRR/) you can see entries with comments from the last n days. Try it here for the last five days. If you want to do this sort of thing a lot, just bookmark that link.
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Re: Gunplay, as art
re: this situation
Q: How many performance artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: I don’t know — I left before it was over!
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Random Links
Douglas Rushkoff (yes, the writer, Douglas Rushkoff) is a member of Psychic TV (now called PTV3).
Anyone who attended art school anywhere in the late 80s/early 90s will know who Psychic TV is/was. Genesis P-Orridge was somewhat unique in those days in realizing the value of networks and set-up a little club around PTV called.. what was it called? All my roommates in college were members.. Psychic Friends Network? No. OH YEAH! The Temple of Psychic Youth or as Google points out, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. But maybe I or my college roommates are/were confused and there is no connection between PTV and TOPY.
Whatever.
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ArtLeaf.net is a new web site on art and the art world. Looks to be pretty well put together with forums dedicated to big museum shows in NYC and Boston (not much action yet), a couple of articles and a section about artists in their studios.
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Scott Rosenberg has an interesting article in Salon regarding RSS (free registration required if not a subscriber).
He compares RSS in 2003 to HTML in 1994 suggesting that it is just as important. It seems to me that a tech writer would have jumped on RSS longer ago. Though it’s an article for newbies (as he points out in his blog) he makes some interesting points.
His blog is good and I recommend it.
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re: artstar.tv
I’m reversing my earlier ambivalence regarding the idea of Artstar.tv. I hate it.
How low can the art world stoop? Artstar.tv answers that question by aping reality television. That is pretty fucking low. I’m actually a fan of reality TV, so, nothing against reality TV. I just think of art as being different from entertainment (perhaps naively).
There is a fine line between good Pop Art and a sickening psychophantical homage to the dominant media culture. Perhaps Artstar.tv will stay on the the right side of that line. Perhaps it will be a brilliant critique of the reality TV phenomenon. Perhaps it will subtly explore the nuances of the life of a working artist in NYC or the nuances of different artists’ creative processes.
I doubt it.
It will be just a bunch of desperate artists doing their best to suck-up to the art world honchos as they watch their dignity being stabbed out like a stale cigarette.
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Public appearance by t.whid
If you’ve ever wanted to throw rotten vegetables at me, this is your chance!
I’ll be making a rare public appearance at the New Museum for Rhizome’s “Blogging and the Arts” panel. Official Rhizome press release below:
Public Program:Can someone leave some ideas about what to say in the comments of this post please? I’m clueless. #
Blogging and the Arts
Tuesday, November 23, 6:30PM - 8:00PM
Location:
New Museum of Contemporary Art / Chelsea
556 West 22nd Street
Rhizome.org Director of Technology Francis Hwang will lead a panel discussion entitled Blogging and the Arts. The panel includes artist Kabir Carter, photoblogger and journalist David Gallagher, artist and critic Tom Moody, and artist T.Whid. The discussion will address questions such as whether blogs will change the nature of discourse in the fine arts field, and ways that artists and critics are integrating this new form of communications into their own work.
About Rhizome.org
Founded in 1996, Rhizome.org is an internet-based platform for the global new media arts community. Through programs such as publications, online discussion, art commissions, and archiving, it supports the creation, presentation, discussion, and preservation of contemporary art using new technologies. Since 2003, Rhizome.org has been affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art.
Blogging and the Arts is presented with the sponsorship of PubSub Concepts Inc., a free, real-time search subscription service spanning weblogs, newsgroups, wire services, and other information sources.
Queer for Cory
Cory Arcangel and T.Whid at Team for the opening of “Welcome 2 My Homepage Artshow!!!!!!!!!”
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NYTimes does “public.exe”
Nice overview of the exhibition “public.exe: Public Execution” on the NYTimes.com today (unfortunately as of 5PM the exhibition is mistakenly referred to as “public.ex” … guess the reviewer doesn’t use Windows) in an article entitled “Politics That Makes Peace With the Beauty of Objects.”
Here’s the pertinent section:
Speaking of extremes, “public.ex: Public Execution” at Exit Art represents one of them, at least in terms of format. The show is all but invisible in the gallery, where another, long-running exhibition takes up most of the space.#
In fact, “public.ex” has just two works on the premises. One, by Siebren Veersteeg, is a screen with a live feed of Associated Press news scrolling across a Coca-Cola logo to demonstrate the pervasiveness of American monoculture. The other, titled “What an Art Gallery Should Actually Look Like (Large Glass),” by the Turkish artist Serkan Ozkaya, is made up of thousands of slides of artworks submitted in response to an open call on the Internet. Deliberately abnegating curatorial control, Mr. Ozkaya displays all the submissions edge to edge, in random order, across several of Exit Art’s windows.
There’s also art in the form of handouts. The collective called Paper Rad contributes a funky cartoon newspaper with a cool, righteous election-year editorial. And Kelley Walker, one of the more promising young artists around, offers a CD of a poster he has designed. For $10 you can have the disk and as many copies of the poster as you care to print. So much for the sanctity of the art object.
The rest of the show is made up of Web sites (for the collective xurban.net, for example); screenings of videos (by the hacker activist collectives BEIGE and Radical Software Group); and live events. Will Kwan is organizing flash mobs to protest the city’s plans to build a stadium near Hell’s Kitchen. Brendan and Patrick FitzGerald, brothers, will lead walking tours of misused public and private urban space. Ricardo Miranda Zuniga will push a shopping cart equipped with radio broadcast hardware through the streets, inviting passers-by to program their own on-air shows.
All of this will be archived on Exit Art’s Web site, further dematerializing an exhibition composed of ephemera, gestures and pixels. And such a disembodied show is precisely what the curators — Anne Ellegood and Michele Thursz, with Defne Ayas — are after: one that as far as possible sidesteps the authority of the art institution, with its conventions of display and critical categories. Instead “public.ex” is dispersed into the everyday world, where art and life, silly and serious, seem to interact on the random, nonlinear model of the Internet, that most potent and exasperating of cultural resources.
Proof: I’m not a hipster
I got 0, that’s ZERO, on this quiz.
Finally! Hard proof that I’m no hipster.
#
PS1’s website redesign sucks
How does PS1’s web site bite? Let me count the ways… rudely.
1. Splash page (need I say more?)
2. Cheese ball flash animation announcing GNY2005
3. Evil pop-up from cheese ball flash animation announcing GNY2005
4. The artist list in the stupid pop-up from the cheese ball flash animation doesn’t do anything! Yes you can rollover an artist’s name and it lights up, but a click does… nothing!
5. The exhibition section just has the stinking press release? How about some friendly copy (and larger text). PLUS, the navigation of stinking press release is too small and too confusing (the page you’re on should be highlighted not the page you’re not on, duh!).
6. Why is there a ‘press’ section when the exhibition section already has the press release? Oh, I see, so you could put a really big dumb graphic that says ‘Press, Greater New York 2005’, which clicks off to MOMA’s site.
7. At least make the friggin’ top-left logo clickable back to the homepage for chrissakes! This has been web-site navigation convention from before the turn of the century!
8. It don’t validate. (snigger, snigger) And it’s so f’d up, it would be hard to figure out where to start.
9. Change your meta-tags now! NOW! NOW! NOW! (It’s a shame to see the free and open-source Mambo put to such wicked uses.)
Ahhhh. That felt good.
See PS1, I AM smarter than you! Hahahahaha.
(Even though you didn’t put me in GNY2005 damnit!)
ps
Though my criticisms of PS1’s website are valid, the rude tone is meant as a bit of a joke or parody. See, I’m left out of the show, so my only recourse is this nerdy and nasty little crit of their website. It’s as much a put-down of myself as it is of PS1’s website.
#
Programming and digital art
Recently Tom Moody wrote (in part):
Does one have to write code to make art or music with digital tools? Two proponents of code are designer/MIT Media Lab professor John Maeda (on the hi-fi end of the digital spectrum) and the BEIGE crew […snip](See posts here and here for the entire quote.)
The beef about using consumer software is that an engineer makes aesthetic choices for you.[…snip]
[…] An analogy I’ve used is the purist artist who thinks you have to grind your own pigment to paint, either because store bought colors aren’t good enough or out of some strict truth-to-materials dictate. I think that applies to John Maeda—his “if you aren’t programming you aren’t using the computer” rap has a whiff of the purist ascetic about it.[…snip]
proclame.com
Got this email today:
From:
info@proclame.com
subject:
proclame.com loves you
body:
both
I almost wrote if off as spam but noticed that is was sent to only M.River and I. So I went to proclame.com and what I found was good.
Of course I’m partial to art duos making net art ;-)
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Prix Ars Electronica 2005
The results
no mtaa :-(
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Prix Ars competition
The jury is about to deliberate over the submissions to this year’s Prix Ars Electronica and M.River is pessimistic about 1YPV’s chances. We submitted 1YPV in the Net Vision category.
I’m also pessimistic, but with over 7600 logins and super-users who have logged over 170 days running the piece I think it’s clear that we’ve defined a novel (if not new) way for people to interact with an online artwork. We deserve serious consideration.
(Jonah, if you’re reading this, my friend *Mr. Franklin* would like to help you deliberate (j/k of course).)
Something like del.icio.us will probably win the grand prize. Or maybe they’ll give it to Neal Stephenson or Linus Torvalds again.
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Worst case scenario…
…don’t think we’ll need it, but its always wise to have a contingency plan.
Canada offers protection to people in Canada who are afraid of returning to their home country. A claim for protection can be made at a port of entry or at a Canada Immigration Centre (CIC) office in Canada. Once a CIC officer decides that a refugee protection claimant is eligible to be referred, the claim is sent to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) for a decision on the risk on return.More info here: CIC Canada | Refugee Protection in Canada #
Pompous gallerist makes NYT
This story was first broken by art blogger James Wagner 6 days ago and linked to from this humble web site 5 days ago. It’s fun to scoop the Times so decisively :-)
Eric Doeringer […] has been selling his copies of works by contemporary artists for four years on West 24th Street in Manhattan. Last Saturday, the police asked him to stop.#
via: Little Artist Versus Big Dealer in Sidewalk Showdown
Wonkette
I’ve been following this thread on Wonkette. And I must say, it’s hilarious!
As the Wonkette explains in this post regarding Bush’s Sloganator:
The brilliant strategists at Bush-Cheney HQ allow you to customize a campaign poster with a slogan of your choosing. And, yes, we tried the obvious ones but someone thought to block those. You can’t make a poster that says “Penis,” or “Poo-Poo,” or “Prince of Darkness.”Some choice slogans:
What the fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck?
Am I overreacting? No, I don’t think I am. With this administration’s track record of lies, abuses of power, power grabs, belligerent war mongering and trashing of civil liberties I don’t think it’s overreacting to cry out, “WHAT THE FUCKITY-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK!?”
Officials discuss how to delay Election Day
Kerry needs to come out hard and NOW denouncing any talk of this whatsoever! (So should Bush but we all know the chimp won’t.)
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What do Goya and Zell Miller have in common?
It’s nice to see my two passions — art and politics — come together.
Atrios compares the now infamous still of Zell Miller from last night’s RNC to Goya’s ‘Saturn.’
Fun, fun, fun.
update:
From the comments: Abe Linkoln’s Zell vs. Goya:
Click to enlarge image
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Weapons Rules Eased At Dulles and National
People soon will be able to carry guns and other dangerous weapons onto the grounds and parking lots of Reagan National and Dulles International airports, after officials yesterday eased what they said were overly restrictive rules.[ link: Weapons Rules Eased At Dulles and National (washingtonpost.com) ]
Without debate, the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority unanimously agreed to permit passengers and other airport visitors to carry guns, knives and other weapons as long as they keep them out of terminals and other buildings that access airfields. Passengers who are taking guns with them on flights still will be allowed to carry them into the terminal but are supposed to make arrangements with airlines in advance, officials said.
The action comes after pressure from an increasingly high-profile Virginia gun rights group whose members have taken to wearing firearms on their hips in public places to make their case.
UK politician rips US Senator a new hole
But why? Why does it take a UK politician to come here in order for the truth to be spoken in the US Senate? Why!?
Our press is weak and under attack and our politicians are cowards.
Download the MP3 (1.1MB) of UK Parliament member Galloway telling the truth.
update
While you’re at it, you may want to download this speech by Bill Moyers (MP3, 27MB) too.
In his first public address since leaving PBS six months ago, journalist Bill Moyers responds to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson - the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - of liberal bias and revelations that Tomlinson hired a consultant to monitor the political content of Moyers’ PBS show “Now.”#
VOTE KERRY
Ahhhhhhhh, it felt so good.
It’s a shame (I mean that: a real shame) that every locality isn’t as easy to vote in as NYC. The poll workers were very cheerful and knowledgeable and I had no line to wait in at all (though there were long lines for other districts, I guess I got lucky).
(note: I’m going to use this post to add my thoughts throughout the day.)
It brings a tear to my eye knowing that even the drug dealers are voting in my homestate. From Clevelend, via Salon:
“Most people here from what I’m hearing have never voted before in their lives,” says Michael Bonner, a 34-year-old police officer who was waiting for a friend in the hallway of Harry David Jr. High School, a polling place in a predominantly black section of the city full of boarded-up buildings and vacant lots.#
“Even the drug dealers came out and voted today!” says Dan Lawson, a hulking 27-year-old electrician. An older man standing nearby nodded in agreement, saying, “That’s right. Even the drug men.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Lawson says, “and I may never see anything like this again.”
I Hate George Bush
And this post on Talkingpointsmemo.com is hilarious.
You might want to read Reuter’s piece in the NYTimes for some context (it’s linked from the TPM article above too).
These people in the White House know no shame and it seems like the general public just doesn’t seem to care either.
If Dean wins the presidency I’ve decided that not only am I literally going to dance in the street but I’m going to dance in Dean St. in Brooklyn. See you there!
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Joe Trippi’s new blog
The former campaign manager of Howard Dean, Joe Trippi, has started his own blog called Change For America.com.
For those of you under a rock, Trippi was the poster child for the ‘new’ political campaign defined as using the Internet for a campaign’s centerpiece in fund-raising and grassroots organizing.
And it seemed to work marvelously until the polls actually opened. It’s a shame that Dean is dropping but his and Trippi’s cutting-edge use of the web for political organizing will be remembered for being very influential IMO.
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The Well Armed Voter
Shaula Evans, over at Tsure Dzure Gusa has a horde of links and information to help make sure you get your vote out. Intimidation stands no chance against the well armed voter.[ via: culturekitchen.com, The Well Armed Voter ]Know your rights. If you’re an eligible voter, you have the following rights:MoveOn.org (opens .pdf) has a cut out wallet card as well.
If your name is not on the official voter list but you believe you are eligible to vote in that precinct, even if an election official challenges your vote, you have the right to cast a “provisional ballot.”
If you’re in line when the polls close, you should stay in line because you’re entitled to vote.
In many states, your employer must allow you time to vote at some point during the day. You can’t be fired for being late due to long polling lines.
You have the right to vote without being intimidated by anyone.
Terror threat: real or partisan tool?
Goddamn-it, I’m ANGRY!
Why am I so angry? Because of our lying President. You can’t trust anything that comes from the government! And we need to trust the government now more than ever.
From the AP via the Yahoo! News:
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a U.S. official called the threat “serious” and “credible” and said it involves threats to financial institutions in New York and elsewhere.So, (1) is this threat for real? Or (2) is it just a way for Bush to suppress turn-out at RNC protests by scaring people and create an excuse for even higher security around the RNC which will further neutralize the protesters’ voices?
…
New intelligence that the al-Qaida terrorist network plans to attack financial or international institutions in New York has led police to urge extra security precautions at various city buildings.
Tanks at LA anti-war protest
Why did two tanks show up at an anti-war protest in LA?
Were they just passing by? Are tanks often on this strip in LA? They circled the block twice according to this article.
Very curious.
You can see video at LA.indymedia.org.
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Scary shit
The radical right’s cynical pitch to the Jews: “My friends, there is no Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There is only the global war on terrorism.” Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Aug. 30, 2004, New York City.
[ via Talking Points Memo ]
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thegreatamericanshoutout.org
fuggedaboudit!
As George W. Bush moves to the podium in New York City, we will send him a message about his bid for reelection: we will yell, “fuggedaboudit!”Go here for all the details. #
Rumsfeld: Iraq Just Like US
Rumsfeld yesterday:
We had something like 200 or 300 or 400 people killed in many of the major cities of America last year. Is it perfectly peaceful? No. What’s the difference? We just didn’t see each homicide in every major city in the United States on television every night. It happens here in this city, in every major city in the world. Across Europe, across the Middle East, people are being killed. People do bad things to each other.What a fucking asshole. #
Partisan tool it is!
Looks like our skepticism was well-founded:
NYTimes: Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old, Officials Say:
Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terror plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.#
Open Source Media™ isn’t
The right-wing bloggers behind Open Source Media™ (love how it’s trademarked — assholes) really don’t seem to understand open source. It really pisses me off that these dickweeds are abusing the term.
Read why I’m griping here.
Daily Kos has a post too.
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mypollingplace.com
Don’t know where to vote?
MoveOn PAC is suggesting using a web site called mypollingplace.com to find out where your polling place is. All you need is your address and zip code to find your polling place.
Spread this URL around!
mypollingplace.com
mypollingplace.com
mypollingplace.com
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NYC: 80% for Kerry
I’m proud to say that NYC voted 80% for Kerry. Red America (especially one’s that voted Bush out of terrorism concerns) should think about why the city that suffered the most from 9/11 voted overwhelmingly for Kerry.
The NYTimes on how NYCers feel:
A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America
M. River adds:
Although the really sad thing is that most people did not rate "terrorism" or "the economy" very high in why they voted for Bush. They voted on "family values".
So, in order to try to understand, I went to the American Family Association’s web site.
http://www.afa.net/
Yup, just as I suspected. It looks like "family values" is a euphemism for fundamentalist bigotry. Thanks Heartland.
Oh, sorry. Is "euphemism" an example of East cost liberal intellectual big words? Okay, how about I just use a Fox news favorite formula? "Some people might say that voting based on "Family Values" shows that you’re just another racist, homophomic, women hating, asshole.”
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Mmmmm, poodle burgers
This has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard…
An animal rights group has called on one of the largest aquariums in the United States to stop serving fish to its visitors, likening the practice to grilling up “poodle burgers at a dog show.”
“It’s easy to think of fish as swimming vegetables but of all the places in the country where fish should get a fair shake it’s an aquarium,” said Karin Robertson, manager of the Fish Empathy Project for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?
That’s what Krugman asks as the end of his column today after detailing the disastourous lack of accountability in Bush’s administration.
Krugman list three examples of how grave mistakes are made by Bush administration officials but no one is held accountable. This is the most disgusting one in my opinion:
…an important story that has largely evaded public attention: the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general, with broad powers to investigate questionable spending. But the new inspector general’s office in Iraq operates under unique rules that greatly limit both its powers and its independence.
I agree with Krugman’s assessment:
These people politicize everything, from military planning to scientific assessments. If you’re with them, you pay no penalty for being wrong. If you don’t tell them what they want to hear, you’re an enemy
Is Kerry the one to save us from this monstrosous administration?
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Juan Cole tells it
Guantanamo Prison should be closed because it was conceived as the beginning of the end of the American Republic.#
via: Quran Splashed with Urine at Guantanamo
Jon Stewart on Crossfire
John Stewart once again proves why he deserves to be my hero.
TUCKER CARLSON: OK, up next, Jon Stewart goes one on one with his fans…via: Media Matters for America
[CROSSTALK]
STEWART: You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.
[LAUGHTER]
CARLSON: Now, you’re getting into it. I like that
It’s madness to put up with King George
It’s time. I was never on the impeach Bush bandwagon, but I’ve just climbed aboard.
It seemed like a very bad idea to impeach two presidents in a row, but this one deserves it more than any other; more than Nixon and certainly more than Clinton.
Admitting that he believes he’s above the law, Bush should have signed his own impeachment papers (impeachment papers… are there impeachment papers?), but the spineless republicans currently in control of congress will most likely just continue to vigorously lick his boot heels. Or maybe not.
+++
Some editorials (cribbed from HuffPost):
NY Times Editorial: Bush “Secretly And Recklessly Expanded The Govt.’s Powers In Dangerous And Unnecessary Ways”…
Wash. Post Editorial: “The Tools Of Foreign Intelligence Are Not Consistent With A Democratic Society”…
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette : “Unacceptable Actions Of A Police State”…
Kansas City Star: “The Struggle With Foreign Enemies Does Not Simply Give Him A Blank Check”…
Denver Post Editorial: “Adm. Has Lost Its Sense Of Balance Between Essential Anti-Terrorism Tools And Encroachment On Liberties”…
St. Petersburg Times Editorial: “So Dangerously Ill-Conceived And Contrary To This Nation’s Guiding Principles”…
LA Times Editorial: “Stunning,” “One Of The More Egregious Cases Of Governmental Overreach”…
+++
And, from Senator Russ Feingold’s response:
The President’s shocking admission that he authorized the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens, without going to a court and in violation of the Constitution and laws passed by Congress, further demonstrates the urgent need for these protections. The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king.” (emphasis mine)#
It’s fun to shoot some people
According to an audio recording, [Lt. Gen. James Mattis] had said, “Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. … It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.”Spreading freedom and democracy…
He added, “You go into Afghanistan (news - web sites), you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”
via: Yahoo! News - Marine General Counseled Over Comments
If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?
