Urban Abstract

Urban Abstract from Musuta on Vimeo.

Digital Urban: "Art Director Jopsu Ramu from Musuta Ltd. (a multidisciplinary design agency based in Helsinki & Tokyo) has created together with Shun Kawakami (artless Inc) an artist and designer from Tokyo - a digital art piece titled Urban Abstract. This digital art piece is being shown as the November break bumpers on one of the biggest commercial TV channels in Finland: TV Nelonen.
We really like the section at 1.14 - the 3D city is nicely done. The artists have plans for new pieces and are currently looking for interesting projects to work on and to continue this Helsinki - Tokyo collaboration.

The website urban-abstract.com works as a part of the piece and creates an extra dimension for the clips shown on TV. "

Explosive new video from the Glue Society

Metal on Metal "BASTARD" from The Glue Society on Vimeo.

Creative Review: "If you're looking for an antidote to all the anodyne Xmas stuff about at the moment, the Glue Society's new video for the delightfully titled Bastard by Lituanian DJ outift Metal On Metal might just be it..."

- The Glue Society has a brilliant website!

Dubai World Marvel Super Heroes Theme Park Concept Art

Disney and more managed to get hold of some concept art for the "city of superheroes" in the desert. Yes, true believers, the construction work on the biggest theme park ever continues: "Late 2007, United Arab Emirate-based Al Ahli Group and Marvel Entertainment, Inc. announced a partnership that will bring Marvel's full library of Super Heroes - including Spider-Man, Iron Man, The X-Men, Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer - to Dubai for a major new theme park destination being developed by AAG. The Marvel Super-Heroes theme park project was supposed to open in 2011 with an investment of over $1 billion USD but apparently it seems that it will open now in 2012."

More images at Disney and more

The Chilling Sound of Ice Records

Dangerous Minds: "For Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull,, artist Katie Paterson recorded the sound of three glaciers in Iceland. She then pressed these sounds on three records made of the melt water of these three glaciers. Three turn tables played the records for nearly two hours until they completely melted. A sample of one of the records can be heard here. It seems like the ultimate piece of conceptual art. Next to that it points at present environmental problems like global warming an the perishability of our planet in a beautiful, subtle way."

Amnesty Pixelatia

worldfamousdesignjunkies: "You love pixels, right? You like helping people live nicely in the whole wide world maybe too, perhaps? Amnesty International’s teaming up with one of the most awesomest pixel teams in the universe eBoy! What they’ve come up with is this fantastic poster! It’s totally large and totally colorful and it can be totally yours! More excellent details over here.

Around $32 and a half dollars for a fabulous poster. Looove it.

47″ x 33″ large, giant, huge.

Co-op for Amnesty International’s Poverty is Modern campaign.
4 Euros of each sold poster will be donated to Amnesty International."

Peyote Queen by Storm de Hirsch / Free Radicals by Len Lye

John Coulhart: "Ubuweb turns up another gem of abstract cinema with this 1965 work by Storm de Hirsch. The only film of hers I’d seen prior to this was Third Eye Butterfly (1968), screened at the 2005 Summer of Love psychedelia exhibition. Both these shorts share the same spilt-screen effect but Peyote Queen (Video)cuts kaleidoscopic views of the woman in question with brightly-coloured animated glyphs and shapes created by drawing directly onto the film emulsion. This is an old technique which goes back at least as far as Len Lye’s pioneering films of the 1930s. Peyote Queen’s drum soundtrack and white dots flickering on black are very reminiscent of Lye’s brilliantly minimal Free Radicals (1958) which was also made by scratching the film. See the film below.


Animation film made by Len Lye in 1958."

Lines of Art Blur Between Rembrandt and His Pupils

Lee Hendrix, senior curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, poses in front of a mural showing the interior view of Rembrandt's studio at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

ABC News: "Before he died 340 years ago, Rembrandt van Rijn lost his house, studio and most of his money. He even sold his wife's grave to pay bills.

Since then, he's also been stripped of credit given to him for hundreds of drawings and paintings.

Experts say many works, once believed to be Rembrandt's, were done by students who would sit at his side, use the same model and come up with similar drawings or paintings.

