a beach (2010) | click to enlarge

Hey ya’ll East-Siders: my two-part film, a beach (2010), will be wavin’ simultaneously on two monitors at the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media, as part of Refresh, “an exhibition of video and animation work that explores an alternative aesthetic in digital media artwork.” … “Refresh features a group of artists that all ask the viewer to reevaluate our collective definition of digital beauty and the value we place on visual quality in contemporary culture.”

The opening reception is tomorrow, 23 July, 2010, and the exhibit will sit pretty 23 July – August 28th, 2010. Artists in the show include: Nick Briz (Chicago), Michelle Ceja (NY), Clint Ennis (Canada), Elna Frederick (the internet), Doug Goodwin and Rebecca Baron (Los Angeles), Duncan Malashock (NY), Rosa Menkman (a Dutch-visualist DINCA recently interviewed, the Netherlands), Andrew Rosinski (Chicago), and Nicolas Sassoon (Canada).

  This exhibition is curated by Yuri Stone.

REFRESH

23 July – 28 August, 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, July 23, 6-9pm

Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media is pleased to present Refresh, an exhibition of video and animation work that explores an alternative aesthetic in digital media artwork. Refresh features a group of artists that all ask the viewer to reevaluate our collective definition of digital beauty and the value we place on visual quality in contemporary culture.

Spanning from 8bit and ascii animations to manipulated digital video, this exhibition creates an aesthetic and conceptual dialogue that allows us to question conventions of digital media in our society as well as our relationship to new and past technology.  The artists included in this exhibition evoke notions of nostalgia, document unintended artifacts, and push the boundaries of the ↓field by experimenting with new technologies.  In doing so, these artists create a refreshingly alternative digital practice that functions outside of the mainstream aesthetic.

More:

Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media
Refresh Exhibit Page
Nick Briz
Michelle Ceja
Elna Frederick
Doug Goodwin and Rebecca Baron
Duncan Malashock
Rosa Menkman
Andrew Rosinski
Nicolas Sassoon

Please spread the word of this exhibit by clicking the “Share/Save” button below. Great thanks, and remember: this summer, take a break and beat the heat by visiting a beach.
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Related posts:

1. Trailer: Computer Beach Party
2. Early Computer Generated Video Art: Sunstone (1979) by Ed Emshwiller
3. a beach
4. Experimental Film Achievements of the 21st Century: Avant-Garde Poll: Film Society of the Lincoln Center
5. “Reality is Psychedelic.” Seven Question Interview with Ali Hossaini, American Philosopher, Filmmaker, Ouroboros Artist, Seer

Andréa Stanislav, "Divine Creatures," 2006

Andréa Stanislav is a Chicago-based artist. “Divine Creatures”,  part of Stanislav’s to the Western Lands exhibit at the Packer Schopf Gallery.

Related posts:

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2. The Art of Fred Camper: Camper Art in Showing Chicago, NYC, and Paris
3. Colors 1: Transitions, 24 through 1, by Fred Camper
4. a beach in Boston, July 23rd – August 28th: Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media
5. Sound Over Water (2009) by Mary Helena Clark

Will Reed is a Brooklyn-based painter. His work speaks for itself. Will received a BA, Summa Cum Laude, Studio Art; a BA, Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, and minors in Religion and Philosphy from Lyon College, Batesville, AR. Will received his Post-Baccalaureate Certificate of Fine Art at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, MD, and is currenting working on a MFA, Painting, New York Studio School, New York, NY. Also, a Master’s of Art Education at Columbia University, New York, NY.

In this interview, Will discusses why and what he paints, what women he finds attractive, and brushes his inspiration, which includes filmmakers Andrei Tarkovsky, Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni, Bela Tarr, and more.

(1) Why do you paint?

I feel that I am carrying a torch, the torch of the original imagists of Lascaux and Avignon those wonderful, magical cave painters (probably women) in the prehistoric times. It is a powerful notion that profound and poetic images can come into being from primitive and simple means — pigment, natural oils, fabric supports, etc. They were making these amazing metaphors for their existence and that is essentially what I am doing today. Painting and drawing both have a very physical visceral quality that other 2-D media simply lack. I am a practitioner of a communicative form that predates written language and I think that is a very special and powerful thing given the contemporary art climate.

(2) What do you paint?

My painting language encompasses a broad subject matter. I paint often time exclusively from life. I love painting fellow humans. I also think painting the animals that we share our world with is meaningful subject matter as well. I also spend a great deal of time painting outdoor and interior spaces directly from life too. But, many people would probably say that my synthetic work, that is work derived from memories or imagination, might be the most powerful and original. These paintings/drawings are reflections on my past, on the current world, and on the realm of nightmares and what many might consider the macabre or terrifying. In these works I feel that the Freudian idea of “Thanatos” and to a lesser extent the idea of “Eros” is paramount.

(3) Are certain things better left unpainted?

I feel that almost anything can and has been painted. Is it well done and meaningful, probably not. I love the ambition and fearlessness that it takes to paint the figure today. It is such a hard subject to paint. You get to realistic and it slips into stale academism, too flagrantly sexual and your looking at soft core porn, and too sweet and its just sentimental. This is why for me the figure is really the make or break motif for me. Can I do it right now? I don’t think I am capable, but I will continue. Failing makes me a better painter. So, returning to the question I think some things are tremendously difficult to paint. But that doesn’t mean they’re better left unpainted.

(4) What is your inspiration soup?

Wow, that’s a tough one. Obviously the history of painting. My favorite paintings and painters changes from month to month. Right now I would say Giotto, Paulo Ucello, Titian, El Greco, Goya, Degas, Bonnard, Ceazanne, Seurat,  A.P. Ryder, Edwin Dickinson, Euan Uglow, and Antonio Lopez Garcia are the painters that make the list. Within that group I take a little from each painter and try to synthesize it with my own language. And if you know those painters that group begins in the late 1300′s and continue into today. I pay attention to what my contemporaries are doing, I enjoy the Leipzig painters and there are some young painters here in the US I look at it, but I feel like I have a lot to learn from the past masters.

In terms of influences outside of painting well that is whole other story. I am deeply influenced by film and literature/poetry and too a lesser extent by music. I am in an intense period of watching the films of Andrei Tarkovsky- late Russian filmmaker active from the 60′s until 1988 when he died. The harmony of beautiful imagery, the history of all art, personal narrative, and craft all speak to me in his work. For me, Tarkovsky stand with the great masters of painting. His images transcend temporality and specificity, yet at the the same time they have such a unique personal language and history to them and that is similar to how I want my work to function.

I watch Hitchcock on repeat as well. The films of Michelangelo Antonioni have impacted my drawing as well and recently the high drama of Bela Tarr has influenced some of my images.

In terms of literature, well I feel as though we live in dark times and really for me no one is darker than Dostoevsky, so I don’t buy too many new books I just re-read all of his (I own all his works). Its an extreme examination of the human condition and you don’t get much serious than that. Plus, he just takes you into the gloom, that dark tonal gloom of dark earth colors and cold greys, at least that what sort of color his stories emit for me. For a very long time I loved the works of William Faulkner, I even spent a great deal of my MFA thesis writing about Faulkner. A critic once asked me who I read while I was working on a specific body of paintings, I replied Faulkner and he said, “It figures, you’re a southern gothic” — I was very complimented, obviously.

Faulkner has that same sense of time and place as Tarkovsky, but yet the imagery functions on a universal level.

