Breaking News
Based on the premise that we live in a media-saturated world, the project seeks to investigate how young children digest major world events such as Obama’s election, Michael Jackson’s death, Swine Flu - inescapable "realities" that momentarily consume media outlets and seep into our lives. The content generated by the children in the workshop is integrated into the news media visualization presented as part of the gallery installation. The visualization itself consists of a textual feed of current headlines accompanied by computer-rendered illustrations of personalities who have established an understanding of news media in the United States. The illustrations and text help generate new interpretations of what we consider "the news."
The primary component of the installation is the Breaking News application that is built with Processing. The application is projected onto a wall and controlled via a trackball and push button that are embedded into an office work desk. The application displays a series of 2D illustrations of famous news-related personalities wrapped onto a 3D sphere. Behind the portrait is hidden the logo of the broadcast company that the individual is most closely identified with; the trackball allows users to turn the 3D sphere. When the user pushes the button adjacent to the track ball the virtual sphere spins and stops with a randomly selected portrait and logo or with an iconic news photograph. Famous news photographs are interspersed with the news personalities. Below the 3D sphere are real time news feeds from a variety of online sources. The visuals are accompanied by the theme songs from televised news.
Other elements featured as part of the Breaking News installation are a selection of drawings and collages from the workshop, video and printed content used in the workshop to contextualize specific articles, documentation of the workshop itself as well as other related sculptural objects, such as the radio guns previously created for a street performance and now tuned to broadcasting radio news.
Processing Instructor for New Media at Purchase College
Introduction to Processing:
This course is an upper-level course that introduces the concept of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. The focus of the course is Processing (www.processing.org), a tool to develop images, animation, and interactivity that can be distributed via the web. Related topics such as the open source movement and algorithmic art will be discussed alongside technical training and experimentation. Prerequisite: Computer Science I or Programming Games. The class meets once a week and is currently scheduled Wednesday from 8:30am-12:10pm.
New Media at Purchase College
In the interdisciplinary New Media Program at Purchase College, students learn to interact with digital media both as critical consumers and as active producers. (http://www.purchase.edu/Departments/Admissions/AreasofStudy/ProgramPages/newmedia.aspx).
Founded on the principle that artists and scholars are indispensable to each other and to an enlightened society, Purchase College combines professional conservatory programs in the visual and performing arts and distinguished programs in the liberal arts. The campus is located 20 miles north of Manhattan in Westchester County (https://www.purchase.edu/Departments/Transportation/default.aspx).
To Apply:
Please send a resume and cover letter to Brooke Singer (brooke.singer@purchase.edu) by June 1, 2008. Include in your letter if the scheduled course time is acceptable or -- if not -- when you are available to teach during the week. Direct any questions to Brooke Singer as well.
VOTEMOS.US Weekly Video Podcast Now Available
VOTEMOS.US the site that questions what the 2008 U.S. presidential elections would look like if all residents in the U.S. could vote will now feature weekly video interviews with U.S. immigrants and Mexico City residents concerning the presidential elections and general relations between the United States and Latin America.
Although VOTEMOS.US is a Spanish-language site, the videos have English language subtitles so that U.S. citizens may have an insight into the views of their Spanish speaking neighbors within the country as well as those south of the border. The weekly video interviews are available on the site - http://votemos.us/video.php and as a podcast or rss feed - http://votemos.us/index.xml
This week Argentine Jose Antonio Lazzari relaxing in the park Alameda Central located in the historical center of Mexico City states that he would not vote for Obama, Hillary or McCain and he questions who the leftist candidates are in the U.S... Jose Antonio goes on to point out that the United States are controlled by the transnational companies that are making a fortune in Iraq.
We had a lengthy conversation with Jose Antonio Lazzari, a theater actor and educator who runs a free school in Argentina. Sections of this conversation will be published over the next few weeks. Past interviews with NYC undocumented resident Raymundo are also available and all videos will be archived on the site: http://votemos.us/video.php
Moving Forest
As part of the 12 hour Moving Forest performance (11:00 -23:00) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Moving Forest of the People Front calls for an act of insurgency with Berliners for the final FOREST march toward CASTLE takeover Transmediale08.
On February 1 at 19:00
CALL for DS Revolt:go northwest 20 Allied Clearing House [Bundestag]
CALL for Radio Gun Revolt: Symphony of noise [Siegessäule]
CALL for AIR: GAMEoverTAKEoverOVER [JVA Berlin Moabit]
CALL for transmission: autonomous transmitting units [JVA Berlin Moabit]
For those of you who have a few streams of rumblings, disruption, upheaval, turbulence, turmoil and convulsion or simply uplifting, please join backyard radio's CALL for netstreams: Conspire and take remote control
BACKYARD RADIO in association with AKA THE CASLE invites all net streamcasters to join the multi-channel sonic uproar by sending in net streams.
