DINCA » art

Innate Disposition by Katja Novitskova, 2012

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:07:29 +0000

Katja Novitskova
Innate Disposition
Digital print plastic cutout displays.
2012

Currently on view at the Center for Curatorial Studies: Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, April 29 – May 27, 2012.

Katja Novitskova and Timur Si-Qin

Katja Novitskova’s website

The European Design of Katja Gretzinger

Cross Section by Bea Fremderman, 2012

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:17:27 +0000

Cross Section
by Bea Fremderman
2012, 42″x28″
Ceiling tile, cork, commercial grade carpet, wood, masonite

“ ‘Cross Section’ can be understood as a register of information, composed of outmoded materials archetypal to American corporate office design. The recuperation of such standard materials subverts use value in a form of resistance. These fragments are culminated together, and much like the bureaucratic condition of office environments, the valid structural organization of things remains enigmatic and unknown. The reassmblage of artifacts constitutes a monumentalized ruin as materials sink into formal shapes and create a new sublime. ”

— Bea Fremderman

brother birth

Acid Graphics by Travess Smalley, 2011

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:17:35 +0000

Acid Graphics
by Travess Smalley

“Acid Graphics is a running series of digital images/digital prints/transparent image-prints that have taken various physical forms — decals, posters, flyers, c-prints, and lasermono prints. For E-Vapor-8 at 319 Scholes, I will be showing two of the Acid Graphic images as a stretched vinyl print roughly 8 and half feet by 11 feet tall each.”

— Travess Smalley

Bed (2009) by Toshi Takeuchi

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:50:03 +0000

Bed (2009) by Toshi Takeuchi

by Toshi Takeuchi.

[STREET_TEAM]

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:53:52 +0000

FRANCOISE GAMMA ON JEAN TANGUEY, TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK, 2012

[STREET_TEAM] is a curatorial project by Alfredo Salazar-Caro in which animated .gifs and short video loops were guerrilla installed in museums and art institutions in five different countries. These institutions included the Tate Modern in London; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam; BOZAR in Belgium; and the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City; among others.

Featuring the works of:

A Bill Miller
Jon Cates
Jeremiah Johnson
Francoise Gamma
Eric Fleischauer
Lori Felker
Brian Khek
Till Wittwer
David Cox
Theodore Darst
Andrew Rosinski
Rosa Menkman
Patrick Quinn
Alfredo Salazar-Caro

http://www.str33t.net/

Photos from the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:07:57 +0000

People in the Michigan Theater Lobby

Program Director David Dinnell with filmmakers Robert Todd & Jodie Mack

Michigan Theater Marquee

Michael Robinson speaks

Candles

Sunny at the merch booth

35mm Clear Leader

Jesse Malmad (Bad At Sports) & Tom Colley (Video Data Bank) chillin'

American Falls signage

Phil Solomon's American Falls

Leighton Pierce Threshold Of Peripheral Induction signage

Leighton Pierce's Threshold Of Peripheral Induction

Leighton Pierce artist talk at the Threshold Of Peripheral Induction installation

Some photographed moments from the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Feel free to share and use.

There are plenty more photos by Abby Rose here.

Ann Arbor Film Festival

Phil Solomon’s website

Leighton Pierce’s website

Michael Robinson’s website

Jodie Mack’s website

Robert Todd’s website

Video Data Bank

Bad At Sports

(Photos by Theodore Darst)

Ann Arbor Film Festival Animated .gifs Part 3 (Threshold of Peripheral Induction by Leighton Pierce)

Andrew Rosinski — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:36:58 +0000

Threshold of Peripheral Induction
Leighton Pierce
2012 | 4 Channel Video, 8 Channel Audio
UM Slusser Gallery (map)
March 26 – April 2

Here is some short-form documentation of Leighton’s Pierce’s four channel video installation Threshold of Peripheral Induction, which is on view at the University of Michigan’s Slusser Gallery until Monday, April 2, 2012. The installation features four channels of visceral imagery projected onto a ‘U’ shaped object, which embodies an exterior/interior function for the images.

The forth .gif features Leighton Pierce during his artist talk wherein he discussed his creative process, his instinctive shooting process, and the implications of physically installing the four channels, architecture, sound, and projectors.

If you’re in the area, check this out today.

