NeMe ReBlog

The excuse for my visit to Paris was SmartCity, a conference organized in the frame of the festival Emergences. Emergences is an 'international festival of electronic cultures and new art forms'. However, one must accept that in a city like Paris the word 'international' doesn't necessarily that tacit rules will be respected and that the activities and conferences will be held in any other language than french. That's probably why i enjoyed the event so much. While both the issues discussed and the quality of the speakers invited to the panels were definitely of international relevance, the festival had a homely feeling with an audience ready to participate and dialog, un-refrained as they were by any lack of knowledge of the ubiquitous english.

The conference focused on urban activism and artistic interventions in public space, a theme which offered a splendid contrast with the venue of the conference: the very chichi Maison Internationale at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris.

Perfect venue to discuss alternative uses of urban space

There were some good moments but the one that got me glued to my seat, pen in the hand and eyes on the screen was the presentation of mOmentoMoNUMENTO, a joint project by Brazilian collective Coloco & French experimental architects of Exyzt whose pavilion at the Venice architecture biennale of 2006 i had enjoyed so much.

Exyzt's works engage mostly with temporary interventions, ephemeral constructions and the presence of diversity in urban space. They have recently joined forces with Coloco to submit to the institution Cultures France a project that will be part of the official programme of the French Year in Brazil (February-July 2009).

When located in urban centers, skeletons provide opportunities

The final project stems from a research started in 2001 by Coloco.
The Brazilian collective observed, analyzed and documented a phenomenon called 'skeleton dwellings': in big cities, groups of people decide to occupy then inhabit buildings which were left unfinished and abandoned because of economic crisis, ups and downs of the estate market, war, cataclysm, etc.

Result of the dead-end of the estate market

The desire of these people is to live in the center of the city, close to the services. They organize the general functioning of the building: bathroom and garden for the collectivity are installed, trash collection is organized, spaces on ground levels are reserved for the elderly, etc. Sometimes, the dwellers are kicked out of the building but in some cases, they manage to reach an agreement with city officials (conscious that the abandon of the center of a city for the suburbs is a growing problem) and their dwelling become permanent and 'legitimate'.

Prestes Maia (Sao Paulo): This building has been abandoned 20 years ago. Its debt in taxes almost equals its value

The skeleton dwellings derive from a logic of opportunity, being easily inserted in dense urban areas and diversifying the supply of low-cost urban housing.

Building their dwellings, recycling these abandoned structures

Neighbours organize themselves informally

Prestes Maia (Sao Paulo): Each family lives in roughly 20 sqm

Gloria, Rio de Janeiro: Even after renovation, some facades can't hide their history

Meanwhile, Exyzt is also working on the rehabilitation of disused spaces and on alternative and cheap forms of dwellings.

A first project they presented is République Ephémère where 450 architectural students from Europe were given some rudimentary tools and materials to organize for 2 weeks their life as a big community in the enclosed space of the two wharehouses?

Each student was untrusted with a survival kit, including a construction manual and security instructions, and a defined quantity of scaffolding and textiles. Geometrical problems could arise, as this amount of scaffolding, sufficient to build one cubic room could then be combined with others: for example, 2 kits put together could give rise to 3 dwellings.

Video:

The affinities and exchanges between the participants were gradually translated into architectural terms. More complex, personalized structures were developed over time. The implantation looked like a cross between an organic. medieval village and a refugee camp. It kept transforming itself, not only on the level of the individual sphere, but also on the level of the collective organization.

The second project Exyzt spotlighted was an intervention inside and outside of the Palast der Republik, a gigantic relic of the communist era, now demolished and about to be replaced by the (very tacky imho) reconstruction of its predecessor, the Berlin Stadtschloss.

Der Berg (image southwarklido)

Under the menace of a demolition act, Raumlabor, one of the most brilliant group on the German architecture scene, decided to occupy and open the monument to the public. They called Exyzt to give them a helping hand.

Der Berg (in german: the mountain) is an artificial mountain, a surrealist architectural performance built to react to the absurdity of making a tabula rasa of a part of Berlin's history in order to build the replica of a long disappeared building.

This collaboration resulted in a 20 meters high triangulated structure made out of scaffolding and fiber glass textile. The installation invaded the theater, while another team made it spread through the roof and onto the front porch of the building. Der Berg became a monument inside a monument.

Movie:

After this introduction, Exyzt and Coloco focused on mOmentoMoNUMENTO, the project they are working on for the official programme of the French Year in Brazil (February-July 2009). The idea is to follow on the steps of the French tradition to 'offer' monuments to foreign countries (think of the Statue of Liberty). This monument, however, is already on site. Well, sort of. The architects have obtained the help of the city of Sao Paulo to spot one of the many skeletons that have been standing for years in the city center, waiting to be reconquered by Exyzt and Coloco.

Saõ Paulo: an apartment building for the wealthy overlooks a favela, ironically called Paraisópolis (Paradise city). Photo: Luiz Arthur Leirão Vieira (bigger view)

The building they've set their sight on was built in 1965. It is the first building with a facade entirely made of glass. Occupied at some point by the federal police it has now been left to decay. The main problem the architect have to solve is that living inside the building is almost un-conceivable without air conditioning which has been dismantled in the meantime. The whole electrical setting has to be re-installed as well (especially if one wants to have access to the top floor by lift.)

The project responds to Sao Paulo government's desire to find new solutions that will inject life back into the center of the city: inhabitants have moved to the edge of the city, leaving many abandoned buildings and a thick infrastructure of roads behind them.

The building is left at the disposal of the architects for one year. If at the end of the project, the result is deemed good enough by the city, it could become a space left permanently occupied by cultural organizations, art galleries, artists residencies, etc.

Exyzt and Coloco want to make the rooftop (originally planned as a landing spot for helicopters) accessible to the public.

The project is currently self-funded. Any help and feedback would be most welcome.

Related: Global Cities, The Morrinho Project at the Venice Biennale and Juan Freire - From the Analogue Commons to the New Hybrid Public Spaces.

Originally from we make money not art by Regine reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

Liverpool artwork of the week 38. 'Gleaming Lights of the Souls' by Yayoi Kasuma at 'Pilkingtons' (venue 12) for Liverpool Biennial 20 September - 30 November 2008

In Gleaming Lights of the Souls visitors are invited to enter a tardis-like chamber, whose small interior unfolds into a magical encounter with infinity. The small room is mirrored on all four sides, with a shallow pool of water on the floor. A changing constellation of small LED lights hung from the ceiling produce an infinite chain of endless reflections, transforming the small white cube into a distinctly otherworldly place.

