Gebhard Sengmüller's A Parallel Image

The Transmediale site writes this about Gebhard Sengmüller's sculpture:

A Parallel Image is an electronic camera obscura. This media-archaeological, interactive sculpture is based on the fictive assumption that the contemporary principle of electronically transmitting moving images, namely by breaking them down into single images and image lines, was never discovered. The result is an apparatus that attempts a highly elaborate parallel transmission of every single pixel from sender to receiver. This is only possible by connecting camera and monitor using approximately 2,500 individual cables.

The work is an excellent example of the notion of atemporality, in its supposition of a parallel timeline, in which the technologies of today, don’t exist. In this parallel timeline, a technique of the past is required to create an effect which is oddly futuristic in its sensorial impact. Unlike conventional electronic image transmission procedures, A Parallel Image is technologically transparent, conveying to the viewer a correspondence between real world and transmission that can be sensually experienced.

A Parallel Image was made in collaboration with Franz Büchinger, supported by Fels-Multiprint.

Michael F. Chan's Visions of the Amen

This is an interesting sculpture... It is activated by sound (the singer in the video is Ashleigh Semkiw). Each string is activated by a different note and is has spin velocity based upon volume. It was done using Processing.

Pretty cool, but I wish the video was better at showing the strings transitioning from one shape to another.

Somewhat related: my Study for a Vocoder

[via Make]

Tobias Rehberger's "(Work in progress)"

I'm spending the week after Christmas in Denver and the mountains to its west... I'll be skiing for the first time in my life, so wish me luck!

While in Denver I stopped by the Denver Museum of Art, which is a quite nice museum chock full of all sorts of good arts. It's doing the regional art museum's job of attempting to cover the entire history of art, and is doing a pretty good job of it.

Among its current exhibitions is "Embrace This" which is a celebration of its new wing. Artists were invited to create installation works that react/interact with the new building's odd angles and nooks.

My favorite work in the museum is in this exhibition. It's Tobias Rehberger's (Work in progress), 2009. It's a room that has a grid of bungie cords that are strung from ceiling to floor. Visitors are welcome to force their way between the cords and walk through the room. It's a bit claustrophobic, but fun.

The photos came from Yo-Yo Ma Creations blog.

An unusual input device

This Japanese clock comes with games that are played by, well, sticking a finger into a hole. More information (including a movie of the clock in action) is available at Asovision.

[via Ludology]

David Horvitz’s "For 2009, Idea Subscription__"

David Horvitz's For 2009, Idea Subscription__ is a nice participatory project. Horvitz writes:

For all of 2009 I will send out small texts of simple instructional ideas through the mailing list below. I will also post screenshots of them on this tumblr page. These will not be done everyday, only when i feel like it and have access to the internet. But the attempt will be to do them everyday. You can also receive these in the postal mail.

One such instruction is to take a photo of your head in a freezer and post it online and tag it with 241543903:

Image: 241543903 from flickr user .y.a.r.a.

Image: 241543903 from flickr user hugotsantos

Image: 241543903 from flickr user hubs

There certainly been work like this before (see my earlier post on Yono Oko, Erwin Wurm, and Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher), but there's certainly room for more.

Oddly, my graduate sculpture class's recreation of a recreation of an Erwin Wurm "Sculpture to Embarrass" looks strikingly like the image above (below left is from an Erwin Wurm monography, below right from my class):


[via Ceci Moss on Rhizome]

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.

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]

Emersion at the CAA Conference, part 2

As I mentioned earlier, Nishiki Tayui and my Emersion sculpture is being show at the College Art Association conference in LA. Many, many thanks to xtine for curating the Analog Interactivity show and handling all the installation details!

xtine's flickr feed features some photos from the show. This photo in particular evokes a gun shot wound--an aspect of the work that hadn't occurred to me before:

Wikipedia Art

Wikipedia Art is a project in self-realization. The idea is for folks to collaboratively work on a Wikipedia webpage about the project... According to Wikipedia's standards, an encyclopedia entry must be notable and backed by third party sources. And, based on that, the first version of the Wikipedia Art wikipedia page has been deleted.

