Apect: The Chronicles of New Media Party

Last night I was lucky enough to attend Aspect Art release party for their 13th volume focusing on public art and its relation to technology and the human experience.
Aspect Art is a bi-annual DVD publication whose mission is to distribute and archive works of time-based art. Each issue highlights artists working in new or experimental media, whose works are best documented in video or sound.

The 13th issue presents nine works positioned within the civic space, engaging diverse audiences and expanding the notion of public art and its relation to technology and history.

V.13: Public features works by Nelé Azevedo, John Osorio Buck & Matthew Ward, Heather Clark & Matthew Mazzotta, Robert Ladislas Derr, Suzanne Hagood, Nina Katchadourian, Thorsten Knaub, Brian Knep, and the Spectres of Liberty (Olivia Robinson, Josh MacPhee, & Dara Greenwald).

Virtual Color Organ

The virtual color organ is an ongoing project between artist Jack Ox a Research Scholar at the University of New Mexico and graphics programmer and architect
Dave Britt. The team creates visual maps of the deep structures of music.
Take a look at the project here: http://virtualcolororgan.com/index.html or view it here:



Ox describes this project as a "self-authored system for translating extant compositions into visual performance involving Information theory with a complex layering of systems."

The art works which have emerged from this process have embodied principles of Intermedia, a combination of structural elements which come from more than one medium but are combined into one, basically the theory that describes the intersection of art and technology.

Volcanic Dance Beats

DANTE, the provider of high speed research and education networks in partnership with CityDance Ensemble, a Washington-based modern dance company joined forces to create a dance concert in order to raise awareness of climate change.The dance titled The Mountain, choreographed by Jason Garcia Ignacio, is based on the structure of melodies created out of seismic waves recorded from four volcanoes across three continents: Mount Etna in Italy, Mount Tungurahua in Ecuador, and the Mountains Pinatubo and Mayon in the Philippines. The waves were transformed into audible sound waves using a volcano sonification technique developed by DANTE engineer Domenico Vicinanza, who also composed the music used in the dance performance. The technique is currently being used in research to translate the patterns in a volcano's behaviour into sound waves to help predict volcanic eruptions.

Taking these seismic waves and applying them to the arts was a natural step for Vicinanza to help raise awareness of climate change. This project is a testament to how technology can bring a multitude of disciplines together to facilitate creative collaboration.

Dots and Thoughts

I came into the office today to find the design studio covered in a wall to wall pointillism like mural of Bert from Sesame Street and couldn't help to laugh at it. When I asked one of the talented designers who works in our studio where it came from they led me to this site: http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

Deep rooted in the digital art revolution the Rasterbator is a tool that creates huge, pixelated images from any picture. You can upload an image, crop/stretch it to the desired size, the tool will tell you how many pages you need to print the resulting multi-page pdf file then you can assemble the pages into extremely cool looking poster up to 20 meters in size.

Art/Work: the ins and outs of all things legal in the art world

In line with the ethical and legal issues surrounding art lately and raised by the digital age, Cool Hunting just blogged about a new book Art/Work by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber. Both have a background which includes representing artists, Bhandari as the director at NYC's Mixed Greens Gallery and Melber representing artists at Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

The book (available in print and conveniently in digital form) is a comprehensive guide for any artist wanting to succeed in the cutthroat art world.

Nam June Paik: Live Feed, 1972-1994

South Korean-born American artist Nam Jun Paik left a hole in the video art world with his passing in 2006. Considered to be the first video artist and a pioneer of the space by many, his work foreshadowed contemporary video art as both a communicative and artistic medium. He even went so far as to asserted in 1965 that the television cathode-ray tube would someday replace the canvas. While video has by no means replaced canvas, you can see some of his influential work at the James Cohan Gallery.

Beginning April 14 and running through May 30, the James Cohan Gallery features a collection of Paik's important works including sculptures from his robot series, which incorporate video monitors and surveillance cameras with sculptural forms in order to allowing the audience to engage with the work.

Digital Lenses

Minority Report has become reality with the development of DigiLens by SBG Labs Inc. This new optical device technology makes it possible to seamlessly layer virtual information over physical reality.