This obsessive patterning began on the canvas with the infinity net paintings of the 1960’s, but quickly evolved into large scale installations where every available surface was colonised by the same pattern. Sometimes associated with the psychedelic art movement, Kusama herself traces her obsessive patterning back to the hallucinations which she began to experience as a young child in the 1930’s, and which continue to this day. Her work often incorporates mirrors to multiply the obsessively repeated patterns to infinity. In her infinity mirror rooms, at once joyful and terrifying, we the viewer, like the artist herself, experience the universe and ourselves obliterated in the endlessly recurring forms.

Text from biennial.com

Originally from Liverpool Art and Culture by Ian Jackson reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

Long overdue.... A follow-up on media_city Seoul, a media art biennale hosted until November 5, 2008 at the Seoul Museum of Art.

The events aims to reflect on the place that media art has taken into contemporary art. Each in their own way, the works selected for the exhibitions bring a fragment of answer to fundamental questions such as: What is media art? What is different from the conventional art? What changes have been made by that in the field of art? and what influences could come from now?

In order to ensure a broader and more informed coverage of these issues, Park Il-ho, exhibition director, professor at Ewha Womans University and main curator of media_city Seoul surrounded himself with four international curators: Maarten Bertheux from the Stedelijk Museum, independent art curator and critic Raul Zamudio, curator of Tokyo's National Museum of Modern Art Tohru Matsumoto and art historian and curator Andreas Broeckmann.

I had the opportunity to attend a talk in which Broeckmann shared with the audience his point of view on some of the questions raised by the media art biennale: What can be defined as media art today?

Most of you probably know Andreas Broeckmann as the artistic director of the transmediale festival (2000-2007) and the co-director of the media arts lab TESLA in Berlin (2005-2007). The curator and art historian recently co-chaired the re:place 2007 interdisciplinary science and art history conference and is currently working on the next edition of ISEA which will take place in the Ruhr area (Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, a. o.) in August 2010.

Below are my (fairly rough) notes from the talk.

Questions such as What does it mean to speak of media art today? or What is the territory of media art today? have given rise to many ongoing discussions and are even the core subject of a couple of exhibitions (such as media_city Seoul). One of these exhibitions closed yesterday at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Deep Screen - Art in Digital Culture. Proposal for Municipal Art Acquisitions 2008 was organized with the objective of getting a sample of contemporary media artists living in The Netherlands. The Stedelijk plans to select a few artworks from the sample and buy them for its permanent collection. The questions they museum asked right from the start was 'How can we bring this recent art, with its own aesthetics and thematics into the collection?'

Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács' Hinterland #2 series (exhibited at the Stedelijk)

Broeckmann's conviction is that in fact not much of it is really new for the Stedelijk. After all, they have been buying such artworks for 40 years now: Fluxus works, videos by Abramovic, Bill Viola, etc. Media art shouldn't be reduced to technology, some media art pieces are just good examples of conceptual art and have other strong connections with modern and post-modern art.

We are now living a historical time when digital technology is used everywhere everyday. We don't have to think about it anymore. It just became so natural. Only a tiny minority of people had a mobile phone 10 years ago. Today we all have one. Being connected is easy and that's the way we expect it to be. Yet people keep seeing media art as something different, a genre which puts a heavy emphasis on technology and when we speak about art, it mostly refers to art creation that uses analog media.

In the past, when technologies were news, artists were engaging with it in a free and often very explorative way. Now that they have mastered the technology the focus is mostly on making good art. Of course some artists are still developing complicated art pieces but we are seeing much more work using easy, hand-on technology.

An important question to raise is: What happens to art when it has reached the phase beyond digital technology novelty? We used to be fascinated by technology and now it is so much part of our life that we don't have to think about it anymore.

Many people have the feeling that we still describe something when we say 'media art'. Which role does media art has in contemporary art? Are there particular themes, ideas or fields that media art references?

One of the works shown at media_city Seoul illustrates a possible answers. At first look, Julien Maire's Exploding Camera is a heap of electronics on a table. The bits and pieces belong to a video camera which, although it was disassembled, is still perfectly functioning. The lens has been taken out. Instead, external light coupled with LEDs and laser produce video images by direct illumination of the camera's CCD (light sensor). A transparent disc containing photographic positives is placed between the lights and the CCD. The pictures are projected onto the CCD when a light is turned on. Because of the different position of the lights, movement in the same picture can be created. Large lights and the laser create explosions (they trigger a sound that overlays the backing soundtrack).

Exploding Camera Screenshots

The installation was inspired by the murder, two days before the 9/11, of the most credible opponent to the Taliban: Commander Massoud.

Two al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as journalists killed him with an exploding camera at his camp in Afghanistan's remote Panjshir Valley.

Although the murder is connected with 9/11, it has been almost completely forgotten because of the magnitude of the events a few days later.

The artist wrote: For me, it is as if the destroyed camera used in the attack against Massoud had continued to work and has been filming a war film for the last 6 years.
All of this, as well as the death of the almost mythic figure of Massoud, has lead me to develop the piece 'the exploding camera': a kind of destroyed medium able to produce live an experimental historical film reinterpreting the events of the war.

Just like Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács' Hinterland #2 series (exhibited at the Stedelijk but not in Seoul), the work deconstructs the technology of audiovisual media in order to better reflect on the way that it works. This theme is often explored in media art and could therefore constitute an element that contribute to its definition.

Marko Peljhan, Speckr, Linz

An other relevant figure to consider is Marko Peljhan, an artist interested in social and political context of technology. He develops works in the Russian constructivist tradition of the 1920. His art projects deal with with technology and offer the public the opportunity to engage with them and talk about technology, scientific research, military developments, etc. The aesthetics of his work is directly inspired by the aesthetics of science and technology while exposing its dark side, the esoteric and sometimes irrational aspects of modern science.

Hello World by Yunchul Kim

Hello, World!, offers an interesting dialog with mediality by showing the process of the translation from the digital to the analog through copper pipes. The installation, developed by Yunchul Kim, uses acoustic signals to store data. A codified auditory signal (feedback) circulates in a closed system consisting of a computer, a loudspeaker, 246 meters of copper tubing and a microphone. Due to the acoustic delay in the tubing system, it's possible to save data, whereby the rule is: the longer the copper tubing, the longer the time delay and the greater the memory capacity.

