Do you love striking up a conversation? Are you that person who always gets asked for directions? Volunteering for Northern Spark 2013 could be the thing for you. Be a part of Minnesota’s newest tradition — YOU can help light up the night!

Centered in Lowertown, Saint Paul, this night-long festival is a portal to a new experience of the Twin Cities. With nearly 80 artist projects indoors and out, there will be a lot to see on June 8!

FESTIVAL VOLUNTEER ROLES INCLUDE:

• STAFFING AN INFO HUB: give information about Northern Spark art and events to festival goers.

• ROVING INFO GUIDE: help with the flow of festival foot traffic. Info Guides are present and available to deliver on-site information about schedules and area events, give directions, and distribute programs to festival goers.

• SURVEY SEEKER: talk with the public and collect feedback about the festival experience.

In addition to gaining an inside perspective on the festival and meeting artists, all volunteers will receive a fabulous Northern Spark T-shirt and will be eligible for exciting prizes.

SOUND LIKE FUN?

Visit http://2013.northernspark.org/about/volunteer to learn more about the benefits of volunteering.

Sign up to volunteer at http://tinyurl.com/NS2013-volunteer.

QUESTIONS?

Contact our volunteer coordinator at

birdie@northern.lights.mn

Perform with us at Northern Spark 2013! From sundown on June 8th to late into the night, our intrepid Kazoo Band will parade through Lowertown, waving artist-made banners and entertaining the public, all while encouraging them to support Northern Spark with donations. We’ll learn a few pop songs that relate to money and giving, and you do not need to be able to read music to participate.

Kazoo Band performance during Northern Spark is organized into two sets: First set is from 9pm to midnight, second set is from 1am- 3am. You can participate in one or both sets. Kazoo Band performers get all of the perks of volunteering– food truck tickets, a free T-shirt, entry into prize drawings, and invitations to Northern Spark gatherings. You’ll also be able to keep your kazoo.

If you’re interested, contact Molly Balcom Raleigh at mbalcomraleigh@gmail.com. We’re accepting volunteer performers through May 17. Volunteers are required to participate in 2 practice sessions between May 20- June 5. Participation will be collaborative and fun– bring your ideas! 

Christopher Houltberg

Sarah Julson

Mad King Thomas

Asia Ward

Anthony Warnick

Artists: Katie Hargrave, Alison Hiltner, Aaron Marx, Peter Sowinski, Emily Stover

Congratulations from the jury: Steve Dietz, Artistic Director, Northern Lights.mn; Rudolf Frieling, Curator Media Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Ben Heywood, Executive Director, The Soap Factory; Piotr Szyhalski, Professor Media Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design; Yesomi Umolu, Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center.

AOV5 artists will exhibit their work at the Soap Factory, March 2014.

Art(ists) On the Verge is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.

Saint Paul, Minn. – March 12, 2013 – Northern Spark announced today the partners that will be participating in the free, dusk-to-dawn, nuit blanche, which will ignite Saint Paul’s Lowertown in an explosion of urban art. The festival will be held on Saturday (into Sunday morning), June 8, 2013 from 9:00 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. with the main hub at Union Depot, hosting nearly 25 projects. Performances, visual arts, projected images, interactive media, and participatory events will bring together a multitude of artists who create art projects in partnership with numerous arts organizations at multiple venues. The public is invited to join this all-night adventure to see the city in a new light.

Volunteers are also needed for a range of interactive tasks. Click here for more information.

“With the reopening of the historic Union Depot, the continuing expansion and development of Lowertown businesses and the ballpark construction underway, the Lowertown district, known for its vibrant arts culture, is only becoming more lively. This unique festival is a wonderful way to showcase our arts community in a distinctive way,” stated Mayor Chris Coleman.

This year the festival expects nearly 72 projects in collaboration with 47 cultural organizations and sponsors.

A snapshot of projects include:

• A site-specific roving performance at Union Depot by artist Patrick Ganert blending history with fictional narratives from 1917 through today.
• A live installation by Monica Haller that sonically links the Upper Mississippi with the Louisiana bayous.
• St. Paul’s Big Table Studio and Printland Press team up with Minneapolis letterpress shop Lunalux to help visitors create travel-themed, handmade prints.
• The Schubert Club invites visitors to play a harpsichord and a fortepiano while overlooking the river from Union Depot’s windows.
• All-night crafty interventions on 4th St. related to art work at Minnesota Museum of American Art’s Project Space by Liz Miller, Andréa Stanislav and Randy Walker.
• The Center for Hmong Art and Talent bring its Fresh Traditions Fashion show to an unconventional runway at Union Depot.
• Art Shanty Projects will transform an out-of-the-way parking lot near the river into a site of artistic intervention and exploration.
• Works Progress, who brought the Mississippi Megalops to Northern Spark in 2011, returns with a sunrise river cruise aboard the Jonathan Padelford.

Additional partners involved include:

air sweet air • Hack Factory • innova Recordings • Landmark Center • Minneapolis College of Art and Design • Minnesota Children’s Museum • Minnesota Historical Society • Mizna • Minnesota Sacred Harp Singing Convention • mnartists.org • Minnesota Museum of American Art Individual artists and artist groups involved include:

Chris Larson, John Keston, Piotr Szyhalski, Monica Haller, Ben Moren and Daniel Dean, Jennifer Newsome Carruthers and Tom Carruthers, Roger Nieboer/lesser mortals, Paul Herwig, Christopher Field and Sarah West, Angela Olson and Gilberto Vazquez Valle

The festival is pleased to be working with Twin Cities Public Television (tpt) as our media sponsor this year.

About Northern Lights.mn

Northern Lights.mn presents innovative art in the public sphere, both physical and virtual, focusing on artists creatively using technology, both old and new, to foster new relations between audience and artwork and more broadly between citizenry and their built environment.

This is an open call for up to 10 projects in any medium for Northern Spark, June 8, 2013.

Application deadline

Midnight, CST, March 4, 2013

(MINNEAPOLIS) — Jan. 30, 2013 — Five finalists have been chosen for the final phase of the Creative City Challenge at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Nominees were selected through public voting which took place on the Minneapolis Convention Center Facebook site. Finalists and their corresponding projects include:

Futures North, LakeForms: a digitally fabricated pavilion that emerges from the Convention Center plaza. Inside the pavilion, learn about the lakes’ ecology and summer uses in an immersive sensory environment, consisting of real-time audio and visual information collected from “smart buoys” installed in the city’s lakes.

INVIVIA in collaboration with Urbain/d/rc, MIMMI: a visiting organism that collects and reflects the aggregate mood of Minneapolis, changing in color, shape, and climatic behavior depending on residents’ emotions. Everyone can enjoy MIMMI’s company and both watch and participate in her changing behavior while enjoying the city and connecting with new places and people!

JeFe Design Collective, MPLS rope densCITY: emphasizing Minneapolis’ eco-focused, healthy culture, “MPLS Rope densCity” looks to discarded rock climbing rope as a material. By anchoring, hanging, wrapping, and allowing people to swing from this discarded material, a temporary portal is created between the Minneapolis Convention Center and the city; a portal that engages site, people, and material in interactivity.

Krause + Sowinski, You Are Here: a combination of urban wayfinding with creative placemaking. The meta-map and the giant red arrow form the center of a vital diagram of downtown Minneapolis, connecting the Convention Center plaza to the best parts of the city. “You Are Here” strengthens the downtown pedestrian experience, making Minneapolis an even better place to explore.

Locus Architecture, RIPPLE: public space as sculpture activated by weather for enticing people to enjoy experiences in their city. Assembled from 20 foot steel fronds capped with LED lights, “RIPPLEʼs” urban room provides the venue for serendipitous meetings between residents and artists, visitors and aspiring gymnasts.

The goals of the Creative City Challenge are to draw residents of the city to the Minneapolis Convention Center as a central meeting space for the surrounding area as well as to provide a compelling gathering site for the Minneapolis Convention Center’s thousands of visitors spring through fall. Achieving these objectives will encourage further exploration of downtown and other areas around the city.

The purpose of the competition is to create and install a temporary, interactive, site-specific, eco-focused “portal” to the City of Minneapolis on the Plaza of the Minneapolis Convention Center beginning summer 2013. The final contenders are asked to develop a complete proposal for the project which will be juried in a public presentation Feb. 27 at 5:30 p.m. in University of Minnesota’s Rapson Hall. The presentation is a free event with reception to follow in the HGA Gallery. Tickets and reservations are not required to attend the event.

The jury will make a final selection based on how well the developer includes each element of the evaluation criteria including, Artistic Excellence, Temporary, Interactive, Site-Specific, Eco-focused, Portal and Creative Placemaking. National jurists, Mona El Khafif, associate professor of architecture and head of the URBANlab at California College of the Arts and Daily Tous Les Jours design studio will participate in the selection process.

The winning entry will be announced shortly after the public event and will receive a $50,000 all-inclusive fee to design, create, install and uninstall the project. The development will be installed in the MCC Plaza in early summer and will inhabit the space for the duration of the summer.

Minneapolis city partners for the Creative City Challenge include the office of Mayor R.T. Rybak, Minneapolis City Council and the city coordinator’s office. Additional information can be found online at www.minneapolis.org/art-in-the-plaza. The goals of the Creative City Challenge are driven by the new direction of the Minneapolis Convention Center and the City’s efforts to celebrate the creative assets of Minneapolis, aim to draw attention to the City’s natural assets and attract new talent to the area.

New research done by the City’s Arts, Culture and Creative Economy program regarding jobs and employment in the creative sector shows that Minneapolis has over four times the national average of architects and designers. While this is a cause for celebration, the data also demonstrates that jobs for architecture and designers have decreased by nearly 20% in the last ten years and nearly 10% in the last three years.

AOV is an intensive, mentor-based fellowship program for 5 Minnesota-based, emerging artists or artist groups working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory. AOV is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation. Links to past AOV programs and fellows’ work can be found here.

Deadline

Monday, February 11, 2013. Submission form here.

More information here.

Artists: Christopher Houltberg, Sarah Julson, Mad King Thomas, Asia Ward, and Anthony Warnick

Congratulations from the jury: Steve Dietz, Artistic Director, Northern Lights.mn; Ben Heywood, Executive Director, The Soap Factory; Ana Serrano, Chief Digital Officer, Canadian Film Centre; and AOV4 Co-Director, Piotr Szyhalski.

Thanks to artist mentors: Melinda Childs, Jeff Crouse, Alexa Horochowski, Matt Olson, Sarah Peters, and Marcus Young,

AOV4 artists will exhibit their work at the Soap Factory, May 4-26, 2013.

Art(ists) On the Verge is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.

