the ikono blog

The Ikono Blog has moved - Please redirect your RSS!

2010-09-25T13:37:00.001+02:00

The new Ikono Blog should work on pretty much any gadget you might have. We’re still unpacking boxes, testing things and fumbling around with the plugins. So, even though our folders are exploding with new stuff we need another day here.

Dude, looks like we're moving to another dimension!

2010-09-22T22:13:00.008+02:00

More tomorrow!

While we're lying under the tables here at ikono labs, we got a nice exclusive for you to celebrate in the meantime. Dude, we got Weezer live with "Perfect Situation" (featuring Jorge "Hurley" Garcia from LOST aka. the dude who's on the cover of the album for some reason...)

- Cheers, Jorge, you're "The Dude"!

What is "The Event"?

2010-09-22T01:32:00.002+02:00

I guess this trailer is all you need to know about "The Event" right now.

A "jigsaw", "post 9/11", a "mix of 'Lost' and '24' minus the madness"... Any other obvious remarks after the premiere? Here at ikono labs we were watching the pilot of the most anticipated new TV show of 2010 without too many expectations or any prejudices.

Flashbacks again? Another plane? We hope the answer wont be aliens, zombies or time travelling! If you cut the fake myth and the very bad CGI, you could do some storytelling and this one could actually be a surprise winner. Please surprise us!

Two Year Anniversary!

2010-09-22T00:55:00.001+02:00

Cheers, folks!

Check out the ikono blog from September 2008. Operation Reconnect.

Mawaly Brings Free Legal Arabic Music to the Masses

2010-09-21T18:09:00.001+02:00

the next web: "Mawaly.com is probably the largest legal online music service in the region providing both independent and signed artists’ music to it’s 1.2 million users from the Arab world, and their based in the Ukraine.

Mawal which is a popular form of Arabic singing often used in music to express agony and display the singer’s ability (or lack of) powerful and capable vocals. The ‘y’ in Mawal(y) adds the first person ‘my’ to the term making it translate to ‘My Mawal’.
(...)
Mawaly successfully provides a selection of 2,691 Artist to choose from boasting a whopping 5,916 albums that contain 70,000 songs to a 1,278,023 fan base that’s growing by the day.

Foraoon the company behind Mawaly is an Arab development firm based out of the Ukraine that has provided some interesting services to the region such as Egyptian Facebook spin-off Banady.com, Iraqi classifieds service Mredy.com, and gaming platform elGame and many more.

So instead of a standard review of the service, we thought we’d head to Mawaly.com’s Ukranian (with Egyptian roots) founder Sherif Amin and ask him a couple of questions."

Interview over at the next web

Turner Prize winner slashes painting to highlight arts cuts

2010-09-21T13:36:00.001+02:00

This is London: "Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger has taken a version of one of Turner's most famous paintings and torn the heart out of it in protest at the Government's proposed arts cuts.

Wallinger, 51, has captioned his take on The Fighting Temeraire from the National Gallery: “If 25 per cent were slashed from arts funding, the loss would be immeasurable.”

The new work, called Reckless, was being unveiled today on a website that is home to a petition calling on the Government to save the arts."

More at This is London

8BITS

2010-09-21T13:32:00.003+02:00

8BITS_hd720 from 8BCREW on Vimeo.

Phantastic killer tribute to classic videogames in full 3D HD by the 8BCREW

FullHD version with subtitles (EN/FR/ES/JAP)

DIRECTED BY
VALERE AMIRAULT
JEAN DELAUNAY
SARAH LAUFER
BENJAMIN MATTERN

More at 8bitsmovie.com

Anormal - X-Ray Musicvideo

2010-09-21T13:22:00.001+02:00

Anormal from Jarbas Agnelli

Vimeo: "Music Video for the brazilian pop band Pato Fu.

We scanned all the instruments and props on an big X-ray machine, and then modeled and rendered everything with CG.

Since we couldn't put the musicians in the machine (the career of the band would end abruptly), we filmed everyone on green screen, at the same time capturing their movements with a motion capture system. We then genereted CG skeletons, and applied over the footage.

Shot with Sony HDR-FX1 on Green Screen."

Hulachess (2009)

2010-09-21T13:17:00.001+02:00

Superjenium : "Jennifer Shahade's submission for YouTube Play Biennial: Project with Guggenheim Museum. Hulachess explores themes of multitasking, the feminine, circular side of chess and the surprising parallels between chess and hooping. The chess moves are based on a game Duchamp lost against the Romanian master Davidescu. The video features a possible improvement by Duchamp, which would have led the game to perpetual check.

The video, created by chess champion and artist Jennifer Shahade and filmmaker Daniel Meirom, features Shahade playing red and choreographer & dancer Gabrielle Revlock playing White. Cinematography by Blake Eichenseer."

Diana in the UAE in 1989

2010-09-21T00:15:00.003+02:00

Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

Very interesting short historical celebrity fasion update with rare photos from Abu Dhabi TV! Unfortunately we can't embed this video from The National Newspaper, but over there they say, "in the few days she was here, her fashion sense and warm smile won many hearts. Tahira Yacoob reports on Princess Diana's desert charm offensive in 1989."

A Story of Islamic Embroidery - The Public Programmes are still on!

2010-09-20T23:36:00.001+02:00

- Hot off the old Youtube!

7 April - 25 Sep 2010
Gallery One - Emirates Palace
Abu Dhabi - Uae

Iraqi Artifacts Are Found in Storeroom

2010-09-20T17:42:00.001+02:00

Ali Al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

There is a lesson to be learned here: next time you're missing 600 ancient artifacts, look into your Prime Ministers closet first.

NYTimes.com: "More than 600 ancient artifacts looted and smuggled out of Iraq, found and returned by the United States, and then lost again for nearly two years were rediscovered in a storeroom of the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Sunday, an Iraqi official said.

The artifacts — including bronze figurines, glass and clay vessels, and beaded necklaces from the world’s earliest civilizations — had disappeared into a bureaucratic fog after an American military aircraft returned them in 2008.

Their disappearance came to light on Sept. 6 when Iraq celebrated the return of another batch of relics looted from the country, prompting an embarrassing and frantic search to find them.

A spokesman for the State Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Abdulzahra al-Talqani, said the items would be turned over to Iraq’s National Museum on Monday. “Nobody knew about them in the storeroom,” he said."

Reenacting "Andy Warhol Eats A Hamburger" [33 Scenes From YouTube RECON]

2010-09-20T17:36:00.001+02:00

Andy Warhol Eats A Hamburger [33 Scenes From YouTube RECON] from Dick Whyte

Vimeo: "Part of a series of films reconstructing (RECON) moments of 20th century art out of remakes sourced from the internet. Other RECONS:

John Cage - 4'33' [May '68 Comeback Special RECON]: vimeo.com/14252504
The Death of the Author [Psycho Shower Scene RECON]: vimeo.com/14235738
RECON Animated GIF Project: recons.tumblr.com/

Recon of Andy Warhol Eats A Hamburger made from 33 YouTube clips (including the original). This was originally a scene in Jorgen Leth's '66 Scenes from America' (a documentary film comprised of 66 long-take sequences of Americans doing things). In this particular sequence Andy Warhol eats a hamburger." See original video below.

