Category: art

Nick Cave

What is not to love about these amazing soundsuits! Visually engaging, full of intricate detail, and they are conduits for sound making and performance.

“‘I believe that the familiar must move towards the fantastic.”
– Nick Cave

If you are in Chicago right now, you can go visit a pop-up shop and and video installation down in Chicago’s Motor Row District. It’s a beautiful neighborhood and the video is a great way to see full dynamism of the suits. More info on the store and the artist at chicagomag.

For Use/Numen

Really love the texture, look and site use/installation of this giant spiderweb/cocoon entirely made out of packing tape. Technically, I guess this is a design project of some sort? For me it is clearly an installation piece. Bonus points for it’s human scale and interaction/entry points.

More pictures and even a video at fast company. Also, surprisingly, Fast Company is a really good read, it’s on of my new favorite magazines.

“I am sitting in a video room.”

(turn your sound down)

The imperfections are all that is left after you repeatedly reflect something through itself. (mirrors, photocopies, audio recording, and now video – anything that is not lossless in it’s copying)

This is a youtube interpretation of “I am sitting in a room” a piece by Alvin Lucier which is probably the most famous artistic application of this effect.

This is the original video. Also a FAQ for this project.

99 cent art

Interactive art for the iPhone/iPad/touch is a growing trend (for example www.iphoneart.org). However, the recent addition of Scott Snibbe’s classics of interactive art to the app store has got to be a milestone in terms of a well established and renowned artist joining this field.

This is very exciting and Scott himself feels like this where art should really be – Art wants to be Ninety-Nine Cents. He’s got an interesting POV on this stuff.

Rhizome also has a recent article on the convergence of iPhone and art.

This is an inevitable step in the evolution of art, and i’m curious what’s next, but for now I’m glad to see an additional and legitimate avenue for artists to get exposure AND get paid.

Synchronized Dancing Robots

Just look at those amazing dancing robots! Dancing to Ravel’s Bolero no less.

<mini-rant> Is this the future of “live” performance? At first it’s amazing to watch all of these robots move in a synchronized fashion and I’m sure the effect is multiplied the more robots you would add, can you imagine a sea of thousands of them?

But after a while it becomes tedious to watch a machine go through the motions. They never tire, there is no discipline or hours of training and practice involved. As a performance I think it’s an interesting novelty but it lacks precisely the exact elements that make watching a live person perform so fascinating. I’m not saying robots have no future in performance but I don’t think this is it.</mini-rant>

Art is Research

In this video from the 2010 PSFK conference, Zach Lieberman talks about how art is a type of creative research, in his case the tech oriented interactive art is like a glimpse into our tech infused future. Zach does amazing things with technology and I agree with him that art, all art, is an exploration and in fact research into new possibilities.