via SEGD10

Tokujin Yoshioka has designed a window installation for Maison Hermès. Maison Hermès Window Display
duration: Nov 19, 2009 ~ Jan 19, 2010
location: Maison Hermès (ginza5-4-1, chuo-ku, tokyo)

‘air du temps 90x90' installation, silk scarves tirred by a light breeze maison hermès / forum in ginza, tokyo, 2004 photographer: nacasa & partners inc.

via DesignBoom

Pane Chair Tokujin Yoshioka (Japanese, born 1967) 2003. Polyester fiber, 29 1/2 x 29 1/2 x 31" (74.9 x 74.9 x 78.7 cm). Gift of The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art. © 2009 Tokujin Yoshioka

via MOMA

Crystal Furniture Grown by Tokujin Yoshioka.

“As part of his “Second Nature” exhibition visitors were able to watch the crystalline chairs grow in large aquariums filled with a mineral solution. Although the shape of the fiber initially guides the crystals into chair-like objects, Yoshioka adds another dimension by allowing the chairs to choose their own form.” – via Inhabitat

Dry run installing Camille Utterback's new project at West End. Photo: Alan H. Davidson.

On Monday, Camille used some “funnoodles” to mock up final location of her interactive lighting installation in the theater at the new West End development.

Funnoodles to mock up hanging locations for interactive LED lights. Photo: Alan H. Davidson

More pictures here.

Today they install the real thing.

Acoording to the project website,

“The Tampa Public Mood Ring (TPMR) is a combined internet and spatial artwork installation which allows an online news community to display the emootional condition of public news stories as color hue. It is based on the wearable “mood ring” which chemically changes color according to body temperature. The online artwork responds to participants news concerns and accordingliy recallibrates the color intense LED lighting in a physical location. For the Lights on Tampa program, the ring draws on the ocal and national sports community proplled by NFL fanaticism leading to the mega event, Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa.”

Feeling great — or angry — about something you just read or heard about? Register your feelings at the Tampa Mood Ring project and watch as the giant football sculpture changes colors based on the collective mood of Tampa Bay.
via TampaBay.com

The Tampa Public Mood Ring is realized through Lights On Tampa and includes partnerships among the City of Tampa and Gerdau Ameristeel. Gerdau Ameristeel, an international company headquartered in Tampa is fabricating the temporary ring structure, designed by Pappenheimer, out of Orange Bowl steel. TampaBay.com provides the news context, while ESPN will periodically inlcude the work in its audience polls and newscasts.

Public Mood at the 2006 01SJ Biennial

In 2006, Pappenheimer presented a small-scale, indoor version of this work, Public Mood: Light Temperature, as part of the C4F3 Interactive Cafe at the 1st 01SJ Biennial and ISEA2006 Symposium.

D-Tower

In 2005, Lars Spuybroek of Nox with Q.S. Serafign completed a not dissimilar project, D-Tower, which illuminates a specially constructed tower in Doetinchem, Netherlands, according to the results of an ongoing poll related to emotions of hate, love, happinesss and fear. See:

• http://www.arcspace.com/architects/nox/d_tower/index.htm
• http://www.d-toren.nl/site/

I saw their prototype for a responsive “breathing” building skin as part of the Vapor exhibition at Southern Exposure. As curators Jordan Geiger and Alison Sant wrote:

“Living City is a full-scale prototype building skin designed to breathe in response to air quality. David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang have been developing one of the first architecture prototypes to link local responses in a building to a distributed network of sensors throughout the city. The prototype will be exhibited at SoEx, opening and closing its gills in response to information the sensors collect.”

David Benjamin + Soo-In Yang, The Living City, prototype, installation view, Vapor, Souther Exposure. via Shotgun Review

The breathing facade is an R&D project, essentially, of a larger investigation about the “living city,” which they see as

• A platform for the future when buildings talk to one another
• An exploration of the vitality of the city through new forms of public space—air and facade

Or as they subtitle their explanatory video Buildings Talk, “From the old model of local input with local output … to the new model of local and global input with local and global output.”

River Glow

Another environmentally responsive project The Living has prototyped is River Glow, “a network of pods that float in public waterways, sense water quality, and send a signal visible from the water or on shore.”

Nuage Vert

River Glow, in particular, reminds me of HeHe’s Nuage Vert, which won the Green Prix for Environmental Art at the 2008 01SJ Biennial and is a literally spectacular effort to use responsive visualization to motivate the local population to change their electricity consumption patterns, thereby affecting the amount of pollution produced by a nearby powerplant.

Fade to Black

A more conceptual, less spectacular, but nonetheless important version of responsively visualizing environmental conditions was the Bureau of Inverse Technology’s BANGBANG network from 2000, in particular the Fade to Black [FTB] node or capability.

“Fade to Black is a network of webcams oriented skyward. Image on the webcam fades to black as pollutant film accumulates on the lens. Provides visual and empirical information on air quality; viewable in live stream or archived [concatanated] format. Test deployments: Houston TX, Hollywood CA, Bronx vs Broadway NYC. Additional sites/host computers being actively sought. This project is part of the BangBang camera network.”

Watch video.

It’s a little hard to tell, but it looks like Jim Campbell’s “light bulb grid” was the version shown in New York, but we also commissioned a new version for the recent 01SJ Biennial, 1st and San Fernando.

More pix of the amazing Moveable Type by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin here.

More pix of The Fountain by David Small and Ben Tre here.

Also in the top 10 is Nuage Vert by HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen), which won the 01SJ Green Prix for Environmental Art.

via weplaytech

I was in New York last weekend and made a point of going to see Gilbert & George’s 1970 video “A Portrait of the Artists as Young Men,” which Creative Time was presenting as part of its 44 1/2 program in Times Square. I was not disappointed. The dissonance between the stillness of the video, where they stare unblinkingly (pretty much) at the camera without making any kind of effort – including to be perfectly still – and the frenetic blinking of the Times Square signage around them is even eerier than seeing the video in a white cube setting.

PDPal: Julian Bleecker, Scott Paterson, Marina Zurkow

PDPal, which I commissioned while at the Walker was also presented by Creative Time as part of its 59th minute program in 2003, and the sheer scale is always impressive, but Gilbert & George’s video was memorable for more than its scale.

I suppose at some level it’s just the difference of stillness, length, and black and white, which makes it stand out and like the Richard Linklater-influenced Chuck (Schwab) ads, the effect would lose its power through over-saturation, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Journal: Germaine Koh

Gilbert & George also reminded me of another favorite work, “Journal,” by Germaine Koh, which I commissioned for the Cleveland Ingenuity Fest in 2007. She wrote a daily 40 word “diary” on a LED news ticker in downtown Cleveland for a month – each day, the cumulative entries would be displayed hourly. Something about inserting her private tribulations into the latest stock news and international crises was equally compelling, even if one didn’t know her or the characters in her life (apologies for the dirty window through which this was recorded).

Germaine Koh, Journal from Steve Dietz on Vimeo.

Urban Screens

Where can we start an art urban screen program in the Twin Cities?

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The Future of Creative Expression for Cities

A panel at the Creative Cities Summit 2.0
http://creativecitiessummit.com/c/agenda/
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Northern-Lights/41442276136#/event.php?eid=34584795828

Time: 1:30pm – 2:45pm
Location: Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center

Creative practitioners are drawn to places with ecologies that can sustain and invigorate what they do. Creative and cultural activity can revitalize neighborhoods, allow residents to re-imagine the place they live, and shape a new identity for a place in the face of competition for talent, investment, and recognition. The Future of Creative Expression for Cites will explore the value and impact that practitioners working across the fields of art, design, architecture, urban planning and new technology are making on cities now and will discuss the implications for the future. Join our group of panelists as they share examples, inspiration and insights from their work and participate in the debate.

Moderator:
Cezanne Charles, Director of Creative Industries, ArtServe Michigan

Featuring:
Monica Ponce de Leon, Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Steve Dietz, Artistic Director of ZER01 San Jose, CA
Lewis Biggs, Chief Executive of Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK

Thursday, October 16

The City As Interactive Installation

http://northern.lights.mn/2008/10/the-city-as-interactive-installation/
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Northern-Lights/41442276136#/event.php?eid=28913384207

Time: 6:15pm – 8:00pm
Location: Milwaukee Art Museum

The exhibition Act/React at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Oct. 4 – Jan. 11, is one of the most significant exhibitions of the art of the interactive installation within the white cube of the museum. With the rise and convergence of mobile computing, ubiquitous Internet access, and locative services such as global positioning systems, many artists are working to make the urban environment itself a space of action and reaction.

Steve Dietz, artistic director of the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, and executive director of Northern Lights, will discuss the burgeoning practice of interactive art in the public sphere, from urban scale installations to ephemeral interventions. He will explore how such practices can change the relationship of a city’s citizenry to its built environment.

On Thursday, October 16, at 6:15 pm Steve Dietz, artistic director of the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, and executive director of Northern Lights, will discuss the burgeoning practice of interactive art in the public sphere, from urban scale installations to ephemeral interventions. He will explore how such practices can change the relationship of a city’s citizenry to its built environment.

Milwaukee Art Museum
700 N Art Museum Dr
Milwaukee, WI USA 53202