Music wise, well Johnny Cash is always playing in the studio. But recently I have been addicted to Daniel Johnston and Elliot Smith, obviously for their darkness. But I thoroughly enjoy listening to Bach, Beethoven, and Rachmaninoff as well.  I hope that is a rich enough soup for you!!

(5) Your work very much pulls focus on the relationship of man and animal; man and nature. Over the last few years, the public has gradually become aware of the existence of a new cause: animal liberation. DINCA believes that animals and all creatures are absolute equals to the human.

What are your thoughts?

I think I could return to an earlier answer. Those cave people, the very first imagists, what were they drawing and painting? The animals around which they structured their existence.

For me, animals are amazing things, they are magical if you will. It is a wonderful thing when you realize the sentience of animals. I feel like I did at an early age because it was something my mother instilled in me.

From my first memories as a child I can remember being with dogs. They have always been my friends, and more often than not the most loyal ones. But, though my work focuses almost exclusively on dogs, I believe most all creatures have this magic about them. I know “magic” seems cheesy or too whimsical but I mean really if you’re in the “know” how else do you describe this? Concerning the equals aspect of your question — I don’t know if I can agree across the board. For instance, I know that without a doubt my dogs have a stronger life force and intelligence than many people I meet, but do I think they have that compared to me, no. But there are plenty of slovenly worthless human beings out there that I would prefer the company of rats to!! So, I think its more a spectrum than absolutism. I don’t I could paint such great images of my animals if that did not posses a profound life force — more profound than say many humans I meet.

(6) This is a general question: what will happen in the future?

I want to believe that this a broad existential question. I could go into a diatribe/rant on this. I will try to be succinct. Where we’re at is here: slaves to a imperialist, globalized, capitalist fascism that has raped the earth and a majority of its inhabitants. We are spiraling towards oblivion and we as a total culture have set into motion forces that will destroy us if we do not change. But, we have shown that the only change we are capable of is change for the worst. Hence, I can only see Apocalypse. But not in the earth shattering Hollywood variety, more like the slow creeping type that only T.S. Eliot could sum up: “This is how the world ends, This how the world ends, this is how the world ends………………not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

(7) What animal/creature comes to mind when you hear the word “DINCA?”

Also, when you hear “… a beautiful girl …” what lady initially comes to mind?

DINCA- A Rhino type dinosaur creature.

Beautiful girl: I can’t say just one so I’ll give you a few — Halle Berry, Zoe Sladana, Uma Thurman, Salma Hayek, Audrey Hepburn, Donna Reed, Nina Simone, Jennifer Wallace, and true to my weird Freudian roots my Mother of course!

More:

Will Reed’s Website

Will Reed’s C.V.

Related posts:

1. Stan Brakage Radio Interview
2. One Question Interview: Rafaël Rozendaal Interviews Ed Halter, Film Critic and Currator
3. Artist Interview: DINCA asks Rafaël Rozendaal One Question
4. “Reality is Psychedelic.” Seven Question Interview with Ali Hossaini, American Philosopher, Filmmaker, Ouroboros Artist, Seer
5. Interview with Rosa Menkman, Dutch Visualist

by Zack Oleson

Art sometimes makes me sick.  Watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, the new digital documentary directed by street artist Bansky from the exorbitant footage shot by Thierry Guetta (aka Mister Brainwash, his street artist persona), I was struck by the subject but not so much the documentary itself.  Through the first hour, I didn’t know what was going on with the delegated narrator’s unqualified and unrelenting hyperbole—another voice-over doc narrator with a mysteriously foreign therefore authoritative accent, without even a hint of irony—or the attention paid to who was behind the camera, this Thierry Guetta character.  A rather fat and unkempt Frenchman, Thierry became obsessed with capturing people and things in his life on his digital camera ostensibly after his mother died when he was very young.  He used to record celebrity sightings, then he started eyeing his cousin’s work creating tile mosaics inspired by the videogame Space Invaders.  Using that name, Thierry’s cousin started pasting his work up all around Paris, thus “street art” was seemingly born.

Street art is for the layman a thinking man’s graffiti.  The work of Banksy is arguably the most well known, considering a book of his work is sold at Urban Outfitters.  There’s also Shepherd Fairey, who was commissioned to design the iconic Obama campaign posters and whose Andre the Giant “OBEY” trademark can be spotted in almost any city.  Thierry comes to know and follow both these two (any surprise in the will-he-meet-the-reclusive-Bansky thread of narrative is undermined by the inclusion of footage of Bansky, though I suppose it is suspenseful to know how they meet), promising that he’s at work on a documentary.  Thierry’s quite a help and a lookout, and he takes hours and hours worth of footage, yet he never watches or does anything with it.  He concerns himself with preservation of change before it itself is wiped out (it is a shame there’s no scene of these posters being taken down or stencils painted over) which is a worthwhile cause, even if it is through 0’s and 1’s.  Thierry manages to get invaluable footage right before street art takes off and into the galleries and auction houses, evolving modern art to a street-aesthetic.

The shit hits the fan once Banksy asks Thierry to put his documentary together. (This comes after a nice segment where Banksy displays a blow-up Abu Ghraib prisoner in orange garb and black mask at Disneyland and Thierry is interrogated by “Mickey Mouse security guards.”  In a legal crisis, at least you can easily delete digital evidence.)  Thierry delivers a product a few months later, and Bansky’s reaction to it nicely walks the line between honesty and encouragement when a friend’s work is shit.  It’s then that Bansky emboldens Thierry to do his own art and have a little show with wine; Thierry takes this as such validation that he mortgages all he owns, apparently, and helms a team of graphic artists, prop builders, and promoters to build an epic gallery of pop art pastiche attractions all from Thierry’s “idears” that will put his name on the map. Surprisingly, it works: his LA opening is in fact a “sensation”; he makes over a million dollars; Madonna asks him to design her cover art for her greatest hits collection.  Mister Brainwash puts one over on the public.

Now, I have some fascination with talentless people who are experts at hype—Lady Gaga, Lola Montes, Madonna—but this case of Mister Bullshi—whoops, Brainwash—really put that affinity to the test.  I like a lot of others find star power so seductive, but Thierry’s incoherence comes across with little charm, and by the time he’s wearing aviators at night and inside (still with his frumpy polo’s, no less), any chance for endearment is lost.  He’s a possum that didn’t bother to wear a fox’s clothing.  His attitude toward his art did not exhibit a knowing pretense that I could forgive but a self-important delusion that was offensive because it was so successful.  Is it because he’s not a woman that he has no excuse for his pretension? New Yorkers trying too hard with their style.  I couldn’t even look at the movie posters or DVDs without suspecting some sort of fraud or yes, brainwash.

The line between seduction and deceit is fine, no doubt, but I like my style with just a hint of substance. Or at least heavy on the style.

Related posts:

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2. Typography: Stanley Kubrick, Futura, and Film Poster Art
3. Notable Film Posters of the Decade: Part I
4. Paper: The Art and Animation of Jen Stark
5. Five Word Film Review: Sissy Boy Slap Party (2005) by Guy Maddin

… an artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn’t exist, for the artist doesn’t live in a vacuum.

Some sort of pressure must exist: the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony, but would simply live in it.

Art is born out of an ill-designed world.

— Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky

Related posts:

1. Stanislaw Lem – Solaris
2. Artist Interview: DINCA asks Rafaël Rozendaal One Question
3. “Reality is Psychedelic.” Seven Question Interview with Ali Hossaini, American Philosopher, Filmmaker, Ouroboros Artist, Seer
4. Selected Works of Fred Camper’s Via Appia
5. Seven Question Interview with Will Reed, Brooklyn-Based Painter

For more information on Fred Camper’s Via Appia series, or if you’re interested in purchasing a work, visit this link.

Related posts:

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2. The Art of Fred Camper: Camper Art in Showing Chicago, NYC, and Paris
3. Colors 1: Transitions, 24 through 1, by Fred Camper
4. an Artist never works under ideal conditions

Artist Interview: Ali Hossaini, (interviewed by Andrew Rosinski, April/May 2010)

Ali Hossaini is an American philosopher, a filmmaker, an artist; an innovator, a pacifist, a seer; a visionary. A warm-hearted man with a mystical, ubiquitous vision for progress. Common themes in Ali’s work include, “a commitment to freedom and innovation that breaks disciplinary boundaries.”

Ali serves on the Board of Advisors for Anthology Film Archives and the Water Mill Center for the Arts. He is an Associate of the Liverpool-based FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, where he serves in a development role.

Ali Hossaini (view his IMDB page here) works on the cutting edge of film, television and interactive media, and in addition to his 2010 Ouroboros exhibit, the 6-channel 3D video exhibit collaboration with SWEATSHOPPE, Ali has been involved in the launch of several television channels, including LAB HD, the only TV channel devoted to video art, Equator HD, Gallery HD, Oxygen, TechTV, NOW, and LinkTV. He is currently proprietor of Pantar, a media production company that specializes in talent-driven projects of artistic merit. Much of his work involves organizing international production, financing and exhbition.

Hossaini’s productions include the Voom Portraits, directed by the avant-garde visionary, Robert Wilson, which includes performances by Johnny Depp (one of my favorite actors, who starred in one of my all-time favorite films, Dead Man (1995) — a film by the brilliant Jim Jarmusch), Salma Hayek — Brad Pitt — Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Sean Penn, and other cultural icons. He has produced numerous documentaries and factual television series relating to travel, natural history, culture and sustainable living. In 2009 he produced Self-Portrait, a short film by Dennis Hopper.

Johnny Depp in "Voom Portraits (watch video)" by Robert Wilson

7 question INTERVIEW: Ali Hossaini

ArtTV (now Lab TV), Single-channel video, 2001 - 2003

(1) Please tell us about your artistic process and how it has evolved throughout the years.

For me the first stage of inspiration comes through adventure. My fundamental drive is curiosity – I’ve always wanted to know everything. I love reading, and I might have been very bookish, but (fortunately for my love life) that intellectual drive is matched by a robust physical and emotional urge to see the world. So I’m constantly exploring, whether through mind or body, then reflecting on what I’ve learned. In the course of this process one naturally makes connections. Some of these connections are straightforward, following established rules of analysis or synthesis. And some are poetic: associative with resonances that are more generative than conclusive.

It is through the latter process that I produce something people call art, though for me it’s more precisely called poetry. I like calling myself a visual poet because the term relates to poesis, which for the Greeks was very specific kind of creative process. (Also the words “art” and “artist” today imply a lot of things I find horrible.) For me poetry arises from a process of disintegration in the fullest sense of that process: the coherence of things breaks down, and previously unrelated structures start bumping against one another, adhering and forming new structures which may or may not make immediate sense.

When I’d started trying to express myself I had a lot of trouble coming up with ideas. And I was unconfident about them. Creativity is a natural secretion of consciousness, and, now that I’ve had a lot more experience, new projects flow faster than I can realize them. One way I think about the creative process is alchemy, the transmutation of dross into gold, an image I love. (This is silly, but I secretly think of the need for artistic expression as a full bladder—you just gotta do it.) In Hindu culture the transcendence of creativity is represented by the lotus, a beautiful flower that rises from muck. Years of reading and travel has enriched my daily experience. When I look at things, I see the thing in front of me, for sure, but it’s in the center of a vibrant, fluctuating, utterly delightful web of connections – historical, scientific, aesthetic, emotional, literary, social and philosophical. My rich inner life contrasts with my Spartan approach to possessions. I live very simply because have a lot of trouble with stuff. Material possessions make my heart sag and distract my thinking, so I find living plants and organic forms to be the best environment for creativity.

ISE Cultural Foundation is pleased to present an exhibition, “Ouroboros: The History of the Universe”, curated by Koan Jeff Baysa, MD.

Video artist Ali Hossaini teams up with artists Blake Shaw and Bruno Levy, aka SWEATSHOPPE, to present Ouroboros: The History of the Universe. Over 30,000 images combine to tell the story of cosmic evolution in an immersive 3D video environment generated by SWEATSHOPPE’s own software. The artwork was inspired by Hossaini’s investigations into the psychology of vision and SWEATSHOPPE’s interest in the hypnotic, meditative and mind-altering potential of the moving image.

Visitors will be handed 3D glasses that reveal mesmerizing arrays of animated holograms, created by seven channels of video, within a 2,000 square foot gallery. Original compositions of ambient sound have been produced by the artists, and a limited edition of 3D prints will be available for purchase.

Aesthetics and craft are very important to me, so I work hard to make experiences that are beautiful. Beauty has been an unpopular category in art for some years, with the justification being that aesthetic criteria have less validity than concepts. I take the diametrically opposite view, as I don’t think artists have much to contribute in the way of original concepts. What the artist can offer is a rigorous craft based on trained manual skills and aesthetic principles. The mandate of art is to create something beautiful – this doesn’t mean that it can’t be critical, provocative or idea-based, but those qualities emanate from the relationship of art to disciplines better equipped to handle them.

Some might say I am dumbing down art, but to me beauty relies on processes that are far more sophisticated than the verbal ability required to appreciate the irony, cynicism and self-referentiality of conceptual artworks. Beauty arises from the innate mathematical abilities of our mind. While our verbal brain lumbers along with kludged linear processes, our visual faculties contain dedicated neural circuits that instantly analyze multidimensional fields. To say concepts are more sophisticated than beauty ignores the fundamentals of cognition, and it also disrupts the organic connection between our intuitions, life processes and the physical world.

Ouroboros, 6-channel 3D video, by Ali Hossaini and SWEATSHOPPE, 2010

(2) The process in creating Ouroboros: when did the concept arise, what do you wish to explore and unveil, and what is the aim of the exhibit? How did you secure funds for the exhibit?

The concept for Ouroboros arose in summer of 2009, not long before the exhibition. The Ouroboros is a powerful symbol in hermetic traditions. As an object for contemplation it’s meant to evoke the self-sustaining nature of the cosmos, eternal life and the unity of being. Since childhood the Ouroboros has been one of my favorite images—that snake has such a self-confident expression – but before last summer I’d only considered as a potential tattoo. Then I started thinking about the degradation of our school system, particularly right-wing attacks on cosmology and evolution, which I think is a real problem because it creates ignoramuses who are ill-prepared to be responsible citizens. It’s kind of weird that the same people who are crying patriotism want to turn America into a ignorant theocracy incapable of technical progress.

This provoked a strong desire to do a work that drew on science, especially the threatened theories of the Big Bang and evolution. At the same time I reflected on why social conservatives and a lot of other people rejected science, and I thought maybe it’s because they don’t feel how scientific theory connects to their own lives. Scientific theory excites me, and it evokes a sense of wonder that makes me feel at home in the cosmos. It sings. How could I convey these feelings to a mass audience? Not by talking about them – BORING – but as a direct experience so they could feel what I feel. It occurred to me that I could do a “history of the universe” animated by images drawn from the Internet. Why not show the unity of being by creating an immersive visual mix poem that stretches from the Big Bang to Lady Gaga?

