Consisting of 17 vibrant hornbeam trees formally planted in a grid pattern, at the heart of this landscape three trees will slowly rotate. In place of the familiar movement of shade according to the rotation of the earth around the sun, here shade migrates at an artificial speed, transforming the familiar patterns of the natural world into artificial creations.
-- FROM THE PROJECT DESCRIPTION FOR THE 2008 LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL
Created by artist Peter Baldes's Electronic Strategies Class at Virginia Commonwealth University, nonmonument.com is a collection of 3D models tagged with geolocation data and viewed in Google Earth. The project uses Google Earth to introduce impossible and possible interventions and objects in that space, and it plays with the program's claim to represent reality. In a communication with me, Baldes stated that these nonmonuments be thought of "...as real, at their own resolution." He sees the works as a unique form of public art and/or graffiti that "exist in a different layer of our reality." His class has opened up the forum to submissions as well, and visitors are invited to submit their own nonmonument.
This system provides light and food in the form of hydroponic solution for the plant. The plant reacts to the device by growing. The device in-turn reacts to the plant by producing a rasterized inkjet drawing of the plant every twenty-four hours. After a new drawing is produced the system scrolls the roll of paper approximately four inches so a new drawing can be produced during the next cycle. This system is allowed to run indefinitely and the final outcome is not predetermined.
Plink Jet is like an elaborate electric guitar made from the motors and mechanical components of inkjet printers. It can play itself independently or be played by a person.
For those who missed the recent SHIFT Electronic Arts Festival in Basel, VernissageTV put together a video compiling installation footage from the exhibition segment of the event, which included AIDS-3D, Craig Baldwin, Zoe Beloff, Lindsay Brown, Erik Bünger, Jim Campbell, Center for Tactical Magic, Susan Collins, Bill Domonkos, The Einstein's Brain Project, F18, Atelier Hauert/Reichmuth/Boehm, Christoph Keller, Julien Maire, Tatjana Marusic, Jane D. Marsching, Shusha Niederberger, Ruth Sergel, Harm van den Dorpel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Patrick Ward. The theme for this year was “Magic. Tech-Evocations and Assumptions of Paranormal Realities.” In the clip, keep an eye out for F18’s robotic installation Living Kitchen - Happy End of the 21st Century (2006) which transforms a suburban kitchen into a scene reminiscent of Poltergeist.
In the spirit of Raphaël Rozendaal's One Question Interviews, I conducted a "1-bit" interview with Rhizome-commissioned artist Tristan Perich. (I felt the idea was apropos given the artist's interest in the possibilities and constraints of basic forms.) Perich performed earlier this week at bitforms gallery in a benefit for his new album 1-Bit Symphony, which is a 45 minute long, five movement composition for a single microchip. 1-Bit Symphony is currently on display through November 7th at bitforms in New York City, along with Perich's Machine Drawings and his 1-Bit Video. Perich will also kick off a two month, cross-country tour with Lesley Flanigan beginning tomorrow, at the Stone in the East Village. He will be performing his composition for harpsichord and 4-channel 1-bit electronics titled "Dual Synthesis". (Full dates and details here.) I visited his bitforms show today (see photos below) where I had the opportunity to listen to 1-Bit Symphony, and it's truly extraordinary. I encourage readers to stop by. - Ceci Moss
What is your favorite unit of measurement and why?
The first unit of measurement to blow my mind was the parsec, which I came across in middle school in that amazing book, Powers of Ten. It described immensely vast distances, larger than a light year, which was really large. It quantified the universe. It was the first time I realized measurements could actually be cool, really cool. The book also went down to angstroms and fermis and pico fermis, accompanied by colorful illustrations of molecules and atoms. They're the only way we can relate to these huge and small places beyond our perception, essentially meaning, "bigger than you can possibly imagine" or "smaller than you can possibly imagine." A great book called Where Mathematics Comes From goes into how we can ...
"Contact," the most recent exhibition by the group Art Business Consulting, featured a rocket ship built from computer hardware, with a trio of yuppies floating weightlessly on a video screen inside. The trappings and denizens of the office have figured in ABC's work since Mikhail Kosoplapov, Maxim Ilyukhin, and Natalia Struchkova formed the group in 2001, and as in "Contact," they have always been subject to some sort of disfigurement. Early on, ABC established a pseudo-corporate identity by showing up at art openings in expensive cars and nice suits, performing the role of Russia's nascent upper-middle class while their colleagues in the Moscow boheme were riding public transport in sweaters and jeans. To solidify that image, ABC made good on their name's promise of "business"--in 2004, they became dealers, selling the work of artists they liked at ABC Gallery. Change happens quickly in Moscow; now that the market has dwarfed institutional influence in Russia's art world, linking the words "art" and "business" doesn't feel as novel as it did in 2001, and Western-style corporate culture has lost the cachet of an exotic interloper. ABC's symbolic launch of the office into space in "Contact" came on the heels of the loss of their own office space; at the end of May, the arts complex where ABC Gallery was located shut down to make room for a new development. While Ilyukhin, Kosolapov, and Struchkova continue to work as artists, businesspeople, and consultants, the events of last summer seem to mark a turning point, a time for reflecting on the future of a project initiated to document social change now that those changes are entrenched.
Cars are a defining feature of the landscape and social space of Southern California. Especially in San Diego, where freeways weave like dangerous ribbons through a terrain of strip malls and tract housing, driving is an almost inescapable part of daily life...
On August 31, 1994 from 6am to noon, a team of 50 professional and volunteer parking attendants directed the arriving cars to predetermined lots according to car color. Each of the fourteen lots was filled with cars of a different color: dark blue, blue, light metallic blue, silver & gray, black, beige, brown, metallic raspberry, yellow, electric blue, white, aqua, green and red.
Edwin VanGorder