Month: December 2009

The blonde woman and the TINY bag.

23/122009

During October 26 through October 30 I was involved in a twitter performance piece. The project was concieved and organized by @Platea. @Platea is a global collective of individuals interested in the power of public art carried out in the digital megacity of social media.

Methodology : observe and let the story unfold, improvise.

It all began with my first tweet:
The woman with the blond hair put on her raincoat, took her umbrella and headed up 18th street. #fp20

This was the beginning of a surprisingly participatory performance. I’ve written a recap at @Platea. I’m planning to make a series of drawings and a book to expand the story and experience from the performance.

You can read it here.

Bold thinking in tough economic climate : Hirshhorn Museum director Richard Koshalek

22/122009

hirshornbubble

We’ve spent plenty of time on the national mall usually in a gathering to protest an injustice and lend a voice for a more perfect union. Imagine our surprise at this new proposal for structure that would bring creative culture to the center of civic energy.
What an interesting approach to a design a dual agenda: raise the museum’s national profile and to put Washington in closer touch with creative life around it. Within weeks he was promoting his vision to legislators, museum directors and foreign cultural attachés.

The director of the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Richard Koshalek proposes erecting an inflatable meeting hall That would pop out of the internal courtyard of the museum.
This is an exciting idea from any design point of view including architecture and placemaking, The other exciting aspect is a temporary structure reduces budget yet expands the impact the museum can make.
Congratulations to Mr. Koshalek and the Museum for such bold thinking.
—
Designed by the New York firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro, the translucent fabric structure, which would be installed twice a year, for May and October, and be packed away in storage the rest of the time, would transform one of the most somber buildings on the mall into a luminous pop landmark.

from the NY Times
—

Object of desire : war is over

11/122009

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The campaign by John and Yoko Lennon continues again this year with new tools. You can head over to Flickr and find a War is Over (if you want it) poster. There are as many languages as they have been able to manage. If you can help to translate into any of the additional languages give them a hand at www.imaginepeace.com

Or sendin your contributions & refinements to admin [at] IMAGINEPEACE [dot] com

I choose to show Burmese for Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle in Burma.

Peace.

WAR IS OVER! Multilingual posters _ postcards - a set on Flickr

Eames Office explained the Polaroid SX-70

07/122009

Loved my SX-70. Finding this video on the web actually made me a bit sad.

This camera created a paradym shift in photography. Instant and high quality the SX-70 was a joy to use. This film made by the Eames Office to explain the technology and uses for the camera. It is a wonderful little film. It is inspiring from a product and design view. The Eames office took a liking to explaining complicated concepts.

Enjoy a technology of the past that set the bar for the future.

poem today : In the Gallery of the Ordinary

07/122009

In their excess, their blowsy dreaming
and King Solomon-like tempers, the clouds
possess the grandeur of eighteenth-century oils,

when a painter earned his profession
as an anatomist. Those artists of verdigris
and gamboge, too gorged on joy, perhaps,

treated that blank pasture of the “heavens”
like something that had lived.
Their crawly undoings remind us

of the mean curiosities of sheep, the sea’s
half-remembered boil, or a few twisted bolls
of cotton—the morning phosphorescent

or sunset a dull, worn-out gilt.
The nights there were scumbled with light.
How could we ever have taken them

for the abstinence of art?

by William Logan

Are we square?

04/122009

square-signature-screen

Simply, Square is a company that will let you make credit or debit card transactions from a smartphone. Square is a new company who has a founder from another interesting company, twitter.

Credit and debit card transactions take all kinds of devices physical and technical including merchant accounts that cost you a bundle each month whether you make a transaction or not. This is difficult for small businesses, sole proprietors, craftspeople, and artists.

The story is that “In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment” and the next day Square was born.

The whole process seems terribly slow for a small transaction but the advantages of marketing offers to frequent customers, an identity verification system, text and e-mail receipts, and transactions to the cloud make it a player in this service space.

I know that I’m ready to try it out.

video from TechCrunch:

square-signature-screen

Simply, Square is a company that will let you make credit or debit card transactions from a smartphone. Square is a new company who has a founder from another interesting company, twitter.

Credit and debit card transactions take all kinds of devices physical and technical including merchant accounts that cost you a bundle each month whether you make a transaction or not. This is difficult for small businesses, sole proprietors, craftspeople, and artists.

The story is that “In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment” and the next day Square was born.

The whole process seems terribly slow for a small transaction but the advantages of marketing offers to frequent customers, an identity verification system, text and e-mail receipts, and transactions to the cloud make it a player in this service space.

I know that I’m ready to try it out.

video from TechCrunch:

I’d walk through the snow barefoot

03/122009

kd lang sings Barefoot from Salmonberries.

This is from a film written and directed by Percy Adlon If you haven’t seen the film rent it. Well, that is if art films are an interest. This isn’t a hollywood thing.

Salmonberries has won several awards:

poem today : true love, nate klug

02/122009

Off rows of windshields
in the Amtrak lot
rain in sudden
clumps like jacks. Parked cars
with people in them
awaiting people they imagine
hurtling through suburbs
of silver woods
awaiting them. True
love needs interference,
a certain blizzard distance,
for the words to worm through.
Remember Iowa?
August storms that would self-spark
as if our fights could trip
the finest wire beneath the sidewalk.
And the sunlight, harder after.