AAFF: Threshold of Peripheral Induction

Leighton Pierce’s website

Leighton Pierce on Vimeo

50th AAFF Schedule

(animated .gifs compiled by Theodore Darst.)

349 (for Sol LeWitt) by Chris Kennedy

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:11:57 +0000

Canada, 2011, 1 min, video, silent

Chris Kennedy digitally animates Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawing #349 in a scintillating short sequence that enchants the viewer with its primary color palette and bold geometric diction. In one thoughtful minute, the sequential dance of shape cuts the frame into pieces of eye-candy; frame-by-frame, the flux of color creates a lurid, fluorescent flicker, fostering a graphic environment with a cinematic sparkle that’s sure to dazzle the viewer.

349 (for Sol LeWitt) played at the AAFF on Tuesday, March 28, 2012, as part of the Films in Competition 2 program.

The 50 annual Ann Arbor Film Festival continues. View the list of events here.

Chris Kennedy — Light Cone

2012 AAFF Schedule

AAFF 50 Screens schedule & overview

AAFF: 50 Screens

2 Hour Moment of Silence by Eric Fleischauer

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:37:55 +0000

2 Hour Moment of Silence
by Eric Fleischauer
videotape, artificial flowers, 2008

A magnetic and enigmatic loop of ersatz flowers and video tape. A blooming ribbon of woven memory and beauty.

(Photo taken at Interstate Projects, Brooklyn.)

obliteration room by Yayoi Kusama

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:37:18 +0000

Obliteration Room by Yayoi Kusama: an interactive happening between colored stickers, children, and a white room canvas. Part of Kusama’s major solo exhibit “Look Now, See Forever” at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia.

Yayoi Kusama, 2005

“Look Now, See Forever” from 19 November 2011 to 11 March 2012.

(intro) Look Now, See Forever

Obliteration Room

Yayoi Kusama’s website

Hey Bubbles’ photos of Obliteration Room

“Before The First Dot”

Likes and Notes At a Glance: Consumption without Contextualization

Louis Doulas — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:22:17 +0000

By Louis Doulas
PDF

Screenshot of Pleaselike.com taken October 27th 2011

Pleaselike.com is a browser-based artwork by Rafaël Rozendaal made in 2010. The website consists of an entirely white page with an embedded Facebook classic-blue thumbs up ‘Like’ button positioned in the center. To the button’s right is an ongoing tally of people who have clicked the button. As of this minute—October 27^th,2011 at 9:55 PM—18,085 people[1] have liked the website. I have yet to participate by clicking ‘like’, a fact Facebook has made quite apparent by urging me on with the following sentence:

Be the first of your friends.

The website first presents the user with an encouragement to submit to a seemingly interstitial request. Nothing appears to be at stake in the user’s relationship to this request; either she clicks or she doesn’t click. The consequences bear no apparent reward or punishment—in fact, there is a marked absence of both. The confrontation quickly becoming slightly idiotic when prompted with the thought of not clicking. So the user—ideally, without such prolonged apprehension—clicks and accepts, enlisting in Rozendaal’s playful game. However, the relationship concludes at this point. The user clicks ‘Like’, perhaps proceeds to check her Facebook profile to witness the immediate result of her action, then proceeds onto the next website in her surfing queue.

Suppose, though, that the user doesn’t click. What happens then? First, why wouldn’t someone click ‘Like’? One reason may point to the user being of the ‘private’ type, not wanting the results of her click to show up on her Facebook profile. However, anyone can hide stories like this from their profile by configuring a simple setting in their privacy settings (or alternatively the ‘Hide this Action from Profile’ option). Pleaselike.com would still receive the user’s ‘like’, but none of her Facebook friends would see her activity. Another reason may point to the user’s unwillingness to forgo privacy, though again this tactic is thwarted: even if the user abstains from clicking, her information will still be accounted for and collected by Facebook for merely just visiting the page[2]. Why else, then, wouldn’t someone want to click and make Rozendaal’s work ‘complete’?

They aren’t familiar with the site and never actually cross paths with it.
They simply put, just don’t care, moving on without further dispute.
They express disdain for the artist by refusing to ‘participate’.
They wonder what it means not to click.

