Thomson’s 16mm film, The Varieties Of Experience, was made by using Nam Jun Paik’s Zen For Film (1962-64) as a negative. Zen for Film consists of a length of clear 16mm film leader projecting a rectangle of pure white. Over time, the celluloid collects dust from the space of its exhibition; this dust is projected as brown and black smudges on the otherwise white image. Dust is largely composed of human cells, and in this way the audience of Paik’s work has literally become embedded in it over several decades. Thomson worked with the NJP estate to procure a “dirty” copy of the film and to use it as a negative from which to make a new print. The new film is an inversion of the original: a black film with the dust printed as white specks and clouds -- a moving starscape, where the stars are composed of dust (and people) instead of the other way around.

-- FROM THE DESCRIPTION FOR "The Varieties of Experience" EXHIBITION AT JOHN CONNELLY PRESENTS

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Fellow NYC art non-profit Creative Time announced that they're launching a new online channel called Creative Time TV. They need a catchy motion graphic using Creative Time's logo to run at the beginning of each video segment. According to the call they're open to "...animations, sleek design, fancy widgets, racy photos, color, black and white, fast, slow, intrepid, transgressive, staid, hot, cold, fruity, salty, and pretty much every other kind of motion graphic." Help them out and make something nice. More info here. Also, deadline is April 3rd.

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The fantasy of the future and the utopian promises of new technologies have always gone hand-in-hand. If the history of technology's evolution tells the story of our culture, we can also trace our present-day novelties back to the root of our anxieties about the future and the problems these devices hoped to solve. With this correlation in mind, the interactive DVD novel The Imaginary 20th Century (2007) by Norman Klein, Margo Bistis, and Andreas Kratky, jumps back to the fin de siècle era between the 19th and 20th centuries. It was a time of wonder when new technologies and their representation were wedded in documents like panoramic films of public light shows and short actualities about newfangled transportation devices called roller skates. The novel tells the story of "the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and the story of a woman (Carrie), who in 1901, selects four men to seduce her, each with his own version of the new century" in a recombinatory visual narrative that overlaps 2,200 images culled from primary documents, architectural plans, photos, and other ephemera with an original score. The project speaks to the multiplicity of visions circulating about what the new century would hold, and it's an even more past-tense follow-up to Norman Klein's interactive novel, Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, 1920-1986 (2003). Klein's work has clearly resonated with at least eleven people, because closing this week at Otis College of Art and Design's Ben Maltz Gallery is "The Future Imaginary," an exhibition that responds to The Imaginary 20th Century with the work of artists Deborah Aschheim, Jeff Cain, Tom Jennings, Jon Kessler, Ed Osborn, Lea Rekow, Douglas Repetto, Phil Ross, Kari Rae Seekins and Aaron Drake, and Susan Simpson. Each contribution embodies the special genre of ...

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The video cameras record each other. The images are mixed digitally and transmitted to the monitor.

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Is email a distraction? SelfControl is an OS X application which blocks access to incoming and/or outgoing mail servers and websites for a predetermined period of time. For example, you could block access to your email, facebook, and twitter for 90 minutes, but still have access to the rest of the web. Once started, it can not be undone by the application or by restarting the computer - you must wait for the timer to run out.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

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As a run up to our annual Benefit (mark your calendars: May 28th), we've launched the Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage today, a new initiative in homage to one of the web's great memes, "The Million Dollar Homepage". Equal parts fundraiser, art collaboration, billboard, classified ad and community builder "The Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage" aims to raise 50,000 dollars for Rhizome by selling 1,000,000 pixels of webspace at 5 cents per pixel.

The Webpage builds upon Rhizome's 13-year history as a community website dedicated to internet art, while providing important funds to a non-profit organization at a crucial time. Participants are able to promote an idea or project--be it art, an organization, a band, a blog, a store, etc-- at a multitude of tax-deductible price points and, at the same time, contribute to a collaborative picture that will remain live on the web in perpetuity as part of Rhizome's archive.

As with the original Million Dollar Homepage, the success of The Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage relies on the involvement of individuals from every corner of the web. It will endure as a snapshot of art, design and collaboration in 2009 and, pixel purchase permitting, help stabilize and sustain a non-profit organization in a challenging economic climate.

Pixels are available for purchase from now until the evening of Rhizome's annual Benefit (again: Thursday, May 28th 2009). On this date, the page will be locked and presented at the Benefit which will be held at the New Museum in New York.

To purchase pixels, or check in on the progress of the site please visit http://www.rhizome.org/50k

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Last week, I met with artist Gareth Long at his Brooklyn apartment for a studio visit. I first became aware of his work through another artist Tyler Coburn, who wrote about him for Rhizome. After training in video for many years, Long turned to sculpture as a means to push video's formal qualities, illuminating the porousness of the category in relation to other mediums. His renderings of video into alternate forms, such as lenticular prints or digitally fabricated sculptures, often succumb to the faulty interpretations and limitations found in the slippage between languages. His book-based works pick up on this topic, functioning as artifacts of mistranslation.

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