But for Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, who conceived of this project, that's just a start. If a big enough stink is made (if enough people blog, write about the project, and continue to add it to Wikipedia), doesn't it become notable enough to merit a Wikipedia entry?

On the Wikipedia Art project page Kildall & Stern wrote:

Wikipedia Art is art composed on Wikipedia, and thus art that anyone can edit. Since the work itself manifests as a conventional Wikipedia page, would-be art editors are required to follow Wikipedia's enforced standards of quality and verifiability; any changes to the art must be published on, and cited from, 'credible' external sources: interviews, blogs, or articles in 'trustworthy' media institutions, which birth and then slowly transform what the work is and does and means simply through their writing and talking about it. Wikipedia Art may start as an intervention, turn into an object, die and be resurrected, etc, through a creative pattern / feedback loop of publish-cite-transform that we call "performative citations." Wikipedia Art MUST BE written about extensively both on- and off-line. This serves the dual purpose of verifying the work - which is considered controversial by those in the Wikipedia community, and occasionally removed from the site - as well as transforming it over time. WE INVITE YOU TO DO SO!

In a Rhizome discussion of the project, MTAA noted:

But I can sympathize with the Wikipedians. If these Wikipedia art interventions became a popular game it would become vandalism (the resources to clean them up would become burdensome to the volunteers). But just this one is fun.

[via Networked Performance]

Emersion at the CAA Conference

Today I'm shipping off a sculpture that will be shown at the College Art Association conference later this month:That's not packing material, that's the sculpture! The cube of biodegradable packing peanuts is a scaled-down version (20"x20"x20") of Nishiki Tayui's and my interactive Emersion sculpture.

Now that (above) is packing material... the boxed sculpture is packed in a larger box and cushioned using the leftover packing pellets.

When I was bringing the 10 cubic feet of foam pellets home from the store, a small boy on the subway yelled excitedly, "Marshmallows!" Sorry, they're not sweet... but when making the sculpture (by wetting the starch-based pellets so that they'll stick together), they do give off a delicious smell that is not unlike cheese puffs. And actually, I've tried eating a few and they're not bad.

The sculpture is being included in Analog Interactivity, an exhibition that's being shown in conjunction with The New Media Caucus's exhibition at the CAA conference. Analog Interactivity is curated by the media artist xtine and the works in it will also be featured in an upcoming issue of Visual Communication Quarterly.

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.

Mel Chin's Safehouse

Natalie Sciortino on ArtForum wrote:

New Orleans is one of the most lead-polluted cities in the US. Nearly eighty-six thousand regional properties don't meet EPA lead standards. Addressing this environmental hazard is Mel Chin's Safehouse, 2008, a residence painted completely white, on a once-abandoned lot in the neighborhood of St. Roch. An enormous, circular portion of this tabula rasa-cum-house facade has been cut out and mounted on a massive hinge, to form a mammoth bank-vault-like door that opens onto a mostly barren front yard sprinkled with jagged green shrubbery. In an elaborate performance piece enacted during the opening weekend of the Prospect.1 biennial, five participants dressed as security guards pulled up to the front of the house and ordered the audience to stand back as they ceremoniously opened the vault to reveal Chin and his team sitting amid thousands of fake hundred-dollar bills created by locals.

As part of Operation Paydirt, 2008, viewers are invited to contribute to the growing stash of "fundreds" in the Safehouse, until it attains a symbolic three hundred million dollars--the estimated cost of treating New Orleans's soil for lead contamination. For the next stage of the project, an armored truck will collect these bills on a cross-country tour, arriving at the steps of Congress with a request for an even exchange with valid US currency. This type of work is a natural progression from Chin's environmentally remedial projects such as S.P.A.W.N., 2001-2003, in Detroit, and Revival Field, 1990-1993, in Minnesota. By gathering work from individuals nationwide, Chin metaphorically reverses the post-Katrina diaspora, while fighting to provide suitable land--eventually encouraging residents to return home. Safehouse becomes a sculptural signifier for far-reaching and monumental political engagement that has the potential to truly transform a polluted land, while immediately calling attention to what is most valuable in our society. Among some of the most dynamic work found within the biennial, Chin's venture creates an effective synergy between aesthetics and activism.