Juan Cole does a serious slap-down of Bush’s BS “optimism.”
President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country.Read the entire post at Informed Comment. #
What would America look like if it were in Iraq’s current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.
[…]
What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target “safe houses” of “criminal gangs”, but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?
What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?
[…]
I heart Krugman
But worst of all from the right’s point of view, Al Qaqaa has disrupted the campaign’s media strategy. Karl Rove clearly planned to turn the final days of the campaign into a series of “global test” moments - taking something Mr. Kerry said and distorting its meaning, then generating pseudo-controversies that dominate the airwaves. Instead, the news media have spent the last few days discussing substance. And that’s very bad news for Mr. Bush.[ via: The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: It’s Not Just Al Qaqaa ] #
I ♥ Dean
I know this is everywhere else, but ya gotta love Howard Dean for saying it:
My view is FOX News is a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party and I don’t comment on FOX News […]In response to Cheney calling Howard Dean “over the top” on Fox News on Sunday. #
Go Kerry!
This is the response we need!
The Vice President called me unfit for office last night. Well, I’ll leave it up to the voters to decide whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty.— John Kerry, Springfield, OH, 09/02/04
Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without healthcare makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi Royal Family control our energy costs makes you unfit. Handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton while you’re still on their payroll makes you unfit. That’s the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And that only scratches the surface.
Haven’t posted on politics in a while…
So yeah. I haven’t posted on politics in a while, but then this question came to mind:
If the pope and Terri Schiavo both die on Easter, is it the beginning of Armageddon?
I’m pretty sure it is.
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Get ready to rumble
Karl Rove said today that the president views a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage as essential to a “decent” society.via: NYTimes
Fucking liars
Haven’t posted on politics in a while…
INTELLIGENCE AND FACTS WERE BEING FIXED AROUND THE POLICY
I saw this a few days ago, but the lack of press coverage here in the U.S. has made it my obligation to do my little part to spread the facts. I think I read it originally via Political Animal by Kevin Drum. Here’s the link to the Drum post (which he got via the Times of London printing of a secret British government memo); here’s the important part (emphasis added):
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.“C” is a spook working for British intelligence.
FEMA isn’t free
Walking to lunch today, I noticed a truck with a window sticker featuring the American flag and the little platitude “Freedom Isn’t Free,” a lightly veiled code for Iraq war support.
It’s time for a new slogan for the left and others who see the Bush administration for the disaster that it is:
FEMA Isn’t Free
background reading:
FEMA predicts New Orleans disaster
FEMA gutted for Homeland Security
timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration
++++
If you use Amazon, you can 1-click give to the Red Cross, or visit their web site.
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Fucking hell
This sucks. (I know, I know, I guess it’s not officially over, but shit, it’s not looking good.) Kerry has conceded. Shit.
Americans have proven themselves to be nothing but a bunch of scared peasants voting for their idiot king.
You Bush voters, your american citizenship is officially revoked for not identifying and dismissing the creeping authoritarianism that is the GWB administration. If it’s not obvious enough now, over the next four years it will become abundantly clear how big a mistake you have made. We’ll hope our democratic institutions are still in place so that you may fix your horrible error.
If a president this corrupt (Halliburton) and incompetent (Iraq) can’t be beat what sort of country have we become?
Don’t despair folks, just start thinking about what we can do over the next 4 years to make the chimp wish he had lost.
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Is it possible…
…for me to get any MORE enraged by the Bush Administration?
Yes, it seems like it is: Fahrenheit 9/11 Opens June 25.
trailer here
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To be believed? I doubt it.
CNN today:
“Cues from chatter” gathered around the world are raising concerns that terrorists might try to attack the domestic food and drug supply, particularly illegally imported prescription drugs…And of course it’s a coincidence that just yesterday (from NYT):
Hitting hard on an issue of deep concern to older voters, Senator John Kerry on Wednesday promised an overhaul of the Medicare prescription drug law, saying President Bush had personally “stood in the way” of importing drugs from Canada…How fucking stupid do these fucking fuckers think we are? Evidently, mighty fucking stupid. #
TPM: perjury charge for Clarke?
JM Marshall writes in this post that the Republicans are considering bringing perjury charges against Dick Clarke (no that Dick Clark, this Dick Clarke).
The first step in this little adventure is to declassify testimony Clarke gave congress in 2002.
It really sounds like they want to totally destroy this guy. Not discredit him, not debate with him, not to object to him; they want to put him in jail. And why? For telling the truth.
It’s doubtful that he’ll ever be charged with perjury because most of his points are corroborated by other people, that is, they’re true. The only people who don’t understand this are Republicans who have been blinded by their partisanship to the deep, deep flaws and lies of Bush.
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Dancing in the Streets: Revolution with a Smile
John Perry Barlow suggests spontaneous explosions of dancing in the streets of NYC during the RNC as a form of happy protesting.
Liza Sabater heartily agrees.
And so do I :-) Don’t know if I’m up to organizing, but I could definitely do some participating.
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Carlson calls it for Kerry
…haven’t seen this elsewhere so I’d thought I’d mention it.
On The Chris Matthews Show this morning, conservative guest Tucker Carlson called the election for Kerry. He said something like,
We will know who the next president is on election day, and though I’m not happy about it — it’s reality — it will be Kerry by 2 points. It’s not good for the nation that Kerry wins, but it will be good that there is a clear winner.Again, not verbatim, but something very similar.
Mr. CARLSON: […] I think there’s going to be a definitive win by two points. I have to say I think it’s going to be Kerry. I’m not for that, but I think that’s—I think that’s reality.#
Calpundit: very good political blog
Yes, sometimes I post about politics here on our little art blog and this is one of those posts: Calpundit rocks.
This post in particular is very insanely good. It succinctly describes exactly why Bush and his Republican handlers are so damn evil:
After 9/11 George Bush had a chance to build a bipartisan consensus about terrorism and how to respond to it. But he didn’t just fail to do that, he deliberately tried to prevent it, and by transparently treating terrorism as little more than a chance to boost the prospects of his own party he has convinced everyone who’s not a Republican that it’s not really a serious threat. After all, if he quite obviously treats it as simply a political opportunity, it’s hardly reasonable to expect anyone else to take it seriously either.
The comments section of Calpundit is very good too, lots of lively debate by well-informed posters.
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Bush to World
Download the video
(1MB QuickTime .MOV)
via Eschaton
More at Daily KOS.
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Bush is insane
As simple as that.
According to the BBC via Huffpost:
President Bush said to all of us: ‘I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, “George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.” And I did, and then God would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …” And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, “Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.” And by God I’m gonna do it.’#
Sorry, need to post about politics today
As always, Talking Points Memo is good:
From the White House’s advocates we hear logic puzzles about appeasement in which the fall-out from the president’s screw ups become the prime argument for continuing to support them.Josh Marshall also quotes this line from the Washington Post:
[…]
[Bush] has no plan. And will without policy just equals death.
The only unequivocally good policy option before the American people is to dump the president who got us into this mess, who had no trouble sending our young people to Iraq but who cannot steel himself to face the Sept. 11 commission alone.And that’s it. As Iraq seems to be falling apart before our eyes, what do we get from Bush? More vacant rhetoric and more stonewalling. He is undoubtably the worst President the USA has ever had. #
Bush: “Happy Holidays”
Another notorious liberal human-secularist trying to destroy Christmas: President George W. Bush.
Listening to Bush’s press conference today on WNYC (I know, I’m a sucker for punishment), Bush closed the conference by wishing the reporters “Happy Holidays.” Faux News carries the transcript here (at the bottom of page).
Why is this a big deal? It’s not, unless you listen and believe right-winger propaganda bullshit. See these posts (here, here, here and here) from the blogosphere for background (and this Tom Tomorrow cartoon).
UPDATE:
I missed the beginning, but according to this, Bush also greeted everyone with the dreaded and disgustingly politically-correct phrase “Happy Holidays!”
Plus, Lou Dobbs is a fucking idiot.
From Media Matters for America:
ROMANS: Lou, Macy’s is adamant it’s not trying to offend anyone, just the opposite. It’s doing just what other businesses do, retail and otherwise. It’s trying very hard not to exclude anyone. That’s why “Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays” is better.And, hmmm, let’s see, IS there any other holiday that almost everyone is celebrating soon… golly it’s a tough one. Oh yeah! That’s right.
DOBBS: Well, they’ve just excluded everyone who is celebrating Christmas, which is, after all, the foundation of the so-called season in which they make most of their profits.
ROMANS: Moving definitely toward not offending anyone.
DOBBS: You know, when you think about it, “Happy Holidays” — what other holidays are we celebrating right now? We’re celebrating Christmas, right?
ROMANS: And they say Hanukkah, Kwanzaa —
DOBBS: Kwanzaa?
ROMANS: — also the end of Ramadan and a host of other holidays between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
DOBBS: But as we celebrate each one of those — and each of us in this very diverse society does celebrate — my Jewish friends say to me “Happy Hanukkah,” I say to them “Merry Christmas,” none of us is offended. I don’t understand the reluctance to use Christmas.
ROMANS: They say “Happy Holidays” covers it all.
DOBBS: They do? Well, they’re wrong. And merry Christmas. Thanks, Christine.
Pokia - Retro phones of the future
Hi-Larry-Us
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Please stop GNY
Joy Garnett needs to stop posting all this stuff about Greater New York because my heart’s been scraped as clean as the inside of a Ben & Jerry’s pint container and I can’t take it anymore!
nasty sour grapes following:
Someone in-the-know let drop on me that the organization of the show is a complete shambles. Unless I misheard my source, it seems that some artists are being asked to submit their work without it being guaranteed that it will actually be hung in the show!
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PodART
We’re participating in this show, should be fun!
Official press release follows.
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PodART
December 9, 2005 - January 17, 2005
at FINE ART IN SPACE
Opening Reception:
December 9, 2005, 7 to 9pm.
Gallery Hours: Monday through Saturday, 9am. to 5pm.
Fine Art in Space
10-47 48th Avenue
Long Island City, NY 11101
(718) 392-7766
Press contact: Heather Stephens at gallery31grand@earthlink.net
Fine Art in Space is pleased to present in collaboration with 31GRAND, the first group exhibition of video art intended to be viewed and sold solely on the iPod. Apple, the computer of choice by much of the art world is the inspiration for our new exhibition.
This curatorial exploration was inspired by the introduction of the latest iPod, which now plays video. In recent years, Video art has been growing rapidly in popularity. Their ongoing introduction of more technologically advanced products has resulted in the acceptance and accessibility of this media. Apple’s latest achievements with the iPod have garnered this art form even more portability.
Artists featured in PodART will include the work of: Gogol Bordello, Jason Clay Lewis, Nelson Loskamp, MTAA, Marisa Olson, Eugenio Percossi, Jean Pigozzi, Adam Stennett, Lee Walton, and Jeff Wyckoff.
MTAA is an art duo working on and off-line and are known for their conceptual and often humorous art projects. Past exhibitions have been at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Getty Research Institute, and Postmasters gallery.
Based in San Francisco, Marisa Olson’s work has been commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and she has most recently performed or exhibited at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Side Cinema-Newcastle, New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, Foxy Productions, Debs & Co, Galapagos, Flux Factory, 667 Shotwell, Pond, the international Futuresonic, Electrofringe, Cinemascope-London, Machinista, Scope, and VIPER festivals, and elsewhere. She has held residencies and fellowships at Goldsmiths, the New School, Northwestern University, the Technical University-Dresden, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She participated in an exhibition which Artforum highlighted among their “Best of 2004” and while Wired has called her both funny and humorous,the New York Times has called her work “anything but stupid.”
Jeff Wyckoff is an artist and scientist whose video work includes intravital imaging, cancer research and often music. Mr. Wyckoff has an upcoming lecture at MIT in February and exhibitions in Belgrade, Antwerp, and is currently working with the Art and Genome Center in Amsterdam.
Each video object is a limited edition and is sold in iPod format with the player.
For more information about the artists please contact us at 718.388.2858 or gallery31grand@earthlink.net.
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Multiple vulnerabilities in ‘pizza_party’
I can’t decide if this list-serv posting is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek or not:
Either would allow for individuals other than the owner of the Dominos Pizza account to order arbitrary pizzas (with random toppings even) via the DominosQuikOrder web server and have them delivered — resulting in chaos, anarchy and confusion.I also wonder how Cory’s site handled the /.ing?
MTAA are non-sexual art partners
This has been a problem lately so I’m just going to lay it right out on the line:
M.River and T.Whid are not gay lovers, we’re non-sexual art partners.
This is only a problem because we sometimes get invites to parties, openings, and other social events where the invite only comes to one of us. It’s our worry that people think if they invite one they’ve invited the other, but that’s just not true. We both need to be invited.
Recently, I was invited to an opening at the Guggenheim, but M.River received no invite. Conversely, M.River received an invite to a party in honor of a mutual friend, but I received no invite. M.River isn’t going to bring my along like I’m his ‘old lady’ or something. We both lead separate lives! We’re not joined at the hip.
So please, in the future, if you want to invite us to something, just because you e-mail me doesn’t mean I’m going to bring M.River along. He’s not my boyfriend, we don’t go everywhere together. And of course the inverse is true.
and mriver adds:
Yeah, I do love Twhid, but not like that. Ya know? Oh, one more important thing, even though Twhid and I are straight white guys…WE THINK YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO LEGALLY MARRY WHOMEVER YOU FUCKING DAM WELL PLEASE! This is America remember…created equal not separate but equal.
MTAA, non-sexul art partners for gay marriage. (N.S.A.P.F.G.M.). Nuff said.
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PIXIES! PIXIES! PIXIES!
WOO-HOO! Just scored two tix to the Saturday 18th show at the Hammerstein Ballroom!
Saw the Pixies back in… what year was it? ‘91? ‘92? At The Newport in Columbus, OH on their Trompe Le Monde tour. Which ain’t that cool considering that M.River saw ‘em at Staches a couple years earlier. (Nirvana also played at Staches but I missed that show too.)
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Pixies Tour
OK, this is sort of old news but, The Pixies are touring. and it’s not some bogus Pixies made up of only two members, it’s THE PIXIES: Frank Black, Joey Santiago, Kim Deal, and David Lovering. So far they’ve booked dates for a ‘warm-up’ tour which is mostly in Canada and the Northwest. According to Billboard there will be real tour to follow. I hope they plan on playing about 50 dates in NYC.
I saw The Pixies in — damn — must have been in 1991. They were touring in support of “Trompe Le Monde” which was released that year. It was at The Newport in Columbus, Ohio.
But M.River, who was much cooler than me in college (and still is I guess), saw them at Stache’s much earlier.
Dave Grohl (who has been to Stache’s) has this to say about it in the NYTime’s today:
Face it, the quiet/loud dynamic that’s dominated alternative radio for the last 14 years can be attributed to one and only one band, the Pixies. Undoubtedly one of the most influential groups of the new rock generation, they are back on tour to reclaim their status as the coolest American band since, well, possibly ever. In the 12 years since the band broke up, we’ve been blessed with some incredible solo albums from the singer and guitarist Frank Black; the bassist Kim Deal has graced us with the Breeders and the Amps; the drummer David Lovering has become a magician; and the guitarist Joey Santiago, he’s just bad (as in good). There is a new greatest-hits CD, a two-and-a-half-hour DVD (both on 4AD) and an 11-city tour kicking off next month. Not to be missed, the Pixies are a live band like no other. Be prepared for an over-capacity sing-along, night after night.#
Pirated Movie on iPod
For the PodART show we’ll also being showing Pirated Movie. Check it out:
MTAA’s “Pirated Movie” on an iPod
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piss poor? No… Piss pour!
Czech artist David Cerny’s new sculpture, “Piss,” installed in Prague.
The best part? You can SMS the sculpture and the guys will spell out your message!
send an SMS to +428 724 370 770
more info here, including more photos and flash animations.
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Pirated Movie DVD release
MTAA’s Pirated Movie (more info here, here and here) is to be released very soon.
We’ve created an edition of 10 DVD-Videos (with 10 APs). This is a large number of APs but we wanted to give copies to all the people who donated their time and other resources to help make it happen. We’ll have more info on how you can obtain your copy shortly, stay tuned.
Super-special-ultra thanks to Devin Clark for editing and all the participating artists and musicians too!
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Photos of 1YPV at NuMu
I took some pix of 1 Year Performance Video installed at the New Museum. A little sneak peek for our faithful blog readers :-)
The photos are fairly lame (flash, fish-eyed, yeck), but it gives you an idea of what it looks like installed. You can see the Mac mini mounted to the wall under the 60” screen.
Click the images below for larger images if you are so inclined.
Thanks to everyone at Rhizome and the New Museum, the installation looks great.
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One thing about the debate
Is it me, or did Bush seem to keep pausing and waiting for applause? Could he be that out of it?
Also, the media says about Bush that his strength is that he can stay relentlessly “on message.” This is a total, big, steaming pile of bullshit. “Stay on message” means repeats himself over and over because all he has are talking points coached into him by his handlers and he’s run out but needs to fill his time. He had to struggle to fill the tiny amount of allotted time half the time! What a pathetic ass.
And from talkingpointsmemo.com:
Every president gets tucked away into a cocoon to some degree. But President Bush does notoriously few press conferences or serious interviews. His townhall meetings are screened so that only supporters show up. And, of course, he hasn’t debated anyone since almost exactly four years ago.I had the same impression and loved it. #
Frankly, I think it showed. It irked him to have to stand there and be criticized and not be able to repeat his talking points without contradiction.
DADC 2005 - CHAMPION!
Luke Butler!
You may be able to make out his drawing, it’s to the left of the monkey with a gun drawing next to his head.
See all photos from The Drinkin’ and Drawin’ Championship 2005.
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Drinkin’ & Drawin’ Championship photos
We’ve posted some pix of the event, click the thumb below to go to the photo gallery.
Also, an honorable mention goes to Neil Jenkins who sent this drawing all the way from the UK under the influence of large amounts of vodka (click for a larger image):
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DADC 2005 - 1st Runner Up
Michael Cambre!
He successfully defended his 1st Runner Up title from last year!
See all photos from The Drinkin’ and Drawin’ Championship 2005.
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DADC 2005 - 2nd Runner Up
Justin Waldstein!
Visit Justin’s web site.
He was the honorable mention, but the 2nd runner up had left, so the title went to him. Unfortunately, we had put the other person’s name on the certificate already. Sorry dude!
See all photos from The Drinkin’ and Drawin’ Championship 2005.
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Casa de MTAA
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Back from <PAUSE>
Yes. Back home. Had a great couple of days in Montreal for the <PAUSE> exhibition.
Thanks again to Valerie Lamontagne and Brad Todd of MobileGaze for inviting us to participate in the exhibition and inviting us to Montreal to present our work.
I’ve posted some photos, mostly of the artist presentations. Follow the link here or click the thumbnail below.
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Interview on petiteMort
We’re very pleased to announce that petiteMort interviews MTAA in their second issue entitled ‘Begins & Ends.’
petiteMort is a new-ish on-line journal published by Antonio Serna and Peggy Tan which covers a wide-range of cultural issues including music, art, writing and science.
While you’re there, don’t miss the interview with Cory Arcangel in issue 01.
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Peretti on WNYC
Jonah Peretti, organizer of The Contagious Media Showdown at Eyebeam, was interviewed on The Brian Lehrer Show today about the showdown
The archive and podcast (RSS link) should be up shortly. Jonah’s bit was the last 20 minutes or so of the first hour.
Unfortunately, I missed the awards ceremony and, boy, am I sorry.
addendum
I should have mentioned that MTAA and collaborators’ submission, artistadl.org, ended up in the 24th position with 7509 hits (officially) and 136 technorati links (we cheated).
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People I’ve called asshole on this site
unknown Verizon employee
James Childs (artist)
Donald Rumsfeld
some right-wing commenter (in comments)
John Currin (artist)
Senate Republicans (in comments)
George Pataki & company
Focus on the Family and American Family Association (dumbasses actually; close enough)
Anish Kapoor (posed the question of whether he is a dumbass; later retracted)
the Bush Administration (of course!)
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This post was inspired by the asshole commenting on this post.
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Paris underground cinema — literally
This is too fucking cool; it’s blowing my mind. (full story here.)
