Tumbarumba info sheet

As mentioned in my previous post, Tumbarumba is being included in the Stranger Than Fiction show at Synthetic Zero this Saturday (April 4th, 2009).

Above is an info sheet about Tumbarumba that I created for as a flyer for the gallery. Click here to download it as an Adobe Acrobat file.

Stranger than Fiction event: April 4th

I am giving a presentation about Tumbarumba as part of an exciting interdisciplinary, one-night (Saturday April 4th) event that Laura Napier is curating at the Synthetic Zero Art Space.

The event includes presentations and work by Yasmine Alwan, Sergio Bessa, Melissa A Calderón, Ethan Ham, Jane Hsu, Edwin Torres and Spanic Attack, and Angie Waller.

Laura Napier writes:

The movie Stranger than Fiction is about an author who is literally writing a real person's life as it happens. The event Stranger than Fiction features interdisciplinary art and literary work that fictionalizes: it follows the lives of strangers, disorients while browsing the internet, uses social networks in ways not originally intended, refers to new schools of thought, and is cryptically dispensed and dispersed. The installation of Stranger than Fiction is artifacts and archives related to the event: a networked computer, video, photographs, signage, a manuscript, clothing, supplemental books, and a comfy couch.

sneaky preview: Wednesday, April 1, 5-9pm (for the Bronx Culture Trolley)
presentations: Saturday, April 4, 5pm
viewing by appointment only through April 23. Please call 646.220.0716

synthetic zero art space
305 East 140th St #1a
Bronx, NY 10454
syntheticzero.com

from Manhattan: uptown 6 train to 138th St (first stop in the Bronx after 125). Exit front of train; turn left at the token booth. You are on Alexander Avenue! Walk past police precinct two blocks to 140th St. and turn left - 305 is on a paper sign in the glass door, buzz 1A.

Gender representation in this blog

After writing my Ada Lovelace Day Post, I wondered how often I post about woman during the other 364 days. So I did a quick count of my posts going back to mid-October 2008.

Roughly, my posts broke down this way:

64 (54%) featured a man or artwork created by a man
24 (20%) featured a woman or artwork created by a woman
17 (14%) featured my own artwork or ideas
13 (11%) were gender neutral

Ada Lovelace Day: Sabrina Raaf

"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."

Today is Ada Lovelace Day--the day to blog about a woman who works in technology. I'm one of 1,680 folks who pledged to do so. I chose Sabrina Raaf to write about. Raaf is a Chicago-based artist who works in experimental sculptural media and photography.


Raaf's Translator II: Grower 2004-6 (v2) is a robotic artwork that is activated by chance.

The robot navigates around the perimeter of a room, hugging the walls. A sensor near the ceiling detects the room’s CO2 level and transmits the information to the robot. Every few seconds the robot draws a vertical green line on the wall--the higher the level of carbon dioxide, the taller the line. The lines become both a representation of grass and a bar graph tracking the amount of carbon dioxide in the room over time. The act of observing the artwork literally changes it.

Raaf writes:

The height of the ‘grass’ directly reflects on the human activity or traffic in the space. The more people that visit that space, the more amenable that space is to my machine’s ability to create. This piece therefore makes visible how art institutions depend on their visitors to make them ‘healthy’ spaces for new art to evolve and flourish within.

Anthropomorph

Occasionally the facial recognition software used in my Self-Portrait project will find a face in an inanimate object. This became the basis of Anthroptic, my collaboration with Benjamin Rosenbaum.

I noticed this one (the photo above) the other day and particularly liked it. Sometimes I cannot see what the facial recognition software is finding, but in this case it's pretty clear.

Sam Hseih

For those who missed it, the NY Times has a nice write up on Tehching "Sam" Hseih earlier in the month. Don't miss the slide show.

Also, MIT Press just came out with Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh

Earlier posts on Hseih:

One Year Performances
MTAA's One Year Performance (aka samHsiehUpdate)
Tehching "Sam" Hsieh exhibition at MoMA

"Self-Portrait" at Root Division

My Self-Portrait project (which was a 2006 Turbulence.org commission) is being included in the Algorithmia show at at the Root Division gallery in San Francisco. The show runs March 11-28th with the opening reception on Saturday March 14th.