The Minneapolis Convention Center (MCC), Meet Minneapolis Convention & Visitors Association, and the City of Minneapolis announce a new, $50,000 “Creative City Challenge” to create and install a temporary, interactive, site-specific, eco-focused “portal” to the City of Minneapolis on the Plaza of the Minneapolis Convention Center beginning summer 2013.  This challenge is intended to encourage exciting proposals and thoughtful discussion about how to make our downtown more vital, dynamic, livable, walkable and environmentally friendly. Moe information.

Northern Spark is one of our best known programs. It is a multidisciplinary Minnesota festival–a free, dusk to dawn participatory public art event throughout Minneapolis* from the Greenway to the Mississippi. In 2012, 40,000 people experienced 118 works by over 200 artists in more than 28 venues in collaboration with 52 cultural partners.

In 2013, we’ll be returning to Saint Paul! Your contribution makes this metrowide community event possible.

Northern Lights.mn supports emerging artists.

Art(ists) On the Verge is an intensive, mentor-based fellowship program for 5 Minnesota-based, emerging artists or artist groups working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory. Now in its fourth year, AOV is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.

Northern Lights.mn supports artists who rock our world.

Northern Lights has commissioned, co-commissioned and co-presented many extraordinary artists, including Futurefarmers, Mona El-Khafif, Sharon Hayes, ligorano + reese, Wing Young Huie, David Goldes, Monica Haller, Andrea Stanislav, Jim Campbell, Chris Larson, Mark Shepard, Marisa Jahn, Shih Chieh Huang, Zach Lieberman, Angelo Vermeulen, The Living, SOFTlab, Daily Tous Les Jours, Piotr Szyhalski, and many others. If you have experienced the Giant Sing Along at the Minnesota State Fair, you have seen Northern Lights.mn at work.

Northern Lights.mn supports new ideas.

This spring, Northern Lights presented in collaboration with the Walker Art Center, our 2nd biannual symposium: Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street. “In an era of cultural conservatives and the liberal elite, Occupiers and Tea Partiers, civil uprisings and government crackdowns, perhaps the one point of agreement today is there’s no shortage of disagreement. But if that’s true, then why isn’t there more debate—not online flame wars, not the televised jockeying of political candidates, but live, in-person dialogue?”

Northern Lights.mn supports collaboration.

The very first Northern Lights initiated and produced was the UnConvention, a multi-partner, multi-venue program about the intersection of participatory politics and participatory media during the 2008 Republication National Convention. We have worked with dozens of organizations locally and nationally. Our goal is the best way to support innovative artists, spark important ideas, and build supportive audiences. As often as not this is best done in collaboration.

We are dedicated to the least amount of infrastructure that is necessary to support the most innovative artists with the greatest impact. This means more bang for your buck.

Your support makes Northern Lights.mn possible.

Thank you.

Steve Dietz
President and Artistic Director

For a $50 donation, receive a free ticket to David Byrne's "Playing" the Piano at Aria, in collaboration with First & First.

Just when you thought it was safe to watch TV and open your email now that the U.S. elections are over, many of us will recieve multiple pitches for donations to our favorite Minnesota non-profit for Give to the Max Day, Thursday, November 15.

Including from Northern Lights.mn.

We have had an extraordinary year, and we are looking forward to another year of exciting projects. Over the next few days, I’d like to highlight Northern Light’s commitment to artists, audiences, ideas, and collaboration.

We are three years old and trying to do this with the least infrastructure possible, so that your support will go the furthest possible.

Support Northern Lights.mn this Thursday on Give to the Max Day.

Playing the Building at Aria, Nov. 5 - Dec. 4. Photo: Jake Armour

I first saw David Byrne’s Playing the Building at Battery Maritime Building in New York City in 2008. It was after hours, and I was the only person there besides the attendant. It was a magical moment, and the building, under renovation before reopening as the summer ferry terminal to Governor’s Island, seemed to sigh and wheeze and pound its history as I prodded the organ keys. In my mind’s eye, it was late afternoon, and the light was slanting through the grimed windows like a Francis Frith cathedral.

The thing about Playing the Building, however, is that it is intentionally a secular experience. It is not about star power. In the technical rider for the project, it states several times words to the effect: DAVID BYRNE WILL NOT PLAY PLAYING THE BUILDING. Do not ask. This is not a not a blue M&M’s clause. It is out of respect for the intent of the project, which is all about exploration and play, not awe. By exploring the re-programmed keys of the organ, you are drawn to explore the recesses of the building. Where did that sound come from? What made that sound? Why does it sound that way? By hacking the organ, you are encouraged to think about how to hack the building. This building. Any building. Any thing.

I saw Beatrix*Jar at the recent opening of Playing the Building at Aria, the old Jeune Lune theater, and I wanted to ask them what they thought about the relationship of circuit bending to playing around with buildings, but we didn’t get the chance. Maybe we would have discussed Gordon Matta-Clark’s building cuts. Usman Haque’s Evoke, “a massive animated projection that lights up the facade of York Minster in response to the public, who use their own voices to “evoke” colourful light patterns that emerge at the building’s foundations and soar up towards the sky, giving the surface a magical feeling as it melts with colour” might have come up. What’s interesting about Playing the Building is the way it deconstructs the organ and building, stripping them both of harmony and ornament. It’s not really about making music. It’s more about making. And listening. The organ is an amplifier for the solitude of an empty building.

 Theater de la Jeune Lune was a fabled theater company. Playing the building, their building, one can’t help but hear Cyrano in the wings or Juliet on the balcony or perhaps urgent late night whisperings pouring over the books in a back room. It’s a magnificent building. Playing the Building does it full justice and First&First is to be congratulated for bringing this exciting event to the Twin Cities and bringing excitement back to the building of Theater de la Jeune Lune.

I arrived at The Soap Factory’s $99 Sale late in 2011. Most of the work had already been claimed, but it didn’t matter to me. What I had eyes for, only, was Landscape Simulation : Fargo / Former PetSmart, Westgate Shoping Center, Macon, GA, 2011. At least that’s what is written on the back of the drawing. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.

I wouldn’t say that it “spoke to me,” but there was something deeply satisfying and nourishing looking at it.

I feel like I squint whenever I look at the drawing. There’s something indistinct about it, but it’s also like scanning the horizon in a Western. Like you’re wearing that battered, square leather cowboy hat that Clint Eastwood wears in The Good The Bad and the Ugly, shading his eyes as he holds  binoculars up to them like a submarine captain, elbows akimbo. Maybe I’m misremembering the binoculars. Does he even use binoculars or just wear that poncho and chomp on a cheroot? And where did the submarine come from? But it’s like that.

I scan this drawing nearly every day, but I’m a lake person, not a plains person. What do I know? What is the attraction? How could something so desolate be “nourishing?” Especially with no water, no weather to eye.

According to its title, the structure is a PetSmart at a Westgate Shopping Center in Macon, GA. Isn’t Eleanor Savage from Macon? When I had my second 50th birthday party, it was about 95 degrees and sweltering. Everyone was sweating like, well, like a pig. I’ve gone to the State Fair for tons of years, but I don’t actually know how or even if pigs sweat. I’ll have to ask the 4H girls about that next year. I still remember that Eleanor said it was just getting comfortable. Like back home. That’s about the extent of my knowledge of Macon. In 2010, I commissioned Chris Baker’s offscript for Santana Row shopping center in San Jose as part of the 01SJ Biennial. I remember it was across from a Westgate shopping center. We would have done it there, if they had sponsored us. We asked them first. I also curated Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s Big Box (2007) for FeedForward at LABoral. Big Box is all about the “former” part. Nature takes over. Like New York City in I Am Legend.

I attended a great conversation by artist Pamela Valfer and critic Christina Schmid tonight. It was thoughtful and open, and even though there was a lot of talk about Baudrillard, it was everything a public conversation should be but often is not.  Thank you! Christina and Pamela. Nevertheless, by the end, I still hadn’t figured out exactly why me and the PetSmart in Fargo  had hit it off so well.  When I got home, I looked at Valfer’s website, and it turns out she had “renamed” the work on my wall: Landscape Simulation: Fargo (movie)/Vacant Pet Smart, Macon, GA. Not only had the Pet Smart (PetSmart?) changed from “former” to “vacant” but turns out the landscape is from the movie Fargo.

This was necessary, the copying from movies part, Valfer averred during the conversation, because until a recent residency in rural Ireland, she had never really been in nature. While I cannot claim the same, it is impossible to deny that it is nearly impossible to look at nature, especially representations of nature, without a kind of virtual overlay and infinite reflection of representation upon representation. I suppose you could say, a la Baudrillard, welcome to the hyperreal, but Christina said something else that was interesting. She mentioned that in some study, people who looked at representations of nature did not have the same visceral, emotional reaction as people who looked at nature. I’m paraphrasing her paraphrase here, but the point she wanted to make is that the body knows. In some sense you cannot lie to the body and there is a difference between representation and the real.

Pamela Valfer, Landscape Simulation: Fargo (movie)/Vacant Pet Smart, Macon, GA 2011 Graphite on paper 8" x 10"

While I do believe this in my bones – nature is different than its representation – the nourishment of Valfer’s bleak Fargo landscape with its vacant Pet Smart may just be its embedded, rich, complex, seductive, vital history of unnatural associations.

ReGeneration opens tonight at the New York Hall of Science! Almost there. It’s looking great.

Biomodd, Biomodd [NYC4]; Futurefarmers, Ethnobotanical Station; Shih Chieh Huang, 99plus; Marisa Jahn and Stephanie Rothenberg, World’s Fair 2.0; Scott Kildall, 2049; Zach Lieberman, Face By Face;  Carl Skelton, Tomorrow 2.0; The Living and SOFTlab, Common Weathers; Nick Yulman, New York Immigration Song; Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, A Geography of Being : Una Geographia de Ser

Project Director: Eric Siegel
Project Manager: Michael Cosaboom
Curator: Steve Dietz
Assistant Curator: Amanda Parkes

Presented at the New York Hall of Science by the New York Hall of Science and Northern Lights.mn

Support from The Rockefeller Foundation NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, The Lambent Foundation, and The MetLife Foundation

World’s Fair 2.0
Lead Artists: Marisa Jahn and Stephanie Rothenberg
Produced by REV-
Support from Mozilla Hive Learning Network NYC, Robert Bowne Foundation, MOUSE, New York Hall of Science

World’s Fair 2.0 is an interactive scavenger hunt that bridges Queens’ history past and present with the question: how did the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs shape the region’s geography and its collectively imagined future? What are the continuities between utopian visions from the past and today’s vision for Queens’ future?

For their installation for ReGeneration at the New York Hall of Science, Jahn and Rothenberg created a  augmented reality tour accessible through cellphone and Ipads that invites visitors to envision these questions.

In addition, Jahn and Rothenberg facilitated a workshop with 14 teens who created their own interactive, mobile scavenger hunt where zombies thwart players in their time-traveling quest to explore the history of the future.

Through its installation and new media tours, World’s Fair 2.0 stages interventions into the past and future, regenerating conceptual tools to interact with the present.

