playing with the planets

how do you compose a soundtrack to the solar system? for english composer gustav holst, nearly a century ago, it took  a strong foundation in astrology and a view of the planets from earth.

holst composed his well-known “planets” suite in 1915. it has been played (and accompanied by visuals of planets) multiple times since it was penned. but recently, a new view was added.  his january, the houston symphony came to carnegie hall to play gustav holst’s “planets” suite. behind them played giant, magnificent images of planets of the solar system — taken by a number of spacecrafts operated between 1989 through the present. images were selected and put together to “planets” duncan copp, creator of the film “in the shadow of the moon.”

the new york times reviewed the performance. (the review and a video excerpt of the film can be found here.) and while the reviewer, daniel j. wakin, was largely unimpressed, i think the idea of integrating images captured (initially) for the sole purpose of science into a beautiful artistic performance is marvelous. wakin’s review discusses bringing different frames onto the screen at the same time and the recreation of imagery such as martian rover landings.  he discounts these ideas: “software allows that to happen.” but i see it as the other way around: copp’s creative mind was assisted by software to make something incredible, rather than the capabilities of software gave copp the ideas.

THIS IS WHY ADVERTISING DOESN’T ALWAYS SUCK

i mean, i’m an advertising major. and i’ll admit, a lot of times, advertising does suck. but when a company hires a solid set of people and gives them free creative reign, shit can get awesome. watch the video.

you can read more about this project (AND download the font) here. it’s just … so cool. it gives me hope in typography and advertising.

(p.s. iQ, the font from this project, makes an appearance on my lame-ass poster i made for the new found glory show at the bourbon theatre. (the photo was required, so i didn’t have a whole lot to work with.) check it out here (it’s the last one in the series))

plastics

there’s something fantastic about taking something so terrible and making it into a wonderful piece of art.

yet again, i’m ridiculously broke. i hate finances (and especially spending with debit/credit cards) just bunches right now. so i thought this article, which highlighted an art exhibit at the graphic design museum in the netherlands, was great. adam eeuwens, who writes for the museum’s magazine, analyzes the role cards (credit cards, gift cards, room key cards, etc.) have played over the last 40+ years.

and the exhibit (see more here) is beautiful. the entire thing is made of plastic cards used or designed by the museum’s patrons. it makes me feel a little better to find visual appeal in such a shitty aspect of modern (or maybe debt is so post-modern) life.

art in oil spills (or, the internet is (really really) neat)

art fag city caught my attention with this post tonight:

click this to go to the original post

i’ve always been a weird kid. the kind who’d stop walking in a parking lot to observe the shimmer of a spot of oil, or purposely stomp through a puddle to make ripples in the residue interlaced with the muddy molecules. so i thought this post (complete with a great .gif on the site (you should really go check it out))  was pretty great. and, as all good blogs do, art fag city included a link to the site of the group that produced this product. the name of the studio is double triple (click right here to see their site (which is also wonderful)), and after browsing through the rest of their art, i think i am in love.

basically, the moral of this story (er, blog) is that the internet makes good art (as we’ve seen with our multimedia galleries in artp 170) and promotes good art. if you’re going to be on facebook for countless hours a day, you might as well have another tab open where you’re hopping from art blog to art blog.

spring break plans

i’m getting antsy for spring break.

two of my best friends and i are road trip-ing to new jersey/new york city for the week. so, with that in mind, here are three galleries we’ll be headed to (hopefully) while we’re in the oh-so-fantastic, densely-populated neighborhood.

1) bitforms (chelsea)

x by y

mirrors mirror and rust mirror

rust mirror

the work of interactive artist daniel rozin (check out all his work (which is all awesome) here) is on display at bitforms through march 20. using tiles or slats of different substances (mirrors, wood, polished steel, etc.), video cameras, motors and control electronics, rozin’s most recent work captures an image of what’s in front of it and remakes it using motion and light.

2) new museum (soho)

no matter when we go, the new museum is bound to have loads and loads of awesome stuff. BUT, starting on march 3, “the imaginary museum: dakis joannou collection” will be open. featuring 1500 works by 400 artists, the collection IS CURATED BY JEFF KOONS for the new museum. which makes me squeal just thinking about it.

3) the kitchen (chelsea)

if we make it to the city in time, we’ll be headed here saturday night to see david neumann and the advanced beginner group perform “big eater.” (you can find the description for the performance here). here’s a video from neumann from a while ago:

while it’s not necessarily related to interactivity or new media, i think this will be a stellar look at another one of the many mediums that can be used to express even the most mundane happenings and emotions.

this is a post about underwear.

underwear + strong magnets

underwear + voice recorder

but it’s not just any underwear.

(i couldn’t embed the video, so click here to see it)

lebanese artist ayah bdeir played on the “Syrian tradition of hacking electronic toys, integrating them into panties, and selling them in the most casual of fashions at popular ‘Damascan’ souks” by taking panties from victoria’s secret and rigging them with different devices. the result is both adorable and kind of terrifying.

bdeir has some more pretty awesome, non-underwear related work, the majority of which uses technology to make a statement about the middle east. check it all out at her website.

jenny holzer follow-up

last week i blogged about an article about jenny holzer and her quest to stay relevant. so i thought it was neat that i stumbled upon a link on art fag city this week about temporary tattoos of some of holzer’s older work. the whitney museum is selling them here; $35 for the set.

to circle back to my previous holzer-related post, maybe this is another way for holzer to stay relevant. maybe temporarily-tattooed messages on bodies is the new temporarily-projected messages on buildings.

video of videos

saying the music video for sour’s “hibi no neiro (tone of everyday)” is incredible is an understatement. the use of multiple webcams to create a beautiful image is a great example of taking a new technology and putting it to a nonconventional use in the name of art.

i’m especially partial to the segment with the glowtape and glowsticks. it’s a great visual.

(via student loans for beer money)

the struggle to stay ahead

did the times catch up to artist jenny holzer? (by karen rosenberg, new york magazine, sept. 2005)

florence, 1996

new york city, 2004

milan 2007

while this article is over four years old,  i find it still has a significant message for (or, perhaps, tells of a common struggle of) artists who work with unconventional media. jenny holzer is known for her carefully planned words and simple art, which are then projected onto buildings, bridges, sculptures and other structures in major cities.

this article takes a look at holzer’s work in a world where digital is no longer novelty, and the populous is constantly bombarded by words and images.

These days, it’s easy to take art like Holzer’s for granted. Her mode of public address seems almost quaint, as Madison Avenue has become incredibly sophisticated about positioning its creations as non-advertising, or post-advertising. Besides, in post-9/11 New York, Holzerisms seem to pop up everywhere—consider the ominously vague subway-poster slogan IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. Has her art become ambient, disappearing into the city’s ever-louder visual white noise? “Sometimes people make my work,” she says, laughing. “Somebody got one of those LED belt buckles and some software, and programmed some of my text in. That was good—I’d been meaning to do it and was too lazy.” Holzer’s own frequent recycling of pet phrases (PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT; ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE) has opened her to charges that she’s tapped out, merely riffing, her interesting work behind her.

Though the technology she co-opted—she owns the LED sign the way Richard Serra owns Cor-Ten steel—has become something of a relic, other forms of streaming text have come forward: the cable-news ticker, the text message, the instant message. So it is surprising to hear Holzer call herself “a lame geezer who can barely send an instant message,” one who relies on her 17-year-old daughter to keep up. She has, however, been considering the cell phone as a medium, envisioning a project based on text messaging: “When you’d go in certain areas, you’d get certain messages, unsolicited but so fast that they wouldn’t be annoying,” she explains. “They would just be there and go away.

can artists like holzer adapt? does their work lose its meaning in the post-modern age? or does it speak to viewers/readers now more than ever?

xxxray

look at these. just look at these.

photos by herring & herring.

while i realize that this post isn’t quite as technology-oriented, i still thought it was worth a post after i read how the team behind these images (more here) made them happen.

“The images were made by combining two images. The preliminary photos were taken with the model wearing clothing over a green body suit, the body and background were then stripped away in post production and then only the clothing was projected onto the model, who had to take the same pose as in the initial photos”.

it took a great deal of work, digitally and otherwise, to produce these breathtaking photos. also, the idea of projection in fashion photography is new, and one that i would like to see at use more in the future.