Gimme Shelter

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Firefly

Schuykill Center for environmental education presents functional woodland shelters made from recycled and reused industrial materials as well as sustainable harvested bamboo. This is a really cool environmental exhibition for anyone interested in the environmental sustainable architecture or industrial design concepts. The projects presented were chosen from over 80 designs submitted by 65 teams from across the US and internationally. Check out the winning designs at http://www.schuykillcenter.org/gimmeshelter/

United Nations Mural

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Centenarian Swiss artist Hans Erni created a 60-mitre-long ceramic tile mural entitled “Tu panta rei”, which adorns the security entrance of the United Nations building in Geneva, Switzerland.

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America’s Best Public Art

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June 20, 2009—Forty of the best public art works in the United States, including projects from 32 cities in 15 states, were recognized at the 2009 Americans for the Arts annual convention held in Seattle from June 18–20. The works were chosen from more than 300 entries across the country. More here or download pdf
.

Nancy Ann Coyne, Speaking of Home. IDS-Macy’s skyway over Nicollet Mall, between 7th and 8th Streets in downtown Minneapolis, MN. Co-presented by Forecast Public Art, Family Housing Fund and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota. http://www.speakingofhome.org/

instead of hurrying by a construction site

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Rachel Hayes, Rainbow Conversation. Re:Construction Initiative


Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brussels, 1932

Power to the solar

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“Designed by public art team Harries/Heder, the installation consists of 15 flower-like solar photovoltaic panels located on a pedestrian and bike path between the village of Mueller and Austin’s highway I-35.”

via Inhabitat

“It’s called the GreenPix Zero Energy Media Wall, and with 2,292 individual color LEDs, comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. monitor screen, it’s said to be the largest color LED display in the world. The wall is solar-powered too — photovoltaics are integrated into the wall’s glass curtain, and it harvests power during the day, to illuminate the display at night.”

via Metaefficient

Solar Collector by Gorbet Design

“In a collaboration between the community and the sun, Solar Collector gathers human expression and solar energy during the day, then brings them together each night in a performance of flowing light patterns.”

Ken Gregory’s Sun Sucker: Solaris consumis

“Sun Suckers are machines. They are classified in the order Real Artificial Life. Sun Suckers have stout flat bodies. The skin is a large photovoltaic cell and usually shiny although in a few species they are dull and opaque. Sun Suckers have one large compound eye (photoresistor) situated on the top of the body. This large eye can read how bright the sun is during the day and detect when night falls. Beside the eye is a thick whisker. This sensor (thermistor) measures the ambient temperature in close proximity of the Sun Sucker.”

via Parks & Wildlife

Pascal Glissmann & Martina Hoefflin, Elf

“elfs are small, analog creatures reacting to light, calling the attention of the observer with their delicate sounds and movements.”

via

Bjoern Schuelke, solar-kinetic object

“The Pearl Avenue Branch Library in San Jose, Calif., features a public art display that combines photovoltaic cells and art glass in an architectural application. Artist Lynn Goodpasture collaborated with Peters Glass Studios in Portland, Ore., in the creation of Solar Illumination I: Evolution of Language, an artwork that incorporates four art glass windows in the building’s southwest corner that convert sunlight to 24-Vdc electricity.”

via Solar Glazing

Give me a V-I-C-T-O-R-Y for art

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Mel Bochner’s Win! (2009) will be painted directly on the walls opposite the monumental staircase in the northeastern portion of the stadium.

There must be something in the water in Dallas. According to Artinfo, Dallas Cowboys co-owner Jerry Jones philosophized about football and contemporary art and the public:

“Cowboys Stadium isn’t just a place to go and see a game or a concert, it’s an experience you share with your family and your community. That will include things that a lot of people wouldn’t anticipate seeing at a stadium — like contemporary art. Football is full of the unexpected and the spontaneous — it can make two strangers into friends. Art has the power to do that too, to get people talking, and looking, and interacting.”