At one time, Rembrandt was credited with 611 paintings. In the 1930s, scholars said only about half were his. Now comes a study of about a thousand ink drawings once thought to be the Dutch master's. Between a third and a half of them were done by his students, said Lee Hendrix, senior curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum's Department of Drawings.

An exhibition based on 30 years of research and called 'Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference' will be on display at the Getty from Dec. 8 to Feb. 28. There will be more than 40 pairings, showing Rembrandt's drawings next to those by pupils such as Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Carel Fabritius and Nicolaes Maes."

Alphabet for Alphaville

Scott Teplin: "Alphabet as buildings in pen & ink and watercolor. A complete letterpress series will soon be available as individual letters and as a complete 26-page book through x-ing books."

Elio

Elio from Rob Diaz on Vimeo.

Vimeo: "An animated short film shot entirely on a Nokia XpressMusic 5800 for the '2 minutos de cine' contest.
Design & Animation: Rob Díaz
Music: Chromeo

eliofilm.wordpress.com/"

Book: Eva and Franco Mattes

0100101110101101.ORG: "Featuring previously unseen works, this book is the first official monograph on the artists-provocateurs Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG. Over the last ten years, the Mattes have manipulated video games, Internet technologies, feature films and street advertising to reveal truths concealed by contemporary society. They have created media facades believable enough to elicit embarrassing reactions from governments, the public and the art world, and they have orchestrated several unpredictable mass performances, staged outside art spaces and involved unwitting audiences in scenarios that mingle truth and falsehood to the point of being indistinguishable.
This book brings together all these exploits, including the anecdotes, indictments and controversies that have always accompanied them. At the same time the book reveals the couple's very first (and until now undisclosed) work: Stolen Pieces. Over two years, 1995-97, they toured the world’s most important museums and stole dozens of fragments from well-known works by artists such as Duchamp, Kandinsky, Beuys and Rauschenberg. This work, which has remained a secret for 14 years, is revealed and discussed here for the very first time.
This unique book is a combination of history and fiction, criticism and plagiarism, jesting and journalism.

With texts by Domenico Quaranta, Bruce Sterling, RoseLee Goldberg, Wu Ming, Fabio Cavallucci, Maurizio Cattelan, Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, Tilman Baumgärtel, Marco Deseriis and Matthew Mirapaul, 144 pages, 243 illustrations."

Pablo Picasso etchings found in Spanish library

The Picasso aquatints on display in Madrid at an exhibition about the Generation of 1927. Photograph: Victor Lerena/EPA
The Guardian:"Thirteen etchings by Pablo Picasso have come to light after a Spanish professor discovered them jammed into the pages of a book owned by the Spanish artist's lover and muse, Dora Maar.

The aquatints were found by chance earlier this year when Professor Andrés Soria began leafing through the pages of an illustrated edition of a book of poems by the Spanish poet Luis de Góngora, which was bought by Spain's National Library a decade ago.

The book, which was a homage to one of Picasso's favourite poets, was meant to have been illustrated by another artist — Ignacio González de la Serna.

But it seems that Picasso was so disgusted with González de la Serna's work that he tore the illustrations out and inserted artist's proofs of his own work. He even drew a picture of a mask across González de Serna's name in the front of the book."

Stop Motion Paper Cutting

Visual Culture: "Dig this stop-motion film for the NZ Book Council. The short uses roughly 3,000 still images to animate a portion of Maurice Gee’s novel, Going West. The piece was produced by Colenso BBDO and animated by Andersen M Studio.

“The entire film is handmade, using only 10A scalpel blades and paper,” explains Martin Andersen. “It was photographed on two SLR cameras and lit using Dedo lights.”"

Art for whose sake?

Clips from an excellent article over at (first click for free, don't worry!) FT.com: "Much derision has been sparked by Damien Hirst’s exhibition No Love Lost – Blue Paintings at the Wallace Collection in London, with critics branding it “dreadful” and “a stupefying admission of defeat”.

