Recently, I told many of you on my Facebook page that I was going to do a post about the newly released Guggenheim show "Play" that's a partnership between YouTube.com and the museum franchise respectively. I must say that I'm disappointed in show. But first let me support my opinion with some caveats. There is indeed an amalgam of wonderful work here, the Guggenheim simply miss the understanding that by allowing YouTube to be the platform so should the content be from the people. Pure user generated content (UGC) is what most of YouTube is actually filled with. Instead we got filmmakers (all do respect going to your ability and craft) using YouTube to submit work. It felt like most of it was slickness over core content. I wanted raw and I got polish. I guess (I hope), that this is the transition into using social platforms as a vehicle for art, so they sought the safe route in so doing. Ergo we received the most digestible content. But sifting through the majority of it feels like a bag of animation student demo reels, project short films from advertising agencies and music videos that MTV simply won't play anymore. I'm very bummed.
And for haters to my opinion I can say honestly "no" I did not watch ALL the videos and I'm not trying to say that I disliked the content. I disliked the outcome of what (in my humble opinion) SHOULD have been driven by art using technology and venue. Not a venue using technology as a submission form. Some of you might be asking yourself "what's an ad dick know about the fine art community anyways?" Well I was born of two fine artists. Both former professors at the now Ringling College of Art & Design. I've curated shows, hung shows, witnesses countless gallery openings and have embraced my local art community as based I can at this time. It just didn't see anything that shook me or touched me like witnessing powerful work for the first time.
I just feel that it should have embraced the artist with minimal means as "a tool to express." Indeed there is a miniscule amount of that work in the chosen selects but not enough. The opportunity to create something that could be seen on a stage such as the Guggenheim is once in a lifetime I agree. But the body of work felt as though it choked out soul-stirring content for standard television fodder. We received nothing short of the Guggenheim/YouTube film festival. Too bad.
Saying this is sick and beautiful is about all I could muster when I first saw it. N-joy. (this find is brought to me via Two Cents)
"Graffiti Analysis is an extensive ongoing study in the motion of graffiti. Custom software designed for graffiti writers creates visualizations of the often unseen gestures involved in the creation of a tag. Motion data is recorded, analyzed and archived as Graffiti Markup Language (.gml) files, a specifically formatted XML file designed to be a common open structure for archiving gestural graffiti motion data. GML files are saved in an open online database, 000000book.com, where writers can share analytical representations of their hand styles. Graffiti Analysis is an open source project that is available online for free in OSX, Windows and Linux. Graffiti writers are invited to capture and share their own tags, and computer programmers are invited to create new applications and visualizations of the resulting data." ~ Graffiti Analysis
Anyone out there that's doing work please send it to me for post -- justice [at] bigblockstudios.com or any crews willing to do an interview. Thanks and have a great weekend!
As many of you know, I'm the product of two amazing artists: Morris Mitchell and Fran Schroeder. You could say that I was bred to be in the creative world. Both parents went to Ringling School (now College) of Art & Design as students, and subsequently taught as professors there. My father retired after forty-two years. So to say that I've seen an art show or two would be nothing short of an understatement. Most of that time was spent viewing (or as a kid, complaining about viewing) fine art. Having been taken to some of the worlds finest gallery's, countless retrospective and endless local openings. This is the stuff that many see, few internalize and fewer still can afford. With that being said, I've found a kinship with fine art. So much so that my wife still likes to tease me about the first time I walked into the Metropolitan's permanent collection of Van Gogh I began to cry – pussy.
Some of the things that I'm drawn to know are styles of fine art that are digitally motivated, kinetically motivated or environmentally motivated -- such as installation work. While it can be said for most of John Q. public, "I don't know art, but I know what I like," artists just need to except that people will adopt, motivate and ideally embrace work as they see fit. So it should come as no surprise that most fine artwork is typically never seen. Well, this may very well be the future of some digital art.
You hear me talk about books I'm reading and you think of me in a smoking jacket (and nothing more), maybe an ascot, a faithful hound, pipe, orange felt slippery bought off the coast of some small fishing village and a wall of contemporary prose. While I agree that is a fine thought, the fact is I'm mildly insane and can't keep focused for more than, say, five pages in a traditional book before I've drifted off into a sea of unrelated thoughts. However, I've found great success with audio books, of which I've read (listened to – whatever semantics! they still cost too much) countless times. With that being said, my most recent obsession has been that of William Gibson and his uncanny ability to prognosticate not just the possible future, but the alternative interpretation of the present day. With that being said, "Spook Country" has in it's pages the message of augmented reality as a canvas for artists to interpret. This marvelous vision has inspired me to think that not only is this a fantastic and realistic idea, but it's only a matter of time.
As an artist, I'm obsessively looking at this medium as the final frontier. Here, I can make the world around me look, feel and be anything I want it to be. But the devil on my shoulder is that of the professional advertiser that can see the same value in all that untapped canvas, prime for branding.
Realistically, all of this conversation is a few years away, but not like decades. Technology and, more importantly, adoption and usage of new technology is growing faster than at any point in the past. This is good and bad as only a half a dozen years ago, if you found a sound technology, you were more apt to keep and use it religiously. Not now, not ever. Technology from here on out is as disposable as trends. We'll begin to see technology as trendy. "OMG, can you believe he still uses "MySpace?" So with knowing that we're going to be a nation of the BBD (bigger, better, deal), augmented reality allows the playing field to be vastly different. True space does not care how you look at it, or with what app/visual-browser. Trend gone. The context will be how the space is used. Below, you will find an amazing TED presentation regarding replacing advertising with art within the augmented reality space. The same can be said be said for ideas like physical storytelling and artwork --actually allowing your environment to be interpreted within the vision of artists, advertisers, storytellers and simulations. And this is not falling on the shoulders of oversized helmets and wire-strung glasses that will need to be warn constantly. This will be mobile, casual and interpretive from one user to another.
When I use the word infancy, I do so saying that this platform has endless growth possibilities and has not even scratched the surface of its potential.
Currently available dominant augmented reality browsers for your primary smart-phones: • Acrossair • Layar • Wikitude
Clara Boj and Diego Diaz(Murcia, 1975) combine their artistic activity in solitaire with projects in collaboration since year 2000. Its work is mainly centered in the observation of the public space and the diverse transformations (architectonic, technological, functional, social, …) resultants of the incorporation of the new technologies to the space of the routine character, from which they generate facilities that combine physical and virtual qualities to try to generate bows of continuity between the old ones and the new forms of social relation, between old and the new spaces of communication.
The Artvertiseris an urban, hand-held Augmented Reality Improved Reality project that re-purposes street advertisements as a surface for exhibiting art.
So what happens when a contemporary art museum and a technology company collide with the idea that crowd-sourcing is the conduit to the future of an emerging media? We'll just have to wait and see.
Courtesy of FranSchroeder.comMy love for fonts goes back to my childhood when my mother would hand letter everything. She still does when she's not on the computer Skyping friends in the UK or designing spots for the local paper. She even has a degree in 'Sign Making', which admittedly is almost entirely a thing of the past now having been rolled over by vinyl cutting machines and printers that are capable of printing to outdoor canvas. But there is a beautiful truth in the hand-painted letter that I still tip my hat too.
Here's to you "BONELESS CHICKEN ON SALE!" on the grocery store window.
Here's to you "SPRINGSATIONAL BLOW OUT!" car sale.
Here's to you "Orange County Fire Fighters, Station 18" - in golf leaf no less ;)
All that being said I began and continue my obsession with fonts, signage & lettering. I hope the following lists comes as a blessed resource to you and your future designs. I've tried to weed this like of online font sites that just loop you from one to another only then to sell you porn and real estate along the way. If you find on here, tell me, I'll kill it.
Friday, October 1, 2010 at 2:43PM
Recently, I told many of you on my Facebook page that I was going to do a post about the newly released Guggenheim show "Play" that's a partnership between YouTube.com and the museum franchise respectively. I must say that I'm disappointed in show. But first let me support my opinion with some caveats. There is indeed an amalgam of wonderful work here, the Guggenheim simply miss the understanding that by allowing YouTube to be the platform so should the content be from the people. Pure user generated content (UGC) is what most of YouTube is actually filled with. Instead we got filmmakers (all do respect going to your ability and craft) using YouTube to submit work. It felt like most of it was slickness over core content. I wanted raw and I got polish. I guess (I hope), that this is the transition into using social platforms as a vehicle for art, so they sought the safe route in so doing. Ergo we received the most digestible content. But sifting through the majority of it feels like a bag of animation student demo reels, project short films from advertising agencies and music videos that MTV simply won't play anymore. I'm very bummed.
