Hanet Is Always the Center of Attention!

Where ever he goes, he causes a stir...

Better Strategies

A followup on the Brian Eno lovefest last week, for you Mac people (which should be all of you, and if not, why not?): Oblique Strategies - comprising all of the editions of the cards to date - is available as an Apple Dashboard Widget!!! (freeware, for OSX 10.4 or later).

Theory on the grill

There ain't no way, no how that summer ends on Labor Day.

Here's a tentative plan:

Saturday, Sept. 8 on the RRL patio: BBQ and a movie. Starting up the grill around 4-5 p.m. sound OK?

We gather, we cook, we sit around, we visit, we eat, we watch stuff. Bring a dish or something to pass -- we can coordinate all that via e-mail, since last time worked so well. Let the group know if you can't make it.

The feature: "Zizek!" (2005) a documentary about the "Wild Man of Theory." Informatic, edutaining and entertational. And more!

We also may have some Wallace and Gromit/Nick Park shorts, for those with shorter attention spans. If you have to be bribed with animation, really, it's OK. It's still art.

More here: Zizek! the Movie

See you all there.

This Just In

Sorry, we missed the Monday showing.
This should have been on the blog from the git-go:

See and hear what your fellow SouthernTierites think about living here...
in Jan Kather's Aleatoric Video project:

Aleatoric Video will be hosted by:
Steele Library (Elmira) - August 20
Hammondsport Library - August 27
Waverly Library - August 29
Watkins Glen Library - September 1
(info lifted from Jan's Facebook page)

... but it returns to Elmira!
Octagon Fair at EC - Sept. 29

Nice Star-Gazette article on the project
HERE

Accept advice.

One of my favorite tools, ever:
Oblique Strategies – "Over 100 Worthwhile Dilemmas"

And now, a haiku:

For art makin’ fools:
advice for gettin’ unstuck
in creative thinkin’

… and livin’ in general .

Brian Eno and the late Peter Schmidt created this set of cards, that has evolved into several different editions and various digital media over the years – from HyperCard stacks (way back before the Interwebs) to WAP apps for mobile phones. It remains a living, growing thing, inspiring additional sayings and whole editions by several other folks.

The idea: Pick a card, read it, think about it for a second or a while, and get back to work.

Some examples:

You Are an Engineer.

Instead of Changing a Thing, Change the World Around It.

Give Way to Your First Impulse.

Abandon Normal Instruments.

Honour Thy Error as a Hidden Intention.

Steal a Solution.

Balance the Consistency Principle with the Inconsistency Principle.

A Line Has Two Sides.

Try Faking It.

Accept advice.

Faced With A Choice, Do Both.

Do Something Boring.


I first discovered Oblique Strategies as an illustrated set in a magazine* that could be cut out, cut up and pasted onto cards. I seem to remember drawings of zebras…

*Not just any magazine, but CoEvolution Quarterly (later known as Whole Earth Review – publishers of The Whole Earth Catalog, subtitle “Access to Tools” – the true source of my education, other than the Southside Branch Library).

If I still have the original magazine or the copies I once made of the pages, I’ll coax another deck out of it.

For more challenging, pithy sayings, check out artist Jenny Holzer’s “Truisms” (as seen on this
Twitter microblog).


Jenny is wonderful, an artist-activist at heart. Her axioms are different but no less eye-opening. Eno and Schmidt address the creative process directly.

Further study: HERE
AND HERE (more links)

ENO'S SITE
--- > click on ‘oblique strategies’ on the left

Another random card generator


OK … so what words inspire YOU? Please share with the group.

Will Wright and Brian Eno - Generative Systems

Why a donut print becomes art.

in tha hizzouse...

Dan and Wendy!

Lurking, apparently...

More undertow: About Last Night
-- a general arts blog, stage & literature mostly, but check the blogroll and sidebar for reviews, more sites, links to lots of audio (Dali, Duchamp, writers) and video (jazz greats)_, news, criticism... including this video interview on Americanism in art, from Commentary mag.

