Here’s what’s happening this week at the Henry!

Wednesday, May 15th
12-12:30 - Faculty Focus Tour with UW Painting + Drawing Associate Professor Helen O’Toole.  O’Toole was born in the west of Ireland and moved to Chicago in 1987 to pursue an MFA in painting at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. She has had solo exhibitions in Ireland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Provincetown, and Seattle. She will guide visitors through Sean Scully: Passages/Impressions/Surfaces. 

Check out this blog post from Jeremy Buben’s le Dandysme about our May 1st Staff Spotlight Tour with Feney Perez.

All day — Give Big! How can you support the Henry and be part of a dynamic community event? Participate in The Seattle Foundation’s third annual GiveBIG community day of giving this Wednesday. We would greatly appreciate your gift to help us to continue to inspire audiences of all ages with the discovery, wonder, and surprise that contemporary art provides.

Thursday, May 16th
7-8 pm - Music of Today with Cuong Vu. Cuong Vu and his guest(s) will perform and discuss the avant-garde, free improvisation, and the experimentation/innovation he uses to create his forward-looking music.This performance is part of the UW’s ongoing centennial celebration of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Friday, May 17th
10 am – 4 pm – Symposium: The Mechanics of Beauty.  UW’s History of Art Department will host a one-day symposium at the Henry that will explore the means, techniques, tools and strategies behind the production of art objects. The symposium will be held in conjunction with the Henry’s exhibition Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty.

6 -9 pm – The Brink Bash. Meet the six Brink Award finalists, enjoy a Hilliard’s beer, and take away an exclusive Brink Finalists publication. Tickets are available online for a suggested donation of $15 or at the door.

“The dress, its work on behalf of the body, is everything. Note how it elongates the leg, lengthens the arms. That those might in fact be arms, and not simply sleeves, slowly liquefying under the weight of fabric, congealing in bands, like poured, cold molasses? Well, try not to notice.”

-  Caroline Chung Simpson, excerpted from her VIEWPOINTS wall text

Image: Elizabeth Jameson. Yellow Droplet Dress. 2000. Charcoal and oil pastel on paper. Henry Art Gallery, gift of Aileen and Ben Krohn, 2003.9.

VIEWPOINTS highlights select works from our permanent collection and offers diverse perspectives of University of Washington faculty members. Multiple voices can help expand our understanding of a work of art, cast a new light on overlooked details, and open our minds to new ideas.

This first iteration of VIEWPOINTS features the drawings and performance documentation of Elizabeth Jameson. Born in Germany, raised in Japan, and currently living in Seattle, Jameson received a B.A. in art from Western Washington University and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Mills College. Since 1996, her work has been exhibited regularly in solo, group and juried exhibitions in the United States and has recently gained notice in Europe. In 1999, Jameson was artist-in-residence at the Society of Austrian Women Artists, in Vienna, Austria.

Jameson’s work is displayed alongside the voices of UW faculty Caroline Chung Simpson, Associate Professor, Humanities; Sarah Nash Gates, Executive Director of the School of Drama and Professor of Costume Design; and Jessica Burstein, Associate Professor, Department of English and Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. Each faculty member contributed a short statement sharing her perspective about Jameson’s works.

Over time, VIEWPOINTS will present new combinations of artworks and voices, inspiring and provoking new dialogues and thoughts on works in our permanent collection. VIEWPOINTS featuring Elizabeth Jameson can be seen on the Henry’s mezzanine through June 16.

VIEWPOINTS: Elizabeth Jameson (installation view). 2013. Henry Art Gallery. Photo credit: R.J. Sanchez

The French artist Edgar Degas famously wrote 'painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.'

It appears that about every ten years (give or take a few) a photobook manages to capture the imagination of large numbers of photographers, resulting in an unavoidable flurry to emulate if not imitate. Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi provided this "gold standard" of photobooks until Christian Patterson's Redheaded Peckerwood came around (pardon the hyperbole, you can use the term "marker" instead).

I have the feeling that despite the explosion of photographers traveling the land with their view cameras and lists, Mississippi was a boon for educators, since a whole generation of students had to learn how to work precisely and carefully with those large cameras. With Peckerwood, I already notice students throwing all caution overboard, aiming for hundreds of different image sizes all over the page, with different styles of pictures thrown in for good measure.

Ironically, while in the past I found myself wanting photographers to be less conservative, my task now is to tell photographers to be more conservative, since lots of different sizes and styles produces a hot mess unless it's done very, very well.

Mississippi and Peckerwood have (so far) seen their third edition each, a feat that is rare for the vast majority of all photobooks. As a consequence, copies of the books are easy to come by, and they are affordable. Actually, I wrote this before looking Mississippi up - I guess it's not true any longer. Regardless, in both cases, the artists decided to change the second and third editions. In Soth's case, the books ended up having different covers.

In Patterson's case, other changes were made. The second edition featured an expanded booklet (the essays in the book come in a separate booklet). In addition, the printing itself was changed, to often result in somewhat more contrasty images (this is also true for the cover). The third edition introduced more changes, to the booklet (again) as well as the main book itself, plus there's a reproduction postcard that comes with the package. For the third edition, Patterson added images to the main book, leaving the teacher in me wondering which version I'll now show my students when talking about the book.

Conceptually, an evolving book is interesting for a variety of reasons, and it is equally problematic I think. If I compare my first and third edition, what does the presence of new images tell me as far as the "story" is concerned? The addition of new images does change the story, and even if it is ever so slightly.

I don't want to pretend I even have a clue what this all means, because I am equally attracted to the idea of the evolving photobook as I am opposed to it. For a start, the evolving photobook would not work for every book. In the past, I've considered the kinds of expanded re-issues that are so common of classic photobooks like the expanded re-issues of jazz albums - you listen to the "cutting-room floor" stuff, and you realize why it was left out in the first place. But a book like Redheaded Peckerwood does not operate like, say, Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places, so the jazz analogy doesn't apply (lest the "gotcha" crowd thinks they got something here: I actually like the recent edition of Shore's book, I'm going to stay shtum about re-releases I don't like).

There clearly is an opportunity for photographers to think about this issue here, especially in light of some photobooks selling out quickly. Cristina De Middel's widely lauded Afronauts is sold out, which is more than just unfortunate given it still is being talked about so widely. Collectors be damned, this just screams for a second edition! (And I'm not talking about an app for the iPhone/iPad) The business/collecting angle aside, the main question is whether re-issues or second editions should be changed/modified or not, what might be gained from doing that. In other words, to what extent can photobooks be if not living entities then at least evolving entities?

The changes in the editions of Redheaded Peckerwood are small enough to argue for either static or evolving photobooks. As I noted I haven't made up my mind, even though I have started to lean in one direction, and I might talk about that at some other time.

A Romanian amateur photographer has won an international food and drink photography award with a snap she took of her grandfather.

The modern football fan has lots of ways to make his or her voice heard. Whether it's through old-fashioned means like terrace chants and calling local-radio phone-ins or, latterly venting on internet forums and social media. If anything, it's a bit much. For purists, the terrace banner, strung up from a rickety second-tier lip, is the best way to make a succinct, often wry, often celebratory point.

Eccentric toilet, Love Me Butch, Burgerkill… the names of the bands on the CD that accompanies siblings John and Lena Resborn's underground-music journey through Southeast Asia might sound juvenilely abstruse– but the bands themselves are deadly serious.

Lorne Lanning worked for Jack Goldstein in the mid-1980s at a time when the artist began to create highly detailed paintings of technological and scientific imagery that foregrounded the visual artefacts of computer vision. In this interview, Lanning discusses the thinking and the process behind this body of work, which is represented in several works (completed after Lanning's tenure with Goldstein) in the exhibition Jack Goldstein x 10,000, on view through September 29, 2013 at The Jewish Museum in New York. Lanning also explains how his work with visual effects for Goldstein led him, via the aerospace industry, to a successful career as creator of the OddWorld video game series. 

Jack Goldstein, Untitled, 1988, acrylic on canvas.  Courtesy Vanmoerkerke Collection, Ostend. © Estate of Jack Goldstein.

MC: How did you begin working with Jack Goldstein? 

I met Jack—he was teaching at School of Visual Arts—I believe it was ‘85. I started working with him in maybe late ‘85 or early ‘86…

I was an illustration student at School of Visual Arts—I had seen his paintings at the Whitney Biennial, and at various museums, and I was just blown away. I showed him my work and I was making all these comments, you know, "I aim to improve this way and that way," and he goes, "You paint just fine, you just have no ideas." And that's Jack in a nutshell.

He said, “You know why don't you work for me, you paint great, and I got a couple of lofts over in Brooklyn.” At the time Ashley Bickerton was just leaving and getting his own success... It was quiet, and I think at the time Jack was going through a down period in his own life. He had ridden the wave of [his early success], and he was very resentful at the time of the art world. I think it was making him pretty bitter, and making him more boisterous, and at the same time he was having some addiction problems.

MC: What sort of work was he making at the time?

When I came in, it was at the very end of his lightning sort of period. The last real piece of that body of work was the cover of Art in America, I think it was a missile launch, something like that. Jack always believed in working straight from photos, he was after actual events that couldn't be recorded with the human eye. That's something he referred to as “the spectacular instant.” There was a cover of Art in America, I believe it was 1985 or so, and that was the last painting that I saw being done at the studio that was of that era.

He said to me, "I can't be the lightning guy for the rest of my life." He was always brutally honest not only with himself but with everyone else as well. He said, "I need to escalate this work into a place where paintings don't feel like they're being made by man. I want them to feel as though they are being output by computer. But I want them to have the artefacts of technology embedded in them." Perfect constructions made imperfectly.

