Davos and Goliath
While Swiss officials banned protests at this year's World Economic
Forum in Davos and unleashed an army of police and soldiers on activists
there (see News Dissector from Davos), they didn't stand in the way of artist
Johannes Gees. In Gees's interactive laser installation
"Hellomrpresident," participants sent short messages via e-mail or the
Web, which were then projected in 50-foot-high letters onto the slopes
of Mt. Bolgen behind Davos. At the same time, Webcams transmitted the
projected images back onto the Net in a dizzying feedback loop. "Anybody
home?" asked one. Gees, looking to create something similar for the
United Nations convocation in New York in September, is seeking
producer-Affiliates. For info, contact him at contact@johannesgees.com
From hellomrpresident.
|
|
|
Barbie Redux
There's little doubt that the vampy Barbie doll is the most iconic toy
ever produced. But when it comes to use of the long-legged toy's image,
Mattel, its manufacturer, has repeatedly (and successfully) brought
suit in U.S. courts against artists and publishers like Paul Hansen, who
sold 150 modified Barbies as artworks. Seal Press, which published
"Adios Barbie," a feminist look at body image, was forced to rename its
product "Body Outlaws" to comply with an out-of-court settlement with
Mattel. Score one last month for Utah artist Tom Forsythe and the
American Civil Liberties Union with the firm of Howard, Rice,
Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin, who jointly
represented the artist in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal when Mattel
went after Forsythe for his photographs of Barbie. The federal judges
upheld a lower-court ruling that Forsythe's free speech right embodied
in his photos outweigh Mattel's intellectual
property claims. (To learn more about cultural and social censorship, see
"The
File Room", an interactive archive/conceptual artwork.)
From Arts Wire Current
|
|
|
|
Art Against Aids
A string of artist-created, anti-AIDS billboards runs along highways from Abidjan to Lagos in the West African nation of Togo. In the inner cities, multilingual murals cover massive walls, and T-shirts sport designs by young artists. Targeting virtually the entire population, from truckers and sex workers to students and young adults, the "Art Versus AIDS" campaign is funded by UNAIDS and captured in this inspiring, online photo essay. As the project organizers assert: "We wanted to work with powerful communicators, and we felt that the most powerful communicators were artists. ... what better way to make AIDS a public issue than with public art?"
From PNUD Togo.
|
|
|
|
InterFace Off
After three successful incarnations in Amsterdam, International Browserday moves to New York. It's a competition for computer-art students and young designers to rethink that ubiquitous software-tool, the Web browser. Forget the tired ol' publishing paradigm that brings us "Web pages," and see how 33 young Turks from around the world reconceive the browser and, sometimes, the nature of the Internet itself. They'll be demo-ing their software at Cooper Union's Great Hall (7 East 7th St., New York City) all day
long on March 29, complemented by speakers and panels. The announcement of
winners will take place at 7 pm. Contact: spadel@uda.com
From International Browser Day.
|
|
|
|
Memories of Underdevelopment
The first exhibition of its kind in the Yucatan, "InteractivA '01" is a real and virtual showcase for interactive new media with a large online component of more than two dozen projects. Although curator Raul Ferrera-Balanquet refers repeatedly to technological underdevelopment facing the artists, many of them, like Ferrara-Balanquet himself, who is a Cuban who identifies himself as living in "USA/Mexico," seem to exist within a global artworld that the Internet has helped bring into being. Conceptually, though, underdevelopment informs some of the show's best work. My favorite: Shilpa Gupta's "Diamonds and You.com," which satirized de Beers's advertising campaigns and offers the viewer-consumer the opportunity to "choose your diamonds from war zones
like Sierra Leone." Virtually none of the widely exposed, online artists from Europe or the United States appear here. The show is up through April 20; the gallery component is at The Museum of Contemporary Art Ateneo of Yucatan, Mexico.
