UbuWeb

UbuWeb is a archive website dedicated to avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. It contains film art, video art, sound art, & written art... and best of all, it's all free!

For example, you can look at 37 short Fluxus films for those of you looking for a more fluxxy day. To pick out one, here's Nam June Paik's Zen For Film:


01: Nam June Paik - Zen For Film (1962-64), 141 mb
It was fun to finally see that film... I had read about it. And I referenced it in the written thesis that accompanied my MFA thesis show:

This [painted leader] footage evokes Nam June Paik's Fluxus film Zen for Cinema (1962-64), which consists of 1000 feet of clear, 16mm film leader projected onto a screen. Conceptual meaning might be "projected" onto the film by a spectator, but, similar to [my thesis] Frames, the formal content evolves from the use of the film [quoting Michael Rush]: "With each additional screening of the film, scratches, dust, and other chance events of film projection inevitably occurred, thus rendering the film new, in a certain way, each time."

Teaching controversial matter

Here's an interesting post from Art 21's blog. In the post, Marc Mayer discusses a high school program he ran at The New Museum:

I asked each student to create a postcard-sized artwork to be sent to another student through the mail. Students had to investigate something they feared, something they loved, or if they were really ambitious, both. They also had to consider that this work would travel through the United States Postal Service and the student who received it would respond with another piece of mail art.

...

One student sheepishly presented two postcards. One of his postcards featured a detailed graphite rendering of an erect penis and, on the other side, a vagina. The second postcard featured a red background with stick figures in different sexual positions with a white substance smeared on the other side (it was Elmer's glue.)

Go to Mayer's post

From the archive...

I stumbled across a digitized copy of Dragon Magazine #158 today... This issue contains my first ever publication (written when I was in high school) . This is the first time I've seen the article in (digitized) print--I was never contacted when it appeared (I probably moved between acceptance & publication). I only learned that the article was published (and received my pay) years after the fact.

Anyway, below is the digitized copy of the entire magazine (my article begins on page 32)... the article alone is available in pdf format here. My other publications can be seen here.

Dragon 158

Related: RPG Outsider Art

Baby Pictures

It's not really contemporary art, but I find it interesting/creepy/fascinating. Forget about bronzing baby shoes, it's now possible to have a bronze sculpture of a baby in the womb (the opposite of a death mask, I guess).

The image above is the output from a 3D printer (see earlier posting on this) from which the bronze would be cast.

A 3D printer uses ultrasound images to build a cast of the child. The models cost £1,200, take up to two-and-a-half weeks to make, and are created when the mother is at a safe stage of pregnancy at 24 weeks.

Doctors say the technology could also help improve survival rates for sick babies.

Accurate casts of birth defects could be taken in the womb then studied by surgeons before they operate.

[Print your baby via Make]

ASDF

ASDF is the art-making duo Mylinh Trieu Nguyen and David Horvitz. Their projects are usually involves collaborations with other artists to make work that is free and digitally-based.

For example, their For a Brief Time Only at a Location Near You:

For a Brief Time Only... is a purchasable exhibition of 24 artists available at a photo developer near you. You can find it at any store that allows file uploading via the internet (including most major US drug-stores). The image files will be sent to the closest location near you, and within minutes you will be able to walk in and pick them up as prints.

This exhibition contains 24 small 4x6 photographic prints contained within the packaging provided by each store. Also included are a contact sheet with all the artists' information, and a letter to the store employee reassuring that there is nothing wrong with the order.

No money is being made by us in this exhibition. You will purchase the show directly from the store (unless you can acquire it another way), which will probably cost around $5. We would like to make it clear that we have no intentions in promoting sales in these places, which will mostly include major US drug-stores. We think of it more as infiltrating these spaces with our games.

That "show" has closed, but the photos are still available in pdf form.

Read my earlier posting about ASDF's 100 $1 grants

Tickets to see the sunset

In 2005 Rose Marshack convinced Ticketmaster's web outlet, Ticketweb to give her a promoter's account and allow her to post a tour of Sunset dates and times, as if the sun was going on tour. Tickets were available to the general public for purchase at Ticketweb.com.

Tickets to the Sunset website


[via John Michael Boling on Rhizome]

Turbulence in need of support

This year has been a hard one financially for non-profits, and the wonderful online art nonprofit Turbulence.org is in trouble. Turbulence has been immensely supportive of internet-based art. Most months they premiere a couple of commissioned works--in December they released four artworks.

Turbulence's support has been incredibly important for the development of internet-based art... Internet-based art doesn't have much commercial support, so much work would have never been created without Turbulence.