The point here is that no one will not not-like the website and this may very well be the point of this Rozendaal work. The user confronts the webpage with really an absence of choice, that is, the Like’s button absence of relationship to content outside of itself has already created the user’s decision for her. Without a clear accompaniment of content (an article, an image, a video, etc.) for what the Like button is existing to support, the user has really nothing to do but to follow the authority of the website and click because of the void of other options. The lack of harm in doing so and because of the briefly satisfying—if not mediocre—moment it offers (the chance to be a ‘part’ of an artwork, to join your peers and not feel left out, etc.) only solidifies the motivation to click. The user here then ‘likes’ to fulfill the site’s only existence, bridging the gap of intention the artist has built. The user clicks, not to confirm and share her taste for a specific brand, aesthetic or event, but to ‘like’ both the website and to confirm the action of liking itself; a recognition of a recognition. The title, Pleaselike, suggests a modest tone and creates in the user an equally modest response: “It’s no problem, really, I can click”. Pleaselike, with no comma separating the two words is a command devoid of a command, an implication that the user do something on the page; and what is there to do but to click the only clickable thing?

Pointing to nothing but itself, the website composes an accumulation of numbers, representations of other users who also did as the user did. There are no direct repercussions or ramifications, there is no disdain or disapproving face and no celebratory one; liking here is a seemingly empty meta-gesture. And thus Rozendaal’s critique appears to reveal itself: through the absence of any detrimental circumstances, the Like button is but a compliant form of support, producing affirmation from users and peers without requesting further textual articulation or clarification.

Just as Rozendaal’s title, Pleaselike blankly justifies its clickable implications by asking nicely, so too does the Like button and Tumblr Note carry seemingly modest and quiet but highly anticipatory requests.

The Facebook Like button is a politely constructed symbol, simultaneously begging to be clicked and not to be clicked. With no perceivable authority implied in its design and function, it never actually forces the user to engage with it. It is clicked because the user does so on her own symbolic behalf. However, the Like button must proceed onwards under such passive-neutral pretenses, for its reliance on the user is an important determinant in the advancement of its own business model. The Like button must exert a non-threatening interface so its users can comfortably continue to activate and integrate it into their online routine.

Besides providing a limited amount of insight to the button’s embedder, its ongoing application outside of the Facebook website, embedded into websites and blogs across all disciplines acting as basic promotional tools and neat suggestions for ‘support’ marks the convenient constructions of a self-referential Web 2.0 business strategy consisting of the employment of walled gardens[3] and financial sustainability through willingly provided user voluntarism. The walled gardens of Facebook—along with paralleling social networking sites striving for similar types of web dominance—entail that user activity is consolidated and performed through one centralized service ultimately suggesting a scarcity of ‘freely’ provided user information to those other websites and companies outside of the monopolized domain of one single, concentrated website [collecting, housing and eventually selling immense amounts of data over a supposedly fixed period of time]. These motives especially highlight themselves through the perpetual use of the Facebook Like button and of seemingly non-existant equivalents i.e. the continuation to Like using the Facebook Like button because there are no other options. Or under similar logic, to paint a more vivid and encompassing picture (but in response to the often disregard of the expensive, fetishized computer hardware allowing for seemingly ‘free’, ‘immaterial’ social interactions and content consumption), Gene McHugh points out,

“Go on, keep chatting with your friends, watching videos, listening to music—it’s all fluid and immaterial now and that’s great—just so long as you do so through the iPad.”[4]

Though the Like button can exist off of Facebook, it never actually quite does as all action and information channels itself back into the social network.

What is of primary concern here is not the Like button’s use within the lounge environment of Facebook (liking friend’s images, statuses’, etc.) or the mining of user data for profit, but its application and accompaniment onto websites, images, articles, etc. (that today approximately 905,000 websites employ)[5] which often require and warrant an expanded critical consideration of content from its users, rather than a summarized one. The Like button as is does its job by acting as a visual log of peer endorsement. But what is the value in these confirmations other than providing the button’s embedder with a temporary relief from a project’s potential failure, from a user’s online alienation, from friendlessness? As well as existing as mere stepping stones in a user’s ongoing performance in self-branding? Maybe the Like button is not worthy of critique or contemplation because its utility is so specific, obvious, non-threatening and narrowly-bound. However, a hidden, subtle conflict emerges in such evaluative scenarios that is worth noting, one that surely many users have experienced: an emptiness, a going-nowhere skewed resolve of content, of appreciation, and of understanding.

Though in many ways conceptually equivalent to the Facebook ‘Like’, the Tumblr ‘Note’ is considerably more animated and lively in form.

