kottke.org posts about art
The mirrors in rAndom International and Chris O’Shea’s Audience project chat amonst themselves until something catches their collective eye.
When members of the audience occupy the space, the mirrors inquisitively follow someone that they find interesting. Having chosen their subject, they all synchronise and turn their heads towards them. Suddenly that person can see their reflection in all of the mirrors. They will watch this person until they become disinterested, then either seek out another subject or return to their private chatter. The collective behaviour of the objects is beyond the control of the viewer, as it is left entirely to their discretion to let go of their subject.
This Vimeo video is a good look at how the project works. (via sippey)
Update: New from O’Shea is Hand From Above.
Unsuspecting pedestrians will be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity [on a large screen].
Now that he has a book coming out on the subject of genius and high achievement, the New Yorker finally lets Malcolm Gladwell write about David Galenson’s work on age and innovation. (A previous effort was Gladwell’s first article to be rejected by The New Yorker.) For an overview of Galenson’s work, check out my post from August.
The most interesting bit of Gladwell’s piece is his discussion of the economics of the two different types of artist. The conceptual artist’s talent is noticed and rewarded immediately. But conceptual innovators need more help to reach their full potential.
Sharie was Ben’s wife. But she was also-to borrow a term from long ago-his patron. That word has a condescending edge to it today, because we think it far more appropriate for artists (and everyone else for that matter) to be supported by the marketplace. But the marketplace works only for people like Jonathan Safran Foer, whose art emerges, fully realized, at the beginning of their career, or Picasso, whose talent was so blindingly obvious that an art dealer offered him a hundred-and-fifty-franc-a-month stipend the minute he got to Paris, at age twenty. If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level.
Gladwell discusses the article in a podcast and will be answering reader questions about it later in the week.
A collection of artworks featuring Kate Moss, including a self-portrait drawn with lipstick.
Evan Roth has been putting metal plates with messages and symbols cut into them into his carry-on luggage when he goes through security at the airport.
Here’s Roth’s idea, which he calls “TSA Communication” and tells me has already made it through three trial airport runs: Take a metal plate, stencil and cut out a message — words or an image — place the plate at the bottom of your carry-on bag, and watch what happens as the TSA employee operating the airport X-ray machine notices … or doesn’t notice.
So far, he’s used plates with outlines of the American flag, a “NOTHING TO SEE HERE” message, and something he calls The Exact Opposite Of A Box Cutter, a plate with a box cutter shape cut out of it.
Daniel Eatock’s counterbalancing shelves.
5 pine planks (each 6 feet), 5 metal brackets, tools and materials from the gallery utility closet or found on the gallery grounds. Each of the five shelves that comprise this work is balanced on a single bracket. All maintain their level balance by the precise placement of the objects they bear.
With a little more conceptual work and product placement, he could have turned this into a piece about consumerism and the collapse of the networked global economy blah blah blah.
Why have I not heard of artist Tara Donovan before…her stuff is great.
Though Ms. Donovan’s new prints won’t be on view, her glass-shattering talents will be: she intends to recreate “Untitled (Glass),” a process-oriented sculpture that she first made in 2004. It involves stacking sheets of tempered glass into a perfect cube, then working carefully one by one from bottom to top, striking a single corner of each pane with a hammer. As with the print, Ms. Donovan will contain the glass with a wooden frame while she works. Once the mold is removed, the cube “stays in place,” she said. “You can still see the layers, but everything’s really broken into itty-bitty teeny-weeny shards.”
Donovan is one of the 2008 MacArthur genius fellows. (via delicious ghost)
This year’s harvest of crop art from the Minnesota State Fair included Grand Theft Festal, a mashup of Grand Theft Auto and Festal-brand canned corn done in millet, alfalfa, canola, and white clover seeds. The artist recorded a timelapse video of its construction. (via mark simonson)
Mark Rothko’s daughter Kate remembers her father nearly 40 years after his death.
Rothko may have been depressed at the end of his life, he may not have been as clear as he should have been when it came to writing a will; but with regard to his work, and where it might end up, he had long held strong views. While selling to private individuals from his studio, he would scrutinise their reactions to paintings; they had to pass a test they did not know they were taking. If they failed, they went home empty-handed, irrespective of the size of their wallets. Lighting, on which wall of a gallery a painting might hang; these things obsessed him.
I saw Rothko’s Seagram Murals at the Tate Modern in May.
How to identify interactive or new media art.
7. Someone in your audience wearing a Crumpler bag, slinging a fancy digital SLR and/or standing with their arms folded smugly says, “Yeah..yeah, I could’ve done that too..c’mon dude..some Perlin Noise? And Processing/Ruby-on-Rails/AJAX/Blue LEDs/MaxMSP/An Infrared Camera/Lots of Free Time/etc.? Pfft..It’s so easy…”
(via russell davies)
Short film: Blow Job by Andy Warhol. Mostly SFW…it’s just the face of the recipient. Here’s some info on the film.
When Andy Warhol decided to shoot Blow Job, he rang Charles Rydell and asked him to star in it, telling him that “all he’d have to do was lie back and then about five different boys would come in and keep on blowing him until he came,” but that the film would only show his face.
Charles agreed, but when he didn’t show up for the following Sunday afternoon shoot, Andy reached him at Jerome Hill’s suite at the Algonquin and screamed into the phone “Charles! Where are you?” Charles responded: “What do you mean, where am I? You know where I am - you called me,” and Andy the said “We’ve got the camera ready and the five boys are all here, everything’s set up!” Charles’s shocked reply was: “Are you crazy? I thought you were kidding. I’d never do that!”
In order to explain serial computation vs. parallel computation, the Mythbusters guys pit two paintball guns against each other in a art contest…one shoots one ball at a time and the other very much doesn’t. (thx, steve)
How to draw anything in one step: Draw a dog covering the thing you can’t draw. The examples are hilarious. (via waxy)
Christoph Niemann has used some unusual image sources to tile his bathrooms. For the shower, an appropriation of Warhol’s Brillo box. For the kids bathroom, a NYC subway map.
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