Someone had a similar idea about a year ago and collected all the Andy Warhol Eats a Hamburger videos on their blog:

The Hidden Costs of Owning Art

2010-09-20T17:24:00.001+02:00

Image by Martin O'Neill

WSJ.com: "The cost of managing an art collection can vary widely but could add up to between 1% and 5% of the value of the works annually – depending on whether you are talking about a single work of art or an entire collection, according to Annelien Bruins, founder of London-based Bruins Private Collections Consultancy. If you are making regular purchases and therefore have to take into account transaction costs and taxes, then costs can rise to 15% of the value of the collection, says Ms. Bruins."

Read on at WSJ.com

David A Smith - Sign Artist

2010-09-20T16:55:00.001+02:00

David A Smith - Sign Artist from Danny Cooke

Vimeo: "David A Smith is a name that has become synonymous in Sign-Writing and Glass gilding circles, with high quality, hand crafted reverse glass signs and decorative silvered and gilded mirrors.

In this short documentary, we reveal behind the scenes work, techniques and visions that Dave uses when carrying out his passion as a glass embosser - One of the few remaining traditional UK glass artists.

David A Smith
davidadriansmith.com

A Film by Danny Cooke
dannycooke.co.uk

Soundtrack by Tony Higgins (Junior85)
freemusicarchive.org/music/junior85/"

Aboriginal art dying with desert masters

2010-09-20T16:51:00.001+02:00

Melbourne gallery owner Beverly Knight does not believe MeaghanWilson-Anastasios's argument is sustainable. Picture: Stuart McEvoy Source: The Australian

The Australian: "New research into the sustainability of Aboriginal art claims the market for new works is already falling away, even for sought-after artists, because some indigenous works are still being treated as ethnographic objects.

A paper by Melbourne academic Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios says major artists such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Rover Thomas, are promoted as Aboriginal in a way that Pablo Picasso would not be labelled Spanish.

'To secure the future of the Aboriginal art market, it needs to expand and evolve so that a new generation of artists is cultivated and they are accepted as contemporary practitioners,' she writes."

Read on in The Australian

Henry Miller - "Dinner With Henry"

2010-09-20T16:49:00.001+02:00

U B U W E B quoting Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company: A Henry Miller Blog : It's a classic question: Name a famous person, living or dead, you'd like to have dinner with. I imagine that a number of readers of this blog would say 'Henry Miller.' Indeed, he had a reputation for holding court at the dinner table, regaling his fellow eaters with opinions and reminiscences.

Dinner With Henry is a rare, 30-minute documentary about Henry Miller. It is exactly what the title implies: footage of Henry having dinner. With him at the table is the film crew, and actress/model Brenda Venus, to whom Henry was enamoured in the final years of life. Henry - at age 87 - spends the majority of his time speaking on a number of subjects, the most persistent of which is Blaise Cendrars. Occasionally, he complains about the food. That is all. It may not be of much interest to a general audience, but is a curious 'slice of life' for any Miller fan who likes to imagine being at the table with him."

Part II & Part III

Gaz Metro Spot - A Natural Evolution

2010-09-20T16:44:00.001+02:00

Gaz Metro A Natural Evolution from La Moustache

lamoustache.ca/ :"We animated this spot for the official 2010 Gaz Metro campaign, we're really proud of this piece. We worked crazy hours all through the night & with a ton of real chalk and paint to create this stop motion madness. Enjoy and please let us know what you think. Stay tuned for a making-of doc"

Revue de tournage de la nouvelle publicité télé de Gaz Métro "Une évolution naturelle"

From Lebanon, To Lebanon and About Lebanon

2010-09-20T16:36:00.002+02:00

"Lebanon Aggregator started in 2006 with one purpose in mind, to group all the URLs of blogs written by bloggers, be it Lebanese or not, writing about Lebanon, and living in Lebanon or not!

It's a round-up Aggregator about Lebanese Blogs, gathering different opinions from different backgrounds, a variety of perspectives and interests written in different languages; politics, art, photography, paintings, comics, recipes, and poetry. From Lebanon, to Lebanon and about Lebanon."

Also: the Twittering Lebanon over at All about Beirut Tweeps

Head-mounted display projects directly onto the retina

2010-09-20T16:31:00.002+02:00

From Japan's most excellent techblog DigiInfo

125 Videos Shortlisted for Guggenheims Youtube Play

2010-09-20T16:25:00.001+02:00

NYTimes.com: "''YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video,'' the first curated search for videos of a higher brow on the popular Google Inc.-owned website. From among more than 23,000 submissions from 91 countries, 125 videos were shortlisted for the inaugural biennial.

A curatorial team from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York selected the videos, which will play at kiosks in Guggenheim museums in New York; Berlin; Bilbao, Spain, and Venice, Italy, beginning Monday.

A jury that includes filmmaker Darren Aronofsky and visual artist Takashi Murakami will whittle the results down further to about 20 videos. Those will be presented at the Guggenheim in New York on Oct. 21."

Watch the shortlisted videos here!

War Rugs

2010-09-20T16:15:00.001+02:00

Origin: Afghanistan, Tribe: Turkman, Date: 2002 (61 X 77 cm)

Warrug.com : "War rugs are traditional Persian or Oriental rugs featuring martial images, such as helicopters, tanks, guns, etc. They come from, primarily, Afghanistan and were first woven around 1980."

Found by Astrid

Kids' Guernica

2010-09-18T01:52:00.003+02:00

YouTube: "KIDS' GUERNICA is a peace project for children through art in different places of the world to create peacepaintings on huge canvases the same size as Pablo Picasso's 'Guernica', 1937 (3.5 m x 7.8m), which protested against the brutality of bombing in the town of Guernika during the Spanish civil war.
The participant children expressed powerful messages of peace with their creativity and imagination, which would contribute to world peace in the 21st century."
More at the kids blogspot!

Monty Python: Never Be Rude To an Arab / The pope and Michelangelo

2010-09-18T00:52:00.002+02:00

Both videos are back because of popular demand!

Films by Philip Haas for the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas

2010-09-17T15:17:00.002+02:00

Kimbell Art Museum: "Commissioned by the Kimbell, Philip Haas’s film installations interpret and elaborate upon selected works in the Museum’s permanent collection. Though based on deep research into the original artists and cultures, Haas’s films are poetic and sensuous in approach rather than factual like a documentary. Between seven and twenty minutes in length and running continuously, they are projected on screens of various unconventional formats and configurations. All are accompanied by original music, and several appear in elaborate architectural and sculptural sets, further immersing the viewer in the experience."

Here is another piece by Philip Haas:

Image credit:
Philip Haas, Winter (After Arcimboldo), 2010,
pigmented and painted fiberglass
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery
Photo by Rob Shelley © 2010 National Gallery of Art, Washington

From Twitpic

Art in Motion

2010-09-17T15:11:00.000+02:00

Really cool trip around the art sphere by Mr. Solo aka. Marcelo Ricardo Ortiz who titled this piece "Guernica" for some strange reason.