A white blank heart sits in the center of a small grey box at the upper right hand corner of a .tumblr.com webpage. When clicked, the heart turns red, coming to life to represent a user’s ‘like’. This action then generates a ‘Note’ affirming that such and such user ‘liked this’. The note generally finds its location underneath the content that was liked and accumulates by number. Interestingly enough, the heart ‘note’ icon doesn’t symbolize a ‘love’, as its symbol connotes. Instead, it represents something more indecisive and uncertain. Love, in this instance, becomes far too committal of an act to exist in such a transient environment.

Nicholas liked the image of the landscape.

Nicholas loved the image of the landscape.

Even in reading it on the page or repeating it out loud, ‘love’ appears overly enthusiastic and may actually perpetuate certain doubtful behavior, causing a user to question the validity of her own taste or preference as well as placing more emphasis on decisiveness, rendering more time taken in arrival of a judgement. A Tumblr note (or Facebook like) is safer, more multiplicative, approachable and effortlessly applicable because it doesn’t require too much commitment or head-dwelling from the user. The ‘note’, also referencing a type of office or research/archival environment, creates exactly that, a note, a bookmark of sorts for the user; signifying that a ‘noted’ piece of content is merely just part of an ongoing growing collection of even more. The ‘note’ isn’t meant to be permanent or committal. Besides the fact that a user can quite literally, ‘unlike’ something at any point in time, the note suggests a constant process or perpetual construction of the self. By serving the ever-changing mood of the user, the accumulation of notes demonstrates the malleability of her identity.

When clicked, the heart turns red, coming to life to represent a user’s 'like'

The declarative moment of a user’s reaction to content is consolidated into a visual summarization online. A ‘Like’ or ‘Note’ represent the rapid symbolic acknowledgement of content that is conveniently and effortlessly employed within the accelerated environment of the internet. However, this type of acknowledgement and its symbolic equivalencies do not necessitate that an actor really ‘like’, ‘kind of like’ or really even ‘love’, something, but rather that their attention be momentarily diverted and briefly concentrated enough for her to become weary of time and respond to the moment, confirming this ‘moment’ through clicking. In this way, both the Like button and Note button at best can only be illustrations of a generalization. Both buttons seemingly discourage the user to extrapolate, discuss, or review; but only to coldly confirm, index and performatively grow. Employing Likes or Notes as an option for evaluating, understanding and collecting content creates an increased likelihood in the continuation of its use as a method for contextualization that never escapes from the user. Of course, the active user will trudge beyond these buttons to make her articulations, but how does the existence of these buttons influence the growth and progress of a niche, burgeoning community of potentially undefined, uncertain users? Of users who aren’t inclined to go beyond clicking things they kind of like?

The State, for example was an online platform based on Tumblr that featured work from artists ‘who use the internet as a primary element in their work’. For each featured work, there was also a textual accounting of the critical/theoretical underpinnings each explored or encapsulated, written by the artist herself. The goal of The State was to ‘engage a more substantial online viewership and initiate critical dialog.’[6] Embedding a DISQUS comment box allowed users to potentially do just this [initiate and circulate conversation surrounding each featured artists work and subsequent text]. However, though now defunct and ceased from publishing, one will find upon visitation of the site to be nearly void of any commentary or discussion. Jumping from work to work, the comment section contains either nothing or a few short-winded afterthoughts (usually complimentary words or sentences):

‘a huge AVI? is this on Vimeo or streaming somewhere?’

‘<3’

‘INTENSE.’

‘!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11’

‘amazing sense of atmosphere in this space you set up’

i dont get it’

‘radical’

In fact, what one will quickly notice is the number of notes each artwork received. While The State obviously had admirable intentions in attempting to assist peers in ‘speaking up’, its problems can be less easily discerned. Is the lack (or dead absence) of discussion a problem of the users or, consequently, of design? We can postulate here four potential theories:

The State featured text alongside artwork. However, the text was mostly ornamental, merely a clarification or contextualized defense of the artwork featured. The lack of criticism here could be attributed to the lack of argument or opinion found in each artist’s own texts.
The State was merely a burgeoning platform. Its audience and network were limited and small and thus the site couldn’t circulate the volume of conversation that a site like Art Fag City, for example, cultivates.
The State was based on Tumblr, primarily an image based micro blogging platform. The audience for such was thus limited to users accustomed to a ‘note’ and ‘reblog’ system (perhaps, WordPress would have been a better alternative).
The pace and massive availability of content online encourages and prioritizes a consumerist approach to content. Clickable visual symbols replace textual response online.