When the curator Koan Jeffrey Baysa offered the Ise Cultural Foundation as a venue, the project was off and running. Koan generously agreed to split his curatorial fee with me, which provided about 5% of the budget, and my collaborators SWEATSHOPPE covered another 5%. The balance of cash expenses were covered from my savings.

Conceiving of Ouroboros was a lot easier than creating it. It seemed like the faultlines of modern experience run through the boundaries of matter, life and spirit, so I made storylines corresponding to physical, biological and psychological evolution. I wanted to create a visual mix of these three realms, and 3D video was the obvious way to do it, particularly since I’d just produced a 3D film of Robert Wilson’s Kool: Dancing in My Mind. But existing technologies were too expensive and difficult to execute.

(SWEATSHOPPE VIDEOS — Live 3d video/av performances)

Then I met SWEATSHOPPE aka Blake Shaw and Bruno Levy. They are an art collective that do remarkable live performances that combine music with live 3D video. Their work bowled me over the instant I saw it, and I instantly knew they were the friends and collaborators I needed to make Ouroboros.

SWEATSHOPPE has created a cool 3D aesthetic based on Chromadepth technology. Within it you can assign any set of images to layers within a holographic space. Layers are coded red, green and blue, and the effect is incredibly robust – you can walk up to an image, and it maintains the illusion of depth. And you can view it in 2D without glasses, and it retains its sharpness, so it’s perfect for a standing piece of art.

We had a lot of discussions about how the concept of Ouroboros could be expressed through the SWEATSHOPPE aesthetic. The tripartite layers neatly fit the three realms of Ouroboros, so the aesthetic provided the perfect grammar for the poem. They taught me how to use their software tools, which was easy, but I also had to learn how to make crisp, coherent sequences, which was a lot harder. Fortunately we share a lot of the same interests, and we were completely receptive to each other’s ideas. The expression of Ouroboros got even larger, as it expanded to include SWEATSHOPPE’s focus on mandalas, hypnosis and primary shapes, and the installation evolved into two triptychs, one of which was representation and the other abstract. SWEATSHOPPE and I both aim to make art that is complex and provocative yet accessible, and I think we succeeded. The audience for Ouroboros was completely universal – it’s appeal didn’t break down across educational, class or generational lines. Sure we got the art audience, but the building’s maintenance staff, babies, toddlers, seniors citizens all responded positively, and creating something that appealed to everyone was our most important goal.

(3) Would you say that some of its content chases the chimera?

When I was a kid my mom would sing, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream,” to help me fall asleep.

Dinca note: The word “chimera” is chiefly known to be, “(in Greek mythology) a fire-breathing female monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail”; our intended usage of the word  is in its lesser-known definition, “a thing that is hoped or wished for, but in fact is illusionary, or impossible to achieve.”

(4) Ouroboros certainly is psychedelic, top-to-bottom. Why?

Reality is psychedelic. I guess I should explain what I mean. Many people treat psychedlia as an aesthetic, and I think the art world mirrors society by marginalizing psychedelia. They seem to think it’s a simple-minded or lacks conceptual rigor. However I am grounded in philosophy, psychology and cognitive science, and I’ve done a lot of introspective work on my perception, what some might call phenomenology. It is easy to go through life accepting the world as appears in normative experience, but scientists, mystics and, yes, a lot of old hippies will attest to the fact that normative experience is a mental construct. That mental construct makes a lot of sense because it evolved to maintain the continuity of biological and social life. With a little poking this construct comes unraveled, and then we confront primordial questions. What am I? What is reality? What should I be doing? Within psychedelia these questions appear as living presences. It is easy to shrug them off in the dry setting of Philosophy 101 or when given ironic distance in yet another piece of conceptual art. Psychedelia confronts Being, and it does it directly with an intellectual, scientific and emotional discipline that I find unmatched in other movements. At the same time, it’s a lot of fun.

SWEATSHOPPE and Isabella Rossellini

Isabella Rossellini in "Guy Maddin's Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair", a film by Guy Maddin, (2010)

(5) You premiered Guy Maddin’s Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair in Times Square last December of 2009. Was it a party? When and how did you meet Guy Maddin?

My connection to Guy is through Isabella Rossellini, whom I met several years ago during my production of the Robert Wilson Video Portraits. Bob portrayed Isabella as a wild anime character, and while we were in makeup she insisted that I check out the films of Guy Maddin. The Saddest Music in the World had just opened. Of course I loved it, and then I found out that my friend Jody Shapiro produced a lot of Guy’s work, so I was able to see Sissy Boy Slap Party and a lot of other Maddin classics. I’d recruited Isabella to be chief juror of the Metropolis Art Prize, a project of Babelgum Networks, and I’d decided to screen the winners in Times Square.

I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it was Isabella who suggested we premiere Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair as part of the program. Of course I jumped at the possibility, but it took some diplomacy on my part to make it happen because the film shows Isabella being jolted into an ecstatic state (to put it mildly) after being strapped into an old school electric chair. I won over the gods of Babelgum and midtown Manhattan by arguing for the artistic merit and press worthiness of Guy’s work. For an hour we watched the winning videos, which were really wonderful, and then we premiered ‘Lectric Chair over an installation that contained the actual electric chair from the film, which was incredibly campy. The crowds loved it, but for me it was a delightfully perverse thing to do. Watching Guy’s visuals detour over Times Square is one of the high points of my professional career. It was a doubly great night for me because I met SWEATSHOPPE right after Guy’s film premiered. My client had recruited them to perform the afterparty at Jonathan Levine Gallery, right after Isabella gave the art video awards.

Epiphany, Immersive video, 2008

(6) What is next on the art plate?

I’m working on a bunch of projects, but two stand out. One is the final realization of my video installation Epiphany. I started working on Epiphany in 2006. It was shot on location in Greenland, Iceland, France and the USA, and I edited it into an 85 minute film set to the Renaissance composer Palestrina. The film is about cycles of life and rebirth, so I used a requiem mass and a beautiful motet based on the Song of Songs, a Hebrew poem that celebrates sexuality and life. But my goal was always to collaborate with a composer on an original mass in the motet style. Then I would edit the Epiphany visuals into a 4-channel immersive piece that created a visual motet. Last year the composer Paola Prestini, whom I think is one of the great talents of the 21st century, recruited me to create the visuals for her opera, Oceanic Verses. And this year she agreed to compose the Epiphany Mass.

Another project that stands out is Alternative Cognitions. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be dyslexic, autistic or synaesthetic? Our shared world is build around cognitive norms, and I’m researching the ways people deviate from them. My plan is build environments that recreate the worlds of people who perceive or think differently than we expect. There’s great literature on these topics, but I’m starting to interview people about their experiences, and the process is really inspiring all kinds of reflection on other issues. It’s a place where philosophy, politics and practical matters interest. I’m a philosopher of science by training, and I’m working with Koan again, who’s an MD with a research interest in olfaction, so we’ve got a really strong collaboration going for this topic.

(7) What is your spirit animal?

You’d think it would be the snake because the Ouroboros has always held a lot of significance for me. And I do like snakes. But it would definitely be the cat, traditional antagonist of the serpent. I’ve cats across the spectrum in my mythological self, falling under Leo in Western astrology, the Tiger in Chinese and Lion in Burmese. I’ve got a lot of admiration for the grace, determination and self-restraint of cats.