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.#
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, “clearly designed to frighten people off,” the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, “like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs”.
There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. “There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous,” the spokesman said.
“The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there.”
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: “Do not,” it said, “try to find us.”
MTAA included in Parachute #113
The current issue (#113, Digital Screens) of Canadian art magazine Parachute describes some of MTAA’s work in an article by Valérie Lamontagne called The Screen of net.art. Other artists discussed in the article are Peter Horvath, Grégory Chatonsky, Brad Todd, Entropy8Zuper, and jimpunk.
There is also an article devoted to thing.net’s founder and artist Wolfgang Stahle.
This could be construed as a vanity post I suppose (hell, this entire blog could be considered a vanity project), but it’s good to see an international art magazine devoting an entire issue to the impact of digital processes of creation and presentation on contemporary art. Having net art as one of the main themes of the magazine confirms my feeling that the editors are serious about documenting and analyzing contemporary digital art practices.
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Paper view technology
Cheap, paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens. The firm says the low production costs could see the
via: MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Paper view technology
Pace digital artist talks
I missed the debate last night but I did go to a talk at Pace University by two very different digital artists.
José Carlos Casado and Michael Mandiberg couldn’t be more different in their approaches to new media art.
Casado showed and discussed his Pandora’s Box (revisited)*, a two-channel video installation. It’s a lush fantastical tableau evoking themes of love, reproduction, sex, and intimate human relationships. Often lyrical and goofy in an endearing way, the video’s playful quality is very refreshing.
Also playful are Mandiberg’s mostly conceptual pieces. Steeped in Marxist theory, his work criticizes the art object, dot.com e-commerce and identity in a hip and witty way. See aftersherrielevine.com and Shop Mandiberg.
Casado was the weaker speaker. His talk was long-winded and — frankly —boring. Mandiberg, perhaps because his work is based more in the verbal or because he lectures for a living at university, was a much more engaging speaker and explained his work in a much more lucid way. To be fair to Casado, his work doesn’t need much explanation, it’s lyrical, aesthetic work which most people know how to respond too without any context or explanation. He should understand this and not bore us with long-winded histories of the piece and let it speak for itself.
*I would link directly to his on-line documentation, but his Flash interface stops me — just go to his site (linked from his name above) and choose “art works”.
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ourmedia.org launches
I’ve been keeping an on this site for a bit…
http://www.ourmedia.org/
The site seems like it’s getting slammed, it’s kinda slow. But that’s OK when you just launch. From their welcome message:
We’ll store your video, podcasts or digital photo collection for free — forever. No catches.Sounds great! #
Our new logo
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MTAA open studio June 18th
When: Friday, June 18th, 6-9PM
coinciding with WGA extended gallery hours
Where: 60 N. 6th St. 2nd floor, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(directions: next door to this place)
Yes, MTAA have a studio and it’s going to be open to the public.
Come see the set for our new net art work commissioned by Turbulence. The set will be fully dressed by our set dresser M.River.
Come see the first public screening of Pirated Movie (to be officially released at Postmasters summer show opening June 19th (more here) so, if you do the math, this means that YOU can see it ONE WHOLE DAY early).
Come see paintings! Yes, paintings! by M.River. (Solid pigment is suspended in a liquid vehicle (like linseed oil or an artificial polymer) and smeared on a canvas stretched over a wood frame.)
Come see other things able to be hung on walls.
We’ll also provide guided tours of MTEWW.com.
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ONVI Archives Project
MTAA has been asked by the ONVI Archives Project (scroll down for English) in Barcelona, Spain to submit DC 9/11 - The Evildoers’ Remix.
According to the ONVI Archives web site:
The works in these archives have been selected around various themes and a single purpose: to encourage a Critique of Contemporary Culture (in the language which best represents it) using different strategies such as video art, independent documentaries, and mass media archaeology, among other…Does anyone have any more info about ONVI (Observatori de Vídeo No Identificat)? I’ve never heard of them before but they look legit and they said they’d lay some euros on us for including DC 9/11 - EDR. Which is cool as I consider it in the public domain.
Oops 01-29-05
I thought about pretending that this post (which is on the front page today) is a new feature where we highlight older projects on the front of the MTAA-RR, but it isn’t. I just edited the post this morning, and one of the peculiarities of this site is that it puts the most recently edited posts on the front page.
Regardless, I’m glad it’s here on the front page today and perhaps we will institute a feature where we highlight older projects… seems like a good idea.
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New Museum of Contemporary Art Presents One Block Radius
This looks like an interesting project:
www.oneblockradius.org
From the press release:
Since January 2004, artists Christina Ray and Dave Mandl — known collectively as Glowlab — have been examining the block on which the New Museum’s new building will rise (Bowery to Chrystie Streets on the East-West axis and Stanton to Rivington Streets on the North-South axis).AND, there’s a walking tour too! Fun:
Olson new Editor and Curator at Large for Rhizome
Rhizome.org Announces Marisa S. Olson as Editor and Curator at LargeCongrats Marisa! #
via: Rhizome Announces Marisa S. Olson as Editor and Curator at Large
On James Wagner & Barry Hoggard
I’ve been meaning to post about James Wagner and Barry Hoggard for a while and a fun coincidence gives me a good excuse.
James Wagner’s blog, jameswagner.com, along with his boyfriend Barry Hoggard’s blog, bloggy.com, are delightful looks into the lives of two art collectors.
I don’t know much about James or Barry (I’ve met them briefly twice), but they don’t seem like blue-chip collector types. They seem like they’re of moderate means (this is relative to what I imagine is the ‘average’ art collector, that is, they’re not out investing in million-dollar paintings) and are REAL, LIVE art lovers! Almost every weekend they seem to be in Williamsburg or Chelsea checking out galleries and posting quick photos and summaries of exhibitions to their blogs (James seems a bit more prolific).
I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to see someone loving contemporary art and artists.
Now to the coincidence. Yesterday, James posted a photo of a strange collage he found on a door in Williamsburg. And funnily enough, the cartoon at the top, partially hidden by the frame, was done by yours truly. I painted it on my front door at the time along with some other decorations to highlight our door and buzzer for a party we were having. It’s lasted on that door for probably about 10 years (it’s been enhanced by folks over the years of course).
I’ve been wanting to make it onto James’ blog — now I have!
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Old AIOTD
Old Art Idea of The Day (oaiotd? OK, OK, the acronyms are starting to get out of hand).
While browsing the archives of ye old MTAA-RR (April 03 to be exact) I found this little gem (from almost exactly 2 years ago):
Liberty, Fraternity, CommunityAnd I still think it’s a good idea! I’ll probably never do it, so I encourage anyone to take the idea and run with it! Please, I’m beggin’ you. #
A series of historical paintings in the neo-classical style depicting great moments in Smurf history. These ‘paintings’ could be done in oil or as digital images.
Olia Lialina’s ‘A Vernacular Web’
So what was this culture? What do we mean by the web of the mid 90’s and when did it end?Read the entire article at art.teleportacia.org. #
To be blunt it was bright, rich, personal, slow and under construction. It was a web of sudden connections and personal links. Pages were built on the edge of tomorrow, full of hope for a faster connection and a more powerful computer. One could say it was the web of the indigenous…or the barbarians. In any case, it was a web of amateurs soon to be washed away by dot.com ambitions, professional authoring tools and guidelines designed by usability experts.
In Ohio for holiday
M.River, the lazy bass-tard, hasn’t updated the blog while I’m out of town and mostly offline so here I am at Borders in Westlake, OH working it from a ye olde iBook.
The Borders has a T-Mobile hotspot ($6/h), so while my gal, my mom and I drink coffee and hot chocolate I’m writing this little blog post.
Maybe M.River will get out of the studio long enough to write a synopsis of the blogging panel at the New Museum earlier in the week?
Back in NYC on Tuesday.
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Out of town and off-line
M.River is going to need to carry the load on our little blog here for the next few days as I’m going to be out of town and off-line.
My gal and I will be relaxing with family on the shores of the Great Lake Erie until the 4th of July.
Also planning on taking my mom and grandmother to Fahrenheit 9/11 this Saturday.
cya
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Off to Ohio
My soon-to-be wife and I are off to the land of the stolen election, the land of my birth, to sit and stare on the shores of the Great Lake Erie for (almost) a full week. We’re bringing my fiancé’s Mom and Dad with us; both native New Yorkers. We’ll see how they do in the Mid-west.
We’ve been looking forward to this get-away for a long time and I can’t wait to see my nieces and nephews, my mom, my grandmother, my brothers and sister-in-laws. Relaxing with the family will do me good.
I’m bringing no computer — and there is no internet access in the little cottage on the beach my mom has rented anyway — so I won’t be posting here for a few days (yes all 12 of our readers will be quietly disappointed I’m sure).
M.River will hold down the fort and he’s thinking of turning this into a bit of a photoblog. We’ll see what happens.
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Off to Maine
MTAA is off to the University of Maine for a few days of artist visits and conferencing and paneling and whatnot.
Read all about it here: New Media at the University of Maine (the site is in beta and may be a bit rough around the edges).
Taking this chance to thank the New Media Program at the university for hosting the 1YPV video clips. Thanks!
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NYTimes does videoblogging (again)
…and goes down with great gusto on videoblogging’s big, fat boner.
Until now, both the television and film industries have been built on a model that requires producers to appeal to millions of people or be considered failures. If Amanda Congdon at one end of the spectrum and Charlene Rule at the other continue to add viewers at the rate they’re going, they and the best of the other vloggers might just provide a viable alternative to that lowest-common-denominator business model.
In other words, the revolution may just be vloggerized.
NYTimes does the Pixies
The NYTimes arts section is a very worthy read today :-)
It was a relief to hear that the Pixies still sounded utterly and gloriously like themselves on Saturday at the Hammerstein Ballroom.#
via: Once Upon a Time, There Was This Really Loud Band
NYTimes does Steve Mumford
Steve Mumford is profiled in the NYTime’s today in a story entitled Sketches From the Front: An Artist’s Dispatches, Rendered in Ink and Paint:
A New York painter, Steve Mumford, has been embedded with military units in Iraq on and off since April 2003.I’ve written about Steve a few times. His Baghdad Journal is on artnet.com. #
NYTimes does podcasts and parody Gates
I’ve become a fan of podcasts recently. This NYTimes article turned me on to a new one: Grape Radio.
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The NYTimes also has an article about a parody of Christo/J.C.’s “The Gates” called “The Somerville Gates.” It’s kinda funny.
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NYTimes does PacMondrian
An online game fusing Pac-Man with Mondrian's painting "Broadway Boogie Woogie" has caught the attention of Internet gamers and even some art critics.The reporter also mentions Rhizome, Metafilter and Eyebeam in the process. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the article is that it deeplinks to Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie-Woogie” on the MOMA web site. The simple fact that the article included bunches of pertinent links at the end of the article surprised me. In my surfing, it seems the NYT is always overlooking that essential element of online reportage, but the deeplink — wow! #
via: Chomp if You Like Art
NYTimes does Artstar
Deitch Projects, a gallery in Soho, is bringing reality television to the art world with a show called “Artstar.”Read it: Reality (on TV) Reaches Art World
NYT on Greater New York
For the show “Greater New York,” museum directors and curators will choose the work of 175 artists who they say best capture the city’s contemporary art scene.I didn’t want to link to this because I’m seething with jealousy that it appears MTAA won’t be in the show. #
via: Talent Call: Hot New Artists Wanted
NYT defends Drawing Center
But because the Drawing Center has been chosen to be part of the projected International Freedom Center at ground zero, it has come under some critical scrutiny. The Daily News reported yesterday that the gallery has, since 2001, shown political art critical of the current Bush administration. How much political art? Four pieces, including one on view now, is what The Daily News came up with, out of many dozens, maybe hundreds of works the Drawing Center has exhibited in the last four years.bob linked to the truly disgusting Daily News editorial that this Times piece references on artistadl.org. #
via New York Times
NYC = secular Hong Kong
Perhaps Great Moral Leader will allow some city-states to survive as secular Hong Kongs around the country. I’m thinking New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, (why not?) Cleveland, &c.
Perhaps Great Moral Leader will see the wisdom of allowing small islands of creative thinking, tolerance, sexual freedom, religious freedom, scientific experimentation, free speech, and free assembly to survive around the country.
Perhaps Great Moral Leader will understand that he must do this in order to avoid the coming American Dark Age.
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NYC helicopters…
…are dropping like flies, two in the last 4 days!
#1 and #2
What gives?
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NY1 does ArtBase 101
NY1 (a cable news station in NYC) came by the New Museum last Friday and interviewed Lauren Cornell and me about Rhizome ArtBase 101 as part of their technology coverage. The reporter said the spot, which will be about 2 minutes long, will air on Monday (July 4, 2005) and Tuesday (July 5, 2005).
Evidently it will be available via Real streaming on the NY1 website too. If anyone finds it, please post specific instructions in the comments.
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Note on T.Whid’s email
For the past, oh I don’t know, few days — perhaps a week — any mail sent to me at my twhid[@{no spammy}]mteww[dot]com account probably didn’t get read. It didn’t get deleted and I can get to it, but if it’s pressing you might want to send it again.
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NowPublic.com
NowPublic.com looks pretty cool. The site allows bloggers to post photo assignments which are searchable so that photogs can take the assignments. The images are then searchable/postable/feedable for anyone.
Cool as is; but also ripe for an artistic intervention ;)
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Not tehchingHsiehUpdate
I’m not sure, but we may be changing the name of the project we’ve been calling tehchingHsiehUpdate.
We thinking of changing the name to 1 Year Performance Video.
Kevin McCoy thinks that we shouldn’t tie ourselves too closely to another artist’s work and he makes a good argument. Plus, we always do whatever Kevin tells us to do ;-)
Anyway, does anyone have an opinion?
Otherwise, it’s coming along pretty well. We need to tighten up a few things in the code that creates the video playlist (make it a little smarter), create the login functionality (don’t want to lose your time) and put the window dressing on it (context, short description, etc). But the core of the thing is essentially finished. It will be released September 30th on the Turbulence web site.
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New York New Media Round-up
Busy week in New York new media art, this is what’s happening:
December 11, 2003
Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Eunjung Hwang and Reynold Reynolds speak at Eyebeam
7PM - 8:30PM as part of the exhibition Beta Launch ‘03: Artists in Residence.
Killer Instinct opening at the New Museum
Reception from 6:30 - 8PM.
From the NuMu website, “Games come off the screen and to life in this exhibition including sculpture, video, painting, and, of course, Ataris and computers. Besides experimental hacks of commercial games, Killer Instinct features artists who use game hardware and software for social commentary as well as in the development of musical and filmic projects.”
December 12, 2003
Digital Culture Evening: Killer Instinct
6:30 - 8PM, A panel moderated by Alex Galloway, includes a gaggle of artists from the show.
Mark Napier’s “Sacred Code” opening at Bitforms
Reception 6-8PM. Show runs through January 17th.
Radio Party @ The Thing, The Thing’s end of the year Party.
Starts at 9PM, could go later than 11:45PM…
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One would have to spread themselves pretty thin to make all that stuff. Good thing there are two of MTAA ;-)
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Profit v non-profit in the US
It’s interesting to note that the two for-profit new media art-friendly spaces in NYC: The Thing (with Screensavers and their giving hosting support to us too) & Postmasters are both supporting RNC protest art during the upcoming convention.
Other art establishments are forced to sit idly by because their not-for-profit status exempts them from political action (yes, I’m talking about Eyebeam and Rhizome).
Not criticizing… But it should make art orgs think twice before accepting the not-for-profit status.
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update:
Wolfgang Staehle, founder and owner of thing.net and founder of
The Thing, Inc., clarifies the many forms of this thing:
thing.net communications LLC is a partnership that runs the hosting and dial up business.#
THE THING, Inc. is a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit arts organization and runs the arts program and the BBS.
Two different entities with different missions.
thing.net sometimes supports THE THING by providing free tech support and inkind donations like paying the rent when TT is broke or donating a used server. This arrangement gives us the flexibility to survive in an increasingly hostile climate. The support provided to MTAA is coming from THE THING and the videos will be hosted on THE THING servers.
Hope this explains the setup.
Greetings,
Wolfgang
New MTAA logo
We paid a super-famous designer piles and piles of money to come up with a new MTAA logo to help brand our international art product.
The thing I like about it the most is it’s originality.
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New feed URL
We’ve added a new feed format. It’s a feedburner feed. Same stuff, but allows us to view our subscriber stats easily.
Considering switching over to this feed if you feel like it :)
This is the link to the new MTAA Reference Resource feed!
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New Art Dirt Redux
Just listened to the new Art Dirt Redux where Robin Murphy and G.H. Hovagimyan tour the all the Chelsea openings last Thursday.
It was great. I really love the way G.H. layers the audio. The technique worked perfectly for this content; it made you feel like you were at the openings.
Check it out
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New digs
Our astute readers may notice that the MTAA Reference Resource (yes that is the official name of this web log) has a brand new URL on the new-ish twhid.com domain.
Since you are reading this blog I must assume that you are OBSESSED with MTAA almost as much as we ourselves are, so that leads me to assume that you are burning with desire to know WHY?! Why OH! Why did we need to move the MTAA-RR all the way over to this new domain and do all the script re-jiggering required and what not. I’ll tell you why:
BECAUSE XO SUCKS!!!!!
Every couple of months they try to shake us down for more money. It’s ridiculous! I hate them!
I’m moving the entire MTEWW.com domain to this new server soon too, so this blog will eventually return to it’s original URL so..
DON’T LINK TO THIS NEW URL (www.twhid.com/mteww.com/mtaaRR), LINK TO: HTTP://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/ PLEASE! please, please.
So, I’m using these guys in Florida now called Lunarpages (maybe it’s a front for a Satanic cult or something, that would be cool). They are very good and provide lots of bandwidth, disk space and other advanced features (php, mysql, etc) for really cheap. They have been very reliable in up-time and have very good customer service. Sorry Rhizome, your host couldn’t come close to the price of these guys otherwise I would be there.
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networked_performance
Turbulence.org has launched a new blog described as “networked_performance: an open forum to discuss network-enabled performance for an international conference in 2006.”
The site and conference is being supported by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (Turbulence.org’s parent), Emerson College in Boston and the State University of California Monterey Bay.
Not lots happening on the blog just yet, but I’m sure there is lots more to come. MTAA is releasing a new net art work in September (funded by Turbulence.org) which I think of as a performance piece so I’m hoping it will add something to the discussion.
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NetNewsWire 2.0, MarsEdit betas
Ranchero Software has released a public beta version of NetNewsWire 2.0, a major update to its popular RSS newsreader application… [MacMinute]
WooHoo!
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NET ART OFFICIALLY DEAD!
From Rob Murphy’s blog…
NET ART DEAD!#
Mark Tribe has called it in the press release for inSite_05:Although artists continue to work online in ever greater numbers, net art as a movement is now over. But to say that the net is just another medium along with video, painting, installation, etc. would be misleading. The net is both a medium and a platform, a set of tools for art-making and a distribution channel for reaching people. The net can still enable artists to reach a global audience without the assistance of art world institutions. Equally important, it can enable artists to reach audiences that never set foot in a gallery, museum or performance space.(via)
Need to know more about MTAA?
Need to know EVEN more about MTAA? Well, it’s your lucky day!
Read an in-depth interview with the art associates on Rhizome’s site:
An Interview with MTAA by Lauren Cornell
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update
In the interview I mention that I did comics before joining up with M. This got me thinking about my old comics days.
The image below is from a one-off I did called “Diet Coke.” It was just a 3-page little thing. It ran in a ‘zine I self-published with some friends in December 1996 (this was right before M. and I started doing net/digital stuff). The ‘zine was called “Burger” but we did a small issue on a small budget between “Burger #1” and “Burger #2” (#2 being the last I believe) which we called “BGR: The Abbreviated Burger.”
Download a larger JPG (apx 300KB)
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Nauman videos on-line
The Video Data Bank has lots of previews of experimental artists videos on their web site.
I like the Nauman videos.
What do you get when you combine Bruce Nauman and simple on-line Flash games? MTAA’s ‘Five Small Videos About Interruption and Disappearing’ of course :-)
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Natalie Jeremijenko - MAKE audiozine podcast
From Makezine.com blog:
A MAKER profile of Natalie Jeremijenko, building toxic sensing robot dogs from discarded toys, as read by Dale Dougherty, MAKE publisher. This is an enhanced podcast, it will play audio -and- show the actual pages of MAKE Magazine from volume 02 when you click on them. We hope to do more of these, please let us know what you think. iTunes: Click this link and click SUBSCRIBE.You can also download the vanilla MP3.
Nam Jun Paik dead
Looking for confirmation, but got an email via RHIZOME_RAW that Nam Jun Paik passed away yesterday evening.
Will link to reliable sources when I find them. According to this web site (which says it’s the official Paik web site); it’s true.
Shit. The world has lost a great and influential artist.