Though an answer could likely be found in all of the above, it is here we see a clear example of how the employment of a ‘Note’ and ‘Like’ system creates only a vague notion of valuability and understanding of content, creating not an expansion of understanding within a community but merely a consumption of it. Notes are an indexical tool and in this aspect they become a private gesture, providing the user an archive only for themselves. Whatever interest, thought, research, etc. is contextualized with the click of the Note is lost within the individual’s privacy of mind and in her Tumblr dashboard of collected ‘Likes’. All justification and defense remains with the user, because there exists no output for such intentions other than her own Tumblr blog (which will either textually clarify her content or further abstract it). Likes are, on the other hand, almost more ephemeral in that they aren’t meant to be indexed and accessed later on; they are momentarily supportive and become of no direct use to the user after the button is clicked. Without a clear alternate option offered within the design of these platforms, certain behaviors and social interactions perpetuate themselves due to the very design the website initially proposes and promotes. The fact that a comment box wasn’t an option on Tumblr (until recently through DISQUS) points to the original intention and purpose of the website itself: a platform of pure image aggregation.

An archive of 'liked' posts in a user's Tumblr dashboard

Online, the value of content culminates and accrues in a series of confirmations. The Facebook and Tumblr ‘Like’ and ‘Note’ button are employed as measured representations of a user’s concentrated attention to multiple interests. Likes and Notes are beneficial and may seem integral to maintaining and measuring the ‘success’ or ‘impact’ a company, restaurant, writer or artist has on its customers, supporters, fans, admirers, etc. because it may gauge the appeal and relevancy an entity has on its intended audience, revealing its niche target. Both the Like and Note button hold a seemingly neutral ground to ensure comfort and control in the liking process. Liking—on both Facebook and Tumblr—always signifies a taste and activity, a performative in-process construction of one’s own personalized brand, encapsulating a user’s style, politics, and philosophy. Liking something is always found in conjunction with a declaration of individuality followed by either the celebratory identification of the individual within the crowd or the dousing of identification through the suffocation of it.

Facebook: Sofia likes The Office, Sofia is The Office, 9,567,948 others like The Office

Tumblr: Evan likes the 3D rendered paint stroke, Evan is the 3D rendered paint stroke, 100 others like the 3D rendered paint stroke

Again we realize here that liking only represents a part of a whole. When Evan likes the image of a 3D rendered paint stroke on Tumblr and gives it a ‘note’ what can be accounted for in his gesture? Why does he like it? How has he contextualized it? Understood it? Consumed it? It is these clickable symbols that replace textual responses online and justify consumption without dissertation, ultimately encouraging a type of passive consumerism where things are merely nodded at and popularized through formal evaluation and understanding. Buttons like the Like and Note firstly exist to cater to producing an aesthetic impulse within the user.

A common 'feedback' button found on many websites and blogs online

The Like and Note button represent only the lowest common denominator of support. If we are really to offer our deepest convictions, support and criticisms to our peers and institutions, let us actually actively communicate them–not merely click them. As a mass that is already so disorganized and fragmented in both politic and philosophy, we cannot afford to have concerns so uncritically affirmed and so passively consumed. If we are to value depth and progress in ourselves, in our peers and projects we must begin to articulate in order to actually comprehend and enact any kind of ideal cohesive organization.

Artists, designers and thinkers must begin to conceptualize new forms of establishing value online—ones that are more demanding and more ‘inconvenienced’. But it is through these delayed methods and considerations that over time we will soon develop to perform and demonstrate criticality in faster inclinations with a contextualized acceleration. Criticality manifests only in its continual use. Current platforms like Facebook and Tumblr are far too basic and undemanding to represent any real content evaluation system. Their existence is formed not within the domain of contemplation of content but in reaction to it and thus limited to the impulses and immediacy that accompanies brief encounters and assessments. Current online value systems exist merely on a surface level and greatly dilute the motivation to expand the consideration of what we consume.

How is value created online?
How do we assign and ascribe value to content online?
How are our current online platforms lacking?
How can we rectify our disappointment or dissatisfaction with these online platforms?
Are we dissatisfied with the quality of content these online platforms are creating or influencing?
What can we create to expand these platforms?
How can we create more critical platforms?