(7.2) The Ouroboros is …

… a cosmic key.

Ali Hossaini Artistic Statement:

I am strongly drawn to the sublime and the absurd. My life has been spent trying to reconcile these qualities, and consequently my work is driven by contradiction, paradox and mystery.

When I was young I was sure that I would become a scientist. When offered the choice I trained as a philosopher, a discipline that combined analytic rigor with humanism, and I now find myself as a hybrid media artist and mediamaker. But my work ultimately derives from philosophy, with the threads of science, spirituality and the quest for truth that drove the evolution of that discipline.

At this stage of history I think art might express philosophy better than writing: academia neuters exciting, dangerous ideas, and art can spark more debate in the public sphere, particularly as the boundaries between high art, popular culture, mass media, fashion and design begin to reconfigure, blur and even disappear. By embracing the visual, the poetic and the experiential I’ve found a way to integrate the explosively different impulses that constitute my inner world.

More on Ali:

The American Museum of the Moving Image maintains a permanent exhibit devoted to LAB HD. Other productions have been exhibited at theLincoln Center, the Tribeca Film Festival, the Montreal Festival of Film on Art, PS1/MoMA, The Hackney Empire, SF Cinemateque, Pacific Film Archives, the Beijing Borderlines Festival, Couvent des Cordeliers, and many other international venues. His production of Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30 appeared in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. His directorial debut, Epiphany (2006), premiered at Anthology Film Archives.

As a vice president at the women’s TV network Oxygen Media, Hossaini developed numerous initiatives related to programming and social networking. At TechTV, he launched Chat Day!, the first application to merge chat, webcams and live TV in a virtual environment. Hossaini is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the National Association of Television Program Executives.

He regularly speaks at conferences in the United States and Europe. In the 1990s he was a regular guest on The Site, an award-winning MSNBC newsmagazine. Hossaini recently completed a manuscript, Vision of the Gods: How Optics Shaped History, and he contributed three entries to the Encyclopedia of Photography, published by Routledge in 2005.

His writing has appeared in Village Voice, The Nation, Verlag Spotlight (Germany), openDemocracy (UK), New York Newsday, Maclean’s Magazine (Canada), Logos Journal, and Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt). He is anthologized in the textbooks Passages and Considering Cultural Difference, and his essays on photography are frequently included in college coursebooks.

While working as an acquisitions editor at the University of Texas Press, which publishes books and journals, both for a scholarly audience and for the people of Texas, Hossaini published one of the first electronic books in conjunction with the Coalition for Networked Information.

He also developed Surrealist Women, an anthology of suppressed female artists, and he successfully funded the Texas History Series.

As a graduate student, Hossaini was awarded fellowships for poetry, photography and philosophy. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994.

His dissertation, Archaeology of the Photograph, traces the history of geometric optics from Sumer to the Classical Era.

Talk about about merit — I recommend clicking every hyperlink in this article. It’s well worth your time.

Ali kindly participated in the following seven-question interview, and his responses are insight, not only for artists, but for any and all striving to achieve their golden vision, and progress.

More:

IMDB page for Ali Hossaini
Ali Hossaini — Wikipedia
Art Lab TV
Pantar Productions
SWEATSHOPPE
SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo
NY Times: Exhibition Review: Ouroboros — The History of the Universe
Interview: Rotterdam 2009: Guy Maddin Will “Send Me To the ‘Lectric Chair”
Anthology Film Archives

Related posts:

1. Video: Ouroboros: A Psychedelic, Phantasmagoric History of the Universe
2. Stan Brakage Radio Interview
3. One Question Interview: Rafaël Rozendaal Interviews Ed Halter, Film Critic and Currator
4. Artist Interview: DINCA asks Rafaël Rozendaal One Question
5. Interview with Rosa Menkman, Dutch Visualist

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by Fred Camper

Artist Statement: The first two parts of this group of works consist of of 43.7 X 57.2 inch prints, each consisting of a 16-by-16 grid of 256 rectangles of solid colors, with a very thin white line (about .008 inches) between each. They look their best in the actual prints. (In some of the 256 rectangles, the upper side looks different from the lower, but this is an optical illusion.) Each print shows a gradual transition in 255 steps from one color to another, using the almost invisibly fine gradations of digital imaging. The first 24 in the series, each in an edition of 12, show the transitions between white, black, and the primary and secondary colors. The second part of this group shows transitions between colors selected using random numbers and their approximate complements. These are issued in unique editions of one, and I will make up to 120 different ones. Each print in the third part of this group, the “Near Grays,” is 29.7 X 38.5 inches, consisting of a five-by-five grid of 25 rectangles. and is a unique edition of one.

Because most ink and paper combinations have a more limited color gamut than is theoretically possible in digital imaging, some of the solid color or very dark areas may show almost no change within a row or two. I decided to leave these in rather than restricting the colors to only those that my inks can render accurately, because part of the point of this series is to reveal the nature of the particular digital printing used in my work. The color grids, seen in relation to my prints of photographs, are meant to show the underlying “materials” out of which the photos are printed. They also have, I hope, a greater generality than images of actual objects, creating a kind of open field for the viewer’s imagination.

Each print can be hung “rightside-up” or “upside-down,” and is signed twice on the back to indicate this. These alternate hangings help reveal the arbitrariness of all human constructions, whether of images or of colors.

— Fred Camper

More:

Fred Camper Website

Colors 1: Transitions 1 through 24

http://www.fredcamper.com/A/

Related posts:

1. Joseph Conrad
2. The Art of Fred Camper: Camper Art in Showing Chicago, NYC, and Paris
3. Selected Works of Fred Camper’s Via Appia
4. a beach in Boston, July 23rd – August 28th: Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media

Permutations 4: The Tower, All Views 13 (2008), by Fred Camper

Fred Camper is a writer. Fred Camper is a lecturer on avant-garde film and art. Fred Camper is the Stan Brakhage expert. Fred Camper makes art. Fred Camper is an artist.

Fred Camper certainly is a Chicago-based artist, and lecturer and writer on film and art, who has spoken on film in the US and overseas and has taught at several colleges and universities. Camper’s work will be showing, starting today, in Chicago (details below) and in soon New York City (details will be posted soon).

Chicago
21-23 May 2010
Friday, 21 May: 6 PM – 10pm
Saturday, 22 May: noon – 6pm
Sunday, 23 May: noon – 5pm
at David Leonardis Gallery
Continuing ’till the end of May.

Fred Camper’s art is coming to a city near you, and Fred Camper cordially invites you to join:

I invite you to look at my recent art … If you’re in the Chicago area, my building is having an Open Studios Weekend May 21-23: Friday, May 21, 6 PM to 10 PM; Saturday, May 22, noon to 6 PM; and Sunday, May 23, noon to 5 PM. Go to 1200 West 35th Street; the entrance is via a parking lot off of the west side of Racine just north of 35th. Alternatively, you are encouraged to schedule a private visit. Also, some of the works of “Quarry 1: Times Square” are on view at David Leonardis Gallery in Chicago at least through the end of May.

If you’re in the New York City area, I will be there with new work approximately May 24-June 5. My first solo New York show, of digital prints from the “Figments” and “Venues” groups, will open at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn on September 10, and continue through October 9. The exhibit will be held in Gallery F/V & P, Juliana Curran Terian Design Center, 3rd Floor; 200 Willoughby Avenue; Brooklyn, New York (Directions). Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 6 PM, and the opening reception is Thursday, September 10, 5 PM to 7 PM.