Where is the medium in this work? Is it the computer with the hardware which carries the data file? Or is it the software? The electrical signal?

Driessens & Verstappen, Breed

Erwin Driessens & Maria Verstappen's Breed (also included in the Stedelijk exhibition) is a fascinating take on the theme of the transition from digital to analog. A computer program uses artificial evolution to grow very detailed bronze sculptures that represent virtual mathematical models. The purpose of each growth is to generate by cell division from a single cell a detailed form that can be materialised. On the basis of selection and mutation a code is gradually developed that best fulfills this "fitness" criterion and thus yields a workable form. The virtual designs become tangible artefacts through 3D printing techniques.

Driessens & Verstappen, Breed

The whole creation process is left in the 'hands' of the computer, there is no direct artistic decision. The final result is presented in a very traditional way: the print-out structures are cast in bronze and presented in a glass case.

Breed reflects on the relationship between virtuality and materiality but also the relationship human and machine creativity. Belonging both to the software art genre and the sculpture genre, Breed pushes the boundaries of mediality.

Pierre Bastien

The work of Pierre Bastien which engages mostly with mechanical age looks at the degree zero of media. He uses very basic (wind, voice, fans, etc.) media for human expression in a 'post-machinic age' scenario. It doesn't make much sense to talk about new media art in this context but his work is an artistic expression that uses the most ancient media possible. On the other hand, it can be regarded as media art because of the way it reflects on the mediality of its own materiality (and vice-versa?.)

Electroboutique

Ironic wink from Alexei Shulgin and Aristarkh Chernyshev with their latest artistico-commercial adventure: Electroboutique, a conceptual project that playfully but intelligently reflects on the status of media art as another product of consumer culture. The Russian artists are exhibiting at media_city Seoul Super-i, a pair of goggles that allow visitors to reverse the virtual/real duality by transforming the "real" world around us into a pixelated one in real time.

Today, many electrical and digital technologies are available to artists, they are free to choose which one best fits their work. That didn't use to be the case. There was a time when these technologies were expensive and not available to the hoi polloi. Nowadays, these technologies have been 'liberated'. In the past, computers would limit what an artist could do, they were 'imprisoned'. Today, an artist can decide freely whether it is software or wood that best correspond to their project. This also constitutes a liberation from the idea that the essence of media art is technology.

The Cage, by Tania Ruiz Gutiérrez, tries to re-create the experience of being incarcerated. The projection shows an image of a tiger kept prisoner in a zoo. The image is always the same, yet the tiger moves around his cage. The artist explains that the movement is in fact determined by the relative sizes of tiger and cage, such that his movements are optimized to the only possible path given the tight space available. Given that both the duration and the distance are repeated, one can imagine that in the tiger's brain there exists a double incarceration, both spatial and temporal. Moreover, the tiger's path traces over and over the sign of infinity. I would like to make visible the passing of a suspended time and give this installation both a reflexive and hypnotic character.

Pneuma Monoxyd, by Thomas Köner, is a visual metaphor of how time and memory intersect into our mind. The video installation merges in a dark blur surveillance images of a German shopping street and a Balkan marketplace.

These last works show how media art offer us new possibilities to look at the world in a different way.

Mark Hansen's 2 channel video Other People's Feelings Are Also My Own No.3 shows the artist in a similar outfit and facial expression as those of the man, woman or child in the picture next to his. The work explores notions of ego, subjectivity and identity but it also looks into the mediality of the human face and how much it can be used as a screen.

Herwig Weiser's sound sculpture Death Before Disko is a self-absorbed machine, it is a medium that could be qualified as 'autistic'. It appears to be busy with itself and communicates as little as possible to the outside. 'Death Before Disko' uses an online data stream from space observation and translates it into sound and light events. With the proliferation of digital technologies, users have become more and more distant from the physical hardware of their laptop or hi-fi units. 'Death Before Disko' aims to return to the foundations of the hardware, and shows how our relationship towards technology is more often emotional than rational.

Broeckmann's view is that it is getting less and less important to have specific media biennales and festivals. If a 'media art' piece is a good art piece it will survive as contemporary art.

Further reading: Deep Screen - Art in Digital Culture. An Introduction by Andreas Broeckmann.

Originally from we make money not art by Regine reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

Just in case the market is getting you down, check out this comic sketch from LAST YEAR. Shockingly prescient ...

Originally from TED | TEDBlog by reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

For Into the Open: Positioning Practice exhibition at the US Pavilion in the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, Teddy Cruz says this about his contribution:

The piece is called 60 Linear Miles of Local Conflict. It's basically a 15-foot-high by 90-foot-long billboard, made of a translucent material, that serves as the facade of the US pavilion itself. A painting of the border wall separating Tijuana from San Diego stretches across the billboard's length, with a long horizon made of photographs taken of places in conflict. In the end, the wall finally sinks into the Pacific Ocean, after traveling miles through the Tijuana territory. First of all, it was a very interesting opportunity to install the whole facade of the US pavilion. It served as a dramatic image to frame the discussion taking place inside the pavilion, and reminded the public that, as architects, we begin with very local, real conditions. Conflicts between military bases and environmental zones, between formal and informal urbanisms, between political and natural conditions — that's where architectural practice should position itself.

Read more in this Artkrush Interview with Teddy from Sept. 17, 2008.

Originally from Subtopia by Bryan Finoki reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

As of today, the U.S. will have a bold new venue for new media art and performance: EMPAC. Short for Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center, the Troy, NY-based facility embodies state-of-the-artness and its affiliation with the highly regarded research university, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, ensures that the installations, performances, and concerts presented there will always be ahead of the technological curve. The space, itself, is a masterpiece. The 220,000-square foot building, designed by Grimshaw, includes a 1200-seat concert hall with an adjustable fabric ceiling; a 400-seat theater with a 70-foot fly tower; two black-box studio spaces with tunable, tilting wall tiles; and acoustically isolated artist/researcher work spaces. Within these walls, and under the direction of Johannes Goebel (who helped found ZKM) and curators Kathleen Forde, Hélène Lesterlin, and Micah Silver, visitors will experience work that emphasizes immersion, interactivity, and time-based media. For the next three weekends, EMPAC will present a major festival full of provocative performances and installations by The Wooster Group, dumb type, Workspace Unlimited, Verdensteatret, Vox Vocal Ensemble and International Contemporary Ensemble, Per Tengstrand, Madlib, Cecil Taylor, Pauline Oliveros, Richard Siegal/The Bakery, Robert Normandeau, Fieldwork, Gamelan Galak Tika + Ensemble Robot, and others. This unveiling has been several years in the making but reservations are going fast, so you won't want to wait to get your tickets and get over to Troy. - Marisa Olson

Link »

Originally from Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Writer's Initiative by Marisa Olson reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Dec 31, 1969, 11:00PM

Yawn...