These are the types of questions we should seek to be concerned with. Only by experimenting with alternative methods of presenting, designing and circulating content and conversation will we create an even more flourishing and creative active user environment. Everyone must write, create, speak and design.

If this last proposal is vague it’s because I cannot offer any concretized solutions. I only encourage anyone interested to experiment and play. Serious consideration of the above questions will create new platforms and specify new questions and conflicts. We must pay attention to the architecture and politics of the website.

BuzzFeed.com's 'alternative' rating system

[1] As of December 8^th 2011, 12:14 PM, the website has 19,345 likes.
http://www.pleaselike.com/

[2] Arnold Roosendaal, Facebook Tracks and Traces Everyone: Like This!, Tilburg Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series, 2010. Online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1717563
Riva Richmond, As ‘Like’ Buttons Spread, So Do Facebook’s Tentacles, New York Times, 2011,

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/as-like-buttons-spread-so-do-facebooks-tentacles/

[3] Joseph Turow, Audience Construction and Culture Production: Marketing Surveillance in the Digital Age, 2005, p. 16.

Dennis Knopf, Defriending The Web, Digital Folklore Reader, Merz & Solitude, 2009, p. 11. Online at http://www.dennisknopf.net/en/index.html

[4] Gene McHugh, Post-Internet, Link Editions, 2011, p. 149. Online at http://122909a.com/

[5] Elinor Mills, Lawmakers seek FTC probe of Facebook post-log out tracking, CNET, 2011, http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20113101-245/lawmakers-seek-ftc-probe-of-facebook-post-log-out-tracking/

Abine, 2011, http://www.abine.com/wordpress/2011/what-you-dont-know-about-facebooks-new-buttons/

[6] Mission statement of The State, http://www.thestate.tumblr.com

Notes on a New Nature at 319 Scholes, Brooklyn, Nov 10–Nov 20, 2011

Water Rug/Portal by Kate Steciw

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 06:07:12 +0000

“Water Rug/Portal” by Kate Staciw, 2011, photo rug, 60"X48"

It’s great to see a rug that acts as a portal. If you had a portal, where would you go?

Kate Steciw is a NYC-based artist, who studied photography at SAIC, and was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

It was a pleasure to see her “Water Rug/Portal” in person earlier this year, which was on the floor during the “A Small Forest” show at the Kunsthalle New, Chicago, July 2011, a show co-curated by Bea Fremderman & Nicolas O’Brien.

More: Kate Steciw

The “Colored Pencil Techniques” Series by Greg Parma Smith

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:07:33 +0000

“Colored Pencil Techniques 4”, 2010, oil on canvas collaged onto oil and acrylic on canvas, 24” x 32”

“Colored Pencil Techniques 3”, 2010, oil on canvas collaged onto oil and acrylic on canvas, 24” x 32”

“Colored Pencil Techniques 2”, 2010, oil on canvas collaged onto oil and acrylic on canvas, 24” x 32”

“Colored Pencil Techniques 1” 2010, oil on canvas collaged onto oil and acrylic on canvas, 24” x 32”

The “Colored Pencil Techniques” Series, works 1–4, by NYC-based painter, Greg Parma Smith.

Greg Parma Smith (born 1983), a Swiss-American artist, lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2007. Group exhibitions include A Great Delicacy, Taylor de Cordoba Gallery and Desired Constellations, Daniel Reich Gallery. — Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York

Greg Parma Smith

Greg Parma Smith: Adult Learning: Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York

“Science, Classicism, Lycanthropy” by Greg Parma Smith

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:45:50 +0000

“Science, Classicism, Lycanthropy” by Greg Parma Smith, 2007, oil on panel, 30" x 40"

Warm, holiday fire * yuletide vibrations.

by NYC-based artist, Greg Parma Smith.

Paper Rehabilitation Project, Series 1, Detroit Blank Book

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:07:44 +0000

Paper Rehabilitation Project, Series 1
Detroit Blank Book Launch
December 9, 2011
6 – 8 pm
Museum or Contemporary Art Detroit Store
4454 Woodward Ave (map)

Nowadays, in our world that is rife with profligacy, it’s nice to see an effort to glean abandoned paper for blank book-binding purposes. Orchestrated by the International Typographical Union, series 1 of the paper rehabilitation project will officially launch on December 9th, 2011, in Detroit, Michigan, at the MOCAD store.