He was looking towards what the computer was doing to imagery, whether it was radar telescopes or ... images that were coming out of particle collision. He would subscribe to Scientific American, he would subscribe to different science journals, and he was looking for that new extension of the human eye that was only brought to us through new technologies. He wanted to re-present those on canvases as though they really came out of a computer. Like, came off an assembly line rather than having the human hand anywhere visible.

And then, of course, he had a profound set of reasons behind that approach... The ideas swarmed around works by authors like Paul Virilio, the French philosopher and political critic. He was very into what was happening in the intellectual French scene at the time.

The approach to the work was trying to escape from... what he called "Cro-Magnon man paintings." [laughs] Which is the UGHHH! UNNGGHHH! gestural, splat. Whether it was Schnabel's work or David Salle's work, he was very anti the directions they were heading. And he really believed that our society was living in a matrix-like illusion, and that it was being fabricated by a powerful shadowy elite that was basically providing most of our stimulus input through media.

He had an interesting way of looking at the world, and he wanted his work to kind of punch through that.

MC: Could you talk through the process behind one painting that you worked on during that period?

You know it's funny, because he never titled the paintings. So I can't speak to a name [laughs].

There was a show at John Weber, [at a time when] Jack was starting to be recognized as the sort of grandfather of the Neo Geo. This is what was going on in his own psychology, but I think he was losing hope. So he was really going for it, pushing the paintings into an unexpected direction.

He wanted to get this imagery that almost had a more pixelated effect, that it was carrying the artefacts of the computer’s processing of vision. I believe one of the first ones that we started working on like this was an AIDS virus. Now it would never be said in the title, because he never titled them. His previous works were largely hand-airbrushed, very tight, many mixtures of colors to get a photographic effect. And the older black-and-whites of the streaked missiles over Dresden—there's a number of World War II photographs that he had altered very slightly—if you look at those, there was still a relatively crude level of airbrushing. As he got more sophisticated, the amount of pre-mixing of colors was much more substantial and the images were taking a more photographic approach. So that's where you'd come to the lightning pieces that were at the Whitney Biennial back in [1985]. They really started to take that photographic quality, and that was largely due to the pre-mixing of all the paints that would then be used through the airbrush.

The big fracture was that he said "I want to get away from any soft edges. I want to get away from blends that happen naturally. I want to get away from the traditional types of camera lens effects, and I want to start getting into more of these digital artefacts.” Now he had a multitude of reasons; you could listen to Jack all night and record a novel just from hearing him talk about why, and why it was changing the way we live in the world, and why this was important, why these were important subjects that we should be studying.

So he wanted less trace of the human hand. We were still airbrushing but we would try and replicate more of the computer artefacts with paint. So we started stenciling and projecting on larger canvases—it was almost a paint-by-numbers approach—and then we were pre-mixing all the way up, the way some of the old advertising illustrators did. Marvin Mattelson used to do this—he was one of the highest paid illustrators of his day—but he would pre-mix all of his paints before painting. And we started doing this with Jack; another assistant was brought on, his name was Barney. I forget his last name, but he was really a chemist in mixing paints.

Jack wanted the frames to feel deeper. He was extending the stretcher bars to, at times, over 18 inches thick. He was always infatuated with the monolith in 2001, just this ominous black void of information. He always loved the precision of that, and he wanted that coming through in these new paintings. So we were spending a fair amount of time making sure the stretcher bars were as perfect as possible before the canvas got put on. We were doing putty, any little dents that were in the wood, we were trying to fix them before the canvas was stretched over. So that edge just felt perfectly creased. And of course the thicker the stretcher bars were getting, the more type of support infrastructure needed to be built around them so they wouldn't bend.

We were going with the highest, finest grade linen that we could get, and airgunning on massive amounts of gesso, to try and get that just so thick. And then we were polishing it back down sot hat it was becoming closer to glass on canvas, sanding them down with car sanders... trying to get rid of any trace of the actual canvas underneath the paint.

We were starting to get into various types of standardizations, various kinds of color fracturing through compression. I said, “Jack, if you're really looking for this assembly line-like output, why don't we start all the paintings in black for this next show.”

We would start with black. We would tape off all the black, and then the first color would come on. After this very elaborate stenciling, we would airgun in the color, and then project the next color, and trace its outline. So we were building from the darkness up to the highlights, step by step. At each stage, we're wet sanding, and we're re-masking. Less and less of the painting was visible the more you were completing it. It was kind of like wrapping a present, and by the time the painting was done there would just be a few holes of visibility left on the canvas, and those would be the brightest points.

[When all the layers were complete], we would call it Christmas, because we would actually pull back this masking, and literally there would be like fifteen pounds of masking on one eight- to ten-foot canvas. We would pull back all that masking, and voilà, there was the image.

Jack Goldstein, Untitled, 1988, acrylic on canvas. S.L. Simpson Collection, Toronto. © Estate of Jack Goldstein. Photo: Frank Tancredi.

From there, we would clean up pencil work, and sand down rough edges, and clearcoat. He started getting into treating the sides differently; he wanted the image to not just be a surface represented in a box, he wanted the image to feel as though it was a volumetric slice, kind of like an MRI would do. He started using metallics, wrapping them around the sides, breaking them in certain points as though it was like a film gauge or a measurement element from a microscope or a telescope. Just adding these artefacts of the machines that would bring about these images.

These paintings got to the point where there was just no real trace of the human hand. There was no trace of a soft brushing anywhere. There were no colors that had gradation. It was all solids. So if we went from black through dark purple through blue up to fluorescent yellow, that transition might be 52 colors, all segmented, zero blending, all hard lines. And it would start to read like a topographical map. 

MC: What was your relationship like?

He was having some addiction problems at the time, and his work was starting to come back up... Jack was known to, like, throw collectors out of his studio. He could be very difficult at times. He was the artist's artist's artist.

We had to get him away from New York. We had to get him away from the drugs. He wanted to, but he was dealing with some tough stuff at the time. This led to his setting up a studio in upstate New York. I was so excited personally by what was happening with his work that I decided to forego going to school, and I went up to upstate New York with him, and was running that studio.

Part of it was helping Jack to detox. I was only 20, 21 years old, so it was a very difficult period. Emotionally, it was an incredibly difficult period, but great things were happening with his work.

At the time, he was not selling all of his previous work, at a price range from maybe $12 to $17,000. You know, income was flowing, but you know Jack never cared about money.

There was a dealer —Rebecca Donaldson—she was a huge fan of Jack's and an amazing lady who I never had anything but tremendous respect for. She was a huge fan of Jack's, and he started showing these paintings in some group shows. I don't recall where, but they started to get a lot of attention. With Rebecca, who I think was his guiding compass of rationality and logic and social acclimation, and myself—just being a kid who largely had come from the street, and loved art, and had a bit of street smarts about things… I would say, "Jack, you cant piss that guy off too much, you know? We're kind of depending on it - you actually are a business, whether you realize it or not."

He was so passionate about that work, and we believed in him so much, that whatever we had to do [laughs]... We would try and A, keep him off the phone, and B, patch up relationships, and make sure galleries got their work on time, and everything was going smoothly. It really started happening, and he started to clean up, and it went to the point where his works... Rebecca was starting to get into the $40 to $50,000 range on the larger pieces. There was a resurgence of interest in his work.

I had helped Jack detox, and drugs was a big concern, because people didn't want to be supporting artists that had drug problems. I believed in him enough to basically forego my plans and really invest all my time and energy and even money I was earning back into Jack's work. Some other people were doing the same, and really helping him. But we had moved to upstate New York, into the Catskills, and it's kind of isolated up there. So we had really a co-dependency with one another. He went back onto the drugs after we had gotten him off, and it was very difficult. He went back onto it, but he wasn't being honest with me. He was hiding it.

And as a 21-year old who was still trying to find his own place in life, I was so shattered by that, that I left. And that was kind of the end of it.

My father was a reformed alcoholic. My parents were divorced. If I wanted to see my father on the weekends from about age 10 onward, I went to AA meetings with him. And [the things I heard there were] some of the most valuable insights I ever encountered in my life.

When Jack went back onto drugs, and I found out, I felt that we couldn't have a trusting relationship. For myself, I felt like I just had to move on and go. I probably could've done it better, but being an inexperienced kid, I didn’t quite know how else to handle it. I just left a note, and on a certain day I left. It broke my heart, but I didn't know what else to do.

Part of it with Jack was, he was abused as a child. He held a lot of animosity against family. He just wasn't willing to work through—not necessarily healing his relationships, but just healing himself. Sometimes we hear artists really hold onto their wounds and their pain and their bitterness, as badges of strength, and I think Jack really embraced that.

MC: What influence did all this have on your career as a video game designer?

Jack really opened my mind to what was going on in the world. I started reading a lot of Semiotexte-type publications—Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil; Paul Virilio, Pure War and Speed and Politics; various interviews. What Jack brought to me was kind of a big wake-up. If you want to know what's going on, if you want to have an opinion, you need to be educated. You need to read this. You need to read that. And he started really turning me on to a whole other world of critical thinking and investigative journalism, and international intrigue and politics.

Jack would ask me, what do you care about? Not, what's going to make you some money so you can't be homeless, but what do you care about? How does that infuse into your work?

There was a day when the painting in the gallery was the forefront of modern media. If you wanted to see something new and cool, you went to the museum or you went to the gallery, and you would see this big controversial stuff and the newspapers would write about it...so that really was the center at that time.

I was feeling that you just weren't going to change the world anymore through paintings. That day was over, because the media landscape and the technological landscape we now lived in. I said to myself, what did Kubrick do? He could have been making paintings, but instead he's doing 2001, and hundreds of millions of people are seeing it, and they're spending two hours each with it.

With that kind of audience, you could have effected deeper change, and that deeper change was not happening in the art scene any longer. And so I went to Hollywood, and I was interested in the computer-generated stuff.