LIVERPOOL OPENS TALKS ON POST '08 CULTURAL STRATEGY

Liverpool is launching a five-year masterplan to build on the success as the UK's European Capital of Culture.

The city's new Cultural Strategy, which makes recommendations such as further waterfront animation, developing the role of parks in the city and a new public art programme, has today opened for consultation.

The 45-page draft document, devised with the help of more than 70 cultural organisations and networks, is seen a key contributor to the city’s vision of creating a ‘Thriving International City of World Status’ by 2024.

Councillor Warren Bradley, Chair of Liverpool First Executive Board and Leader, Liverpool City Council, said: ‘’This strategy demonstrates our commitment to ensuring culture continues to play a central role in Liverpool and how it can contribute to our ongoing renaissance as a quality international destination.

‘’Collectively we can be proud of delivering an outstanding European Capital of Culture. Maximising the legacy of ‘08 for the benefit of Liverpool’s citizens and cultural sector will undoubtedly prove as challenging as delivering ‘08 itself. But we can only achieve this by listening to what people have to say.‘’

Available at http://www.liverpoolfirst.org.uk/consultations/stakeholder-sept2008 the public and stakeholders are invited to provide feedback over the next 6 weeks until Friday, October 31. A questionnaire accompanies the document.

The Cultural Strategy will then be driven by Liverpool First’s newly created Culture Task Group, chaired by Councillor Gary Millar, Liverpool’s Executive Member for Enterprise and Tourism.

The group will assess deliverability of recommendations and set out an annual cultural strategy action plan which will spell out what needs to be delivered, where, when, by whom and with what results. This will be monitored by an annual performance review.

With an initial five-year period to cover until 2013, the group will work on five key themes:

* Cultural Vibrancy
* Access and Participation
* Creative learning and skills development
* Economic growth
* Image, identity and sense of place

These themes are based upon those developed by Liverpool’s Impacts 08 research model, which is also monitoring the city’s year as European Capital of Culture.

Originally from Liverpool Art and Culture by Ian Jackson reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

In what can be seen as an omen of what is still to come, three stories this weekend sum up how the financial crisis will affect the so-called "art world." From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

When Seattle Art Museum Director Mimi Gates announced her retirement in June, she was credited with striking an agreement with Washington Mutual whereby SAM was able to afford its 2007 expansion by sharing real estate with WaMu. What a difference a year makes. If SAM and WaMu are joined at the hip, can SAM flourish as WaMu falters? Museum spokeswoman Nicole Griffin says yes. "Everything is in transition," she said, "but we feel confident in the provisions of the lease agreement."

We'll see about that. In today's NY Times, Edward Wyatt reports that the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA) has received a $45 million cash gift for a Renzo Piano pavilion and $10 million worth of artworks from Lynda and Stewart Resnick. This is good news, the bad news:

Cultural institutions have been left wondering in recent weeks what will become of some of their largest financing sources as a national economic crisis unfolds. Four prominent financial institutions that were significant contributors to museums and arts programs -- Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual -- have shut down, been acquired or seized by regulators.

Maybe LACMA can deaccession some of its collection. Speaking of deaccessioning, the Washington Post reported on Friday that:

The Corcoran Gallery of Art plans to sell 10 paintings from its permanent collection at a public auction in December as a first step toward refining the museum's focus and providing funds for purchasing future works.

More on the Corcoran deaccessioning on Clancco's Deaccessioning Blog. UPDATE: According to The Gulf Times, dismal sales at the Lyon and Turnbull auction signal a collapse in the contemporary art market.

To the gathered dealers, there was no longer any scope for optimism. The sale, or lack of sales, was incontrovertible proof that the money-spinning contemporary art market has collapsed into what one shocked expert called: "a bloodbath". Moss's picture did later sell for £33,600 - just above its low estimate - after the dealers hit the phones to drum up business. That did little to lift the gloom at the sale by the auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull in central London as even work by popular graffiti artist Banksy struggled. Another blood-inscribed piece by Doherty, as well as work by Sean Scully, Sam Taylor-Wood and a host of other artists also failed to reach their reserve prices. The sale's outcome will send a chill through the art world, despite a headline grabbing auction by Damien Hirst just two weeks ago, which netted the artist £111mn at Sotheby's.

UPDATE 2: Oct. 1, 2008, From Bloomberg.com:

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. owns about 3,500 contemporary artworks that have been displayed in the investment bank's offices around the world, and the fate of the collection is unclear.

UPDATE 3: Oct. 2, 2008, From The Art Newspaper:

There are still those who profess to believe that there are markets that can continue to operate in isolation; auctioneers and dealers have been saying for months that buyers from growing economies such as China and Russia can make up for the likely retirement of western buyers. But news of Lehman Brothers' collapse didn't only see the Dow Jones fall 500-points: Asian stocks nosedived (the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed down 4.5% on 16 September), and on 17 September trading on Russia's main stock exchange--one of the best performing indexes in recent years--was suspended following sharp falls in share prices prompted by the news from Wall Street.

Originally posted by Clancco from CLANCCO, ReBlogged by Other Options on Oct 2, 2008 at 08:06 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog by Clancco reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Jan 1, 1970, 5:00AM

Increasingly open ways of participating in the selection and display of content are blossoming. Harnessing the ubiquity of internet access, the Brooklyn Museum are able to produced Click!, a "crowd-curated" photography exhibition. Weblogs, like FFFFOUND!, allow invited internet users to select pictures worthy of scrutiny from the tonnage of imagery available on the web. Taking the semi-randomness of allowing web users to filter content as a model, the Kemper Museum in Kansas City recently permitted museum visitors to choose items from the collection to be displayed in an exhibition entitled "Putting the U in Curator".

In each of these situations, the word curating is used to describe actions taken by members of the public who would not normally self-define as curators. This situation is similar to the one described by Clay Shirky in his recent book, Here Comes Everybody, about the definition of a journalist: "So long as publishing was expensive, journalists were rare." (p. 71) So long as there were relatively few museums and galleries, art curators were rare. On the surface, it appears that this rarity is eroding, not because of an explosion in curatorial jobs and projects, but because there is an explosion in the way the term is being used. "Curating" is increasingly being used to describe an expanding body of activity in terms of new platforms and materials, but remains focused on the act of the curator as editor or selector. This movement towards the application of the term curator to bloggers choosing images for their blogs, and to museum visitors who are invited to move a painting from the vault to the gallery wall, and to the person who votes on images in a web browser, expands the notion of a curator at the same time that it contracts it.