If you’re in Detroit, the books are currently for sale at in Detroit at City Bird, MOCAD, and Signal-Return. If you’re not in Detroit, the books can be purchased online through the MOCAD website.

Recycle, reduce, reuse.

Only 600 books available.

162 pages; 81 sheets
5.25 x 8.25 inches
7 oz

The blank books in this first series of the Paper Rehabilitation Project are made of stock found at a warehouse of excess, rejected and damaged paper. Each book contains four different sheets – Rolland Enviro, Oxford White, Cougar Natural Opaque, and Royal Cotton, manufactured by Cascades, Neenah, Domtar, and Wasau paper companies. We found three different stocks for the covers – blue and gray with a linen finish, and a plum, with a sort of faux-leather finish. They were bound by Janutol Printing on Detroit’s East side.

The paper in these books was probably originally purchased by printers for their clients, but for one reason or another it was not used as intended. Perhaps it was damaged in transit, or the sheets were jamming the machines, or the job was cancelled altogether. The printer might have made the case to the mill that the paper was unusable in order to try to recoup some of their investment. It ended up on the scrap market at a high-volume paper recycler, where there was a small chance it would be bought by another printer, or more likely it would be shredded and sold (by weight) to a paper mill where it would become the recycled content in a new sheet of paper.

It took us a long time to learn of the existence of this paper. Printers, paper distributors, and even many paper recyclers are reluctant to speak of this kind of surplus paper, perhaps because it threatens the commodity status of ‘clean’ paper. We had the feeling that by having it bound into a book we were causing a minor disruption in the circulation of paper. We captured these sheets at this particular moment in time, while they were available, and made 600 books that we will never again be able to reproduce.

MOCAD Store

International Typographical Union

Acid-Free, a mural by Jen Stark

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:58:51 +0000

The Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art commissioned Jen Stark to create a large outdoor mural on their building. The Mural, titled “Acid-Free,” is 90 ft long by 35 ft wide.

Dock your yacht and check it out.

Power: On and Off the Grid with Deborah Stratman & Daniel Tucker, 11.15.11

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:25:06 +0000

POWER: On and Off the Grid
8:00 PM, $5 suggested
@ the Nightingale
1084 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL, 60642 (map)
Tonight! 15 November 2011

“The YouTube assembly consists of screening web-based video for a live and participating audience. Each YTA features 2 hosts that use YouTube to elaborate on a point of interest relevant to their artwork or creative practice. After the “talk” the assembly opens for dialog, giving audience members the opportunity to pull up videos in response or that are relevant to the topic. It’s halfway between an artist talk and film screening; yet goes beyond their conventions by channeling the social possibilities of the medium. The series is sponsored by Homeroom Chicago and is held at the Nightingale

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Her films, rather than telling stories, pose a series of problems – and through their at times ambiguous nature, allow for a complicated reading of the questions being asked. Many of her films point to the relationships between physical environments and the very human struggles for power, ownership, mastery and control that are played out on the land. Most recently, they have questioned elemental historical narratives about freedom, expansion, security, and the regulation of space. She has exhibited internationally at venues including the Whitney Biennial, MoMA, the Pompidou, Hammer Museum and many international film festivals including Sundance, the Viennale, Ann Arbor and Rotterdam. pythagorasfilm.com

Daniel Tucker has worked as a cultural and political organizer in Chicago for over ten years, initiating a number of large-scale local projects and events. His particular focus has been on documenting social and cultural movements and the places from which they emerge. Most of his work exists in a blurry line between documentary, advocacy, journalism, curating and art-making and deals with themes of political imagination, localism, hidden history, economy and community. All of his projects utilize careful consideration of audience and distribution and involve significant research and relationship building to have effective and lasting impact. miscprojects.com”

Jen Stark’s t0p 5

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:59:08 +0000

Oh yeah, player, it’s time to get thrashed with another installation of t0p5. But what is t0p5? T0p5 is a DINCutorial series where artists select five embeddable videos. But how does t0p5 feel? T0p5 feels like flying over the earth; it feels like Shawn Kemp posterizing a robot; it sounds like balloons being released for orphans; it sounds like BROS; it sounds like Neptune; it smells like being in a CAVE with a Cellar Dweller; it looks like a noble surfer, surfing in the dark; it looks like “蘋果動新聞 – 2010-12-12 – 美森林現怪物　眼發光「蜘蛛俠”; it tastes like eating a fish you caught from the LA river; it tastes like buckshot; so without further ado, let us walk through the door to Jen Stark’s t0p5.