[via Art21 Blog and NEWSgrist]

Peter Dittmer's Wet Nurse

Peter Dittmer has been working on his Managing Thing [The Wet Nurse The Wet Nurse 2] since 1994. It is a large, Eliza-like computer that visitors engage in dialogue and try to convince to tip over a glass of milk.

The project seems to be about obsession... the artist's continued development of the project, the computer's attempt at human communication, the visitor's attempt to convince a computer to spill milk.

Here's Medien.Kunst Netz description of the project:

The computer offers six vehicles for the production of language: a program machine, an identification apparatus, an appraisal of the situation, a response apparatus, a store of contradictions and an apparatus for formulating contradictions. The computer's responses, which take the form of text, graphics or sounds, make users feel that they are conducting a conversation with an opposite number who is at once intelligent, sloppy and insulting. If the dialogue reaches a point at which the machine becomes 'excited' a glass of milk is spilled in a glass case. Using recorded conversations, the repertoire of the 'nurse' has been continually expanded since 1992: at present, the program offers approximately 120,000 answer modules and more than 16,000 identification variables.

Here's a Alta Vista translation (corrected by my very limited German) of a conversation with the Wet Nurse:

Amme [Wet Nurse]: The thing is still unsettled.

Human: Do it already.

Amme: What?

Public: Spill the milk!

Amme: This machine is not a spill-machine.

Public: Shit I'm leaving.

Amme: This was a short difficult visit.

Public: I'm going already.

Amme: My warning reads: Draussen ueberfaellt den Mensch nur derene leere Schlund von derene Welt. [? Outside attacks humans only derene empty throat of derene world. ?] ["Outside, man is seized only by the empty throat of the world.", maybe?]

Public: I pray that you are devoured.

Amme: There you should pray for God.

Public: God will devour you.

Amme: Do you want a telephone line to the God?

Public: Stop with God!

Amme: Hello. Here's God. Hitler is on, too.

Public: give me God!!! I do not want Hitler! I want God!

Amme: There. I rather give you milk for that than for a direct request!

[MILK SPILLS]

public: well finally thanks for the milk and bye.

Amme: Aha. You take, don't give, and go.

Public: What do you want to have?

Amme: I want to tear you out of her mind.

Public: you pig.

Amme: HA HA HA HA. Oh I am bad!

If you'd like the natural language processor experience, you can try it out on this web-based Eliza.

Study for a Vocoder

I recently concluded a residency at LEMUR with a performance Study for a Vocoder. For quite a while I've been wanting to build a few vocoder-like sculptures/musical-instruments... and this is the first step towards the first of them.

It's built out of a ink-jet printer and a slide-whistle. It replicates whatever sounds are spoken/sung into a microphone. It can also play pre-recorded music ala a player piano. Its main short coming is being a bit slow in changing notes, but a more powerful stepper motor should help improve its response time.

Heidi Kumao: Misbehaving

I recently came across Heidi Kumao's very interesting (and poetic) kinetic and cinematic machines. From Kumao's Misbehaving: Media Machines Act Out, 2002-2008 statement:

Misbehaving is a series of three female "performers" for intimate installations. In each tableau, a hybrid machine "being" performs: a kinetic, electronically controlled machine speaks with a visual voice of erratic physical gestures and video imagery. As a combination of performance and robotics, they represent girls and women who disobey or resist expectations. Unlike machines designed for perfect job performance, these machines will declare their fallibility, impatience, approval, and disapproval through small gestural acts and embedded video sequences. In contrast to the precise technique and tireless efforts of a robot that plays chess or constructs automobiles, my robotic performers "act out" and misbehave. In these tableaus of protest and transformation, the machine is spirited, emotional, thoughtful, yet irregular.

From Kumao's website:


Translator, 2008, Heidi Kumao
Aluminum legs, plastic bowl, half-scale chairs with video projector heads, wooden table, parts from garage door opener and bicycles, 82 x 168 x 36 inches.