There are two distinct types of activity happening in this expanded area of definition. One is a singular act of temporary deputisation as a curator. This type of singular activity fits with the example of the Kemper Museum show, where one random museum visitor was selected to choose one piece from the collection, and then this same activity was repeated with a different museum visitor, until the walls were full. The other type of activity is a crowd-generated model, wherein group choices are tallied and a final result evolves from popularity of particular items, as in the Brooklyn Museum example. Both of these cases highlight the selection and editing processes that are part of a curatorial role.

Language is living and the meaning of words and expressions evolve over time and with use. There is no doubt that there is value to opening up and demystifying the editing and selection processes most typically known to be domain of the art curator. If this strategy is properly applied, it is possible to encourage anyone who is interested to develop a deeper aesthetic sense, to feel more closely linked to culture and heritage institutions, and to develop stronger ideas of what culture means to them. But if this is how the common use of the word curator is evolving, what is lost?

To speak very broadly, when looking at any collection of items, one can ask: "For what and for whom?" Why select, edit, and group things together? Collections and curated exhibitions are about creating links, developing narratives, and composing responses to perennial questions and ideas. These collections and groupings are then presented in ways so that they will effectively reach audiences. Often erroneously perceived as the skulduggery of the marketer, it is the work of curators and all cultural workers to perform extensive research on who is or could be the audience for a particular exhibit or collection, and what would constitute an effective display for this audience. Just as a priest isn't simply someone who says Mass and a doctor isn't simply someone who taps your knee with a hammer, a curator isn't just someone who selects images. The larger role of the curator encompasses the creation of links to other creative dialogues, writing and contextualising work, developing the physical (or virtual) exhibition sequencing and flow, and perhaps most important of all, nurturing a relationship with the practitioners who make the work and understanding the narrative inherent in their career trajectory. (Or, in the case of those who work with historical collections, having a scholarly background on the movements/time periods/artists represented in these collections). What can and will be lost in the reduction of the term curator to mean one who clicks on a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon is that sense of for what and for whom.

Is it possible to build a notion of for what and for whom into the singular model and the crowd model, and is that an appropriate aim? Or do these models serve the very specific purpose of magnifying the intricacies of these selection processes? I would argue that building larger cultural narratives, and developing clear intentions towards an audience are functions too important to ignore. Behind each of these very important additional tasks of the curator is an understanding of intentions and a burden of responsibility towards the public, artists, and colleagues.

Perhaps the intentions of those working with either old models or new are too divergent to reconcile. In interviews about the Brooklyn Museum crowd-curated exhibition Click! on artinfo.com, a photoblogger describes traditional modes of curating as about "judgment and exclusion" and that it allows "only a certain group of people to have their work seen", whilst a professional curator working in an institution characterises the crowd mode of curating as allowing people to act "less as curators and more as participants" and another curator described how the the exhibition might undermine the educational aspect of a museum's mandate.

In a very direct statement on the matter, blogger Jason Kottke says of his FFFFOUND! project: "I would argue that these sites showcase a new form of art curating. The pace is faster, you don't need a physical gallery or museum, and you don't need to worry about crossing arbitrary boundaries of style or media. Nor do you need to concern yourself with questions like "is this person an artist or an outsider artist?" If a particular piece is good or compelling or noteworthy, in it goes." Were these thoughts to be developed a little further, Kottke might have found that the terms "good", "compelling", and "noteworthy" are problematic, and the use of those terms in a cavalier way indicates a lack of consideration for who both the audience and the users are, or could be. In "Here Comes Everybody" Shirky also notes that: "As with the printing press, the loss of professional control will be bad for many of society's core institutions, but it's happening anyway. The comparison with the printing press doesn't suggest we are entering a bright new future - for a hundred years after it started, the printing press broke more things than it fixed, plunging Europe into a period of intellectual and political chaos that ended only in the 1600s." (p. 73). Will the notion of flexibility espoused by evangelists such as Kottke break more things than it fixes? It will certainly stretch, if not completely break, the definitions of noteworthy, good, and compelling, as well as curating.

In these open forums for participation, the very arbitrariness and randomness that is held up a virtue also ensures that there will never be a common vision or consensus on direction and intention. While this doesn't undermine the value of online or offline filtering by the public as an educational or research vehicle, it is erroneous to imagine it could take the place of a specialist waking up every day and asking "for what and for whom?" (before putting the "u" in curator). Rather than muddying our terms, the way forward is to identify and clarify what the purpose of singular or collaborative methods of filtering are, and refine how to make these methods more useful and meaningful to the participants.
--
Reference links:
(1) Brooklyn Museum, Click! http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click (Further information: http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/28147/power-to-the-people)
(2) FFFFOUND! Commentary:
http://www.kottke.org/07/10/ffffound-art-curating-for-the-masses
http://www.artfagcity.com/2007/10/29/art-curating-on-the-internet-meets-mediocrity/
(3) Kemper exhibition, Putting the U in Curator: http://www.kemperart.org/exhibits/UinCurator.asp
(4) Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody
--
This essay was included in the latest issue of Vague Terrain, guest edited by the fine folks at CONT3XT.NET.

Originally from Curating.info by nospam@example.com (Michelle Kasprzak) reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Oct 4, 2008, 10:22AM

...he'd be a member of the Media Ecology Association. Marshall actually came up with the term Media Ecology, and worked with Neil Postman to create the Media Ecology program at NYU. While the program went to the great beyond with Postman's passing, it has morphed into an international organization of people from a wide range of fields who look at the way media and culture influence one another.

Their conferences fall somewhere between a traditional academic conference and a DisinfoCon. And, best of all, they're open to papers and presentations from anyone. My favorites of the past few years were one by Lian Amaris on the World of Warcraft funeral raid, and Corey Anton on the Tao and media.

I just received the call for submissions for the next conference, and I encourage anyone with interesting ideas about any aspect of media to make a submission. This isn't one of those stodgy academic groups, so you don't have to present in any officially recognized format. Just tell them what you want to talk about, or do. I can promise you'll have an audience of smart, weird, and friendly people giving feedback you can use. In the flesh.