Please consider giving Turbulence a donation--even $5 would help alot.

Go to Turbulence's donation appeal

Clouds, clouds, clouds

Super Mario Clouds (2002)
Cory Arcangel, modified game cartridge

cloud.s (2009)
Jason Sloan, twitter-fed generative art

[via Rhizome]

clouds of clouds (2008)
Miguel Leal & Luis Sarmento, Flickr-fed generative art

Things Fall Apart

Jonathan Traviesa, Sculptural Awareness #7,
photograph, 2005, 30" x 30"

Things Fall Apart opened at the Winkleman Gallery last night. The show is curated by artist & blogger Joy Garnett, who named the show after a line in a Yeats poem. The gallery's press release explains:

Things Fall Apart takes its title from a line in a well-known poem by William Butler Yeats that warns of ominous forces unleashed in the political vacuum following World War I. The poem reverberates in twentieth and twenty first century literature and culture, from Chinua Achebe's eponymous novel about African societies giving way under colonialism, to Joan Didion's collection of essays on California in the 1960s, to Oliver Stone's Nixon. Allusions to the poem regularly color news items, notably The Economist's cover story after the U.S. market collapse, and New York Times articles covering the failed war in Iraq, the increasing dysfunction of the U.S. right wing political axis, and the spread of the current economic crisis to global markets.

If Yeats' poetic imagery and its subsequent iterations seethe with foreboding and even despair, by contrast, the international group of artists presented in Things Fall Apart mark precipitous global power shifts in their work while positing the darkest moments--when things fall apart--as salient points of departure for change.

Standout works included a selection from Garnett's Three Gorges series that "re-invents the candy-coated public relations photographs from the Yangtse Three Gorges Development Corporation website in a series of oil paintings that show the earth itself giving way in the widening gyre of China's monumental and controversial public works project."

Joy Garnett, River (5), 2008, oil on canvas, 26" x 26"

I was also struck by Jenny LeBlanc's The Line That Binds, a series of prints that are hung at ankle height as part of a salon style display of work from The Front, a New Orleans art collective.

The Line That Binds, each print 24" x 18," intaglio on wallpaper

---

Our Condolences, vol 1 by Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida is being shown in the hallway between the Winkleman Gallery and Schroeder Romero. The set of 6 greeting cards (produced in an edition of 100) is the inaugaral offering publication of Compound Editions, a collaboration between Winkleman & Schroeder Romero. The cards, with their biting humor, prompted some lulz.

card #6 front

card #6 inside

Miquel Barceló's ceiling

Barceló's 16,000-square-foot (1,500-square-meter) ceiling was unveiled in November at the United Nations' European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The Spanish artist spent 13 months apply the more than 100 tons of paint with pigments from all over the world. The work is supported by an extra-strength aluminum structure.

In Spain there is some controversy over the cost of the project & the fund which was used for it (there are claims that it came out of the budget for overseas development aid and international organizations like the United Nations and would have been better used to alleviate poverty).

Artdaily.org says about the artist:

Miquel Barceló is renowned for the extraordinary diversity and originality of his work, which has ranged from a series of spectacular terracotta murals for a chapel in the cathedral in Palma de Mallorca to a mesmerizing performance piece/living sculpture with the Hungarian/French choreographer Josef Nadj. Barceló's amazing creative output has been compared to such great Spanish masters as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Antoni Tapies and to outstanding contemporaries European artists such as Francesco Clemente and Anselm Kiefer.

Born in Majorca in 1957, Miquel Barceló studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Palma and the Fine Arts Academy in Barcelona. In 1974 he held his first solo exhibition at the Galería d'Art Picarol, Cala d'Or, Majorca. During the 1980s he traveled in Europe, the United States and West Africa and in 1982 he achieved international acclaim for his participation in Documenta 7 in Kassel. Barceló works with a wide-range of media and projects, from paintings and drawings, to backdrops for opera, murals and engravings, and terracotta and ceramic sculptures. From 2001 to 2006 Barceló worked on a project for the cathedral in Palma, covering an entire chapel in terracotta and then decorating it with images relating to the sixth chapter of the gospel of St John. Recent solo exhibitions include Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, 2003; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2004; Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zürich, 2005, and Sala Kubo, San Sebastián, 2005. Barceló currently lives between Paris, Majorca and Mali.

Is e-literature just one big anti-climax?

