Wire Weavers:Marissa Fick-Jordan via Timbuktu Chronicles
Marissa Fick Jordan discusses Wire Weavers at......
The Healthcare Panopticon via WorldChanging
A quick project seen last month at the RCA Summer show. This one is by Design Products (platform 11) graduate and engineer Benjamin Males:
The Static Obesity Logging device, part of Target set of projects, can be installed almost anywhere. The casing of the innocent-looking device conceals a computer, digital and analogue inputs and outputs and a camera. The system is able to remotely calculate Body Mass Index and communicate the data via wired and wireless networks.
The purpose of the device is to raise a series of slightly disturbing questions. Surveillance technologies are becoming increasingly important and invasive in our daily life (especially in the UK). How far can it go? Could we envision that one day surveillance technology will have a role in healthcare? Could it... This is the Sublime of Our Time via WorldChanging
Stewart Brand writes up Ed's talk thusly:
Photographer Edward Burtynsky made a formal proposal for a permanent art gallery in the chamber that encloses the 10,000-year Clock in its Nevada mountain. The gallery would consist of art in materials as durable as the alloy steel and jade of the Clock itself, and it would be curated slowly over the centuries to reflect changing interests in the rolling present and the accumulating past.
Photographs in particular should be in the 10,000-year Gallery, Burtynsky said, “because they tell us more than any previous medium. When we think of our own past, we tend to think in terms of family photos.”
But photographic prints, especially color prints, degrade badly over time. Burtynsky went on a quest for a technical solution. He thought that...
The 10,000 Year Gallery via WorldChanging
Readers in San Francisco have the opportunity tomorrow to hear Worldchanging Chairman Ed Burtynsky deliver a Long Now Seminar. Ed will be talking about his ideas for long-term intergenerational communication through art:
There should be a gallery that collects, displays, and sifts such works over centuries and millennia, and develops ways to preserve them. That is exactly Burtynsky's plan--- a 10,000-year Gallery to accompany the 10,000-year Clock. His presentation will explore and demonstrate the idea.
I'd bet this is going to be a hell of an interesting talk.
It's at the Fort Mason Center, it's $10, and the details can be found on the Long Now site.
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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Arts at 8:18 AM)...
Catalysing Filmmaking via Timbuktu Chronicles
Variety reports on Focus Features Africa First Program which:
Will award 5 African filmmakers $10,000 in financing for post or production work on a narrative short that makes use of local African film industry resources. Filmmakers selected for the grants will retain the copyrights to their projects as well as artistic, budgetary and editorial control with support from a team at Focus.
via...
FreshFacedAndWildEyed via WorldChanging
While in London i went to see a few photography exhibitions. And yes! i realize i wrote a couple of days ago that i'd focus on the RCA show this week but i can't keep that promise, i'm starting to bore myself. Now one of those photo shows is called freshfacedandwildeyed and it marks the launch of an annual exhibition presenting the most striking work by visual arts graduates from BA and MA courses across the UK. There were 25 photographers selected. Some of them had all my attention:
Dewars being filled. Cryonics facility, Phoenix, Arizona
Murray Ballard's Cryonics series explores the practice of preserving dead people or animals by freezing them at extremely low temperatures, in the hope that science will be able to revive them in the future. The photographer traveled to a... London Biotopes and Body Ecologies via WorldChanging
The largest part of the pharmaceuticals and chemicals we take go through our bodies and eventually end up in waste water. As water and waste treatment plants haven't been designed to filter them, the content of our medicine cabinets are eventually passed into the water supply. In London, tap water comes from surface water which implies that traces of our medicine can end up in our drinking water. This results in local differences in tap water, based on the food and drugs we ingest.
Tuur van Balen, one of the graduates of Design Interactions at the RCA, decided to explore this issue in a project which imho had the perfect balance between speculation and solid anchorage into reality.
The way people live and behave in each zone of London can be reflected in the quality of the tap... Life Support: Animals as Medical Companions/ Devices via WorldChanging
Revital Cohen's final project at the Design Interactions department looked at how cross-breeding man with machines or other species can open up new design opportunities and a space for debate (see her previous project the Telepresence Frame.) I realize that most of the readers are familiar with this concept of 'design for debate' but to avoid any misunderstanding, let's just remind that design for debate explores how design can be used as a medium to draw attention to the social, cultural and ethical implications of new technologies. The resulting design proposals do not provide answers, but they make complex issues tangible, and therefore debatable (via).