And some of the censure has been reserved for the Wallace, one of London’s best-loved museums, for putting on the show at all, because of the commercial nature of the deal. Hirst contributed £250,000 ($417,000) to the Wallace, and this led to accusations that the Wallace chose to show Hirst for financial reasons and not for curatorial ones. “Damien Hirst paid for the costs of the exhibition to ensure that entrance to the exhibition remained free without the Wallace Collection needing to find a corporate sponsor in these difficult economic times. He covered the costs of the installation of the exhibition and the refurbishment of the galleries as well as the majority of the marketing and advertising,” said director Dame Rosalind Savill in a statement.
(...)
Publicly funded museums and galleries have a mission to display and conserve works of art for aesthetic, art historical and educational reasons. The market, on the other hand, seeks to maximise commercial value, and is only too aware that exhibition in a well-known institution brings recognition, validation and a potential boost in prices for the artist’s work.

But faced with rising costs and diminishing resources, museums have no recourse but to turn to dealers and collectors for loans and sometimes funding for their exhibitions. “Today, no curator can afford to be ignorant of the market. If you are, you will soon learn a hard lesson when you try to mount an exhibition by a ‘hot’ artist,” says Sandy Nairne, director of London’s National Portrait Gallery. “Either you will find it very difficult to secure loans, or you may come under pressure from collectors or dealers to include particular works.”

This means that galleries help fund exhibitions in public institutions of their artists, picking up the bills for insurance, shipping, catalogues and so on. “No public gallery is obliged to accept financial support from commercial galleries,” says Julia Peyton-Jones, director of the Serpentine Gallery. “However, support for specific expenses such as transportation does form a legitimate part of some galleries’ fundraising income.”"

Google Wants to Offer Streaming TV on YouTube--For a Fee

AllThingsD: "YouTube, which is already trying out the movie rental business, wants to get into TV too.

Google’s video site has been trying to convince the TV industry to let it stream individual shows for a fee, multiple sources tell me.

YouTube already lets users watch a smattering of TV shows for free, with advertising. Now it envisions something similar to what Apple and Amazon already offer: First-run shows, without commercials, for $1.99 an episode, available the day after they air on broadcast or cable.

Sources say the site’s negotiations with the networks and studios that own the shows are preliminary. But both sides seem optimistic, since models for such deals already exist. No comment from YouTube."

Pittsburgh mystery letters revealed as art project

The Associated Press: "PITTSBURGH — Two pieces of mail arrived at Michael Tolson's house on Nov. 24. Neither had a return address.

One contained a collage of paper scraps. The other, a small saucer with two messages: "Congratulations to Michael Tolson for everything you've achieved so far" on the front, "Well done, Michael + Lenka" on the back.

That night, he learned his neighbor had gotten odd mail. Soon, he found other neighbors received weird letters, too.

It turns out, nearly every residence in the city's Polish Hill neighborhood received letters — 620 in all — as part of a project by artists Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton.

Crowe and Clayton, both 32, say they want to write to everyone in the world. In April, the pair wrote 467 letters to homes and businesses in Cushendall, a small Irish village. The Polish Hill letters were their second undertaking.

They picked Polish Hill because they both happened to be in Pittsburgh and felt the size of the neighborhood suited their needs. Pictures of the letters can be seen on their Web site, mysteriousletters.blogspot.com."

Nice story at The Associated Press

Mobile Art Lab Combines iPhone and Children's Books

Interesting new project from Mobile Art Lab

MyArtspace Announces Winning Artists for The MyArtspace Aqua Art Miami Beach Competition

Prweb.com: " MyArtspace.com has announced the winning artists of the MyArtspace Aqua Art Miami Beach Competition. The top 3 winners will have their work on exhibition at Aqua Art Miami Fair during the week of Art Basel Miami Beach from December 3-6, 2009.

Palo Alto, CA and Miami Beach, FL (PRWEB) December 2, 2009 -- MYARTSPACE.com, the premier online social network for the contemporary art world is pleased to announce the winning artists for the Miami 2009 Art Competition. The winners will be exhibited at the Aqua Art Miami Fair during the week of Art Basel Miami from December 3-6, 2009.

After careful deliberation, the jury panel selected 3 top-winners and 50 finalists. The three winners were Kristi Malakoff, Justin Beckman and Mandy Greer. The five-person jury panel consisted of Alma Ruiz, Associate Curator at MOCA - The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Michele Urton, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Andrea Cashman, Director of the Deitch Projects, Kathy Grayson, Director of the Deitch Projects and Catherine McCormack-Skiba, CEO and founder of MyArtspace.