From the show's statement:

This exhibition explores the relationship between math, science, programming, and the effect these have on our relationship to the changing world around us both. However, unlike many math oriented shows of the past, this exhibition does not draw the line at simply defining algorithm as only the use of mathematical equation, but rather opens up the door to a broad array of artistic interpretations to what this means, both literal and conceptually referential.

The Altruist

The Altruist (above) is a short documentary about artist Laurie Munn's adventure in found portraiture. Following a project where she painted portraits of all the Presidents of the United States, Munn began painting portraits of all 220 members of the graduating class from a 1965 yearbook she found in the trash.

One of her professors (at the time of the documentary's making, Munn was pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree) suggested she visit the school that the yearbook is from. At the school she runs into one of the 1965 graduates which sends her on a journey to track more of them down.

It's a fun documentary (though a bit ham-handed in its use of soundtrack)... and I enjoy seeing the artist's work expand from a fairly thin practice of painting portraits to a deeper, more interesting social-practice of seeking out the humanity behind the portraits.

Tim Schwartz: Card Catalog

Tim Schwartz writes about his Card Catalog (2008):

A card catalog designed to hold all of the songs on my iPod, 7,390 songs. Each song is cataloged on a single card. The cards are organized in reverse chronological order, that is the songs I listened to most recently are in the front of the catalog, and the songs I haven’t listened to in two years exist at the back. The piece is seven feet long when closed and just under fourteen feet when opened.

Read more about the Card Catalog and see a video of it in action.

[via Ceci Moss on Rhizome]

Michael Kimmelman on Art

I just watched My Kid Could Paint That. It would make a great double-feature with Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? The two documentaries are flip-sides of the same coin--they both explore issues of authenticity, authorship, and art-world insiders/outsiders.

I suspect Amir Bar-Lev, who made My Kid Could Paint That, originally intended to use the story of the 4-year old painter (whose paintings were selling for upwards of $10-15k) as a narrative thread to explore "what is art" and the inconsistencies in the art world's psyche. However, that path becomes derailed when a 60 Minutes expose throws doubt on the the child as an artist. The documentary shift gears and becomes a self-referencing reflection on the documentarian's relationship with his subjects and the ethical dilemmas it poses.

In the documentary, Michael Kimmelman gave very straightforward, but enlightening overviews of the art-related issues raised. The DVD's special features also included "Michael Kimmelman on Art":

4'33": the video game

Petri Purho creates a video game each month. Or at least he did until becoming focused on finishing and released the brilliant Crayon Physics Deluxe:


Now he's back to the monthly games. In February he released 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness, inspired by the John Cage's 4'33" composition in which the musicians do not play any notes for four minutes and 33 seconds (so that the music becomes the ambient sounds in the concert hall). A screenshot of the game:


The game play is watching the status bar for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. If no one else logs into the game during that time, you win. If someone else logs in, you're booted off and they become the "leader."

The comment section of Petri's blog is wonderful--it's full of gamers arguing whether 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness is a game or not (and using the art world as a touchstone):

• Rob Says:
  February 2nd, 2009 at 6:57 pm Cool concept, but to call this is a game is like shitting on a paper plate, signing it, and calling it art.
  
  
• Gemedet Says:
  February 2nd, 2009 at 10:25 pm I'd argue that what distinguishes games from other art forms (films, paintings) is the ability to interact. It's great to push the boundaries of a definition, but you can't throw it out completely. Otherwise we'll go the way of the art world: they've come to the point where they consider anything to be art, and so the word "art" has lost all meaning. Still, an awesome idea, and a really clever take on the Jam's theme.
  
  
• Mike Says:
  February 3rd, 2009 at 2:11 am I don't know about defining a game, but the purpose of a game is that it should be fun. This isn't.
  
  
• Jonathan Says:
  February 4th, 2009 at 2:08 am Even though it feels like starting the game is the only interaction, this game interacts with every other person playing it. The author is also exploring the boundaries of interactions.

There's also a map-based visualizer of the game, created by Jonathan Basseri, where you can see folks logging in and knocking each other off.

[via Art Fag City]