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!