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

4171129321_636899ecab_b

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.