COME ONE! COME ALL!

from artinteractive.org:



David Merrill's "Face the Music"

Collision 8: "El Ocho"
Curated By: jackbackrack, Dan Paluska, Brian Knep
September 16 through October 03, 2005.

Collision 8: "El Ocho" is the wildest and most experimental collision show to date! Halfway between an art exhibition and a mad science fair, Collision 8 artists invent new technologies, new art forms, and even new forms of life (like robot bugs). The future of interactivity starts here.

Collisions showcase of envelope-pushing artwork in an interactive workshop/laboratory format. The artwork often involves never before tried technologies, concepts and installation approaches. It is an opportunity for Collision colluders to experiment and show new ideas and techniques and to discuss their work with and gather feedback from the public.

The Collision Collective is a group of artists and researchers from MIT and the Boston area whose work explores the frontiers of art, technology and human behavior.


from lucy:

This promises to be as great show, and it's closing this weekend. I'd like to take a little vacation on Saturday afternoon to check it out before it's consigned to the archive. (Is that the digital art equivalent of puppy heaven?) The gallery is open from 12p-6p on Saturday, so I'd like to leave Providence early-ish in the afternoon. Perhaps, after the exhibit, there could be some Central Square carousing? I'll send out a more comprehensive email tomorrow or the next day--tell me if you have any travel time preferences/want to go/wish I would stop bullying you and just play my goldurned accordion.

grad center stairs + trees

grad center stairs + trees
Originally uploaded by lucy ross.

for some reason, the flickr "post directly to flickr and blog" option isn't working. what goes on?

isn't it unfortunate that i

isn't it unfortunate that i have no cameraphone?

hot spire action

hot spire action
Originally uploaded by lucy ross.

Here's a blurry photo of the Empire State Building spire, taken about a week and a half ago. RELEVANCE.

Popfun

"What happened was that these emotionally charged images from the mass media dramatically reduced aesthetic distance...something intimate and simple was offered. An appeal to common experience was central to the first phase of Pop art."

"The basic assumption was that our idea of nature had changed because of the bombardment of our sense by the signs, colors, and lights of the mass media. Hence it was supposed to be possible to create an analogue of the man-made environment, which we all participate in, by means of a nonverbal but highly topical imagery."

"It wasn't the sunset the abstract painters wanted but the flow of neon, the dazzle of high-style fashion, the envelopment of big-screen cinema, realized not by one-to-one references but by color and scale."

-Pop since 1949, Nigel Whiteley

QUOTE BOMBARDMENT!!

(Do you guys have any idea how much I love the blink tag? Perhaps it's best if I keep my shameful secret under wraps.)

Attempts to "reduce aesthetic distance" from artworks are always very interesting to me, be they literary (as in violent or highly sexualized novel [examples of which Shane and I, along with the rest of the members of EL176.4 are fairly swimming in this semester]), visual (Pop art), musical (ambient and experiemental?), or "other." The assumption that "our idea of nature has changed," especially in the context of mass media and technological development, seems to suggest that "our" conception of ourselves as participants in/observers of artworks has changed. Is that so? How much
can we say that the mindset of any given observer/participant differs from that of another (in particular, across historical period). Isn't the whole "mind reeling from technological advances" thing a given by now (er...by 1949)? I suppose I haven't much of a point to make. Just saying, is all.

"Mailing lists and the BBS (bulletin board system) were more than structures for distribution and promotion: They were simultaneously content and community. Like Andy Warhol's Factory, the people as well as the methods of production and distribution were all part of the project's meaning."

-Web Work: A HISTORY OF INTERNET ART, Rachel Greene

I just wanted to throw this quote "out there" (oh ho ho, the digital abyss) to get a discussion started on internet communities, specifically net.art communities. How do these differ from sites of collaboration/conversation employed by "traditional" media artists? What about digital sites being used for "non-artistic" purposes? Do they have the potential for transformation (in the eyes/other sensory organs of the observer or otherwise) into art?

A quick note for kicks

As a follow-up to last week's class discussion of sampling and reuse of artistic material, I'd just like to point out that, hilariously enough, the shirt I was wearing to class (see above) was a pretty prime example of remixing/reappropriation. I thought this was particularly hilarious in light of the discussion of punk aesthetic. Just saying! Also, the webcomic from which the idea for the shirt was spawned (and from whose creator I bought it), Cat and Girl, is #1 hilarious. Hopefully some of you folks will give it a looking-over, and perhaps, during the course of the semester, we can have some discussion on webcomics as digital art. Excitement!

First off, sorry everybody for being so late with this. I was out of town from Wednesday afternoon until a few minutes ago. Though I was able to set up my blog during that time, I wasn't able to post anything until this very moment. That said, here's some dadastuff.

"Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted."
-Max Ernst

I find the dadadiscomfort (I am just really into this fun word-formation so help me...) with the concept of "taste" to be really interesting. The discomfort seems to stem from a fear of being absorbed into popular/mass/mundane/"safe" culture, which is, it seems, one of the hazards of creating art which is meant to be, at least to some degree, judged on how trangressive it is/was, how much it challenges the observer, how it affects the artist, etc. It seems a perfectly reasonable fear to have, especially when one's reputation as a "serious" (a particularly hilarious distinction, I think, especially in the context of dada) artist is at stake.


I also found Schwitters' use of identification of his works (and self! though the two shouldn't necessarily be separated in the first place) as "Merz" interesting, especially in the context of other one-man movements (such as the work of Stewart Home).

(There'll be more to come shortly, I swear for real.)