Is e-literature just one big anti-climax? That's the question put forth in an interesting blog post by Andrew Gallix. Here are some excerpts:

A year later [in 1997], Mark Amerika's Grammatron transcended the fledgling genre by turning it into a multimedia extravaganza. This, I believe, was a crucial turning point. The brief alliance between literati and digerati was severed: groundbreaking electronic fiction would now be subsumed into the art world or relegated to the academic margins.

...

My contention that e-literature has been gradually sidelined by the rise of the internet as a mass medium proves controversial.

...

In fact, Dene Grigar - who chaired the Electronic Literature Organization's latest international conference - was alone in thinking that I may have a point. Interestingly enough, she argues that American universities' digital humanities departments are partly to blame because of their emphasis on digitising traditional books at the expense of promoting creative electronic writing: "In reality, unless it is a department where Kate Hayles, Matt Kirschenbaum, and a handful of other scholars reside, Michael Joyce's work will not receive the attention that James Joyce's does". Nevertheless, she is convinced that e-lit remains a "viable art form". That it may be, but is it still writing?

...

Since its inception, e-lit has been struggling to free itself from its generic limitations and now seems to be on the verge of doing so. At long last. Although interesting, its early manifestations were hardly groundbreaking. Collaborative narratives are as old as literature itself. Generative poetry simply adds a technological twist to Tzara's hat trick, the surrealists' automatic writing or Burroughs' cut-ups. Interactive fiction has its roots in Cervantes and Sterne. Hypertexts seldom improve on gamebooks like the famous Choose Your Own Adventure series, let alone BS Johnson's infamous novel-in-a-box. Besides, if you really want to add sound and pictures to words, why not make a film?

Read Gallix's entire post (and responding comments).

The Disagreeing Internet

It's a lot like Google...

http://www.thedisagreeinginternet.com/



(I'm giving this a label of "art movements"--get it? No? Well click on the damn link!)

Ada Lovelace Day blogging pledge

"I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."

Only 10 more bloggers needed to reach the 1,000 person goal! The 1,000 person goal has been reached! But you can still pledge & participate... go here to do so.

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

More details here

Joy Garnett's artist support list

Not too long ago Joy Garnett posted Programs and Support for Emerging Artists, A-Z on her NEWSgrist blog.

In her introduction to the list Joy wrote:

The other day I received an email from a young artist asking me to suggest galleries, spaces, blogs and publications that provide support for emerging artists in the New York area. I compiled a list, and have since added more, which I am posting below. As for blogs and publications: my advice was for emerging artists to start working on their own online presence, start their own blogs, get their work out there and start networking. The list is by no means complete...

See the list

Tehching "Sam" Hsieh exhibition at MoMA

MoMA has an upcoming exhibit that focuses on Sam Hsieh's cage piece performance. The installation opens January 21st and runs through May 18th, 2009. Here's the announcement:

This is the inaugural installation in an ongoing series that will bring performance documentation, original performance pieces, and live reenactments of historic performances to various locations throughout the Museum. The first artist to be spotlighted is Tehching Hsieh (b. 1950, Taiwan), who is best known for his five One Year Performances: between 1978 and 1986, the artist spent one year locked inside a cage, one year punching a time clock every hour, one year completely outdoors, one year tied to another person, and, lastly, one year without making, viewing, discussing, reading about, or in any other way participating in art. Hsieh's final performance piece, Thirteen Year Plan, was completed in 1999 after a process lasting thirteen years. This exhibition focuses on the artist's earliest performance, commonly called his Cage Piece (1978-79), with 365 photographs meticulously documenting the daily passing of time.

See my earlier posts about Hseih and MTAA's update of his cage piece.

15 Criteria that Define New Media Art

After much research, the Near Future Laboratory has come out with a list of the top 15 criteria that define interactive & new media art.

Here are a selected few:

15. It doesn't work

...

13. Your audience looks under/behind your table/pedestal/false wall/drop ceiling or follows wires to find out "where the camera is"

...

11. Your audience "interacts" by clapping/hooting/making bird calls/flapping their arms like a duck or waving their arms wildly while standing in front of a wall onto which is projected squiggly lines

...

0. There are instructions on how to experience the damn thing

See the full list (plus 3 bonus criteria) at Near Future Laboratory's blog.

3d Printers Pronostication

Paddy Johnson (of Art Fag City fame) sticks her neck out in her L Magazine column and makes predictions for the art work in 2009.

Among the predictions is:

3-D Printing Technology is the New Photoshop: In 2001, artists like Lucas Samaras discovered photoshop filters littering galleries with art nobody cared about. It turns out common usage of the distortion tool isn't all that groundbreaking after all. Presenting artists with the opportunity to use these same sorts of technologies sculpturally, increasingly affordable printing techniques allows us all to stretch out photos of our faces and render them three-dimensionally. I predict this will inspire a remarkably bad, but ultimately short lived art-making fad exploring little more than what the technology does.