I don't quite understand all of the science behind how this really works but all I can this technology is pretty radical enabling us to enhance our world by seeing images: art or other in the context of what we see everyday.

CC: and not Carbon Copy

Writers, bloggers and other online content sharer's sometimes find that Copyright can be too restrictive in enabling them to share their works online. Creative Commons licenses provide the ability to modify the terms of the copyright on your intellectual property.

This video helps to explain Creative Commons licensing and some of the ways in which it allows someone to publish their work somewhere in between All rights reserved and No rights reserved. This method of copyright allows the creator of the work to decide how it can be used by others, if it can be used commercially, sampled, remixed, or built upon. By using a Creative Commons License creators are able to maintain some rights while allowing others greater access to the work than the regular Copyright would allow.

FairShare is a free online application that allows people to track the usage of their creative commons licensed intellectual property. FairShare makes it possible for people all around the world to reuse content while still attributing it back to the original creator. Currently FairShare works for any text based content that is available to the public via RSS feeds.
FairShare hopefully will continue to grow their busness to photos and videos in the future that would allow users to track the use of images and other media beyond just text content.

This is an amazing new tool that will allow anyone who is concerned about how their intellectual property is being used to track and influence how that content is being shared.

Graffiti Eyes

So I came across a blog similar to this one this morning called F.A.T Free Art & Technology - they were on the first page of my Google search of Art and Technology while I'm still no where to be found :(

Anyway, on their there was an interesting post about a graffiti artist named Tony who tagged "Tempt one". Tony suffers from a debilitating disease: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ASL) which has left him paralyzed and unable to use any of his muscles including his hands to write.

F.A.T embarked on a project at the beginning of this month which uses eye tracking technology EyeWriter V1.0 to help Tony continue to practice his art. Pretty fantastic that a man who was down on his luck and thought he would never be able to write again has had the chance to tag again after 7 years. Imagine how this technology can help others like him....

Associated Press vs Shepard Fairey

On posters, on buttons and websites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: Shepard Fariey’s red, white and blue depiction of a pensive Barack Obama and underlined with the caption HOPE.

In February of this year the Associated Press brought a case against the Los Angeles based graphic artist accusing him of copyright infringement for using an AP photo originally taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington as the basis of his iconic “HOPE” image. Fairly admitted that he used the image without credit or prior permission from Garcia or the AP but because he found the image on Google images, which is public domain, he has claimed fair use.

Fair use is a legal concept that allows exceptions to copyright law, based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work.

Fairey claims that he created the Obama image as a grassroots tool solely to help Obama get elected president. The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees, stating on his site that he’s fighting these charges to "protect the rights of all artists and the basic rights of free expression" except in this case has become what is free if its posted online. Legal experts differ in their views on the Obama image. Some claim that Fairey had the right to use the photo, saying that he intended it for a political cause, not commercial use and therefore will certainly count in favor of the poster being fair use. The poster in no way diminishes the value of the photo, if anything, it has increased the original photo's value beyond measure, another factor counting heavily in favor of fair use. Fairey released the image on his website shortly after he created it, in early 2008, and made thousands of posters for the street.
As the image gained exposures, supporters of Obama began downloading the image and distributing it at campaign events, while blogs and other Internet sites picked it up. Fairey has said that he did not receive any of the money raised.

On the other side of the argument, copyright specialists question whether Fairey has a valid fair use claim. Jane Ginsburg, a Columbia University law professor states "what makes me uneasy is that claiming fair use suggests that anybody's photograph is fair game, as long as it is found in public domain, even if it uses the entire image, and it remains recognizable.”

In my opinion the HOPE poster/art is something totally different than the Garcia reference photo he used to create it. Artists work in this manner every day and have for years; they take existing imagery and change it into something else. I suppose one could argue that it is a derivative work, but everything created in the world is derivative. There are many existing photos taken of famous people by different photographers that look almost exactly the same or even images taken from public domain that inspire larger bodies of work. I guess this is a testament to our times – where there still lacks the existence of laws and protections that define how we categorize property found online.