Doug Aitken’s star (2008), which was acquired for the stadium, will be installed in the elevator lobby.

“The program kicks off with 14 commissioned works, including contributions by heavyweights Franz Ackermann, Annette Lawrence, Lawrence Weiner, and Olafur Eliasson, as well as acquisitions of existing pieces by Doug Aitken, Wayne Gonzales, Jacqueline Humphries, and another work by Eliasson. Pieces will mainly be installed in high-traffic locations, such as the four principal entries and the walls above the main concourse concession areas, which measure 15 by 114 feet. Some will wrap around stadium walls.”

Meanwhile, over at the American Airlines Arena, there are eleven large, high resolution LED “Super Screens.”

“Eight of these screens, 4 on each side of the plaza, move on horizontal tracks to allow for a myriad of configurations and motion possibilities. These screens can also be combined in sets of four to create 31’x53’ super screens with HD resolution. High fidelity sound and a theatrical lighting system heighten the experience to an immersive level.”

Originally, the screens solicited digital art submissions and commissioned work by the likes of Jennifer Steinkamp (below),

although the Victory Park website currently states:

“Victory Park is NOT currently accepting submissions for its Victory Arts Program: Stylized live-action, stunning visual storytelling, cutting-edge motion graphics, experimental animation or very short films.”

Let’s hope that the V-I-C-T-O-R-Y for art at the Cowboys Stadium is not quite so short-lived.

Stop (genocide)

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Michael Zeng’s The Stop is an installation of 10 stop signs – at least from the front – at Charlson Park and Vanier Park, Vancouver, Canada, as part of the Vancouver Biennale 2009, which take place September 2009 – June 2011. Apparently, the “stop” view is from the sea wall looking into the park. When you walk around the backside, however, the signs become pink and remind me of a Google map pin marking a photo op with the harbor in the background.

It’s amusing. It would probably make me stop, make me look, maybe even listen. What more do you want in your public art?

It’s probably not a fair comparison, but even though I never saw it in person, I have a powerful mind image of Hachivi Edgar Heap of Bird’s signs along the Mississippi River commemorating the death by hanging of 40 Native Americans in 1862 and 1865 in Mankato, MN.

According to the artist,

“As a sign of respect, forty Dakota-English, red lettered metal signs were exhibited originally in 1990 in the earth in the business zone of what was called the Grain Belt. This is a proud ‘historical’ districts of the city of Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota that houses the grain and flour mills, canals, and facilities to ship out the fruits of ‘American progress.'”

That would have made me stop, too, I think.

Listen to Clara Kim’s take on the project when she was a curatorial intern at the Walker Art Center.

Does feminism affect how you portray subjects such as creativity or technology?

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“It absolutely does. The major inventions in tech, the computer language, [came from] Ada Lovelace, artificial intelligence was invented by Mary Shelley. Cellular phone technology was invented by Hedy Lamarr. The major influences have all been women, but people continue to say that women have no aptitude for science or technology.”

Lynn Herhsman via io9

See also “IMG MGMT: Life As A Woman, Hedy Lamarr,” Guest Post By: Michaela Melian, Art Fag City.

Sketches of free sheep and a wild sheep chase

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“Seattle Skethcer” is an illustrated journal of life in the Puget Sound region by Times artist Gabriel Campanario. In this story about “Public Art from the Back of a Truck,” he sketches the story of a 24-hour reading marathon of Haruki Murakami’s “A Wild Sheep Chase” from the back of a truck. According to Campanario, Holly Brown read the book out loud into a mike while Niko Rey transcribed the words on the side of the truck and another performance artist, D.K. Pan, typed on a $40 Olympia DeLuxe typewriter.

Rey and Pan are the founders of the Free Sheep Foundation,

“a non-profit organization whose mission is to foster site-specific projects through artistic interventions in architectural spaces. The foundation seeks partnerships with developers, architects, government agencies, and other arts organizations to identify and occupy buildings void of activity, opening these spaces to artists as facilities for cultural production; artist studios, exhibition and performance space. In transforming disused spaces, the foundation serves to integrate artists within the process of development. Through investigation and research, each project will contribute to the continuum of the past and future memories of a site.”