I went to CalArts, and I wanted to understand visual effects. Because in many ways, Jack's paintings were about visual effects, and their impact on the viewer. I wanted to take the ideas that Jack had opened up to me, and I wanted to re-embody that in a way that wasn't just regurgitating junk food to the audience, but that had some nutritious value. Particularly for youth, to give them something that might give them a little gas in that dark moment, or help them step off the ledge.

While I was in school, the computer graphics industry in Hollywood went bust, but I had learned just enough to get a job in aerospace. I get a call from TRW Aerospace—they build satellites and weapons and car parts and all kind of things. I get a call from the division called the visualization lab. It was the very early days of this; Reagan's in office, and they're working on visualizing the Star Wars weapons programs.

I got this call and I was like, “Can I do this? Can I go work for this? I totally don’t believe in this stuff!” But I decided to go and get insight, rather than just having an opinion. I've just come from the art world making Goldstein paintings the year before, now I’m sitting in the lab with guys with computers and we're visualizing Star Wars weapon systems.

Jack would have loved the medium of computer graphics. [When we worked together, he had seen] the beginnings of it, and he just thought it was so cool.

Computer graphics was my medium, but there was no market. So the only place you could learn the craft of it was in aerospace. So I went and I'm working to visualize these really hi-tech weapons systems... By this point, I'm looking at the industry of war and the industry of media kind of as one and the same.

My time in aerospace allowed me to interact with real war simulators, high end, that people at the time barely knew existed. I was quickly able to figure out that in a very few years... what was happening in the military was very soon going to be happening in video games that were in people's homes. I started shaping stories for this medium, and started learning about video games.

Pre-alpha footage of the new Oddworld video game as of September 30, 2012.

 Goldstein's looped films were previously discussed on Rhizome in this post by Loney Abrams.

To mark the launch of McKenzie Wark's new book The Spectacle of Disintegration, Verso Books have offered Rhizome readers in the UK a chance to win a 3D printed Guy Debord action figure.

3D-printed Guy Debord action figures (2012). Produced by McKenzie Wark, design by Peer Hansen, with technical assistance by Rachel L.

The figure is part of a limited edition run of 200 made by Wark, who was inspired to delve into maker culture because of Debord's own investment in craft as evidenced in the twelve handcrafted issues of Internationale Situationniste. (You can read more about this in Brendan Byrne's recent interview with Wark on Rhizome). It's important to note that you can also make your own Debord figure based on Wark's 3D model, which will be released under a Creative Commons license.

The questions, which were supplied by Verso, are after the jump. They are not to be taken lightly...

The prize will go to first person with all correct answers to the quiz below.  Two runners up will receive a complimentary copy of the book. The competition is open to UK residents only; entrants must email [enquiries AT verso.co.uk]. Please put SPECTACLE COMPETITION in the subject line or your entry may not be counted.

1.The Critique of Everyday Life is a seminal book that opened up a whole line of critical thinking about the small, everyday situations outside of the factory walls and beyond the official political sphere. Who wrote it, and in what year was it first published?

2. McKenzie Wark calls the experience of the everyday in our time the disintegrating spectacle. He is adding a fourth kind of spectacle to the three described by Guy Debord. Writing in the 60s, Debord thought both sides of the cold war were just variants of spectacle. Later, he thought that states such as France and Italy had combined elements of both into a third kind. What were the names Debord gave to these three variants?

3. The Surrealist leader André Breton wrote a poem, published after World War II, dedicated to the famous utopian writer Charles Fourier. Breton’s poem starts out with the narrator noticing a flower placed beneath his statue. During the Occupation, the Germans melted it down to use the copper for munitions. On which Paris street was that statue?

4. Debord’s comrade Raoul Vaneigem was rather more influenced by Surrealism, and via Surrealism by Charles Fourier, than some other Situationists. He even edited a paperback edition of Fourier’s ‘queer theory’ manuscript, The New Amorous World. What was the name of the Fourier-inspired utopia Vaneigem wrote about in 2005?

5. The great art historian T. J. Clark, who was briefly a member of the Situationist International, once recalled a demonstration in London which found him on the steps of the National Gallery in London. He and his friend debated there which painting within they would feel obliged to consign to the flames should the people ever storm through those illustrious portals. The masterpiece that Clark would have chosen was painted by whom?

6. The Situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti pulled off a stunning prank in Italy, by publishing The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy. Purporting to be from some insider to ruling circles or someone cognizant of ruling opinion, it argued that there was no harm in admitting Communists into government, as the Communists were not a revolutionary party, but were already acting in the interests of power in keeping workers in line. Under what name was the Real Report issued?

7. Next to Guy Debord, René Viénet is the best known Situationist film maker. His détourned films have a lightness and charm all of their own. His film Can Dialectics Break Bricks? uses a martial arts film as its raw material, and by gently moving a few minutes of film around and dubbing the actor’s voices into French, Viénet turns it into a critique of the Stalinization of the left during ’68. Who directed the film on which Can Dialectics Break Bricks? is based?

8. Debord’s ‘70s films Society of the Spectacle and Refutation of All Judgments were a quantum leap forward in complexity over his earlier cinema work, in part due to the resources of his new patron, Gerard Lebovici. Who was the film editor with whom Debord worked on these films, and who was the other famous French director with whom she worked?

9. Besides being Guy Debord’s second wife, Alice Becker-Ho wrote some very interesting books on the influence of Romani language on the ‘jargon’ of the dangerous classes, and as an important source for words not only in French but in other European languages. According to her glossary of jargon, what is the meaning of the word ‘baron’?

10. Besides his many accomplishments in the arts of writing, editing, cinema, and revolution, Guy Debord was also a game designer. On the writings of which military theorist did he claim to have based The Game of War?

11. Who was the member of the Situationist International who thought the SI should attempt détournements of porn and comics? Who praised Latin American militants for taking over an electronic BBS system? Who advocated fake issues of well-known periodicals? Who thought any militant thinker should be as capable of making a film as writing an article?

12. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale had the holograph manuscript of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle on display for a while. Did that manuscript and other items from Debord’s papers end up being sold by Alice Becker-Ho to the Beinecke, or somewhere else?

It looks a busy time out there for those interested in art and technology, with lots to do and see and apply for. Here are our picks for the week; good thing your proposal for the 2013-2014 Rhizome Commissions was finished and submitted weeks ago, right?

Rick Silva, from the series En Plein Air. 

Events

São Paulo

If you’re looking for art that isn’t afraid to raise the stakes, check out Still Fighting Ignorance & Intellectual Perfidy – African video-art project. In a text written to accompany an earlier presentation of the project (in Malmo), Yvette Greslé pulls no punches:

Why is it that - in the wake of prolific work by twentieth century scholars, curators, artists, writers and critics - we need to draw attention to the category [of] African video art as if it is something unusual, idiosyncratic and unexpected? Why are we still fighting ignorance and who is committing intellectual perfidy?

New York

We’re very excited for Rick Silva’s solo exhibition En Plein Air, which opens May 18 at TRANSFER Gallery in Brooklyn. The show features digital images and animations that are made on location, updating the tradition of plein air painting for the mobile computing age.

On May 16, Kristin Lucas will launch her new book DOLLAR STORE QUALITY piece of SCRAP as part of Publication Studio’s Residency at Eyebeam.

For those who want to drink from the manguera de incendios, the work of 86 artists will be screened as part of Region 0 – The Latino Video Art Festival of New York on May 16-18 at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. 

Deadlines

Writers 

May 15: Transart Insitute in Berlin is calling for papers and proposals for their first ever symposium, an examination of the prefix “trans.”

May 15: Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

Artists 

May 15: Rhizome Commissions and Rhizome Tumblr Grant!

May 17: Deadline for Open Call 3, exhibition series in New York open to emerging and mid-career artists.

May 20: Send short animations by email to Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo for their Outdoor Animation Festival.

Jobs

May 22: Deadline for the position of Medialab Director at the Prado Museum.

McKenzie Wark’s new book The Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages Out of the Twenty-First Century (Verso, out today in the US and May 20 in the UK) completes his non-trilogy of writings on the SI, begun with 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008) and continued with The Beach Beneath the Street (Verso, 2011). I sat down with Wark to discuss the application and recuperation of SI tactics in the contemporary mediated landscape. 

3D-printed Guy Debord action figures (2012). Produced by McKenzie Wark, design by Peer Hansen, with technical assistance by Rachel L.

BB: You’re very upfront about how you didn’t intend to write a “great man” history of the Situationist International, instead incorporating marginalized and forgotten figures. Yet The Spectacle of Disintegration focuses on Guy Debord, especially in its second half, if simply because there is no one left.

MW: The place were I started the whole thing was just an obsession with two late texts of Debord’s, Panegyric and In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. I think they’re two of the most luminous critical Marxist texts, avant-garde texts, prose poems, of the late 20th Century. It took me a long time to even understand what they were doing. And so the whole thing grew over 20 years, just returning to those texts and trying to figure out a framework for interpreting them. The whole project was somehow leading up to writing about those. I learnt to read French by reading these texts. I just taught myself. And my French is terrible. I make no claims to be a scholar of the language or anything like that whatsoever.

BB: Debord’s conception of the interactivity of the spectacle seems to be a bit limited in terms of where we are today. I believe you refer to his conception of it as “a one-way street.”  