PERMUTATIONS 1, REUSS RIVER, 3.2 24 X 22 INCHES, INCLUDING A 3 INCH BORDER ARCHIVAL INKJET PRINT ON ARCHIVAL PAPER

Fred Camper on Fred Camper: I am an artist, and a writer and lecturer on film, art, and photography, who lives in Chicago. I have written on cinema for most of my life, have taught at several colleges and universities, have been an art critic and arts journalist since 1989, and have been working on the art I am now showing, digital prints of multiple photographs, since 2002. By my mid-teens, I was interested in math, physics, poetry, classical music, and cinema, mostly American avant-garde film (Brakhage, Markopoulos, Rice) and classical Hollywood (Hitchcock, Hawks).

By 17, I was trying to make my own films, and was writing my earliest film criticism. By my early 20s I had completed five 16mm films, and by 1984 had made a version of SN. By then my film ideas had grown impossibly ambitious in comparison to my resources, while I had already, for other reasons, been thinking about combining multiple still photographs in ways that would be somewhat cinematic, something I continued to think about for two decades. Then, in 2002, I started taking digital photos. I first began completing art works using them in 2005, and began exhibiting in September, 2007. This art work has become my principal focus, and now feels like the work I was meant to do for my whole life. There’s a longer autobiography on my site. My studio is in the East Bank Storage Building.

More:

Fred Camper Website

http://www.fredcamper.com/A/

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2. Submit to the 2010 Chicago Underground Film Festival
3. Paper: The Art and Animation of Jen Stark
4. Stan Brakhage Film Scans and Frame Enlargements: The Mega Thread (Source: Fred Camper)
5. Colors 1: Transitions, 24 through 1, by Fred Camper

Rafaël Rozendaal is a Netherlands-based artist who creates exceptional work; his art arouses that of computer art, cyberspace, and other forms that defy classification. His art is verily digital: Rozendaal also has created a number of concept-computer art websites. Part of Rozendaal’s work is computer-generated animations, and his animations are way good, and he has made many. I currently am running one of Rafaël’s screensavers — you should too — check them out here. Also of note, Rozendaal is currently selling signed prints of his “Dollar Poster” painting. Also of note: Rozendaal, inside of his mouth on the inner lip, has a tattoo that reads “internet.” He loves the internet (don’t we all?).

One of those websites is Rozendaal’s One Question Interview, a blog where Rozendaal interviews great artists, artists of all mediums, asking them just one question.

dinca.org decided to turn the table on Rafaël — do the olde tyme switcheroo — asking Rafaël just one question.

The Interview:

dinca: Your computer chair: how nice is your computer chair, do you like your computer chair, what does it look like, how many hours do you spend sitting upon it a day — and does your back ever hurt?

Rozendaal: i used to have a regular chair, a wooden office chair on wheels. i’ve
had that chair since 1998. but after a while i started moving around,
from country to country, so i was a guest in various chairs, small,
large, hard and soft. in 2005 i returned to the wooden chair on
wheels. my back never hurts but sometimes my wrists and shoulders feel
bad. i decided to research a bit and bought an expensive adjustable
chair. it didnt help. what helped was when i had more money in my bank
account, all pains disappeared.

i try not to sit too much, but i end up w about 6 hours a day.

End of Interview.

More:

Recent work from Rozendaal: www.freedomfromfearandworry.com

One Question Interview

Rafaël Rozendaal Website

Related posts:

1. Stan Brakage Radio Interview
2. One Question Interview: Rafaël Rozendaal Interviews Ed Halter, Film Critic and Currator
3. “Reality is Psychedelic.” Seven Question Interview with Ali Hossaini, American Philosopher, Filmmaker, Ouroboros Artist, Seer
4. Interview with Rosa Menkman, Dutch Visualist
5. an Artist never works under ideal conditions

Detroit filmmaker, Peter Hutton's At Sea (2007)

“A man who is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea …”

“A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them.”

“Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.”

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.”

— Joseph Conrad

No related posts.

Ouroboros
6-channel 3D video, 2010
Ise Cultural Foundation, 555 Broadway at Prince St, New York City March 9 – April 23, 11 am – 6 pm, Tuesday – Saturday

Do you live in New York City? If you answered yes, you absolutely have to visit this video installation: Ouroburos: The History of the Universe, curated by Koan Jeff Baysa, MD, is a holographic 3-D visual installation that tells the story of cosmic evolution. Some 30,000 found images we’re used, and the 3-D video environment was rendered by Bruno Levy’s (no relation to Eugene Levy) software. According to artists Ali Hossaini, Bruno Levy aka SWEATSHOPPE, and Blake Shaw, “Compiling and processing the images requires hundreds of hours of effort and attention to detail on every frame of video.

The artwork was inspired by Hossaini’s investigations into the psychology of vision and SWEATSHOPPE’s interest in the hypnotic, meditative and mind-altering potential of the moving image.

Visitors will be handed 3D glasses that reveal mesmerizing arrays of animated holograms, created by seven channels of video, within a 2,000 square foot gallery. Original compositions of ambient sound have been produced by the artists, and a limited edition of 3D prints will be available for purchase.”

March 09, 2010 – April 23, 2010 at  Ise Cultural Foundation in SoHo.

Artist(s): Ali Hossaini, Blake Shaw, Bruno Levy
Curated by: Koan Jeff Baysa, MD
Artist Talk: Wednsday, April 7th, 6-8PM
Artists Ali Hossaini, Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw will discuss the inspiration, influences and technical processes used to make the installation.

Video: Ouroboros: The History of the Universe

Ouroboros Artistic Statement:

Nowhere is the fragmentation of the human psyche more evident than in how we treat the environment. We know we’re pillaging our habitat, but we can’t make the leap from knowledge to right action. I attribute this disconnect, and many others, to the factionalizing of culture that began with modern science, industry and art.

I’m not saying we should turn our backs on the Enlightenment. But neither should we take it as dogma – we need to rethink its foundation, integrating our psyche into the cosmos in a way that builds on pre-modern wisdoms as well as modern science. The Enlightenment freed physics, astronomy and eventually art – think “art for art’s sake” – from tradition, spawning remarkable advances along with deep alienation.

It’s time to produce culture in a more holistic, organic way. For now science, art and religion – and I use “religion” here to mean a generalized psychology – lie in private tracks, each requiring extensive knowledge for appreciation let alone practice. How can these disciplines work together more effectively?

The answer doesn’t lie in the rejecting, merging or reconciling science and spirit. Instead we need to create a framework for integrating our experiences of these different realms, and this is precisely what artists can do. Art needs to step out of its self-referential confines, the safe house of galleries, museums and markets. It needs to be Saturday night and Sunday morning, be the new church, and it needs to invade pop culture. Mass appeal is critical.

Most of all art needs to rejoin itself to science. Both embody urges to explore, understand and create, and both have become specialized, mechanized and self-absorbed, given to destructive irony. Art cannot be science, but it can convey the sense of wonder that drives scientists. It can visualize the worlds of science while honoring our sense of self as beings that transcend the mundane.

Our experiences of spirit and matter cannot be reconciled, but they can be represented. And they can be represented in a way that sheds light on the complexities and responsibilities of being self-aware. Artists can rise above the dilemmas of modern life: they can comprehend the contradictions, integrating them into new levels of experience where knowledge, desire and energy meet the limits of human freedom.