SALVADOR DALI animation

2010-09-17T15:05:00.001+02:00

YouTube: "animacion basada en famosos cuadros de salvador dali. Director and animation: Roni silva (delaxer)"

Geekfiti: 15 (More!) Unusually Geeky Graffiti Projects

2010-09-17T14:50:00.001+02:00

WebUrbanist: "Geeks may rule the internet, but do they rule the world? To take a look at some modern graffiti, one might think so. Plenty of street art has begun to take on a tech-inspired flavor, whether it’s graffiti that references geek culture or some new kind of gadget that makes tagging easier. These prime examples of geeky graffiti might make you think that geeks spend much more time outside than previously believed."

The museum that was written down

2010-09-17T14:43:00.001+02:00

Orhan Pamuk: in 2005 the author was charged with 'insulting Turkishness'. The charges were dropped, but he is still accompanied by a bodyguard

The Art Newspaper: "Turkey’s most famous living novelist is holding a pair of dentures in a room packed with ephemera reflecting everyday Turkish life of the past three decades. Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2006 and author of My Name is Red (1998) and Snow (2002), is standing among a sea of objects—sewing machines, clocks, soda-bottle tops, buttons, lottery tickets, china dogs, birdcages, cigarette lighters and false teeth—that will soon go on display in The Museum of Innocence, a four-storey building in the Çukurcuma neighbourhood, central Istanbul. This venue, not just a chamber of curiosities, is the real-life incarnation of the museum painstakingly assembled and detailed in his book The Museum of Innocence (2008). The institution, which is due to open “[before] next year” according to Pamuk, will house 83 wooden boxes related to the book’s 83 chapters. Each box will be filled with items—both ready-made pieces and commissioned works of art—that reflect each chapter, thereby covering a 30-year period in the history of modern Istanbul from 1975 when the novel begins."

More at The Art Newspaper

Stop motion with wolf and pig

2010-09-16T14:42:00.001+02:00

YouTube - オオカミとブタ: "I displayed the photographs in my room and photographed it again. Enjoy a connection with the world of the room and the world in the photograph."

The PEN Story

2010-09-16T14:40:00.001+02:00

YouTube: "This is the PEN Story in stop motion. We shot 60.000 pictures, developed 9.600 prints and shot over 1.800 pictures again."

What Booze Looks Like Under a Microscope

2010-09-16T14:30:00.001+02:00

BARCROFT / FAME PICTURES

From a slideshow at TIME: "Margarita: The images are made by crystallizing the drink on a lab slide, then passing a polarized light through the crystal."

World's Largest Graffiti to be Inaugurated in Brazil

2010-09-16T14:25:00.002+02:00

Oddee.com: "As you are reading this post, Brazilian president Lula is probably inaugurating the world’s largest graffiti on earth up to this date, 3500 square meters (over 37,000 square feet) at Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil on the 2nd of September of 2010. Oddee's exclusive reporter Priscilha Benitez sent us the very first photos published on the internet."

Rubin Museum breaks tradition to show the first Tibetan art show in New York

2010-09-16T12:17:00.001+02:00

'Tibetan Idol 15' by Gonkar Gystso is a collage of “hundreds of little stickers imprinted with familiar logos, cartoon characters and other signs of corporate empire” which form the “atomised silhouettes of the Buddha”.

Art Radar Asia: "Until October 18, Rubin Museum, usually New York’s home for traditional art of the Himalayas, will run the first Tibetan contemporary art show in the city. Titled “Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond“, this exhibition showcases the works of nine Tibetan artists born within the period 1953 to 1982. In a review published by The New York Times, critic Ken Johnson comments on each of the artists’ works."

Ownership isn’t everything—The future will be shared

2010-09-16T12:14:00.001+02:00

MoMA, New York, and the Laurenz Foundation, Basel, together preserve Matthew Barney's "Drawing Restraint" archive

The Art Newspaper: "Museums don’t have to own art. We can commission it, or we can borrow and return it. Stewardship is the new normal

Art museums maintain that the ongoing acquisition of new objects is the crux of their mission, and that all their other activities stem primarily from additions to the permanent collection. But there are three primary reasons to question that orthodoxy today, hinging on ethics, cost, and scarcity."

Read on at The Art Newspaper

Music video by The Narcicyst features faces from 12 cities

2010-09-16T12:09:00.002+02:00

Art Threat: "Iraqi hip hop artist The Narcicyst has released a new video for his single Hamdulillah, and it is simply stunning.

Directed and edited by Ridwan Adhami, and featuring Palestinian singer Shadia Mansour, the video is a beautiful montage of initimate portraits of people from a dozen different cities across the globe.

The track also happens to feature piano by Art Threat contributor Stefan Christoff, as well as a much appreciated Grandmaster Flash reference.

From the YouTube “liner notes”:

To say ‘Hamdulillah’ is to be grateful for what one has.

The images of the past decades have cast a veil on our identity as a people. We, as international brothers and sisters, are now witness to injustice in real time. We watch our Wars in HD. Injustice is played in real time.

It is time for us to claim our faces back.

This video is a global collaborative effort by 10 photographers — from London to Lebanon, Cairo To Canada, Abu Dhabi to America — to create a portrait of the New Global Citizens. They are DJs, MCs, poets, architects, teachers, doctors, parents and children. Most of all they are people.

For more info visit narcy.net.

BONUS: WatchMojo.com presents... An interview with The Narcicyst, a founding member of conscious Arab hip hop.

Tornado Artist Defies Deadly Twisters for Video Show

2010-09-16T12:01:00.001+02:00

Bloomberg: "A man walks into a tornado with a video camera. As the killer winds whip around him and dirt gets in his lungs, he records the experience for posterity.

The man is 50-year-old Francis Alys, a Belgian-born artist. He has plunged into tornadoes in the Mexican countryside several times over 10 years, all in the name of art.

The resulting video work “Tornado” (2000-10) is a highlight of his one-man show at London’s Tate Modern (through Sept. 5), which is at New York’s Museum of Modern Art next year."

Interview with the artist and more at Bloomberg.

Andy Warhol shills for VIdal Sassoon

2010-09-15T18:31:00.001+02:00

Dangerous Minds: "During the 1980s, Andy Warhol occasionally walked the fashion runways and did product endorsements, represented by the Ford Modeling Agency. This print ad for his friend Vidal Sassoon hair products was a frequent sight in trendy magazines circa 1985."

Photog Gives Migrant Workers the Superhero Treatment

2010-09-15T15:43:00.001+02:00

Bernabe Mendez from the state of Guerrero works as a professional window cleaner in New York. He sends $500 a month.

A really cool photo gallery at Raw File: "Mexican photographer and a former New York resident Dulce Pinzon casts the Mexican migrant workers of New York City as superheroes -– in costume, at their jobs and within our midst.

Superheroes (2004–ongoing) intends to broaden our collective definition of the term hero, a label often used in American culture, but not always applied to the heroic everyday acts of work and family commitments.

“It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions,” says Pinzon in the project statement. They work “for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive.”

Each portrait is captioned with the worker’s name, hometown in Mexico and the amount of money they send to Mexico each week."