MW: One of the premises of The Spectacle of Disintegration is that there’s the myth of the overcoming of the spectacular form in the age of the Internet, but what it does is make it microscopic and distribute it throughout the entire media sphere, so we now have micro-spectacular relations rather than one big macro one. So if you think about the old culture industry, everybody was critical of it, but at least it fucking entertained us! You would have all those flaws that Adorno spoke about, the extorted reconciliation of the ending, the equivalence of exchange values, but at least it was offered to you as something to consume. We’ve moved from the era of the culture industry to what I would call the vulture industry, which is companies like Google. I mean, in terms of culture, they don’t make shit. They just allow you to get to stuff that somebody else made. So now we have to even entertain each other. Go on, make some cat videos! So there’s a sense that on one side there’s the outsourcing of the production of the thing, and on the other what I would call the insourcing of the production of the affect. It becomes everyone’s job, but no one is to expect to get paid for it anymore. It was always a struggle if what you wanted to do was be a creative person, to make any living at all. I don’t know if that got any worse. It was always terrible. But the conditions of its terribleness change with each technical evolution. 

BB: So now we have all these writers and artists policing the area of ‘we still get paid to do this’. It’s almost like fetishizing outsourcing. Like, can’t we get back to the 1970s when you could make a fuckin’ record and make some money. 

MW: Yeah, well, no one ever really made any money. That was like a tiny handful of people. The myth of that tends to leave out the real life of working musicians and writers. We sort of focus on and fetishize a few people who made good. It is worth asking—so now we’re in favor of the commodification of culture? Is that necessarily a bad thing? In some ways, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have a day job. There’s part of your mind and life that’s completely separate. The fly in that ointment is that whatever version of capitalism this is requires so much affective labor. You’re supposed to be invested in the company and its products. You see people in coffee shops who have become the brand they’re speaking on behalf of, and you’re like, man that’s sad. The Situationists put this on the agenda. They didn’t necessarily have the answers. For example: the idea of détournement, that the whole of the cultural past is a cultural commons that belongs to all of us from which you can appropriate at will—but to correct in the direction of hope. There’s a plagiarism in the correcting gesture. They were thinking about this stuff already in the fifties, and now it's everywhere. We know all of Debord’s major texts are heavily plagiarized. There’s an anticipating in that of the whole of remix culture, but a critique of it as well. To simply mix shit together is not all that. The advertising industry’s been doing that since the days portrayed in Mad Men. You have to do it in such a way that you reveal that culture is really a commons. That’s the sense in which Debord is speaking to the present, even though the tools he did it with are now antiquated. 

BB: Remix bots like @KimKierkegaardashian seem to be accomplishing détournement without conscious human input. 

With Spring around the corner I’ve been playing with more cream & white instead of just all black. But beneath it lies despair just the same — KimKierkegaardashian (@KimKierkegaard) March 20, 2013

MW: I followed that one for a while; it’s hilarious. I kind of love that stuff because it’s so revealing. The side of culture that’s really a giant automatic repurposing machine. Can you build a bot that would, for example, build sentences? And then flip that into the space where it’s the negative, the critique of that very practice? Can you create protocols using a search engine to generate language? That reveals exactly the great poison sea we’re swimming in.  

BB: Which kind of feeds into all these recent copyright scandals, like the ones involving Jonah Lehrer and Quentin Rowan, who didn’t even attempt to use arguments about intellectual property being fair game. Rowan could have come out and just been like, I’m just fucking with you guys. 

MW: It’s a shame. The Society of the Spectacle is really brilliant prose. There’s entire chunks of all sorts of things not even entirely digested into it. Like it suddenly starts to read like Hegel translated into French. That’s because that’s exactly what it is! Or the films Debord makes after Gérard Lebovici becomes his sponsor. I tracked down Martine Barraqué, Debord’s film editor. She explained that all the newsreel footage, you could just buy that, but the feature films, they just straight up lied about what they wanted them for. They created all these elaborate stories like, “Oh, I’m the production assistant to a famous American film director who would like to see something. We need it for three days...” Because that’s how long it takes to copy a piece of a feature film, so it could be stuck into The Society of the Spectacle or so on. You just sort of think, wow, it’s just so friggin’ hard and laborious to steal this stuff outright. And Martine talks about how they had to build whole databases of film by category. The Internet just does all this for you now, but they were kind of inventing a practice of making remix, détournement cinema from scratch. But yeah, we still live with the myth of the romantic author, the creator. This idea that, oh I made that with my own labor, so it must be my property. So it’s like yeah, you and whose fucking army made that? Labor’s always social and collective. Including the labor that produces culture. Let’s not forget all the scandals about often very prominent historians in the US writing about really well-worn topics who can’t even tell the difference between their own prose and somebody else’s. And it’s like, oh it’s an accident, I just forgot to put the quote marks around it. Well, you’re just revealing that all of bourgeois thought is identical with itself. You really have no ideas, you’re just moving it around a bit. 

BB: If the SI prized concealment almost to the point of fetishization, do their analyses and strategies lose something in a society where concealment has become not only more difficult to achieve but almost undesired? 

MW: I write in The Spectacle of Disintegration about Debord’s widow Alice Becker-Ho’s work on "gypsy" or rather Romani language as being the source of underworld cant or slang or jargon. Slang not in the sense of how it turns up in hip-hop, but in terms of ways of both concealing and stating at the same time. It’s a  kind of cliché that we live in this culture of over-exposure in which, if you even attempt to secrete part of yourself, you’ll just draw more attention—from companies as well as from law enforcement. But I think there are ways of stating things that are intelligible for "those who are in the know," to use a Becker-Ho phrase. Ways of being public that aren’t quite what they seem. It reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. We now know that “earnest” was late 19^th-Century slang for homosexual. So that strikes me as kind of useful, that you can occupy a place in the disintegrating spectacle but not quite be what you seem. And that struck me as being kind of the last space available. ‘Cause if you try and do a withdrawal thing like the Tarnac Nine, it will get you arrested. And who really wants to be Žižek? There’s only one at a time, occupying a space in the disintegrating spectacle in a certain way. 

BB: This kind of plays into the whole anonymous with a lowercase “a” thing—the whole fight to be able to create an independent identity on the net and, to take it to an extreme, to be a troll and not to be exposed. 

MW: What I learned from the comrades in the labor movement back in the day is: always assume you could be under surveillance but not that you are. There’s a certain vanity in assuming you are. So all of your statements need to be able to pass muster. Debord has this lovely riff in, I think it’s in Comments on the Society of the Spectacle where he says, I don’t abjure any of the statements I made to the police, but I don’t want them in my collected works because of scruples about the form. That is brilliant. So those statements would pass muster as literary texts, but they’ve been redacted by a police officer who’s garbled all these sentences. You have to earn even those statements. 

BB: Does maker culture, and its mass-market mirror of “artisanal” production, have any shared roots with the SI’s emphasis on producing highly-designed, limited-run free journals and books? 

MW: Yes and no. One wouldn’t want to be part of this whole disruptive technology language, which is pure California ideology [Ed. – “The Californian Ideology” was a 1995 essay by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron exploring the “counter-culture libertarianism” at work in Silicon Valley technoculture]. One would not want to get too close to the petit bourgeois Brooklynization of everything, the organic beard oil for 20 dollars.  But, I think, not just Marxists, but a lot of people with pretensions to critical theory got very remote from practices of making, and to not understand the production technologies of our time is an enormous oversight. To at least know how to make one thing is an extremely helpful way of understanding what production is, what labor is. So with the launch of The Spectacle of Disintegration, I’m doing limited edition Guy Debord action figures that are 3D printed, and we’re gonna release the file to print your own for free. There is something that is really interesting about 3D printing, but it’s a proprietary technology. On the one hand, it enables a certain kind of détournement, but on the other hand is already being recuperated before it’s even on the market. I actually walked past MakerBot on my way here. Just down on Houston, there’s a little showroom down there, and it kind of reminds me of the Apple 2 before the Mac. It’s at that stage. So yeah I really recommend that one do what Debord did in that sense. He learned how to produce journals. He was really good at it. He was a good editor and production manager. The twelve issues of the Internationale Situationniste are really lovely handmade objects. 

BB: Is the “attention economy” some kind of corruption of the concept of potlatch? 

MW: The Letterist International journal, Potlatch, was never to be for sale. It was only given to certain selected people and then some other people randomly selected from the phone book. Apparently, it would turn up for sale in those little book stalls along the river in Paris. And it was very, very low-rent. Michèle Bernstein would rent a typewriter and bang out—she was the woman, so she had to do the physical labor—all the texts on the typewriter and then duplicate it. But it was already posing questions about economies of access and attention. You’re in the post-war period, and there’s a myth of production of images and stories, which there was an intimation of back in the 19th Century, but by the post-war period the deluge kind of begins. They paid attention to the strategies of the advertising industry and were looking for ways to create work that partially subtracts itself into another kind of temporality. It’s a sort of partial invisibility to create a different kind of attention for different people. In the critical theory tradition, this is really quite new. For the Futurists and the Surrealists, it was still early days for a spectacle. The Futurists start by taking out an advertisement on the front page of a newspaper. You could still do that in 1909. But I think there’s a canniness about the fact that the attention-seeking strategies of the older avant-garde would no longer work in the post-war period. 

BB: Researchers at Northeastern University in Boston have developed an algorithm which can, with an approximately 93% accuracy, tell based on a person’s mobile-phone records “where that person is at any moment of the day”, according to The Economist. This seems to, in a certain way, back up some of the SI’s theories. 