There’s an article on MSNBC too.
Below, the entire NYT obit by Roberta Smith.
Nam June Paik, 73, Dies; Pioneer of Video Art Whose Work Broke Cultural Barriers#
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: January 31, 2006
Nam June Paik, an avant-garde composer, performer and artist widely considered the inventor of video art, died Sunday at his winter home in Miami Beach. He was 73 and also lived in Manhattan.
Nam June Paik in 2004 with one of his installations at the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum in Berlin.
Mr. Paik suffered a stroke in 1996 and had been in declining health for some time, said his nephew, Ken Paik Hakuta, who manages his uncle’s studio in New York.
Mr. Paik’s career spanned half a century, three continents and several art mediums, ranging through music, theater and found-object art. He once built his own robot. But his chief means of expression was television, which he approached with a winning combination of visionary wildness, technological savvy and high entertainment values. His work could be kitschy, visually dazzling and profound, sometimes all at once, and was often irresistibly funny and high-spirited.
At his best, Mr. Paik exaggerated and subverted accepted notions about both the culture and the technology of television while immersing viewers in its visual beauty and exposing something deeply irrational at its center. He presciently coined the term “electronic superhighway” in 1974, grasping the essence of global communications and seeing the possibilities of technologies that were barely born. He usually did this while managing to be both palatable and subversive. In recent years, Mr. Paik’s enormous American flags, made from dozens of sleek monitors whose synchronized patterns mixed everything from pinups to apple pie at high, almost subliminal velocity, could be found in museums and corporate lobbies.
Mr. Paik was affiliated in the 1960’s with the anti-art movement Fluxus, and also deserves to be seen as an aesthetic innovator on a par with the choreographer Merce Cunningham and the composer John Cage. Yet in many ways he was simply the most Pop of the Pop artists. His work borrowed directly from the culture at large, reworked its most pervasive medium and gave back something that was both familiar and otherworldly.
He was a shy yet fearless man who combined manic productivity and incessant tinkering with Zen-like equanimity. A lifelong Buddhist, Mr. Paik never smoked or drank and also never drove a car. He always seemed amused by himself and his surroundings, which could be overwhelming: a writer once compared his New York studio to a television repair shop three months behind schedule.
Mr. Paik is survived by his wife, the video artist Shigeko Kubota.
Mr. Paik got to television by way of avant-garde music. He was born in 1932 in Seoul, Korea, into a wealthy manufacturing family. Growing up, he studied classical piano and musical composition and was drawn to 20th-century music; he once said it took him three years to find an Arnold Schoenberg record in Korea. In 1949, with the Korean War threatening, the family fled to Hong Kong, and then settled in Tokyo. Mr. Paik attended the University of Tokyo, earning a degree in aesthetics and the history of music in 1956 with a thesis on Schoenberg’s work.
He then studied music at the University of Munich and the Academy of Music in Freiburg and threw himself into the avant-garde music scene swirling around Cologne. He also met John Cage, whose emphasis on chance and randomness dovetailed with Mr. Paik’s sensibility.
Over the next few years, Mr. Paik arrived at an early version of performance art, combining cryptic musical elements — usually spliced audiotapes of music, screams, radio news and sound effects — with startling events. In an unusually Oedipal act during a 1960 performance in Cologne, Mr. Paik jumped from the stage and cut off Cage’s necktie, an event that prompted George Maciunas, a founder of Fluxus, to invite Mr. Paik to join the movement. At the 1962 Fluxus International Festival for Very New Music in Wiesbaden, Germany, Mr. Paik performed “Zen for Head,” which involved dipping his head, hair and hands in a mixture of ink and tomato juice and dragging them over a scroll-like sheet of paper to create a dark, jagged streak.
In 1963, seeking a visual equivalent for electronic music and inspired by Cage’s performances on prepared pianos, Mr. Paik bought 13 used television sets in Cologne and reworked them until their screens jumped with strong optical patterns. In 1963, he exhibited the first art known to involve television sets at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany.
In 1965 he made his New York debut at the New School for Social Research: Charlotte Moorman, a cellist who became his longtime collaborator, played his “Cello Sonata No. 1 for Adults Only,” performing bared to the waist. A similar work performed in 1967 at the Filmmakers Cinematheque in Manhattan resulted in the brief arrest of Ms. Moorman and Mr. Paik. Mr. Paik retaliated with his iconic “TV Bra for Living Sculpture,” two tiny television screens that covered Ms. Moorman’s breasts.
Mr. Paik bought one of the first portable video cameras on the market, in 1965, and the same year he exhibited the first installation involving a video recorder, at the Galeria Bonino in New York. Although he continued to perform, his interests shifted increasingly to the sculptural, technological and environmental possibilities of video.
In 1969, Mr. Paik started showing pieces using multiple monitors. He created bulky wood robotlike figures using old monitors and retrofitted consoles, and constructed archways, spirals and towers, including one 60-feet tall that used 1,003 monitors. By the 1980’s he was working with lasers, mixing colors and forms in space, without the silvery cathode-ray screen.
For his 2000 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, Mr. Paik arranged monitors faceup on the rotunda’s floor, creating a pondlike effect of light and images. Overhead, one of the artist’s most opulent laser pieces cascaded from the dome in lightninglike zigzags — an apt metaphor for a career that never stopped surging forward.
Napier and Hovagimyan
Two shows happening now or soon in NYC involving established NYC digital artists.
First, Mark Napier is having an opening at Bitforms this weekend:
Show dates: october 22 - november 26 2005
Opening reception: saturday october 22, 6-8 pm
Bitforms Gallery
529 W 20th St, NY, NY
Eyebeam
Thursday, October 27, 7:30 PM
540-548 west 21st street (bet 10 & 11 Ave)
I’m pleased to announce that my latest work in High Definition videos are on display at Sara Tecchia Gallery (529 west 20th street, 2nd floor) in Chelsea. The videos are random select from an HDV database that are played one after another in a seamless playlist. This is a preview for a larger installation of 3 flat screens at Sara Tecchia’s in March. Come by and have a look and let me know what you think.
My day job: TVTonic
Last week my company released a new version of our software, called TVTonic.
What is TVTonic? Well, according to me (I wrote the web site copy):
TVTonic allows you to subscribe to most video podcasts on the web.
Download RSS 2.0 video enclosures in the background.
New music biz model
Magnatune is a record label with an entirely new and clued-in business model.
They really seem to ‘get’ it: they publish their music in a variety of formats from which you can choose, CD-Quality WAV files to MP3s; they use a shareware model which lets you listen to entire albums before you buy; they use a sliding scale for home purchases ($5-$18 I can’t imagine why one would pay more than the min); the artists get 50% of sales; and they have a unique automatic licensing system for folks who need to license music for commercial use (you can even get the tunes for free for non-commercial uses).
So what’s the downside? They don’t publish any artists you’ve ever heard of.
I’ve been browsing their catalog for the past couple of days and haven’t heard anything I consider buying. Which is unfortunate as I would really like to support them. There is plenty of stuff I would consider licensing for commercial projects (because it’s cheap), but most of it seems to be B or C grade material.
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Museums Sell Out
NYTime’s Kimmelman again takes museums to task for selling out to private interests. Another column of his was mentioned by yours truly on this post.
Museums are putting everything up for sale, from their artwork to their authority. And it’s going cheap.
via: What Price Love? Museums Sell Out
With faith goes the delicate ecosystem of charitable contributions and tax-free privileges. Why, the public will ask, do institutions like these reap the benefits of nonprofit status if they service private interests who shape the content of what’s on view and/or reap cash rewards?
Murphy’s law in full effect
Holy shit.
Could more have gone wrong today? Yes (we’ll get back to that in the epilogue). But not much.
Where do we start? Hmmm, let me see. Let’s start on a NJ Transit train to Newark (starts out bad and just gets worse).
M.River and I traveled to Newark on this snowy day to interview for a ‘professional development’ program at an arts organization in Newark called Aljira. The program is called Emerge, and you can read all about it here.
The wind and snow was fierce as we trudged from Newark Penn Station to Aljira (normally probably a short and pleasant walk — not today).
The interview process consisted of 5 artists (MTAA counts as 1) showing and talking about their work in front of a panel of arts professionals (there were reps from Creative Capital, eyewash, The Brooklyn Museum and Aljira).
During preliminary introductions, we ran into our first problem. “Oh! We don’t do collaboratives,” Aljira’s program director said, “There was a question mark there.”
That’s OK, M.River and I figured, we’ll win them over.
We had submitted a DVD-video of work samples. The other artists had all submitted slides and for reasons to do with the format, presented their work before us. Finally, it was our turn.
Bad disk. Let’s try again. Bad disk. Let’s try another disk. Bad disk. Let’s try a computer in the other room. All of the computers only have CD drives. I had brought along a few prints of the installation version of 1YPV and gamely passed them around to the jury panel, but was seething inside.
M.River bravely attempted to describe our work without the help of any visuals of our visual art as I stewed in my own juices and fought back urges to crack that goddamn DVD in half and fling it across the room.
Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. “You know. I feel like an idiot trying to explain the work with no reference images,” I interrupted, “I’m just kind of sitting over here and being angry.” That was pretty much the end of our interview.
What are our chances of being accepted to this program? Considering they don’t take collaboratives and couldn’t really see any of our work, we’re optimistic.
epilogue
It’s around 7:30PM on 7th Avenue in Manhattan and it’s snowing like hell. M.River is wondering if he’ll be able to catch a cab home. I’m thinking, no way in hell, when a cab comes cruising up and stops right in front of him. He gets in and a guy half-way down the block starts screaming and cursing at him. He runs over and makes like he’s going to punch the passenger window but thinks better of it. Evidently, he thinks M.River stole his cab. He keeps calling M.River, “asshole!” and “motherfucker!” He’s stomping his feet and venting his spleen. I casually watch him.
Ahhhhh. Sweet, sweet schadenfreude.
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New installment of Steve Mumford’s Baghdad Journal on-line
I received an email from Steve a few days back but didn’t get around to posting this until now.
Read Steve Mumford’s Baghdad Journal.
I’ve posted about Steve’s project from time to time (one, two, three), I have mixed feelings on the entire thing but it’s an interesting read and look regardless.
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Mumford’s Baghdad Journal on-line
You can read the journal and view some JPEGs of his sketches and watercolors at artnet.com
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Mumford’s new Baghdad Journal online
Steve Mumford has a new Baghdad Journal online at artnet.com.
Steve is a New York City-based artist who, for the past year or so, has been visiting Iraq and creating watercolor and ink-wash sketches of the people and places he finds.
He sent this note around:
Due to a screw-up on my part the last illustrated story posted, “Ramadi”,
was actually my notes for the story, not the final essay. I’m sorry for the mix
up not least because it was in no way intended for publication. The correct version is now up and I hope you’ll take a look.
Basically, if you read an earlier version it looks as if it wasn’t intended for publication.
I’ve been mildly critical of Steve’s work in various forums (thingist). I felt the work was glorifying militarism and empire. But this current crop of sketches has a different tone, especially the portraits of the different soldiers. These sketches seem to capture a weariness and exhaustion that must be creeping into the soldiers. The general tone is less that of macho excitement and more reflective.
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MTAA @ Sala1 Galleria
We’re in a show in Rome called ‘Netizens II (la libertà del post-mediale)’ curated by Yael Kanarek and Sylvie Parent. The exhibiting artists are:
Peter Horvath
David Crawford
MTAA
Evann Siebens & Yael Kanarek
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
Yan Breuleux
I have to admit, I’m sort of confused about what’s going on with it.
The space has a web site, but there is no mention of the show there. Yael sent us a press release, but it’s in italian so I can’t really read it (the google translation is not much help).
I think it’s the same exact group that was in videozone2 video biennial in Israel. Yael sent us a catalogue from that show that featured a nice color reproduction still from “Five Small Videos…,” thanks Yael.
If you’re in Rome, check it out and let us know how it looks:) It’s up through January 28th (I think).
UPDATE
Found the official site explaining everything :-)
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MTAA + RSG
Finally! some actual news (as opposed to the usual rants), big news in fact. MTAA has received a Creative Capital grant this year. It’s for a project we’re doing in collaboration with RSG.
Here’s a description of the project:
Want – A six-channel video installation using Internet peer-to-peer networks and actors portraying the obsessive desires of six types of common Internet users.
MTAA-RR new comment policy
Some posts on this site, for whatever reason, get spammed over and over. From now on, when a post gets spammed, I’m going to close comments on it. Hopefully it won’t effect the discussion that takes place on this site.
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MTAA-RR birthday today
As M. noted in the post below, today is the 3rd birthday of the MTAA-RR (the official name of this blog/documentation station is the M.River & T.Whid Art Associates Reference Resource — we have a gift for creating long-winded and hard to remember names).
Go here to read the first post.
After that, I encourage you to peruse the archive. You should be asking yourslef, “what was MTAA doing in x month of n year?” For example: what was MTAA doing in August of ‘03? They were watching TV, camping on the beach, enjoying the SUMMEr oF HTML, preparing to pirate a movie and surviving the blackout.
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MTAA: one of 27 finalists
It’s good to see that we made it into the 2nd round of the Rhizome ‘05-‘06 Net Art Commission process.
See all the finalists.
And you should vote (you must be a Rhizome member to vote). Remember: you should vote MTAA #1, the title of our proposed project is “To Be Listened To…” You can read the proposal. It’s a pretty simple project.
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MTAA not in the top 100
I know, I know! It’s unfair and totally bizarre; I totally agree.
MTAA should definitely be in the top 100.
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MTAA naming
This post is intended to be the definitive guide on how to refer to MTAA and their web sites.
MTAA (M.River & T.Whid Art Associates)
The name of the art collaborative is MTAA (M.River & T.Whid Art Associates). We prefer the entire name be used in any press releases and other widely circulated documents like announcements as well as in title cards for gallery pieces or in any publications describing MTAA’s art work or creative practice. If your space is restricted in some way using simply MTAA is acceptable.
M.River AKA Mark River
M.River prefers to be referred to by his web alias, M.River, in any publications, announcements, lists, postcards, and etc attending an exhibition of MTAA’s work or in any publication describing MTAA’s work or creative practice. If, for whatever reason, one needs to use his ‘real’ name, it’s Mark River (though that’s not his real name). But he asks that efforts be made to use his web alias: M.River. In person he likes to be called Mike.
T.Whid AKA Tim Whidden
T.Whid prefers to be referred to as T.Whid (his web alias) in any publications, announcements, lists, postcards, and etc attending an exhibition of MTAA’s work or in any publication describing MTAA’s work or creative practice. His real name is Tim Whidden. In person he likes to be called Tim.
MT Enterprises WorldWide
The name of the art duo MTAA’s web site is MT Enterprises WorldWide and the web address is http://www.mteww.com.
MTAA Reference Resource
There is a section of MT Enterprises WorldWide called the MTAA Reference Resource, or MTAA-RR for short. This section of the web site contains background material, biographical info, documentation, texts and a blog.
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MTAA included in Rhizome ArtBase 101
Actual MTAA news — not just random ranting and ravings! Read on…
Rhizome, along with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, will be presenting a gallery show of selections from Rhizome’s ArtBase called Rhizome ArtBase 101. The show will be hung in one of the New Museum’s galleries at their temporary space in Chelsea.
I’m very happy to report that MTAA will be represented in the show with our piece 1 Year Performance Video. PLUS! We’re going to be showing the gallery version of 1YPV. This will be the first public presentation of the gallery version. The gallery version differs from the online version in numerous ways — most importantly — it uses much higher quality video that is more appropriate for gallery viewing.
I’ll post the entire press release when it’s available.
We also have some other news, but we’ll need to wait a bit to post it here.
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MTAA as academic fodder?
Received this yesterday from a arts educator/artist/curator/writer friend of ours.
Just wanted to tell you that I showed a few of your works in class, today, and my students loved it. You’re one of the very few artists/ collectives to actually make them laugh, this semester, and I think that’s a high compliment. They especially enjoyed the 5 small videos and we had a very long conversation about 1YPV, in light of the ideas of Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, WJT Mitchell, and Roland Barthes.
Oh, and we also talked about “real life.” It was nice!
I can’t wait for all those MTAA PhD dissertations to come out—starting with Avi Rosen, of course… :)
MT gets the beat down on Slashdot
dJ phuturecybersonique writes “Netcraft reports that ‘Comment spam attacks on Movable Type weblogs are straining servers at web hosting companies, leading some providers to disable comments on the popular blogging tool. The issues are caused by bugs in MT, forcing publisher Six Apart to recommend configuration changes while it prepares fixes.’ More…”Presently, the consensus is that everyone should move to Wordpress.
via: Comment Spams Straining Servers Running MT
MTEWW.com moving hosts
I’m moving the MTEWW.COM domain to another host because XO SUCKS! XO is the current host and they suck so I reallly had no choice.
So, anyway, in the process of writing this post I ran into broken links already as I’ve changed the default directory for this blog from mtaaRR/ to mtaaRR/news/. I guess I gotta try to fix that because all the google links are going to break. ERRRR.
Anyway, this should be it for a while I hope. No more moving stuff around, fixing broken scripts and etc after this weekend I hope.
One cool thing is that I installed a method to post from the web to this blog. That’s cool :-) But you need to know the password to do it so don’t get any bright ideas ;-)
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Morning activities
I need to make a list of daily activities but am having a hard time motivating myself to do it. Since posting to this blog is categorized in my mind as ‘goof-off’ behavior, it’s easier to make these notes as a blog entry. PLUS, if any of our faithful readers would like to add to the list, please do so in the comments. I also need to make a list of afternoon activities, evening activities and night activities.
Note: these are all activities that would take place in one room, as if one was confined to a cell. Also, these activities don’t need to be exclusive to the morning.
morning activities (in no particular order)
7:30 - 7:40: wake up
get dressed
brush teeth
floss
wash
shave
urinate
breakfast (coffee)
defecate
exercise
read
lay on bed; stare into space
pace the floor
sit on stool; stare into space
M.River adds:
Just so people know what this list is about, we are writing a “script of activities” for an internet artwork that we will film in July (see this, twhid). Please add any action one can do when one is alone. We have the day broken into 4 sections: Morning, Afternoon, Evening and Night. Here are some additional acts that one might do in the morning.
make bed, comb hair, get dressed, clip nails, rub eyes, turn on light, lay in bed starring at the ceiling. wash breakfast dishes. clean room. turn off alarm clock
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Correction re: Rhizome
I was incorrect in stating in an earlier post that one cannot link to articles on Rhizome.
My only complaint now is that they make it very hard to link to articles if you are a member and nearly impossible if you are not. My main point still stands, Rhizome is going to slowly suffocate behind the fee wall as long as they make it hard to freely link and browse their content.
I make similar points in a post to Rhizome from today.
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More NYT Rhizome ArtBase review
Marisa Olson has a very thoughtful response to the review at Rhizome.
In this quote she responds to Pall Thayer’s remarks.
Now I don’t want to personally attack Sarah Boxer (though she is very much worth taking the time to Google!), but I know that she has a background in psychoanalytic theory and I find it unfortunate that her reading in a science of interpretation has not parlayed into interpretations of art. As is true of her other articles recently discussed here, I think that this was, ultimately, a missive rather than a review. (Again, Palli said it all.) She doesn’t adequately discuss the experience of the pieces, though the intended experiences were, in many senses, constitutive of the works. She says, simply, that she doesn’t have time for them.
More on Cloud Gate copyright issues
The Slashdot geeks are chewing over the copyright issues surrounding Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” (aka “The Bean”). “Cloud Gate” is installed in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Public Park Designated Copyrighted Space (You get one guess as to where the open-source crowd stands on the issue.)
I don’t have much more to say on it, except…
I wonder if Christo and Jeanne-Claude have security guards keeping professional photographers away from “The Gates”? I would really be interested to know their official stand on the copyright of images of “The Gates,” especially since they make all their money from images of the sculptures as opposed to the sculptures themselves (which many times cost them money). Part of this answer is at the bottom of this page. The artists say that they “have donated all merchandising rights” [emphasis theirs] to a charity and Central Park.
Granted, the two situations are totally different in terms of politics needed to be navigated in order to realize the piece. (Perhaps Christo and Jeanne-Claude had their arms twisted to donate the merchandising rights.) But in terms of copyright issues I don’t see that there would be much of a difference.
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More “Lazy Sunday”
I finally got around to making an MP3; download it.
And the NYTimes does a story with some interesting details about the production (cheap and fast):
On the evening of Dec. 12, the four wrote a song about “two guys rapping about very lame, sensitive stuff,” as Mr. Samberg described it. They recorded it the following night in the office Mr. Samberg shares with Mr. Schaffer and Mr. Taccone at “SNL,” using a laptop computer that Mr. Taccone bought on Craigslist.
