implicit art

HELLO, my name is, is the title of Juliana I. Smith’s installation for her final exhibition with MAPS, Master of Art in Public Sphere. The installation includes two video works, objects, and drawings mainly from performances she has done in public places. Juliana works with themes of chosen home (Wahlheimat), mobility, tourism and voluntary migration. Through MAPS, she had the opportunity to spend five months at Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg, South Africa. There she co-founded “Kazoo- it’s a live art thing” with Anthea Moys. They held their launch event last December at The Premises Gallery in
Johannesburg, and were the co-curators of Armed Response II at the Goethe-Insitut this past April. She recently had a video installation at the “6th International Symposium on the Aspects of Tourism”, at the
University of Brighton. Juliana’s theoretical work focuses on the “resident” artist versus the “insider” artist in Johannesburg, and makes comparisons to Berlin and New York. How does a place and site affect artwork? In a global and cosmopolitan city like Johannesburg, loaded with a violent history, turbulent politics is one able to make artwork without reflecting the environment?

Possibly this blog’s favorite art blog, Art Fag City gets a total overhaul today. From Paddy (via email):

In an effort to curtail redesigning Art Fag City every two months, I asked House of Pretty to work with me on a new site design. The result is a blog you can actually read. Hurray for good looking fonts, manageable column widths, and separation of feeds and links both visually and rss-ally. I will also now feature the work of an emerging artist every two weeks in AFC masthead space. Artists who wish to make a submission for consideration, should send an image no smaller than 680 pixels wide to tips [ at ] artfagcity [ dot ] com along with a 100 word bio.

In other news, don’t miss ROFL!, the Internet competition I’ve been working on with John Seroff of Tofu Hut at Joe’s Pub tomorrow night at 11:30. Briefly, the event is basically an internet gong show pitting the finds of cewebrity contestants such as Andrew Baron of Rocketboom, and Josh Fruhlinger of Wonkette.

I’m thrilled to be the first featured artist on her new site - click the banner for a mini bio and the full Compressionist image.

The Dublin Art and Technology Association, originally founded by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Nicky Gogan, was re-launched after a year-long hiatus, as as part of this year’s Darklight Festival, last night.

Featured works / artists included:

Paul Makepeace, a technologist who donates much of his income to artists, and encourages others who make decent cash to do the same (we love that); Blackletter.ie, self-publishing for Irish contemporary artists (has not yet reached its full potential, but already a fabulous resource, and I’ve watched it get better already in the short time I’ve been using it…); John Buckey and David Walker - The Kingdom, a 3D space akin to Second Life, but prettier and more art friendly; and Benjamin Gaulon, some of the coolest public art I’ve seen in a while, especially his de pong game, highly recommended by following the relevant links above.

Per usual, folks were invited to “bring your new videos, websites, works in progress!” but I had to jet home to help with the babe befre we got to that part… DATA is a great presentation, resource and discussion group - congrats to the organizers for breathing life into it again. Looking forward to more…

We love her.

Some nice further discussion in the comments section of Tom Moody’s post about my Wireframe Series, and I’m glad for the crit - some positive, some negative, all useful for when I implement the next iteration (hopefully in Joburg in September). I’m even more grateful for his second post, a point by point comparison to Stephen Hendee (image: The Eye, New Britain Museum, New Britain, CT, USA, 2005):

-specifically evokes “wireframe” computer model (or “invokes” in the case of Stern, who uses the word in his title)
-reproduces wireframe outlines as an actual object
-”problematizes” computer drawing with surrealist invention, deformation
-use of materials such as tape and foamcor (Hendee) and rope (Stern) suggests folk-like or cargo-cult-like reification or fetishization of high technology
-inverts the idea of a computer as effortless and airy through the conspicuous employment of hand labor

I think that these, coupled with his point of it being “activated through its contact with people” (both the performers/volunteers, and the public) are where I should re-double my efforts.