Eduardo Kac was born in 1962 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil began his artistic career as a traditional performance artist but eventually moved on to investigate technology artistically through an exploration of poetry. After becoming dissatisfied with the uni-dimensionality of the printed word, Kac turned to holography. In 1983, he coined the term "holopoetry" to describe his three-dimensional floating texts at which point he began an intense relationship between artistic practice and the possibilities of technology. Throughout the years he has continued to push the boundaries that lie between networks and telecommunications as well as biological technology and art.His transgenic works dating back to 1998 include pieces where rabbits, fish, plants and mice glow in the dark not because they are virtual or digital but because they are genetically engineered to do so. To this day he continues to not only make a social commentary on where technology is taking society but also create dynamic and interesting pieces that leverage his performance arts background and combine it with present day technology.

Artistic Knives

The Times Arts section reported on a fairly disturbing show that opened yesterday: I Am Art: An Expression of the Visual Artistic Process of Plastic Surgery," curated by a plastic surgeon, uses the human body as a medium - YUCK!
The multimedia group show answers fundamental questions of creativity, writes Holland Cotter : "Who defines beauty, perfection, the ideal? To what degree is perfection another version of distortion?" If you decide to go under the knife yourself, Mr. Cotter won't object. "A thing of beauty is a joy, whether forever or for a day," he writes,"and if a doctor-artist can turn you into one, that's art to me."

Society & Virtual Museums

Throughout history, art objects have been placed in a variety of spaces, works of art have been part of churches, caves, libraries, malls, parks, galleries and museums. In each of these environments, art objects have acquired a variety of functions and meanings: religious, ritualistic, commercial, decorative, historical.

The virtual museum is the most recent cultural space to have emerged in the art world. The birth of the virtual museum dating back to the 1990s with the advent of the internet have created a new cultural space. In many ways, the cyberspace museum has redefined the functions of the museum and the relationships between the museum, the art object and the public.

This fascinating paradigm shift has peeked the interest of not only artists, technologists but asko sociologists such as María-José Moreno of the Department of Social Sciences, College of General Studies at the University of Puerto Rico has dedicated her career to the affects of technology on altering our traditional views of art.

New thinking in old ways

New thinking in old ways sounds like a bit of an oxymoron which it is, its a bit like seeing the old world with new eyes. I came across a 2003 white paper from ArtsLab titled Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Money: Technology-Based Art and the Dynamics of Sustainability which discusses even five years ago how technology-based art was becoming increasingly of interest to both the art and the technology communities, as well as to the public at large. The white paper discusses the support opportunities that existed for tech-based art, such as commercializing invention and tapping a new generation of collectors, patrons and sponsors based on observations about the art and technology landscape and opportunities for future support.

I'm not that narcissistic to think that I'm the only one thinking about these issues and I'm happy to find that established foundations and people have been looking for ways to integrate the two.

Take a look for the paper at: http://www.artslab.net

Math Spirits

So I've been on this kick of art that's based on math or science of some sort lately and came across Xylor Jane's pieces. Jane's work draws on mathematical algorithms to create highly ordered minimalist grids. Each of her highly elaborate geometric works involves binary code and the color spectrum. While I'm sure technology of some sort could make these pieces easier to construct there's something really nice about the fact that Jane uses traditional means to create these magical paintings.

What?!? DNA Art

Ok seriously now - when did DNA become art? I was taking a look for a present at the MOMA shop and came across this:


Framed DNA Print
Adrian Salamunovic,
Nazim Ahmed, 2005

These prints are described as "A modern spin on the traditional personal portrait, a unique DNA genetic fingerprint" and are custom printed in your choice of one of nine different color palettes. I guess you buy a kit and swab the inside of your mouth to collect a saliva sample, which you send to a lab for processing. The result is an image of your DNA - cool but creepy. Really people? REALLY??!?

Wall Art Parties

I've been noticing a new and pretty cool phenomenon taking over the usually lame wedding/ vacation/honeymoon picture sharing parties. I went to one of these a few weeks back and essentially every party attendant was asked to provide the art. The hosts provided the projector and a large wall! Here's how it worked - everyone emailed the host their work (whatever medium: drawings, photos, graphic design, post-it art) in the form of digital images or video. She compiled all of the pieces into a slideshow and create an instant gallery where each piece gets 1.5 minutes of fame.