Then, while their colleagues were rehearsing and rewriting that Saturday’s show, the group spent the morning of Dec. 15 shooting their video with a borrowed camera, using the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Chelsea to stand in for a multiplex cinema and Mr. Taccone’s girlfriend’s sister to play a convenience-store clerk. Mr. Schaffer spent the next night - and morning - editing the video and working with technicians to bring it up to broadcast standards. Finally, at about 11 p.m. on Dec. 17, the four learned from Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of “SNL,” that “Lazy Sunday” would be shown on that night’s show.
More KDM100 (iPod Edition)…
31Grand will be previewing a couple of the videos in the PodART show at scopeMIAMI December 1 - 4th. One of them is MTAA’s own KDM100 (iPod Edition).
If you’re down there, check it out. 31Grand will be in RM203 in the TOWNHOUSE (150 20th St. at Collins Ave., Miami Beach).
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More from Baghdad
Steve Mumford responds to the consternation in my last post (near the bottom).
To summarize, Steve recounts how his Iraqi friends see things as getting better and I ask “Better than what?” — things must have been pretty shitty if the current conditions in Iraq are better.
Steve’s response cut and pasted below (with a wee amount of formatting):
Hi Tim,Steve’s words could be used to bolster the right-wing radical agenda of Bush and Co. but that would be a misuse. We Americans were sold the war on national security fears (many never bought of course). The WMDs do not exist so the Bush administration and its apologists fall back on the excuse of freeing Iraqis from Hussein’s tyranny. Would the majority of Americans have supported this war if it was to be fought only to free Iraqis? Of course not.
You ask: things now in Iraq are better than what - all-out war and constant bombings?
It’s a fair question, and highlights the psychological divide between Americans and Iraqis. I think it’s very difficult for us to really understand what life under Saddam was like. The problem is made more difficult because it’s impossible to frame without a political subtext, ie., if you say things were worse under Saddam you can sound like a propagandist for Bush, with his hall-of-mirrors justifications for going to war. When I say that things were indescribably worse under Saddam, I’m not justifying our going to war in Iraq, just explaining how it’s possible for an Iraqi to be more hopeful for their future now than in the last 30 years.
When you get to know Iraqis well and personally you begin to see the scars from Saddam. It’s not enough to catalog the bizarre and horrific crimes, the Caligula-like escapades through Baghdad, the arbitrary arrests and beatings, the sense of complete irrationality and injustice that marked these years. It’s the feeling of residual fear, frustration and hopelessness that I sometimes see in my friends. It’s a country suffering from post-traumatic stress, where ambition and courage are thwarted and even the lives of the living have, in a sense, been lost.
My friend Esam Pasha told me about a conversation he had with Naseer Hasan, the poet, back in the 90s. He was describing his anger at the Baathist regime, his having to live in fear, not being able to talk openly in public about anything related to politics (almost everything, you had to talk in kind of bland code), the abuses of his military service. Naseer is 15 years older. As a communist party member, he spent 5 years on the run, hiding with relatives, after a colleague was captured and he feared that under torture he’d give his name up.
Naseer said, “Look, you can’t think of it like that. You can’t wish for things to get better, because you’ll become obsessed. You must think of the regime as an unwelcome house guest that you can never ask to leave; instead you have to get used to them in your house, and all your daily life things are just done knowing that they are around you.” Esam says this helped him a lot.
Naseer feels he lost the best years of his life to this regime, the years we take for granted in the West, when you’re young, energetic, and the world seems new.
Another artist, one of Baghdad’s bright lights in painting, often suffers from depression. He says his military service still haunts him. And he wasn’t in any wars - just having to serve in an army where cruelty and arbitrariness marked each day. He often stood up to the abusive officers, yet he’s haunted by his failures, and the fear of those days which are often vividly recalled in his dreams.
Perhaps I can’t convince you that this is worse than war - but it is. I’ve seen a little of the war out here, though not much. I’ve found that I’m not greatly affected, on a psychological level, because these events are over relatively quickly and I have a relatively healthy ego. But imagine a trauma which is not as great, but goes on for years, with no end in sight, each hope dashed, each avenue of escape cut off, each slip of the tongue a cause for paranoia. This, your life since birth.
The only analogy that I can come up with for this is Stalinist Russia. In this sense the Bush administration got it wrong: they imagined that they were liberating the French from the Nazis. It’s obviously more complicated when we invade a country with a homegrown tyranny, and we’ve compounded the problem with inadequate resources and bad decisions. But even so, I think that many Iraqis feel they are better off now, and most look to the future as having real potential for positive change.
More blast from MTAA’s past
While rooting around for the image in this post, I found an old photo of M.River and me in our V-TAV gallery.
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Mini mine
Pictured with an iPod and a Kerry/Edwards t-shirt.
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More artstar.tv
In the comments on this post, Christopher Fahey says (quoting me):
Yes. It’s not. But at least for those willing to lose their dignity off-camera they can attempt to keep it a secret. Whoring oneself proudly in front of a camera is much sadder than whoring oneself in private. [Not that I have any experience with either ;-)]It will be just a bunch of desperate artists doing their best to suck-up to the art world honchos as they watch their dignity being stabbed out like a stale cigarette.And how is that different from the real art world? I mean on the Deitch plane of existence, of course.
I think the show is brilliant, and I very much look forward to it. It’s obviously not targeted at artists with dignity, so you shouldn’t try to imagine yourself as a contestant on the show. Instead, you should think about the great entertainment that will result from watching all of the art world “types” that you probably hate humiliate themselves on television. Savor it.Yet another sad aspect of this soon-to-be fiasco: it probably won’t even make it to regular TV! Fashion designers are a billion times more popular (by my estimation) than artists in the mainstream culture, yet, Project Runway is on Bravo — which, seriously, is barely on TV. A show focusing on artists will be lucky if it makes it to cable access. If it’s extremely successful: PBS! Yet they’ll find more more-than-willing artists to exploit and degrade themselves than they know what to do with.
Millenium Park in Chicago
A good story in the NYTime’s about the opening of Chicago’s Millenium Park which the Times dubs “a sculpture garden on steroids.” To me it looks more like a theme park with a brain.
Don’t miss the slideshow.
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Midnight In The Deli
10 Pre-Rejected, Pre-Approved Performances: Midnight In The Deli
…we call him Frank.
You can see larger sizes on Flickr (you may need an account).
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Microsoft does blogs
But they’re called Spaces and the design is ugly as hell. Well, as ugly as the rest of MSN anyway.
And the HTML is not even close to being valid of course. At least the RSS feed seems to be valid. That’s weird. Why care about the RSS and not the HTML? Makes no sense.
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Meta-post: 1/17/05
This web site has gone through some problems the last few days.
First, M.River decided to pull-down a post of his because the discussion in the comments seemed to get a bit — how shall we say it? Well, let’s just say that it probably wasn’t fun for anyone. We hope no one got chased away permanently, no one’s feelings were hurt, and no one felt under attack.
Second, for some currently unknown reason, some of this blog’s posts were re-ordered. I’m not sure why.
Happy Martin Luther King Day (I’m lounging at home).
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Meta-post 01
This is a meta-post, a post about the workings of this site.
You may have noticed that I posted about DC 9/11 - EDR yet again. This is because it was officially added to the ‘off-line art’ section of the web site. Things added to the ‘off-line art’ and ‘on-line art’ sections of the web site also appear on the front page.
Perhaps the process isn’t the best. As new work is created and released, I’ll hype it by posting it to the ‘news’ section of the blog. Then, when I get around to it, I’ll post the official addition to the appropriate sub-section of the art archives. Sometimes this can get repetitive, my apologies.
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meta-post 04-24-05
I updated the MTAA-RR a bit today.
The front page now shows 20 posts by default instead of 10.
And the search should work better. You can now get up to 999 returns on the search page. It was a bit broke before and you would only get 10 search results no matter how many matches were found.
Some day I’ll fix the comments too :-)
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Merry X-Mas 2005…
…and Happy Holidays and etc.
The Infectious Nature of Holiday Cheer (2004, .MOV, 10.9MB, 3:31 min.)
Credits
A B&D Handmade production
Written & Directed by Bill Hallinan
The Players
T.Whid as John Q. Public
Andre Sala as Mr. Gift Boxes
Dawn Winchester as Fay Wray
Bill Hallinan as Pointer
The Crew
Photography by George Su
Prop Master, Andre Sala
Prop Support, Elece Blumberg
(Perhaps we’ll get something new next year.)
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McCoys featured in NYTimes review
The McCoys are featured in Roberta Smith’s review of
“CUT/Film as Found Object in Contemporary Video” in the NYTimes today.
The online version of the review features 2 images of the McCoys’ work: “Horror Chase” and “Learning From Las Vegas.” There’s also a slide show. If you want to see lots and lots of the McCoys great work, check out their flickr site.
Artists and work in the show: Soliloquy Trilogy (2002) by Candice Breitz | Video Quartet (2002) and Telephone (1995) by Christian Marclay | Ellipse (1998) by Pierre Huyghe | 24 Hour Psycho (1993) and Black and White (Babylon) (1996) by Douglas Gordon | Horror Chase (2002) and Learning from Las Vegas (2003) by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy | The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle) (2001); The Long Count (I Shook up the World) (2001); The Long Count (Thrilla in Manila) (2001); and Live Evil (2002) by Paul Pfeiffer | CNN Concatenated (2002) by Omer Fast | The Blink (2000-2001) by Michael Joaquin Grey
The show is on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum through September 11, 2005 (yoinks!).
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McCoys win Wired Rave award
Brooklyn’s own tech-art wizards, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy win the Wired Rave award for art!
Read all about it here.
Yo Kev, did you two go to the award ceremony? Did you run into Adam Curry?
Congrats!
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Maybe notstar.tv?
On the comments of this post, Dan of iconoduel.org points out that artstar.tv is being produced for Gallery HD, The Arts & Museum Channel which is broadcast on the VOOM hi-def satellite TV service.
Or, maybe not: Cablevision Shuts Down Voom Service.
(note: I mistakenly labeled the satellite service as ZOOM on a previous post.)
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McCoy’s new stuff = hot
I’m subscribed to the McCoys’ Flickr RSS feed and they’ve been posting new images like crazy today.
The new stuff looks great! Start here to check out the new images. The new stuff is in the ‘Clouds’ sets.
The McCoys are having a show of new works at Postmasters opening on the 4th of March, 2006.
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Marking Time @ Getty Center LA
MTAA’s 1YPV will be included in the Marking Time video screening at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
This ninety-minute screening surveys sixteen artist who incorporate the experience, memory, or anticipation of time’s passage into their single-channel video works. This screening is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Marking Time, currently on view at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE).It’s tomorrow night at 7:30PM. You can get more info and make reservations on the Getty’s web site. It’s free, but they charge you $7 to park.
The screening and exhibition is organized by Glenn R. Phillips, research associate and consulting curator, Department of Contemporary Programs and Research at the Getty Research Institute, in association with the Getty Research Institute’s 2004-2005 research theme “Duration.”
Christian Marclay @ Eyebeam tonight
From Eyebeam’s e-mail:
Wednesday evening artist Christian Marclay will screen and discuss his work as part of the Focal Point lecture series from Eyebeam’s Moving Image Studios. Marclay’s talk will include the seminal pieces Telephones and Record Players as well as his more recent work including The Bell and the Glass.It’s from 8:00PM - 10:00PM tonight and is *FREE* (with a suggested donation).
Mac mini!!!!
Just announced by the Jobs Himself at Macworld Expo SF 2005:
Mac mini
This machine is super-tiny and is perfect to be used in art installations. Can’t wait to get my hands on one but the store seems to be taking a beating right now.
UPDATE
Bought one :)
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LOW LEVEL ALL STARS
A copy-and-paster from Rhiz:
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: LOW LEVEL ALL STARS—Weds and Thurs at Deitch Projects#
Date: February 21, 2005 9:17:41 PM EST
To: list@rhizome.org
DEITCH PROJECTS AND THE NEW YORK UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL PRESENT:
LOW LEVEL ALL STARS
CURATED BY CORY ARCANGEL and RADICAL SOFTWARE GROUP
FEBRUARY 23 + FEBRUARY 24, 7-10PM
76 GRAND STREET, NEW YORK CITY
FREE!! PLUS FREE RED STRIPE
Deitch Projects is please to present a two-night music and video event, LOW LEVEL ALL STARS, in conjunction with the New York Underground Film Festival. Cory Arcangel of the BEIGE programming ensemble and the Radical Software Group have put together two nights celebrating the best in contemporary home hobbyist hacker aesthetics. Featuring musical performances each night by:
BODENSTANDIG 2000- who released Maxi German Rave Blast Hits 3 on Aphex Twins label Rephlex, definitively a CULT LEGEND ALBUM, made the first chip tune record out of old Ataris. FIRST NYC APPEARANCE! http://bodenstandig.de
TREEWAVE- Atari supergenius Paul Slocum and Laura Grey will be performing as Treewave, using hacked home electronics, dot-matrix printers and more to make music and videos. www.treewave.com/about.html
NULLSLEEP- 8bitpeoples member and Nintendo uber-nerd will be performing music and showing demo videos all programmed in assembly for the NES. Awesome!!!!! http://www.8bitpeoples.com/
Videos and other performances (including NES demos, ASCII movies, Atari break movies, C64 intros + more!!) will be featured, as well as interactive and explanatory portions familiarizing the audience with whats going on…in Corys words: THESE GUYS ARE THE REAL DEAL
Lucasfilms Nixes Star Wars Live Screening
The Seattle PI has an article about Lucasfilms sending a cease and desist letter to a local Seattle-based theater company. The company had been planning to do a live parody of Star Wars in which they would turn off the sound and redub it live. This brings up the question are parodies fair use? And if so, should copyright holders be allowed to order people not to parody their work?[ Lucasfilms Nixes Star Wars Live Screening, Slashdot ] #
Letter to Wichita
Mr. David Butler,Read all about this ridiculousness at NEWSgrist. #
I’m writing to express my outrage that you are allowing a special interest group to post brochures and a sign in the gallery to express their views on Middle Eastern politics in conjunction with Ms. Jacir’s exhibition “Where We Come From.”
I agree with Ms. Jacir:
“This is a complete infringement on my right to free speech, not to mention an insult to me as an artist. It is intolerable that I have to go through this just because of my background. I am sure no other artist would accept to work under such conditions. They are placing a huge unnecessary burden on my exhibit with the presence of the brochures which are intended to silence or censor my work. I am shocked that they would place such conditions in a the space of a museum.”
You are treading on a very slippery slope. If you were to exhibit work of a gay artist would you allow right-wing christians to display brochures and posters beside the exhibition explaining how gays are abominations? If it was an exhibition of Jewish artists would you allow neo-nazis or the KKK to express their views? These may sound like ridiculous speculations, but that is where this twisted logic leads.
I urge you to resist this pressure and allow artists’ voices to be heard in a neutral context. Do not allow special interest groups to take over your museum in their wrong-headed pursuit of “balance.”
Lazy Sunday SNL rap
You must download and watch this video because it’s really, really funny.
Lazy Sunday (QuickTime, .mov, 29.7MB, 02’22)
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Let’s all get stoopid
Man I can’t wait ‘til the American Dark Age! It’s going to be a blast! Your civil rights will be privatized by corporate feudalism, scientific fact will be just another opinion, and Great Moral Leader (appointed by Gawd™) will rule in benevolence until the end of days. What a bright and shining moment in our history!
It’s on the way, wooohooo!
A suburban American school board found itself in court Monday after it tried to placate Christian fundamentalist parents by placing a sticker on its science textbooks saying evolution was “a theory, not a fact.”via: Salon #
Atlanta’s Cobb County School Board, the second largest board in Georgia, added the sticker two years ago after a 2,300-strong petition attacked the presentation of “Darwinism unchallenged.” Some parents wanted creationism — the theory that God created humans as related in the Bible — to be taught alongside evolution.
Kuspit on digital art
I’ve only read the first two grafs. I totally agree with this:
The status and significance of the image changes in postmodern digital art: the image becomes a secondary manifestation — a material epiphenomen, as it were — of the abstract code, which becomes the primary vehicle of creativity. Before, the creation of material images was the primary goal of visual art, and the immaterial code that guided the process was regarded as secondary. Now, the creation of the code — more broadly, the concept — becomes the primary creative act. The image no longer exists in its own right, but now exists only to make the invisible code visible, whatever the material medium. It makes no difference to the code whether it appears as a two-dimensional or three-dimensional image.The Matrix of Sensations
Kitsch
n.Does anyone out there on the old WWW think that any of MTAA’s art work could be: a) classified as kitsh; or b) understood as commenting on kitsch?
Sentimentality or vulgar, often pretentious bad taste, especially in the arts: “When money tries to buy beauty it tends to purchase a kind of courteous kitsch” (William H. Gass).
adj.
Of, being, or characterized by kitsch: “The kitsch kitchen… has aqua-and-white gingham curtains and rubber duck-yellow walls painted in a fried-egg motif” (Suzanne Cassidy).
Kerry rocks
At kerryrocks.net
This image is blatantly being lifted from andreaharner.com :-)
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Kill Monty
This is a pretty simple game, just kill everything that moves: Kill Monty.
I guess “everything that moves” is named Monty? I dunno.
BTW, screw you Windows users, it’s Mac-only. Hah!
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KDM100 — rockin’ the new iPod
KDM100’s ‘album art’ for the iPod and iTunes
MTAA was asked to show a couple of pieces in a video exhibition to be shown exclusively on iPods. It’s being curated by Heather Stephens of 31Grand. We’ll have more details or the press release when we get them, but the show is coming up quick; the opening is December 9.
Of course we’re showing a special ‘iPod edition’ of the Karaoke DeathMatch 100 (coming soon to an Internet near you).
I’m very impressed with the new iPod (I picked up two 30 Gb models from the gallery yesterday). It’s super-thin, the screen is larger, it charged up quickly and transfered about 1.75 Gb of KDM100 video in a snap. The video looks and sounds great. Apple really did a good job and it makes me salivate that I don’t have a 5G model (yet).
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KDM 100 stills
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KDM100 preview TODAY!
We’ll be showing a preview version of our new piece, Karaoke DeathMatch 100, at our studio today.
The location is 60 N. 6th St., in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
This coincides with the closing reception for the summer group show, There’s A City In My Mind, at Southfirst gallery (more info).
Get there between 2 and 6 PM to check it out.
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KDM100 = done!
Last night I finally finished Karaoke Deathmatch 100. WooHoo! It comes to about 18GB of video.
Now, we just need to load it up on our new Mac mini, pack it into a crate (along with M.River) and accost the town of Leonding, Austria with our caterwauling for Leonart ‘05 (german).
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Katrina and New Orleans
Reading the press about the aftermath of Katrina is sure to enrage any person that isn’t a total partisan zombie. Bush, FEMA, Homeland Security — disgraces all. But the governor of LA and the mayor of New Orleans probably have some answering to do as well. I think it was Wednesday, my fiance and I were watching a press conference with the governor and she was practically incoherent, almost raving. Think what you want about Guiliani (I hate the bastard), he did provide comfort and leadership in those dark days immediately following 9/11.
But I think the Feds deserve the majority of blame for the New Orleans disaster. Bush’s “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” is one of the most disgusting things ever said on national television. He’s either criminally stupid, criminally incompetent or criminally negligent — take your pick.
Also see CNN’s comparison of the Bushie’s rhetoric opposed to reality. It’s simple to extrapolate to Iraq where we don’t have a free (english) press operating to get the reality.
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Karaoke DeathMatch shooting complete
We spent all day yesterday (which I heard was a nice day in NYC) drinking and singing karaoke and shooting it all on video.
M.River has some behind the scenes pics on his tinjail blog (start here and work back).
Super big thanks to Bill Hallinan, André Sala and George Su for donating their time, equipment and talent so generously.
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Karaoke Deathmatch! [coming soon]
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Karaoke Deathmatch 100 stuff
MTAA are working on a piece called Karaoke Deathmatch 100. You can find earlier posts about it here and here.
I want to re-title it to Karaoke Deathmatch 100 AKA Self-portrait With Karaoke but M and I haven’t come to a consensus. Regardless, we’re considering doing a few different versions of it.
The first is a pretty straight-forward video using custom-built OSX software to present the 100 clips. Alex Galloway is doing the programming and I just got the first version last night and it’s hot. It probably could have been done as a DVD-Video, but having it run off a computer hard drive allows the hours of footage to loop with no muss or fuss for the gallery. Also, it plays back in a random order which would have been impossible with a DVD-Video. This version is going to be shown at an arts festival in Leonding, Austria in September.
To coincide with the closing BBQ of Southfirst’s summer show, we’re going to show a special preview in our studio this Sunday (our studio is right above Southfirst). More info here.
Another version we’re considering is a limited-time videoblog of all the footage. Each day, 1 round of the deathmatch would be posted and people would be asked to vote for the best by commenting on the blog post of the video they liked best. Not sure if we’ll do this.