MW: Yeah, Debord is reading Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe, who is this great urban sociologist, the first person who was trying to map people’s pathways, and Debord, riffing off Henri Lefebvre’s The Critique of Everyday Life, is gonna start with the predictability of that. Now we’ve reached the point of real-time analysis and application—which runs almost exclusively to selling you stuff. One thing the Situationists were doing was looking for the free space in the Paris of the 1950s, with this massive police presence and surveillance. In the division between work time and leisure time and its routine, there was still a place of play, provided you live by the slogan Never Work. Well, there is no longer any difference between work and play. There’s no such thing as leisure and non-leisure. We’re all working all the friggin’ time. But when we’re working, we’re goofing off half that time anyway. Does anyone even know when they’re working anymore? I’m talking about in what the Situationists called the 'overdeveloped' world. I do all my work in coffee shops, and I see people constantly juggling stuff that’s either work or not work, god only knows what it is. As the grid tightens, it in certain senses becomes more diffuse. So it’s not to deny how geolocation is involved in surveillance or 3D printing is rapidly becoming proprietary, but it’s to figure out what can you produce within the space of those things that suggests another world entirely.

Paul-Henri Chombart de Lauwe, map of a young woman's movements in Paris, 1957

BB:  In your first book, Virtual Geography, you define Global Media Events as “singular irruptions into the regular flow of media”, and focus on four, including the Wall Street crash of ‘87 and Tiananmen Square. Do you think that such “singular irruptions” are still possible in our current mediated landscape?  

MW: Yeah! In the sense that they were defined in that book as completely unanticipated in the media narratives of the time. And then of course someone comes along and says, “Oh, that crash is just like the last one.” But in the rhetoric of the time it was unthinkable, just as 2008 was unthinkable to all but a tiny handful of folks. So, yes I think there are still interruptions in the narrative space-time, and it’s a question of method. As soon as a weird global media event like that happens, start recording everything, because when the media has no idea what the narrative is, then they experiment with all kinds of weird shit, like interviewing crazy people who would never otherwise be on the air, speculating wantonly and randomly, and that’s the stuff. You capture that, and that gives you a window into that break in the narrative space-time the spectacle can imply. The scariest one I went through personally was 9/11. Truly extraordinary stuff went on the air. You saw people jump out of the fucking building. Live. That stuff’s never been shown on television ever again. The event has been edited down to two or three images. So yeah, I think the method still works. Don’t give me this shit about Twitter revolutions, I was writing about this in the ‘90s! About how things like fax machines play into the space of Tiananmen Square. The first Twitter revolution is 1848, when the telegraph is already beginning to change the space-time in which things happen. We always have the same ridiculous debate about, Ooh it’s the new media, and it’s like, no, events only happen because of the political actors. It’s a total category mistake; there’s no such thing as politics outside of the media. Or vice versa.

BB: In The Spectacle of Disintegration, you specifically state you don’t want to name the inheritors of the SI’s spirit, yet in five years earlier in 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International, you named a small group, including the Bernadette Corporation, DJ Spooky, and the Critical Art Ensemble. I was curious why you revised your stance. 

MW: Well, not to slight those folks, but it just struck me in retrospect as a bad idea. Anyone can "inherit" the spirit of the Situationists. One of the sources of this whole project was I was on a Listserv in the ‘90s called Nettime which was kind of like media central for a whole series of avant-garde actions. I thought, I want to write about that, but it was too rhizomatic, so I started by rereading The Society of the Spectacle, something everyone involved probably read, and I said, “Holy fuck, it doesn’t say what I thought it said!” So I got sidetracked into this whole thing. It’s still a project I’d like to do some day. It’s much broader than just one or two groups, and all of them have their locations in a sense, the Bernadette Corporation folds back into the art world, a bit precipitously I suppose. The myth in the art world was that the avant-garde disappeared. No it didn’t, it just had nothing to do with the art world anymore, because when art becomes contemporary art, it’s just another category of commodity production. The avant-garde is now attached to media and design. There’s still a project to kind to recover those stories, extract what’s living and what’s dead, extract the concepts, make it available for folks to do it all over again. Avant-gardes are always extremely historically aware. They just want to deny it and pretend they’re not repeating. 

BB: Do you see any of today’s social thinkers who stand in opposition to the gadget age, and here I’m thinking of people like Sherry Turkle and Evgeny Morozov, as coming from an SI background? 

MW: No, and the most common mistake is to mistake the current form of a technology for technology at its basic potential. How many times do we have to do the same old stupid bullshit over and over again? It’s all one-sided and undialectical and frankly very uninteresting. So alright you don’t like technology. Technology is the human. We’re the tool-making species. There is no human independent from its tool apparatus. The question is: does it have to be these tools? Absolutely not. So how does one reimagine the potential, the set of the scientific discoveries and their technical applications, and open up so life could be otherwise? That’s the critical task. There’s an absolute failure to perform the critical task in relation to technology. There’s a kind of "No, I don’t like the iPhone." Well, what the fuck do you like then? What do you want? Describe another world. Describe it to me. For seven billion people.  Among the Situationists, someone like Constant Nieuwenhuys did exactly that, he imagined an entire other planet based on mid 20th Century technology. That’s more of a conceptual exercise than a real engineering project, but it opens a door to asking question about how, well, how do you reengineer cities? So that they’re survivable would do for a start, but better than. We really could abolish work, y’know? Not completely. But we could really get it down to a few hours a day. So, well, how’s that project going? We’re gonna run out of cheap labor eventually. It can’t go on forever. There’s signs that China has turned a corner. They just don’t wanna do these boring factory jobs. Alright, so we’ll go exploit cheap labor in Vietnam. But it can’t go on forever. So that opens the question of, well, we’re only using this cheap labor ‘cause it’s so cheap, sitting there all day with a screwdriver assembling those cheap plastic toys. Now you look at all those plastic toys with ten screws in them. Well, they’re only designed to have ten screws because it’s cheaper to use the labor than to design the fucking thing properly so it snaps together. So at some point technology has to be part of the critical conversation. And that’s where hackspace culture, hacker culture, some of maker culture, is so incredibly helpful. It’s equipping people with a basic knowledge of how our world actually works. But you have to add the question of how could it work better, how could it work differently. And as a totality, not just "I want a better widget." What would be a better system? That’s the whole critical design question. The central question to me now is the avant garde of design. 

BB: There’s a certain strain of tech utopianism, personified now perhaps in the figure of the late Aaron Swartz, who are for using tech to bring about an “open culture.” How at odds with the SI’s interest in concealment is this?   

MW: Aaron Swartz’s story is tragic in more ways than one, but you have to ask how politically aware his mentors actually were. Marx says in The Communist Manifesto, who are the forces of social change? Those who ask the property question. And Swartz did. It got him into all sorts of trouble. So I think there’s a kind of reformist dimension to openness, but there’s also an attempt to recuperate the energy of a social movement that has basically decided that all of culture really does belong to all of us. It’s file-sharing. That to me is one of the biggest social movements of the early 21st Century: 'These are my dreams, these are my desires. So I’m taking them back thankyouverymuch.' And then some people, not everyone, go, 'Oh and then I’ll share it with everyone as well, because it all belongs to all of us. We all made this!' So there’s a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between gift and commodity going on there. And it gets recuperated back into industrial structures. The whole of what I call the vectoralist class is attempting to recommodify at a different threshold. Google doesn’t give a rat’s ass who owns whatever it is you’re searching for. It just wants your data and to sell ads at you based on that data. Here’s all this free information, you can have that, but we want you to give up more information than what we’re giving you. If you see it as a political compromise between the fact that information wants to be free but is everywhere in chains, it’s like, Oh we’re just gonna rearrange the chains a little bit. So we need that historical perspective of the shifting of frontiers that respond to the social movement. That’s the crucial bit that’s often missing from popular writing about this stuff. 

BB: There’s been kind of a second wave of recuperation of the SI since the mid to late aughts. What do you think the drivers of this wave are?

MW: It’s hard to tell if it’s a pattern or if it’s random. But there were a bunch of attempts in the late ‘80s to tell the story. The famous show was at ICA Boston and the Pompidou Center, which Debord famously refused to attend. And Greil Marcus’ book came out. As the SI said: 'our ideas are on everyone’s mind.' They really understood the boredom of commodity capitalism. While they’re dealing with an earlier phase of it, it’s still true. There’s still something about boredom in the way the commodity responds to desire imperfectly. So maybe it’s just that it still speaks to people. Debord’s widow Alice Becker-Ho just sold the archives to the Bibliothèque nationale for an astonishingly large sum of money, if the rumors are true. She tried to sell it to Yale, I think, knowing that this would provoke the French government into declaring Debord a national treasure, which means that the manuscripts can’t leave the country if the price can be almost matched. There’s a way in which the museum industry and the scholarship industry require rare, special things to base whole careers around. You now have to go the Bibliothèque nationale to see the holograph of Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle. I saw it in a glass case; I’ve never actually read the manuscript. “Real scholars” have to work in the presence of the sacred aura of the thing. It’s kind of ironic given the nature of the stuff. One of the reasons I like to teach the SI is that all the texts are free in translation on the Internet. It’s everywhere and done by amateurs, but done lovingly. So there is a kind of auto-museological side to avant-gardes themselves. These are the folks who are in this, creating it. Rather than the sense that, now that almost everyone’s safely dead we can add this to a canonic succession and teach it after all. I don’t really care. There’s two competing histories. There’s what I call low theory. This stuff is now part of high theory. I really couldn’t care less. But this other tradition of low theory has already decided that this is stuff it wants to curate and share freely and give away. I’m part of that. 

In Part Four of our ongoing genealogy of queer computing (Part One, Part Two, Part Three), we introduce a second generation of queer scholars who made important contributions to the field of computer science, and from whom we may trace a direct connection back to those familiar foundational figures.