Facebook.

Red tape. And yellow and blue and green and white.

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via Hrag Vartanian

“My street work consists mostly of isometric rectangles and squares. I selectively place these graphics around New York to highlight the unexpected contours and elegant geometry of the city itself. All execution of a piece is done on site with litle to no planning.”

Akash Nihalani

West End interactive art project

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Camille Utterback, West End project

Back in April, Forecast Public Art helped organize an invitational competition for two public art projects at the West End complex in St. Louis Park, MN.

Duke Realty is redeveloping approximately 40 acres at the southwest corner of I-394 & Highway 100. The $400 million mixed-use project is called “The West End”. The first phase includes a 350,000 square foot lifestyle retail center and approximately 30,000 square feet of office space. “The Shops at West End” will include fashion boutiques, a wide variety of restaurants, a 14 screen, state-of-the-art movie theater, and a grocery store. This unique shopping and entertainment destination began in April 2008 and is expected to be completed in September 2009. Later phases of The West End will include 1.1 million square feet of class A office space distributed between several buildings and a hotel.

Camille Utterback won the commission for the “state-of-the-art movie theater” with a proposal for hanging interactive full spectrum color light columns, which are activated by people touching a balcony handrail. Here is an early mock up of the project from her proposal.

And here are some pictures of the site under construction.

I recently received a note from Camille that she will be installing the final project the week of August 30. An incredibly short timeline! Here she is in her San Francisco studio with one of the prototype columns (still with some packing around the joints, and no lights). Can’t wait to see the results – and plan to see all my movies at The West End.

Entertailment and Architainment

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La Vitrine – Montreal from steven bulhoes on Vimeo.

via Urban Prankster

Moment Factory, which produced La Vitrine’s installation pictured above, claims that it is North America’s “first permanent ineteractive giant exterior LED wall.” There are probably enough qualifiers there not to aruge too much.

La Vitrine is in a section of Moment Factory’s website called “Entertailment” – Entertainment + Retail, get it? They also have an “Architainment” section – no bonus prize for guessing this one – with “permanent exterior multimedia environments including building facades, public parks, urban entertainment installations and theme parks.” I wish I’d seen the Michael Jackson tribute at the Moon Palace in Mexico. They’ve also done quite an amazing “vast choreography synchronizing and harmonizing light, sound and video (giant screens, LED and architectural projection), creating an ever changing visual symphony” for “Perkins Rowe, among many other literally spectacular projects.” Watch a “behind-the-scenes tour of Moment Factory below.

“A new approach to urbanity”

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Snuggles

Snuggle - das mobile Hotel

raumlaborberlin has a solution for temporary festival housing.

“Snuggles was
designed by Berlin-based Raumlabor, which says that it is not an architecture firm, but rather an interdisciplinary team interested in urbanism, and the study of public and private space. The modular system was intended for use as comfortable, safe housing for travelers to festivals, workshops, or other artistic events. Each unit features a three-sided pod with a window and tunnel access to a central pod with sanitary facilities.”

via Inhabitat

According to their website, raumlaborberlin began working on the issues of contemporary architecture and urbanism in 1999m, and in various interdisciplinary working teams they investigate strategies for urban renewal.

Eichbaumoper

Eichbaumoper

Eichbaumoper is Raumlabor’s vision for the transformation of the Eichbaum underground station between Mülheim and Essen where a new type of opera will be created in an on-site opera site office.

Spacebuster

Spacebuster

Spacebuster opens urban space for temporary collective uses.

“The Spacebuster is build on the basis of a step van and a big inflatable space coming out of the back of the van fitting up to 80 persons in it. People enter the bubble through the passenger’s door of the van walking through to the back down a ramp right into the inflated space. The bubble is supported by air pressure generated by a fan underneath the ramp. The membrane of the bubble is translucent so people on the inside can see schematically what´s going on outside and vice versa. So the membrane acts as a semi permeable border between the public and the more private.”

Stick On City

Stick on city, an imaginary landscape through which visitors can take a tour, then add their own vision by drawing in and simply sticking it into the city, was presented at the 11th biennale of architecture, venice. In part it was a response to a visit to raumlabor by Archigramist Dennis Crompton, who talked about

“the scrapyard of visions, the city as responsive system, interactive buildings, good intentions, imaginary cities and the art of architecture that cannot fail.”

“A new approach to urbanity”

Written by

Snuggles

Snuggle - das mobile Hotel

raumlaborberlin has a solution for temporary festival housing.

“Snuggles was
designed by Berlin-based Raumlabor, which says that it is not an architecture firm, but rather an interdisciplinary team interested in urbanism, and the study of public and private space. The modular system was intended for use as comfortable, safe housing for travelers to festivals, workshops, or other artistic events. Each unit features a three-sided pod with a window and tunnel access to a central pod with sanitary facilities.”

via Inhabitat

According to their website, raumlaborberlin began working on the issues of contemporary architecture and urbanism in 1999m, and in various interdisciplinary working teams they investigate strategies for urban renewal.

Eichbaumoper

Eichbaumoper

Eichbaumoper is Raumlabor’s vision for the transformation of the Eichbaum underground station between Mülheim and Essen where a new type of opera will be created in an on-site opera site office.

Spacebuster

Spacebuster

Spacebuster opens urban space for temporary collective uses.

“The Spacebuster is build on the basis of a step van and a big inflatable space coming out of the back of the van fitting up to 80 persons in it. People enter the bubble through the passenger’s door of the van walking through to the back down a ramp right into the inflated space. The bubble is supported by air pressure generated by a fan underneath the ramp. The membrane of the bubble is translucent so people on the inside can see schematically what´s going on outside and vice versa. So the membrane acts as a semi permeable border between the public and the more private.”

Stick On City

Stick on city, an imaginary landscape through which visitors can take a tour, then add their own vision by drawing in and simply sticking it into the city, was presented at the 11th biennale of architecture, venice. In part it was a response to a visit to raumlabor by Archigramist Dennis Crompton, who talked about

“the scrapyard of visions, the city as responsive system, interactive buildings, good intentions, imaginary cities and the art of architecture that cannot fail.”

Admission free, toga required

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Fight! Fight! Fight! Brooklyn vs. Queens vs. Bronx vs. Manhattan in Duke Riley's Those About to Die Salute You

“Those About to Die Salute You, a battle on water wielded with baguette swords and watermelon cannon balls by New York’s art dignitaries, will take place on Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 6 pm in a flooded World’s Fair-era reflecting pool in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, just outside of the Queens Museum of Art. Various types of vessels have been designed and constructed by artist provocateur Duke Riley and his collaborators: the galleons, some made of reeds harvested in the park, will be used to stage a citywide battle of the art museums in which representatives from the Queens Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and El Museo del Barrio will battle before a toga-clad crowd of frenzied onlookers.”

via Queens Museum of Art

“For the Queens Museum, Mr. Riley proposed a naval battle reminiscent of naumachia, a type of bloody sea battle conducted in basins, lakes and amphitheaters to entertain Roman emperors like Caesar, Nero and later, Napoleon in Paris. More lavish than regular gladiator games, these boat battles were sometimes saved for moments when the restless or hungry masses needed placating, historians say. Mr. Riley says he appreciated the sentiment, as the world suffers through an economic downturn.

“The artist also found a parallel in the 1920s economic decadence of the “Great Gatsby” era when the park in Queens was a coal ash heap. He offered to build his boats using Phragmites australis, a wheat-like reed that is choking out the biodiversity of the park’s lakes and nearby wetlands because it can tolerate the ashy pollutants still seeping underneath.”

via WSJ