License plate art by Michael Kalish.

(Added, some hours later:)

These are probably more our thing, I am digging them anyway...
More visual art-specific artsjournal blogs:

Modern Art Notes

Culturegrrl
-- wait, there was a major J. Cornell show that just closed in Salem? damn!

Man, it's beautiful out there.

(click to view larger image)

Not only that, no one can hear you scream.

Or for that matter, shout "Wow!!!"
So stop gazing at your navel and go... where no man (or woman) has gone before: Spitzer Space Telescope Images

one of the benefits of working at a uni ... cool stuff like this.

L'Avventura

L'Avventura opened my eyes to what film can communicate better than any other medium -- for the first time I saw beyond character, story, scene and effects, and discovered a rich language of image and mood, and backgrounds and landscapes that spoke louder than the actors.
((I could say the same thing about Mulholland Dr.))

"If I hadn't become a director, I would have been an architect, or maybe a painter. In other words, I think I'm someone who has things to show rather than things to say."
-- Michelangelo Antonioni, 1912-2007

Essential:
L'Avventura (1960)
Blow-Up (1967)
The Passenger (1975)

Turn That Damn Sculpture Down!

NEW YORK—At “Not Your Parents’ MTV: Music Videos From Hell,” a recent show at Manhattan’s Postmasters gallery, one work drew particular attention to itself. Karaoke Deathmatch 100 (2007), a video projected across the space’s back wall, featured the two members of the New York-based collective MTAA taking turns stepping up to the mike and trying to out-sing each other with karaoke staples from “We’ve Only Just Begun” to “Stairway to Heaven.” The work’s 50 rounds of intense crooning were originally presented (and contained) online, but in the gallery the sound spilled across the space to affect the viewing of the other eight videos in the show.

The phenomenon demonstrated by MTAA’s piece—the leaking of sound from an audio or video work into adjacent areas commonly referred to as noise “glare”—is just one of many complications that “media work” (a broad label that includes everything from single-channel video to interactive software-based work) has introduced to exhibition design. Every media work carries its own potential for interference, and over the years, numerous curatorial strategies have been developed to neutralize them—from using headphones and sit-down computer kiosks to dividing galleries into small screening rooms—some of which are more distracting than the works themselves. But curators and dealers are discovering that rather than attempting to reduce “glare” and other installation challenges, some of the most successful exhibitions take advantage of media work’s idiosyncrasies, using them to craft the overall experience of the exhibition.

Last Chance to see

the Jan Thomas installation at 171 Cedar Arts in Corning. The "In Resemblance" show comes down on Saturday, August 18. Also on exhibit are pieces by Arts of the Southern Finger Lakes' Lynn Rhoda and Ginnie Lupi, as well as Vanessa Decker Goodman.

Where ..

... are Dan and Wendy?

Michael and I saw The Simpsons Movie tonight. Quite good, very funny. Cameos by Green Day and Tom Hanks ("Since the United States has no credibility left, they're borrowing some of mine.")

(above - not Green Day but Sonic Youth.)

Ghetto Ballet?

See the movie Rize

Wilka Roig's Website

http://www.tarrahwilka.com/

Pix!

The latests, at a new link hyah: Jan's photos from the opening

Hey, that's not "a guest" in the Brian Jonestown shirt, that's my second cousin, Ben Redder! (Friend of Molly's, I think)

And the "guests" Tom, Karen and I are talking to are Matt Conway (who's "one of us" by association) and his girlfriend and little dog in basket)

Hey Jan, could ya forward me Wilka's link too?

signed,
least photogenic human being, evah

NP Idiot's Delight on WFUV
- All Tomorrow's Parties, VU and Nico
-Gimme Some Truth, John Lennon
-The Boxers, Paul and Artie
-and some band from the Catskills.

Cyberplaque

Testing the waters.

Interactive Net Art

This is a cross between internet art and gaming - We talked about Jason Nelson at one of our informal meetings. Maybe he would be interested in doing some internet art with RR?