Catherine McCormack-Skiba, the founder of MyArtspace and CEO noted "This is our second year in Miami representing the best of our community. The competition really brought out some incredible work from all corners of the world. The breadth, depth and variety of work is unparalleled. We have an exciting mix of work to show at our show kicking off the same week as Art Basel Miami at the Aqua Art Miami Fair. We strive to provide great opportunities for artists to have their work recognized by leading curators and the art public. We continue to see a global audience of artists and art appreciators in our community. We hope to see and active and interesting art collectors down at the Aqua Art Miami Beach Fair. "

The Miami 2009 Exhibition will take place at the Aqua Art Miami Fair at the same time as Art Basel Miami Beach, December 3-6, 2009

Three Top Winners

The three top winners were were Kristi Malakoff, Justin Beckman and Mandy Greer. Their work can be viewed at http://www.myartspace.com/miamibasel/winners. "

Time Inc. Shows Us Their Idea of the Future of Magazines

Time Inc. Shows Us Their Idea of the Future of Magazines [Video]: "It seems that every major magazine publisher has their own idea of how their magazines should look on the upcoming Tablet of Newspaper Salvation, due to be created by Apple (who, by the way, didn’t officially confirm they’re working on any such device). First it was CondéNast, who’s preparing a digital version of Wired magazine for the Apple Tablet, and now it’s Time Inc., which released a video demonstration of a tabletized Sports Illustrated.

The demo is actually quite impressive, including a decent amount of interactivity, some video elements, several different ways of browsing through the content, and a somewhat creepy Monty Pythonesque hand that’s flipping the pages. It’s all fine and dandy, but I believe the end version will depend quite a bit on how Apple – if their tablet ever actually happens – designs the interface of the device."

The rise of climate-change art

Vision of a tragic future? … Tomás Saraceno's Biospheres at the Rethink exhibition in Copenhagen. Photograph: Anders Sune Berg

The Guardian: "Artists are waking up to climate change. But what good can they do – and how green is their work? Cornelia Parker, Gary Hume and Keith Tyson reveal how they're dealing with the threat of catastrophe

A floating plastic bubble, so hi-tech it is lighter than air, is attached by ropes to the walls of the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen. As I step gingerly on to its see-through floor, I can peer down at the gallery 100ft below. When I'm joined by one of the museum staff, I become unsteady. We crawl around this airborne plastic yurt like babies and then, feeling giddy, stop to sit and talk about how our children might end up living in a city of such bubbles, sealed off from a contaminated earth; about who might be lucky enough to have such a refuge; how they might sing their children lullabies of a lost earth. It's an eerie conversation to have with a stranger, both of us imagining a deeply tragic future that seems highly plausible.

This installation, by Argentinian architect-artist Tomás Saraceno, is the biggest in Rethink, a series of contemporary art exhibitions taking place across Copenhagen ahead of next week's climate change summit. "

Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' Gets Digital Makeover

Discovery News: "Bright, vivid colors adorned Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, according to a digital reconstruction of the masterpiece at the exhibition 'Leonardo da Vinci's Workshop' at Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York.

Painted to provide monks at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan with something to contemplate during meals, the mural is considered one of da Vinci's greatest works.

Unfortunately, the painting began to deteriorate as soon as it was finished in 1498.

"Today, The Last Supper is faded and cracked. Thus, these brilliant, saturated colors may appear shocking, but we believe this reconstruction is the closest representation of how the fresco must have looked like when Leonardo painted it," Mario Taddei, exhibit creator and scientist at Milan's Leonardo3, told Discovery News.

BIG PIC: Take a closer look at Leonardo3's reconstruction of The Last Supper here."

Fast Fourier Transform Video by Peter Menich

Fast Fourier Transform from peter menich on Vimeo.

CLDFX: "This music visualization by Peter Menich might be the best ever seen. It’s a glowing point in space that follows the timeline, emitting millions of particles to the different piano key strokes. It’s a very complex and detailed video to the sound of Origine Nascota from Ludovico Einaudi. Mr. Menich created an outstanding timeless masterpiece."

Comfort Fit - Bit by Bit (Polyshufflez LP)

Amazing video. Watch it until the end!
YouTube: "Concept, hardcore stop-motion photography and post-production by Felix Hüffelmann and Phillip Frowein, nachteule-photography.de. Additional sound design by Comfort Fit."

Paul McCarthy | “Piccadilly Circus”

Art21 Blog: "Artist Paul McCarthy describes the improvisational process and performances behind the video work Piccadilly Circus (2003). Filmed at an unoccupied London bank before being renovated by Hauser & Wirth gallery in 2002, and shot several months before the start of the Iraq War, the work features costumed players in the roles of President George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden, and the Queen Mum (in three versions).

Paul McCarthy’s video-taped performances and provocative multimedia installations lampoon polite society, ridicule authority, and bombard the viewer with a sensory overload of often sexually-tinged, violent imagery. With irreverent wit, McCarthy often takes aim at cherished American myths and icons—Walt Disney, the Western, and even the Modern Artist—adding a touch of malice to subjects that have been traditionally revered for their innocence or purity. Whether conflating real-world political figures with fantastical characters such as Santa Claus, or treating erotic and abject content with frivolity and charm, McCarthy’s work confuses codes, mixes high and low culture, and provokes an analysis of fundamental beliefs."

Shaquille O’Neal, art curator?

Los Angeles Times: "Basketball great Shaquille O'Neal could never be accused of sticking to one thing. The 7-foot-1-inch athlete has dabbled in acting (remember 'Kazaam'?), recorded a handful of rap albums and earned a master's in business administration.

Now, O'Neal is branching out yet again by taking on the art world. The Cleveland Cavaliers athlete is curating a gallery show in New York that is appropriately titled 'Size DOES Matter,' which explores the idea of scale in contemporary art, according to a Bloomberg report.

The show is scheduled to open in February at New York’s Flag Art Foundation, an exhibition space in the Chelsea neighborhood."

Haus Beautiful: the Impact of Bauhaus

TIME: "It lasted only 14 years, but the bauhaus stamped its own century and this one too. No one would claim that the taste for clean, simplified design that emanated from its classrooms ever became universal, certainly not among the toiling masses the Bauhauslers hoped to speak to. And nobody believes anymore that good design can produce a more virtuous world. But all those steadfast geometric tea sets and tubular steel furnishings drew lines in the collective consciousness. They're still basic to our picture of the modern home--even if we don't happen to live in one."

Video at time.com

The Work of Nam

flylyf: "Nam’s work is highly distinctive and often surreal, it blends photography with graphical elements and sometimes obscure set design.

Portfolio: N-a-m.org"

Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal

Incredible progress over at Project Mandelbulb: "The original Mandelbrot is an amazing object that has captured the public's imagination for 30 years with its cascading patterns and hypnotically colourful detail. It's known as a 'fractal' - a type of shape that yields (sometimes elaborate) detail forever, no matter how far you 'zoom' into it (think of the trunk of a tree sprouting branches, which in turn split off into smaller branches, which themselves yield twigs etc.).

It's found by following a relatively simple math formula. But in the end, it's still only 2D and flat - there's no depth, shadows, perspective, or light sourcing. What we have featured in this article is a potential 3D version of the same fractal. For the impatient, you can skip to the nice pics, but the below makes an interesting read (with a little math as well for the curious)."

- The formula is here. Experiment yourself.

SNIFF

Sniff from karolina sobecka on Vimeo.

SNIFF: "public interactive projection
*project by Karolina Sobecka with software development by Jim George

As you walk down the street you are approached by a dog. He is on his guard trying to discern your intentions. He will follow you and interpret your gestures as friendly or aggressive. He will try to engage you in a relationship and get you to pay attention to him.
Sniff is an interactive projection in a storefront window. As the viewer walks by the projection, her movements and gestures are tracked by a computer vision system. A CG dog dynamically responds to these gestures and changes his behavior based on the state of engagement with the viewer.

As you walk down the street you are approached by a dog. He is on his guard trying to discern your intentions. He will follow you and interpret your gestures as friendly or aggressive. He will try to engage you in a relationship and get you to pay attention to him.
Sniff is an interactive projection in a storefront window. As the viewer walks by the projection, her movements and gestures are tracked by a computer vision system. A CG dog dynamically responds to these gestures and changes his behavior based on the state of engagement with the viewer.

PROCEDURE
Sniff is created with Unity3d Game Engine which renders the dog in real time and allows
to dynamically change his behavior based on the video tracking data. The sidewalk is
illuminated with infrared lights. An infrared-sensitive camera is used to monitor
the sidewalk in front of the display windows. We track the position of each viewer and implement
simple gesture recognition, so that fast, big actions are interpreted as threatening and
slow actions directed at the dog (for example hand extended in his direction) are
interpreted as friendly. The dog keeps track of the attitude of the viewer and forms a relationship with them over time based on the history of interaction."

Window on the body: CT scans become art

'What lies behind our nose?'

This is the winning image of the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

The original CT scan was taken from a 33-year-old Chinese woman who came in to have her thyroid examined.

The 3D image is digitally reconstructed from many millimetre-thick 2D X-ray "slices" taken in the CT scanner. 182 slices are stacked together here, allowing us to look upward at her nasal passages from beneath her head.

The bones, soft tissue and fat have been removed from the image, leaving just the cast of the sinuses.

(Image: Kai-hung Fung)

New Scientist: "Radiologist Kai-hung Fung makes beautiful and informative art from the CT (computed tomography) scans of his patients, digitally manipulating them to look more appealing. His image of the inside of our sinuses won the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. See this and some of his more recent works in our gallery"

Cut Chemist - 1st Big Break

Cut Chemist - 1st Big Break from eyestorm on Vimeo.

Vimeo: "The first music video ever shot with a 360 degree panoramic lens. A tripped out journey into the track 'My 1st Big Break'"

Art from Electricity

Photo: Stoneridge Engineering

Art from Electricity: "Lichtenberg figures are the branching patterns formed by electrical discharges, discovered by 18th Century German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. He captured the images in dust on charged plates, but in the 20th Century, laboratories used solid blocks of acrylic, such as the one pictured above. “Captured Lightning” was created by shooting five million volts into the acrylic by the art/engineering firm Stoneridge Engineering. More pictures and an exhaustively detailed scientific explanation."

Contemporary Dance Video Database

Contemporary Dance Video Database: "We love dancers.
Although the ethics behind uploading 'somebody's work' to the internet without 'permission' is highly debatable, our point is doing so, especially when the 'work' in question is a performance video -live recording or movie version of the performance, is to help people reach and enjoy this rare material; in particular the people who live in a non-European country and are unable to have the chance to be live audiences. What is unethical, we think, is actually depriving the masses of these works of art while you have the means of transmission. We hope that the artists and all creative group behind these works would understand our excuse. We all love them. We all want to watch them. We are all ready to learn and to be fascinated upon the experience they give. We all appreciate their work. We all want them here and now.

All contributions to the database will be appreciated."

Famous portraits as mice

Boing Boing: "Alan F. Beck paints watercolors of mice posed and modelled on classic and famous portraits"

Classical Mouse Portrait Gallery

VisitorsStudio

Rhizome: "VisitorsStudio is a real-time, multi-user, online arena for creative 'many to many' dialogue, interviews, networked performance and collaborative polemic. Through simple and accessible facilities, the VisitorsStudio web-based interface allows users to upload, manipulate and collage their own audio-visual files with others', to remix existing media. Providing a platform for the exploration of collective creativity for both emergent and established artists from a diverse array of geographical locations and social contexts. Designed so anyone in the world can access it from a 56k modem. Participants upload sound files and still/moving images (jpg, png, mp3, flv, swf) to a shared database, mixing and responding to each other's compositions in real-time. Individuals can also chat with each other and are located in the interface by their own dancing-cursors."

VisitorsStudio won the Grand Prize for netarts 2009 from the Machida City Museum of Graphic Art. Congratulation to Furtherfield.org

Magazine Publishers to Build an Online Newsstand

NYTimes.com: "A consortium of magazine publishers including Time Inc. and CondéNast are jointly building an online newsstand for magazines in multiple digital formats, according to people familiar with the plans.

The formation of a new company to run the online newsstand — sometimes characterized as an “iTunes for magazines” — may be announced in early December. Time, CondéNast, Hearst, and Meredith all intend to be equity partners in the new company, although the deals have not yet been signed.

In the face of slumping print circulation for many magazines, the publishing houses are eager to exert some control over digital readership, said people at the companies, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the plans."

ImprovEverywhere strikes again

Urban Prankster: "The latest project from GuerilLA, folks ballroom dancing in a grocery store while a flute duet plays Bach’s Minuet."

