Meat Cleavers and Screensavers for the New Age
Despite being snowed out one week and changing the date, we had a great turnout and a great time at our evening of six minute performances called “Meat Cleavers and Screensavers for the New Age” at Kunsthalle Galapogos, presented by This Red Door on February 10th. The artists met during last summer’s LMCC residency on Governors Island and the six minute constraint is inspired by the six minute ferry ride from Manhattan to Governors Island.
Artists (in order of appearance): Karl Erickson, Elisabeth Smolarz, Rachel Stevens, Meredith Drum, Kimberly Ruth, Jamie Diamond, Jody Wood, Tamar Ettun and the Moving Company. I projected dueling quotes from two books with the same name: Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland; and Art and Fear by Paul Virilio, while flipping over a cassette tape with an album by The Cure on either side when each quote began. See the standalone version here.
High School, Gold Keys and a ‘Banksy’
Heading back to the ferry on Governors Island
This has been the week of brilliant high school students. On Thursday we held our first workshop with students at the Urban Assembly Harbor School on Governors Island. In the Oyster City themed workshops, spearheaded by my terrific collaborator Meredith Drum, we are working with students to design 3D, virtual “monuments” to mark sites on the island that we might add to the treasure hunt node of Oyster City. The super bright and engaged on-the-ground experts who come to the island every day to study ocean engineering, scientific diving, aquaculture and other projects centered around marine stewardship are a pleasure to work with. A special thanks goes to Sam Janis, who has helped us organized the after-school workshops and who is deeply involved in the Billion Oyster Project .
On Friday I was a juror for the digital art category of the Scholastic National Art and Writing Awards. Top award winners get a gold key and artists and writers like Andy Warhol and Truman Capote got their start with early accolades from Scholastic. Since we finished a little early I sat in on some of the “Future New” panel and was truly blown away by the interdisciplinary work high school students are doing. Conceptual performance video, mapping tap water sample collection in different parts of San Francisco, an algorithmic system that generates bright abstract animations, a beautiful, intricate interactive shape game inspired by oragami and realized with a 3D printer and elegant string installation in public space drawing attention to spaces where people live on the street were only a handful of the amazing projects.
Afterwards I bought a fake Banksy on the street from a vendor in Soho, just to remind myself to keep it light.
TECCS Gala and Silent Auction
Richard J. McCormack/For The Jersey Journal
This week I was very pleased to participate in a silent art auction organized by art critic Carly Berwick for the TECCS (The Ethical Community Charter School) Gala honoring Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop. The piece sold, a good time was had by all, and apparently the Mayor checked out all the art!
Carly wrote this nice blurb about the piece. I should work this William Eggleston connection.
Stevens’ photographs are found landscapes, reminiscent of William Eggleston’s color-saturated photographs of American vernacular scenes. Drive-in was taken in upstate New York, near the town Massena, on the border with Canada. Its seeming casualness belies the deep formalism of the image, with its repeating rectangles in the marquee, screen, and numbered posts. The sun-streaked outdoor cinema references vacation postcards yet replaces crowds and vibrancy with a sense of absence and decay. The leftover landscape becomes an accidental collage.
Foundations of Digital Art and Design (+ Oyster City)
If I were teaching a foundations digital media course right now I would use this great new book by Xtine Burrough, Foundations of Digital Art and Design, published by Peachpit Press/Pearson. The book, which “combines lessons in Bauhaus-inspired design principles and theories with histories and examples of digital art for learners using Adobe Creative Cloud” leads the learner on a path that gracefully traverses conceptual and art thinking while developing technical skills. It is easy to get lost in the how-to and wow of software when you are learning, so I greatly appreciate this take on the process. And I am proud that Oyster City, our AR walking tour and game about the history and future of oysters in NYC, is included in the introduction. Here’s xtine’s blog, DesignEducator.info.
LMCC Bldg. 110 Open Studios
Player finds a location and approaches
Next weekend we’ll be participating in LMCC’s open studios as the culmination of our lovely residency. My collaborator Meredith Drum and I have been working hard on Oyster City, designing and building the interfaces and working on the Governors Island site of the five site project.
Swing Space Residency Open Studios
Saturday and Sunday, July 13 & 14, 12-6 PM
Building 110: LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island
Many thanks to LMCC for the fantastic opportunity to have access to the island during the week, for the studio with a view and for the community of artists.