And the final version, which may be called simply Self-portrait with Karaoke, would be a dual-channel Flash application that allows people to choose a song, then both M and I perform the exact same song at the exact same time.
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Kac-head
This Wired News article describes a new installation by Eduardo Kac at the Exploratorium in San Francisco: DNA Spirals Into Artists’ Medium.
Short description of the piece, Move 36: A genetically-modified tomato plant planted on a chess board with a couple of video projections.
Personally, I don’t see how his work is interesting and evidently the art world doesn’t either as he’s showing at a science museum. Remember kids, we don’t want New Media art showing up in science museums!
Then there is this strange section of the article:
Kac said the plant is rooted in the square where Deep Blue made the move that flummoxed Kasparov, but it’s actually on a different square, and the board is not oriented correctly.
The article doesn’t explain if these are mistakes by the artist or somehow related to the content of the piece.
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Jump to Gmail
The other night, during Cory Arcangel’s presentation at Jihui, I noticed he used Gmail as his mail client. “Hmm,” I thought, “if someone as smart as Cory is using it, perhaps I should check it out again.”
So I embarked on what I pompously called my “Grand Email Unification Experiment.” It seems to be working. I forwarded my two most-used email addresses to the Gmail account and started using it as my single access point.
POP or not to POP
At first I used it to connect via POP and download to my client but I realized that this was destroying the purpose of having it in one place. The real power would come from the filtering and the labeling features in Gmail so that I could get my email exactly how I like it anywhere with a web browser handy. So now I’ve just decided to use the POP feature to download the email once in a while (essentially a back-up for when the ‘net goes down and I need to find some essential info).
Spam
Gmail’s spam filtering seems very good. After a few days I’ve only gotten 2 or 3 false negatives (it was spam but wasn’t marked as such) and no false positives. I was using a 3rd-party service to filter spam, but Gmail catches more. By forwarding one’s email to Gmail, then connecting via POP to download one could use Gmail as a free spam filter. You won’t download the spam and would just need to check Gmail once in a while to check for false positives.
No one needs to know
The feature that allows one to add accounts to Gmail means that no one needs to know that I’m using Gmail. I can send email from any of my other addresses.
One gripe
Gmail doesn’t work as well with Safari as it does with Firefox. I prefer Safari for browsing and Firefox for Gmail. I wish there was a way to set the Gmail Notifier app to open any browser, not the default browser set in Safari preferences.
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Joywar in intelligent agent vol. 4 no. 2
Painter and blogger Joy Garnett gives a first-person account of her small copyright skirmish (Joywar) over a 25-year-old photograph she transformed into a contemporary painting in Steal This Look available now in intelligent agent’s new issue.
She gives me credit for coming up with the name Joywar but it wasn’t me (wish it was). I did post the first mirror to the image in question and it’s still on-line here.
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iTunes now supports video
You can drop a video into iTunes 4.8 and it will be added to the library. There is a new button on the bottom of iTunes (where the ‘add playlist’, etc buttons are). Once you start playing the video, click it to watch the video fullscreen.
Some videos open in fullscreen automatically… at least a trailer I downloaded from Apple did, while a video I created myself (in After Effects) did not.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
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Jacir resolution
It’s very good news that Wichita State University and the Mid-Kansas Jewish Federation came to their senses and are allowing Ms. Jacir’s exhibition to continue with no strings attached.
According to the MKJF their excuse is — basically — that they’re clueless. Judith Press, Executive Director of MKJF,
We made a request to the University, and we are under the impression at this point that this was not an appropriate request […] We did not realize that this was considered inappropriate or infringing on the artist’s rights. We need to not ask for that if it is not appropriate.The University should have known it was inappropriate, and if not, they should have consulted with the professionals running the museum in order to determine the appropriateness of the “request” from the MKJF. But according to a commenter on NEWSgrist posting under the name Debbie Gordon (with a wichita.edu email address), “the lead donor in a major building project on campus. Someone the news got to her about the exhibit, and she threatened to pull her donation.” So we see what sort of “request” this was — one that is very hard to refuse.
It’s a cartoon for crying out loud
I’m with James Wagner on this one:
It’s time for all newspapers, and all nations, everyone who has a media outlet, to make themselves a common target of those who would threaten the freedoms which support liberal societies.
Muslims are not, as you will be told, the only community that is touchy about attacks on its holy figures or even just ordinary heros. Thousands of Muslims were killed in the early 1990s by enraged Hindus in India over the Ayodhya Mosque, which Hindus insisted was built on the site of a shrine to a Hindu holy figure. No one accuses Hindus in general of being unusually narrowminded and aggressive as a result. Or, the Likudniks in Israel protested the withdrawal from Gaza, and there were dark mutterings about what happened to Rabin recurring in the case of Sharon. The “sacred” principle at stake there is just not one most people in the outsider world would agree with the Likudniks about.#
It wasn’t just drunk talk!
A WELSH rugby fan cut off his own testicles to celebrate his team’s defeat of old enemy England in Cardiff on Saturday.Don’t really know why I’m linking to this… #
Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win the Six Nations opener that he told fellow drinkers at a social club, “If Wales win I’ll cut my balls off”, it was reported yesterday.
via: Rugby fan carries out threat to cut off testicles after Wales win
Is Anish Kapoor a dumb ass?
It certainly sounds like it. [More info here and here]
I don’t agree with Cory Doctorow that Chicagoans should ‘melt the thing down for slag.’ It’s a very beautiful sculpture and there is never a good reason to destroy art no matter how ignorant or greedy the creator is perceived.
Whenever I hear anyone advocating the destruction of art it really makes me get queasy in the gut. It’s an extremely ugly thing to advocate.
What would probably be more helpful is to contact the artist’s representatives and urge them politely to council the artist to adopt a non-commercial creative commons license for this public art work.
He’s represented by Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York and Lisson Gallery, London.
update:
This is the email I sent to Ivy Crewdson, director of Barbara Gladstone Gallery. I urge others to contact the gallery as well.
Subject: Cloud Gate copyrightupdate the 2nd:
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:50:05 -0500
Hello Ivy Crewdson,
I’m writing to urge you to council Anish Kapoor to consider adopting a less restrictive copyright concerning his work ‘Cloud Gate’ in Chicago.
Non-commercial images of this art work should be allowed to be taken by the general public. I’m sure you would agree that the public good is served by allowing citizens to take photos and video of this beautiful art work. The piece is destined to become one of the major landmarks of Chicago but only if the public is allowed to enjoy it fully.
Perhaps using a Creative Commons [http://www.creativecommons.org] license would help you solve this matter. I suggest using a license entitled the “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License”. This license protects the work from commercial uses and derivative works.
There is a bit of online direct protest happening regarding this matter. See this web site for more information: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/07/¬
please_add_photos_of.html
On ISP censorship
As part of a recent research project, [Christian Ahlert] posted a section of Mill’s On Liberty on the internet (which is clearly in the public domain), then issued unfounded copyright complaints against it (1). One internet service provider (ISP) removed the chapter almost immediately. This illustrates the problem with self-censorship procedures, which rely on hidden judgements being made by unaccountable bodies. [spiked-online]
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Ippolito rebuts
Still following the discussion started by Jon Ippolito…
Philip Galanter rebutted Ippolito’s original assertions via Rhizome. And now Ippolito is back with a reply.
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Ippolito rebutted
Philip Galanter offers a rebuttal to Jon Ippolito’s Internet2: Orchestrating the End of the Internet? on this thread at Rhizome.
To be completely honest, I have no idea who’s right. They both sound right. I’ve never known Jon to be wrong about much. Let’s hope for a reply to this rebuttal from him.
(I mentioned Jon’s essay in this post.)
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Ippolito: MPAA looking to break Internet2
The technology behind Internet2 *breaks* anything remotely resembling a broadcast business model, which is why the MPAA will do its best to disarm the technology by installing Digital Rights Management directly in its routers to stop interesting content from ever getting into the pipeline.Read the entire essay: Internet2: Orchestrating the End of the Internet? #
Interview with Olia Lialina
Check out an interview with one of the original net.artists (note the dot) at The Thing:
Online Newspapers by Olia Lialina
Interview with the net.art veteran by James Allan
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How to get into the popular sushi place in your neighborhood
This is a hot NYC tip!
It turns out it’s really simple to get into the hot sushi restaurant in your neighborhood, here’s the secret:
go during the 4th of July fireworks display :-)
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Interesting new work
Today, Peter Horvath and Turbulence released Peter’s new web art work, Intervals.
From the web site:
Intervals explores a series of characters whose investigation of self and identity unfold and elide through a sequence of cinematic interludes.You need to make sure you have a broadband connection and a fairly healthy computer to view the work and QuickTime is required as well. #
[…]
Horvath’s innovative use of pop-up windows create a virtual collage that posit identity as a series of random ‘memory acts’ but whose inquiry accumulate into a slowly revealing narrative of the human condition.
Infinite Phil (Hartman/Donahue)
[8MB .mov]
Infinite Fill
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In the studio
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The Infinite Fill Show opening tonight 6:00 - 8:30PM
The Infinite Fill Show is opening this evening at Foxy Production in NYC. The show is curated by new media/dirt-style superstar Cory Arcangel and his sister Jamie Arcangel and includes too many artists to name here. Go here for a list of the artists.
Too many artists to name here except for one of course: MTAA is proud to take part with a new piece completed just for the show entitled ‘Infinite Phil (Hartman/Donahue)’ (8MB .mov).
The gallery is tiny. If you’re planning on seeing anything I suggest you get there as early as possible (5:59PM).
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Images from getawayexperiment.net
[click thumbs to see larger images]
getawayexperiment.net is a project by Nathaniel Stern and Marcus Neustetter which “commissioned local sign-makers in Johannesburg to ‘re-mix’ five websites, by painting stylized versions of each image on their main pages.” The project has a lot more than that going on with it and I urge everyone to check it out.
Turbulence.org (who commissioned the project) was one of the web sites re-mixed in this way and MTAA’s thumbnail for 1YPV was caught in the process resulting in the images above.
update:
Read the net art news blurb about getawayexperiment.net.
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IKEA WALKTHROUGH v2.3.1
For those of us are getting a bit older and find ourselves giving into the ‘nesting’ impulse this guide is a must read:
IKEA WALKTHROUGH v2.3.1
This link was forwarded to me by M.River (whom I never thought would nest, but there you go). We’ve recently rented a studio and that, I suppose, is a form of nesting for net artists who are used to our computers being our studios.
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If you are reading this…
…please post a comment.
If you are reading this via an RSS news reader, this is the link to the web site where you can post a comment.
This is just sort of a very casual survey of who’s reading our little blog here.
Thanks.
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Idiot of The Day
The state’s school superintendent, Kathy Cox, has proposed striking the word evolution from Georgia’s science curriculum and replacing it with the phrase “biological changes over time.”
I hate ignorant people. I hate ignorant people who attempt to force their ignorance on others even more. So I don’t like this person.
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I’m now a proponent of ID
OK, OK, I’m now a proponent of ID — Incompetent Design!
The only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution’s way of modifying something or else it’s just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.
How To Hack Copyright for Fun and Profit
Yo! Reminder! Tonight!
Columbia University School of the Arts[ via: How To Hack Copyright for Fun and Profit ] #
presents
A Lecture by Jon Ippolito:
“How To Hack Copyright for Fun and Profit”
Thursday, December 2
6:00 PM
702 Hamilton Hall
Columbia University
116th and Broadway
New York City
Jon Ippolito is an artist, a curator at the Guggenheim museum, and co-founder of the Still Water program for network art and culture at the University of Maine where he is an Assistant Professor of new media.
Mr. Ippolito’s lecture, “How to Hack Copyright for Fun and Profit,” will examine alternative approaches to intellectual property and creativity.
Here’s Jon’s abstract:
Now that the music labels have sued 6,000 college kids and universities are spending more on anti-plagiarism software than on student art exhibitions, you’d think young people would finally grok the message that sharing is bad. But as this presentation aims to demonstrate, a cadre of dedicated artists, musicians, and activists are offering digital creators an end-run around broadcast flags and RIAA summonses—from tools for embedding open licenses in music files to an online environment for sharing art and code to a semantic search engine for remixable art and video. In conclusion, this presentation will examine the question of whether such innovations are sufficient to prevent the lockdown of creative culture.
How do you spell loozer?
You would think that with all the art festivals, openings, fairs, parties, carnivals, feasts, festivities, performances, installations, exhibitions, jubilees, and shows going on in NYC this week MTAA would be in one or have been invited to at least one.
Wouldn’t you?
Well, I would.
Find the whole list here.
For the past few years I haven’t really paid any attention to this stuff because I guess I didn’t really care. But now that M.River and I have made our decision to start doing some gallery work (not just on-line hijinks), I find it a tad troubling just how outside the whole art world thing we actually are. Bah!
Good luck everybody! Send me some free passes!
(PS, please commiserate in the comments if you’re feeling left out too.)
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Hot shit
Massive Manure Fire Burns Into Third Month (AP)
Makes me proud to be a carnivore — oy!
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Homeland Insecurity Advisory System
Today, in conjunction with the US Department of Art & Technology, Jonah Brucker-Cohen launched his newest project, the Homeland Insecurity Advisory System. The Homeland Insecurity Advisory System (HIAS) is a public rating system that allows people from across the globe to determine the US Government’s Threat Level by collectively rating RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) feeds from major US news sources.
link: Homeland Insecurity Advisory System
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Heavy duty postcards - film at 11!
Roberta Smith in the NYT:
Lifted your mail lately? Counted the number of ostentatious announcement cards printed on stock that approaches, and sometimes exceeds, the thickness of cardboard?uuummm. no?
It is one more sign that some New York art galleries of the contemporary kind have more money than they know what to do with, and that the competition for attention-getting frivolities in the overpopulated art scene is on the rise.
Each day’s mail seems to deliver a series of challenges and counter-challenges from the galleries that consider themselves in the upper echelon of the upper echelon.
via Art Promoted Heavily (Even in Your Mailbox)
Help: 1 year performance video
MTAA’s web art project 1 year performance video is a victim of it’s own success.
The piece lives on Turbulence.org and it’s causing bandwidth overages.
It’s a commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. They are a not-for-profit arts organization that has been commissioning web and net art projects since the early days of the medium and they simply can’t afford the overage charges.
If you have resources to help us continue to serve this piece on the web please contact T.Whid using the email link on mteww.com/mtaaRR (near bottom of the left nav).
If you are considering helping out, check out the piece: 1 year performance video.
mriver adds:
Please, please, please. We’ll behave for once AND we’ll give you a real live MTAA drawing. (9 x 12, ink on Arches watercolor paper) Ooo- la-la.
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Has Google become evil?
Check out this story over on eWeek
This is pretty funked up I must say, from the article:
When Oceana challenged the ban, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google responded with an e-mail advising the group that it doesn’t accept ads with “language that advocates against Royal Caribbean.”
That sounds like an incredibly amateurish sort of thing to say, no? Did they have an intern write it or something? Anyway, it’s sad. I’m used to thinking of Google on the side of the Good&trade, but it’s looking more and more like the power has gone to their heads.
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Hang on to your hats…
The Contagious Media Showdown has been slashdotted!
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Happy Thanksgiving
A giant balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade snagged a street light near Times Square and caused part of it to fall into the crowd, injuring two people, according to police and eyewitness accounts.
via: Balloon Injures Two at Macy’s Parade - Yahoo! News
Hair Metal Redux
It’s Music Video Week on the MTAA-RR!
Well, not really, but this song is so funny, but at the same time very catchy, that I had to post it. It’s from a band called The Darkness and they are a shiny new version of the hair metal bands of yore. They’re even from the UK, just like Def Leppard. Watch the video, it could almost be 1983 all over again: spandex, hair, operatic metal vocals, and guitars!
Link to high bandwidth real media version of “Keep Your Hands Off My Woman (Motherfucker)”!
Go to The Darkness’ official site for more video options.
My question: Is it ironic or not?
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Greater New York gender equality
Via Newsgrist
Though PS1 positions itself as a venue for cutting edge work, it clearly has not overcome historical prejudices that privilege men over women. The system is still broken, and the efforts made by the PS1 staff to examine work from a wide range of artists were severely flawed.I know nothing about this other than what was found at this website: http://www.brainstormersreport.net/.
On Monday, March 7th, the press office at PS1 released the following numbers about the gender balance of the show:
100 men > 50 women
in other words
33% < acceptable
Google video upload sucks
Good news: Google has launched their Video Upload Program.
Bad new: appears to be Windows only! WTF?!
And the weird thing is, they don’t even have a system requirements section! There’s a weird little instruction page that assumes that everyone has a Windows machine. You would think that with the popularity of video on the Mac (no matter how you cut it, video is one of the Mac’s strongest points), they would have figured out a way to let Mac users upload video!
So I say, screw you Google! (until you allow Mac and Linux users to upload video, then I will love you again.)
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Google goes Van Gogh
Is it Van Gogh’s birthday or something? I guess it is. I didn’t know our birthdays were so close, mine is tomororow :)
Clicking the logo on Google’s site takes you to their results for ‘vincent van gogh.’
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Getting our asses spammed off
Just a note. I might be closing comments on this site until I find a solution to the spam issue we’re dealing with.
Most readers probably don’t see a problem, but, trust me, it’s there.
really pisses me off
+++
In other news, M.River is throwing me a bachelor’s party tonight. It will be pretty tame. We’re going to Peter Luger Steak House for dinner (best steaks in NYC), then off to a private speakeasy for some poker.
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Get Behind Me Satan
(OK, OK, I know I’m entering onto thin ice here with my little music review. M intimately knows a real, live professional music writer. Please be kind to my amateurish peckings.)
I’ve been a pretty big White Stripes fan for a while. M and I even did an artwork involving them. Their new album, “Get Behind Me Satan (iTMS link),” is pretty damn good. The garage-y rock stuff like “Blue Orchid” and “Instinct Blues” really… well, those songs really rock. Jack and Meg know how to use older blues or roots genres while updating them in a way so that they seem fresh.
Take “The Nurse” for example. It starts with piano and vibraphone but interspersed through the beat is some great heavy drum and guitar noise that takes it beyond the average rock-band-gonna-experiment toss-away tunes that bands like The Hives use as filler.
The White Stripes are musically fresh, not lyrically fresh. What bugs me about the album is embodied in the title: “Get Behind Me Satan.” WTF? Jack, man, you’re a white boy from Detroit who grew up in the 80s & 90s. You’re not a black man from the 30s Mississippi delta. Please drop this tired lyrical nostalgia and sing about what you know, not what you wish you knew.
And so ends my nickel review of The White Stripes, “Get Behind Me Satan.”
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Get yer net art on 2007
Rhizome has an open call for net art commissions. You could score between US$1k and US$3K to MAKE SOME GODDAMN NET ART FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
Deadline is April 2, 2007 and that ain’t no joke.
Get on over there and find out how to submit a proposal for chrissakes!
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wURLdBook Research
wURLdBook’s mission is to help people stay connected to information on the Web. wURLdBook is a free web based information aggregator. wURLdBook offers you a new way to unobtrusively navigate, collect, categorize, annotate, clip, archive, find, publish RSS (including enclosures) and share information with others that is important to you on the web.wURLdBook Research
Cleaning out my closet
Actually, I was cleaning up my bookmarks and I found lots of very cool bits of info that most web/graphic/visual designers would find useful so I list them below, have fun.
logotypes - company logos in vector formats
NS4 compatible 3 column CSS layout
PNG behavior - get your alpha on in MSIE
Javascript & Iframes - a good breakdown
Zeldman’s good CSS links
Mezzoblue’s css crib sheet
Lipsum generator - all the gibberish that’s fit to print
CSS2 reference - I use this on a weekly basis
Perhaps I’ll keep adding to this list… let me know if you find it helpful.
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Webmonkey closes
Is it the end of an era? Or just an error? Webmonkey closes.
I learned much from Webmonkey back in the day. But Webmonkey, along with their non-standards supporting interface, has simply been left behind.
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Speaking of enhancing the MTAA-RR
On my way to the deli I wondered if there is a plist parser written in PHP. Why would one want such a thing and what the hell is a plist you ask?
To answer the second question first, a plist (property list) is an XML format (created by Apple I believe) that is used “to store, organize and access standard data types” (definition from Apple’s site). Generally, it’s used in Mac OS X to store user preferences and other info that an application might need. If you use Mac OS X, look in ~/Library/Preferences to see examples.
But why would we want a PHP parser for this stuff? So you can parse plists anywhere that’s why. Why would you want to parse plists anywhere? I have one very specific application in mind. I want to parse my NetNewsWire sync data and display it somewhere on this blog.
When you sync NetNewsWire 2.0 via FTP it stores the state of your feed reading in plist format on your server. If I had a PHP parser I could share my real feeds in a sort-of blogroll deal. I’m suspicious that some people who have HUGE blogrolls don’t really read them all. If I used NetNewsWire’s sync data I could share my REAL daily feed reading habits.