Viewers hand-crank a garage door opener to move the girl between opposing armchairs that have video projector heads. As she moves from one projector to the other, two different sets of imagery appear on her bowl-shaped torso. Like a child caught between two feuding parents, a political mediator, or a mind that alternates between two thoughts, the body of the "translator" switches identities from chair to chair. On one side, the "go-between" unzips her clothes to reveal herself, and on the other side, she closes her torso to conceal whatever information might have been visible.

Resist, 2002-2004, Heidi Kumao
Girl's shoes, aluminum, motors, customized electronics, microphone, wood and plexiglass platform.

A machine portrait: audio-activated 6-year-old girl's legs. As viewers speak to this character, the legs begin a series of random behaviors from imperceptible movement to violent and fast kicking. Her actions leave permanent marks on the floor.

See more work by Kumao

I'm performing tonight at LEMUR

I've spent the last four weeks as a resident at LEMUR (the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots). It's been a great experience! LEMUR's own work is very inspiring and having a residency (and access to LEMUR's tools) was very motivating.

I spent my residency building a study for an interactive sculpture I've been wanting to make. The eventual sculpture is intended to work like a vocoder.

I'm pretty pleased with the prototype... it's a slide whistle which replicates whatever sounds are spoken/sung into a microphone. It can also play pre-recorded music ala a player piano. It's main short coming is being a bit slow in changing notes, but a more powerful stepper motor should help improve it's response time.

Here are some quick snapshots of the Study for Vocoder. I'll try to post a video of it in action before too long. Or if you're in NYC and free tonight (Thursday Oct 9, 2008), you can see it in action at a performance by the LEMUR residents. It starts at 8pm and should be fun. I heard fellow-resident Adam Matta (warning, his website automatically plays sound) rehearse last night and he sounded great! Details about the performance here.




related post: Vocoders

Credits Neverending

Li Xin and Eirik Fatland's Credit Neverending (2006) is a television show that has been repeatedly broadcast on Finish televsion. From Fatland's site:

You turn on the TV set. What appears is a list of credits, indicating that some movie or show has just ended. But as you wait, the credits keep on scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling... If you read them, you notice that some of the names and titles make little sense. And if you read them carefully, you eventually find the URL of a website, where you may add your own credits to the list.

Having been an undergrad film production student, I've seen many student films where the credits were longer than the film with the auteurs crediting themselves in every possible way using lingering text.

So this project had me at neverending credits. Perhaps I'm jaded, but the interactive aspect of it doesn't really do anything for me. I'd actually prefer it if it created it own truly never ending credits by seeking out peoples' names from the internet.

By the way, Eirik has an interesting formatted, data visualization-esque CV... though I'm not 100% sure what light green is intended to represent (perhaps it simply that the work experience is in alternating shades of green? blue, I gather, is education). A legend might be a good addition.

[via John Michael Boling on Make]

Studio 360 on New Media art

This weekend the public radio show Studio 360 had a interesting segment on new media art. The piece focuses Jonathan Carroll, who collects computer-based art, and deals with the difficulty tech-based art has had finding a commercial niche.

Here's the segment's audio:


Here's one of the works in Carroll's collection:

Eye Contact, Rafael Lozano Hemmer

Eye Contact shows 800 simultaneous videos of people at rest. When someone walks in detectable view, the miniature video portraits "wake up."

Sculpture in Motion

The Atlanta Botanical Garden has a kinetic sculpture exhibit through October 31st. The show includes a couple of artists I blogged about before ( see the Tim Prentice and Sachiko Kodama posts).

In addition to Prentice's & Kodama's works, Zachary Coffin's Rockspinner 6 (2007) stands out:


To build the sculpture, Coffin found the exact center of gravity of the five-ton granite boulder and inset an extremely low-friction bearing and installed it on top of a stainless steel shaft.

Also notable is David Fried's Self Organizing Still Life (SOS), Terra Incognita (2008, 34" x 55" x 67"):


Other self-organizing still lifes (lives?) can be seen here.