From Cartodigital.
|
|
|
|
Tabloid Troublemakers
A driving force behind the puritanical witch hunts against artists this winter in
the United States and Britain has been tabloid newspapers of the Rupert Murdoch ilk. In
New York it was the purple press that awakened Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to the alleged anti-Catholicism of Renee Green's "Yo Mama's Last Supper." In London, it was Murdoch's News of the World that fomented the near-closing of an exhibition at the private, museum-like Saatchi Gallery — and the obscenity prosecution of two artists, Tierney Gearon and Nan Goldin. Their sins? Photographing naked children being childish, peeing in the snow and the like. When it comes to nudity and children, even the generally free speech-respecting press puts its hypocrisy on view. Critic Mark Lawson of the left-leaning Guardian asserted, without irony, that: "The animal masks in some of the pictures might quicken the step of any gallery visitor who happened to be into kids-and-pets porn."
(To learn more about cultural and social censorship, see "The File Room", an
interactive archive/conceptual artwork.)
From Guardian Unlimited
|
|
|
|
Hybridize
Of all the general-interest print mags attempting to illuminate the hybrid character of our rapidly evolving built environment — the fusion of design, media, media-art, architecture and technology we know as today's digital culture — Artbyte does it best. "Voyeurschism" by Carly Berwick, in the current issue, discusses little-known nomadic artworks that place viewers in buses and turn the medium of the guided tour inside out, revealing its dark and voyeuristic underbelly. To cite one example, the late-night Dencity Bus Tour recently transported viewers through Brooklyn's most environmentally blighted areas in a darkened bus with an abstracted sound track, mixed live. This ain't no
party bus or even a satirical take on the ubiquitous, museum audio-tour, but a lonely
foray into a bleak world where the poverty of tourism happy-talk is laid bare.
From ARTBYTE: The Magazine of Digital Culture
|
|
|
|
Festival Of Fools
Take the Adbusters' media-art challenge. On April Fool's Day (April 1), simply gather up one hundred dollars in small bills and scatter them in a crowded shopping mall or onto the trading floor of your nearest stock exchange. Capture the action on video, and then send in your video or photo-stills for your $100 reward.
From Adbusters Media Foundation
|
|
|
|
|
AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE
MEDIA.
|
|
News & Reviews
ARCHIVE:
• March 28
• February 13
• January 17
• December 13
• September 13
• August 16
• July 26
• June 28
• May 31
• April 26
• March 29
|
MINIS:
RED LETTER EVENT
Spain's exemplary daily, El Pais, offers a newly-expanded history of online
art or arte.red (in Spanish.)
BOSTON T-1 PARTY
The annual Boston Cyberarts
Festival includes more than 30 exhibitions ranging from "Race in Digital Space" at the List Center, to "The Virtual Book" at the Cambridge Arts Council.
NEW MEDIA RESOURCE
CRUMB, or Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss, is a site (and
soon a discussion list as well) for new-media exhibition organizers, archivists and those who work with them.
MACHINES R US
"Machines That Become Us" is an international, 2-day conference about mobile communications presented by the Rutgers University Department of
Communications, New Brunswick, New Jersey, April 18-19
Post-Renaissance
"E-naissance: New Configurations of Mind, Body and Space" is a two-day, international conference exploring the art-sci-tech convergence, in Turin, March 28-29
ROLL 'EM
Artist Bill Seaman's evocative "Red Dice" marries Mallarme and the Net. Through April 22 at the Cinematheque quebecoise, www.fondation-langlois.org
DO IT YOURSELF
You've got til June 30 to send in your offerings for "Performances from Photobooth," an international exhibition in Yugoslavia held in conjunction with the third International
Multimedia Art Festival. For info contact Nenad Bodganovic at mangallery@ptt.yu
ARTRAGE
The latest alleged anti-Catholic art rage is a satircal version of the "the
Last Supper" called "The Last Pancake Breakfast." Artist Dick Detzner
replaced Jesus with the syrup icon Mrs. Butterworth. From: The Freedom Forum"
|
|