ReGeneration is presented by the New York Hall of Science and Northern Lights.mn

How would you remake your City?

Be a part of the revitalization of the beautiful convention center plaza as it is transformed into an activity center and gateway to Minneapolis. 

The Minneapolis Convention Center and the Mayor of Minneapolis are pleased to announce a new Creative City Challenge to create and install a temporary, interactive, site-specific, eco-focused “portal” to the City of Minneapolis on the Plaza of the Minneapolis Convention Center beginning summer 2013.  This challenge is intended to encourage exciting proposals and thoughtful discussion about how to make our downtown more vital, dynamic, livable, walkable and environmentally friendly.

The competition is open to Minnesota residents only, and it will be in two phases. In the first phase, the public will vote on all proposals, and the top 5 viable projects will each receive a stipend to produce a final proposal, which will be reviewed by a national jury of prominent architects and urbanists. The selected proposal will receive a $50,000 commission to produce a summer-long project on the Convention Center Plaza in 2013.

Initial responses are due by 4:30 pm CDT Monday, December 3, 2012. 

For further details online, click here. For a pdf of the full call click here. Email conventioncenterplaza@northern.lights.mn with questions.

Today we continued to install ReGeneration at the New York Hall of Science. Everyone is thrilled with SOFTlab’s and The Living’s “cloud” design for the exhibition called Common Weathers. There are still some issues to resolve, but it provides a beautiful focus for the work in a pretty chaotic installation venue.

biomodd [nyc4]‘s installation of BIOMODD has been going like gangbusters for a couple of weeks already. It’s a dynamic installation that builds a community as it is built.

Futurefarmers have built a remarkable mobile research station, Ethnobotanical New York, out of the commonest of materials, and it is stunning. It also rewards investigation, from the seats that double as plant presses to the “rolodex” of images to the provocative library.

Shih Chieh Huang installed 99plus. At first we wondered about it being “hidden” in its funnel cloud, but there are some great views from around the exhibition floor, and having to work for these views adds to a certain mystery of peering into the ocean depths.

We also reviewed Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga’s delightful video game, which is at the heart of A Geography of Being: Una Geografia de ser, which he will begin installing on Friday. The wooden robots are awesome!

Tomorrow we install Scott Kildall’s 2049.

“On October 24, Richard Flood will moderate a roundtable discussion considering the future of the international “nuit blanche” phenomenon. The organizers of Nuit Blanche New York, Ethan Vogt and Ken Farmer, will be joined by Shauna McCabe (Curator, ScotiaBank Nuit Blanche Toronto), Steve Dietz (President and Artistic Director, Northern Lights.mn and the Northern Spark festival), and Council Member Stephen Levin to explore critical responses to, challenges, and opportunities for the “nuit blanche” model, and visions for its continued evolution. Informed by this global context, panelists will propose strategies for sustaining an annual “nuit blanche” tradition on the New York waterfront, rooted in the extraordinary potential of the city’s public spaces and creative communities.”

More information: New Museum

Ten artists present their interpretations of cultural sustainability

October 27, 2012 – January 13, 2013

 ReGeneration, a new exhibition exploring the relationship between sustainability and cultural vitality, opens October 27 at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI).

The exhibition includes interactive works by 10 artists that inspire visitors to think about the notion of cultural sustainability through collaborative engagement and futuristic visions built upon the history and traditions of New York’s diverse neighborhoods.

Despite the near ubiquity of the term “sustainability,” there remains significant ambiguity about everything from the actual meaning of the term to overarching solutions to the challenges we face as a community. Technology and behavioral changes including energy production, agriculture, recycling and pollution reduction are all on the table as we work to understand and address the challenge of sustainability.

“ReGeneration is an exhibition about the future,” says NYSCI president and CEO, Margaret Honey. “We challenged the artists to take inspiration from science and imagine a future where we live sustainably, not just in the foods we eat or the materials we use,
but in our fundamental approach to how we view our communities and the interdependence between people and our environment.”

NYSCI produced ReGeneration in collaboration with Northern Lights.mn, a media-oriented art organization supporting artists who work innovatively in the public sphere to foster new relations between citizenry and the built environment. It is curated by Steve Dietz and Amanda Parkes.

“The artists in ReGeneration are change agents,” says Dietz, artistic director of Northern Lights.mn. “The most lasting and sustainable way to change the environment is to change our habits and envision new and exciting possibilities. The artists of ReGeneration each have a unique, engaging and rigorous take on the intersection of art and science in relation to a sustainable, emergent future.”

“As an institution, NYSCI has long explored the intersections of science, art, technology and culture,” says Eric Siegel, NYSCI’s chief content officer, who leads the project team that produced the exhibition. “With ReGeneration, NYSCI explores and celebrates particular indicators and examples of cultural vitality. These engagements can ultimately be adapted to other environments, enabling a network of local practices that helps sustain a regional or larger cultural vitality.”

Artists

BIOMODD, biomodd [nyc4]

In biomodd [nyc4] a team of collaborators led by artist Angelo Vermeulen has created symbiotic relationships between plants and computers. Algae are used to cool computer processors so they can run faster, while the heat that is generated by the computer electronics is used to create ideal growing conditions for a plant-based ecosystem.

Futurefarmers, Ethnobotanical New York

As humans transition from a rural to urban existence, indigenous plant knowledge is being lost and western models of school-based education often do not include traditional skills. Through a mobile structure and workshops, Ethnobotanical New York collects, displays and facilitates the regeneration and production of new and traditional knowledge.

Shih Chieh Huang, 99plus

For 99plus, Huang created glowing, kinetic sculptures of flowers and insects made from materials bought at 99¢ stores in Queens. The items have been integrated with LEDs, computer fans, and microcontrollers to create sculptures that Huang invites visitors to imagine as real life forms “that are adapting to each other, finding ways to coexist, and working together to form a self-sufficient society.”

Marisa Jahn and Stephanie Rothenberg, World’s Fair 2.0

In World’s Fair 2.0, Rothenberg and Jahn collaborated with teenagers to re-envision the World’s Fair to celebrate people and community. NYSCI visitors will take a virtual augmented reality tour to see what the artists imagined.

Scott Kildall, 2049

Using garbage scavenged from a San Francisco landfill, for 2049 Kildall has built imaginary devices that might be needed by a visitor from a future with fewer people and resources. These include an infinite battery, a trans-dimensional mailbox, and an emotional distiller. Kildall will also construct a time capsule called “Imagine 2049” with letters from visitors to the exhibition and from schoolchildren. The time capsule will be buried at NYSCI on January 12.

Zach Lieberman, Face by Face

Lieberman’s Face by Face installation makes faces out of other people’s facial elements. It combines a photo booth, which records video of participants, and a live visualization, which uses custom software to visualize faces using the eyes, noses, mouths, eyebrows and other face parts of previous participants. It is designed to investigate the diverse textures, rhythms and styles of our faces and present an algorithmic, collective portrait of NYSCI visitors.

The Living and SOFTLab, Common Weathers

Design studios The Living and SOFTLab created the exhibition design, Common Weathers, for ReGeneration, which consists of an interactive “cloud” structure, which is suspended from the ceiling and is made from wood and mylar. Lighting elements are embedded within the cloud. The cloud envelops the nine art installations and glows in response to visitors’ text messages.

Carl Skelton, Tomorrow 2.0

To create Tomorrow 2.0, Brooklyn artist Skelton and Joe Frattoni worked with middle and high school students from the Louis Armstrong Middle School IS 227Q in Queens and the Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology in Manhattan. Tomorrow 2.0 uses Betaville, a collaborative and participatory virtual sketchpad and laboratory platform to focus on an imaginary future for Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Nick Yulman, New York Immigration Song

New York Immigration Song is a digitally controlled, acoustic sound installation by artist Nick Yulman. It features mechanically actuated piano strings stretched from nodes across a wall-mounted map. Data about immigrant patterns to New York is translated into music, which is played by the piano strings. The resulting music represents the New York City’s changing population and the countries to which it is connected through its residents.

Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, A Geography of Being/Una Geografia de Ser

Brooklyn artist Zúñiga uses kinetic sculptures, a graphic zine, and a video game to explore the subject of undocumented immigrant populations in the United States. While visitors play the video game, the sculptures react to the game play and help the player. A graphic zine shows the challenges and options that are presented in the video game.

ReGeneration Website

For more information about ReGeneration visit http://regeneration.nysci.org/

Tell us about YOUR Northern Spark

Take part in our online survey

Deboarah Carver, “Night Lights in the City,” mnartists.org

Marianne Combs, “Highlights and lowlights from ‘Northern Spark’,” MPRNews

Lightsey Darst, “Night Vision: A Northern Spark Diary,” mnartists.org

Zac Farber, “Wheelies, Skids and Bunny Hops Yield Chalk Art at Northern Spark Festival,” Southwest Minneapolis Patch

Jay Gabler, “My Northern Spark Journey,” Twin Cities Daily Planet

Tom Horgen and Mary Abbe, “Northern Spark Festival: Up all night,” StarTribune

Stephanie Kwong, “A Taste of Northern Spark,” phenoMNal twin cities

Andy Lien, “Photo Gallery: Northern Spark 2012, The Instagrams,” Lavendar

Jahna Peloquin, “Saturday: Northern Spark Festival,” Vita.mn

Sheila Regan, “Northern Spark: Minnesota’s sleepover art party,” City Pages

Joel Schettler, “Nuit Blanche: An Art All-Nighter,” Minnesota Monthly

Brittany Trevick, “Think and Wonder, Wonder and Think,” Twin Cities Metro

Joel Zimmerman, “MN Original’s Northern Spark journey,” MN Original

Vita.mn staff, “The Crawl: Northern Spark: What just happened??“

More than 20 videos of your favorite venues and projects.

Northern Spark channel

More videos

Contributed by participants. Add new links in the comments section.

This video created by Caleb Coppock (vimeo.com/calebcoppock) illustrates the time scope (from dusk until dawn) of the "In Habit: Living Patterns" performance at Northern Spark, June 2012. The music for the video was composed by John Keston for the sixteenth and final vignette in the sequence titled, "Energy."

Northern Spark in and around the Soap Factory including the 10 Second Film Festival

Interactive media art by Eunsu Kang and Donald Craig Choreography and dance by Diana Garcia-Snyder June 9th, 2012 at the W Hotel Minneapolis as a part of Northern Spark 2012

On June 9-10, the Loft and Paper Darts co-hosted a Northern Spark event called Captured Dreams. A video loop of submitted dreams ran throughout the night.

Time Lapse documentation of setup and participant interaction with Dan Scofield and Miriam Simun's "21%" sound installation at the 2012 Northern Spark Festival in Minneapolis, MN on June 9th, 2012. Site-specific sound installation, 2011. Passive Infrared and Ultra Sonic Range Finder Sensors, Arduino, Max/MSP, 8-Channel Original Audio 21% invites visitors to influence a sound collage in collaboration ‘with’ the trees they walk amongst, as well as with other visitors to the space.