Revital's Life Support project looks for way of disconnecting people from the therapeutic machines and cold technologies... Committed Places via WorldChanging
I found this edition of the PHotoEspaña festival amazingly good. One of the most thought-provoking shows, Committed Places, Topography and the Present, displays the work of ten photographers who use the genre of topography photography as a medium to go beyond the representation of physical places and reflect on a series of social, historical or political issue. These photographers know how to work their public: first you grab their attention with a spectacular or intriguing image then you tell them the story that lurks behind the print. Some of the participating artists were familiar to me (Geert Goiris , Walter Niedermayr and Taryn Simon) but i discovered other photographers worth a mention and some praise:
Beate Gütschow, S #22
The show opens with Beate Gütschow's puzzling... Looking Behind the War on Terror via WorldChanging
The Helga de Alvear gallery in Madrid is currently running a (very timely) exhibition on the controversial topic of Extraordinary Rendition. The expression was coined by the Bush administration to define new legal measures designed to sidestep the existing Human Rights system and deprive some individuals from its protection in the name of the fight against terrorism.
Detainees at Camp X-Ray, at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
The Patriot Act, for example, expands the authority of US law enforcement agencies for "terrorism investigation." It limits -when it does not completely abolish it- citizens' right to privacy or freedom of expression, allows for kidnapping and confinement of persons without charges, without trial or a detention period as has been happening in Guantanamo... Food Mayhem and Corn Education via WorldChanging
We are living in food mayhem: yesterday morning a nutritionist was complaining on French tv that because the country had turned its back on the usual bread and jam breakfast in favour of American-style fat and sugar-loaded cereals, the population was at risk of fattening. In the afternoon, i was reading in La Repubblica that the soaring costs of pasta, bread, fruit and vegetables are making Mediterranean diet harder to afford. Italians are eating more cheap processed foods high in fat, sugar and salt (via WSJ.) The whole continent is complaining about the food crisis. Meanwhile, bananas are dying, eating local might not always be that energy-efficient after all and a livestock meltdown is under way across Africa, Asia and Latin America. An alarming report states that native breeds... The New Normal via WorldChanging
It's not everyday that Dick Cheney gives its title to an art exhibition.
In the weeks following September 11, the U.S. Vice President justified a steep increase of surveillance measures by explaining that "Many of the steps we have now been forced to take will become permanent in American life. They represent an understanding of the world as it is, and dangers we must guard against perhaps for decades to come. I think of it as the new normalcy." Almost seven years later, the collection and sharing of personal data by governments, luggage searches, Internet monitoring, and wiretaps have indeed become part of a "new normal" in American life.
View of the exhibition space
The New Normal brings together 13 artworks which explore private information. All the works have been... Running the Numbers, the Next Installment via WorldChanging
To help people picture their impact, photographer Chris Jordan has been diligently adding to his consciousness-raising series Running the Numbers, which puts statistics about consumerism into perspective by capturing them visually.
When we covered the first installment of this series, we were taken aback with his ability to make jaws drop and minds expand in a single shot. If you haven’t seen his work before, I recommend taking a look. His talent for illustrating how our individual choices build mountains of consequences (literally) is worth exploring.
In his Running the Numbers series Chris Jordan pairs imagery with statistics in hopes that images representing quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone. Jordan says,
“Statistics can feel abstract... Just-a-Band on Kenyan Animation etc., via Timbuktu Chronicles
In an Afromusing interview Dan of Just A Band said that:
Kenyanimation isn’t actually a Just A Band project, but I work as an animator, and I put up my JAB animation projects there. That blog was set up to bring together animators and animation fans who are from/work in Kenya, just to show people that there actually is such a thing as Kenyan animation, and hopefully be a launching point for...
Video Halls via Timbuktu Chronicles
Business Daily reports on the appearance of video halls that cater largely to the Nollywood Film audience and asks the question, can they be monetized and formalized?
“Every African country has the equivalent of a pirate cinema audience that runs into the thousands....The challenge for film-makers, distributors and exhibitors is how to turn this grey market into one that functions at a price...
Anton Kannemeyer - The Alphabet of Democracy via WorldChanging
White Nightmare (Sedan Chair), 2008
Yesterday i arrived in Manhattan just on time to see the last hour of Anton Kannemeyer's solo exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery. The title, The Haunt of Fears, comes from the 1950s EC Comics title, The Haunt of Fear, a bi-monthly horror comic from the '50s. As co-editor of Bitterkomix, the satirical comic magazine he started with Conrad Botes in 1992, Kannemeyer became known for creating a new South African brand unconcerned with hypocrisy and political correctness.
Say! If You Speak English..., 2008
Birth, 2008
The gallery presented a selection of Kannemeyer's works on paper from The Alphabet of Democracy-series, a new series entitled Cursed Paradise and drawings from recent sketch books; all of which raise extremely uncomfortable... A few magazines I’ve discovered (and in some cases liked) last month via WorldChanging
I've often heard the statement "Oh! but you're a blogger you must find magazines old-fashioned!" No, actually I don't. I love mags, I love paper and beautiful graphics. I like adding notes in the margins and having something to read while I wait for the metro.