Cool Hunting just covered Slideluck Potshow which is based on a very similar concept - a potluck slideshow. Anyone can attend the events, however guests are asked to bring contributions in the form of food, drink and imagery. Photographers of all subject matters and experience levels are encouraged to submit their work for the entertainment portion of the evening. The result is a striking mish-mash of imagery by emerging and established individuals.

Photographer Casey Kelbaugh founded the non-profit organization in 2000 in Seattle, where he hosted more than 20 of these gatherings in his backyard. When he moved to New York in 2003, the events continued in his East Village apartment before landing in larger venues.
Past contributors have included the Guggenheim Foundation, Elliott Erwitt, Shepard Fairey, Chris Buck, Nina Berman and other well-known names, each exhibition also features an equally impressive number of amateurs.

Check out Slideluck Potlucks upcoming events here: http://www.slideluckpotshow.com/

False Mirrors - Jacob Kassay

Jacob Kassay's electroplated silver canvases look a lot like old worn mirrors but use today's technology to attain their appearance. If, like me, you have no idea what electroplating is, its a super cool process of plating that uses electrical current to reduce cations (positively charged ions) of a desired material to coat an object with a thin layer of the material, such as a metal. While electroplating dates back to the 1800s its a pretty new and inventive concept for art.

The plating concept burns the unpainted canvas, so at times the pieces look black and burnt on the corners. In several of Kassay's pieces the burn marks extend into the shiny faces of the panels giving them a mirror like appearance.

Joseph Wolin notes "The way that these thin silver surfaces delicately capture the traces of whatever stands before them evokes photography, with its light-sensitive emulsions of metal salts. But film photography as a technology has now been surpassed by digital—just as photography itself once usurped the province of painting—making Kassay's metal coatings feel like bronzed baby shoes, elegies to an unrecoverable past."

Rankin Live - Reminder

A few months back I blogged about Rankin's upcoming exhibit in London and today I received a reminder email from Dazed that I thought I would pass along:
From the 1st August 2009 for 7 weeks, Rankin will take up residence at the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane. A 600 image retrospective of his work and a live photo shoot will feature side by side. You have the opportunity to be photographed by Rankin for £50 (all profits going to Oxfam). In addition to receiving a print, your image will also form part of the live exhibition alongside some of Rankin’s most iconic images, including portraits of The Queen, Kate Moss and Vivienne Westwood to name a few. For a chance to participate, please email rankinlive@rankin.co.uk. Please include a photograph of yourself and briefly summarise your reasons for applying.

Moveable Art

I was in the New York Times building today and was memorized by the permanent lobby instillation by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin called Moveable Type. This piece is a collaborative installation between New York artist, Rubin and UCLA Statistics professor, Hansen. The interactive piece captures writing from the New York Times, old and new, and displays them in various ways on hundreds of small screens.



The artwork is in a constant state of change because it reflects the up to the minute production of the news by the Times both print and online and draws content from life feeds, summaries of online page views and search activities as well as Times archives dating back to 1851.

What a cool way to mix technology and art it definitely made my rainy day a little better.

...and More Art Ads

My post about Marilyn Minter got me thinking - this weekend while celebrating my soon to be married friends last few months of bachelorette-hood we had a bowling lunch at Lucky Strike. Lucky Strike is a new and can I say posh bowling alley that opened in New York a few months ago.

While bowling I noticed that there were screens at the end of the lanes alternately displaying digital art and attributions. I think its a pretty ingenious way to promote artists and their work and also a great use of technology to do so.

Art ads

So I've been catching up on my New York Magazines and Time Outs from the past few weeks this gorgeous afternoon and came across an interview with artist Marilyn Minter which was pretty interesting. Minter's large scale paintings border on photorealism although she calls herself a "photo-replacer" meaning that she "replaces photos with intense rich surfaces" that tend to look abstract from up close. For her upcoming show at Salon 94 in New York she did something fairly ingenious, she's created an ad for her show.

In the interview Minter talks about how she got the idea of creating an ad from movie trailers. She recruited her makeup artist for help with the project. While taking photos for paintings, her makeup artist who has shot for MAC began taking photos of Minter taking photos which are now the subject of a video that's going up in Times Square for Creative Time an organization that "produces, and presents adventurous artworks of all disciplines in the public realm."