Call for papers Media Ecology Association 2009 Annual Convention June 18-21, 2009 Saint Louis University St. Louis, Missouri

"Ecology" a word derived from the Greek words meaning "household knowledge." For the 2009 MEA convention, we seek papers on any aspect of media ecology. Special interest in the places and spaces of media interactions: Silicon Valley or St. Louis; screen, studio, library, or street. Does place matter? Local systems, larger systems, and changing relationships in the ecology of media. The role(s) of media in different ecological systems. The changing geography of media: Why do some forms emerge and others recede? The ethics of (not) setting boundaries. Living in information systems: Are we the center, the web, the flaneur? What is the I in the culture of iPods, iPhones, and iGames? Because the 2009 MEA Convention will meet at Saint Louis University, where Walter J. Ong was a faculty member, papers on any aspect of his work are especially welcome. Papers and session proposals should be sent by January 15 to Prof. Sara van den Berg, Dept. of English, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63108-3414. Electronic submissions (preferred) to vandens@slu.edu. All submissions will be acknowledged.

This meeting will be sponsored by the Walter J. Ong Center for Language and Culture, the Department of English, and the Department of Communication at Saint Louis University. This conference will feature special exhibits and tours of the Walter J. Ong Archives and a reception at the Pius XII Library. Housing (single rooms/private bath) will be available at Reinert Hall ($44/night) or the Water Tower Inn ($85/night).

http://www.media-ecology.org

Originally from Boing Boing by rushkoff reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Oct 4, 2008, 3:27PM

A new exhibition called Forest, curated by Cécile Martin, opens up tomorrow night in Montreal. For the show, "artists and architects have joined forces to propose a new vision of the forest."

There are three pavilions in all: "three installations that invite one to penetrate and explore the movements and dangers of the canopy, soil and hidden dangers of the forest." They include the poetically named "From Chernobyl to Montreal, the Incandescent Zen Garden," whose creators note that "the natural phenomena of radioactivity and sound waves are amplified," with part of the installation "illuminated night and day by a red light, the same one that made the forest – the Red Forest – adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor vibrate."
This slightly unclear image nonetheless leaves me wondering what the biological effects might be if you could cause a several-acre test-forest to vibrate constantly: what strange roots and branches would grow? Would constant vibration cause radically new tree structures to grow – or just make for some very happy plants?
It'd be like the sound farm, only more tactile – and far stranger.
A perpetual earthquake as a lab for cultivating the unnatural.
The other two pavilions, meanwhile, are "The Macrocosm of Fiber or the Filtering Pavilion" and "The Mobile Branch, A Forest of Hypnosis and Vertigo." The latter project, a collaboration between architect Philip Beesley – whose work was explored here a few years ago – and artist Patrick Beaulieu, is described a kind of animatronic thicket: "A raised three-dimensional flooring and a cover propelled at 300 rotations per minute form a vibrating dance of branches and twigs, constituting a human-sized space of the in-between from which humans are nevertheless excluded."
You wander into a forest – only to realize that it's not a forest at all, but a vast machine...
There are a series of workshops on Friday and Saturday, as well – so if you're anywhere near Montreal, check it out! Tell them you heard about it on BLDGBLOG.

Originally from BLDGBLOG by Geoff Manaugh reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

Blu has recently “vandalized the facade of Tate Modern,” as it is written in Blu’s sketch note-book, and it would be amazing to see, I’ve no doubt. I’m particularly intrigued, however, by Blu’s wall-painted animations, such as Muto, a fantastic and fantastical “ambiguous animation painted on public walls made in Buenos Aires and Baden.”

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

We normally think of animation as having the ability to transport us into a fantastical space often not possible in the “real” world, but this work raises the possibility of a “site-specific animation”; one that knowingly uses the 3D world to metaphorically animate the meaning of the animation.

On one level, Blu is literally animating the public sphere, although beyond the process itself, the result is screen-based playback. Would it be differently meaningful to see the animation projected back onto the walls used in the animation?

And what would it mean if all the “urban screens” popping up around the globe were blu(e) screen studios in the physical world for locals’ creativity not, primarily, a black hole through which to deliver globalized commodity advertising into a local context?

via jugaad

Originally from Northern Lights by mediachef reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Sep 29, 2008, 10:34PM

Experimenting with Art in Public Places is a symposium free and open to the public, which will explore ways to support and present experimental art practices in public places, including in the virtual realm, outside the traditional white cubes and black boxes of cultural institutions. It brings together local and out-of-town artists, curators, producers, and presenters for a collaborative conversation about the public sphere as a site for works of art and art practices that spark the imagination but also challenge perceptions - artistic, cultural, social, political.

Full schedule here.

Friday evening, there will be a keynote presentation by Seattle phenoms SuttonBeersCuller. Saturday will be a day of Pecha Kucha presentations and panel discussions. Saturday evening, registered symposium attendees can attend the hearSIGHTED party for R. Luke DuBois’ Hindsight Is 20/20 exhibition at the Weisman Art Museum for half price.

Register

Experimenting with Art in Public Places is free, but seating is limited for the symposium, which takes place at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. To register and reserve a space, email aov@northern.lights.mn.

Keynote: SuttonBeresCuller

Friday, October 10
MCAD Auditorium
6:30 pm: reception
7:00 pm: Keynote

On Friday evening, SuttonBeresCuller (John Sutton, Ben Beres, Zac Culler), a 3-person collaborative from Seattle will give a keynote talk about their experimental art practice in the public sphere. Their work deals in the realms of experimentation and discovery through site-specific installation, performance and sculpture. The work is meant to be accessible, and it actively involves and challenges the viewer, discouraging passive viewing. It’s meant to create an ephemeral circumstance, caught perhaps in a fleeting glimpse, which removes the viewer from a daily routine and leaves them with a sense of bewilderment.

Saturday, October 11, MCAD Student Center, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm

8:30 am
Coffee and refreshments

9:15 am
Welcome and Introduction: Steve Dietz, Executive Director, Northern Lights

9:30 am

Pecha Kucha: Art(ists) On the Verge

Northern Lights recently awarded grants to 6 emerging artists “working experimentally at the intersection and technology, with a focus on practices that are social, collaborative and/or participatory.” In part, Experimenting with Art in Public Places is an opportunity for these artists to “boot up” their practice, and, Pecha Kucha style, Avye Alexandres, Kevin Obsatz, Andrea Steudel, Pramila Vasudevan, and Krista Kelley Walsh will each have 6 minutes - 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide - to answer 3 questions:

• What is the intersection with technology in their work?
• How is their practice experimental and social/participatory?
• What are they planning to do?