The moving forest - its standing, its moving is floating towards the center of empty wireless power. Conspire with your radio station, sound studio, toy shop, sample archive, live improvisation, mouth poetry, boombox collection. You´ll be streamed, televised, wiretapped, remixed, multiplexed, oversampled, frequency modulated and broadcasted.
Each network sound stream gets on air for 20 minutes slot and mixed into the ensemble stream and microradio broadcast.
SIGN UP for your time slot at http://www.movingforest.net/
write to info@backyardradio.de
Moving Forest presented by AKA the castle
CONSPIRE, Transmediale08
House of World Cultures, Berlin
February 1, 2008
'Moving Forest' is a 12-hour 5 act sonic performance operating with public wifi and mobile technology - an expandable citywide operatic manoeuvre/intervention. Derived from Kurosawa's film version of Macbeth, Spider Web Castle, 'Moving Forest' renders the film's final sequences
(12 minutes in length) into a 12-hour 'sonica' of grand scale. 'Moving
Forest' reinvents a modern edition of a Castle Central (here: the House
of World Cultures) and a city in revolt. Inside the castle, the downfall
of the assumed power; outside in the city, the mobilised urbanites march
with generated sounds of insurgence towards the imaginary Centre.
'Moving Forest' collaborates with sound artists to compose acts and
scores, at the same time, drafts a PD (pure data) conspiracy scheme,
performing live with citywide performance transmitted by wifi.
[AKA the castle] is a temporal performance troop bringing together visual artists, writers, soundists, silk threaders, codedecoders, macromikro, boombox mass, mobile agents, wifi fielders and urbanites to realize the 12 hour Moving Forest.
50,000 Beds opening July 20, 21, 22
Star Trek into Darkness SUCKS!
I just watched Star Trek Into Darkness and I’m sooo angry. It was boring and everything antithetical to the Trekkie code and I’ve never been a Trekkie, but I do respect them for their pseudoscience. J.J. Abrams is boring, has no imagination and should have never been hired to do this. It was nothing more than a chatty action flick. It lacked any sense of mystery. It’s like NASA reduced to out of atmosphere trips for the very rich.
Worst of all it’s a Khan redo. And even worse Ricardo Montalban isn’t around to do a decent Khan, instead we get the very pale and boring Benedict Cumberbatch, whom I don’t understand why he’s hired to be a scary villain when he lacks any consequence. He’s boring and like Abrams, has no depth. It’s shallow bullshit and for most Hollywood flick, it’s expected, but this is Star Trek and it’s sad, upsetting.
The 80′s movies are so much more interesting. The 60′s was farther ahead of time, this current movie extracts all the innovative qualities of the TV series and the following movies. Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on this movie. It lacks imagination.
Interview with OBTRUSIV
Last Saturday, I met with Keith Estiler and Edgar De La Vega of OBTRUSIV MAG to discuss art. They’ve put the interview on their Art & Culture column, the article is titled – Pricking the Public. Here’s the video:
Ward Shelley, History of Science Fiction
I’m a big fan of Ward Shelley, particularly his performances, but equally love his brain maps. One example I just came across is “The History of Science Fiction, ver. 1:
EXCESS NYC on DNAinfo.com
Sonja Sharp of DNAinfo.com was excited to discover to whom the compost and food rescue bike at the Sterling lot belonged. She got in touch with Brooke and I and ran a story on the project – Bodega Bicycle the Vehicle of Choice for Crown Heights Food Waste Crusaders. It’s perfect timing as we’ve completed our first two weeks of picking up coffee grounds from Lincoln Station.
Hirschhorn’s Laundrette
When visiting Brooke Singer’s prints at the Hudson Valley
Center for Contemporary Art (HVCAA) as part of the ambitious Peekskill Project V, I documented Thomas Hirschhorn’s Laundrette installation that is part of the HVCCA’s permanent collection. I was immediately enthralled by Hirschhorn’s installation as I found it much more approachable than more recent sprawling installations with little way in to the tumultuous sea of media.
Laundrette of course presents a ton of appropriated media from video to magazine, newspaper, audio, book excerpts, stickers, but it is all framed in a laundromat. I spent countless hours of my childhood at a laundromat near the corner of Mission and Kingston or Eugenia Avenue, right near 30th and Mission in San Francisco and Hirschhorn’s Laundrette immediately felt familiar from the variable sized washer and driers to the soap dispensing machine.
I love the framing of this critical content – that immediately alludes to having to wash all our dirty laundry generated by the Capitalism’s insatiable desire for capital. And to inform the audience beyond the video news snippets, day time television excerpts and a gluttony of disturbing media that is being cycled in the washing and drying machines, Laundrette is fortified with quotes and texts from Nietzsche, Spinoza, Klein, Popper, Deleuze and Guatarri. And as usual with this sort of work, I love it, but walk away wondering what the point is. The people viewing it are left leaning artists or collectors that may feel guilt at their wealth, but are comforted by the labor of the artists that they support.