On June 20, 2009 at 4pm at The Hampstead Quaker Meeting House in London, a memorial service was held for Professor Peter Landin. In attendance were his family and the friends whose lives he had touched over the last 78 years. It was a collision of worlds, a sudden mixing of two communities that Landin had kept separate his entire life. Landin's friend and colleague Olivier Danvy likened the event to the memorial for the French mathematical logician Jean van Heijenoort, author of From Frege to Gödel (1967).^[1] In the early part of his life, van Heijenoort had been the personal secretary and bodyguard of Leon Trotsky, the famous Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army. Van Heijenoort left service only two months before Trotsky's murder in Mexico City by Stalinist assassins, but was a devout Trotskyist until his death, publishing extensively on his relationship with the revolutionary figure and editing a volume of Trotsky's correspondence before his own death in 1986. In attendance at van Heijenoort's funeral, Danvy recalls, were two disparate groups of people: on one side the logicians, and on the other the Trotskyists, each one incapable of communicating their own sense of importance of the man to the other.

Peter Landin had also led something of a double life. He was a foundational figure in computer science, and a pioneer of programming language design based on mathematical logic and the Lambda calculus. He was responsible for the invention of the first abstract process virtual machine—a kind of software emulator of a real world computer—ever defined. Many modern programming languages—such as JavaScript, the programming language that underpins much of the Web—make use of or fully rely on Landin's work on functional values, and have implementations based on his definition of a "closure," a programming function that “encloses” a set of variables so that it can be used in different contexts. Yet there was more to Peter Landin than this. All his life he had been a political radical, and since coming out in the 1970s he had been an active member of the Gay Liberation Front, protesting and campaigning on behalf of gay rights in the UK and abroad. His home on Rona Road in Camden had been a famous gay commune, and from the dinner parties he hosted many movements and collaborations were born.^[2] And so on this Saturday afternoon two worlds met to commemorate his passing, and once again there seemed an impassable divide between these two parts of Peter Landin's life, these two worlds he simultaneously occupied. 

Landin was part of what we might describe as the second generation of influential queer figures in the field of computer science. This lineage is not simply chronological; there is a direct, genealogical connection between early foundational figures such as Alan Turing and Christopher Strachey, and those who lived through the pioneering gay rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The clearest queer lineage that begins with Alan Turing leads to Robin Gandy, his longtime friend and associate. Gandy first met Alan in 1939 as a student at Cambridge,^[3] but they became particularly close when they were stationed together during the War and in the years following, and remained friends until Turing's death in 1954.^[4] Gandy was never very explicit about his sexuality with friends and colleagues, but he and Turing seemed to share a mutual understanding and often discussed men and sex in a coded, joking way both in person and through correspondence. Landin shares a similar lineage with Christopher Strachey, having spent as brief period as Strachey's assistant after meeting in a bizarre set of circumstances that unite a number of key figures. Similarly, Landin spent a brief period as Christopher Strachey's assistant, the two having met in a bizarre set of circumstances that unite a number of key figures.

***

Peter Landin was born in Sheffield, England on June 5, 1930, eleven years after Robin Gandy and eighteen years after Alan Turing. The only child of an accountant father who had been disabled in WWI, he was educated at King Edward's Grammar School. Later, at Clare College Cambridge he completed a mathematics degree in a rushed two years, and then attempted the very difficult Part III course, but came away with only a 3rd class degree. As Landin tells it, he was unsure of what to do with his life after college, which led him to a now-infamous group of early computer science pioneers:

When I ceased to be an undergraduate, and because of being fast-laned through all these things and leaving with a rather ambiguously low grade degree I was very uncertain of what to do with my life and spent the next six months in a Sheffield reference library trying to avoid making a decision about my life. I used to go out to a cafe just around the corner from this reference library … and one day I was having my coffee in Fields cafe, and a voice came booming across the crosswise tables, and this voice said "I say didn't I see you reading Principia Mathematica^[5] in the reference library this morning?" And that's how I got to know the legendary Mervyn Pragnell who immediately tried to recruit me to his reading group.^[6]

Mervyn Pragnell is the mysterious figure orchestrating many of these early connections.  He is not only responsible for introducing many of these figures to one another, but also for introducing them to the lambda calculus of American mathematician and logician Alonso Church, which was essential to the development of a mathematical theory of computability. Not much is known about Mervyn Pragnell, as he does not appear to have ever held an academic post or published any research paper. Nonetheless, he was fascinated by mathematical logic in general, and Church's lambda calculus in particular. Much as with Landin, he was known for hanging around London bookshops approaching individuals he saw purchasing volumes on mathematical logic and recruiting them for a reading and discussion group. In an interview from 2000, Rod Burstall—one of many important logicians to get his start in Pragnell's groups – recalls that, while looking for a logic text in a London bookshop, he asked a man whether the shop had a copy. "I'm not a shop assistant," the man responded, and "stalked away," only to return to invite him to join the informal seminar where he would meet Peter Landin and, subsequently, Christopher Strachey.^[7]

The sessions were held illicitly after-hours at Birkbeck College, University of London, without the knowledge or permission of the college authorities.^[8] Pragnell knew a lab technician with a key that would let them in, and it was during these late night sessions that many famous computer scientists cut their theoretical teeth. This also appears to be the place Landin would first meet Strachey, and it marks the beginning of an important intellectual relationship between these two men. It is unclear how open either man was about his sexuality at the time—Landin, who identified as bisexual, would marry his wife Hanne that same year, and their marriage would last until 1973—but the connection is nonetheless meaningful, as it shows how intimately linked the world of computing was at this time, and how powerful these connections would be to research and development within the field.

Thus in 1960, nearly a decade after Strachey's love letter generator and six years after the death of Alan Turing, Peter Landin was taken on as a research assistant to Christopher Strachey, who at the time was an independent computing consultant working out of his home at 9 Bedford Gardens in Kensington. Having left the National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC), Strachey formally started activities as a private consultant on June 1, 1959. By 1960 he was fully occupied with a number of contracts, many of which he had begun while employed by the NRDC. Strachey took Landin on as a full-time employee specifically for a contract with the Ferranti electrical engineering and equipment firm, for whom he had agreed to deliver a scientific autocode – the term for a family of "simplified coding systems" or programming languages devised for early computers – for the company's new Orion computer. Landin set upon the project with great ambition, imagining an innovative compiler that functioned "as an automatic product of the semantics of the autocode, matching its forms to semantic representations of the instructions of the machine, and generating LISP expressions that could be executed."^[9]

[9 Bedford Gardens, London]

While Landin was working for Strachey full time, he was not fully occupied by the Ferranti project, and with Strachey's encouragement he spent much of his time on a theoretical study of programming languages. It gave Strachey a certain satisfaction to be able to claim that he was funding "the only work of its sort being carried out anywhere (certainly anywhere in England)."^[10] Whether due to this split in the time spent on the Ferranti project, or due to the overly ambitious and theoretical work Landin was attempting with his compiler, the work was never fully finished, and required additional work by Ferranti's own programming department to bring it into workable condition. Still, the research Landin began here with the support of Strachey was foundational to his study of programming languages. It allowed him to clarify his ideas about programming semantics and led to the publication of "The Mechanical Evaluation of Expressions" in 1964,^[11] which showed how to translate programs into lambda calculus and defined the SECD machine, a landmark virtual and abstract machine that emulates a hardware environment within which lambda calculus expressions may be evaluated.^[12] Landin hoped this work might form the basis of the design of future computers, and in many ways it has.

As Landin was conducting research and raising his children, a cultural shift had begun. In the US and Canada a transformation was underway. The former had seen the now infamous Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village and the beginnings of a social movement for gay and lesbian rights. The Gay Liberation Front, or GLF, was formed by thirty-seven women and men who broke ranks with the conservative homophile establishment and urged a candlelight march in response to the riots. The GLF first took hold in the UK in 1970, growing rapidly over the next three years before splitting into a number of spin-off organizations such as the London Gay and Lesbian Switchboard, many of which still thrive today. In 1971 it issued a manifesto comprising  a list of immediate demands, including the decriminalization of homosexual acts. While the law criminalizing homosexual activity that led to the arrest of Alan Turing had already been overturned by the Sexual Offenses act of 1967, that legislation set out explicit terms by which homosexual acts would be deemed legal, namely mutual consent, a minimum age of 21, and that sex take place in private between no more than two people. Thus, it was far from the end of the struggle to end homosexual persecution, and in many ways it marks the beginning of a long legal battle that is still ongoing.

1970 would be a transformative year for Peter Landin as well. The previous ten years had truly shaped his career, but he was set to undergo a massive change. In 1964 Landin had ceased working for Christopher Strachey and, through contacts provided through their relationship, was "brain drained" to the US and—along with his wife and two small children children—he moved to New York City to work for Univac, then a major computer manufacturer. The family first took up residence in a hotel, but after asking for a home with a garden they were moved to a half-house in Greenwich Village. Landin published several key works during this time period, perhaps most famous among them a short work titled "The Next 700 Programming Languages" (1966), in which he gave a witty account of how all programming languages of the time were just sugared^[13] versions of the lambda calculus.^[14] By 1966, Landin was tired of the corporate world of New York City, and so moved with his family to Cambridge, MA to take up a teaching position at MIT. Still, he was disheartened by what he saw as a secretive environment that shunned collaboration, along with a group of colleagues with very different ideas about the logic of programming languages. And so in 1967 he was tempted back to London with the chair position at Queen Mary College, where he remained for the rest of his career.

Then suddenly, in 1970, Landin made the abrupt decision to walk out on the discipline of computer science. After serving as the evaluator on a student's PhD committee, he decided that the field had become too theoretical and retired. Having attained the position of full professor, he was given emeritus status and continued on in a reduced capacity at the university for the next forty years, but for Landin something had changed and he was no longer interested in the kind of innovative research that had occupied the previous fifteen years of his life. It was also during this time that Landin's personal life underwent a transformation. In 1973 he separated amicably from his wife, though he remained close to her and his children for the rest of his life. He was also becoming involved with the GLF and other burgeoning gay organizations, and was even arrested during a gay rights protest in London.^[15] A regular on the lawn at Hampstead Heath, frequent dinner party host, collaborator, facilitator, and activist, Landin underwent a substantial transformation as he moved from one life into another. 