Dillon Bakke, "Too Cool"

Alex Lauer + BA Mpls at Northern Spark

Yuiees collaborating with local artists; Rachel James, Kit Leffler, Andrea Steudel, Yuichiro Tanabe, and Josh Winkler

Tristan Pollock's Northern Spark

Northern Spark Midnight Mario Video #4, featuring the real Mario

Midnight Mario vids by Dustin Davis 1 2 3 4

Overnight is a realtime data portrait of Minneapolis shown at Northern Spark 2012. Projected on the Mill City Silos, each silo holds one aspect of data collected about the city. Data-driven music accompanies the visuals, and was played on a section of the Stone Arch Bridge overlooking the silos.

pongatorium in the Palace of Wonder at Northern Spark

Sarah Peters on CultureQueue

DLWeidt Northern Spark on Greenway

Videos along the Greenway by DLWeidt: 1 2 3

the Northern Spark psychedelic matching band: sunset

Grand opening of the Gamut Gallery in downtown Minneapolis. It was part of the annual Northern Spark art festival that takes over most of the city for one night.

Come see the Palace of Wonder!! wonder... wonder... at Northern Spark in the courtyard of Minneapolis Institute of Arts - June 9th - Dusk to Dawn!

Three Nuns And A Gun - (Live at MCAD - Northern Spark 2012)

During four weeks of construction and installation leading up to the MIA's 2012 Northern Spark event, HOTTEA, MIA staff and volunteers measured, cut, and knotted an estimated 14,000 pieces of colored yarn (almost 400 skeins) to a plastic fence. If laid end-to-end, the yarn would stretch for 82 miles, or put another way, the distance from the MIA to Mankato, Minnesota. If it went straight up into the sky, the yarn would reach past the Kármán Line, the border between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.

Balloon creatures at MIA @Northern Spark

Gallery13 presents SPARK3DS EXHIBITION and Mini Symposium will open on Saturday June 9th with the exhibition Opening 8:00 in conjunction with Northern Spark Festival.

A look at the strange sights and sounds of Northern Spark

We talked with Rosemary Williams, creator of "Mom's Cookies," part of the Northern Spark festival in Minneapolis on June 9, 2012. Her videos, featuring several General Mills products, were displayed on the side of buildings on the historic Minneapolis riverfront and milling district.

Northern Spark Marching Band on the Stone Arch Bridge at St. Anthony Main, Minneapolis MN. Conducted by Jackie Beckey

mnartists.org, Drawing NIGHTclub Acoustic Campfire + Bedtime Stories, Brian Laidlaw Scott Sayre and Vanessa Voskuil, Midnight Padhandling

Ben Johnson and Elizabeth Johnson, PixelTron150

Jackie Beckey, Psychedelic Art Parade

Aniccha Arts, In Habit: Living Patterns

Michael Murnane, Under Ice

Rosemary Williams, Mom’s Cookies

Eunsu Kang and Diana Garcia-Snyder, Shin’m Pinata Jim Campbell, Material World Caly McMorrow, Observation Tape Deck

Tetsuaya Yamada and Clive Murphy, Pizza/Calliope Diane Willow, Tuning the Sky Bell Museum, Capturing the Night Raptor Center, All About Owls Weisman Art Museum, Night Vision Tours: All Will Be Illuminated Jenny Schmid, Drew Anderson and MAW, nightdemons

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak kicked off Northern Spark with a rousing call to the night and the virtues of Minneapolis.

Walker Art Center, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

mnartists.org, Drawing NIGHTclub
Acoustic Campfire + Bedtime Stories, Brian Laidlaw
Scott Sayre and Vanessa Voskuil, Midnight Padhandling

Videographers: Nolan Morice, Tricia Towey

Editor: Brennan Vance

Ben and Elizabeth Johnson, PixelTron 150, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

Ben Johnson and Elizabeth Johnson, PixelTron150

Videographers: Allison Osberg, Nolan Morice, Brennan Vance

Editor: Brennan Vance

Jackie Beckey, Psychedelic Art Parade, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

Jackie Beckey, Psychedelic Art Parade

Videographers: Allison Osberg, Tricia Towey, Tom Johnson, Nolan Morice, Gus Ganley, Brennan Vance

Editor: Brennan Vance

Annicha Arts, In Habit: Living Patterns, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

Aniccha Arts, In Habit: Living Patterns

Videographers: Allsion Osberg, Tricia Towey, Brennan Vance

Editor: Brennan Vance

Michael Murnane, Under Ice, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

Michael Murnane, Under Ice

Videographers: Allison Osberg, Tricia Towey, Tom Johnson, Nolan Morice, Gus Ganley, Brennan Vance

Editor: Brennan Vance

Rosemary Williams, Mom’s Cookies, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

Rosemary Williams, Mom’s Cookies

Videographers: Allison Osberg, Tricia Towey, Tom Johnson, Nolan Morice, Gus Ganley, Brennan Vance

Editor: Brennan Vance

The Foshay and Target South Tower, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

Eunsu Kang and Diana Garcia-Snyder, Shin’m Pinata
Jim Campbell, Material World
Caly McMorrow, Observation Tape Deck

Videographers: Nolan Morice, Brennan Vance

Editor: Brennan Vance

Weisman Art Museum, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

Tetsuaya Yamada and Clive Murphy, Pizza/Calliope
Diane Willow, Tuning the Sky
Bell Museum, Capturing the Night
Raptor Center, All About Owls
Weisman Art Museum, Night Vision Tours: All Will Be Illuminated
Jenny Schmid, Drew Anderson and MAW, nightdemons

Videographer:: Tom Johnson

Editor:: Brennan Vance

Stone Arch Bridge and Mill Ruins Park, Northern Spark 2012 from Northern Spark on Vimeo.

Robin Schwartzman, THINK AND WONDER, WONDER AND THINK
David Rueter, The Kuramoto Model (1,000 Fireflies)
Wil Natzel, Night Blooms
Lauren McCarthy and David Wicks, Bumps in the Night

Videographers:
Allison Osberg, Tricia Towey, Tom Johnson, Nolan Morice, Gus Ganley, Brennan Vance

Editor:
Brennan Vance

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak kicked off Northern Spark with a rousing call to the night and the virtues of Minneapolis.

Saturday I had the opportunity to see a work-in-progress performance of Aniccha Arts’ In Habit: Living Patterns, which will be performed at Northern Spark. Pramila Vasudevan, the founder and artistic director of Aniccha Arts, was an early Art(ists) On the Verge fellow, and I have seen many of her performances over the years. For In Habit, Pramila brought in Piotr Szyhalski in an accustomed but nevertheless new role for him as director for another artist’s work. Jon Keston returns for another tour-de-force sound composition, and the entire crew and all the performers are amazing. The program is stellar and should be a highlight of Northern Spark.

Check out Pramila and Piotr on this video trailer by our new intern Tricia Towey, who will be doing regular progress reports on artists’ work for the next 59 days. And speaking of just days to go, support Aniccha Arts’ Kickstarter project.

How should I explain the idea of agonism to my neighbor across the street?

Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition A new book and deck of cards by Marisa Jahn explores the productive possibilities of agonism, a relationship built on mutual incitement and struggle.

Warren Sack: “Agonism” is the ancient Greek word for a contest with a prize. In the sense we are using it, is a way of understanding life and politics as a game or contest.

Marisa Jahn: My neighbors do in fact ask me what agonism is. But then I like to throw it back on them. I say, “ok, let’s play a game. When I say agonism, you say…” I’ve gotten all sorts of answers. One person said, “Paradise Lost.” Lucifer wrestling the angels. A physiologist responded that the agonist is a contracting muscle; the antagonist is the muscle that returns the limb to its natural state. A techie person was reminded of the symbiotic relationship between the fig wasp and the sycamore tree. A musician likened agonism to noise. As in, harmony is control, order. Noise is the sum of sounds; it fluctuates between harmony and cacaphony. Noise is difference, polyphony, epistemological and political pluralism.

Mark Shepard: I don’t think you should explain agonism to your neighbor – better to enact it through engaging her – with empathy and respect – on an issue you disagree.

Carl Skelton: There is a variant of agonism, which most people think of as how open-source software happens: an idea gets proposed in an initial form to the widest possible group. Of the many who find fault with it, a small minority will actually propose an improvement, which is then subjected to the same process, except that the original proponent gets to weigh in as a critic. Anybody who cares enough to keep the idea moving owns it. Over time, competing variants and improvements are adopted and discarded by ad hoc groups which themselves persist, peter out or mutate over time.

Carl DiSalvo: Agonism is the truth that your neighbor already knows – legislation doesn’t *solve* anything, the conflicts continue regardless, it’s just the nature of politics.

How does agonism express itself in your practice as an artist?

Mark Shepard, artist comp, structures for dischord

Marisa: If agonism merely describes a condition in the world, then expressing agonism through artwork in fact paints reality more aptly and with greater complexity. Agon makes things fun! Agonistic art practices “work” by coming in through the backdoor to solve problems and intrigue using a different kind of logic.

Carl D: My practice is about creating spaces for an agonistic pluralism to flourish, for creating spaces where we can participate in conflicting values and practices towards the composition of new social conditions and structures.

Mark: As an artist I maintain an agonistic relationship to the discipline of architecture. My work exploits the tensions between architecture and media art with respect to how space is conceived, constructed, organized and interpreted within technologically mediated environments.

Warren: Much of my work as an artist is concerned with politics and publics, and I consider what would it mean to make political metaphors material.  For example, we talk about debates as though they are scored like boxing or wrestling contests, but of course they are not.  What would happen if we devised a scoring system for debates?

Warren Sack, Agonistics: A Language Game

Carl S: Nothing ever gets finished, but you never run out of room for improvement.

We’re clearly living in a fractious time. How can agonism help us?

Courtesy Carl DiSalvo

Carl D: Like any theory, agonism is a tool to think with. So it gives us a way to understand what we mean when we use terms like democracy and politics. From this, we might begin not just “think about” but also “do” democracy differently.

Marisa: Paying attention to agonism helps us reframe how we see struggle. Instead of regarding it as a symptom of a bad or messy or contentious situation, we can instead see agonism as a symptom of an environment that is strong enough to withstand difference and adversity.

Warren: As many theorists have pointed out, our culture is increasingly “gamified.” People tend to think of many everyday actions as moves in a game.  For instance, what does it mean “to make a move,” “to make a play,” “to play around,” “to call someone a loser”? If indeed, all the world’s a game and all the men and women merely players, then what is this game we are playing and how could it be otherwise?

Mark: One would hope that agonism offers a way to come to terms with extreme ideological differences – not resolving them, but at least making the debate more tolerable.