The 8th edition of MONU is dedicated to Border Urbanism.
The mag opens with an interview with a dead-pan Joep van Lieshout describing life inside Slave City and his interest for the non-buildable architecture and urbanism (see Slave City and SlaveCity - The Board Room).
Expected borders are analyzed in an innovative way, for example there's a very engaging comparison of Tijuana vs. San Diego's architecture and urban strategies. Then there are the more unusual destinations: the "island" situation of Kalingrad, the... The Chinese Far West via WorldChanging
Just spent 3 days in Rome to check out FotoGrafia, the 7th edition of international festival of photography which runs until May 25th in several venues throughout the city.
In a time when most photo festivals focus on urbanity, chaos or sustainability, the theme chosen by FotoGrafia this year is very brave: "Seeing normality. Photography portrays daily life".
First stop was the Palazzo delle Esposizioni there were several shows by young photographers but one of the photo series was so striking (and so far away from what you and i would regard as "normality"), i spent the rest of my stay in the Italian capital obsessing about it. Chinese Wild West, a collaboration between photographer Paolo Woods and journalist Serge Michel, follows China's industrial neo-colonialism in African... Biopiracy in Art and Literature via WorldChanging
by Regine Debatty
Back in July, while I was visiting Documenta 12 in Kassel, I saw a 16-metre-long flower-bed raised above the ground, with 70 packets of seeds sprouting from the grass, each of them carrying worrying labels that documented the latest form of Colonialism: biopiracy.
Photo documenta 12
Biopiracy describes a new form of "colonial pillaging" in which Western corporations reap profits by taking out patents on indigenous plants, food, local knowledge, human tissues and drugs from developing countries and turning them into lucrative products. Only in few cases are the benefits shared with the country of origin.
Biopiracy targets particularly countries known for their exceptionally high level of cultural and biological variety: Mexico, India, Brazil, Indonesia and... The Art of War via WorldChanging
Ten days ago i went to the opening of Homo Ludens Ludens the at LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijon, Spain. Homo Ludens Ludens, the third part of a trilogy the center dedicated to games, explores play as a key element of today' s world.
I'll come back with more details about the exhibition in the next few days but as a smooth prelude to the lengthier coverage, here's a few words about Art of War Parts 4b and 4c , one of the projects i particularly liked.
Art of War features two puzzling video works. Is that a war movie we are watching? A warzone documentary? A news clip? It's also almost impossible to identify the date of the events or to locate the city where the fight takes place. It might be Beirut or Sarajevo.
The warzone was downtown Stokholm. It was a... Interview with Bart Hess via WorldChanging
I discovered the work of Bart Hess just a year ago, at the Salone del Mobile 2007. The video of his graduation project A Hunt for Hightech was shown as part of Family of Form, the exhibition that the Design Academy Eindhoven had organized in Milan that year. Just one video on a small screen and several people glued to it, fascinated and sometimes slightly horrified. The images showed mutant skins, breathing shoes, living furs and metallic gloves. My vocabulary is actually even more limited than ever when it comes to describe the futuristic fabrics and textures that the young designer had imagined. As his website won't give much details about him and his work, i decided to write Bart and pester him with my questions:
Hi Bart, i found little info about yourself online. Would you... The Great Tortilla Conspiracy via WorldChanging
Father and son team, Rene and Rio Yanez of San Francisco are The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, pioneering artists in the Tortilla Art movement. If you are in San Francisco between now and April 23rd, head to SomArts in the South of Market neighborhood to view their exhibition “Tortilla Art for the 21st Century,” an interactive experience about the reappropriation of pop culture, food systems and globalization.
What is Tortilla Art? Tortilla Art uses the tortilla as an experimental art medium. Rene and Rio use a variety of techniques from heat-transfer prints to collage. Their show also includes work by a number of other artists, as well as a pyramid of tortilla art created by students at Oakland’s Skyline High School. The origins of Tortilla Art date to the early 1970s when... Greenwashing. Environment, Perils, Promises and Perplexities via WorldChanging
Today people will look down on you if your art space doesn't have an exhibition dedicated to ecological issues on its agenda. Unsurprisingly, Milan still hasn't organized anything worth mentioning but her little neighbour, the enlightened and chilly Turin, did. The show is called Greenwashing. Environment, Perils, Promises and Perplexities and is on view at the Fondazione Rebaudengo until May 11, 2008.