Minter prides herself on pushing boundaries and making art accessible to everyone which is not only in line with Creative Time's mission but also enables her to use technology and various other media such as skateboards or t-shirts and now even trailers to display and promote her art. I'll be sure to try and catch the trailer next time I'm at the Sunshine theater!

Connection Progression - Visual and Media

With the economy where it is now I began thinking about how artists go about marketing themselves or connecting with galleries, other artists and prospective buyers - for networking or just as means of social media

MySpace connected musicians or let me re-phrase that, connected music lovers to bands that they might have never had a listen to before. Twitter came into popularity by people "twitting" about new artists at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas a few years back. But I had never really heard of social media sites for artist until I did a little bit of research. I came across several sites that seemed pretty credible although I'm not really one to judge.

The site VisualProgression is one of the many I came across and seems to provide an environment that makes digital art accessible for artists to sell their work and for buyers. Its an environment for graphic designers and digital artists where they can learn from others and share their knowledge, upload portfolios, blog, ask and answer questions and discuss equipment.

I also came across a list Nicholas Forrest of artmarketblog.com recently put together of the top ten social networks that would be of benefit to art collectors and art investors. Below is his list of the top ten social networking sights that cater specifically to people interested in visual art:
http://www.myartspace.com/ is an online community with more than 50,000 artists, collectors, students, teachers, gallerists, curators, critics and art appreciators across the world.

http://www.artreview.com/ is a new social networking site for the artworld, "creating a global forum for discussion, interactivity and debate. artreview.com is a unique blend of editorial and community content, combining the insight and critical weight of some of today’s most important art world voices with the input and opinions of everyday enthusiasts from around the world."

http://www.artmesh.org/ is an inspiring and innovative network for those who live and love the fine arts. The difference to other art communities is the fact that "artmesh is about communication and collaboration, about inspiration and the exploration of the boundless possibilities of a progressive and innovative virtual art network."

http://www.artslant.com/, is the #1 contemporary art network, launched in Los Angeles in February, 2007. It is a sophisticated website that brings a local and in-depth focus to the contemporary art scene.

http://www.artlog.com/ "Artlog is the place for you to connect with folks, share your work and discover innovative new art & design". Artlog is for art makers, insiders, organizations and art lovers.

http://www.independent-collectors.com/ is an online tool targeted at modern and inquisitive collectors. It makes building a personal network and sharing information about topics like artists, galleries or events much easier and faster.

http://www.artselector.com/ The artselector contemporary fine art collective was originally set up by MA Fine Art graduates of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art.

http://www.rhizome.org/ community includes thousands of artists, academics, curators, critics, and other new media art enthusiasts.

http://www.labforculture.org/en/labforculture/browse brings members of the visual art community together to network, advance careers, and to foster a community with exclusive benefits where information about artists and designers is provided by artists and designers.

Projections and Protections

LED signboards have become a signature material for Jenny Holzer - an artistic means of disseminating a message in a public forum and provoking a response in viewers. LEDs allow Holzer to convey her subversive messages whether its describing torture, or lamenting death and disease.

Her work sometimes blends in among advertisements in public space but it definitely doesn't go unnoticed. Sometimes you wish it was like a show where the announcer warn you of the strobe lights to lessen the shock - but regardless the message sinks in.

Since the late seventies, she has been working in the street and in public buildings, using media from LED displays to posters and stickers applied to telephone booths or parking meters, that enable her work to blend in the landscape. Text functions as social commentary on that environment they fit into, stimulating awareness of our social conditioning conveyed in the very environments and media in which we may be confronted by them.

As a communications professional I find her work extremely interesting - I find it speaks to the adage coined by Marshall McLuhan that the medium is the message. Like McLuhan Holzer tasks herself with understanding the effects of technology as it related to popular culture, and how this in turn affected human beings and their relations with one another in communities.

Holzer's work has been shown worldwide in prominent institutions and last week the Whitney Museum in New York opened a survey of her latest work. The exhibit is well worth your $15 admission and runs through May 31st.

This Happened....