How do we foster a space for dissensus, critical dialogue, and debate?

Marisa: Promote and commit to diversity! This may mean doing the work to figure out how you are going to outreach to people from a different point of view or ilk, subjecting ourselves to uncomfortable situations; and building conditions to foster a sense of tolerance and difference. Listen to who’s not speaking and see why not; create a space where this differential is foregrounded. Understand that you can hold difference; understand when compromise sacrifices particular points of view and when compromise strengthens alliances.

What are you most looking forward to about the Discourse and Discord symposium?

Carl D: The opportunity to have these conversations in public, and to disagree about them.

Mark: The opportunity to encounter and test different ideas on agonism through the various formats planned.

Carl S: The chance to try a few things I’ve been working on, and to find out what might be possible in re-making Hennepin avenue, which seems to have a lot in common with a lot of other urban environments that need some love in North America and Europe.

Related

An Introduction to Agonism: Volume 1

An Introduction to Agonism: Volume 2 

Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street

Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition (download)

Rosemary Williams is also cooking up a storm with her Mom’s Cookies projection for Northern Spark.

Find out at Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street, an upcoming public symposium from April 12 – 14 copresented by the Walker Art Center and Norther Lights.mn.

via Susy Bielak

Discourse Karaoke is part of Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street, a public symposium copresented with the Walker Art Center.

Karaoke  from a selection of classic and contemporary protest/patriotic/political songs. Duets and larger singing groups are encouraged. Here is a partial list of songs. Start practicing now!

The Beatles, Revolution
The Beatles, Taxman
Black Eyed Peas, Where is the Love?
Black Sabbath, War Pigs
David Bowie, Young Americans
James Brown, Living in America
Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth (Stop Children What’s that Sound)
Johnny Cash, The Man in Black
Tracy Chapman, Talking About a Revolution
Ray Charles, America the Beautiful
The Clash, I Fought the Law
The Clash, Rock the Casbah
The Cranberries, Zombie
The Cranberries, Free to Decide
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fortunate Son
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Have You Ever Seen the Rain
Billy Ray Cyrus, Some Gave All
Neil Diamond, America
Bob Dylan, Maggie’s Farm
Bob Dylan, The Times They are a Changin’
EnVogue, Free Your Mind
Marvin Gaye, What’s Goin’ On?
Marvin Gaye, Mercy, Mercy Me
Green Day, American Idiot
Lee Greenwood, God Bless the USA (Proud to Be an American)
Woody Guthrie, This Land is Your Land
Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit
Mahalia Jackson, We Shall Overcome
Mahalia Jackson, Black or White
Mahalia Jackson, Earth Song
Michael Jackson, et al. We are the World, We are the children
Janis Joplin, Mercedes Benz
Toby Keith, American Soldier
Judas Priest, Revolution
John Lennon, Imagine
John Lennon, Give Peace a Chance
John Lennon & Yoko Ono, War is Over
Lynard Skynyrd, Sweet Home Alabama
Loretta Lynn, One’s On the Way
Bob Marley, I Shot the Sheriff
Bob Marley, Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)
Bob Marley, Redemption Song
John Mayer, Waiting on the World to Change
MC5, Kick Up the Jams
Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
Peter, Paul, & Mary, Where Have all the Flowers Gone
Peter, Paul, & Mary, If I Had a Hammer
Pink, Dear Mr. President
Public Enemy, Fight the Power
Rage Against the Machine, Killing in the Name
Helen Reddy, I am Woman
Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK
Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen
Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A.
Standard, Star Spangled Banner
Standard, Amazing Grace
The Staples Singers, Respect Yourself
Edwin Starr, War
T-Rex, Children of the Revolution
Peter Tosh, Legalize It
U2, Year’s Day
U2, In God’s Country
U2, Mothers of the Disappeared
U2, Sunday Bloody Sunday
The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again
Neil Young, Rockin’ in the Free World

The evening starts with a chalkboard mixer where people pair up with a stranger to discuss the following:

• Describe a political issue that is not black and white to you. Describe one that is.
• How do you think race affects politics?
• Which candidate (local, national, historical) do you most identify with and why?
• What do you think is the biggest threat to our society?
• What influences your political beliefs the most and why?
• Each partner chooses the other’s answer that they think is the most interesting. Each person then writes their answer on a 5 x 7 inch mailing label and wears it for the rest of the evening.

The Third Place Wing Young Huie Photography Gallery is located at at 3730 Chicago Avenue South in Minneapolis. Click here for directions.

During Northern Spark, up to 1.000 bicyclists will use customized, interactive blinking LED devices outfitted with microcontrollers and radio units that allow them to mutually and observably synchronize with others, as do certain species of firefly.

Lights are available online via Kickstarter until March 31.

These devices, in isolation, look similar to conventional LED cycling safety lights, but in groups exhibit an immediately noticeable phenomenon. To maximize the visual impact for all festival attendees, organizers will encourage participating cyclists to gather together in a large group to tour the various festival sites, including a “blessing of the bikes” at the Basilica of Saint Mary and a procession down Hennepin Ave.to start out the night.

This project owes much to the research of Yoshiki Kuramoto, who in 1975 first articulated a mathematical model that describes why, how and when large systems of similar oscillators (things that cycle automatically and repeatedly) can mutually synchronize, without any single coordinating force or leader. With Kuramoto’s legacy (as well as the earlier work of Norbert Wiener and Art Winfree) as a starting point, this project aims to activate and transform the social networks and urban dynamics associated with cycling, by fusing this existing system with one biased towards synchronization. Grafting this artificial system of synchronized blinking lights onto a real-world urban transportation system does two things: first, it calls attention to the individual act of cycling as a component of a larger dynamic system with its own unique patterns and qualities, and second, it momentarily transforms that system through a subtle but pointed intervention in urban social space.

The project will be documented and published on a project blog, and the software and hardware implementation details will be published under an open-source license, allowing others to reproduce the designs or use them as starting points for new projects. Through an open process and significant outreach, organizers receive input and participation from members of the Minneapolis/St. Paul cycling community.

Modified LED bike lights.

Get your Kuramoto Model bike light on Kickstarter today.

To help support our Northern Spark nuit blanche, Elizabeth Armstrong, Neal Cuthbert, Steve Dietz, Vince Leo, and Gary Smaby are each contributing their creative talents as a reward for our Kickstarter campaign.

Gary was quite the music photographer in his youth, and is offering a number of prints of rock stars of the 70s.

Neal’s iPad cover is a marvel of DIY engineering and design using recycled cardboard and bike tires.

Vince’s profound text poems garnered from his all thumbs texting were most recently seen at the Weisman Art Museum as part of Ordinarily Here.

Liz is offering a personal, behind-the-scenes tour of More Real: Art in the Age of Truthiness when it opens at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Steve is teaming up with Guggenheim award-winning artist Marina Zurkow to offer an evening of alien gustatory delights in a home cooked and homegrown version of Marina’s earlier “Not an Artichoke, Nor from Jerusalem” culinary performance at The Artist’s Institute in New York City.

Invasive Knotweed Soup

Including portraits of: Luther Allison, Allman Brothers, Maggie Bell, Sony Bono, David Brenner, David Bromberg, Johnny Cash, Cher, Rita Collidge, Ry Cooder, Alice Cooper, David Crosby, Rick Derringer, The Hollies, Mick Jagger, Elton John, Tom Johnston, B.B. King, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Loggins, Linda McCartney, Paul McCartney, Mary McCreary, Joni Mitchell, Shaun Phillips, Tiran Porter, Pure Prairie League, Bonnie Raitt, Todd Rundgren, Leon Russell, Carlos Santana, Ben Sidran, Carly Simon, Patrick Simmons, Steven Stills, James Taylor, Edgar Winter, Jesse Colin Young, Neil Young.

See the video for more portraits. Signed 8″ x 10″ prints available on Kickstarter for a limited time.

Drew Anderson, Ghosts Near Sugarloaf Mountain

Mike Hoyt, Poho Posit

Caly McMorrow, Status Update

Anthony Tran, Wire less

Aaron Westre, City Fight!

Over 500 people showed up for the opening of Art(ists) On the Verge at the Soap Factory last week. The show is up through April 15.

Artist talks are scheduled for March 23rd with Caly McMorrow and Aaron Westre and March 30th with Drew Anderson, Mike Hoyt, and Anthony Tran. All talks are free and begin at 8pm.

A related symposium Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street takes place at the Walker Art Center April 12-14.

Submissions for the next round of Art(ists) On the Verge are due March 19.

This unique artwork by Andréa Stanislav, who created the memorable 2011 Nightmare for Northern Lights.mn, is now available as a Kickstarter reward for supporting new artists’ work for the 2012 Northern Spark nuit blanche Twin Cities.

Stanislav’s Text Works are recontextualitions of dystopic phrases and sayings from such references as: the Ramones, Sex Pistols, A Clock Work Orange, Nivana, William Burroughs, current catch phrases and video games.The text is embedded between layers of resin polymer, and appear to “float” above the glittering light activated glitter-film base.

Check out other artworks available for supporting Northern Spark by: Jim Campbell, Wing Young Huie, Vince Leo, Ali Momeni, ROLU, Marina Zurkow and many others.

You can also support directly the Northern Spark projects of Wil Natzel, Night Blooms, and Pramila Vasudevan’s dance-performance collaboration In Habit with Piotr Szyhalski, Jon Keston and others.

We did a walk through of all the Art(ists) on the Verge projects this morning, and everything is looking good for the opening tomorrow at 7 pm at the Soap Factory. Above is a short vid of Caly McMorrow’s Status Update. Beautiful.

Great article in MN Daily about the show “Digital Immersion As Art.”

Tomorrow morning WCCO will do a couple of segments on AOV around 8 am and 8:30 am.

Nice preview in Twin Cities  Metro.

Opens Saturday at the Soap Factory.

If you’re interested in participating in Art(ists) On the Verge, proposals for the next round are being accepted through March 19.

Former Art(ist) On the Verger, Pramila Vasudevan (artistic director of Aniccha Arts,choreographer and dancer) has put together a stellar crew to work on In Habit.

Piotr Szyhalski (director); Jasmine Kar Tang (dramaturg and dancer); Caleb Coppock (visualmedia designer); John Keston (musician); Benjamin Reed(installation designer); David Steinman (technology designer); Clare Brauch(costume designer); Cornelius Coons and Annie Wang (graphic designers);Sarah Hoover Beck-Esmay (dance collaborator); Dustin Maxwell (dance collaborator); and Chitra Vairavan (dance collaborator).

And the rewards, beyond supporting such an amazing cast, include a personal dance class, custom screensaver, limited edition poster and more.

We’re thrilled that Patricia Briggs will be writing an essay for the Art(ists) On the Verge exhibition at the Soap Factory, opening on March 3. She was in town this past weekend visiting with the artists about their installations.