I found one written in Python, but no PHP.
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Quicktime 7 released
The new Quicktime 7 is pretty cool. Only for Mac OS (both panther and tiger) for now. Haha PC users!
I’ve already upgraded to Pro. The scaling to fullscreen is definitely very eye-candiful. Worked great on my G4 1.25 with a 64MB ATI video card (running two monitors).
They’re boasting an awful lot about the this new H.264 (there’s a catchy name) format, but I can’t find any damn content on Apple’s site to watch. Anybody know where any is? Somebody point me to some of the HD quality stuff, please!
There are a bunch of new features in QTPro. You can capture audio and video right in QT (don’t have to fire up FCP or iMovie anymore, yeah!); more editing controls (easier to create in- and out-points); export concurrently; the interface is redone and cooler; and this new H.264 (damn marketing must have gotten to that name) codec of course (where is any? where? where? I’ll do some tests; maybe post them later).
Definitely a solid upgrade and it’s nice to get some Tiger tech without upgrading the OS.
Update: I should have added this, from Apple:
Installation of QuickTime 7 will disable the QuickTime Pro functionality in prior versions of QuickTime. If you proceed with this installation, you must purchase a new QuickTime 7 Pro key to regain QuickTime Pro functionality.update the 2nd: Finally found some of the HD .movs using h.264, here ‘tis.
RSS: Really Stupid Syndication?
Or, does RSS = DoS?
Is RSS too stupid to behave properly on the Internet? CmdrTaco over on Slashdot seems to think so:
We’ve seen similiar problems over the years. RSS (or as it should be called, “Speedfeed”) is such a useful thing, it’s unfortunate that it’s ultimately just very stupid.I’m not sure what he means by stupid. Is the tech stupid? There is a tag for ‘last updated’ in RSS but not all readers and aggregators pay attention to it I guess.
powered by Blosxom
After reading all about the new Movable Type 3 licensing scheme, I can’t think of a recent situation that better illustrates the huge chasm between open-source software (OSS) and the proprietary kind.
Hundreds of people who have poured their imagination and time into creating websites based on MT will now have to deal with the developer’s new license plan which, IMO, restricts the creative use of the software. (See this post on the Eyebeam reBlog for more.) To be clear, I wish the developers of Movable Type the best of luck; this whole situation seems to simply be growing pains. But to put it simply, these licenses underline this simple fact: with proprietary software, it’s not OUR software, it’s THEIR software.
Luckily for Blosxom users, our blogging software is released under the MIT license which is almost absurdly non-restrictive. We’ll never need to post in outrage because our toy is about to be taken away, or rail at Rael. We’re all as much owners and developers of Blosxom as is our main developer and that is the beauty of OSS.
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PodART makes Digg’s front page (sorta)
OK, OK — I know it was a dupe; I know it was totally self-serving since it led to a blog post that also mentioned PodART and a link to MTAA, but on my second post ever submitted to Digg, I made the front page (sitting pretty at 524 diggs currently — oops, make that 526. They just roll in so fast!).
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OS X 10.4 Tiger upgrade
I upgraded to Tiger last night. The installation went extremely smoothly. I’m using a single 1.8GHz G5 with 2GB of RAM.
Digression 1: I still think it’s funny that the entire contents of my 1st Mac’s hard disk could fit into memory on my current Mac. Digression 2: Yes, I am a loser for being home on a Friday night upgrading my operating system.
INSTALLATION This is all I did: backed-up all my data to an external firewire drive, after I was sure it was safely backed-up, I stuck in the Tiger DVD, chose upgrade and an hour later I was done. Simple. Don’t believe the geek-hype: you don’t need to erase the disk and install clean. Of course, it’s good idea to keep things running smoothly. I just didn’t have time to deal with re-installing all my apps, preferences, etc, etc.
DASHBOARD Dashboard is phat. P.H.A.T. Look for an MTAA widget of some sort soon. Not sure what, but it’s gotta be art. Since I use a 3 button mouse, I set the 3rd button to launch the Dashboard.
SPOTLIGHT I’m kinda torn about Spotlight. I’ve used Quicksilver for a while and like it very much. Spotlight is similar. I guess they can live together happily, but I would like to use one or the other for simplicity. One thing that bums me big time about Spotlight is that it doesn’t seem to index iTunes playlists. It indexes song files, but not playlists. Which sucks. What doesn’t suck is that it indexes text inside email, PDFs and other documents — which I don’t think Quicksilver can do. Maybe I will need to use both…
SAFARI Safari RSS hasn’t done much for me, I use NetNewsWire and will continue :-) One nice thing is that you can set the default app for RSS feeds within Safari, so one click can subscribe you within NetNewsWire.
MAIL I wish you could configure which side the sidebar appears on. I hated the drawer (hopefully the whole drawer idea will die, it’s always been extremely dumb) as much as anybody, but I got used to it being on the right. Now the sidebar is on the left. Also, I don’t think it’s as clear as the old drawer design. It’s not as easy to see which mailboxes have new mail since they aren’t bold. Overall it’s a plus IMO, the design is cleaner and clearer.
FONTS My fonts have been funky for a while. Weird stuff where the wrong font gets activated and renders all crazy in Safari. This doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore.
MISC So far the only problem I’ve had is that I needed to configure Apache to use PHP (the Apache config file got overwritten by the default install). That took all of 1 minute. I did have to install the latest version of my mouse driver. Also, I’ve upgraded other apps like BBEdit and Transmit to the newest versions too. Most of my apps are working flawlessly.
Overall a great update!
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NYTimes does RSS
The New York Times finally has its own RSS Feeds, get ‘em while they’re hot.
Sure, for a long time you could get NYTimes RSS feeds via UserLand but now the Times has its very own feeds.
Maybe Rhizome can get some feeds now? I mean — damn — the old grey lady’s got feeds, you would think a progressive contemporary art site focused on new media could embrace some (not so) new tech. Wouldn’t you?
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NetNewsWire Pro demo expiration
NetNewsWire Lite (NNW) introduced me to the wonderful world of RSS (XML) feeds some time ago. RSS-enabled websites and an excellent aggregator like NNW make an info-junky’s wet dreams come true. RSS is crack to HTML’s cocaine.
After using NNW Lite for a long, long time I’m thinking of upgrading to the Pro version and using it’s Weblog Editor to post to this site. To make the editor useful for me I wrote a little applescript that uploads a post to my website when I save it (via NNW’s ‘post’ command) to a specific folder on my hard drive.
But when I downloaded the Pro version I couldn’t use it. The demo had expired. Darn. I must have demo’d the Pro version long ago and forgotten about it. What is an aspiring geek to do? Attempt a hack of course.
But listen up first! Ranchero, the makers of NetNewsWire Pro, seem to be extremely cool Mac OS X developers so don’t use this tip to rip them off! Use this tip only if you’re seriously considering an upgrade and find yourself with an expired demo. It would be extremely UNCOOL to steal from small Mac developers putting out great software like NNW.
And now to the little hack:
It’s ridiculously easy to get the demo working again. This tip is for Panther users and you need to have Xcode installed too. Go to your ~/Library/Preferences folder and find this file: com.ranchero.NetNewsWire.plist (ah yes, the .plist, where all good mac hacks start ;-)
Xcode comes with a little app called the Property List Editor. If you double-click NNW’s .plist file it will open in that app. Next, click the arrow next to “Root”, scoll down to the entry “FirstRun” and double-click on it’s value so it’s editable and change it to something that isn’t more than 30 days ago, like today. And that’s it, NNW Pro should work fine for the next 30 days.
Of course .plist files are simply XML files that can be edited in any text editor so you don’t NEED the Property List Editor, its just a tad easier.
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Microsoft to introduce PDF competitor
Computerworld reports that Microsoft will be including a new document format called ‘Metro’ with Longhorn. Apparently, Metro is intended to be a competitor to Adobe’s PDF and Postscript formats. The format will be open and available for royalty-free licensing, and will be based on XML.This sorta puts the whole Adobe aquiring Macromedia deal into a new light.
via: Microsoft to Introduce PDF competitor ‘Metro’ (The /. commentary is actually not that bad on this one. )
Is a Mac OS X RSS aggregator *SMACKDOWN* brewing?
It certainly looks that way:
The reigning champ, NetNewsWire, is heading for a BIG upgrade.
But a feisty contender, PulpFiction, is on the horizon.
Looks like it could get interesting….
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iTunes playlists and Spotlight
I was a Quicksilver user before I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4.
Spotlight steals the command-spacebar key combo that launches Quicksilver and the functionality is similar so I decided to see if Spotlight could be used as a replacement.
One thing I really liked about Quicksilver was that it could find an iTunes playlist and let you navigate to items inside it. I use this for one and one thing only — launching my WNYC MP3 streams.
For some reason, Spotlight wasn’t indexing the playlist that I keep the streams in. So I created a little Automator action to launch the stream for WNYC AM 820. It was super-easy (much easier than AppleScript) and only took two actions: “Find Songs in iTunes” and “Start iTunes Playing.” Saved as wnyc.app, I can now type command-spacebar, then type wnyc and launch my stream. Easy-peasy :-)
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Super-drool
Dual 2.5GHz G5 features liquid cooling
As briefly noted earlier today, Apple’s top-of-the-line dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 features a new liquid cooling system that is supposed to be more efficient than a traditional heat sink… [MacMinute.com]
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Handy reference
This is an extremely handy reference for graphic/web designers:
300 images from 1800 sites, from the site:
I visited only Fortune 1000 company sites, major online retailers, well known blogs, top advertising, publishing, and design agencies, technology and software industy leaders, and the very largest online news publishers.#
Illustrator CS2 woes
The new Adobe Illustrator CS2 has some great features, most notably to us here at MTAA, the new auto-trace capabilities. It’s a vast improvement over the old auto-tracing in Illustrator.
But I’ve been having a nasty font issue that won’t even allow me to launch it. Reading a thread on the support forum and a technical article, I narrowed it down to the font issue — and man — it’s an issue. My /Library/Font folder is so fucked up it’s choking the Mac Finder! No wonder AI couldn’t deal. I guess I’ll have to go in there via the Terminal and delete some stuff… don’t know what to delete though.
Wish me luck :-o
update
WooHoo! Fixed it. It was indeed bad fonts or font-like files. Transmit’s ability to browse local files graphically came in very handy in identifying the bad files that needed to be removed from the /Library/Fonts folder. Since the Finder would choke when I tried to open the folder, I used Transmit to browse the folder and see which files didn’t seem to be recognized by OS X as a good font.
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I love the Paparazzi!
You Mac OS X web developer geeks out there will be excited by this little app called Paparazzi (I know I am). You just feed it a URL and the little app takes a screenshot of the web page in PNG format. The cool thing is it takes a screenshot of the entire page, not just the part that would show up in your browser. No more editing screenshots to get the whole damn page.
It looks to be a GUI wrapper for this command line tool: webkit2png.
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Ho. Lee. Shit.
Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it’s scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel’s microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned. Apple has used IBM’s PowerPC processors since 1994, but will begin a phased transition to Intel’s chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said. The announcement is expected Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steveupdate:
via: Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | Tech News on ZDNet
Googlex
Googlex: mad props to OS X!
Google is really doing some amazing interface stuff these days. The cool thing is, much of what they do is very simple, but just works great… like googlex.
Google Suggest and Google Maps also rock.
update
Sadly, it seems Googlex is no more :(
update 2:
Happily, some nice geek mirrored it :)
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GIF: pronounced “gif” or “jif” ?
I pronounce GIF like it’s spelled, with a hard “G.”
This page makes a good argument that the creators of the format wanted folks to pronounce it “jif” (soft “G”).
It does seem like the creators wanted people to say “jif.” My question is: who cares? If the majority of english speakers see the acronym GIF and say “gif,” then that’s how it’s pronounced. It doesn’t matter what the geek who created the format thinks, he’s been outvoted!
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Firefox now builds with SVG
Firefox nightly builds now have SVG support. (Look for builds with the string -svg- in them.) Currently Linux is not build with SVG; both the Mac and Win32 are.from: Firefox nightlies now build with SVG - Anne’s Weblog about Markup & Style
If you are using an older version of Windows it might be that you get a warning message. Also note that native SVG support is disabled by default. To enable it you need to follow some steps.
Have fun! You can try your build with some nice SVG samples or you can run it through the W3C SVG test suite.
Although in the current nightlies SVG is disabled it might be that native SVG support in Firefox 1.1 will be enabled by default. Another update: it appears the patch attached to this bug has been checked in; Firefox now builds with SVG and has support for it enabled by default. This seems like a good thing with the only downside that authors might think to ‘know’ how SVG works, while it actually is a bug. (For example, try width:200 in Internet Explorer
Free Apache software odyssey
This weekend I’ve been on a little geek odyssey.
It all started with a possible job redesigning a site that currently uses coldfusion. So, I thought to myself, I need to learn some coldfusion.
To install coldfusion on a Mac OS X, you need to have Tomcat installed. So I installed it.
Then, I saw a posting on Zeldman’s site about a CMS from Apache called Lenya. It can be installed under Tomcat too (tho I never got it to work that way). But I did get it to work as a standalone servlet. Of course Lenya led me to Cocoon which I had to install and give a whirl.
Finally, after all of that, I remembered that I was supposed to be installing coldfusion. I followed the directions on Macromedia’s site, but for some reason it’s not deploying on my Tomcat set-up at home. I did get it to work on my machine at work though.
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Microsoft awarded patent on double-clicking
And I’m not making it up. It’s true!
Here’s a nice understatement from the article:
“These are symptoms of the fact that the patent system is not well-adapted to being applied to software,” says Jonas Maebe, of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure#
Dreamhost servers run Debian Linux
It took me a while to track this info down, so I thought I’d share it here with what I think are the keywords that someone might use in Google when trying to track down the same.
Dreamhost servers run the Debian Linux operating system. As of Sept 7, 2005 the are currently using the “Woody” version. All according to their wiki.
Keywords:
Dreamhost, Linux, operating system, version, distro, distribution
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Create 2 feeds for different media formats in Wordpress 1.5 (quick and dirty)
When linking to media files in WP 1.5.2 the default behavior is to create 2 enclosures for that particular item in the RSS 2.0 feed. My quick and dirty little hack allows me to generate 2 separate feeds for two different media formats. It’s not a plugin for Wordpress and isn’t easily extended without some knowledge of PHP.
What I did is fairly simple and specific to my needs. First, in wp-rss2.php I check for a query string with the media format I want in the feed:
if ( isset($_GET['format']) ) {
$enc_format = 1;
} else {
$enc_format = 0;
}
if (empty($feed)) { etc } bit.
if ( $enc_format ) {
rss_enclosure($_GET['format']);
} else {
rss_enclosure(false);
}
function rss_enclosure($input)
{
global $id, $post;
if (!empty($post->post_password) &&¬
($_COOKIE['wp-postpass_'.COOKIEHASH] ¬
!= $post->post_password)) return;
if( is_array( $custom_fields ) )
{
while( list( $key, $val ) = each( $custom_fields ) ) {
if( $key == 'enclosure' ) {
if (is_array($val)) {
foreach($val as $enc) {
$enclosure = split( "\n", $enc );
if ( $input )
{
if ( $input == "wmv" && trim( $enclosure[ 2 ] ) ¬
== "video/x-ms-wmv" ) {
print "<enclosure url='".trim¬
( htmlspecialchars($enclosure[ 0 ])¬
)."' length='".trim( $enclosure[ 1 ] )."' ¬
type='".trim( $enclosure[ 2 ] )."'/>\n";
}
if ( $input == "m4v" && trim( $enclosure[ 2 ] ) ¬
== "video/quicktime" ) {
print "<enclosure url='".trim¬
( htmlspecialchars($enclosure[ 0 ])¬
)."' length='".trim( $enclosure[ 1 ] )."' ¬
type='".trim( $enclosure[ 2 ] )."'/>\n";
}
}
else
{
print "<enclosure url='".trim¬
( htmlspecialchars($enclosure[ 0 ])¬
)."' length='".trim( $enclosure[ 1 ] )."' ¬
type='".trim( $enclosure[ 2 ] )."'/>\n";
}}}}}}}
if ( $input == "m4v" etc. Those are the two formats I will be using in my project. It works like this: if I’m asking for a WMV file and the enclosure is of that type, it writes the enclosure line. The same for M4V. If there is no format specified both enclosure tags are written. If the format isn’t recognized, no enclosure tag is written.
http://www.domain.com/wp_dir/index.php?feed=rss2&format=m4v
RewriteRule ^wp/feed/?(.*$) /wp/index.php?feed=rss2&format=$1 [QSA,L]
http://www.domain.com/wp_dir/feed/m4v
CSS podGuide
I would be completely remiss in my Mac/web-dev geekitude if I didn’t post a link to Westciv’s CSS podGuide, from their site:
The Style Master CSS podGuide is an iPod ready edition of our renowned Complete CSS Guide. Featuring a handy overview of CSS concepts, and in-depth information for every selector, property and @rule of CSS 2.1, the CSS podGuide is a must have for any web developer with an iPodI downloaded it to my iPod and I must say it’s pretty cool. It takes a minute to load up the first time but after that you’ll have a handy CSS reference handy at all times. Cool. #
Ajax, Shmajax. Read about the future of HTML
HTML isn’t a very good language for making Web pages. However, it has been a very good language for making the Web.
Apocalypse (maybe) now
Apple Developing Two Button Mouse
&
Microsoft support of PNG alpha-transparency
My world is being turned upside-down!
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Adobe to acquire Macromedia
Holy shit!
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.via: About Adobe - Adobe to acquire Macromedia
new iPod info leaked
Newsweek inadvertently leaked an article about the new 4G iPod to be officially announced this week. The article has been taken down (you can check if it’s back at this link) but you can read the text below.
July 26 issue - Veteran Podsters understand that at least once a year Apple performs a feat that at once infuses them with dread and delight: an iPod upgrade. The delight comes from a new look and new capabilities. The dread comes from the realization that you’re a step behind the cutting edge and must consider whether to buy your way back on it.
And here it goes again. The considerably tweaked fourth-generation iPod will roll out this week, and NEWSWEEK got an advance peek. It looks a bit different, operates more efficiently, has a few more features and costs less. Here are the highlights.
The click wheel. The iPod keeps getting slimmer and more streamlined. While the initial version had a relatively boxy feel, subsequent versions have been curvier and smaller. This one is about a millimeter thinner and, more significantly, eliminates the control buttons that sat under the display screen. Instead, it uses a “click wheel,” where the controls are placed on the compass points of the circular touchpad that lets you scroll through menus. This is an innovation carried over from the diminutive iPod Mini. “It was developed out of necessity for the Mini, because there wasn’t enough room [for the buttons],” says Steve Jobs. “But the minute we experienced it we just thought, ‘My God, why didn’t we think of this sooner?’ ”
New features. You can create multiple on-the-go playlists and delete songs from those ad hoc mixes. And audiobooks are not only easier to find, you can listen to them at normal speed, slower or 25 percent faster, without its sounding like a Munchkin.
Longer play. Coast-to-coasters rejoice: the new iPods are rated for 12 hours of rockin’ between chargesŃa 50 percent boost in battery life. This is accomplished, Apple says, not by a heavier battery but diligent conservation of power.
Lower price. The top-of-the-line iPod, holding 10,000 songs (40 gigs, as geeks will tell you), now costs $399. The lower-capacity model, with room for 5,000 songs (20 gigs), costs $299. That’s a $100 price reduction for each. (There’s no more 15-gig model.)
Color. Fuggedaboutit. Despite rumors to the contrary, the wide-bodies are still as pure as the driven snow.
Bottom line: If you have yet to jump on the iPod bandwagon, it’s cheaper and more attractive to do so. If you’re already plugged in, the question is whether you should engage in the “iPod Bump,” where you snap up the spiffy new version and pass Old Reliable to a grateful friend or family member (or the highest eBay bidder). If your music collection has exceeded your iPod’s storage space, or your listening binges exceed your current iPod’s battery lifeŃor if you want to hear Bill Clinton’s abridged book in 4-1/2 hours rather than sixŃconsider the Bump this time around. Of course, if your heart went aflutter at the very sight of this year’s model, you’re probably in line at the Apple Store already.
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Gallery unveils interactive tree
One word: Endnode. #
A Christmas tree that can receive text messages has been unveiled at London’s Tate Britain art gallery.
[ via: Gallery unveils interactive tree ]
Gallery hopping on Sat
After visiting my accountant this past Saturday (taxes, ugh). I popped over to Chelsea to see some art.
First stop was Pace Wildenstein for Logical Conclusions: 40 Years of Rule-Based Art which featured lots of big art stars and RSG. RSG was sharing a room with Paul Pfeiffer. The curator was trying to draw some progression through time so I guess video games follow video. But that stuff is always a curatorial construct with no basis in reality.