10:15 am

Julie Lazar, A History and Future of Experimental Art Practice

Julie Lazar is a trail blazer in the support and presentation of experimental art. She was a founding Curator then Director of Experimental Programs for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1981-2000). As a curator, Lazar specializes in commissioning new art works in all media.

11:30 am

Panel: Playing in Public

Moderator: Jack Becker, Executive Director, Forecast Public Art
This panel will look at a range of projects that have played with our expectations for art in public spaces.

R. Luke DuBois’s
Wing Young Huie’s
Piotr Szyhalski
Marcus Young

12:30
Lunch
A buffet lunch wil be available in the MCAD cafeteria, next to the Student Center, for $7.50.

1:00 - 3:00 pm: Breakout Session: Forecast Public Art

This grant-writing workshop will discuss Forecast’s annual grant program, provide an overview of recent innovative public art projects, provide time for artists to brainstorm and discuss their own project ideas and hear about the experiences of past grantees. More information here. To reserve a space in the grant-writing workshop, email Forecast.

1:30

Panel: Technologies of Engagement

Moderator: Carl DiSalvo, Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.

New technologies have clearly enabled new means of engagement with an audience, whether through networks of delivery or interactive and partciipatory installations or both. Technologies does not always mean “Computers! or Internet! or iPhone!”, however, and this panel will explore a more nuanced idea of the technologies of engagement, from the recent past into the near future.

Chuck Olsen
John Schott
Scott Stulen
Diane Willow

3:00

Panel: Building an Audience / Community for the Experimental

Moderator: Diane Mullin is Associate Curator at the Weisman Art Museum.

If “build it and they will come” was part of the first generation of technology-enabled community-building projects, experience has shown that building a true community for experimental public art that goes beyond the memorial or the plop is not an easy matter. This panel will explore successful strategies for building a committed audience for experimental art practice over the long term.

Tom Borrup
Doryun Chong
Carl DiSalvo
Doug Geers
Peter Haakon Thompson

7:00 pm - late

Performance: hearSIGHTED AT THE Weisman Art Museum

hearSIGHTED is an evening of music, dancing, food and drink at the Weisman Art Museum, presented in celebration of the exhibition Hindsight is Always 20/20 by R. Luke DuBois. See the exhibition and hear performances by University of Minnesota electronic music students in the galleries. Catch a special musical performance by DuBois at 9:30 p.m. Following the performance, kick up your heels to electronic grooves spun by Minneapolis-based DJ ETones.

Register

Experimenting with Art in Public Places is free, but seating is limited for the symposium, which takes place at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. To register and reserve a space, email aov@northern.lights.mn.

Support

Experimenting with Art in Public Places is a public progoram presented by Northern Lights October 10-11, 2008, with the support of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Jerome Foundation, through its support of the Art(ists) On the Verge grant program. Northern Lights is supported by the McKnight Foundation.

Full schedule here.

Originally from Northern Lights by mediachef reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Oct 2, 2008, 2:33AM

In 1989, Carole Kismaric published the book “Forced Out: The Agony of The Refugee In Our Time,” which was also a monumental travelling exhibition. It was a most effective reflection on displaced persons, integrating images and text that gave testimony to the aftermath of famine and war at that time. The exhibition was composed of larger than life photographs of displaced people printed on film so that not only was the viewer dwarfed by the images and text, but the transparent images produced haunting slightly moving shadows on the wall behind the hanging film. The impact of the work was all the more palpable because of the inclusion of text by people who experienced a cataclysm.

Originally from NeMe by NeMe reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Oct 2, 2008, 8:31AM

Finally some time to put order in my brain and write a few lines about the 5th edition of Seoul International Media Art Biennale, aka media_city Seoul.

With some 70 artists showing their work, the biennial is a very satisfying but also very overwhelming experience, especially because the event features so many pieces that require time and reflection, and so many artists whose work i had never heard of. Thank god and the curators, there were very few of those installations that look more like entertaining gizmos than art. Most of the time they require the audience to wave their hands or move around so that whatever is projected on a screen will move. Or will perform some magical trick like spitting out smoke. Apparently some visitors have seen this kind of work too much: i saw a few people flapping their arms in a desperate attempt to 'interact' with a piece which was perfectly happy to function without human help, thank you.

Sorry Miss, this installation is good but it won't interact: Hello World by Yunchul Kim

I saw some great pieces of media art in Seoul and they put the emphasis on 'art' rather than 'media'. media_city Seoul is the only major biennial i've heard of that is entirely dedicated to media art. It doesn't take place in a gallery or in one of those ueber-trendy disused industrial spaces outside the city. It is located in a very official, big, and bright art institutions: the Seoul Museum of Art.

Visitors trying on Electroboutique's virtual reality goggles

The thing that puzzles me is the existence of a media art biennial. Not because i am per se unconvinced by the idea of applying the structure and vocabulary of 'traditional' contemporary art onto media art. Not because of all the discussions about the overflow of biennials all over the world and the obsolescence of their concept. I love biennials, any celebration of art is good for me. No, what perplexes me is that, once again, media art is treated like the odd kid who has to be separated from the others. If on the one hand it's fantastic that a city has the guts to dedicate two month to media art and host the event in a museum, i wonder how long it will take until media art is regarded as 'art' and integrated into other contemporary art events without anyone finding it extraordinary, brave or strange. We're getting there i know but, damn! it's slow. Anyway, not sure this French expression translates well in english but i'm going to stop 'spitting in the soup' and just rejoice in this opportunity i had to see so many great works.

Starting with 2 examples taken from Marie Sester's Exposure series, an artwork which started as videos that explores how X-ray imagery was used for surveillance, before 9/11.

Exposure, Marie Sester

One photo shows an X-rayed truck containing what are very probably smuggled items. In another one, an X-rayed horse trailer is elegantly juxtaposed with a house, which eventually overtakes the entire screen. The horse trailer has a luxury car hidden inside. The house was scanned by laser as well. Today, Exposure is a work stronger than ever. Marie Sester has also noted that today, as an artist, she would never have access to images like the ones included in "Exposure" due to the levels of control that entities, which she approached in the past, have placed on their surveillance technologies.