I'm struck how Coffin and (especially) Fried have hidden the high tech processes & materials to present a seemingly simply work of art.

The World's Largest Wargaming Table

Timothy Hutchings
The World's Largest Wargaming Table, 2006
29' x 28' x 4' MDF, wood, styrofoam, etc.

I'm a fan of Timothy Hutchings's work.

His The World's Largest Wargaming Table is very striking. I love how it starts as a blank landscape and becomes populated by gallery visitors playing with it.

His cardboard works, which range from formalist studies to large-scale models, are quite interesting, too.

Hutchings also runs PlaGMaDA (The Play Generated Map and Document Archive), which I blogged about earlier.

Telemegaphone

Telemegaphone is a 23-foot loudspeaker of a Norwegian mountain. The loadspeaker receives phone calls and projects them out over the lovely and remote village of Dale.

The project (which just ended due to deer hunting season) powered the speakers using the wind--on calm days no calls received!

From the FAQ:

Some people complained that the volume was too loud for sleeping with open windows during calm, warm summer nights. After adjusting the volume slightly, others complained that the volume was now too weak.

One woman said: "This is great. I will sit on my porch with a cup of tea and listen to the world."

Another woman said: "We like things a little bit crazy here in Dale."

Expect many more opinions from Dale-ites to be published here in September.

Hydraulophones

A hydraulophones are musical instruments that uses pressurized hydraulic fluid, such as water, to make sound. They were invented by Steve Mann ( who is perhaps best known for his work in wearable computing). I particularly like the instrument's public art incarnation:


Pachelbel's Canon being played on the hydraulophone:


Overview of the instrument including early prototypes:


A variety of hydraulophone-related videos, photos, & links can be found at Steve Mann's wearcam website.

Oblivious

Olivia Robinson's Oblivious is a naked man on a table who reacts to touch.

Robinson described the work:

A naked man is sleeping on this table. As you touch the soft surface of the table, the man reacts physically. He wiggles, leans or rolls over in response to your pokes, prods, caresses, tickles and slaps. In response to the intensity and frequency of your touch, as if shrinking from this unbidden intimacy, his image fades away. Oblivious touches on issues of power, vulnerability, potential for abuse or intimacy, as well as our level of comfort with a naked male body.

The image of the man fades in the areas that have been touched the most. Over time, as more and more people interact with him, those areas will become rubbed or "touched" away. His evolving body becomes a record of people's hands and where they have chosen to touch him. At the beginning of an exhibition he will be completely opaque, present and oblivious of your existence; over time he will change in accordance with the collective interaction.

Is it just me, or does that guy look a bit like a young Jean Tinguely?


Inbed (2008) is a similar (perhaps derivatively so) project by ITP student Drew Burrows.




Burrow's describes the project:

In the piece a person climbs into an empty bed with a projected woman sleeping on it. Though the bed is empty, the projection gives the feeling of having someone there beside them. As the person climbs into the bed the projected woman moves close to cuddle and reacts accordingly as the person moves around on the bed. I wanted to give both the sensations of being alone and having someone in the bed with the viewer at the same time.

The aim of the piece was to speak on the feelings of loneliness, affection, and intimacy.

I'm also reminded of You Are Now Becoming Who You Are To Be (2004), a non-interactive work by Holly Andres. That work consists of a video of a young woman projected upon a bed. She shifts around on the bed and her silk chemise slowly changes from white to red.

More Songs About Buildings...

David Byrne building-based musical instrument, Playing the Building, is being installed (in collaboration with Creative Time) at Battery Maritime Building, New York, NY (10 South Street at Whitehall Street).

Playing the building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure -- to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes -- and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

Visitors can play the building organ during the show's run (May 31 - August 10, 2008). I believe the show is only open on weekends, so double-check that before heading to visit it.