While I would have loved to be the first to find this amazing site - Cool Hunting's Brian Fitchner reported on it yesterday.
This happened... is a company that organizes events focusing on the stories behind interaction design. According to them having ideas is easier than making them happen so they delve into projects that exist today and how their concepts and production process can help inform future work.
Created in 2007 by a threesome of London based designers, this happened...encourages people to be more open in their methods and ideas in a fairly proprietary industry.

With over 30 different 20 minute talks online this site provides a wealth of information and inspiration for anyone working in design or interested in the creation of interactive art. Some of my favorites are the talks given by Dominic Harris who runs Cinimod Studio, a multi-disciplinary design practice spanning architecture, lighting and interactive design. He talkes about his collaboration with New York artist Peter Coffin, for which he designed and built a UFO that flew over the Polish city of Gdansk.

I also really

appreciated the talk given by Ben and Russell of

Really Interesting Group a multi-disciplinary organization working in post digital design who talk about Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet(TOFHWOTI). TOFHWOTI is a collection of things from the Internet they thought would work well on paper so they made it into a newspaper and had it printed with a limited edition run of 1,000 that they hand numbered.

Ben and Russell's impetus for this project was not only to work out Christmas presents for their friends but also to try to transfer web content into a more interesting and traditional forms that people are accustomed to. While they aren't the first to do it - company's like MacGloud and Tabbloit have been working it out for a while now The Really Interesting Group not only put an artistic spin on their project but also spawned a Flickr community of online collectors who are trying to capture images of all of the 1,000 newspapers.

Q-bert attack - The New Dark Age

Interdisciplinary artist Ben Jones of the East Coast art collective Paper Rad (whose primary deal is to combine multiple medias online and also to create books) solo show of crossover-media video sculpture, light painting, and “drawing in the digital age” is currently showing at the Deitch Projects. Ben explores new methods of pictorial storytelling through the drawn, projected, and sculpted line. Take a look at some of his work:

On a side note careful when visiting Paper Rad's site - it reminds me of a Q-bert game on acid: images jump at you and you get sucked in to the vortex of color and sound.

Mechanical Creatures of U-Ram Choe

Artist U-Ram Choe's sculptures are a mix of science, technology and art. Inspired by science fiction and anime culture, he mechanicizes nature — replicating flowers, insects, birds, and sea life.

Choe's deep understanding of robotics helps him in running his own lab, United Research of Anima-Machines (URAM, after his own name) where he designs and constructs his machine-creatures, equipping them with wings, fins, and propellers.
Choe gives his animatronic sculptures Latin names and creates narratives that suggest his creatures eat all sorts of electric waves.

Choe admittedly finds machines fascinating, yet fears the Matrix-like outcome of technology taking control of humankind.

Check out Choe's website here: http://www.uram.net/english/intro_eng.html

and view a time-lapse installation of the piece his bitforms gallery online.

Capturing Tigers and Elephants

I found myself re-watching the BBC Planet Earth series this weekend and remembered how remarkable the series was the first time I saw it. The great plains disc is by far my favorite not only because of the adorable Pikas (cousins of the rabbits) but because of the amazing HD film and infrared technology that was used to capture for the first time on film a pride of 30 famished lions leaping on the back of an elephant five times their size, mauling and gnawing until they finally succeed in running the poor defenseless elephant into the ground.
While I found the footage hard to watch the behind the scenes diary that explains both the technology and filming technique is beyond fascinating.

For over six weeks the team follow a pride of 30 lions as they attempt to hunt elephants, using the latest night vision equipment they were able to capture this amazing natural phenomena.
The infrared night vision used by the crew pushes filming technology to the limits. It works by augmenting and converting the available ambient light or in lay person terms collecting the tiny amounts of light, that are present but may be imperceptible to our eyes, and amplifying it to the point that we can easily observe the image without actually using a visible light source.

This technology and artistry made it possible for mass audiences to see the rare behavior that exists outside our realm of consciousness and that was previously unable to be captured on film.

Cloning Art

I was googling the words technology and art today to see if anyone is actually reading my blog or if it had any prominence in Google. To my dismay it didn't but what I found instead was an article from the technology section of the New York Times dated July 2004 about a french sculptor who wanted to reproduce a limestone sculpture of a loin's face for a line of fountains. Since carving each individual head was an arduous task that the sculptor was uninterested in, he instead worked with a new-stone mill in who technically mapped the original sculpture in 3D with a laser scanner and produced exact replicas of the loin's head. A task that would take any sculptor days if not weeks was completed in mere hours by the machine - without the subtle flaws and imperfections of handmade creations.