Drew Anderson, Near the Ghosts of Sugarloaf
Michael Hoyt, Poho Posit
Caly McMorrow, Status Update
Anthony Tran, Wire less
Aaron Westre, City Fight!

Patricia Briggs is an art historian, critic and independent curator. Her writing appears in Artforum International, Art Papers, Art on Paper, History of Photography, Public Art Review, Sense and Society and online at mnartists.org. She was named “Best Art Critic” of 2008 by Twin Cities-based City Pages. Follow her blog Scene Unseen at http://artsceneunseen.wordpress.com.

Art(ists) On the Verge 2011-2012
Northern Lights.mn/Jerome Emerging Artists Commissions
March 3 – April 15
Opening reception: March 3, 7-11 pm
Artist talks: March 23 and 30, 8 pm
On Facebook

Applications for the next round of Art(ists) On the Verge now open.

Public Symposium

April 12–14
Co-Presented with and at the Walker Art Center

In an era of cultural conservatives and the liberal elite, Occupiers and Tea Partiers, civil uprisings and government crackdowns, perhaps the one point of agreement today is there’s no shortage of disagreement. But if that’s true, then why isn’t there more debate—not online flame wars, not the televised jockeying of political candidates, but live, in-person dialogue?

That question was a starting point for this three-day symposium on agonism in the public sphere. A term unfamiliar to many, agonism describes an approach to politics that embraces difference and disagreement as an important part of democracy. As a series of talks, workshops, actions, and playful experiments, Discourse and Discord aims to explore the structures or “architectures”—whether it’s the built environment, online technologies, songs, or recipes—that can draw people together for genuine dialogue and debate. It also reinforces the notion that democracy thrives on and even requires an agonistic foundation: the friction of varied publics and participation by people of different minds, views, and beliefs.

Join with a range of other unlike-minded people to debate and discuss, disclose and expose—and find out what happens when you move beyond agreeing to disagree.

More information here.

DataVisualization in collaboration with Eyeo

Inter/National call

Application form

Explore a constellation of urban arts and discover the city in a new light.

Help support Northern Spark’s Kickstarter campaign.

From $5 to $5,000 your support can help support the work of dozens of artists at Northern Spark.

Check out the rewards, from limited edition posters to autographed photographs to home-cooked meals and designer seating.

Any amount will help.

Northern Spark is a free, dusk to dawn, participatory arts festival that presents visual arts, performance, films, and interactive media indoors and outdoors in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2011, during the course of one night, there were 50,000 visits to 100 projects by more than 200 artists at 34 venues in collaboration with 60 partner organizations and sponsors.

At its core, Northern Spark is about supporting artists to reinterpret the city through art and creative interventions.

Participating Artists: Drew Anderson, Michael Hoyt, Caly McMorrow, Anthony Tran, Aaron Westre

Northern Lights.mn presents the third edition of Art(ists) On the Verge (AOV3) at The Soap Factory. This exhibition features new work from five Minnesota-based artists. AOV3 is an intensive, year-long, mentor-based fellowship program for emerging artists working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory. Previous exhibitions of work by AOV fellows have been at the Weisman Art Museum (2009) and the Spark Festival at the University of Minnesota (2010).

Feel your heart race as you pull the trigger of Drew Anderson’s “shotgun projector” illuminating the point of view of an animatronic hunter in the north woods of Minnesota. Zero in on Mike Hoyt’s video paintings of the Powderhorn neighborhood and join the online civic dialog. Get on the horn and leave a status update for Caly McMorrow’s sound and light installation. See yourself and the world around you differently in Anthony Tran’s hertzian funhouse mirror. Make your mark on the environment with Aaron Westre’s urban planning video game.

A related symposium on creative solutions for public discourse, “Discourse and Dischord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street,” will be co-presented with and at the Walker Art Center, April 12-14.

Northern Lights.mn is a collaborative, interactive media-oriented arts agency from the Twin Cities for the world. It presents innovative art in the public sphere, both physical and virtual, focusing on artists creatively using technology, both old and new, to engender new relations between audience and artwork and more broadly between citizenry and their built environment.

Art(ists) On the Verge is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.

Full call here.

We are happy to announce a number of calls for participation in the 2012 edition of Northern Spark, which will take place June 9-10, 2012. For some background on this year’s Northern Spark see here. The new website will launch later this week at northernspark.org.

Please note that the deadlines for submission are different for different calls.

1. Call for a project in any media/discipline – inter/national

We are looking a  project that is sited/performed in public space and engage a broad public audience in that space. Projects can be in any medium or discipline. This call is funded in part by the NEA is for artists living or working outside of Minnesota. Application deadline: February 7. The call is here.

2. Call for Data Visualization project

This is an open call in collaboration with The Eyeo Festival for a data visualization project. Application deadline: February 7, 2012. The call is here.

3. Call for “platform” project

This is an open call in collaboration with ZERO1 Biennial for a “platform” project. Application deadline: February 13, 2012. The call is here.

4. Call for project in any media/discipline

We are looking for up to 10 projects that are sited/performed in public space and engage a broad public audience in that space. Projects can be in any medium or discipline. Look at the project line up for Northern Spark in 2011 to see the wide range of works presented. Application deadline: February 27. The call is here.

4. Call for Minnesota Center for Books Arts project

Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA), in collaboration with Northern Lights.mn, is accepting proposals for an all-night event in MCBA’s gallery and studio space as part of NorthernLights.mn’s Northern Spark Festival (June 9-10, 2012). Application deadline: January 30. The call is here.

More Calls

More calls will be announced in the coming days. Subscribe to the Northern Lights mailing list (at the bottom of the page), Like us on Facebook, follow us @Northern_Spark or get the tumblr feed to stay informed.

Links

• 2012 Northern Spark website
• 2012 call for projects
• 2012 call for projects – inter/national
• 2012 call for dataviz project
• 2012 call for platform project
• 2012 call for Minnesota Center for Book Arts project
• 2012 Kickstarter

• 2011 website
• 2011 report (pdf)
• 2011 trailer
• 2011 documentary
• 2011 flickr site

On Give To The Max Day, Wednesday, November 16th, you have a special, one-day opportunity to support a special, one-night project: Northern Spark, Minnesota’s only nuit blanche.

Northern Spark is a free, dusk-to-dawn, participatory public art event that takes place in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Northern Spark is all media, all night: performances, visual arts, projected images, interactive media, participatory events.

Northern Spark brings together a multitude of artists, creating hundreds of art projects in partnership with numerous arts organizations at multiple venues.

Northern Spark was an exhilarating first-time event for Minnesota. Throughout the night, there were 50,000 visits to more than 100 installations and performances presented by 200 artists in partnership with 60 organizations in 34 locations.

Your support of Northern Spark is support of local artists, who help us to create and sustain a vibrant community year-round by:

• Building a broad audience for serious art and creative fun
• Cultivating open and active civic engagement
• Heightening awareness of the cultural and natural wonders of the Twin Cities
• Partnering with MN arts and cultural organizations, strengthening public awareness and support of our local non-profits

Like an art comet that blazes through the night sky once a year, Northern Spark enters the Twin Cities’ orbit on Saturday, June 9, uniting two cities and bringing together a multitude of artists, art projects, arts organizations, and venues in a confluence of culture and nature.

Please become a co-creator of this remarkable project by supporting Northern Spark through your generous donation at GIVEMN.org.

Northern Spark is organized and presented by Northern Lights.mn.

Northern Spark 2011

If you missed Northern Spark this year, please check out the links below for great video and images from the June 2011 event, all of which is accessible from the Northern Spark website.

As well, we want to share here some of the comments about the event, which over 500 attendees wrote in response to our survey question: “Imagine you are out to dinner with friends who were also at Northern Spark and each person is taking a minute or two to describe the most memorable part of the event. It’s your turn; what would you say?”

“Northern Spark opened up my eyes to more of the arts in the Twin Cities. For once the places that I want to go to collaborated, stayed open and I was able to see what they were all about. Its a great chance to check things out!”

“Northern Spark has tremendous opportunity to become a signature summer event for Minneapolis, much like the White Nights in St. Petersburg, Nuit Blanche in Paris or Fete des Lumieres in Lyon. There was fantastic energy on the Stone Arch Bridge — you could tell people were loving the strolling and being outside on such a beautiful night and craving artistic inspiration.”

“A friend of mine commented that she expected to see the ‘usual art-nerd’ suspects out and about. We realized together that there were many people out who may have never participated in a community art event before. What a great way to expose the entire community to the arts!”

“Art is everywhere. The night of Northern Spark transforms your consciousness. Yes, you read the brochure and move from installation to installation, but you’re also always on the lookout for what might be new or different. Suddenly, everything becomes art: the lights under the 35W bridge; couples stealing a kiss under an archway; even the spaces themselves which you had previously never considered as anything other than no-man’s-land. The next morning, the sensation continues.”

View the complete “report” here (PDF).

Flickr photo gallery.

Brennan Vance, Northern Spark: A Documentary

Press coverage

Northern Spark 2011 website

An organization like Northern Lights depends on a fair and open Internet, as do many of the artists we work with. Join us in protesting legislation that places, once again, commercial interests as a higher value than open culture.

“5×5, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’s new temporary public art project, will result in twenty-five groundbreaking temporary public art installations that will be installed concurrently throughout the District of Columbia. DCCAH is seeking five highly-experienced and innovative contemporary art curators to select and work with five artists each to develop and present exciting, temporary art works in public spaces throughout the District of Columbia. The resulting twenty-five projects will activate and enliven publicly accessible spaces and add an ephemeral layer of creativity and artistic expression to neighborhoods across the District.”

Northern Lights/Artistic Director Steve Dietz was selected as one of 10 semi-finalists for 5×5. We will be presenting a final proposal in early December. Other semi-finalists here.

On a sunny, unseasonably warm October afternoon, nine people gathered in a circle and wrote a story.  The story was of a tree seed – the sugar maple – at risk of survival due to the environmental impacts of climate change, and the possibilities of its migration north.   It was a story in action and of action, told next to a 200 year old Sugar Maple at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts, in the midst of  the largest and most diverse collection of maple trees (genus: Acer) in the world.

Participants spread around the maple grove, picking out seeds that looked mature, dried, and worn.   A viable seed pod needs at least 4 maple seeds (often maples drop seed pairs with only one half of the pair carrying the ability to germinate, and including 4 or more improved the likelihood of the wearable garden’s survival.)  Around the seeds, participants packed dirt, moss, and leaves. to protect them during the next 3-5 months in a cold, damp environment where they are exposed to friction.  Participants addressed the design challenge of making a wearable pocket that could travel on a human body, that could keep the seeds moist and cool, and have some level of friction through its movement.  The creations varied: seed bearing scarves, an armpit band, a garter belt, a jacket sleeve and a pocket-on-a-stick.  The items were decorated with embroidery, with lace, with yarn and with instructions.

