I want a flash mob.
via flavorwire
“Video of the Day: Digital Small Talk”
Chris Baker’s Murmur Study was tagged as “video of the day” by Flavorwire.
Murmur Study from Christopher Baker on Vimeo.
Murmur Study, along with Baker’s HPVS is part of an exhibition of “Art(ists) On the Verge” Avye Alexandres, Aniccha Arts, Kevin Obsatz, Andrea Steudel, Krista Kelley Walsh and their work commissioned by Northern Lights with support from the Jerome Foundation, which is on exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum through August 23.
Good work…”
“Anyway, I had my metaphorical books open until I moved over to the Artists on the Verge exhibition. It changed the channel in my head, and I felt like someone had nudged me gently awake. All of the artwork necessitated involvement of people in some way (way to go new wave of contemporary art! I like you more than the movements 5 years ago!) which got me thinking about how we, museum people, have sometimes layered the audience experience on top of the artwork. To help inspire or explain if it was more difficult to get at. Why this exhibition seemed so effortless in that respect, was because the viewer was primary to the artwork itself. Of course I felt like I had been woken up! The artwork wanted me to. It needed me to.”
Making the city safe for pedestrians
Piéton Piéton from Piedlabiche on Vimeo.
Pied la biche is a collective that brings people together to make things about cities softness through interventions, science-fictions, films, lectures & texts.
Public Art Network Year in Review 2009
In June, Americans for the Arts presented their annual review, The Public Art Network Year in Review 2009 (from Arts Watch). Janet Echelman and Mildred Howard were the curators. 304 projects were reviewed from 2008 with 40 winning finalists. It is wonderful that two projects from the Twin Cities Metropolitan area were among the top 40 public art projects. The St. Cloud Library Project entitled “Natural Rhythmâ€,
by Chicago artist Lucy Slivinski and Minneapolis artist Nancy Ann Coyne’s
“Speaking of Homeâ€. Forecast Public Art.org was the public art project consultant for the Library project and consultant/co-funder of the “Speaking of Home†project. For the serious public art patron a CD of the projects can be acquired from the Americans for the Arts bookstore.
UnConvention award-winning video
In May, one of the videos for The UnConvention won a Silver Pencil at the New York Art Directors Club OneShow. The video, “Park,” was one of a series of PSA’s called Make an Effort, a campaign for The UnConvention designed by Campbell Mithun to
encourage Twin Cities residents to find their own unconventional ways to welcome the visitors who will be arriving for the Republican National Convention. The campaign does not ignore the undeniable irony of the Republicans’ choice to hold the convention here in Minnesota, and the entire tone of the campaign captures the unique brand of intelligent, rewarding creativity that Minnesota is justifiably world famous for.
The other two videos in the campain were Pin and Limo, and there is a series of downloadable poster pdfs here, including Yard Ornaments and Wally the Beer Man.
Congratulaations to CampbellMithun and thanks for their participation in The UnConvention. Special thanks to everyone who made the campaign possible including: The UnConvention, LaBreche, Hungry Man Productions, Jonathan Chapman Photography, Unleashed Productions, and Ditch Edit.
The UnConvention
The UnConvention was a non-partisan collaboration of local and national cultural organizations and citizens, initiated by Northern Lights before, during and after the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, to explore the creative intersection of participatory media and participatory democracy. It existed as a counterpoint to the highly scripted and predetermined nature of the contemporary presidential nomination process and conventions.
Opening reception Art(ists) On the Verge, Weisman Art Museum
Opening reception
Tomorrow night, Thursday, July 9, from 8-10 pm, there will be an opening reception for Art(ists) On the Verge at the Weisman Art Museum.
https://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/
http://weisman.umn.edu/exhibits/AOV/home.html
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Northern-Lights/41442276136#/event.php?eid=203135440643&ref=mf
Opening Night Performances
8:30 pm Krista Kelley Walsh, Public Eye Action, Northrop Mall and Weisman Art Museum
9:00 pm Aniccha Arts will perform an excerpt of Cloud Turn, Weisman Art Museum
9:30 triquetera, an allegorical exercise. Andrea Steudel and David Steinman with sounds by John Keston present an original outdoor video performance on the facade of the Weisman Art Museum
Art(ists) On the Verge
Artists on the Verge 2008-2009 at the Weisman Art Museum features works or documentation of works made by the inaugural group of Art(ists) on the Verge fellows. Installations of all six commissions are included. Artists are Aniccha Arts (Pramila Vasudevan, Director), Avye Alexandres, Christopher Baker, Kevin Obstatz, Andrea Steudel, and Krista Kelley Walsh.