This story is an example of how technology is transforming the way sculpture, architectural elements and and even painting can be cloned. Computer aided design software and scanners are in some cases replacing the original artists creating detailed replicas from original works. While these replicas lack the inspiration and creativity of the original pieces they do paint a scary picture of what's in store for craftsmen.

Don't get me wrong I am all for advancements in technology but not at the cost of craftsmanship. Rapid prototyping pioneered by the automotive and aviation industry in the 1950's has gained traction in industries ranging from consumer package good design to toys, I guess it was only a matter of time before it infiltrated the art world.

Are artists fully prepared to embrace it though?

Drama: Sensory Overload

New York City performance company Big Art Group creates hallucinatory theatrical environments through real-time film projections. The company uses the language of media and blended states of performance in a unique form to build "culturally transgressive" works. As the action unfolds in their most recent work, a forest of technology records each scene from multiple angles and rebroadcasts them to the audience on a network of screens. The confluence of visual stimuli functions as a "discomfiting commentary on our times", evoking reality TV, digital data streams, screen addiction, and the future of virtual reality. Big Art Group's latest piece, SOS, uses the audience as an active editor, whose individual attention produces a unique narrative from the sensory overload. S.O.S. utilizes ten performers and a video matrix that inhabit a multi-camera, multi-screen installation. If you agreed with me that Ben Jones pieces in collaboration with Paper Rad's site were a lot this experimental piece is even more.

Ligths, Camera, Screens - Protect Protect

Lee Frank says "Jenny Holzer thrives outside the more traditional, brick-and-mortar art world of paint and photography, using LED and light projection as her medium."

Starting today, her exhibit PROTECT PROTECT lights up the Whitney. As with past works where she beamed poems on buildings throughout New York, Holzer continues using poetry in her work. However, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, this show also includes manipulations and projections of government documents, and covers her craft from the '90s to the present.

The show goes on from Thursday Mar 12 (11am–6pm) at the Whitney Museum of American Art (945 Madison Ave, 800.944.8639).

Computer Age Generated Art

This morning the New York times reported on the The New Museum of Contemporary Art's next month inaugural triennial exhibit of an international sampling of 50 artists who were born after 1976 and raised in the computer age. The show "Younger Than Jesus” will begin to examine the visual culture this generation has created to date.

In order to select the artists for this show the curators relied on their Internet savvy, reaching out to 150 writers, teachers, artists, critics, curators and bloggers worldwide, for recommendations. From around 600 suggested names, the team including Adjunct Curator; Massimiliano Gioni, and Laura Hoptman cut the group down to the group to 50 artists spaning mediums from painting, drawing, photography, film, animation, performance, installation, dance, Internet-based works, and video games.
Kerstin Brätsch, a 30-year-old German-born artist and a part of a collective called Das Institute who will show computer-generated images that “can become anything."

“Younger Than Jesus” will capture the signals of an imminent change, identify emerging stylistic trends and provide the general public with an in-depth look at how the next generation conceives of our world. Revealing new languages, technologies and attitudes, the exhibition will comprise a portrait of the agents of change at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Insane Image Technology

My last post reminded me of a Microsoft image technology that was presented at the 2007 TED conference.

Some call this technology mind blowing, I find it insane and amazing. Essentially this Microsoft technology can change the landscape of photo sharing. Here is the video of Blaise Aguera demo-ing it at the conference:

Basically you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your photo is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail and clarity impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.
Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos. Bonkers right?

Risque Internet Photos - Thomas Ruff

A classmate suggested I take a look at the work of contemporary German photographer Thomas Ruff for the purpose of this blog.

Ruff has been testing and extending the limits of photography for more than two decades, completing a dozen series of photographs that range from seemingly banal images of streets and buildings to computer-generated prints of sensuous psychedelic colour fields.