The Farjam Collection Art Camp

2010-09-15T15:40:00.001+02:00

The National Newspaper: "Youngsters work alongside the most rare and valuable pieces of Islamic art during an interactive summer camp in Dubai"

The Mystery Behind the Ancient Stone City of Nan Madol

2010-09-15T15:16:00.001+02:00

Photo: CT Snow

Environmentalgraffiti.com: "Nan Madol is located at the eastern coast of Pohnpei, Micronesia, and is unique in the whole world because of what it is and how it was made. Nan Madol is a city spanning 80 acres, and comprises about 90 man-made islands.
(...)
Archaeologists estimate that a whopping 250 million tons of these basalt logs are needed to construct the whole city. But the question archaeologists have yet to answer is, “How in the world were these walls constructed so high, given how heavy the basalt logs were?” "

Read on at Environmentalgraffiti.com

Mona Lisa as a Vampire

2010-09-15T15:09:00.001+02:00

SHIELD 4 Vampire Variant Cover by *mikemayhew on deviantART: "pencil, pen and black watercolor B&W art with digital color in CS4.

Cover for the comics series SHIELD, which features Leonardo Da Vinci as a character."

THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG - Shorpy Historic Photo Archive

2010-09-14T20:53:00.001+02:00

The Queen City circa 1905. 'Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.' 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

Amazing photos and fine-art prints over at Shorpy: "History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago."

Hands up for Hirst - How the bad boy of Brit-Art grew rich at the expense of his investors

2010-09-14T20:41:00.001+02:00

Very interesting look at the art market over at The Economist: "IN 2008 just over $270m-worth of art by Damien Hirst was sold at auction, a world record for a living artist. By 2009 Mr Hirst’s annual auction sales had shrunk by 93%—to $19m—and the 2010 total is likely to be even lower. The collapse in the Hirst market can partly be ascribed to the recession. But more important are the lingering effects of a two-day auction of new work by Mr Hirst that Sotheby’s launched in London on September 15th 2008.

The sale was memorable for many reasons, not least its name, “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”. The first session took place the very evening that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. No one on Wall Street or in the City of London knew who might be next. Yet within the New Bond Street saleroom, collectors went on bidding, oblivious to the bloodletting without."

Making Future Magic: light painting with the iPad

2010-09-14T20:37:00.001+02:00

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London

BERG: "“Making Future Magic” is the goal of Dentsu London, the creative communications agency.
(...)
“…what might a magical version of the future of media look like?”

and

…we [Dentsu] are interested in the future, but not so much in science fiction – more in possible or invisible magic"

Humanitarian design rises in MoMA's upcoming 'Small Scale, Big Change'

2010-09-14T14:37:00.003+02:00

Diébédo Francis Kéré's first building was this primary school in Gando, Burkina Faso. (Siméon Duchoud/Aga Khan Trust for, © 2010 Museum of Modern Art / September 12, 2010)

latimes.com: "Has architecture rediscovered its conscience? Or is it just critics and curators who have had a reawakening, suddenly paying attention to design work that has been going on steadily, and right under our noses, for years?

Those are among the compelling questions hovering around 'Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement,' which opens Oct. 3 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition is only the latest in a string this year of museum shows to explore so-called humanitarian design, an approach to architectural practice that instead of splashy new skyscrapers or private villas concentrates on disaster relief, anti-poverty programs and affordable housing."

Read on at latimes.com

Koyaanisqatsi

2010-09-14T14:32:00.001+02:00

YouTube: "Koyaanisqatsi, also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way. The film is the first in the Qatsi trilogy of films: it is followed by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature, and technology. Koyaanisqatsi is the best known of the trilogy and is considered a cult film."

You can find part 2-9 over here.

British Art archives to be opened up at Ulster Museum in Belfast

2010-09-14T14:18:00.001+02:00

Ulster Museum at night

Belfasttelegraph.co.uk: "The Government is opening up the vaults of its historic art collection to the public for the first time and the Ulster Museum is one of just three venues selected to exhibit the display.

Locked away from view for its 112-year history, the multi-million pound catalogue of 13,500 works includes pieces by David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud and Tracey Emin.

Although the Government Art Collection does loan out individual pieces to museums, the tour will be the first exhibition exclusively collated from its archives.

Curators are pulling together an exhibition from the vast selection and those chosen will go on display in the Whitechapel Gallery in London before moving to Birmingham and then Belfast in spring 2013, where it will remain for three months.

Set up to promote British art and culture in Government buildings and embassies, the collection features from artists from the 16th century to the present day."

Duppy Art: Cly Reggae

2010-09-14T14:05:00.001+02:00

ART:Jamaica has an interview with the artist Scally Ranks..

Quarxs - a 3D series by Maurice Benayoun and François Schuiten

2010-09-14T13:47:00.001+02:00

Quarxs: "Quarxs created between 1990 and 1993, was one of the earliest computer animated series. It predated ReBoot.

Each episode was made in HDTV and no more than three minutes long. Only twelve episodes of the original series of 100 have been created. The title was meant to describe a common name on mysterious, omnipresent and invisible creatures that were bending the laws of Physics, biology, optics... Discovered by a CryptoBiologist researcher, the Quarxs are presented as being the only and last explanation of the imperfection of the world.

Quarxs is the only fiction animated series by Maurice Benayoun, contemporary artist who dedicates his later work to media art. The series was conceived together with François Schuiten well known Belgian comic book designer. Quarxs has been widely awarded in international events and festivals."

First rule of Curators Club!

2010-09-14T01:02:00.001+02:00

You do not talk about Curators Club!

Sea Orchestra

2010-09-13T21:21:00.001+02:00

Sea Orchestra from Shy the Sun

Lovely commercial from 2008.

"Client: United Airlines
Agency: BDM

Produced by Shy the Sun
Directors: Ree Treweek and Jannes Hendrikz
Producer: Nina Pfeiffer"

Iran: A nation of bloggers

2010-09-13T20:29:00.001+02:00

Iran: A nation of bloggers from Aaron Chiesa

Very cool infographics about Iranian bloggers

TiM by Ken Turner

2010-09-13T19:52:00.001+02:00

TiM from Ken Turner

Timothy Gray wants to be just like Tim Burton when he grows up.

Ordæmonium

2010-09-13T19:29:00.001+02:00

By Gergely Wootsch: "I tried not to pre-plan and to have this this project as an experiment to see what happens if I let my unconscious unravel itself. I had a basic idea, the tangled spaghetti in the plate, and a hidden narrative emerged around this image with a perhaps alcoholic father and a child who is tangled between chaos and order.

Ordaemnium probably falls short sense and filmic punctuation but still, it was an enjoyable process and I benefited from making this short. Enjoy?

blog.wgergely.com/ord%C3%A6monium/

Royal College of Art(c), 2010"

Ooops!

2010-09-13T17:49:00.002+02:00

"Not available” by Robert Poulsen

Via rebel:art

Preview: Turner and the Masters

2010-09-13T17:47:00.001+02:00

Only a few more days to see this blockbuster show at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. The exhibition runs until 19th of September 2010.

Videos from Art History of Games Symposium

2010-09-13T17:43:00.001+02:00

Rhizome: "The videos from last Spring's Art History of Games conference at Georgia Tech are online now. Ian Bogost co-organized this interdisciplinary symposium that explored games as an art form."

Hermitage Plaza

2010-09-13T17:39:00.001+02:00

Hermitage Plaza from Uniform

Vimeo: "A short film for Foster Partners, for their Hermitage Plaza scheme in La Defence, Paris.

When complete in 2016, the two towers will be the tallest mixed-use towers in Western Europe, at a staggering 323m!

Produced by Uniform - uniform.net"

Walton Ford - Bestiarium in Vienna

2010-09-12T18:47:00.002+02:00

Still time until 10.10.'10 to check out this great show at the Albertina, Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Wien (Vienna)
Fon (01) 53483-0"

Art in Perspective - Linking the Past and the Present Through Art

2010-09-12T18:19:00.002+02:00

Earth, by Yinka Shonibare / Stephen White/Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

NYTimes.com: "What do Marcel Duchamp’s readymades have to do with a Chinese mandarin’s robe? And what is the link between the crowns of African kings and a synagogue in South America?

These are some of the questions raised by three contemporary artists who were asked by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to select pieces from its vast collections to create their own special exhibitions. To celebrate the reopening this summer of the museum’s main galleries following a $100 million renewal, the artists were given free rein on about half a million pieces ranging from prehistoric tools to conceptual art.

“There were no restrictions and that is so unusual,” said Susan Hiller, who along with Yinka Shonibare and Zvi Goldstein curated the “Artists’ Choices” projects. “The museum was giving us a great opportunity but also a puzzle, because how do you approach this open invitation?” "

More at NYTimes.com

Why art galleries are embracing the internet

2010-09-12T18:15:00.001+02:00

Video at BBC News - World News America: "The first data on how Americans are using new media to engage with the arts shows a surprising link between internet use and actual attendance.

Many experts had thought that technology had caused a decline in audiences for live events.

But the report from the National Endowment for the Arts shows that Americans who participate through electronic media are three times more likely to go to a gallery, theater or concert than those who never go online or use an electronic device. Jane O'Brien reports."

Surreal animation by Naoyuki Tsuji

2010-09-12T18:13:00.002+02:00

Pink Tentacle: "Here is an excerpt from artist Naoyuki Tsuji's 'A Feather Stare at the Dark' (2003), a simplistic, yet hauntingly surreal, hand-drawn animation made from charcoal drawings.

A unique characteristic of Tsuji's minimalist style is that each frame is created by partially erasing and redrawing the scene on the same sheet of paper. Traces of the previous frames remain visible as the dream-like action unfolds, creating an uncanny sense of motion and the passage of time. "

More videos by Naoyuki Tsuji

DVD: The Naoyuki Tsuji Animation Collection (1992)

Write like an Egyptian

2010-09-12T18:08:00.001+02:00

MetaFilter: "An online collection of texts from ancient Egypt. Most are available only as translations, but some include a transcription or an image of the original hieroglyphics. There are some very famous documents, like the treaty of Ramses II with the Hittites (the earliest known peace treaty), and a wide range of topics - gynaecology, court proceedings, contemplations of suicide, and apparently they beat Kipling to the just-so stories by a good few thousand years."

Art dealer convicted of forging forger's forgeries

2010-09-12T18:04:00.001+02:00

Konrad Kujau with his faked Hitler diaries in a Hamburg court in 1984. Petra Kujau has been convicted of forging his copies of masterpiece paintings. Photograph: N Foersterling/AP

Guardian.co.uk: "He is known as the man behind what was arguably the most masterly forgery of the 20th century, the Hitler diaries. Now almost three decades after investigators rumbled Konrad Kujau's multimillion pound ruse, a woman falsely claiming to be his great niece has been convicted of forging Kujau forgeries and selling them to unwitting collectors.

The bizarre tale, details of which unfolded in a Dresden courtroom during a two-year long trial, centred on 300 paintings obtained by Petra Kujau. She put his signature on them and sold them on as paintings by Konrad Kujau, claiming they were works the elderly Stuttgart forger had made in his latter years. In yet another twist his works were copied from famous masterpieces."

More about this crazy story at Guardian.co.uk

'An important message about the arts' - an animated video by artist David Shrigley

2010-09-12T17:59:00.001+02:00

YouTube: "For more information about Save the Arts, please visit http://www.savethearts.org.uk.

Over a hundred leading artists including David Hockney, Damien Hirst, Anthony Caro, Howard Hodgkin, Anish Kapoor, Richard Hamilton, Bridget Riley, Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin have joined the campaign to make the case against the proposed 25% cuts in government funding of the arts.

The campaign is launched today with the release of a new video animation by artist David Shrigley highlighting the effect of the funding cuts and a new work by Jeremy Deller with Scott King. Each week the work of a different artist, created in response to the campaign, will be released. Mark Wallinger will present the next project."

More at SavetheArtsTV

Wide Open Walls | An Art Village for Gambia

2010-09-12T17:53:00.003+02:00

The Gambia Blog: "Well now, this is incredibly exciting. Lawrence Williams, founder, designer and proprietor of the magnificent ecological and cultural project at Makasutu, and of the wonderful river lodges at Mandina has a new venture. Lawrence, a keen artist himself, has been working with local artists on a project called Bushdwellers for a number of years and has always wanted to expand the project into something more, something lasting that could both function as a valid art installation in itself and at the same time promote The Gambia as a tourist destination. The basic idea was to turn some the village of Kubuneh within the Ballabu area into a living art project. Lawrence spoke with renowned street artist Eelus and suddenly he had himself a curator – the first curator of Wide Open Walls… So from 12th-26th October, 8 of the world’s leading street artists (Eelus himself, Logan Hicks, C215, Will Barras, Broken Crow [John Girder & Mike Fitzsimmons], Lucy McLauchlan and Ben Eine will be in residence within the Makasutu region turning a Gambian village into an art installation. Click on the individual artists to see some of their work and read on to find out more. Oh, and follow the Wide Open Walls’ Facebook page for up to date information.

Many thanks to Lawrence who took the time to answer some of our questions about what sounds like a fantastic project."

WAYS OF SEEING

2010-09-12T17:49:00.001+02:00

Wikipedia: "Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30 minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. Berger's scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon."

manwithaplan999 has the rest of this excellent series

Thanks to Johnny for finding this.

Lviv and the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe

2010-09-12T17:41:00.002+02:00

Fountain "Svitezianka" / Creator: Adam Lenkiewicz / Publisher: "Halytska Brama", Lviv

Awesome website from the Ukraine. MetaFilter: " Lviv Interactive, a project of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, is mapping the history, architecture, and human landscape of the City of Lions - including locations no longer there.

Take a look at the architecture of the Beth Hamdirash, a version of which had stood for over 200 years in the center of a Jewish neighborhood before being destroyed in 1943. Visit the home of Austrian Archduke Karl Ludwig, who lived in the city for two years in the 1850s. Perhaps you'd like to know what the monument to the Stalin Constitution that used to stand on Svobody prospekt looked like, or hear some interviews, in their original language, with the residents of Bohomoltsia Street.

Other highlights of this great, multilingual (Ukrainian, English, Polish, German, and Russian) site are a chronicle the life of the city and the region in images, a fabulous video archive (featuring, for example, newsreel footage of a Lviv candy factory from 1949,), and a collection of historical maps, to say nothing of the multilingual library on the region and other themes connected to the Center's studies and work (and its searchable catalog).

Visiting soon? Check out one of their previous exhibitions or symposiums for a deeper look at this incredible city."

Great Art for the iPad

2010-09-12T15:00:00.001+02:00

The Art Authority app for the iPad is set up like a gallery.

NYTimes.com: "Apps can greatly enrich the museum experience, as this week’s App Smart column points out. But what if you’re in the mood to browse some art from the friendly confines of your living room?

For that, there is no rival for the iPad, and within that realm I have yet to find a rival for the “Art Authority” app. For $9, you get a virtual museum experience that offers a high-resolution tour of 40,000 works by more than 1,000 artists. Those works, by the way, span the collections of more than 2,000 museums around the world.

The app lets you browse “shows” of art periods, or specific artists. The photography is crisp and you can enlarge the images (although clarity suffers).

If you don’t want to spend that kind of money on an app, artist-specific titles are cheaper, and quite good. See, for example, the “Gustav Klimt HD” and “Van Gogh HD” apps, both $1 on Apple devices. Android users can find similar, but fewer, titles.

Other good alternatives are museum-specific apps, like “Musee du Louvre,” “Edsel & Eleanor Ford House,” and “Brooklyn Museum Mobile” (all free on Apple devices), and exhibit-specific apps, like Yoshitomo Nara ($3 on Apple devices), which is a tour of the artist’s show at the Asia Society and Museum in New York.

By the way, you can also get an $8 version of the Art Authority app for your iPhone or iPod Touch, but if you see it after using the iPad app, prepare yourself for some canvas envy."

MENASA - Open Call - ikono.tv will go live on Arabsat soon

2010-09-10T01:11:00.010+02:00

We have something really big to announce here! It's getting bigger every minute.
So big that here at ikono labs we don't even have an official date for all you fine folks working for the media out there. No nonsense, just watch this space! WE GOT STUFF COMING UP!

Here are some words for the street:

ikono Menasa, the new 24/7 HDTV art channel on Arabsat, is looking for new experimental videos to be broadcasted via Satellite. Arabsat reaches more than 16.5 Million households in northern Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe. How does that sound?

If you would like to participate, please send a link of your video work to info at ikono.tv. The submission deadline is the 15th of each month, starting in September 2010.

More over at ikono.tv

Metropolis - DVD & Blu-Ray

2010-09-10T01:05:00.002+02:00

The ultimate "Masters of Cinemas" rerelease is finally ready. And Metropolis finally got a good website. Nice work, folks!

Digital Comic Museum

2010-09-10T00:54:00.001+02:00

In case you're into studying the roots of popculture like us nerds here at ikono labs, you might enjoy this: The Digital Comic Museum is "the #1 site for downloading FREE public domain Golden Age Comics. All files here have been researched by our staff and users to make sure they are copyright free and in the public domain. To start downloading just register an account and enjoy these great comic books."

How Google Instant Could Reinvent Channel Flipping

2010-09-10T00:51:00.001+02:00

Wired.com: "Suppose I’m not looking at every string of text on the web, but for movie or television titles on the new Google TV.

Now, when I begin to enter text, Google will have a much better idea of what I’m looking for. In fact, it might actually be able to give me what I’m looking for even when I don’t know what that is.

The key to the next generation of TV is likely to be search, and the biggest drag on search is going to be text entry. This isn’t your laptop; people are going to be banging out text on remotes and mini-keyboards in bad light. Anything a company can do to minimize the number of keystrokes and make that process as painless as possible is going to be a tremendous usability boon to its customers.

If Google TV is really going to be the “one screen to rule them all,” it has to solve that problem."

A lot more at Wired.com

Brothers in exile - Sex and politics in the Middle East

2010-09-10T00:45:00.001+02:00

The Economist: "RAMIN and Rokni Haerizadeh, two Iranian artists exiled in Dubai, fled their homeland in spring 2009. Iranian officials became aware of their work when it was included in Charles Saatchi's exhibition, “Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East”. Armed with a catalogue, representatives from Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and National Security descended on Tehran's art galleries, pointed at Ramin Haerizadeh's partially naked self-portraits (from his “Men of Allah” series) and asked, “Do you know this man?”
They then raided a patron's house, confiscated two of the artist's works and threatened the collector with four months in prison. Family and friends called the artists, who were in Paris for the opening of their exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, and warned them not to return. Iranian passports are hardly great calling cards, but after the intervention of a sympathetic Sheikh in Abu Dhabi's Department of Higher Education, Mr Haerizadeh and his younger brother Rokni were granted three-year visas for the United Arab Emirates."

Read on at The Economist

More about the artists at Saatchis's.

Zane Yek Shabeh - Animated Introduction

2010-09-08T23:46:00.002+02:00

Bidoun on Youtube: "Animated intro for Zaneh Yek Shabeh (One Night Stand)"

- Folks, help us palefaces out here please! What is this thing? Nothink on the old Wikipedia. Who were the artists? What year? All that...

David Bowie's part in "Basquiat"

2010-09-08T23:00:00.002+02:00

"David Bowie plays Andy Warhol in this story of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, directed by Julian Schnabel."

More: Part 2 and Part 3.

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, filmed in 1986

2010-09-08T22:32:00.001+02:00

YouTube: "This is from the final episode of State of the Art, a series of documentaries about the visual arts in the 1980s. To buy the DVD, please go to www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk

Filmed in Europe, the United States and Australia in 1985-6, the six programmes feature many key artists including -- in addition to Basquiat and Warhol -- Cindy Sherman, Antony Gormley, Hans Haacke, Eric Fischl and Joseph Beuys. The films also explore the intellectual context of the time and the ideas of post-modernism.

The series was originally seen on Channel 4 in Britain, and then shown in more than 20 countries."

Cool interactive video tech from Veeple

2010-09-08T18:01:00.006+02:00

Scobleizer: "In the crowded field of online video, very few platforms can offer true interactivity. One that can is Veeple, a three-year-old company that makes watching videos on the internet less like watching TV, and more like the engagement that abounds on the rest of the web.
“If you have ever put an image, or an icon, into a PowerPoint presentation or into a Word doc, you know how to make your videos interactive,” explains Veeple founder and CEO Scott Broomfield. Content creators can link almost anything—a link to an outside web page, a pdf, a panel that pops up with contact info or a Twitter feed—to what’s going on, on-screen.
Another opportunity Veeple creates is the ability to keep viewers in. “Instead of putting video inside of a web site,” says Broomfield, “you’re now able to put a web site inside of a video. So no matter where a video traffics, wherever it goes on the web, all your messaging flows with it.”
And that messaging is working: customers using Veeple’s best-practices model are seeing an average click-through rate of 29.5 percent—a ridiculously high number, if you consider the average rate is 1 or 2 percent."

Toronto Palestine Film Festival

2010-09-08T17:53:00.001+02:00

Check out the Trailers for the official selection of Toronto Palestine Film Festival 2010 (Oct 2-8, 2010)

Why PlayStation Move Could Give ‘3-D Games’ a Whole New Meaning

2010-09-08T17:45:00.002+02:00

In augmented-reality games like Start the Party, the PlayStation Move brings videogames one step closer to true immersion. Image courtesy Sony

Wired.com: "Forget about 3-D graphics: With technology like Sony’s PlayStation Move, your whole living room might become a videogame.
(...)
the PlayStation Move does boast a distinctive feature that could be a serious game-changer. The controller is tracked by a camera, called PlayStation Eye, that sits atop your television set. The Eye tracks the position of the glowing sphere at the business end of the Move, and it does this so accurately that it can know the exact position of the controller in 3-D space.

This allows Move to do augmented reality, adding virtual upgrades to real-world images of you and whatever’s in your living room. It also makes possible games that rely on players being able to precisely manipulate the 3-D space in front of them, something the Wii remote can’t do with nearly enough accuracy.

More at Wired.com

542 antiquities looted in Iraq war return home. Where are the rest?

2010-09-08T17:41:00.002+02:00

"Artefacts are displayed at the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters in Baghdad Tuesday.The headless statue of a Sumerian king and more than 500 other artefacts looted from Iraq's museum and archaeological sites during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion have been returned home, officials said Tuesday." Photo: Mohammed Ameen/Reuters

CSMonitor.com: "“This is a very happy day – we are making progress in the very important field of returning Iraqi history to its rightful home,” said Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Samir Sumaidaie, who said the objects had been found through a combination of Iraqi and American efforts. “Iraq cannot be summarized by 30 years of problems and wars – it can stand and it can reclaim its history.”

He noted, however, that a previous shipment of 632 stolen pieces recovered in the US had gone missing after being delivered to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office last year.
The looting of the Iraq museum was one of the most controversial moments in the early part of the war. US troops sent in to topple Saddam Hussein and secure the city had no orders to protect the museum or other cultural institutions. In the ensuing chaos, thousands of pieces of Iraq’s history were looted while other cultural institutions were burned."

Read on at CSMonitor.com

The Omidvar Brothers , the first Iranian World Explorers

2010-09-08T16:31:00.005+02:00

Now, this is a really cool story you wont even find on the old Wikipedia: the famous travelling Iranians!

From the Home of the Omidvar Brothers: "In 1954, Issa and Abdullah Omidvar, two enthusiastic and daring Iranian brothers, decided to go beyond their country's boundaries and discover the world.

Their eagerness for reaching faraway lands took them into an incomparable adventure that kept them traveling across the most recondite territories on earth for ten years. In those days, in which there were no travelfacilities to speak of. They started their adventures on two motorcycles from Tehran to Mashad, continuing then on route of the orient.

As part of this adventure, unique in the Iranian history, they crossed burning deserts, the dense forests of the Amazon, the Itori forest of central Africa, the Australian continent with its Aborigines. In I957 they travelled to the frozen lands of Arctic and lived with the Eskimos, in I966 they were the first from Asia to explore the Antarctica with the scientific expedition of Chile"

First Asian in Antarctica

There is a little museum for the brothers and more over here..

Videos from Bidoun's Youtube Channel.

Two magical short films from 1907 created by special effects pioneer Segundo de Chomon

2010-09-08T13:28:00.002+02:00

ACROBATS JAPONAISE from MARC CAMPBELL

Dangerous Minds: "Les Kiriki: Acrobates Japonais, directed by Segundo de Chomon in 1907, is a lovingly hand-tinted artifact from the early days of French cinema. Similar in technique to George Melies, Aragonese film maker Chomon was a pioneer of cinematic special effects. In Les Kiriki, Chomon creates the illusion of complex, gravity defying acrobatics by having dancers lay on a black floor and filming them from above. The feat, while not as miraculous as if they were actually standing upright performing the balancing act, is still imaginatively choreographed, requiring considerable skill. The use of absurd Japanese wigs, pulsing colors and the primitive set result in a witty and surreal little film. For the soundtrack I added The Ventures’ “Let There Be Drums.”

The second video is Chomon’s Le Spectre Rouge which was also made in 1907 but released in 1908. Music by Shpongle."

Satan S'Amuse from Marc Campbell on Vimeo.

Digital art comes to Sanlitun, China

2010-09-08T13:22:00.001+02:00

MORTAL ENGINE, 2008, seen here with performer Antony Hamilton.(Source: China Daily)

Xinhuanet: "This September, Dream Worlds - Australian Moving Image 2010, a digital exhibition curated by Melinda Rackham, brings art to The Village at Sanlitun.

Dream Worlds is just one of the many events that make up Imagine Australia, a year-long festival of performances, exhibitions, concerts and forums, to be held all over China. It presents the moving images of eight leading Australian artists, each two to six minutes long, which run together uninterrupted for half an hour every hour on the large screen above the Piazza in The Village."

Future of Screen Technology

2010-09-08T13:14:00.001+02:00

TATMobileUI: "This is the result of TAT's Open Innovation experiment. It is an experience video showing the future of screen technology with stretchable screens, transparent screens and e-ink displays, to name a few."

Damien Hirst faces eight new claims of plagiarism

2010-09-08T13:10:00.001+02:00

A detail from Damien Hirst's In the Name of the Father which is claimed to be based on John LeKay's earlier This is My Body, This Is My Blood. Photograph: Jackdaw

The Guardian: "Charles Thomson, the artist and co-founder of the Stuckists, a group campaigning for traditional artistry, collated the number of plagiarism claims relating to Hirst's work for the latest issue of the Jackdaw art magazine.

He came up with 15 examples, with eight said to be new instances of plagiarism. The tally includes the medicine cabinets that Hirst first displayed in 1989, and its development in 1992 - a room-size installation called Pharmacy.

'Joseph Cornell displayed a cabinet with bottles on shelves called Pharmacy in 1943,' said Thomson. Nor were Hirst's spin paintings or his installation of a ball on a jet of air original, he said, noting that both were done in the 1960s.

"Hirst puts himself forward as a great artist, but a lot of his work exists only because other artists have come up with original ideas which he has stolen," said Thomson. "Hirst is a plagiarist in a way that would be totally unacceptable in science or literature."

More in The Guardian

Surfer Statue Stokes Gnarly Controversy in California

2010-09-07T16:38:00.001+02:00

The 'Cardiff Kook' surfer statue, with the addition of a prankster's great white shark in papier-mâché. Photo by Grant Brittain

WSJ.com: "CARDIFF-BY-THE-SEA, Calif.—The botanical society in this beachfront town thought it was honoring surfers when it spent $120,000 to erect a 16-foot tall statue of one riding a wave. Instead, it inspired a wave of humiliation for the hapless bronze dude.

Locals nicknamed it the 'Cardiff Kook,' derisive surfer slang for a wannabe surfer.(...)
But the main blowback has been an ongoing campaign that has seen the Kook dressed like a clown, a ballerina and topped with a pumpkin head. The most notorious act happened in July, when a local sculptor encapsulated the entire statue so it looked as though it was being devoured by a great white shark.

"I don't call them vandals," says Michael Clark, chair of the Cardiff Botanical Society, which commissioned the statue. "I've learned to call them artists."

More at WSJ.com

Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation (Multi-Media Version)

2010-09-07T16:29:00.001+02:00

Arts.gov: "This report describes the demographic characteristics of U.S. adults that participated in the arts (such as concerts, plays, and dance performances) via electronic media (e.g., TV, radio, computers and portable media devices) in 2008, based on the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). Separately, the report examines broad categories of arts participation via Internet. The report also investigates factors contributing to the likelihood of some Americans experiencing art through media. Finally, the report considers the relationship between media-based arts activities and other types of arts participation, such as live attendance and personal arts creation. June 2010. 146 pp.

Go to the multi-media version. [Click on upper left or right corner of page to scroll backward or forward through the pages]

- The videos take a while to load. Be patient!

[Please download the latest version of Flash]"

Ben Davis commented on this at artnet.

Art Wallpapers

2010-09-07T16:19:00.001+02:00

In case you're looking for some fine art to decorate your monitor, have a look at Art-Wallpaper.com, The ArtWolf or Artcyclopedia's masterscans.

3D Conversion from 2D flat images

2010-09-07T12:31:00.002+02:00

In case you don't know what to do with those 3D glasses they made you buy to see a bad movie, Jim Long has some fine art from 1425 to 1988 for you: "These are stereo conversions from artwork and photographs.
The original left eye image was changed to create the new image for your right eye. The method used is the 'pixel shift' technique; for every pixel in the picture was moved. They can be viewed as either cross-eyed, parallel, or anaglyphic."

Trailer: The Taqwacores - Islam Punk is not dead

2010-09-05T22:58:00.001+02:00

YouTube : "Yusef, a straitlaced Pakistani American college student, moves into a house with an unlikely group of Muslim misfits—skaters, skinheads, queers, and a riot grrrl in a burqa—all of whom embrace Taqwacore, the hardcore Muslim punk-rock scene. They may read the Koran and attend the mosque, but they also welcome an anarchic blend of sex, booze, and partying. As Yusef becomes more involved in Taqwacore, he finds his faith and ideology challenged by both this new subculture and his charismatic new friends, who represent different ideas of the Islamic tradition.

Adapted from the influential novel by Michael Muhammad Knight (cowriter of the film), The Taqwacores marks the energetic directorial debut of Eyad Zahra, who creates a wholly original spin on the identity narrative and invests the filth and fury of Islamic punk with humor and humanity."

The film world premiered at the 2010 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL.

www.punkislam.com

Blade Runner Revisited at Insane Resolution

2010-09-05T22:48:00.001+02:00

BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixels from François Vautier

Jawbone: "An experimental film in tribute to Ridley Scott's legendary film 'Blade Runner' (1982). This film was made as a unique picture with a resolution of 60.000 x 60.000 pixels (3.6 gigapixels). It was made with 167,819 frames from the film."

Battlestar Galactica: The Exhibition in Seattle

2010-09-05T22:40:00.001+02:00

The 2004 remake of that cheesy show from the 70s was probably the best comment on the Bush era within the world of entertainment. The terrorists were evil robot fighters and the heroes were women. Check it out if you want some intelligent Science Fiction.

"Battlestar Galactica: The Exhibition opens on Saturday, October 23, 2010. Organized by EMP|SFM, the exhibition features three stunning, full-size prop spaceships, iconic costumes, new exhibition films, music and other props from the original and re-imagined series."

Iranian Typography Now

2010-09-05T22:30:00.003+02:00

Calligraphy painting by Mohammed Ehsaei

PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” : "The past few years have been quite exciting for Iranian graphic designers. As Iran’s design gains more international attention, the graphic designers face new challenges and rewards. In winter 2002 a poster exhibition by Iranian graphic designers called “Un Cri Persan” (A Persian Cry) was held in the city of Echirolles as a part of the Month of Graphic Design in France. The exhibition exposed a wealth of works that somehow escaped the spotlight for almost two decades. Ever since then Iranian graphic designers, many of them already internationally known, have been sharing more of their magic with the rest of the world."

Read on at PingMag.

Calligraphy for an Oriental Wedding

2010-09-05T22:26:00.001+02:00

[ calligraphie
Hochgeladen von sadhu. - Nachrichtenvideos top aktuell.

Sadhu: "Calligraphy made for an oriental wedding."

Johannes Vermeer - The Milkmaid in 3D

2010-09-05T13:52:00.001+02:00

Janhin345: "Animation of a 3d model of the painting The Milkmaid of Vermeer"

Book: Art for Baby

2010-09-04T13:10:00.001+02:00

Amazon.com: "From Publishers Weekly: Budding Baby Warhols can fix their gaze on this oversize board book of 12 eye-stimulating patterns, credited to well-known artists. Each picture features chunky black-and-white shapes to catch a child's attention. Some pop pieces, like Takashi Murakami's deliriously happy-faced flower, resemble conventional child fare. Others are unorthodox but promising choices: Kazimir Malevich's modernist Black Cross is an enormous plus sign, and Julian Opie's stylized human portraits have smiley-face dot eyes and serious mouths. A few pages offer familiar subjects: a duck silhouette, a pear or a carrot, while the intersecting ovals of Josef Albers's Together could suggest a family or a nest, and Keith Haring's iconic Radiant Baby—a crawling figure emanating exclamation-point lines—graces the cover. Little ones unmoved by figurative work can linger on abstract compositions like conceptual artist Damien Hirst's grid of grayscale dots or '60s op artist Bridget Riley's aggressive zigzags. The images repeat on three folded friezes, tucked into the back of the book, ready for installation in art connoisseurs' play spaces or bedrooms. The high-contrast art should prove mesmerizing; no batteries required. Up to age 3."

Art, nature, the history of science, and whoa, aren't these beautiful?

2010-09-04T13:04:00.003+02:00

Plate 73 of the John Reeves Collection of Zoological Drawings from Canton, China, 1774-1856. (© The Natural History Museum, London).

Boing Boing. "Reeves was an English tea inspector, but also amassed a wonderful collection of Chinese drawings of plants and animals during his time in Canton.

A few weeks back, I had a great conversation with Judith Magee, Library Special Collections Curator at the Natural History Museum. From this conversation, as well as others (thanks Peronel, Martha, Bergit), it soon became clear that there were many individuals within the museum that had a passion for things pertaining to the humanities and the arts (see also this previous post).

In particular, the museum happens to house a vast collection of illustrations and paintings, many of which were originally produced as a way to scientifically document new species, new cultures, and other things observed during expeditions. However, it's also clear that apart from their historical value, these pieces of artwork also have immense aesthetic value. They. Are. Beautiful."

Read on at Boing Boing

Why your brain flips over visual illusions

2010-09-04T12:52:00.003+02:00

Image: Mary Evans Picture Library
New Scientist: "IT'S a big skull. No, wait, it's two people under an arch. Hold on, it's a skull again. Two very different images can be perceived in the trick picture Blossom and Decay. Now we are one step closer to working out how the brain spontaneously flips between such views, with the discovery of what may be the relevant brain region.

The precise neural mechanism that provokes the brain to switch its view of a scene is unknown, but it is thought to play a major role in perception by acting as a sort of reality check, says Ryota Kanai of University College London."

Read on at New Scientist