After that it was one big blur of crap. I remember thinking two things over and over, “Why do I hate so much art if I’m an artist?”, and the words “fucking painting” kept going through my head.
Finally I stumbled into Postmasters who were showing Guy Ben-Ner who’s work is witty and fun and put me back into a good mood.
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Gallerist busts artist
via: Bloggy
[…]
On Saturday, Mike Weiss called the police on Eric [Doeringer]. James has the story. This is my favorite part:He packed up his work and confronted Mr. Weiss, who admitted he had called the police. He said that he didn’t like “seeing people walking around with tiny paintings,” while he was paying high rent for his gallery and, “trying to sell $30,000 paintings.” When Doeringer told him he was certainly going to let everyone he knew in the art world hear about what he had done, Weiss said, “If that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll call the police whenever I see you anywhere.”
[…]
Eric has posted his account on his website.
Fuck The South
I had to link to this because it’s so damn funny.
Fuck The South
The next dickwad who says, “It’s your money, not the government’s money” is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least… can you guess? Go on, guess. That’s right, motherfucker, they’re red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It’s too easy, asshole, they’re blue states. It’s not your money, assholes, it’s fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.#
Fuck Pataki
Pataki, via the NY Daily News:
We will not tolerate anything on that site that denigrates America, denigrates New York or freedom or denigrates the sacrifice and courage that the heroes showed on Sept. 11.
Fuck Pataki redux
Serious rant, be forwarned…
More on the Drawing Center/Freedom Center/WTC memorial/Pataki’s an ass/Bloomberg’s a hedging technocrat brouhaha at the NYTimes.
(First mentioned on this site here, check out Kevin’s letter to the Daily News in the comments.)
Concise commentary on Greg.org too.
NYC art institutions have to step up, throw down, grow some balls, whatever you want to call it and tell these pandering politicians that if government censors are part of the deal, then NO NYC art institution is going to play ball!
Artists too! Who’ll join me in boycotting (both exhibiting or visiting) any art museum or gallery that plays ball with the goon Pataki and his art police? Who’s coming with me? Who’s coming with me?
It’s just so fucking new America to apply censorship to a museum called the Freedom Center and say you’re protecting freedom from ‘denigration’ by making the institution a free speech-free zone.
Aaaarrrggghhhhh!
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From The Floor review of ArtBase 101
Practical Jokes, Mechanical GIFs, and Art Data
MTAA’s favorite part:
Far from showcasing tech art by tech artists that can only be appreciated by other techies, this show presents an emerging body of art that sparks thought about new uses for a technology that is mostly deployed for commercial ends. Anyone interested in artistic practice today (Luddites included) will appreciate the current state of the art as shown here#
fuck ___ ______
This is the entire N.W.A. Straight Outta Compton album edited down into just the “explicit” content.via: |:ni9e:|:destruction:|:production:|
Rhizome needs to drop its membership fee and free its content
During the debate regarding Rhizome’s membership fee I was very vocal in my support of the idea. The argument went like this: an obligatory membership fee for Rhizome is better than no Rhizome at all. I was sure that if the fee wasn’t implemented then Rhizome as we know it would cease to exist. There would be no more lists, no more ArtBase, and no more web site.
But what I failed to understand is that the fee basically caused Rhizome to cease to exist. As the founders and current directors of Rhizome know well, to exist on the network you need to be linked. I am hyper-referenced therefor I am. Rhizome’s membership fee effectively shuts down links to articles and artwork on Rhizome’s web site.
I know, it’s free on friday. But if I want to link to a Rhizome post or artwork, am I to attach a disclaimer? “This link only functions on Fridays.”
I know, first time’s free. But what if I have visitors to my site who follow the links to Rhizome regularly? They get shut out.
Why should Rhizome care? Since I can’t trust links will resolve to the article or the artwork they point too, I simply don’t link to Rhizome. I didn’t mean this to happen, it just started happening. I can’t help but think that other people must feel the same way.
These days newer on-line publishing technologies like weblogs, (RSS, RDF, Atom) feeds, and link aggregators (like del.icio.us) are connecting people to information in very exciting ways but I have a feeling that Rhizome is being left out and left behind. How many blogs link to Rhizome articles and artworks? Probably not many, blog authors know the value of freely linking across the web; Rhizome stops them at the door.
Being locked up behind the membership fee leads to a degradation in the content on Rhizome. We could argue whether it’s happening or not — I’m not sure it’s happening myself — but I’m sure it’s going to happen and I’ll tell you why. Folks don’t want to post to closed forums. If they want their articles read or their artwork looked at they want to be linked far and wide. Sure they might drop a post on Rhizome (if they’re a member) and a few other places. If the other places are free, guess where the links will go? Not to Rhizome. So at best you’ll get duplicate content on Rhizome which is harder to find. Since not as many people are finding Rhizome, membership might start to drop. Since membership is dropping even fewer articles are posted; a very bad downward cycle could start.
Rhizome needs to drop the fee, find new ways to connect with new audiences — an XML feed of the Rhiz list posts would be a good start — and then work on ways to get these new audiences to donate voluntarily.
Perhaps it was an emergency at the time the fee curtain came down. I hope it’s over and Rhizome finds a way to free their content.
I really want to link Rhizome.
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Flickr coincidence
This is cool.
(Reblogged from reBlog which was reblogged from somewhere else.)
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Free quality crates!!
At some point in our career, two large crates took up residence in our studio. It’s time to evict them!
If you want two (2) professionally built crates for shipping or storage, contact MTAA (our email addresses are on our web site). These are the highest quality wooden crates!
dimensions
Apx two foot square interior measurement
pick-up?
Yes, you would need to pick them up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, USA.
pass the word
Please pass the word! We want to find someone who would really need the crates.
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My Blog Has Fleas
UPDATE! Yes, there is an update to this post. Can you believe it?
My Blog Has Fleas
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Five Small Videos: Macromedia Site of The Day
MTAA’s Five Small Videos About Interruption And Disappearing has been selected as Macromedia’s Site of The Day for October 21, 2004.
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First iPod film festival
The Flux Announces the iPod Video Film Festival
Coming soon to a small screen near you: The iPod Video Film Festival. The Flux announced today the opening of The Flux iPod Film Festival, an online film festival/competition of content formatted for the iPod. Visitors to the site can download the films for playback on their computers or iPod video, then vote for their favorite video. Prizes will be awarded in four categories: student film, indie film, family clip, and best music video. “The iPod video has people yearning for fun, portable video content, and our festival will give people access to free content, while exposing independent filmmakers and bands to an exciting new audience,” said Flux producer Ryan Ritchey. Submissions must be less than ten minutes, and formatted for the iPod. Flux partner site R Cubed Productions will offer conversion services to properly format films for iPod playback for a small fee. Submission deadline is January 25th. The Flux was founded in March 2005 to be the single stop for the creators and viewers of short films, including movie reviews, how-to tips, movie hosting, and resources for filmmakers.
The top three films in each category will be given awarded prizes, to be determined.
Senate: Toss Film Pirates in Jail
People who secretly videotape movies when they are shown in theaters could go to prison for up to three years under a bill approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate on Friday.3 - 10 YEARS! For copying a movie? Damn. You can kill somebody and get less time than that.
Hackers and industry insiders who distribute music, movies or other copyright works before their official release date would also face stiffened penalties under the bill…
A House subcommittee approved a similar bill in March.
[full article in Wired News]
Finger food
What a dick! From CNN:
[…] Clarence Stowers still has the digit, refusing to return the evidence so it could be reattached. And now it’s too late for doctors to do anything for 23-year-old Brandon Fizer.Well yeah, I suppose the guy could use it. Sheesh! #
[…]
“The man who lost the finger has the superior claim,” said Paul Lombardo, who teaches at the University of Virginia’s law school. “It’s his finger and he might be able to use it.”
FDA Approves Use of Chip in Patients
AP - Medical milestone or privacy invasion? A tiny computer chip approved Wednesday for implantation in a patient’s arm can speed vital information about a patient’s medical history to doctors and hospitals. But critics warn that it could open new ways to imperil the confidentiality of medical records.[ via: Yahoo (AP) ]
Fake movie hits the streets
0100101110101101.ORG’s “United We Stand”
Read the press release on Rhizome.
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<PAUSE> & FACT
<PAUSE>
MTAA leave tomorrow for the opening of <PAUSE> in Montreal, Quebec. This is a on-line art exhibition curated by MobileGaze. From the press release:
<PAUSE> addresses the notion of time as experienced in art and through technology. The exhibition aims at intercepting this stream of information in order to provide a disruption within this endless expanse of data — by providing the viewer with a vantage point, a moment of reflection and a slowing down in his/her interactive viewing habits.The opening is at Oboru. There will be presentations by artists and some performances too, here’s the schedule:
Face the fact
If you don’t have an RSS feed, you’re nobody.
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Extremely grumpy
I might start blogging elsewhere, the constraints here are starting to get to me.
The MTAA-RR will continue in order give official MTAA news and announcements, but I need a place to post my own personal stuff with no constraints.
Maybe I’ll start one at twhid.com…
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Eyebeam reBlog
Eyebeam’s reBlog should provide a way to look at archived posts from individual reBloggers. One of the things I like most about reBlog is how the flavor of the site changes with each new reBlogger.
Plus, I want to go back and re-live my own time as a reBlogger.
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Email from Baghdad
Steve Mumford is an artist who has been making trips to Iraq for the past year (read my first post re: him). He publishes his thoughts and sketches in his Baghdad Journal on artnet.com. A recent email sent to friends was, I thought, interesting so I’m posting below with his permission.
Hi Everyone,I’ve been critical of Steve’s project in the past (but always giving respect). Reading some actual on-the-ground info from a friend is interesting but I have to ask: If his Iraqi friends think things are getting better, better than what? All out war? Normalcy and explosions? Your barber got killed in a car bombing! What is this better than?
Yeah I’m back in Baghdad, hanging out with my Iraqi friends here. It’s awesome what different opinions they have about the situation from some of the journalists here, who are aghast when I ask them how they think things are going - that is, the journalists assume I share their view that the sky is falling. In contrast, my Iraqi friends (both Sunni and Shia) regard the Najaf episode as a triumph, both for Sistani and the Iraqi gov - and by association, the US - Sadr was essentially humiliated, resulting in a big loss of popularity in favor of moderate Sistani. The destruction of Najaf was grave, but reconstruction money is already flowing from the government, with most people apparently blaming Sadr, more than the US, for the damage.
Even in Falluja, my friends maintain, the majority want peace and stability and are willing to join the government, but for the time being are scared into silence by the jihadists. However, talks are going on between Allawi and the tribes of Falluja. They’re optimistic that this will all be reflected in the coming elections.
So, who knows - I can say that I feel some journalists I’ve met are so blinded by their hatred for Bush and recent US foreign policy that they clearly want this to become a massive failure. It’s certainly hard to find Iraqis who will openly compliment the US at this point, for a variety of understandable reasons. But crucially, this doesn’t mean that they are lending their support to the insurgents. In fact, my friends maintain, just the opposite.
As usual, Baghdad is surreal in it’s normalcy amid explosions - you hear them almost everyday, yet the Iraqis barely turn their heads and go about their business. I use caution traveling about, generally with my friends, but I’m not holed up in my hotel either. The local art world continues apace, with the usual salons held every Monday at the Hewar Gallery and the Shebander Tea House, internet cafes filled, the streets bustling, everyone eagerly anticipating the cooler days of Fall.
I was saddened to find that Nezar, a haircutter on old Rashid Street, who gave me 2 haircuts, was killed along with his nephew by a car bomb parked right outside his shop, about 3 weeks ago. He was a sweet guy who wouldn’t take my money the first time, and was a friend of my friend the artist Ahmed al Safi. His blackened, ruined store is still there, with traditional Shia obituary flags draped over the storefront.
Baqubah remained relatively peaceful for the remainder of the time I was there. Rumors of an impending insurgency keep circulating but have yet to materialize. The police and Iraqi National Guard are gaining strength and confidence with better training, heavier weapons and flack vests. In spite of recent conspicuous failures, they’re getting better. They’re starting - in baby steps - to stand up to insurgent attacks. You see them everywhere in Baqubah and Baghdad, whizzing around in new cars and SUVs with the Iraqi Police insignia on the side. I can’t overstate the importance of this to Iraqis. You can’t have a democracy or even an economy without security.
I’ll remain here a bit longer, replenish art supplies, and try for another embedding for a couple of weeks, then return home.
Please, everyone, try to keep an open mind about things over here - Muqtada Sadr is NOT Che Guevara! Bremmer fucked some things up very badly, but somehow, Iraqis are optimistic that the situation is improving.
Love, Steve
“Echoes of Art” Emulation Symposium May 8 at Guggenheim
This symposium looks interesting and I’m thinking of attending the “Emulation Performance” by jodi and the afternoon session. Get the details here (click symposium once you arrive).
The symposium accompanies the exhibition “Seeing Double,” which is very successful IMO. According to the press release:
This exhibition tests the promise of an experimental treatment—emulation—for rescuing new media art from the ravages of time.The art work seems to have been “rescued.” The exhibition does more than just that however. By exposing ‘how’ you emulate new media art the curators also illustrate the ‘material’ of new media art.
Easter eggs
Yes there are easter eggs in 1 Year Performance Video, so glad you asked.
Check ‘em out: STEAL THIS VIDEO: 1YPV easter eggs.
Download interesting stuff regarding 1YPV here (more on this later).
To expand on this easter egg thing: we consider the videos in “STEAL THIS VIDEO: 1YPV easter eggs” to be easter eggs because they don’t follow the overall narrative of being locked in a cell 24/7. For example, we address the camera and do other things that don’t follow the narrative logic of 1YPV in these easter egg videos. Normally you would only see them if you happen to be watching 1YPV between 4AM and 5AM and you get lucky :)
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Dvorak’s ignorant blather
I posted this to Rhizome too: John Dvorak trashes creative commons. It was a big mistake. I’m a proponent of Creative Commons so when I saw the link on Slashdot I figured that it would be good to link to it and get another side of the story.
But the article is so full of ignorant statements and falsehoods that it wasn’t really worth a link. Some examples?
If you are unfamiliar with this thing, be sure to go to the Web site and see if you can figure it out. Creative Commons actually seems to be a dangerous system with almost zero benefits to the public, copyright holders, or those of us who would like a return to a shorter-length copyright law.
This means that others have certain rights to reuse the material under a variety of provisos, mostly as long as the reuse is not for commercial purposes. Why not commercial purposes?
Dude ransoms rabbit online
A fairly humorous attempt at Internet blackmail.
This guy says he’s going to eat his rabbit unless he gets $50K from suckers on the web. Are there enough gullible animal-lovers out there to pay the ransom? So far he’s made around $14K.
Goddamn, I wish I had thought of this first.
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Duchamp’s “Fountain” most influential
A porcelain urinal is the most influential work of modern art, according to a survey released Wednesday.More here: Urinal Named As Most Influencial Art (AP). #
Dubya the Defender
The perversly talented director, Final Cut ninja, and After Effects master Sorrel Ahlfeld (more here) is entering this very funny and well produced video into MoveOn’s Bush in 30 Seconds Contest. According to Sorrel his intention is, “to poke fun at, and educate people about, the Bush administration’s outrageous hypocrisy.” Seems to work on all counts brilliantly IMO.
Dubya The Defender (quicktime 3.8MB, right- or control-click to download.)
Credits:
Written and Directed by Sorrel Ahlfeld
Production Design: Devin Clark and Verena Weisendanger
Production Assistance: Amos Katz
Music: Jim Morgan, David Driver, Connie Petruk
Starring: Emily & Dubya The Defender!
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Duct Tape Festival
Not only am I posting a link to the web site for the INAUGURAL AVON HERITAGE DUCT TAPE FESTIVAL, but AVON, OHIO is practically my hometown. It’s the town where my mother and grandmother live.
It really isn’t my hometown, Elyria, OH has that glorious distinction, but it’s pretty damn close.
I never thought I’d ever type this — but — thanks for the link Mom!
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Drinkin’ & Drawin’ Championship TONIGHT!
All the info is here: MTAA’s Drinkin’ & Drawin’.
See this earlier post for more info: Drinkin’ & Drawin’.
See you there :-)
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Drinkin’ & Drawin’
First noted on this web site by M.River in this post, the 1st Annual Drinkin’ & Drawin’ Championship is happening!
Go HERE for all the details. But we’ll let our loyal followers (like you because you’re reading this blog) in on a few details.
M.River and I aren’t quite sure how to handle what becomes of the drawings at the end of the night. We need to keep the drawings to create documentation of the project, but we don’t want to scare away any artists who don’t want to give drawings away. Our plan is to inform competitors that we’ll need to keep the drawings for a time of up to 6 months in order to get hi-res scans of them. We’ll also need non-exclusive rights to publish the drawings. Does this seem reasonable? Please leave a comment if you have an opinion.
Other mechanics of the evening: Each contestant will need to sign-in. They’ll be given an ID number (which will be associated with their name and contact info), paper, and pencil. The paper will be stamped with a small rubber stamp so that the contestant can label the drawing with their ID number and the list the drinks consumed while making the drawing.
We don’t want the drawings to have names on them as that may influence the judges. That’s why were going to label them with a number.
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Drinkin’ and Drawin’ Champion
The Drinkin’ and Drawin’ Champion for 2005 is:
Luke Butler!!
More info to come…
Check out M.River’s pics
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Drinkin’ and Drawin’ TONIGHT!!!!
Get yer ass out to BKLYN and win yer ass a 100 BUCK BAR TAB at BAR MATCHLESS.
And while you’re at it, buy T.Whid a drink for his birthday.
More info here:
www.tinjail.com/drinkAndDraw
and here:
The 2nd Annual DRINKIN’ & DRAWIN’ CHAMPIONSHIP
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Time: 8-11PM
Location: Bar Matchless
Corner of Driggs and Manhattan Aves, Greenpoint, BKLYN
Directions:
From Manhattan: L train to Bedford Ave.
Walk North on Bedford Ave. (past the park) to Manhattan Ave. Take a right, one block down on the corner.
From Brooklyn or Queens: G train to Nassau
Walk one block east on Manhattan Ave. to Driggs Ave.
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Dreams DO come true!
If you wish hard enough and pray to the baby Jesus every night before you go to bed then…
Your dreams can come true too!
(See comments in the first link and see ‘prepared piano’ description in the second link for this post to make any sense; M.River noticed this coincidence.)
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Dreamland Artists Club in NYTimes
…in the summer of 2003, when the artist Steve Powers became simultaneously obsessed with Coney Island and the dying art of sign painting, he had a tough time convincing many of the wary and con-wise business owners that he wanted to give them - free, really - brand-new hand-painted signs for their aging bumper-car palaces and clam bars.If you live in or near NYC or are coming to visit this summer you must go to Coney Island.
[…]
But Mr. Powers, a former graffiti artist who has had scrapes with the law and lots of experience dealing with suspicious authority, was persistent. And now his personal mission has become a sprawling public art project that blurs the line between art and commerce in a way that perhaps could happen only on Coney Island.
[ via ]
Drawing Center may quit WTC
Amid a storm of controversy over plans for the Ground Zero cultural centers, the Drawing Center says it has put the entire planning process for its move downtown on hold and is considering whether it should pull out of the site.Good. They should. To paraphrase NWA, fuck The art police!
via: Crain’s New York Business
Double awesome
Yahoo! Creative Commons search!
Obligatory MTAA narcism:
MTAA (we come up number 1)
simple net art (number 1 again)
net art (number 13, bah!)
It’s funny when you search too, it’s like you know everybody on the results page. Haha!
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“Doomsday Weapon” slide show @ THE THING
Check out the slide show of Jakob Boeskov’s “Doomsday Weapon.” We mentioned this art project in this post on this web site.
Sorry Wolfgang, I linked right to the slide show — bypassing THE THING log-in. But, check out the benefit auction while your over at THE THING.
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MY DOOMSDAY WEAPON: An exhibition by Jakob S. Boeskov @ The Thing
This sounds fascinating, from the press release:
Weapons that shoot microchips into the bodies of innocent civilians. An artist smuggling blueprints for fake technology inside China’s first international weapons fair. Laughing arms traders drinking 30-year-old Chivas Regal among teenage models advertising new weapons. No, it’s not a chilling sci-fi movie; it’s reality, and a project by Danish artist Jakob S. Boeskov.» Dates, times and more information on The Thing’s web site.
Don’t hassle the Hoff
This is a very funny video from David Hasselhoff.
My wife and I are debating whether or not he knows he’s being super-cheesy. My position is that he’s playing both sides. He’s trying to be sexy for his actual fans, but he’s trying to be cheesy for those that love to hate him. It’s a strategy invented and perfected by Shatner.
I’ve gained more respect for the Hoff if he truly is working the irony angle.
(BTW, I got the title of this post from the comments on this post: David Hasselhoff is hooked on a feeling.)
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