Form+Code: In Design, Art, and Architecture is an ambitious new text that investigates the creative exploration of software across numerous disciplines. A collaborative venture between artists Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams and the graphic design studio LUST, the book presents both a succinct history of computational design and an indexed guidebook of strategies and approaches. Form+Code fundamentally differs from more traditional, tutorial-based books on creative coding by delving into precise contextualizations of the origins of various tangents within software art. The scope of these nuanced discussions is both sweeping and extensive. For example, within the space of six pages, the authors examine the computer as a drawing instrument starting with Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad proto-CAD workflow (1963), then turn to advances within various proprietary applications, which opens up into a discussion about digital representation and fabrication. Form+Code is full of these compact histories, and each is tastefully illustrated with related contemporary projects and (sometimes surprising) precedents and predecessors. Op-artist Bridget Riley’s Polarity (1964) sits in a spread beside Martin Wattenberg’s music visualization The Shape of Song (2001), highlighting the similarities in the graphic language of luminaries from two distinct generations.
Call for Applications
Transmission arts non-profit free103point9 have announced the call for their 2011 Distribution Grant for New York State Artists. The deadline is October 31, 2010. Info below or visit the original call here.
free103point9 is pleased to announce the 2011 Distribution Grant for New York State Artists providing support for the distribution of new works in film, video, sound, new-media, and media-installation. Funding is available from free103point9 through a regrant from New York State Council on the Arts' Electronic Media and Film Program. Grant awards will assist artists in making works available to public audiences and may include, but are not limited to: moving image and sound works; duplication of preview, screening and exhibition copies; promotional materials including documentation and schematics of media-installation and new-media works. The rental or purchase of equipment essential for exhibition/distribution by individual artists is also eligible. Artists may request funding support up to a maximum amount of $10,000.
Successful grantees will also be awarded the opportunity to work with a project mentor who will offer guidance as grantees execute their distribution and exhibition plans. This mentor will have expertise in the grantees' specific genre of media art.
Note: This grant is for works that have been fully completed between January 1, 2010 and October 31, 2010 only. Grant funds may not be used for production or post-production costs or production deficits.
The Other Side (New York) (2004) - Richard Galpin
Richard Galpin’s complex art works are derived from the artist's own photographs of chaotic cityscapes. Using only a scalpel Galpin intricately scores and peels away the emulsion from the surface of the photograph to produce a radical revision of the urban form. The artist allows himself no collaging, or additions of any kind - each delicate work is a unique piece made entirely by the erasure of photographic information.
The works enact a reimagining of the city, but their futuristic vision is predicated on the city as it is now, with the intricate details bearing traces of contemporary urban experience. Playing between abstraction and representation, the works draw their visual language from a variety of early 20th century movements such as Constructivism, and Vorticism.
Muhheakantuck - Everything has a Name (2003) - Matthew Buckingham
40 minutes, dimensions variable
Creative Time presents Matthew Buckingham’s film Muhheakantuck - Everything has a Name with free screenings aboard a New York Water Taxi, navigating the river from Christopher Street to the film’s endpoint at the Statue of Liberty, and back. The 40-minute-long film features a single continuous shot from a helicopter as it traveled above the Hudson River. The film is accompanied by a narration by the artist meditating on the region’s turbulent history, and asks the question, “What role does social memory play in defining the present moment?” ...
Buckingham’s film explores the social and political impact of the relatively brief but violent period of contact between Dutch colonists and the Lower Hudson River Valley’s indigenous Lenape people. By examining how maps are constructed, how places are named (and thereby owned), and what stories are left silent, the film exposes the consequences of Henry Hudson’s journey. Buckingham's narrative reminds us that “The river that became known as the Hudson was not discovered—it was invented and re-invented.”
The film describes how differences between the languages of the Lenape and colonists were integral to how each group experienced concepts of place, but that for all people, maps and other abstractions of place are like histories: condensed versions that contain only shades of truth.
Passengers will board a NY Water Taxi on Manhattan’s West Side at Pier 45. The screenings will take place in the early evening, when the light is low yet still present, allowing viewers to see the river from the windows of the boat—linking the present with the historical narrative of the film.
-- FROM THE PRESS RELEASE FOR THE PRESENTATION OF "MUHHEAKANTUCK - EVERYTHING HAS A NAME" BY CREATIVE TIME ...