Tom Moody defends Sentimental Construction #1 after Paddy Johnson’s initial slate. Although I tend to take criticism well, and Paddy and I are “still friends” (we met through professional channels, and now I like to think of us as such), I was very pleased to see my name on Tom’s channel in my RSS reader, and I’m a little less mopey about the initial bad review - what with Tom’s taking her to task. (Intellectual Property Spokesperson Tom Chance also had good things to say on the iCommons site, but it means more to me coming from an artist, and on an arts blog I read / like.) Above are better pics of the installation view than Tom (Moody) managed to find (he was just looking in the wrong place - it was on my camera, rather than online anywhere…), and there are direct links to the video and images on the lower right, here.

(Here are another set of parentheses, just to drive home the point that I think in little node-like bubbles.)

I’m not sure Paddy’s post on the panel represents my position very well, and moreover seems to fall in line with the (de-contextualized - David is actually saying something else) claim that my attention to try and make a little money for my art is exploitative (see the comments here). I think Tom Chance does a better job explaining what the vast majority of my presentation was about; and in light of MTAA’s response, I thought there’d be nothing wrong with my doing some clarification as well.

Most of my presentation was about the artist in residence program. I explained why it began (to bring more fine artists into the fold), ventured into the diversity of artists we invited (what they do, how they are - directly or indirectly - involved with CC, and what the two can offer to each other), explained what the residency was encouraging artists to look at (1. Differing modes of production that move beyond re-mixing; and 2. How we as artists can sustain ourselves — this was at the request of the iCommons), showed some of my own work and where my interests lie, and finally, I gave one potential example of each of these (production and money-making). Only one of these, the final bit, one slide, gave a bit on how to use CC to make money. Most of my presentation was just contextualizing for the rest of the artists.

I think, when talking about my own interpreatation, the far more interesting point was the one about context and site-specificity, and how CC might allow for or encourage international collaboration (something that may create a minor tension with Tim’s point about CC having little to do with the value of a work, but the argument could go either way). Read Tom Chance’s post or take a look at the CC description for Sentimental Construction #1 for more on what I was trying to say here.

update: paddy makes the point that she did not say there was anything wrong with my marketing my work (in my comments), and she’s right: she didn’t say that. So, I wanted to add that I only felt misrepresented because “marketing” was the only part of my talk that warranted a mention in her post, not that she “got it wrong” on any level, but that I wanted to give mention to some of the other things I talked about. That, coupled with David’s crit (which does kind of allude to “bad-ness”), above, inspired this post.

Of money, meaning and artists in residence is a lovely response to our artist talk and work by Tom Chance, while Paddy’s insightful review is slightly more critical (especially of my own work). It inspired a great conversation, actually, and I’m excited about where I might go with the next Wireframe, as I think through what happened, and what didn’t (with or without Paddy’s approval :).

And here’s a great SL review. And more from Joy. And, oh well, go here. That’s what technorati is for - I’m off to a planning meeting for next year’s Summit!

updated links (and again):

http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2007/06/14/the-art-happens-here/#comment-39071
http://www.parthsuthar.com/derive/2007/06/15/the-art-happens-here/
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/06/by_prokofy_neva.html#more
Why don’t artists use open source software?
Second Summit
http://www.ugotrade.com/2007/06/18/second-life-a-global-creative-context-of-the-future/
http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/004417.html
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2007/06/icommons_keynot.html

Go/diva of the Icommons is an extension of Patrick Lichty’s (re)constructing Cicciolina project in which he, recontextualized as real-life avatar Cicciolina, questions the translations of mythology, culture, normative sociology, gender and IP issues. Here, Lichty stood in the iCommons art gallery for 30 minutes, then rode through the iCommons performance area before exiting. While the double play of Cicciolina asks questions of identity and image in cultural terms, Cicciolina as Go/diva is far more symbolic, asking what cultures we are creating in online communities. Attached is a properly sized texture for a primitive. Thanks for the opportunity, and it’s been an honor.