Art(ists) on the Verge (AOV) is a new Northern Lights fellowship program that supports Minnesota-based, emerging artists working experimentally at the intersection of art and technology, with a focus on practices that are social, virtual and/or participatory. The program is sponsored by the Jerome Foundation.
In September 2008 a jury consisting of Liz Armstrong (The Minneapolis Institute of Art), Steve Dietz (Northern Lights), Ben Heywood (Soap Factory), Ana Serrano (Canadian Film Center Media Lab), and Anu Vikram (Headlands Residency Program) selected 6 artists for AOV fellowships. This exhibition represents the culmination of the fellowship year.
Artists
Avye Alexandres
Once, 2009
interactive environment
https://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/alexandres/
Once is a mixed media, immersive installation designed to function as memory might. Placing the viewer on the edge of an ambiguous, changing and ephemeral space, the work raises questions about the placement, origins, and malleability of our memories. It also highlights the difficulty we have controlling our surroundings and recollections.
Aniccha Arts
Cloud Turn, 2009
DVD
https://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/aniccha-arts/
For the Weisman Art Museum, Pramila Vasudevan, founder and director of Annicha Arts presents documentation of the interactive dance performance Cloud Turn presented at Pillsbury House Theater in early June 2009.
Cloud Turn is a part of Aniccha Arts’s larger multi-media endeavor The Weather Vein Project. Created in a time of publicly acknowledged climate crisis, the work investigates the human desire and need for weather modification. The Weather Vein Project is based on a series of workshops with students and the general public throughout the Twin Cities as well as an online discussion site exploring the arising concern about global water scarcity.
Aniccha Arts / Mark Fox
Weather Oracle, 2009
interactive sound sculpture
This interactive sculpture is a part of Annicha Arts’s, The Weather Vein Project. Designed to be shown in the entryway to the performance of the interactive dance performance, Cloud Turn, the sculpture responds sonically to the audience.
Annicha Arts
wecanchangetheweather.org, 2009
blog
The web log accessible on this computer explores and documents our weather memories in an age of increasing warmth. Developed by Pramila Vasudevan, founder and director of Aniccha Arts, primary contributors are Shalini Gupta, Cecilia Martinez, and Mark Seeley with workshop contributors Piotr Szyhalski from Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Ian Rhodes and Martha Johnson from Highland Park Junior High School.
Christopher Baker
Murmur Study, 2009
Thermal printers, paper, Twitter
https://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/baker/
Murmur Study is an installation that examines the rise of micro-messaging technologies such as Twitter and Facebook’s status update, which have become a kind of digital small talk or contemporary coffee klatsch. But unlike water-cooler conversations, these fleeting thoughts are accumulated, archived and digitally indexed by corporations. While the future of these archives remains to be seen, the sheer volume of publicly accessible personal—often emotional—expression might give us pause.
This installation consists of 30 thermal printers that continuously monitor Twitter for new messages containing variations on common emotional utterances. Messages containing hundreds of variations on expressions(?) such as argh, meh, grrrr, oooo, ewww, and hmph, are printed as an endless waterfall of text accumulating in tangled piles below.
Murmur Study is an ongoing collaboration with Márton András Juhász and the Kitchen Budapest. Baker, a former research scientist, is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Time and Interactivity program and currently has a residency fellowship at The Kitchen in Budapest.
Christopher Baker
HPVS (Human Phantom Vibration Syndrome), 2009
cell phones
HPVS (Human Phantom Vibration Syndrome) is a kinetic sculpture that considers the subtle, often-subconscious ways that mobile communication technologies shape our senses. The title references the recently discovered Human Phantom Vibration Syndrome—a syndrome wherein mobile phone users become hyper-attentive to their mobile devices, often experiencing phantom ringing sensations even in the absence of incoming calls or messages. This work carefully orchestrates the vibrations of over 500 mobile phones to produce a familiar yet quietly disturbing cacophony.
Kevin Obsatz
The Gate to the Enclosure, 2009
four-screen video installation
https://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/obsatz/
The Gate to the Enclosure is a four-screen video installation that challenges the practice of restricting televisual communication to “keyhole” or “vignette” dynamics, in which the author of the work is both safely hidden behind his/her framing choices, and in complete, unilateral control of the experience of the viewer. For this installation, the artist built a four-camera video apparatus that captures a 360-degree field of vision. He then experimented with it in various environments, both as a static observer and as a form that can be manipulated in three-dimensional space.
In The Gate to the Enclosure the dynamics of the relationship between cameraperson, apparatus and filmed “subject” are very different than those at play in the traditional act of filming with a single camera. The keyhole effect is shattered as notions of inside and outside the field of view are blurred. As a result, the viewers become observer and observed, subject and object, positioned on the same side of the lens, a part of the same landscape.
Andrea Steudel
Mobile Shadow Projection Theater, 2009
DVD
https://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/steudel/
Andrea Steudel, collaborating with different artists, such as Angela Olson of the Open Eye Figure Theater, Jetpack Puppeteer Karen Haselman and for a performance at the Weisman, David Steinman with John Keston, created a portable projection system tailored for shadow puppetry. She then deployed it ubiquitously in the public sphere in performances of varying formality. This looping DVD shows video documentation of her urban performances over the course of the fellowship.
Krista Kelley Walsh
Public Eye Action, 2009
computer, graphite on paper
https://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/walsh/
Public Eye Action is a series of site-specific visual events created for public webcams. The events initiated by the artist and undertaken before the cameras humorously hijack these “eyes in the sky†to expose their persistent presence in our daily lives. For the Weisman installation Kelley Walsh has installed a computer monitor linked to a webcam positioned on the University’s Northrop Mall and will work with the community to stage actions there. In addition, Kelley Walsh has installed 5 drawings she created from selected images captured from web cameras.
The Banff New Media Institute, ZER01, and Sundance Institute Announce Locative Cinema Commission
Joint Venture to Stimulate and Showcase New Media Technologies
http://zero1.org/press/releases/banff-zero1-sundance
The timeframe for applications is short – due August 3 – but the opportunity for a residency and technical support to produce a new work to be shown at the 2010 01SJ Biennial, the 2011 Sundance Festival, and the 2011 Banff Summer Arts Festvial is enormous. Please distribute widely.
For more information on the Locative Cinema Commission: http://zero1.org/01sj/lccall
San Jose, Calif. – July 8, 2009 ―The Banff New Media Institute at The Banff Centre, ZER01: The Art and Technology Network, and Sundance Institute’s New Frontier initiative today announced the formation of The Locative Cinema Commission, a joint venture to stimulate and showcase the creation of a locative cinema project. The Commission is presently soliciting proposals. The chosen artist or artists will realize their proposed project during a residency at The Banff Centre, to be completed by July 2010. They will also receive a $4,500 (four-thousand five hundred dollar) commissioning fee, related production funds, and will present their work at the 2010 01SJ Biennial from September 15 – 19, the 2011 edition of New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival from January 20-30, and the 2011 Banff Summer Arts Festival.
“ZER01, Sundance Institute and the Banff New Media Institute all have proven commitment to supporting emerging forms of creative practice,” said Susan Kennard, Director and Executive Producer at The Banff New Media Institute. “It is our hope that this collaboration will inspire the creation of a dynamic new work that can be exhibited to wide and diverse audiences in San Jose, Park City, and Banff and excite the public about changing ways to experience art.”
The purpose of this commission is to use “locative cinema” as an apparatus through which artists can share their vision using place in ways that are both specific and generic, or at least transferable. The Commission understands the notion of “locative cinema” as a platform-agnostic apparatus through which artists share their vision of place. Any variation on how to present an artist’s work will be considered, from cell phones to the black box of the cinema, from mixed reality to street theatre, from GPS to handhelds, from distributed to ambient. Proposals will be evaluated on their ability to engage people using place as a key element of the experience. The chosen project will receive a $4,500 commissioning fee a residency in Banff with up to $5,000 in related costs, and technical support from the Banff New Media Institute. Reasonable presentation costs, including necessary travel, will also be covered. The final project will be presented in San Jose, California, Banff, Canada, and Park City, Utah, and therefore must be realizable in those locations.
Proposals will be accepted until August 3, 2009, and must include a conceptual proposal describing the relationship of the project to the place, a technical proposal outlining the basic parameters of the project, and strategies for problem solving during the residency. Other requirements include a budget, list of collaborators, links to examples of related past work, and resumes of key personnel.
More information and specific application details are available at http://zero1.org/01sj/LCcall.
“art or larceny”
via Shakesville
Grendel Bear
via examiner.com
Buckminster Fuller and Olafur Eliasson Exhibition
Recently I had the good fortune to see the Buckminster Fuller exhibit while visiting Chicago. He was one of the first interdisciplinary thinkers and an early advocate of alternative energy. This is an excellent exhibit for those who want to be inspired by a true visionary. He was an architect, engineer, environmental scientist, mathematician, philosopher and visual artist. One can explore his quest to discover what one person can do to serve the needs of his fellow human beings. Olafur Eliasson’s work is concurrently showing until September 13, 2009.The Buckminster Fuller exhibit is showing at the Contemporary Museum of Art in Chicago, extended until July 5, 2009.
Food for Thought: Continuing the Discussion on “Creating A Sustainable Public Art Practice”
Panelists Christine Baeumler, Seitu Jones, Nicholas Legerous, and Ralph Nelson of Loom Studio shared their recent projects as well as views on the latest concerns and trends in sustainable public art practices (including the desire for a word to replace sustainable!). An inquisitive group of students from Vesper College and a hearty group of Twin Cities based public artists spurred the discussion along.
Forecast collaborated with NEMAA, Vesper College, and The Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota to host the evening to celebrate and promote the newest issue of Public Art Review which focuses on the same theme.
As is always the case with good dialog many more questions were raised than answers given. Forecast collected written questions from the audience and encourages you to continue the discussion online. Feel free to add your thoughts to the questions posed below! Or just read them as food for thought.
Does the future of sustainable art making lie in the manipulation of living organisms as a medium – moving away from the static?
How can (public) art inspire “mainstream” America to act?- Brad Baso
What change needs to occur within (public) art as a practice in order to be even more sustainable? What is holding the field back? – Brad Baso
Where can one learn more about reusing water on one’s own property? Do you know of any city funded programs to encourage property owners to set up these types of projects? (related to a discussion on watershed art projects).
What are the negative & positive effects of the current economic downturn on sustainable public art & artists? – Laurie Phillips
Sustainability demands scientific, technical knowledge of creative professionals. Will “Sustainability” in art eventually lead us to merge the studio with the laboratory (or field studies) in a seamless synthesis? Where might this lead?
Nick differentiated between his world before and after being involved in a community. Could everyone comment on their experience working as part of a greater community? – Susannah
Please speak a bit more to how initiatives, community collaborations, and community history can become a part of sustainability.
How can public art be utilized better, especially concerning business as usual? Do you think art can help to change people value systems and help to work for social change?
How do beauty and emotion (of the work and process) help to build community and a better world?
When you envision a project that cuts across disciplines and public entities, is it best to approach them separately or together?
What skills, experiences, and insights do aritsts contribute to the sustainability community of scientists, government business, etc? Why should they be at the table? – Brad Baso
Does public art create change within or in spite of the system? – Brad Baso
What is being sustained in sustainability? – Jon Spayde
“Sustainability” – overused indeed, so what buzz word should we start using instead?
How do you break into public art “creating sense of place” when pigeon-holed by commercial sense of place?
How do you get started in public art if your background is in commercial art but your heart is public?
iPhone app demoed at Art-A-Whirl
[Recently Northern Lights and mnartists.org commissioned Abigail and Michael Mouw to produce an iPhone/iPod Touch application, which will allow anyone to present their views – visual and verbal – on art in the public sphere. We will blog more about this in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, Mike and Abby will be posting regular updates about their project.–mediachef]
Abigail + Michael Mouw (left) at Art-a-Whirl
We demonstrated ideas for our artists’ iPhone/iPod Touch app at Art-A-Whirl in Minneapolis, during the weekend of May 15-17. Approximately 35,000 artists and supporters attend this open studio event in the northeast warehouse district.
Artists iPhone app Goal
We are artists-in-virtual-residence at Northern Lights and mnartists.org, as both organizations are providing the virtual studio space that will allow us to create an iPhone/iPod Touch app. Our goal for the app is to connect artists and arts supporters in Minneapolis-St. Paul to public art in our area. We hope the app will allow users to identify their favorite public art, locate it on a map, and share thoughts and feelings with each other about the work. We hope to launch a free app through Apple’s iTunes store in spring 2010.
Feedback from Art-A-Whirl attendees
Art-A-Whirl was an excellent venue to discuss ideas around our app-in-progress. Our target audience of local artists and supporters were in attendance. They responded positively to the concept, and understood the wide appeal of an app that runs on the iPod Touch, which works on any wireless network, and doesn’t need a phone contract. The positive potential of the app for the local arts community was communicated through the informal front-end testing of our concept.
Public Art 2.0?
This call for what might be termed “Public Art 2.0,” with its emphasis on art as a “means of exchange and shared dialog” is worth quoting in full.
The new art project on the Berlin Underground, U10 – from here to the imaginary and back again, sets a focus on the social and collaborative dimension of public art.
Artists or collaborative groups of artists and non-artists are invited to take part in this call for submissions. Preference will be given to artists who see their work as a means of exchange and shared dialogue and who are interested in reaching new audiences. This may include a readiness to collaborate with, for example, groups of BVG staff or passengers who have little experience of contemporary art. The organisers cannot take part in the call themselves. The U10 project will run for a maximum of 3 years.
The organisers are looking for situation specific and/or participatory projects which focus on the Berlin Underground and its staff and/or users. They can range from being short, interventionistic artistic reactions to specific occurrences on the Underground to being long term collaborations. The competition sees members of staff, passengers, kiosk and snack bar owners, buskers and ticket traders not only as a potential audience but also as potential collaborators on a joint research of the Berlin Underground.
Run by Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NBGK) Berlin, in collaboration with the Berlin Underground Train Network (BVG), financed by Berlin Council’s Department of Culture and supported by Wall AG.
via actuphoto
And the winner is . . .
Every year the Museums and the Web conference awards “Best of the Web” in various categories. This year, in the Innovative or Experimental Site category, the winner was My Yard Our Message.
My Yard Our Message was part of Northern Lights’ UnConvention collaboration.
The jury said about the project:
- Awesome … brilliant job
- leveraging a local event with national implications
- the quality of the final slogan boards were as good if not
- better than a corporate ad agency
- the content worked during election season but also stands up beautifully now, post-election, both in terms of interest and also as a historical snapshot of the thinking of the time
Yard signs are as ubiquitous and familiar to the American political landscape as baby-kissing and stump speeches, combining catchy images and pithy campaign slogans to increase visibility for vying candidates and their parties’ messages. In honor of this election season, My Yard Our Message turns this tradition of political ephemera on its ear with a unique national competition: we’re putting the message and the creative design for these political yard signs in the hands of artists and then—in true democratic fashion—you, the people, will vote among the entries to determine a selection of fifty winners, whose designs will be made available to order as full-sized political yard-signs after August 1.
More details about the project and the process of putting it together are here.
My Yard Our Message, a project conceived by Scott Sayre, is produced by the Walker Art Center and mnartists.org in collaboration with The UnConvention.
The UnConvention is a non-partisan collaboration of local and national cultural organizations and citizens, initiated by Northern Lights, exploring the creative intersection of participatory media and participatory democracy. It exists as a counterpoint to the highly scripted and predetermined nature of the contemporary presidential nomination process and conventions.