Josh Dickinson’s Medical Trials

While not every art school graduate has a hard time finding a way to pay the bills, some graduates find financial refuge far outside the realm of art.

Josh Dickinson is one such person. He “has participated in almost 100 medical experiments in order to pay his rent. He’s been wired up with electrodes, stuck with needles, interrogated, subjected to pain and intentionally suffocated. In any other context, some of it might be considered torture. For him, it’s turned into an art project.”

He initially had no intention of documenting his experiences, but after about a year of strange tests and odd scenarios, he decided to capture what made up a large part of his life.

“Finding answers is entertaining to me,” says Dickinson. “I like the process. And if an audience can learn a little something while being entertained, it’s worth it.”

Via: WIRED

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Urban Stargazing

Here’s a project which is particularly interesting for its subtlety. Designer Oscar Lhermitte created twelve groups of artificial stars and added them to the night sky of London, titling the project Urban Stargazing. Oscar and his team installed a group of lights on thin transparent lines. These lines were then anchored to nearby structures. I find the modification of an ‘image’ humans have lived with and interpreted for thousands of years is a pretty powerful statement.

This project “attempts to have us raise our head again up to the stars in the city sky by adding new constellations that narrate contemporary myths about London. They can only be observed by the naked eye at night time and from the ground they look so uncannily like the old constellations that you might never notice that any change has occurred.”

Via: We Make Money, Not Art

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Blasbichler’s Twenty-One

Architect Armin Blasbichler recently presented 21 of his architecture students at the University of Innsbruck with an interesting and secretive assignment. His students had been assigned to “pick a bank in the city, study it, identify its Achilles’ heel and plan a bank robbery.” I’ll include the assignment statement below because it is incredible.

“The task: Develop a bank robbery plan for a bank branch within the city limits of Innsbruck. Use only information you find out yourself. Your alter-ego is your team mate, listen to what he/she says. Do not tell bank staff who you are and what you intend to do. Identify weak points of the chosen bank branch. Develop a concept to detract assets from the bank according to the weaknesses identified. Include action-, time-, and escape plan in a paper document of 70x100cm of size. Use graphic design techniques and text in order to provide a viable instructions manual document. Calculate or estimate the potential loss of assets.”

Via: We Make Money, Not Art

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Mid-Week Work Period

Yesterday a group of us met at the School of Visual Arts building to work on completing the sub-projects which will appear in our How to Forget the Border Completely publication. It is exciting to see our ideas come to fruition and our publication take shape. We are now at the stage of roughly laying out the publication and seeing how our individual works get along with each other.

Pictured above: Sara and Hiba work on laying out the HFBC publication in InDesign.

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Outside the Planter Boxes

At the end of last month, 30 planter interventions were created by a group of Toronto-based artists, gardeners, and concerned citizens. These individuals each took a neglected planter and adorned it, modified it, or annotated its condition. This statement is made stronger by a collective approach to highlighting the issue of urban engagement.

The following is from the project’s website: “We all have stakes in our shared environments, and this public project directly engages with Toronto’s urban fabric. One of the primary intents of the Outside the Planter Boxes project is to encourage more direct participation and interest in our shared public spaces – to demonstrate that the public can play a more consciously active role in how our city is shaped.”

Via: Eyeteeth: A Journal of Incisive Ideas

Pictured above: Sean Martindale’s Planter

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Sergio Albiac’s ‘Content is Queen’

Content is Queen is a new generative video painting by Sergio Albiac. Using computer programming language, he modifies the tools a painter would normally use and creates dynamic “paintings” from found video. If you’re having a hard time discerning what the image is, take a few steps back. Now the title makes sense!

Sergio states, “My technique uses regions of video content to effectively represent or “paint” heterogeneous regions of the image. Both the partial content of the videos and the whole image are fully visible at the same time, widening the possibilities to deliver meaning in a contemporary aesthetic language.”

Via: Today and Tomorrow

David Maisel’s American Mine

David Maisel‘s photographic series American Mine is getting on a bit now–he started it in 2007–but it’s one of those projects that become more relevant with age. To me his work highlights the paradox of admiring beauty in the organized destruction of something valuable. To be honest, all of David’s work is stunning; I suggest checking out his portfolio.

According to the American Mine project page, “Rather than a condemnation of a specific industry […] my images are intended as an aesthetic response to such despoiled landscapes. These sites are the contemplative gardens of our time, places that offer the opportunity to reflect on who and what we are collectively, as a society.”

Pictured above: American Mine (Carlin, NV 21)

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Matthew Brandt’s Lakes and Reservoirs

I have recently come across a very gorgeous set of photographs from Los Angeles, California’s Matthew Brandt. Matthew took snapshots of various lakes and reservoirs in California and soaked them in water from each corresponding location. The results are pretty random and, in my opinion, all beautiful. What he ends up with are sort of “personalized” portraits of these lakes and reservoirs.

Image above: Stone Lagoon, CA (C-Print)

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Fire Painting by Sanela Jahic

Fire Painting is an interactive installation made by Sanela Jahic. “The viewer can set off explosive levels of kerosene by subtle movements of a sensory data glove. The image can be manipulated, yet it constantly escapes control.” Sanela asks “What happens if a painting is no longer an independent, selfcontained position, bound by standstill, unalterability and light in site?” Interesting.

Via: Today and Tomorrow

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