Living My Life Faster - 8 years of JK's Daily Photo Project

Karen - This is the video I was talking about. Check out others, like Me: Girl takes pic of herself everyday...

Summer's here and ...

the time is right for writing in the streets.

A site full of designs by street artists, via Art News blog:
ST*NCLR*VL*TN

I know it's corny

but how could I resist? I was up at 5:30 am!

She was perfectly preserved underwater for over 30 years!

A Lady in the Lake: The True Account of Death and Discovery in Lake Placid (Mass Market Paperback)
by George Christian Ortloff (Author)

Art is a hammer ...

Hey everybody: Sorry I didn't make it down for all the work on Saturday. Was sick and slept it off until 4 pm, then got an invite to join some friends for food and music at Sheldrake Point.

I was in the studio Sunday afternoon into early evening, however, before Tom was showing around the young photographer interested in working at RRL. Before that I was finishing a piece and hurting for fasteners -- when I couldn't find what I wanted I smashed a few pushpins with a hammer; plastic bits flying everywhere. It was very therapeutic.

Kudos:
- Melissa's show looks good. I like how she used the furniture, Reidy, Taylor and dog (sorry, I am spacing on all names today).
- Dan's "KURT" sign looks REALLY good. I finally installed it after being tired of looking at it for weeks as 'separates'. I used the ladder and was very safe.
- Thanks to Dan for helping me over the phone with a shelf for my piece. Tom says it's maybe an inch too high, oh well. I was more concerned with no one touching it.
– I have one more simple/small framed item that might hang, but not sure just where it should go right now. As well as the usual uncertainty that it should go up at all.
- Thanks Jan for keeping us updated on all the visiting young'uns. It made my week.

See everybody soon; I'll stop by tonight, Wednesday and of course Friday.

Best wishes Tom!

'Scuse me while I kiss this guy

Everybody: Please congratulate our fearless leader as he exits the workaday world of art moving and storage and somehow finds more time for laundry, sleep, and being a studio rat -- not necessarily in that order. This is for you, Tom -- you're the straw that stirs the drink. We love you, man.

(That's Lily Allen living it up off Sydney, above.)

What Japan really thinks of us

People of LLR:
I stomps on your puny little art project.

I wonder if

in Japan do they call us "L L Rabs"?

More invites

I have sent invites to the blog to Karen and to Michael, who was working on his own project in the studio last night. If anyone needs help signing on, let me know... I have put coding for LINKS and IMAGES in my posting template since my bad bad browser at home doesn't let me do the latter. If you wants code, then asks.

I is has a ball now.

yours,

Big in Japan

Jan's Secret Comments Revealed

Rhonda Morton said this about RR after conducting her Young Adult Writers Group session at the Carriage House:
It's great to have that little wonderfully alive spot enriching the community!

Lynn Rusinko said after attending a Community Arts Meeting in their new building on Lake Street: I left the glow of the atrium light of a meeting at CA last night and turned the corner to see lights spill from the Carriage House. It's so nice to see life in the dark.

And my favorite moment today when the Japanese students visited the exhibit: They saw Dan Aloi's Derrida Deconstruction and word by word, line by line, spoke the whole painting! Dan you passed the Japanese test for effective interactive art.

Dan Gives the Tour to ESL Students

Good stuff in the comments, but...

Hey Jan! Post out here in the open where we can see you! (See? Tedd's not shy!)

Sweet! My first ever blog entry.

Welcome to the RRL blog!

A home on the Web for comments, news and more by the artists & friends of RRL -- throw down those mad ideas, yo. And brush up on posting photos, video, links and such. The Blogger program's sky is the limit.

Here's one of my favorite blogs, for the writing, music & art:

Locust St.
-- Chris is a great and thorough essayist. Check out his "7 Drinks of Mankind" item on coffee.

enjoy, and post away!
-- Dan A

Art: Roy Lichtenstein, screenprint - now on display (with 76 other rarely seen Roy prints) at Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT