In conjunction with Rhizome's brand new curated page on Kickstarter, we are featuring select projects from the site on the blog. If you would like to let us know about your fund raising efforts on Kickstarter, shoot us an email at editor(at)rhizome.org
► Phonebook 3: directory of independent art projects & spaces
PHONEBOOK 3 is a directory of independent art spaces, programming, and projects throughout the United States and a collection of critical essays and practical information written by the people who run them. Previous issues of PHONEBOOK published in 2008 and 2009 focused mainly on alternative spaces. PHONEBOOK 3 will expand to include public programming, unconventional residencies, alternative schools, and community resources; all of the projects that form and support art ecologies across the nation, as well as historical documents marking their past.
The directory organizes art spaces into four categories depending upon the primary tools they provided to artists and their community including SPACE to show art, TIME to present performances, a PLACE for artists to stay and make work, and RESOURCES in the form of physical materials or research archives. Each section of the book includes commissioned essays by creative arts administrators and organizers providing individualized accounts of innovative and relevant strategies to keeping projects afloat. These essays will focus on art spaces that have made the transition from small and temporary to large and permanent while maintaining the values and principles they began with. Also included will be short essays interspersed throughout, describing practical bits of skill-sharing and personal reflections as well as historical documents from art spaces and residency programs that have shaped and expanded the definition and function of independent and alternative art spaces in the United States over the last 100 years.
► Beyond Digital: Morocco - what if the DJ were the NGO?
Beyond Digital: Morocco is a research and production project consisting of video documentation, digital media workshops, and public performances managed by artists DJ Rupture (Jace Clayton), Maga Bo, Photo Editor of The Fader magazine John Francis Peters, and Taliesin Gilkes-Bower on location for the month of June in Marrakesh, Morocco. The project focuses on how creative adaptations of global digital technologies in Morocco are helping to transform youth culture and suggesting powerful alternatives to Western concepts of digital literacy.
► Smarthistory — Art. History. Conversation.
Smarthistory.org is a Webby-award winning, free and open educational resource for the study of art history. Smarthistory was created by two art historians, Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, each with twenty years of teaching experience, who saw an opportunity to use conversation and the web to make art history accessible to their students. The Smarthistory website currently covers more than 300 works of art and is fast becoming a viable alternative to the commercial textbook.
n 2010, Smarthistory.org was visited more than half a million times by visitors from more than 150 countries. Nearly one hundred universities, libraries and museums now recommend Smarthistory and instructors are increasingly adopting it in place of the expensive survey textbook. Even if you’re not a college student, Smarthistory is a great resource, and we want to keep it that way.
► The Hyrtl Simulacrum: Reconstructing a Past
Jeanne Kelly is creating reconstructions of several skulls from the Hyrtl exhibit, a collection of one hundred and thirty-eight human skulls on display in the main gallery at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. The skulls are from the later half of the nineteenth century and most originated from central and eastern Europe. Dr Hyrtl recorded the names, birthplaces, occupations and causes of death directly onto each skull. With this information, Kelly, a visual fine artist with a background in forensic art, will be using CT scans of the skulls, along with Photoshop, Maya and other computer graphic programs to complete both two and three dimensional reconstructions of eight individuals from the collection. She will create stereolithographic sculptures and a narrative for each character that will be told visually through miniature dioramas.
The Manual is a new, beautifully crafted journal that takes a fresh look, in print, at design on the web. Published three times a year—with the first due this summer—each issue will have six substantial, beautifully illustrated feature articles, along with several additional pages of rich material.
The articles focus on bringing a greater depth and maturity to our craft and profession, with contributions in the first issue from wonderfully talented artists and writers such as Simon Collison, Frank Chimero, Liz Danzico, Dan Rubin, Jon Tan, and the Web Standardistas.
► The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment
The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE) needs a space in the San Francisco Bay Area. All funds raised here will be used exclusively for the rent and utilities associated with a ~1000 sq ft space near BART for 6 months to a year, depending on the rent we find. Additional funds will keep the space open longer.
A space will enable us to showcase videogame artifacts and educate the public about the artistry, craftsmanship and inspiration that go into the creation of videogames and digital works of art.
This space will also act as meeting place and event venue for the local community. There are several ongoing game related community events in the Bay Area that need a reliable and free space to continue their missions of bringing people together. That means LAN parties, demo scene events, and artist talks.