Here's the premise: The diverse practices represented in the exhibition do not just point the finger at the degradation of our planet, they also make more tangible the contradictions and responsibilities that we encounter personally and as a society. Art here does not necessarily proclaim a 'correct' ethical or green choice, but allows the possibility for broadening and analysing... Birima via Timbuktu Chronicles
Founded by Youssou N'Dour, Birima "...helps the people of Senegal start their own businesses and develop small enterprises. It supports emerging artists and musicians, too. It is open to all, particularly women and young people, and it lends both to individuals and groups. Birima works with its clients, giving them the support they need to achieve business...
Ant Farm via WorldChanging
The Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla is currently running an exhibition dedicated to Ant Farm, a group of experimental architects and critical artists active mostly in the '70s. The exhibition includes videos, models, original drawings, inflatables and all the quiet you can expect in a cultural center located inside a stunning monastry on the bank of the Guadalquivir River, the Monasterio de la Cartuja de Santa María de Las Cuevas.
Monasterio de la Cartuja de Santa María de Las Cuevas
Founded in San Francisco in 1969 Ant Farm could be regarded today as a very effective mix between Archigram, the Rolling Stones and The Yes Men. Ant Farm embraced the latest technologies at the same time as they hit American culture on the head with their social and political... Billboard Liberation Front’s talk at Vooruit, Ghent via WorldChanging
10 days ago, i was in Ghent for the festival The Game is Up! at the Vooruit. Artists who study the relationship between art and consumerism were invited to perform, and present their work to explore this year's theme: Art for Sale.
Vending machines, installed all around Vooruit magnificent 1913 building, were packed with surprise objects made by the artists who participated to the exhibition: t-shirts, 5 euro banknotes inside blank envelopes, badges, crazy eyeglasses to see what is happening behind your back, etc.
Eva De Groote had invited me to moderate a couple of Fricties Salons. That's how i finally got to have dinner with one of my heroes, Heath Bunting, saw a performance of Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping, had drinks and a lot of laughs with the smart... Exposing the APIs of Invisible Things via WorldChanging
The reason for my presence at etech08 this year was the "art fest" that i set up with the super nice and super smart Kati London, an itp graduate who currently works as a senior producer at area/code in New York and as an artist responsible for projects such as Botanicalls Twitter DIY and You Are Not Here.
Brady Forrest had the idea to organize this first ETech Emerging Arts Fest and we are infinitely grateful to him. We had our friendly debates and doubts but he is the first person who listened to our complains that artists should be given a voice in all those big technology conferences. The theme of the event was "Awareness" and we selected works that bridged the gap between perception and understanding. In retrospect i realize that Brady selected the geekiest pieces, Kati... Alertness Enhancing Device via WorldChanging
The theme of Susanna Hertrich's thesis at the Design Interactions department, RCA, in London, is a reflection on humans and animals in the context of "Human Enhancement": How much do we want to borrow from animals and what are the risks this would involve? How much of the animal is still living inside us? How much of the original animal that we once were has been has been lost in the evolution process?
The project that Susanna was showing at the work in progress show a few weeks ago is the Alertness Enhancing Device.
The risks we fear the most are often the ones most unlikely to be encountered. The human animal has lost its natural instinct for the real dangers. When worn directly on your skin, the Alertness Enhancing Device will act as a physical prosthesis for a lost natural... Cascade on Wheels via WorldChanging
Working together with Cristóbal Castilla, José Hernández, Ricard Marxer, Julian Oliver and Nicolas Tremeaud, Steph Thirion developed a gorgeous traffic data visualization project during the Visualizar workshop which took place at MediaLab Prado in Madrid last November.
Cascade on Wheels intends to express the quantity of cars we live with in big cities nowadays. The data set of daily car count averages is visualized per street (and segments of streets) in the center of Madrid in 2006.
To better express the meaning and extent of the harm car traffic is doing to both the city and its inhabitants, the team created two visualizations of the same dataset. One is a 3D representation, where holes are used as a metaphor of the volume of cars, in a map where the streets look like open... Preview of Eyebeam Eco-Vis Challenge finalists via WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future
Michael Mandiberg and Brooke Singer are two wizards of eco-data visualization.
Eyebeam alum. Brooke Singer is behind Area´s Immediate Reading and the Superfund 365, A Site-A-Day. Superfund 365 is probably my favourite project from 2007. Each day for a year, this online data visualization application visits one toxic site active in the Superfund program run by the U.S. The contaminant, the responsible party and the people involved with or impacted by Superfund are represented in the project.
Michael Mandiberg is a 2007-08 Fellow in the R&D OpenLab and the author of two eye-opening dataviz plug-ins: Oil Standard converts all prices from U.S. Dollars into the equivalent value in barrels of crude oil and Real Costs inserts emissions data into travel related e-commerce websites....