There may be a pause in blogging

This blog is published using Blogger, but is hosted on my own site. Unfortunately, on May 1st Blogger is discontinuing the ability to host one's own blog.

So I'll be switching to Word Press... I'm a bit busy at the moment, so it may be a couple of weeks before I'm able to do the change.

Thanks for reading!

The Virtual State of Jefferson

The Virtual State of Jefferson (above) by Ethan Miller and myself is being included in an upcoming show at Southern Oregon University's Schneider Museum of Art.

The State of Jefferson is a proposed 51st state that would be carved out of Southern Oregon and Northern California. Many residents of this region feel alienated from the rest of their state and see the movement either as a tongue-in-cheek protest or a serious libertarian movement towards self-determination.

The Virtual State of Jefferson is a wireless router. Laptops, iPhones, and Blackberries can connect to the internet through the router and browse the web. Whenever a webpage displays the address of a town that is in the proposed borders of the State of Jefferson, the router changes the state name to be "Jefferson." In this manner, the "City of Ashland, Oregon" website automatically becomes the "City of Ashland, Jefferson."

The Virtual State of Jefferson explores how the internet has become one of our primary windows for viewing the world and how the realities it presents can be authoritative, fictive, self-deluding, and enlightening.

Addendum:

Here is an example of how the router changes the web pages it servers. Immediately below is the results typically given when searching for "ashland, oregon" on Google.

click to enlarge

However, when using The Virtual State of Jefferson router to connect to the internet, these are the results that are returned:

click to enlarge

Jan Vormann in New York

Jan Vormann, who I blogged about a couple of times before, made some art interventions in New York last month in conjunction with the art fairs.

These works are a part of a series where he repairs walls using Legos:

At Wooster & Broome Streets

I think my favorite of these latest involves repairing a subway mosaic:

In Times Square subway station