To close, each wearable garden was attached to a map to aid in sending these seeds on their way north.  The map included information on the various viable territories for the maple seed, and how they may change between now and the year 2100, along with how to care for the seeds.  It included 3 different highway routes up the East Coast, each ending up in a different region in Canada projected to have the most conducive climate to Sugar Maples 100 years from now.  Each participant had ideas in mind of where they would leave their pods.    One participant was on his way to Maine that very weekend and intended to leave it by a maple sugar shack at the trailhead where he was going to go hiking.  Another was headed to Vermont. Yet another had plans to visit a CSA farm, also in Maine, and planned to leave her creations there.   One wearable garden was hung on a pedestrian crossing sign on a nearby highway, along with the map and a wish of safe journeys.

Wearable Gardens

Oct. 8, 2011

1-3 PM

Arnold Arboretum

—-

A project of Platform2: Art and Social Engagement, an experimental event series that sits somewhere between a classroom, community organizing, and 1960s happenings. Platform2 is organized by Catherine D’Ignazio (kanarinka), Jane D. Marsching, Savić Rasović and Andi Sutton. Andi Sutton is an artist whose current practice explores the ways that duration, dialogue, endurance and exhaustion can push socially prescribed boundaries of human interaction. Working in a solo and collective context, her projects take the form of web, media, and street intervention, video and performance art installation. Her works have been shown nationally in shows and festivals such as Pathogeographies (2007), Contaminate II (2007), PURE: An Exhibition (2006), The Paper Show (2005), Mix NYC (2003), Better Homes and Guardians (2003), Politically Charged (2002), among others.

The show is down now, but it was such a pleasure to walk into Pace/MacGill’s Social Media exhibition and not have to get frustrated about all the work that was overlooked for a show. That is, even though one could imagine dozens of other possible projects, at least it was a strong selection of work whose creators had a history and weren’t just dabblers. David Byrne’s imaginary apps fell short for me, but the “kodak” photo frames for Democracy in Action were a perfect way to “share” his YouTube fascinations (or his assistant’s?). Other work was stronger, however. Christopher Baker’s Murmur Study with its cascading receipt tapes of twitter hashtags perfectly captures the torrent of the information age in all its glory and waste. Aram Bartholl’s Google Portraits are also pitch perfect renditions of the QR code moment. It will be interesting to see whether they retain their funhouse magic in a year or more. Now if only the curators had included someone like Mark Lombardi….

#neversatisfied

Join us for the Pecha Kucha for the Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Design Competition (Weisman Plaza)

Back in March, the Target Studio for Creative Collaboration at the Weisman Art Museum put out a call for a Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Design Competition. Northern Lights.mn teamed up with Short Elliott Hendrickson (Bob Kost, team leader, and Rachel Baudler), EE&K Architects (Peter Cavaluzzi), and artist Christopher Baker, and we were selected as one of four finalist teams.

The broad outlines of all four teams’ (4rm+ula), coen+partners, and VJAA + HouMinn) proposals are currently on view in the Target Studio at WAM. On Wednesday, October 26, we will present our final proposals to an expert jury in the afternoon and to the public at large at WAMChatter. Final selection of will be announced the following day.

Join us Wednesday, October 26 at 7 pm for 24 minutes of exciting pecha kucha by the 4 cross-disciplinary teams about the Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Design Competition at WAMChatter (preceding reception at 6 pm).

Check out the blog of our team’s “discussions.”

SEH/EE&K/Northern Lights.mn/Christopher Baker team members

Bob Kost (SEH), Peter Cavaluzzi (EE&K), Steve Dietz (Northern Lights.mn), Christopher Baker (SAIC), Rachel Baudler (SEH), Michael Imranyi (EE&K), Mister Blue (SEH), Yehui Xu (EE&K), Dongshin Lee (EE&K), Gaylen Perkuhn (EE&K), Amier Hossein (EE&K)

"This call for ideas is not about perpetuating protests; it is about empowering them."

“Storefront for Art and Architecture is making a call for submissions for projects and strategies that offer a new, creative and productive way of spatial occupation for public demonstrations and actions in cities throughout the world. Gathering expertise from the various acts of civil occupation throughout the world during the last months, we ask architects, artists and citizens at large to offer their ideas for enabling acts of communication and action between the civil society and the structures of economic and political power.”

Check out Brennan Vance’s mini-documentary of the 2011 Northern Spark Festival.

Metro magazine's Top 100 list includes Northern Spark at #7

7. Northern Spark, June 4 to 5, 2011

“Modeled after nuit blanche events in Paris and St. Petersburg, the Twin Cities’ first-ever all-night art party spanned galleries and green space on both sides of the river (it even spilled into the mighty Miss via a variety show aboard an old paddleboat). The highlight? Artist Jim Campbell’s “Scattered Light” installation at Upper Landing Park in St. Paul: hundreds of glowing glass bulbs strung together to create Northern Spark’s unofficial nightlight. We’ve been catching lots of Z’s in preparation for next summer’s citywide sleepover, which promises to be bigger and better than the first. northernspark.org“

Save the dates: July 9-10, 2012

Northern Spark is produced and presented by Northern Lights.mn with the participation of 60 organizational partners and sponsors.

www.irrigatearts.org

Irrigate: Art happens here

Soon, hundreds of projects led by local artists will bring new life and vibrancy to the Central Corridor Light Rail Line in Saint Paul, thanks to a new partnership between Springboard for the Arts, Twin Cities Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the City of Saint Paul.  Called Irrigate, this initiative spurs artist-led creative placemaking spanning the six miles of the Central Corridor Light Rail line in Saint Paul during the years of its construction. This is a unique opportunity that brings together huge infrastructure development, a high concentration of resident artists on both ends of the corridor, a diverse ethnic and cultural mix among the neighborhoods, and a city with a strong track record of artist community engagement. By mobilizing artists to engage in their community, Irrigate will change the landscape of the Central Corridor with color, art, surprise, creativity and fun.

Placemaking is the act of people coming together to change overlooked and undervalued public and shared spaces into welcoming places where community gathers, supports one another, and thrives. Places can be animated and enhanced by elements that encourage human interaction – from temporary activities such as performances and chalked poetry to permanent installations such as landscaping and unique art.

How to Get Involved

If you are an artist – of any level, experience or discipline – who lives, works or has a personal investment in Central Corridor Light Rail Transit (CCLRT) neighborhoods, Irrigate invites you to join the creative placemaking movement! Use your creative talents to have an impact on your neighborhood, your local businesses and organizations, and the light rail corridor. Starting October 22, Irrigate is offering creative placemaking training workshops, after which artists will be eligible for collaborative placemaking project funding through a simple application process. For more details and registration information for Fall 2011 workshops click here (http://tinyurl.com/PMworkshops).

If you are a business, non-profit, community group, or other entity that is has a presence on the light rail corridor in Saint Paul, and would like to connect artists to your work, please contact Peter Haakon Thompson, Project Coordinator, at peter@springboardforthearts.org or 651-789-0679.

If you are a fan of artists and placemaking, revisit the website after October 15! We will have a live map to which anyone can share ideas about where placemaking can happen along the corridor, AND, over time, you can see artist-led projects take shape, find out ways to participate, and discover placemaking activities and sites to visit.

For more information, see www.irrigatearts.org

Other questions, contact Jun-Li Wang, Artist Community Organizer at jun-li@springboardforthearts.org or 651-789-0679.

Content | Form | Im-material—Five Years of CONT3XT.NET

“[...] Interpretation is an inherent mode of curatorial practice, and CONT3XT.NET must decide, generally in collaboration with the artists but not entirely, how to manifest the form and content of the network recension of any works exhibited. There is not necessarily a correct answer in this process—although there may be wrong ones—but there is a kind of feedback loop between CONT3XT.NET’s interpretive mode and the content of an exhibition, which is both an instantiation of and a theory about their curatorial practice as translation. [...]“–Steve Dietz, Introduction

Book launch: Content | Form | Im-material—Five Years of CONT3XT.NET

CONT3XT.NET is a Vienna-based initiative founded in January 2006 by Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Birgit Rinagl and Franz Thalmair. Programmatically, this group of artists, curators and authors—their different roles and functions sometimes regarded strictly, sometimes as a fluid continuum—work at the basis of contemporary visual, textual and networked practices. Starting from the idea of the context as the most indecisive and variable but relevant constraint of any situation, the collective reflects upon the spatial, temporal, discursive as well as the institutional framework that conceptual artistic practices (on the Internet and elsewhere) are rooted in today.

artists

Maria Anwander, Anna Artaker, Ruben Aubrecht, Miriam Bajtala, Ryan Barone, Mary-Anne Breeze—aka netwurker, Charles Broskoski, Codemanipulator®, Arend deGryuter-Helfer and Aylor Brown, Gerhard Dirmoser, Aleksandra Domanovic, Reynald Drouhin, Nikolaus Gansterer, Christina Goestl, Jochen Höller, Karl Heinz Jeron and Valie Djordjevic, Michael Kargl, Annja Krautgasser, Miriam Laussegger and Eva Beierheimer, Jan Robert Leegte, Ralo Mayer, Michail Michailov, MTAA—M. River & T. Whid Art Associates, Barbara Musil and Karo Szmit, Jörg Piringer, Lisa Rastl, Arnold Reinthaler, Veronika Schubert, Johanna Tinzl and Stefan Flunger, UBERMORGEN.COM, Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak

authors

Josephine Bosma, Mary-Anne Breeze—aka netwurker, Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz, Thomas Dreher, Constant Dullaart, Mark E. Grimm, Jeremy Hight, Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Jan Robert Leegte, Mia Makela, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, Stefan Nowotny, Les Liens Invisibles, Birgit Rinagl, Franz Thalmair, Pall Thayer, Marius Watz

Hope this message finds you well.

If you have visited with the Empty Words (so that we can do our living) performance during the Northern Spark festival on June 4-5, chances are you have walked away with one of the “We Are Working All The Time!” posters. These posters were printed during the performance and distributed to the audience. I am writing to ask you a simple favor:

If you have that poster hanging somewhere, would you please take a quick photo of it in whatever environment it is, and send the image to me?

I started this simple site for this poster series, and my hope is to show the posters in various spaces, where people chose to hang them.

http://weareworkingallthetime.org

There are not too many images there yet, but with your help I am hoping to populate the site very soon!

Thank you for your help,
p.

Piotr Szyhalski

PS
If you know anyone else that has this poster, or if you saw one around, please forward this message to them!

Kiosk from the exhibition at SPUR in San Francisco

Reclaim Market Street! is an exhibition and series of public programs created by the Studio for Urban Projects and hosted by SPUR (the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association), in San Francisco, CA.