Exposure, Marie Sester

When walking in the museum lobby, you might be startled by the sound of an aircraft flying overhead. Up there above you, the gigantic shadow of an aircraft is passing quietly and menacingly over the ceiling. The only on-going attack I-Chen Kuo's work Invade the SeMA (SeMA being of course the Seoul Museum of Art) refers to is the one that sees artists invading art institutions, with or without their consent.

Invade the SeMA by Kuo I-Chen

One of the best art pieces i saw at the biennial is Life Writer by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. An old type writer rescued from the era of analogue text processing and normal piece of paper become the vivarium for a swarm of artificial life creatures. The letters that you type appear as projected characters on the paper. When you push the carriage return, the letters turn into small black creatures that creep or fly over the paper. The creatures are based on genetic algorithms where text is used as the genetic code that determines the shape, behaviour and movements of the creatures.

Life Writer Machine, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau

The creatures need to eat text to stay alive and when they will try to snap up the new characters you type. Once they have eaten enough text they can also reproduce and have off-spring.

By connecting the act of typing to the act of creation of life, Life Writer deals with the idea of creating an open-ended artwork where user-creature and creature-creature interaction become essential to the creation of digital life and where an emergent systems of life-like art emerges on the boundaries between analog and digital worlds.

The interesting part was to hear and see how the young people behave in front of the typewriter. They never had to use it so they tend to type using very soft and light gestures as if the keyboard of machine was as sensible as a the one of a cell phone.

For his project Adam Smith: a million of good reasons to become millionaire, Damián Ontiveros Ramírez asked students of economy and accounting to help him draw the figure of Adam Smith, an 18th century Scottish philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, an essay regarded as the first modern work of economics.

A view from Damián Ontiveros Ramírez' installation

The artist's objective is to total 1,000,000 drawings that show Adam Smith performing different actions. Each of them suggests a way to make money, as the Scottish economist had claimed that the source of wealth is labor. For media_city Seoul, the artist is showing digital animations of some of the drawings.

Damián Ontiveros Ramírez, Adam Smith: A Million of Good Reasons to Become Millionaire

Herwig Turk is showing two works which question the standards of perception. The first part of the installation, Uncertainty, takes its cue from Austrian physicist Dr. Manfred Drosg who stated that " A model can never be a perfect portrayal of reality, and there can never be a part of reality perfectly mirrored by a model".

Herwig Turk, uncertainty

In this two-channel video installation, which Turk developed in collaboration with Paulo Pereira, a camera registers the movement of a fluorescent solution set on top of a shaker. The camera is supported by a similar shaker, set to move at the same speed, in an attempt to reproduce the solution's exact motion. In a precisely controlled experiment the solution would not move. This, however, is impossible since the movement of both shakers can never be perfectly synchronized. This impossibility is represented on one of the screens, whereas on the second screen the movement has been artificially synchronized through post-production, so that the solution no longer moves. However, on this screen the whole stage begins to move. The artificial immobilization of the fluorescent solution results in an apparent shaking of the white background, making the stillness of the vibrating solution distressing. A small black border occasionally appears on the screen's periphery, dissolving yet another reference: the frame of the screen.

Herwig Turk, DNA film

The second part of the installation, DNA film, consists of an animation of DNA separated in an agarose gel. The pulsating black and white structures are an artistic translation of DNA-sequences, which are interpreted as the twilight zone between being and nothingness. By measuring the average luminance within the single frames, a structure was found to generate the sound that is directly referring to the picture. The artwork refers to the constant need for translation within science and art and just like uncertainty, it focuses on the manipulation of scientific image.

To be continued...

media_city Seoul runs until November 5, 2008 at the Seoul Museum of Art.

Originally from we make money not art by Regine reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

In this prophetic talk from 2003, roboticist Rodney Brooks talks about how robots are going to work their way into our lives -- starting with toys and moving into household chores ... and beyond. (Recorded February 2003 in Monterey, California. Duration: 18:47.)

Watch Rodney Brooks' 2003 talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 300+ TEDTalks -- including more talks about robots.

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Originally from TED | TEDBlog by reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe

The Guardian has an excellent slideshow of work from the four shortlisted artists, as well as a video, taken from a group exhibition that has just gone on view at the Tate Britain.

The British newspaper opines that year’s quartet is “the most obscure shortlist in the history of the prize,”established in 1984 by the Tate Britain. If that’s so, perhaps rather than merely affirming talent, the museum is trying to gain credibility as one who makes it - not unlike one notable British innovation that spawned a phenomenally successful American franchise.

The four artists are Goshka Macuga, Cathy Wilkes, Mark Leckey, and Runa Islam (one of whose works’ title was recycled as the title for this post), and the Guardian includes brief bios as part of its extensive coverage of the prize, which is taken very seriously in the UK, with bookies getting in on the action (apparently, the lone male of the group is currently favored).

Looking back at a list of previous winners and nominees, it does seem that many Turner artists were better known when they won the Prize (and many have work that’s in the Walker’s collection or has been seen in its galleries: Gilbert and George, Derek Jarman (subject of a special tribute during our Expanding the Frame cinema series in January/February - keep an eye on our Film/Video page for details), Yinka Shonibare, Tony Cragg, Rachel Whiteread, Christ Ofili, etc.)

However, it’s also worth noting that this year’s shortlist artists are not so obscure as to be confined by the boundaries of the UK. Islam, Leckey, Wilkes, and Macuga have each had shows Stateside, if that means anything in a now-thoroughly-globalized art world.

The 2008 Turner winner will be announced December 1, and it’s tempting to wonder if viewer input from the Tate exhibition has any bearing on this decision. In any case, we should probably write a whole other blog post on on the American counterpart to the Turner Prize and speculate on why it doesn’t garner nearly the attention - its 2008 winner was announced last week.

Originally from Off Center by Julie Caniglia reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Sep 30, 2008, 4:07PM

As a parallel event to the exhibition, the international conference “IN TRANSITION: Cultural Identities in the Age of Transnational and Transcultural Flux” has been organised by the Ural State University named after A. M. Gorky, the Ekaterinburg Academy of Contemporary Art and NeMe (Cyprus)

Originally from NeMe by NeMe reBlogged by Yiannos Economou for NeMe on Oct 2, 2008, 10:27AM

Legislation passed by the Senate reducing and sometimes nullifying damages for infringing uses of so-called "orphaned works" was dead on arrival at the House of Representatives. The House, mired in formulating a $700 billion economic bailout plan, won't take up the measure until at least after the November elections, if at all. Orphaned creative works are those in which the copyright holder cannot be promptly located.

Wired.com