We can change the future! You read about it, now don't do it!

Andy Baio's "Faces of Mechanical Turk"

Mechanical Turk is Amazon's new service where you can post a task you want completed, along with the amount you'll pay for it, and folks will do it--Amazon calls it "artificial artificial intelligence." The service is named after an 18th century chess machine hoax.

Andy Baio decided to post a task for the mechanical turkers to reveal their faces. Here's his request:

Upload a photo of yourself holding a handwritten sign that says "I Turk for ...", filling out why you turk. For example, "I Turk for Cash," "I Turk for My Kids," "I Turk to Kill Time," or whatever else you like. Be honest, be funny, be whatever you like.

As a good faith gesture, here's my photo.

If you have a webcam, you can simply go to Cameroid to snap a photo from your web browser, download the JPG, and upload it below. (Don't worry if the text is backwards, I can fix that myself.) DON'T provide any identifiable information, like your name or email, since that's a violation of MTurk policy.

The result will be used in a collage that can be found on my personal weblog, http://waxy.org. By uploading your image and accepting payment for the image, you give permission to me, Andy Baio, to use your image in all forms and media for any lawful purposes. (That's just cover-my-ass language. I'm almost certainly only going to restrict it to this one project.) The collage will show up there shortly after the HIT is complete. Thanks, everybody!

Baio originally offered $0.05, but then raised it to $0.25 and finally to $0.50.

Click here to read what Baio says about the project.

Breakout!

The video above presents the results of Game Mod, a six hour workshop by Steph Thirio in which the participants with little programming experience modified the game of Breakout! in the Processing programming language.

You can read more about the workshop (and trying modding the source code yourself) here.

[via A&D+]

Interconnectiveness

Gallerist & blogger extraordinaire Edward Winkleman has an interesting & epic post on the next big thing in art.

In his conclusion he says:

So it seems to me that what some of us are missing, as we're anxiously anticipating the next big thing, is that it's right here, right now, under our noses and that we, in fact, are actually all participating in it. The systematic connecting of the dots across all of history, the uploading and tagging of the videos, the databases we're voluntarily building in social network sites, the knowledge base we're creating and constantly refining in Wikipedia, all of this is a necessary part of building the foundation for the coming new way of seeing and processing the world around us. We're collectively creating a massive content management system, but it is simply a tool, not the product. This multi-dimensional interconnectivity is merely the new "Perspectiva!"

The Year in Posting (part 2)

In my previous post, I presented what I think are my most in-depth posts of 2007.

For today's post I looked through all my 2007 posts to highlight seven artworks that I wrote about in 2007. This was a much more difficult choice than my last post because I generally only write about artwork that I find interesting, so it's hard to pick out seven.

The criteria I settled on was to choose artworks that work both intellectually and aesthetically and whose impact I find particularly poetic or visceral.

January
Theo Jansen's walking machines





February
Desiree Palmen's camouflaged people




March
Tehching "Sam" Hsieh's one year performances




April
Paul Chan's The 7 Lights




June
Markus Copper's Kursk





October
Heidi Kumao's Misbehaving




November
Tom Thayer at White Columns

Lagniappe
Tumbarumba
And, as an extra eighth artwork, I'd like to include Tumbarumba by Benjamin Rosenbaum and myself which was released in December. I'm not one to fall in love with my own work, but this is one of which I'm really proud.

The Year in Posting (part 1)

This is a look back at the blogging I did in 2008. I've selected one post from each month which I think goes a bit deeper than my standard posts--these are the posts in which I'm developing or presenting my thoughts about art, rather than simply re-posting an artwork that I think is interesting.

Tomorrow Monday I'll post a list of the most interesting artworks that I posted (or re-posted) about in 2008.

January 2008
Coffee, knitting, rice, and data visualization



February 2008
Complexication




March 2008
Assignment Art



April 2008
How to apply (and not apply) to an MFA program



May 2008
John Luther Adams's The Place Where You Go to Listen



June 2008
2 Works by Olafur Eliasson & 1 by Me




July 2008
Laurie Anderson's Hearring




August 2008
Pencil carvings



September 2008
Susan Robb's Warmth, Giant Black Toobs




October 2008
Study for a Vocoder




November 2008
Peter Dittmer's Wet Nurse




December 2008
Drunkard's Walk versus PMU



And one more... I think the issues discussed in this January 2008 post is interesting.