Jen Stark is a Miami-based, psychedelic artist, whose majority of work includes paper sculptures; she also makes incredible animations using paper. Her work has been featured at Art Basel, MoCA, all over the internet, on the cover of the Harvard Business Review, and many other notables — vide her CV for more.

Jen Stark (born 1983 in Miami, Florida) is a contemporary artist whose majority of work involves creating paper sculptures. She also works with drawing and animation. Her work draws inspiration from microscopic patterns in nature, wormholes, and sliced anatomy.^[1] She studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), graduating Magna Cum Laude with a BFA majoring in Fibers with a minor in Animation.^[2]

Stark’s ideas are based on replication and infinity, echoing patterns and intelligent designs found in nature. Since expanding her medium from paper to include wood and even mirrors, Jen Stark’s oeuvre of optically and methodologically baffling sculptures and drawings has enjoyed a renaissance of context. Her signature creations combine a variety of materials that have acted as a catalyst for more established spiritual proclivity as expressed through hypnotic mandala-like configurations. Jen Stark has exhibited her works in various galleries around the U.S. as well as the Girls’ Club Collection, FL, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, FL and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami. She was a recipient of the prestigious South Florida Cultural Consortium’s Visual and Media Artists Fellowship in 2008. Stark lives and works in Miami, Fl. — Wikipedia article on Jen Stark

JEN STARK’S T0P5, in her own words.

“Geometry of Circles: Sesame Street ” by Philip Glass
A simple, beautiful example of old school Sesame Street by the mastermind, Philip Glass.

“Let’s Paint, Excercise & Blend Drinks TV” by Let’s Paint TV
Just what the title says, including taking live call’s while gang members call in to curse each other out.

“Story from North America” by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore
A fun song about life lessons.

“Ready, Able” Music by Grizzly Bear, Animation by Allison Schulnik
Cool video of playdough melting faces in a magical forest.

“Nobody Here” by sunsetcorp
A neverending dreamy loop of nothing.

Jen Stark website

Jen Stark on Vimeo

Jen Stark Wikipedia

Paper: The Art and Animation of Jen Stark

Inside View of “Kaleidoscopic” (2011) by Jen Stark

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:40:27 +0000

Jen Stark, 2011, video, 1 min

We ♥ Jen Stark, a Miami-based artist and paper magician.

From Jen Stark: “This is the inside view of a kaleidoscopic sculpture I created out of wood.”

Jen Stark Website
Essential viewing: Jen Stark’s Paper Art-Artstreet Miami
Jen Stark on Vimeo

a Painting by George Kuchar

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:34:28 +0000

A painting by the late George Kuchar.

Photo credit: Elisa Harkins.

If anyone has additional information on the painting, please comment. Apparently this photograph was snapped at NEXT, Chicago, year unknown.

Roxaboxen Fundraiser: Xina Xurner, Mr. 666, Jerome Baez, Panthervision: Sept. 2, 2011

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:58:04 +0000

a fundraiser for Roxaboxen w/
Xina Xurner
Mr. 666 (techno set)
JEROME BAEZ in Panthervision (Theodore Darst)

Friday, September 2, 2011
8:00pm – 11:00pm
Roxaboxen Exhibitions
2130 W. 21st ST.
Chicago, IL
(map)

Bring your looks
Bring your evil donations for Roxaboxen too

Roxaboxen Exhibitions is an artist run gallery and performance space in the heart of Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. We are dedicated to displaying work of awesome artists we encounter, providing a space for creative collaboration, as well as distributing/acquiring ideas and information. We can be contacted at roxaboxen.minicastle@gmail.com

Jen Stark’s Work on the Cover of the Harvard Business Review

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:52:25 +0000

Hardly ever are there strange nodes of business journalism and good paper art. Jen Stark‘s work on the cover of the Harvard Business Review is one instance. Sources say Stark now has a full-ride for Harvard’s M.B.A. program. Have fun, Jenn! Study hard and take lot’s of vitamins.

More of Jenn starks work featured in this interview.
Jenn Stark’s website
Harvard Business Review