Well, it's not as good as last month's most legendary Grocery Store Musical, a hot candidate for video of the year!



"Six undercover actors burst into song in a grocery store in Queens. Three minutes and lots of silly choreography later, they returned to their roles as shoppers and stock boys. The mission was filmed with hidden robotic, lipstick, and wearable cameras. The song was played over the store's PA system live."

More ImprovEverywhere

Turkish city asks Louvre to return statues - report

timesofmalta.com : "The Turkish city of Izmir has asked Paris's Louvre museum to return two statues of Greek gods Zeus and Apollo, a newspaper reported.

In a letter to the management of the French museum, mayor of the port city Aziz Kocaoglu demanded the return of the marble figures, newspaper Hurriyet said.

Now displayed in the Louvre, they were discovered towards the end of the 17th century in the Izmir region, on the Aegean Sea, which is the site of the ancient city of Smyrna.

They were taken to France and presented to King Louis XIV.

The mayor of Izmir is asking for the statues to be returned to form part of a museum of Aegean civilisation that the city plans to establish and has requested 'long-term cooperation' from the Louvre.

The statue of Zeus measures 2.34 metres and the Apollo statue is 2.16 metres, the paper said."

Animation: Five Years of Graffiti Outside Serge Gainsbourg’s Home

Serge Gainsbourg - animation des graffitis sur 5 ans du mur rue de Verneuil from Arnaud Jourdain on Vimeo.

Art-house films top contenders at Chinese Oscars

Image from Guan Hu's 'Cow'

The Associated Press: "An Australia-based director's romance, a Taiwanese family drama and the story of a Chinese peasant guarding a cow are the unlikely trio of top contenders at the Chinese-language equivalent of the Oscars to be announced on Saturday.

Jurors for this year's Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan pushed aside several of the year's blockbusters in favor of art-house films. Movies like Jackie Chan's 'Shinjuku Incident,' John Woo's historical epic 'Red Cliff II' and the biopic of Bruce Lee's kung fu teacher, 'Ip Man,' weren't among the leading nominees.

Instead, Clara Law's 'Like a Dream' bagged nine nominations, Leon Dai's 'No Pudeo Vivir Sin Ti' had eight and Guan Hu's 'Cow' seven. The three films are vying for best pictures honors against Tsai Ming-liang's 'Face' — the latest offering from the Malaysian-Chinese director known for minimal dialogue and music — and Chinese filmmaker Ning Hao's 'Crazy Racer.'

Law, Dai, Guan and Tsai are also candidates for best director."

Ron Arad, MoMA, New York

Wallpaper* Magazine: "Checking in with Ron Arad during the installation of his MoMA exhibit spanning nearly three decades of work, this video follows the Israeli designer as he leads us on a tour through the show. Arad explains how his unconventional design practice relates to his radically amorphous forms and to the show's title, 'No Discipline'"

The Tagtool Project

Wall of Light - iink & Maki, Session 1 from makimono on Vimeo.

Tagtool performance by iink & Maki at Illuminating York, 31st of October 2009.
Music: "Tuatara" by Tipsy

Tagtool.org: "The Tagtool is a performative visual instrument used on stage and on the street. It serves as a VJ tool, a creative video game, or an intuitive way of creating animation.

The system is operated collaboratively by an artist drawing the pictures and an animator adding movement to the artwork with a gamepad. The design achieves virtually unlimited artistic complexity with a simple set of controls, which can be mastered even by children.

The project is coordinated by OMA International. Our approach is that all knowledge acquired within the Tagtool project should be shared. We are inspired by the open source movement and believe that it is also relevant for the digital arts.

The project website, www.tagtool.org, is the place to find out what people do with their Tagtools, and how to build your own."

More Tagtool Videos

SWEATSHOPPE, 4spots, the landing extras

SWEATSHOPPE, 4spots, the landing extras from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

Vimeo: "In an effort to establish new platforms for public art and performance, the multimedia duo SWEATSHOPPE has developed a new interactive technology that enables them to explore the relationship between video, mark making and architecture. Dubbed 'video painting', this technology allows them to essentially 'paint' video onto any surface. Shooting in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, the duo spent weeks documenting their work in urban settings to create 'The Landing' the first in a series of episodes that showcases their work as artist, technologist and performers.
This video shows 4 full uncut extra clips form the landing.