It is in this period that Peter Landin's life begins to recede from view. The archive fails, and forty years are devoured by the impassable partition that he erected between his personal and professional life. No doubt there exist many people who could share fond memories of Peter's activist years and his role as an organizer and friend, but these stories have not yet come  to light.^[16] Instead, it is his professional service and contacts that remain. What little that exists in the way of memorial and biography has been produced by university colleagues, and while it is currently unclear what will happen to Landin's papers, correspondence, and materials, too often in such cases these details are deemed "personal" and are either excluded or reserved until some future date. Toward the end of his life, Landin became "convinced that computing had been a bad idea, giving support to profit-taking corporate interests and a surveillance state, and that he had wasted his energies in promoting it."^[17] It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that there exists almost nothing online about the last forty years of Landin's life and that, despite his influential role in the development of the field of computer science, Landin did not own a computer, a television, or a car.^[18]

This is, in part, the reparative work that this essay hopes to accomplish. In linking the professional accomplishments of these men with those personal parts of their lives that even they may have deemed inappropriate for public discussion, my hope is to create a queer archive that links foundational developments in the history of computer science to explicitly queer figures and politics. It is, in part, a refusal of the separation of these worlds, and an acknowledgement of the way in which the sexual lives of these men are part of the historical significance of contemporary computational technologies. It's not that these facts have been hidden or are not known, it's that there is often a compulsion for historians to pass over them in silence. As with Landin, many of these figures have only recently passed away, and many others will be gone in the coming years. As a result, preserving these histories is of particular importance, as is producing an archive that reflects the complex divisions and connections that constitute these lives and this history.

Performance by Shana Moulton on June 7 @ 7pm
Grand Luxe Hall, Western Front
FREE

New York based artist Shana Moulton will produce a new performance in her ongoing Whispering Pines series at Western Front, specifically for the Grand Luxe Hall.  Building on a decade of video and performance work, Whispering Pines features Cynthia, Moulton’s alter-ego, traversing new age mysticism, consumerism and domesticity through rituals that are at once banal and uncanny. Moulton will present a selection of video works followed by a new performance.

Brent Watanabe and Cable Griffith, for(){};(2013). Projection-mapped video game on canvas.

A collection of items from the Prosthetic Knowledge Tumblr archive and around the Web, taking a brief look at creative works that bring gaming literacy to the canvas plane.

Brent Watanabe and Cable Griffith, for(){}; 

Brent Watanabe, for(){}; (2013). Projection-mapped video game on acrylic hand-painted canvas.

Playable art by Brent Watanabe based on acrylic hand-painted canvases by Cable Griffith which function as the setting for a video game, with sprites projected onto their surfaces:

In for( ){ };, there is no beginning or end to the game, just collecting and wandering, birthing and consuming, an arbitrary point system rising until your inevitable death and the birth of another generation. It is a game mechanism without the game. An addictive but essentially aimless experience. 
The piece is a triptych of playable acrylic paintings, controlled by the viewer using a NES controller.

(Watanabe's project page)

(PK)

Shinobi Marilyn

Ashley Anderson, Shinobi Marilyn (2012). Digital print.

A collection of pieces by Ashley Anderson that were inspired by an act of appropriation: the famous Pop Art icon was used as a backdrop in the video arcade game Shinobi (SEGA, 1987). After discovering this, the artist then made a series of prints in which Marilyn's image is re-created using visual elements drawn from video game culture.

Still image from Shinobi (SEGA, 1987).

Ashley Anderson, Magoo (2012). Digital print.

Ashley Anderson, Super Mario Clouds (2012).Digital print.

Here is a talk by the artist explaining the background to the series:

(Ashley Anderson's website)

Kristoffer Zetterstrand  

Kristoffer Zetterstrand, Wanderer (2008). 33x37 cm oil on canvas.

Kristoffer Zetterstrand, Fighters (2007). 20x20cm oil on canvas.

Kristoffer Zetterstrand, Dante and the Three Beasts (2007). 20x20cm. Oil on canvas.

Zetterstrand’s work (since 2002) has combined space, perspective, historical fine art and the presentation of video games. As the artist explains,

I work with painting. For some years I have experimented with virtual still lifes, often in the form of stage design in which I explore how two-dimensionality (and painting) relates to computer-generated 3D worlds. I am interested in visual spaces created online, in computer games and 3D programmes, and especially in what happens when the illusion is shattered and the underlying construction emerges -like when there is a bug in a computer game. I am interested in visual failures, which I try to use in my painting. Among other things, I have produced paintings based on the landscapes that you can see only if you are “dead” in the online game Counter-Strike, and paintings with motifs created by crashed landscape generators used in film and computer game production. Presently my work process is like this: I start by sketching the motif in 3D on the computer, where I can move the scene about, rearrange pictorial elements, redirect the light, reposition the camera, and so on. I sculpt the architecture and the various parts of the environment and dress the parts in different textures, which I often sample from images of my own earlier paintings, from pictures I have found on the net and screen dumps from computer games. I also use a lot of material from my art archives, which comprises some sixty-thousand paintings. While working with a sketch on the computer, the simpleness of the tools means that I can follow my impulses and try out new angles, change backdrops and pictorial elements, redirect the light, rearrange the shadows, etc. For me, the 3D programme is a tool that I use intuitively when I construct my motifs. The scenes are often influenced by the dramatic composition of computer games, where familiarity with some kind of mythology is essential in order to play the game, in a similar way as an artist relates to art history. That the end result is painting is a prerequisite of my work. The physical aspect of painting and the space it allows for improvisation and painterly reformulations of the motifs are the most important parts of the process. You could say that when it comes to the painterly part of my work process, I improvise on a theme that I have determined on the computer. 

(Artist’s website)

Alice Shintani 

Autoestrada, 2008. Acrylic resin on fabric. 40 x 50 cm.

Alice Shintani, "Atari Series," 2008-2010.

A series of paintings, made from 2008 to 2010, that are based on graphics and isolated sprites from the old Atari console game River Raid.

(Artist's website)

Tiananmen Squared by Casey Weldon

Casey Weldon, Tiananmen Squared.

Following on from the Atari-inspired artworks by Shintani, this piece inspired by the game Combat was a submission to the Gallery1988 Old School Video Game Show.

More links:

Possibly the first video-game inspired paintings, by Mark Dagley.

Deadly Towers, a series of paintings by E*Rock based on the isometric level architecture of NES games.

Interview with artist Alex Paik.

Ryder Ripps, Screenshot of portion of project website for Hyper Current Living (2013).

Tilda Swinton hasn't reappeared in her box at MoMA since Ebertfest, but there's a new endurance performance in town. Through May 5, Ryder Ripps, artist and co-founder of Dump.fm and digital agency OKFocus, will be living and working among the music studios at Red Bull Music Academy in a residency space that he designed with Chen Chen and Kai Williams. Wearing a karate uniform featuring bull-themed graphics, he will be drinking cans of Red Bull and generating new ideas for artworks and online projects.

Ryder Ripps, Self-portrait with costume for "Hyper Current Living" (2013).

A visualization on the project website displays the number of Red Bulls consumed and the number of ideas generated; all ideas are shared online via Twitter; at press time, 9 Red Bulls had been consumed, and 71 ideas generated. Example:

a temp staffing service to make your company seem larger than it is for a meeting #hypercurrentliving — retweeted (@ryder_ripps) April 29, 2013

Ripps' ill-advised endurance performance could be seen as a distillation of many of the worst things about being an artist today: the over-emphasis on hypertrophic creativity and easily digestible ideas, the ever-present superego injunction to produce and publish, the endorphin rush that comes from positive online feedback (and the terror of the negative - or of the lack of any attention at all). Ripps' project makes these conditions visible, suggesting that they are at work not only in his performance, but, to varying degrees, in nearly all cultural production in the age of social media.

Hyper Current Living is a direct collaboration with the Red Bull brand, or at least created with their explicit knowledge and permission. As with The Jogging's contribution DISImages or the 2012 exhibition Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship, Ripps' performance suggests a fascination with the power of branding and an interest in working with brands and embodying their "values," while also developing a brand of his own. This is distinct from the appropriation of a logo à la Warhol or the adoption of a corporate persona à la the Yes Men; it is living and working according to the strange logic of contemporary marketing. Hyper Current Living is art in the age of biobranding.

Hyper Current Living runs from April 28 through May 5, 2013. It is accessible online only.

Screenshot of Oliver Laric, An Incomplete Timeline of Online Exhibitions and Biennials (2013). Web page with text and still images.

Rhizome is pleased to present a new artwork by Oliver Laric, An Incomplete Timeline of Online Exhibitions and Biennials (2013). Initially intended for inclusion in BiennialeOnline 2013 organized by ARTPLUS, the work is now launching as part of the Rhizome ArtBase instead.

Initially billing itself as "The first exclusively online biennial exhibition of contemporary art," BiennaleOnline 2013 convened 30 leading international curators to select a total of 180 artists to be included in the project. Initially, as ArtFCity reported, the site planned to charge $80 for access in its first week, followed by a $10 subscription fee thereafter; later, organizers said it would employ a "pay what you want" model.

For his submission to BiennaleOnline, Laric compiled a list of exhibitions and biennials that had taken place online between 1991 and the present. The list is not meant to be definitive, but to offer an introduction to the great many precedents that the organizers of BiennaleOnline might have cited. 

In the end, a more careful look at these precedents might have been useful for ARTPLUS. Their format requirements were narrowly defined; for example, Laric was not allowed to include any outgoing URLs in his work. Ultimately, ARTPLUS was unable to find an acceptable way to display an HTML-based artwork within the exhibition, and so Laric yesterday asked curator Martin Germann (who Laric credits for being supportive throughout the process) to notify the organizers of his withdrawal from the show.