_ Ali Hossaini

More:

Exhibition Review — ‘Ouroburos – The History of the Universe’ — NY Times
SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo
SWEATSHOPPE Official Website
Artlab.tv
ISE Cultural Foundation

Related posts:

1. Untitled Video Painting 02
2. Out of Body Experience: Travel the Known Universe
3. Video: Takeshi Murata’s Melter 02
4. Video: Flooded McDonald’s by Superflex
5. Video: 1923 by Max Hattler (2010)

Papermation, Jen Stark, 2005, 38 sec, with music by Eddie Alonso.

Papermation (2005) is an impressive stop-motion animation by Jen Stark, a Miami-based artist and animator, whose work channels phantasmagoric tropes of the extrasensory, with motifs of psychedelia, the rainbow spectrum, geometric forms, and other extrasensory phantasms that defy classification.

Jen made Papermation entirely from paper, hence the title Papermation. Jen is prolific with paper, using it in her animations, sculptures, and of course, her drawings. Her work has colorful zest, and her work explores the extrasensory in a playful manner. These days, most kaleidoscopic animations are rendered synthetically; however, the tactility of Stark’s approach carries organic warmth; the warmth endures its digital conversion. Charming.

Other Animations by Jen Stark

Tunnel Vision Inside View, Jen Stark, 45 sec

Artist’s Synopsis: This is a view of the inside of a sculpture I created called “Tunnel Vision” that hangs on the wall and has a peephole you can look into. It was made using kaleidoscope mirrors, with a drawing on a motor and a light.

Streaming Gradient, 2008, 38 sec

Artist’s Statement: This is a stop motion animation I created in 2008 using only paper. Music by Eddie Alonso.

Jen Stark | Sculpture

Double Take

24″ x 24″ x 24 / hand-cut wood, acrylic paint / 2009

Coriolis Effect

12″ x 12″ / hand-cut paper / 2007

Purple

20″ x 20″ / hand-cut paper / 2009

Afterglow

12″ x 12″ / hand-cut paper / 2007

Over and Out

19″ x 19″ x 5″ / hand-cut paper / 2008

Drawings by Jen Stark

Explosive Expansion

26″ x 40″ / felt-tip pen on paper / 2009

Space and Time

22.5″ x 30″ / felt-tip pen and pencil on paper / 2008

What Does Organic Matter

22.5″ x 30″ / felt-tip pen and pencil on paper / 2008

Jen received her BFA in Fibers / Animation from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, Maryland, Magna Cum Laude.

More:

Jen Stark Portfolio

Jen Stark on Vimeo

Related posts:

1. Bjorn Copeland Art Scarf
2. Video: 1923 by Max Hattler (2010)
3. Brief Thoughts on Collision (2005) by Max Hattler
4. Early Computer Generated Video Art: Sunstone (1979) by Ed Emshwiller
5. Nematophorma part 2: (moth animation)

by Tuan Andrew Nguyen & Superflex, 2009, 20 min, HD Video

From the Superflex vimeo page: Flooded McDonald’s is a film work in which a convincing life-size replica of the interior of a McDonald’s burger bar, without any customers or staff present, gradually floods with water. Furniture is lifted up by the water, trays of food and drinks start to float around, electrics short circuit and eventually the space becomes completely submerged.

Flooded McDonald’s is a film by Superflex. Produced by Propeller Group (Ho Chi Minh City) in association with Matching Studio (Bangkok) and co-produced by the South London Gallery, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark) and Oriel Mostyn Gallery (Wales) with generous support from the Danish Film Institute.

Flooded McDonald’s Video Excerpt

More:

The Official Flooded McDonald’s webpage

The Independent UK: Superflex: Flooded McDonald’s, South London Gallery, London

RSA Arts & Ecology: Superflex | Flooded McDonalds

Superflex on Vimeo

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1. Untitled Video Painting 02
2. Video Clip: Let Each One Go Where He May by Ben Russell
3. Video: Takeshi Murata’s Melter 02
4. Brief Thoughts on Film and Video Editing: Number One by Leighton Pierce
5. Video: 1923 by Max Hattler (2010)

Dithered

Julien Ducourthial studied audiovisual media at the Esba, France, graduating from there in 2006. The project Ilbm.info | Interleaved Bitmap | in reference to the amiga computer picture format, was created with artworks inspired by low-tech, graffiti & abstraction.

Niteworks

Dithered

Fluxshap

Niteworks

More:

Julien Ducourthial Portfolio

No related posts.

Here’s a revised version of some artwork I designed for fun. Back in November, I submitted this to Adbusters Magazine for their end-of-the-year issue, Big Ideas of 2010. Once the magazine hit the news stands, I visited the Barnes and Noble on State St. to see if my design made the cut; It didn’t make the cut, but I was fine with it, because after skimming the mag, I realized that the design didn’t fit the theme of the issue anyway.

Soon after, I had an epiphany: If I continually submit to Adbusters, eventually one of my designs, or writings, will get accepted. I think this applies to all art — you must separate your work from your personal life — don’t let unsuccess emotionally affect you; embrace it, and keep drilling with your work. However, I must say that success with Adbusters submissions is, by no means, at the top of my laundry list of goals. I’m a filmmaker with a side-fixing of design, web design, and blogging.

As The Bhagavad-Gita teaches us, we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor.

Success will come when it’s time.

Sidenote: I highly recommend reading Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Related posts:

1. Bjorn Copeland Art Scarf
2. Typography: Stanley Kubrick, Futura, and Film Poster Art
3. Paper: The Art and Animation of Jen Stark
4. The Art of Fred Camper: Camper Art in Showing Chicago, NYC, and Paris

Reissue poster for Jean Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou (1965)

We continue to plow our way through the best, and worst, film posters of the last 10 years. Today, on this good Tuesday, we’ll take a close look at 10 more great works.

The above poster is a lovely re-release of Jean-Lu Godard’s 1965 road film Pierrot Le Fou.

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001)

People have mixed feelings on this film — even Lynch fans — personally, this film is in my top five of the last 10 years. I feel many misread this film; this first act of the film is kitsch; I think this works well; most interpret it as plain cheese. It’s quite apparent this poster is guilty of a shoddy photoshop job. The placement of beauty, embodied by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring, captures the essence of the film, particularly its woozy tone and the action of the sleuthing by the two ladies. The importance of a Hollywood setting is represented and the bold type works well.

Don’t get me started on the lesbian scene. Haha!

Here’s a pic of Laura Harring laying on a couch.

Amir Bar-Lev’s My Kid Could Paint That (2007)

A delightful little documentary; an open-ended film that leaves the viewer responsible for a conclusion. The tag-line of the film (top and bottom of the title) sums up the film’s argument and the film investigates quite objectively. A small child who stands in front of her Jackson Pollack-esque painting stirs interest. Did she paint it, or was it the work of her father … that is the question.

Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, (2006)

Not a huge fan of this film, but the pink is a great representation of the Sofia Coppola’s candy-colored palette, and the punky-pink type epitomizes the soundtrack. Of course Kirsten Dunst beautifies.

What the hell? A film about a man pushing a cart? Don’t be fooled: This is a great film.

Ron Mann’s Know Your Mushrooms (2008)

I don’t know what to say about this poster other than I love this dude’s glasses and his wicked pippy-tails.

Stanley Kubrick’s Eye Wide Shut (1999)

See the previous post Typography: Stanley Kubrick, Futura, and Film Poster Art

Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003)

This artwork is iconic, it really stands out, and I think the middle-placement of the small still works really well.