In 2003 as part of his exploration of the Internet and the "parallel visual universe" Ruff published a photographic collection titled "Nudes" that were based on borrowed images of Internet pornography, which were then digitally manipulated, processed and obscured to give them an abstract feel that often masked their erotic content. Here is one of the less risque images from this series:

While this series was received with much ambivalence in the art community and departs greatly from his earlier portrait work that highlights every pore and detail of his subject. This series of Ruff's work really underscores the belief that in our virtual age, that each photograph is a part of an ever changing whole that we all have the opportunity to participate in and change.

Wierd Web - Explain this Photo

Ok so maybe this site has less to do with art and technology than anything I've posted on before but I couldn't resist. I stumbled across this site this morning and just started laughing to myself.

The webs weirdest photos now have a home where you can comment on and provide captions for them: explainthisimage.com . Images range from mildly touching (an Asian child in a grocery bag with the caption "Angelina I'm back from the mall") to the completely absurd and mildly perverted where you just have to ask yourself really?

I guess without the web and the proliferation of image sharing sites like this wouldn't exist. Thanks Al Gore ;).

Instant Fame & Gratification

As the accelerated pace of the digital age reaches full velocity, Rankin, a photographer, publisher and most recently a director is pairing up with the British magazine Dazed for an ever-changing exhibit, Rankin Live. Selected participants - 1,000 members of the general public get a chance to have their portraits shot, framed and exhibited alongside British icons of the 21st century in record time - 15 minutes after the shutter closes to be exact. Amazing, groundbreaking, instant gratification!

The exhibit is slated to take place in August.

For more information and a preview of the project visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/feb/12/rankin-live-preview-photographs?picture=343063473

Technology at the Oscars

Last nights Oscars definitely felt like a reflection of the times. The glitz and glamour seemed to be downsized but what remained spectacular are the advanced technology and engineering that that many of these films used.

What disappointed me was the fact that this art form was breezed over at the ceremony and awards for Scientific and Technical Achievements were honored at a dinner almost a week earlier.

The team of Christophe Hery, Ken McGaugh and Joe Letteri were honored for their groundbreaking implemention of skin rendering techniques using something called a subsurface scattering. These techniques are used to create realistic-looking skin on digitally created characters. It makes me wonder if this was a technique used The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to make a hansom Brad Pitt look like a wretched tree gnome and a walnut looking baby.

It seems as though advancements like this has come to a point where it blurs the boundaries of reality. Technical achievements made by such people as this trios make it virtually impossible to distinguish between a digitally synthesized character and the actual actor.

Personally I wonder what these types of advancements mean for film making as an art form.

Obama Me Shepard Fairey

A few months ago Paste Magazine launched a site Obamacon.me. Anyone who visits the site is able to upload a photo of themselves and create their own Shepard Fairey -inspired campaign poster and words of inspiration. You've probably seen these icons everywhere and they may annoy you as much as they annoy me. It just comes to show that how far photo altered technology has come that now anyone can reproduce and mimic to the point that we can bastardize a national icon to represent ourselves.

Arts Education

I got to thinking today - as we venture more and more into the "Digital Age" where technology and knowing how to use continues to becomes paramount, how is arts education effected?

Does teaching children how to use educational software's such as Kid Pix or Photoshop at a young age rather than how to use traditional materials such as clay and paint benefit or harm them? Do they get a broader world view by being exposed to virtual museums and exhibits online or are we creating unrealistic expectations as to what art looks like and what mastery really is.

The use of technology as a creative tool is occurring more and more in art classrooms across the country. Lessons in computer graphics, animation and multi-media design are increasingly being taught to younger age students. At a recent conference of Arts Educators of New Jersey a session on computer graphics curriculum for K-8 was one of the best attended.

Organizations such as The Visual Thinking Strategies and Arts Education 2.0 promote a curriculum and teaching method that ask educators to facilitate learner-centered discussions of visual art while using art to develop critical thinking, communication and visual literacy skills.

Needless to say as we are exposing younger and younger kids to art through technology their social dynamic and technological consciousness are changing as are the way they communicate, understand and interact with the world around them.

Welcome

Hi -
Welcome to my TART blog where art and technology meet. Please feel free to send your feed if you too blog about tech and art.

Happy reading.

Best,
Tanya