Today – April 10th Immigration Reform March on Washington DC
I can’t be at today’s March for Full Citizenship, Rights for All Immigrants in Washington DC. However after receiving an email from Dream Activists, I took virtual and phone action. If you wish to be heard today as others march go to the Dream Activist’s page and form to help Everilda and keep her from deportation an action that could result in her death. Read her story below:
Everilda has been living in the U.S. since 1998; she was placed into deportation proceedings in 2005 after she went to the border to pick up her 8 and 10 year old kids. Everilda’s family fled Guatemala after Everilda’s sister, father and three nephews were assassinated by a gunman. They were all out-spoken activist and because of that they were killed. If deported, Everilda’s life has already been threatened and she will most likely be killed.
Because of our broken immigration system people like Everilda are being deported left and right. Let’s put a stop to that. Let’s bring Everilda home and show that we are serious in demanding reform.
And if you have time to make a phone call to ICE Director John Morton 202-732-3000 use this sample script:
“I am calling to ask for the immediate release of Everilda Sanchez (A#200-070-769), currently being held at the Calhoun County Jail in Michigan. In 2005 Everilda’s sister, an activist in Guatemala, was murdered. In 2011 Everilda’s son was deported and targeted by the same people who killed her sister. If deported Everilda will be killed. Grant discretion; let her stay!”
EXCESS NYC Documentation
EXCESS is a community-based art project that investigates the large amounts of organic waste in urban centers and creatively employs new tactics to divert food from landfill and back to people to consume or compost. Can we make smarter urban infrastructure where edible food gets eaten, organic waste is turned into compost, compost is used to remediate contaminated lots, vacant lots are transformed into gardens and cities save money while reducing greenhouse emissions? EXCESS NYC is currently active in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
The food rescue and composting bike will be circulating in downtown Stamford, CT in conjunction with the exhibition Strange Invitation at Franklin Street Works.
EXCESS at Just Food Conference 2013
Today at 10:30am Brooke and I are presenting our neighborhood composting project at the Just Food Conference as part of MAKING ART WITH FOOD IN MIND (ENGAGING NYC COMMUNITIES) panel. We’ve made an initial video cut documenting the project thus far that we’ll be presenting as an introduction and then briefly describe where we are at and how we are moving forward with EXCESS NYC.
EXCEDENTES/EXCESS 2011-2013 from Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga on Vimeo.
About the panel:
10:30-11:45am
Food & Finance High School (Sign outside of the building reads Park West High School)
525 West 50th Street, New York, NY
MAKING ART WITH FOOD IN MIND (ENGAGING NYC COMMUNITIES)
For centuries artists have given us new ways of seeing the world around us through the lens of food. The last decade has been especially rich as artists respond to the challenges and concerns of feeding ourselves by creating models that are local, sustainable and community-oriented. In this workshop, visual artists will offer practical advice on using food creatively while fostering social change.
Speakers: Atom Cianfarani, Co-Author of A Roof Grows in Brooklyn: The Do-It-Yourself Green Roof Workbook; Jason Gaspar, Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum; Lisa Gross, Boston Tree Party; Brooke Singer & Ricardo Miranda Zuniga, collaborating artists on “Excess NYC”; Tattfoo Tan, artist
El Anatsui at the Brooklyn Museum
Following a visit to El Anatsui’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (on view through August 14th) a friend commented – what a great shtick – use discarded material and unskilled labor to produce large scale work that can be folded for easy travel in a globalized art market. I’m paraphrasing here, but the point is clear – the work is formulaic and beautifully executed as high-end commodity. My friend is a Filipino-American artist/academic well versed in post-colonial studies and critical culture. El Anatsui is an African artist born in Ghana, working in Nsukka, Nigeria and trained in Western European Art. The brilliance of the work is applying minimalist conventions while using non-Western materials to create large scale abstraction. It is mesmerizingly beautiful to look at and various meanings may be allotted to the work – so it is aesthetic with theoretical potential.
The minimalist conventions include the use of least possible materials and repetition to create the maximum effect by using discarded mass produced materials such as lids from tin cans, bottle caps, newspaper printing plates… As the mass-produced products are from Nigeria or other African countries, the work presents a distinct quality from parallel work created by U.S. and European artists using recycled American and Western products. The unfamiliar labels and unique colors of these discarded elements adds a veil of the other for a Western art audience. All this said, there is plenty of reason to praise the work – it is aesthetically beautiful, unique, grand in scale, works from a distance as well as up close, reflects waste while recycling the waste and the artist brings racial diversity to a still all too white art world.
In the end, I’m writing about the work because I find it problematic. El Anatsui is embraced by the Art World and in his work, I perceive the colonizing effects of Western Art and Art History. By combining his Western Art training with the products of his culture, he has established a unique niche. In the end the work doesn’t move me. I don’t feel that the various pieces present an entry point. They are nice big objects, neat to look at for a bit, but with little resonance. If I was an art collector, on the other hand, I’m sure I’d buy in to it and see both it’s material and constructed cultural value.
Click on the images below to view at larger dimensions.
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
El Anatsui at Brooklyn Museum