Frederico Fellini’s Amarcord (1973)

Beautiful artwork by San Francisco-based painter Caitlin Kuhwald. Amarcord limited edition art prints are available for purchase via the Criterion Collection store.

Related posts:

1. Oslo Posters
2. Contemporary German Film Poster
3. Typography: Stanley Kubrick, Futura, and Film Poster Art
4. Notable Film Posters of the Decade: Part I
5. 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival Poster

G2 Puzzle Special

Marian Bantjes is a graphic designer from O(!) CANADA(!), well, from the prairies of Saskatchewan, to be accurate. I found out about Marian from Michael Bierut’s name dropping of her in this article published by Azure Magazine. I can’t say I know much about her, but I can say that I like her work.

Marian on herself:

I have a very big virtual life. In fact, most of my life these days seems to exist in the ether of the internet. I’m not that happy about this, but … I live on an island on the west coast of Canada, so, uh …

I do not know if I am lazy or driven. A little of both. While I tend to work every day, from morning to night (I’m frequently working past midnight), my days are relatively stress free. In the summer I tend to take a lot of breaks and sit in the sun or go for a walk. I spend a lot of time thinking. Just staring into space and thinking. Does this count as work? Sometimes. When I wake up in the morning with the perfect solution to a given problem, have I been working while I was sleeping? Perhaps.

These days I call myself a lapsed Graphic Designer. This is largely untrue, but in my struggle to redefine myself it’s helpful to cast off the old me in the search of the new.

I have a ton of experience in typesetting and design, but it wasn’t until I started doing this other thing in 2004 that I began to find the thing that is me in the act of what I do. Does that make sense?

I am impatient; I’m always about 6 steps ahead of myself, and I get frustrated that it takes me so long to reach where I feel I already am. But I have to remind myself I’ve made a huge amount of progress in the few years that I’ve been doing what I’m doing.

Release Restraint!!!

(ornament font, purchase here for $45)

Release Restraint!!!

R-Wines: The grape poster

Screen prints of Marian’s work are available for purchase on her website:

More:

Marian Bantjes Portfolio

Related posts:

1. Siggi Eggertsson: Design Portfolio
2. Lust Design
3. Test Pilot Collective: Typography and Design

Petra Cortright, art-gem of the net, posts a lot of videos of herself dancing, and I admire how she posted this video of herself performing a potboiler of a dance to Kraftwerk’s “The Model.”

In the silent abstract piece of video-art (above) we observe Petra as she juggles das football in das hot-pink onezee. A synthetic pink cloud hovers. This is seductive.

Related posts:

1. Alpine Ascend by Petra Cortright

We love Deborah Stratman. 1) She’s from Chicago. 2) She experiments with film and other forms of media/technology. The following is a brilliant concept: 

Straight from Pythagoras Film:

In fall of 2003, business cards were freely dispensed at 30 pay phone booths around the city of Chicago. The cards invited participants to dial a toll-free number and describe what they were most afraid of. The toll-free number was operational for two months and resulted in over 200 responses, which were then compiled onto an audio CD and broadcast on WLUW (88.7fm).

The toll free FEAR number has since been reinstated and remains open for submission. Call now! 1 800 585 1078

The relationship between safety and fear is a cyclical one. Desire for safety leads us to build gated communities, post surveillance cameras and enlist security patrols to protect ourselves from breach by an unknown. In the process, we sever ourselves from the unexpected, from the accidental, from others not like us. The less we encounter them, the less we know and understand them. The less we know and understand them, the more we fear them. The more we fear them, the more we fortify ourselves. It is a fundamentally unhealthy relationship, as our fears so often animate our decisions.

As our administration employs increasingly reactionary policies, where a fearful, suggestible citizenry is desirable, it becomes more important to question what that fear is.

The calls are really interesting. The callers are candid; some are truthful and disclose their fear of bats, spiders, people lurking in the dark seeking to cut others, defaulting on loans, the abyss (like the ocean or outer-space), relationships, or swarms of insects and other species. Others joke around with it. Some talk about sports. Many say they’re afraid of failure.

Click here to listen to the phone calls.

And remember: The toll-free number has been reactivated

Call 1 800 585 1078 tonight.

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Designed by Yokoland

Yes, there is a website for just about everything, and yes, there is an entire site dedicated to posters found on the streets of Oslo, Sweden, and yes, Nordic/European graphic design always is ten kilometers ahead of American design.

People snap photos of posters they find on the streets of Oslo and submit them to http://osloposters.net/. Considering the prevalence of graphic design in Oslo, a city of 580,229 people, it seems designers would be bumping into each other as they hung their posters, and bumping into pedestrians as they photographed the posters. Below are more posters. Posters

Designed by Luftmensch

Designed by Are Kleivan

Meditasjon og dyp avspenning

Designed by Christin Malen & Helene Ryenbakken

Designed by Are Mokkelbost

Designed by Lasse Marhaug

Related posts:

1. Notable Film Posters of the Decade: Part I
2. Notable Film Posters of the Decade: Part II
3. Luis Buñuel Film Posters

… and steel drums

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A collaboration between Pixelgarten, Birgit Amadori, and Tekko.

Related posts:

1. Pixelgarten: Oceanworld

by Pixelgarten of Deutschland

Pixelgarten: Oceanworld is a series of large-format illustrations created in 2001. The drawings were inspired by the architecture of and activity in American amusement parks. The construction of the pictures plays with the observer: from a distance only geometric areas of color can be seen; the actual content is revealed by taking a closer look.

Related posts:

1. Safety in Numbers
2. Colors 1: Transitions, 24 through 1, by Fred Camper

Yes, you heard right — artist/musician Bjorn Copeland of Black Dice has designed a $70 art scarf that was made in Italy. The scarf measures 35” x 35”, is 100% silk, and is being sold at United Bamboo. Fall fashion season 2009.

Related posts:

1. Typography: Stanley Kubrick, Futura, and Film Poster Art
2. Paper: The Art and Animation of Jen Stark
3. The Art of Fred Camper: Camper Art in Showing Chicago, NYC, and Paris
4. But is it Art? Exit Through the Gift Shop: Film Review

Some readers may find Anton Kannemeyer’s Congo Parody offensive. You have been warned.

Anton Kannemeyer Biography
Kannemeyer completed an MFA at the University of Stellenbosch in 1997 and lectured there periodically until recently. Together with Conrad Botes, he has been at the forefront of introducing a comic and satirical aesthetic to South African art. He and Botes were the co-founders and are the ongoing co-editors of the Bitterkomix series, which started in 1992 and has become revered for its subversive stance and dark humour. He held his first New York solo exhibition, The Haunt of Fears, at Jack Shainman Gallery in April-May 2008.

Visit the Michael Stevebson Gallery website for more information on Anton Kannemeyer and his art.

Related posts:

1. A Dog Portrait: Shane (1974) by Jack Goldstein
2. The Art of Fred Camper: Camper Art in Showing Chicago, NYC, and Paris

Dot matrix printers originated in the 1970s and gained popularity in the ’80s through the early to mid ’90s. The printers are known for being exceptionally slow, noisy, and for printing with limited color performance and quality.

Nowadays, dot matrix printers are still around, however the printer is considered obsolete for the home computer user and is mostly used in lo-tech devices such as a receipt printer or an ATM. Some individuals find other uses for the dot matrix printer — e.g, making rhythmic and pulsating music.  Meet Sue Harding.

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