“In its early years, the art of the Situationist International advocates the use of any medium not as art, but to reproduce a reality that doesn’t participate in capitalism.”
Quoted from G. Roger Denson in Part 2 of the Timeline of Leftist Social and Political Art on the Huffington Post.
“Don’t wait to be invited. Otherwise things will never happen.”
Project Stimmungsgasometer, by Richard Wilhelmer, Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus, is a giant smiley face that changes based on the mood of Berlin citizens. When they are collectively “happy” the light is a smile, and when they are not, it is a sad face. Input comes from facial recognition software (contributed by the Fraunhofer Institut) that takes in video from a strategically placed camera. The obtained mood data are then stored on a server and processed by the smiley on the screen to visualize the emotions in real-time.
Kind of hilarious, a bit weird, and somehow already feeling like its showing its age (though as I understand it, it was a temporary installation back in 2008). Data-driven artwork is already boring — that is, taking dataset x and applying it to artwork parameter y. Somehow I feel like Cory Arcangel had something to do with wrecking this for everyone, in the best way possible.
Thinking about ways to animate the intangibility of the city still seems like a good idea though.
via an email from Kim seen on Flowing Data & [Stimmungsgasometer via infosthetics]
This might, or might not, actually answer a question attracting and retaining recent grads in Windsor, but either way, it should be interesting viewing. Given the people set to speak, it’s quite possible that there’s going to be a lot more of the same noise (well except for Vincent Georgie, there are a lot of good things coming from his efforts at Odette), but here’s hoping there’s a chance for the conversation to open to the floor where some more expansive ideas can start to be generated. My fingers are crossed that this doesn’t turn (exclusively) into a propaganda + complaint session, but instead actually becomes a productive forum for conversation.
CBC Windsor has been asking what it is the young, tech-savvy children of the Baby Boomers are looking for in a city – and whether Windsor has what it takes to attract and keep Generation Y.
On Tuesday, November 29, we’ll be bringing those young voices together for a special town hall hosted by CBC News Windsor at 6 anchor Susan Pedler and online host Greg Layson.
Joining in the conversation are Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis, City Councillor Al Maghnieh, Vincent Georgie from the Odette School of Business, Dave Bussière from Admissions and Recruitment at the University of Windsor and Michael Lomonaco from Open Systems Technology in Grand Rapids, MI.
Our audience will be encouraged to use their mobile devices during the event to chat with Greg, tweet (#cbcwdr), respond to others’ tweets, update their Facebook status or follow CBC at www.facebook.com/cbcwindsor.
The event will be a mix of taped stories, chat, and special guest panelists.
It all happens Tuesday, November 29th at 8:00 p.m. at the Capitol Theatre.
Good on CBC Windsor for pulling this together. I’d love to see this happen on a more regular occasion (well, this being a range of off-site and issue-driven programming). I’ve asked students from my class to go, and hopefully some other BCLers will join Sara (I think she said she was going). Unfortunately I won’t be able to make it, I’m giving a workshop on grant writing at the ACWR (tonight at 7pm).
It felt like it was time for an update around here. With the winter coming, it seems right to have something a little brighter.
There’s also a bunch of new features that we’re still working out, so please be patient. All of our content is on here, somewhere. Let us know if you have any particular trouble finding things.
A quick three days at Martha Street Studio finished up with the opening for our exhibition, All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg. The show features a series of posters made by participants from our workshops and created in response to the stories they collectively wrote.
The exhibition runs until January 5, 2012!
We have to extend an incredibly huge thank you to everyone at Martha Street Studio for facilitating this residency and exhibition. We were floored by the support we received there and were lucky enough to host some exceptionally great Winnipegers at our workshops.
Needless to say, we had a great time — and below is how it all came together.
Continue reading “Martha Street Studio Residency Day 3: Install & Exhibition”
Arriving in Winnipeg late Sunday night, we were met with our first taste of winter for the year. It seemed like the right introduction to Winnipeg. This residency and exhibition is all about exploring the narratives that are (and are not) circulated about the city of Winnipeg, and perhaps any story of Winnipeg should indeed begin with the winter.
Suzie from Martha Street Studio picked us up at the airport and gave us a quick driving tour before we settled in at MAWA‘s apartment. Monday morning, we headed in to Martha Street Studio and got started right away sorting through the materials and work spaces available to us.
Among many things, we also got (re)acquainted with silk screening, which is now officially one of our favourite things to do.
Continue reading “Martha Street Studio Residency Day 1: Winnipeg / Winterpeg”
Next week, Justin, Michelle and Josh will be stationed at Martha Street Studio in Winnipeg to do a quick residency involving workshops, walks, and a lot of on-the-ground research leading up to an exhibition.
In Winnipeg? Check out the Martha Street Studio facebook page for more event information!
Here’s the details:
Martha Street Studio houses an exhibition gallery open to the public 5 days a week from 10–5pm. Martha Street Studio also has an inventory of artists’ work for sale and an archive of work produced at the studio since 1988.
“All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg”
We know a city from the stories we tell about the city. But, we can also know something about a city from the stories we don’t tell about it. Winnipeg is no different. Some of these stories we tell are about celebrating everything the community has to offer, while others are about all of the things that make the city a difficult place to love. However, there are still other stories that fall somewhere between the two, based on the personal narratives we all chart as we live, work, play, and move throughout the city. These stories of our everyday experiences are the ones that we don’t hear enough about.
You are invited to participate in the creation of a sprawling series of posters featuring the titles of all the stories Winnipeg isn’t telling, written by you. Facilitated by Broken City Lab, this workshop will begin with shared story telling, community mapping, and DIY design tactics and culminate in an exhibition at Martha Street Studio, of all the posters.
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WORKSHOP INFORMATION:
Monday, November 21st, 6-9pm
Tuesday, November 22nd, 6-9pm
Each workshop costs $10.
Sign up now, space is limited!
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EXHIBITION INFORMATION:
“All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg”
Broken City Lab Exhibition at Martha Street Studio
Opening November 23rd 5-8pm
Exhibition runs November 24th-January 5th
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And, we’ll definitely be trying to blog as much as we can about the trip! More soon.
It’s always a bit strange to get so many random emails about great work, and so often there’s not enough time to really explore. Today, though, I’m glad I took a couple minutes to look this over.
The Szpilman Award is awarded to works that exist only for a moment or a short period of time. The purpose of the award is to promote such works whose forms consist of ephemeral situations.
Above, Péter Szabó lit fireworks and fired confetti-canons and smoke-machines for the workers who arrived early in the morning at factories and a bus-station in Romania and Hungary. As some of these factories were to be shut down soon, his labor of love towards the stressed and worried workers appears almost like an alien artistic ritual in the midst of a hopeless daily routine.
The winner of the award, Jaroslav Kyša uses doves as living barriers in the city of London by secretly scattering their favourite fodder in front of shops or across busy streets.
Above, some things I’ve been thinking about lately.
It may or may not be useful to you, but feel free to share, post, tweet, email, photocopy, etc. with a larger image or pdf.