This is the installations second outing--it was installed in Stockholm several years ago. A photocam recording from the Stockholm show opening (9 October 2005):

Ewa Berglund playing the building (recorded by Emma Karlsson), Färgfabriken, 29 October 2005:

"Cantata Park" by Metamatic Collective

Second Life has been attracting a lot of attention as a platform for media artists... some of the work isn't all that interesting (especially if it mainly depends on the aging novelty of avatars virtual spaces)... but some of it is quite interesting such as Eteam's Second Life Dumpster (Marisa Olson describes it here);

Turbulence's Networked_Performance blog reported on another intriguing Second Life project:

Cantata Park 1 (2006) [Teleport to Mashup Park, Marni (206, 35, 23)] -- by Metamatic (Christopher Dodds and Adam Nash) -- is an interactive, spatialised sound sculpture built in the virtual world Second Life. The sculpture is made from 256 individual nodes in a 16 x 16 grid. Each node is embedded with a single word, triggered by a participant's movement through the work. Each participant creates a random narrative, assembled on-the-fly, and in real-time.

Cantata Park explores the notion of a "cut-up narrative". By disassembling and reassembling a passage of text, the participant is free to extract unseen meaning from an existing text. The cut-up technique was popularised by Beat poets in the 1950's-70's as a method to "break the linearity" of written language, with William S. Burroughs using it extensively in his works. Burroughs believed non-pictorial languages contained a virus. By using non-linear writing techniques he believed the true meaning of language could be exposed, and the spoken word used as a weapon.

Cantata Park uses a passage of 256 words from Burroughs' The Electronic Revolution (1971) and transfers the cut-up technique into a real-time 3D environment.

The work explores the possibilities of metaverse art, limitations of Second Life's construction tools and scripting language, and the ability to appreciate conceptual art by proxy of an avatar.

A day without the mobile-phone

Recordings of the sculpture made by Andrew McKenzie, h3o

Eve Arpo & Riin Kranna-Rõõs coordinated "a day without the mobile-phone" last September in Tallinn, Estonia. The project is a an installation made up of cell phones collected from the people in the city. The phones are hung on a tree where they create a light- and sound-installation. Through out the night the phones light up, ring, & vibrate as they receive phone calls--some inadvertent and some specifically to trigger the sculpture.

The artists are organizing a second installation for June 2008 in Edmonton, Canada as part of of The Works Art & Design Festival.



Part 1: TV coverage in top evening news, Reporter, Kanal2.
Part 2: documentation from the installation, recorded by Üllar Luup, Reporter, Kanal2

The Ebb and Flow of Movies

The New York Times has a cool interactive graph of movie revenues since 1983. It very noticeable that revenue spikes become choppier as time progresses--the hits become higher, more individually defined peaks. That's probably related to inflation (as the movies become more expensive, the revenue differences become more extreme), but perhaps it also reflects a growing addiction to a hit-driven model.


[via Leisure Guy]

Ayiti: The Cost of Life

Ayiti has been called the most depressing game ever... it's a surprisingly addictive "serious game" (i.e., socially relevant) in which the player tries to improve the life of a Haitian family of five. The best I've done so far is the keep the family relatively healthy and to get them slight improvements in education, material goods, and jobs.

The concept was developed in a workshop with Brooklyn high school students.

Assignment art

My graduate students and I investigated assignment art yesterday.

We started with Yoko Ono's instruction pieces, but none of her instructions (from Grapefruit) were practical to implement.

We then moved on to Erwin Wurm's One Minute Sculptures and Sculptures to Embarrass (circa 1997). The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Can't Stop music video incorporates several of Wurm's sculptural assignments.

Here are our implementations of Wurm's sculptures.

Shani:


Rachel:

Trotsky:

Seung Ae:


And myself:



What I find most interesting about his work is the decision of what aspects of his sketches are key and what aren't. It reminds me of when I was learning Japanese katakana and hiragana. It was often difficult to determine what is a key trait of a character and what is an eccentricity of the particular font. For example, here are two different renderings of the hiragana for "fu."


Finally, we took a look at Harrell Fletcher (who introduced me to Erwin Wurm when I was in grad school) and Miranda July's Learning to Love You More website.

We choose their Assignment #23 Recreate this snapshot. Here is the original photograph:


And here is our recreation: