A nice place to be

Google Street View

Wow. Hello Big Brother.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&om=0&layer=c&cbll=37.871827,-122.268356&cbp=2,263.306329353911,0.560851827385273,3&ll=37.89057,-122.264528&spn=0.037187,0.113554&z=14

Neurosis a.k.a Flickrvision and Twittervision

These developments scare me..

http://flickrvision.com/ and http://twittervision.com/

David Troy has created a monster, or perhaps a family of disturbing creations. Twittervision seems most unnerving - but I've added the flickr site too as I'm trying to keep up with the new things going on there. Even Twitter.com seems lunatic - but even more mad when you see itty bitty chats coming and going and appearing on a google map of the world on twittervision. Though it's somehow strangely compelling and futuristic - as if you were in a control room somewhere spying on important conversations around the world - except that there's maybe not a lot of actual dialog there. I want to do it too. But fear it'll be addictive... And isn't it sort of talking for the sake of reassuring yourself - sending out signals and filling in the empty spaces to convince yourself you're really here.

Subvertisements and POPaganda

Just because. I like the words. They come from the press release describing Ron English's pieces in the exhibition - Don't Do That! - at Elms Lesters Painting Rooms in London.

MAY 4th - 26th 2007
The exhibition features six international contemporary urban artists.
DELTA RON ENGLISH ANDREW McATTEE DALEK STASH MARK DEAN VECA

Urban artists? Are they saying that this show provides for a transition [+ legitimization /validation/ commercialization] of these artists' work from street to gallery? Hardly. They all seem to be pretty much well established and largely celebrated already. So perhaps their "work" is already done.

"RON ENGLISH has pirated over one thousand billboards over the last twenty years, replacing existing advertisements with his own hand-painted "subvertisements." He revels in taking on the establishment, tearing down corporate icons, and unravelling social constructs. His works on canvas contain an equally biting commentary whilst being flawlessly painted in a hyper-real style.

"The film "POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English" features ENGLISH as one of the leading figures of the international agitprop movement of artists who paint over billboards and create other art that takes aim at the emptiness of modern culture.

And, then there are pieces by Mark Dean Vega.

"Veca's paintings installations and drawings resemble surreal cartoons and landsapes with inspiration as diverse as 18th century Toile de Jouy fabrics, Mad Magazine, Robert Crumb and the Furry Freak brothers, with popular icons his subject matter.

Still wish I could see it.

Miranda July

Miranda July has a new book out - No one Belongs Here More Than You - which I can't wait to read. But before you even get to that - have a look at what she's done on her website. It's charming. Stove top as hero!

http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

FLICKR mashups

I guess Flickr has opened up its API to developers - and interesting things are starting to emerge - curated exhibitions, color matchers and more. Apparently I am late to notice all these cool things - but anyway, they're beautiful. Here are some picks:

Color Fields Experimental Colr Pickr - Jim Bumgardner (since my own tech skills are rudimentary, i haven't been able to figure out posting an image from the site - but i will soon).

Color Field Camera - Bjoern Hartmann. Blends live video data with flickr images that match the color of the object in the center of the viewfinder. It combines a web cam and a 2.5" Color LCD screen in a vintage 1950s snapshot camera case. The Color Field Cam won "Best Flickr Hack" at the Yahoo! Open Hack Day on 10/01/2006.

The winning project from Hack Day was by a group known as Black Box Nation - a group of three women working with sewing machines, soldering irons, nokia 6682s, pedometers, Flickr and the Zonetag API. They collectively put together a handbag that took a picture with a camphone every few steps and used Zonetag to upload it to Flickr and turn it into a life-recording weblog. It even geotagged the photos as it went. You can see the Flickr stream of the handbag to this day and there's a site about it the whole project at Blogging in Motion. (Thanks to PlasticBag.org for the write-ups.)

At the SFAC Gallery, Takes on Flickr. Part of Breakthrough: An Amateur Photography RevolutionApril 20 - June 16, 2007 .

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery presents a multi-faceted exhibition and a panel discussion examining the new digital environment that has revolutionized the way photographers shoot, store and share images. Our examination centers on the empowered digital communities fostered by two Bay Area enterprises that are helping to define and push the boundaries of how images live within a virtual ecosystem.

Exhibition:

In the South Gallery- JPG Magazine: Community and Opportunity In partnership with the SFAC Gallery, the JPG Magazine community tackles the theme Breakthrough in a multimedia exhibition that celebrates global participation and exposes the editorial process. An accompanying feature will appear in JPG's May issue.

In the North Gallery- Takes on Flickr Six leading Bay Area curators explore the expansive Flickr community and emerge with image-sets that reflect unexpected thematic threads and a diverse array of photographic styles.
Curators: Rebeca Bollinger, Heather Champ, Joseph del Pesco, Chuck Mobley, Renny Pritikin, and Terri Whitlock.

A Rose Has No Teeth

Reading Renny Pritikin's review of A Rose Has No Teeth, Bruce Nauman 1964-69, at the Berkeley Art Museum, is incredibly inspiring - perhaps even more for importance he attributes to the exhibition as marking a turning point for the Bay Area than for the description of Bruce Nauman's work there.

"It is the culmination, professionally, of at least a decade’s worth of projects by Lewallen that resuscitated the work of conceptual artists of the Bay Area who had been in danger of being overlooked by art history".

"I felt that it was a turning point in the Bay Area’s understanding of its place in contemporary art. This region has nurtured so many artists whose work is of the utmost value and importance, yet for the usual litany of reasons, it is rarely acknowledged as an important art center in this country, let alone internationally. So what is landmark about this exhibition is an assertive celebration of what we have accomplished and contributed organized by one of our most important curators, and that will go on to demonstrate that contribution in stops in both Europe and America. Furthermore, there is a bit of a culmination of something as well, as Nauman and his teachers are now in their 60s and 70s, (I saw both Jim Melchert and William T. Wiley at the opening for example) and are our old masters, beloved and esteemed. "

Field Trip

How nice to have a trip to look forward to. My friend P is planning an uber-road trip through the wilds of the South West. There'll be desert and art, and perhaps even lightening storms. Thinking about going to The Lightening Field and Marfa, TX for starters. I'm excited..

Drawing Without Paper

Inspiring NY Times article here on Gego's retrospective at the Drawing Center in SoHo. Lovely pieces..

San Francisco Emotion Map

These are the final maps from a participatory mapping project I took part in recently. It was created by English artist Christian Nold and commissioned by Southern Exposure. The final product is a sort of emotional meta-map of the Mission (eM M-M M?), formed from about 100 people's experiences walking in the neighborhood.

People went for a stroll around the Mission while attached to a Bio Mapping device (a thing with lots of wires that you strapped onto your fingers) which recorded the wearer’s Galvanic Skin Response (which indicated the wearer's emotional arousal (!) in conjunction with their geographical location - not dissimilar to a lie detector device). The data was then downloaded and used to plot an “emotion map” that highlighted each person's points of high and low arousal. After sharing and reflecting on this data, Christian constructed a map that shows where "we" as a community feel stressed and excited.

It's thought-provoking both from the perspective of what's involved for people who participate in the creation process, and the resulting finished piece - an alternate way of considering one's locale. For the people who took part (i.e. me), it provided a different way of seeing and experiencing the areas you walk through every day. I enjoyed participating more than expected. It was exciting and sort of trippy to be wired up to the device and to go wandering down 24th Street and up to Bernal Hill, while being hyper-conscious of everything going on around you - for a change. Back at Southern Expsosure, we took turns describing our walks to Christian, and listening to other people's stories. It was interesting to hear what sorts of real experiences and triggered memories provoked the strongest emotions. Kind of like group therapy, but without the conversion. The finished map is cool - specially when you download Google Earth and start zooming around the Mission examining different people's paths.

More info here Bio Mapping website

eBay "ToGo"

As you can see from the embedded flash file below, today, eBay launches "ToGo" widgets. (Had to attach in a separate post as my tech skills are still lacking..)

eBay is now letting users embed information about any listing or group of listings directly into a website (so I'm trying to test it out here). eBay is hoping to encourage bloggers and social network users who like share fun listings to embed the information right into the page. And, the widget is available at togo.ebay.com as of this morning.

There are three types of widgets. You can see all the versions on the blog here.

Fun!

Distributed content - plug for eBay

Graffiti - LED Throwies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iC3Lh6XaOc

Came across a post on Graffiti Research Labs today, and a link to some of their projects. They're just one of the groups supported by Eyebeam, a non-profit arts and technology group in NY, who promote creative use of new technologies through funding art, education and exhibitions.

GRL's LED Throwies project documents guerrilla art projects, and gives instructions in how to make these non-permanent, illuminated, magnetic objects. The throwies are certainly a beautiful way to make statements in public places e.g. Night Writer. But perhaps just too pretty to be considered subversive. Is it grafitti, or is it art? Can it be both?

Curiously, while the light cells last for just 2 weeks, the question of how to dispose of the remaining batteries in a non-harmful way seems to provoke more debate than the projects themselves.