pop culture | implicit art

the shooting gallery

a digital ceremony for a war photographer

Literary cult figure and pioneering digital filmmaker, Aryan Kaganof joins Catherine Henegan, Amsterdam based multi-disciplinary artist, for a gripping performance about a war photographer and an insatiable media machine. Also included in the team is James Webb, internationally renowned electronic sound artist who has created an audio landscape for the performance….

Max/MSP+Jitter announces Intel-based Mac Support!

Not much more to say about this – except how awesome it is. Intel Macs can now run everybody’s favorite interactive video application in two operating systems…. Downloads here….

PS – I just proposed a free, 5-day workshop on Jitter for The Bag Factory’s ‘for artists by artists’ series; watch this space if you are interested in attending.

the rhizome ten year anniversary

Via Rhiz:

This year, Rhizome marks our tenth year of leadership in the new media arts community by celebrating the growth, diversity, and strength of the field. Rhizome was initiated in 1996 as an online platform for the global new media art community. Then, our focus was primarily upon Internet art and, ten years later, we retain this focus and have also grown to support new media art more broadly. Our anniversary festival provides a touchstone moment to celebrate new media art and look forward to further advancements in the field.

Archives

02 August 2006 by nathaniel

Skatesonic – Cobi hits Cali

via networked performance (who got it from we-make-money-not-art – even tho Cobi actually sent me an email which I accidentally deleted… cobi, could you send me that again?):

Skateboard music interface

Cobi van Tonder, author of the brilliant Ephemeral Gumboots, has been commissioned a new work for ISEA2006. The project, Skatesonic, uses the motions and sounds of skateboards and explores their inherent ambient rhythm to create music. In a way, each move translates to musical parameters and the rider ends up skating through a landscape of music (which s/he influences over time).

Skatesonic will work in both solo and group situation. The system "listens" to space through movement, which it maps out and translates into music. Each of the four boards will map to a unique sound and structural parameters, so if there are 4 riders they will be able to jam like a band. For example, Skatesonic will allow skaters to buffer through a sound file in Max, meaning that as they rolls over a certain distance it is as if they have a record needle under the board, and every inch of movement progresses the sound. The live microphone input also reveals information about the texture of surface under the board and intensity of movement. From an interview with the artist by Sylvie Parent. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

JOHANNESBURG AND SA REPRESENT!!!!

Archives

01 August 2006 by nathaniel

promised land: ralph borland @ blank projects in cape town

His blurb:

‘Promised land’ is a body of work that plays on some of the ‘faultlines’ running through contemporary South Africa – disparities in wealth, contests of ownership over symbols and cultural objects, the threat to stability offered by the dispossessed, new struggles with their conflicted relationship to the old Struggle. Was it land that was promised; is this the land that was promised? The exhibition combines sampled and manipulated mass-produced objects with fictional artefacts to produce a wry commentary on South Africa now.

Archives

30 July 2006 by nathaniel

ismail farouk and the parking gallery

JHB626GP, on the parking gallery roof. Photo by Christo Doherty
^{JHB626GP, on the parking gallery roof. Photo by Christo Doherty}

JHB626GP, Ismail Farouk’s solo exhibition of a video produced for the Venice architectural biennale and photographs shot of a burning house in Ellis Park, was an amazing testament to the urbane provocations alive and well in downtown johannesburg. Between a great SAarts article by Rat Western and Matthew Krouse’s interview in the M&G, a lot has already been said recently about this entertainer / artist – I highly recommend both of these pieces, and won’t repeat their content here. I will say that his evocative and emotive images resounded with a plea to look again and work at our country, while his stylistic video (I could admittedly have done without the Mendoza track in the sound, but rumour has it that the British producers insisted, believing it to be more ‘authentically’ South African) portrayed a sympathetic but vibrant rhythm to our city.

I am biased, without doubt, but I also think this show concretizes Simon Gush as one of SA’s rising gallerist stars. His experience as an exhibition hanger, dabbling with curatorship, and artistic sensibilities – as well as an innate fearlessness around risks and complex set-ups – helped to create the perfect spaces for Farouk’s cityworks.

Best show I’ve been to in a long while. Congratulations to Ismail, Simon, Rat and Max. (And to Lindsay Bremner, for a great opening speech – a textured and inviting mediation in under 5 minutes, as an opening text should be…. And that was the most unpretentious use of Deleuze I’ve ever heard…. She and Farouk are the leftmost peops in the pic below. Oh, and many thanks to Christo Doherty for the use of his beautiful photos.)

^{Lindsay Bremner and Ismail Farouk, left, in front of the latter’s images at his solo exhibition.
Parking Gallery, Johannesburg. Photo by Christo Doherty}