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.
A film about Rosemary Williams(s)
Check out this Kickstarter campaign for a film by Rosemary Williams about Rosemary Williams starring Rosemary Williams.
Rosemary Williams is also cooking up a storm with her Mom’s Cookies projection for Northern Spark.
The Kuramoto Model (1,000 Fireflies)
The Kuramoto Model (1000 Fireflies) by David Rueter is a “synch mob” on bikes for Northern Spark.
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.
Northern Lights board contributes to Northern Spark
Here at Northern Lights.mn, we are fortunate to have a committed and active board, which can always be counted on for its invaluable insights based on years of collective experience to help build out a nimble, sustainable non-profit organization.
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.
Star Struck on Kickstarter
As part of Northern Spark’s Kickstarter campaign, some remarkable photographs by Gary Smaby are available of many music stars of the 70s. Check out the video.
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.
Ba-ba-bamp-ba-ba-ba-ba bamp-ba I wanna be sedated
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.
In Habit on Kickstarter
Check out the new Kickstarter page for Aniccha Arts’ In Habit: Living Patterns a FREE performance by Aniccha Arts that will take place at the Central Avenue Bridge underpass in conjunction with Northern Spark on June 7th, 8th and 9th, 2012.
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.
Kickstart Northern Spark
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.
http://vimeo.com/36181745
Who owns the virtual public sphere?
Jeff Crouse’s Unlogo was recently featured as part of the 01SJ Biennial in a collaboration with the Berkeley Art Museum as part of their Net Art program. As Richard Rinehart writes in his essay about the project
“Corporate branding coupled with new media transforms our already cluttered visual environment into a pulsing tesseract of capital. Commercial television and video digitally blur some logos while promoting others. Music videos were introduced as short films and commercials for albums, but today’s music videos are commercials within commercials (Lady Gaga’s music video Telephone features nine product placements.) However, new media also offer new forms of resistance and play.”–Richard Rinehart, Digital Media Director and Adjunct Curator, BAM/PFA
Crouse’s Unlogo
“is a web service that eliminates logos and other corporate signage from videos. On a practical level, it takes back your personal media from the corporations and advertisers. On a technical level, it is a really cool combination of some brand new OpenCV and FFMPEG functionality. On a poetic level, it is a tool for focusing on what is important in the record of your life rather than the ubiquitous messages that advertisers want you to focus on.”–Unlogo website
bimbos, San Francisco
Definitely humorous – for a $100 contribution to Crouse’s Kickstarter campaign, he will personally take your favorite movie and use “The Moustachizer” to add moustaches to everyone in the movie. – Unlogo also raises serious issues about how the increasing commercialization and privatization of contemporary society plays out in an increasingly hybrid public space, where all your vacation photos and videos posted to Facebook (or wherever) also become augmented megaphones for the brands and logos in those “memories.”
Join me in supporting Jeff’s Kickstarter campaign for Unlogo.
P.S. Among other sources, let’s not forget Steve Mann’s Eyetap precedent-
“Dr. Mann fights technology with technology, wearing computers on his body and cameras in his glasses so he can ”shoot back” by recording everything he sees. The billboards and advertisements posted on every public surface are a form of ”attention theft,” he says, so he has invented technology that replaces these messages with whatever he would like to see. When he is wearing his ”eyetap” glasses, which project an image onto the retina of his eye, a condom ad in a bathroom becomes a picture of a waterfall.”–New York Times