Video and Music by SWEATSHOPPE
Thank You: Arpana Rayamajhi, Jacky Tran (Quizbowl Productions) and all the popsicle lovers

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contact@sweatshoppe.org

Copyright 10/14/2009 Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw
All Rights Reserved"

What is Indonesian style? Jumaldi Alfi on the art, style and Jogja

Renewal/ Verjungung Series 3-A, by Jumaldi Alfi, 2009. Acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of Sin Sin Fine Art.

Art Radar Asia: "The Sotheby’s success of contemporary Indonesian artists like I Nyoman Masriadi, who sold a single painting for more than $245,000 USD at auction on October 6th, 2009 in Hong Kong, has grabbed the attention of the art world. There finally appears to be much international interest in art from the politically heated Southeast Asian island nation. However, what is Indonesian art, and is there an ‘Indonesian style’? Art Radar discusses the emerging style from this part of the art world with renowned Indonesian artist Jumaldi Alfi at Sin Sin Fine Art in Hong Kong before the opening of the ‘Diverse 40 x 40′ exhibition, which features the works of Alfi, Andy Dewantoro, and Nasirun."

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

This has to be the comeback of the decade and the best video you will see until the end of the year! Yes, The Muppets have returned with new material and they're about to kick some butt with their new HD Youtube Channel. It will be interesting to see how they're gonna make money with their content in 2010.

Google to put ancient Iraq museum collection online

Reuters: "Google is putting thousands of images of ancient artefacts at Iraq's National Museum online, the Web search leader said on Tuesday, part of a U.S. bid to entice foreign firms to invest in Iraq.

What is now modern-day Iraq was once known as Mesopotamia a region considered by many as the 'cradle of civilisation.' The museum houses one of the finest Mesopotamian collections in the world.
But its millennia-old artefacts from Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian cultures, as well as Iraq's more recent history, have been largely closed to public view since the invasion due to security concerns and for renovation.

"The Iraqi museum is closed and people from all around the world are asking questions about it. Now they can know more as they sit in their homes," museum director Amira Eidan told Reuters.

Google employees have taken more than 14,000 pictures of the antiquities and aim to put them online in early 2010."

LUCIA

LUCIA from diluvio on Vimeo.

Vimeo: "LUCIA (Lucía, Luis y el lobo - Part 1 of 2)
Lucía is the 1st short video of the 2-part series “Lucía, Luis y el lobo” (”Lucía, Luis and the Wolf”). The video was shot frame by frame with a digital photo camera. Materials: charcoal, dirt, flowers, found objects and cardboard.

LUIS from diluvio on Vimeo.

LUIS (Lucía, Luis y el lobo - Part 2 of 2)
by Niles Atallah, Cristobal Leon & Joaquin Cociña"

Quest for art’s Idol-Talent-Factor-Runway

Artworld Salon: "A new four-part reality show, School of Saatchi, begins tonight on BBC television (and will be viewable online). Six artists from an open submission competition are selected, first by a panel of judges – artist Tracey Emin, critic Matthew Collings, collector Frank Cohen and Kate Bush, director of the Barbican Art Gallery – and then vetted by Charles Saatchi. The London-based collector does not himself appear on screen, despite – or perhaps because – he’s trailed as ‘one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in the art world’"

KUROSAWA'S "DREAMS"

Great HD clip on YouTube: "A Japanese man steps into the palette of Vincent Van Gogh (Martin Scorsese) in the 'Crows' segment of acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa's 'Dreams.'"

Three Minute Film School - "Surrealism"

YouTube : "This video was one of the winners of the Guggenheim Bilbao Surrealist Film Competition and was screened there in September 2008. It was part of a series called '3 minute film school' for a programme called Film Night and inspired by Bunuel, Dali etc."

Augmented reality rig that turns you into a character in a third-person game

Avatar Machine [LONDON] 2008 from MARC OWENS on Vimeo.

Boing Boing: "Marc Owens's augmented reality project 'Avatar Machine' puts its users in VR helmets that display the world around them as though they were playing a third-person game, so that their own body is seen from behind. Owens theorizes that 'The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.'"