Studio for Urban Projects is an art and design collaborative that, according to their website, “perceives art as a means of advancing civic engagement and furthering public dialogue.” Together, the Studio’s core members–Alison Sant, Richard Johnson, Marina McDougall, Kirstin Bach and Daya Karam–operate a storefront in the Mission District of San Francisco and have created public art projects for the city of Seattle, and the 2010 01SJ Biennial.

Installation shot from Reclaim Market Street! exhibition by Studio for Urban Projects

This research-based exhibition largely consists of a curated set of examples of public projects and interventions that have had positive impacts in other cities that is held together by a clever exhibition design consisting largely of cardboard–cardboard seats, walls, signage, kiosks, and even flooring. The meat of the project lies in its public programs of walking tours, guided bike rides, impromptu parks, and outdoor events that challenge the public to participate in redefining what they expect from (and how they interact with) city streets.

Applications available to the public as part of the exhibition at SPUR.

Indoors, I found the way the exhibition challenges people to take immediate action most refreshing. Within SPUR are work stations displaying applications where you can immediately apply to “Create a Park,” “Make Your Own Bike Lane” or “Plant the Sidewalk.” Outdoors, their project is about gathering people together to acknowledge history while contributing to aspirational scenarios of the future.

This project is a perfect example of how artists are using their practice to help create solutions to real-world problems. Market Street is the central transit corridor of San Francisco. On one side is Ferry Plaza and the bustling Financial District, on the other side is the colorful Castro District where shops and cafes line the street. In the middle is the Central Market District. Originally a theater district, years of economic decline have left it more known for strip clubs, panhandlers, graffiti, and empty storefronts. The City of San Francisco has launched a revitalization campaign and other organizations such as the San Francisco Arts Commission and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts have been actively working to literally bring art to the street.

Paz de la Calzada painting Central Market Dreamscape, 2011. Mural, 1127 Market Street, San Francisco. Courtesy of the ARTery Project, San Francisco Arts Commission. Photo: Lydia Gonzales.

Reclaim Market Street! adds to this local dialogue and is about using Market Street as muse in a public conversation around expand the use cases for city streets beyond automobile traffic to include safe and engaging spaces for bikers and pedestrians. Because Central Market Street District is a place people are more likely to pass through quickly, Studio for Urban Projects has created a framework that challenges people to spend time on the street. A particularly interesting program that will take place on October 15th is “Temporary Urban Experiments in Creating New Public Spaces.” Child-friendly urban planning more often than not sequesters children within fenced off playgrounds. But what if play was incorporated back into street life?

The Imagination Playground installed near South Street Seaport in New York City. Image courtesty of http://www.glenwoodnyc.com/

For this project, they are featuring the Imagination Playground Kit designed by David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group within an urban plaza that is normally dominated by concrete.

With public funds for the arts dwindling, revitalization of cities through the arts and culture is one area that is receiving greater attention in recent times. As an example, the NEA is echoing this call for a revitalization of cities through the arts by recently announcing its inaugural “Our Town” grants that help 51 communities, including San Francisco and San Jose, CA, revitalize their neighborhoods through strategies involving the arts. Creative placemaking is a challenge to reclaim our urban centers, which is precisely what Studio for Urban Projects is doing in focusing their energies toward the Central Market Street District.

Much of what Studio for Urban Projects suggests is common sense. Safe and scenic bike paths through the city, reclamation of under utilized spaces, and a move away from automobile centric civic design. It’s the thoughtfulness of the exhibition design and their collaborative ethos (Reclaim Market Street! also showcases contributions by Futurefarmers, Rebar, and the San Francisco Bike Coalition) that works best in using the arts to promote conversations that have the potential to create lasting change.

So the question is, what urban spaces would you like to reclaim?

1. For one glorious afternoon, my office was the steps of the TKTS booth in Times Square.

2. I’m not saying I got a ton of work done, but in a somewhat surprisingly, all the screenage became almost like white noise. It wasn’t that hard to tune out.

3. For a while I tried to count all the screens facing/in Times Square, but I quickly gave up and wondered if the task could be crowd sourced? Maybe I could create a job for the Amazon Mechanical Turk to count these pix?

4. For many people, the TKTS steps are a vantage point, like a scenic overlook on the Interstate.

5. All the photographing activity made me think about all the “pocket screens” in Times Square. In December 2009, there was an actual count of 364,000 pedestrians in the area. If we assume that 75% of those people are carrying phones or computers with an average screen size of 2″ x 2″, that’s 1,638,000 square inches of screen. Still way less than an acre (about .25 acres), but that’s not even counting all the taxis displays and vehicular GPS devices.

As these devices become increasingly networked, the “power” will not be in the white noise of size but in the magnitude of “connection.”

6. Interestingly, when I met with Glenn Weiss, Manager of Public Art and Design for the Times Square Alliance, he said that his experience with the public art program in Times Square is that somewhat counterintuitively anything over 15′ gets lost in the cacophony of the screens. Up to about that height, and a good project will attract spectators about 5 rows deep. Over that, and the project, even a “spectacular” one, often gets lost.

I think you could argue that above a certain height and the “connection” is lost.

7. Interestingly, the one exception, which perhaps proves the rule, is the Forever 21 billboard, which has a simple set up of a “spy cam” from the billboard pov onto Times Square at street level. In other words, people standing within its penumbra become part of the billboard. Periodically, green screen beauties dance and shake their way onto the (billboard) street with you.

It’s mind numbingly simple interactivity, but there were the crowds gathered 5 deep looking up at the billboard and waving and photographing and paying attention – above 15′.

8. I attended Pavement Politics: Times Square and the Changing Face of New York’s Streets that evening. Prof. Gwendolyn Wright, Columbia University, gave an excellent mini-history of Times Square. In the day, thousands would visit Times Square to get the latest news.

9. In a phrase I particularly loved, Wright said that Times Square, whatever it was called at the time, has always been a site of ephemeral, mediated architecture.

10. Ethan Kent, Vice President of the Project for Public Spaces, talked about some of the simple but effective “moves,” like making Times Square pedestrian-centric, which are part of a larger goal to think of “traffic” as not only cars.

11.
• Stop planning for speed/capacity
• Start planning for community-based outcomes
• Think of streets as public space
• Accommodate diverse users

12. Iterative, feedback loop vs. a straight-line process that hopes to discover a use only the end of the process, when it is often too late

Entrance hall, Çemberlitas Hamam; photo: Ming-yen Hsu

I bought my ticket, a yellow plastic tab, and was given a small cardboard box.  A cluster of topless Turkish men in plaid towels gestured toward one of the narrow staircases.  I climbed to the second level balcony where I was ushered into a wooden cubicle.  I stripped down, wrapped a towel around my waist and stepped into some plastic sandals.  The attendant asked for the yellow tab, then locked the room and handed me the key.

Clutching the cardboard box and key, I went back down the stairs to the lobby, where my burly masseur, Ahmet, met me and shook my hand.  After a quiz to determine my correct nationality, he led me into the cooling-down room.  He removed a small scrub mitt from the box, handed it to me and pointed to the interior of the empty box.  For a moment I thought he was about to do a conjuring trick, but then he pointed inside the box again, rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and said the word “token”.  I pantomimed that all I had was a mitt, key and towel.  No hidden lira or euros.  He rolled his eyes, slapped me manfully on the shoulder and said: “later!”

Pointing toward the edge of the huge marble platform beneath the hot room dome, Ahmet guided me to lay on my back with my head on a small spittoon-like metal headrest, and then left me to sweat for fifteen minutes.  The heat and humidity from the platform was intense, eventually almost hallucinatory as I stared upward at the terracotta dome perforated by round holes.  Every few seconds, a drum-like boom seemed to come from deep inside the walls.

Hot room, Çemberlitas Hamam

Ahmet returned and started splashing me with buckets of hot water, had me sit up, roll over, stand and lie down again.  Next I could feel a softness glide over me and looked down to see soapsuds drifting upward over my shoulders and neck.  Ahmet began to scrub me all over, in different positions, stopping to point out an accumulation of dead skin on one of my arms.  I was doused with hot water again, massaged, taken into the cool-down room where he washed and kneaded my head.

Ahmet splashed me with cold water and returned me to the hot room.  Pointing to the marble platform, he gave me terse one and two-word instructions to lie down for no less than ten minute, take a shower, dry off with a towel, go upstairs and dress, come down and give the token there.  Not upstairs.  Down.

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ISEA.1

Bruce Charlesworth is an artist, writer and filmmaker. He one of the pioneers of postmodern staged photography and among the first artists to use video and audio to power aspects of physically immersive “narrative environments.” He teaches in the Department of Film/Video/New Genres at the University of Wisconsin Peck School of the Arts in Milwaukee. He previously reported on Ars Electronica in 2009 for Public Address.

1. I checked into my hotel on Sunday and walked out immediately to head to the the World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science. As I turned onto 8th Avenue, there was something not so common in my experience of New York – no cars.

At first it was exhilarating. Sunshine. People. No traffic. A kind of marketplace. What was not to like? I decided to walk down to Times Square to catch the 7 out to Queens.

2. As I walked down the Avenue, I noticed what seemed to be an inordinate number of stands selling “murano-style” glass for $3. There didn’t seem to be any clear difference between the stalls.

3. There were also pashminas and scarves being sold at nearly indistinguishable booths.

4. This booth was no candy ass copy, almost worthy of the State Fair

5. t was good to see The Times reaching out to its neighbors with a robust absence.

6. The LED T-shirts were hard to pass up.

7. But it was the repetition that stood out more than the “unique.” I did some very minimal research, and it appears that this “fall festival” is organized by a street fair organization, Mardi Gras Festival Productions,which, presumably arranges street closure permits with the city and sells space to vendors.

8. Nothing wrong with producing a commercial street festival. The street is still closed. The traffic absent. But it’s not the 85th Feast of San Gennaro, which also, of course, sells space to vendors, where I witnessed the pizza pie making contest a couple of days later.

9. Nor was the Eighth Avenue “Fall Festival” the Bust Magazine Craftacular at the World Maker Faire, which sold “not your mother’s crochet” and other artisan gewgaws that you can’t live without.

10. My point is not to run down the Eighth Avenue Fall Festival per se. It’s unexceptionally true that not all street festivals are created equal. It’s less obvious how to “give back the streets” without still withholding their control. The commercial market stunningly set on 8th Avenue, the fun artisan market with a $28 entrance fee to Maker Faire, and the authentic community festival, also on the streets, are three options.

We are still getting in final documentation of Northern Spark. There is a great photo essay of the event here. Above is video documentation of Christopher Baker’s Waste Not. The projection visualizes in real time time a data dump of the garbage that accumulates every day in Minneapolis. And while not yet part of the public interface, the project is programmable to isolate and visualize various aspects of the waste stream from diapers to plastic.

Baker is also currently showing Murmur Study, at Pace Gallery in New York, a work first commissioned for the Art(ists) on the Verge program.