Rhizome has added this work to the ArtBase not for its merits as an art historical resource (although it will undoubtedly be useful for many researchers), but rather for its as value as an example of online site-specificity. The work engages not only its intended exhibition site (the BiennaleOnline) but also the less tangible "discursive site"^[1] in which it is situated. 

In particular, it touches on an issue that was discussed in a recent must-read article by Caitlin Jones for Mousse Magazine:^[2] the history of new media is often treated by critics and art historians as if it functioned within a "specialized field of its own,"^[3] having no contact with or relevance to "the mainstream art world."^[4] Laric's work can be seen as a response to this fallacy, an assertion of one artist's belief that these histories are, of course, thoroughly intertwined.

Disclosure note: Laric's piece makes mention of an online exhibition curated by Michael Connor for Rhizome in 2005.

References:

This past Friday, seven artists and seven technologists, working in pairs assigned by Rhizome, took up residence in workspaces across the city. The rules of engagement were simple: they were given one day to make something, which would be made public the following day at Rhizome’s Seven on Seven conference, presented by HTC.

Seven on Seven can have the feel of an Olympic figure skating mixed pairs event in which the pairs have never met before. Part of the drama is around whether they hit the triple axel, so to speak: will their projects be any good? But there is another dimension to the drama as well, which has to do with the conversations and relationships that unfold on stage, the sparks that fly when two interesting minds come together.

What follows is a description of the projects, as well as the sparks, that came out of Saturday’s event.

KEYNOTE: EVGENY MOROZOV

Morozov has earned a reputation for having a sharp tongue as a result of his biting critiques of intellectual laziness in techno-culture. In his keynote, he struck a more diplomatic note, re-affirming his belief in the importance of technology: "The message, especially in my book that just came out, is that technology is very powerful." He emphasized the importance of looking at the histories of art and technology history in tandem, as a way of understanding the origins of old ideas that are packaged as new solutions. In particular, he called on artists to create friction and complexity where technologists offer oversimplified solutions.

As the conference continued, it became increasingly clear that there are technologists out there who do have a keen understanding of the complexity of their field. One of these, without a doubt, is Alex Chung, who presented in the leadoff slot with artist Paul Pfeiffer.

Animated GIF extracted from Giphnosis (2013). Website with downloadable screensavers.

1. PAUL PFEIFFER + ALEX CHUNG

Pfeiffer and Chung's project Giphnosis is a website offering two downloadable screensavers, each comprising a series of tiled animated GIFs. One features a fragment of The Shining: aquaking Shelley Duvall in the corridor of Overlook Hotel, wielding a large knife. The other stars an ensemble of five cats who look to the left, the right, up and straight into the camera, in perfect synch.

Pfeiffer and Chung clearly came into this collaboration with shared interests. Both use moving image media as a kind of database of shared raw materials; Pfeiffer subjects his source material to digital manipulations, while Chung’s startup Giphy allows users to find looped, animated images on the Web. Their presentation was rich with ideas, including a comparison between Marcel Duchamp’s Anemic Cinema (1926) and the animated GIF file format, as well as the revelation that Giphy was inspired by Chung’s interest in Wittgenstein.

In particular, Pfeiffer and Chung found a shared fascination in the idea of the loop. In an effort to determine why this cultural form holds so much power over our minds, they turned to the idea of hypnosis, reasoning that the constant repetition of media imagery in the age of the 24-hour news cycle has a kind of hypnotic effect on viewers. By offering their own looping imagery, Pfeiffer and Chung position Giphnosis as an act of resistance against this type of media bombardment. In a kind of self-administered experiment, it might be used to re-program one’s mind through exposure to looping images.

It might also be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Constant Update (2013). Single-channel video with sound.

2.  FATIMA AL QADIRI + DALTON CALDWELL

For their contribution to Seven on Seven, Al Qadiri and Caldwell created a video work with an original musical composition. White words appear against a black background, one after another: “Constant... Continual… Dread.” On the soundtrack, a steady stream of digital alerts play over a steadily building rhythm. The effect is hypnotic and anxiety-inducing in equal measures.

In the "About" section of the project website, Al Qadiri and Caldwell describe the video as "a work dedicated to the exploration of data-related anxiety. The rate of updates and notifications required of society, from media outlets to social networks, is stressful to say the least…This site will never be updated."

Al Qadiri and Caldwell used the term "infobesity" to describe the feeling of bloating that comes from indulging in an excess of information. Both clearly had strong feelings on the matter; a which can be seen in their past work: Caldwell is the founder of a tech company that launched an ad-free social network, App.net, while Al Qadiri often appropriates technological content, such as beats drawn from videogames, and turns it against itself. This message of data desaturation may seem incongruous for an art and tech conference, but Constant Update likely inspired many in the audience to turn off their glowing LED screens—for a short time, at the very least.

Audience volunteer Diego high-fives technologist Tara Tiger Brown after designing and printing his first 3D model based on instructions from the audience. Photo by Jesse Untracht-Oakner.

3. CAMERON MARTIN + TARA TIGER BROWN

Martin, a self-taught artist and musician, and Tara Tiger Brown, maven of maker culture, found a common ground in their shared passion for informal education. During their daylong collaboration, they decided to teach themselves a new skill: 3D modeling and printing. They set out to make a model of a balloon dog à la Jeff Koons; the results were amateurish, but endearingly so.

Building on this experience, Martin and Brown devised an experiment to conduct on stage at Seven on Seven. They asked for a volunteer from the audience with no prior knowledge of 3D modeling or printing, and invited a man named Diego onto the stage. Members of the audience (many of whom presumably know a great deal about 3D modeling) were asked to guide Diego through the process of making and printing a simple model by posting messages to Twitter using the hashtag #3DHelper.

The signal-to-noise ratio on the Twitter hashtag was quite low, and soon the experts in the audience were shouting their advice directly to Diego, allowing him to successfully fabricate a small 3D-printed badge with his name on it. Even if the hashtag proved not to be quite the right tool for the job, the broader point was made: informal and collective pedagogical models can be both generative and fun.

But even if Twitter didn’t pan out perfectly as a collaborative tool, it was an important part of the experiment. At a time when educational institutions are rushing to add paid online courses to their curricula, the use of network technology to support a more collective model of learning can be seen as an act of resistance with profound political implications.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Harper Reed demonstrating friendfracker (2013). Online service for use with existing Facebook accounts.

4. RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER AND HARPER REED

With the online service friendfracker, users of the popular social networking website Facebook can slightly reduce their overall number of “friends,” or people with whom they are connected on the site. When users log into the service using their Facebook account, friendfracker will randomly delete some of their “friends.” A message appears onscreen informing the user how many friends have been deleted (a randomly selected quantity, between 1 and 10), but they are not informed which friends have been deleted.

Lozano-Hemmer and Reed embarked on their collaboration with a shared interest in collecting personal data. Reed confessed that he often collects a lot of data about himself for “no reason,” saying that “it might be important someday.” As Giampaolo Bianconi observed in Rhizome’s liveblog of Seven on Seven, the duo “asked one of the most asked questions of our time: what do we do with all this data?”

From their shared interest in data, Lozano-Hemmer and Reed (echoing Al Qadiri and Caldwell) moved on to the topic of erasure. In their presentation, they offered examples of erasure that included artworks (Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased Willem de Kooning Drawing) and technology projects (Snapchat, in which users can send messages to one another that automatically self-destruct after a pre-determined amount of time).

But what makes friendfracker so compelling is not just that it is an act of erasure. Self-erasure online has many precedents: in 2005, Cory Arcangel deleted his Friendster account in front of a live audience in a performance titled Friendster Suicide, while Giphy founder and Seven on Seven participant Alex Chung has gone to great lengths to erase himself from the Web. friendfracker offers something else: it injects uncertainty into one’s online social life. Because any of one’s “friends” may be deleted, it asks users to rethink the importance they place on their online social connections.

Screenshot of Dabit (2013). Online lottery and charitable donation service.

5. MATTHEW RITCHIE AND BILLY CHASEN

Dabit is a platform that uses humans’ inherent irrationality with regard to lotteries as a way of driving charitable donations. The site collects contributions for a list of pre-selected charitable foundations; 50% of each donation goes to the charity of the donor’s choice, while the other 50% goes into a kitty. At midnight each day, the kitty is paid out to one of the donors from the day.

After what must have been a fairly heroic coding effort by Chasen, and a less heroic beer-drinking and logo design effort on the part of Ritchie, the site went live at Seven on Seven—although it has since been taken down while its organizational status is formalized. By the end of Ritchie and Chasen’s presentation, $953 had been raised. According to the website, $471 was paid out at midnight to an anonymous donor.

For Ritchie and Chasen, the project emerged out of the idea that Seven on Seven participants often view technology as a way of cultivating "good" behaviors. As Ritchie put it, Dabit "appeals to both the best and the worst." As with any lottery, the house (in this case, the charities) always comes out on top. It is possible to “game” the system by making a very small contribution in hopes of winning a big prize, but the pair decided to allow this kind of behavior; they see the money paid to individual winners as a form of charity as well.

Jeremy Bailey demonstrates “Big Penis Mode” at Seven on Seven 2013. Photo by Jesse Untracht-Oakner.

6. JEREMY BAILEY + JULIE UHRMAN

Bailey and Uhrman's project turned attention to the presentation itself as a cultural form in need of reinvention. Taking the approach that presentations can be thought of as a kind of game, they developed a system that allows presenters to earn points for moving about dynamically onstage, for earning Twitter comments, for being loud or for earning applause. The game is a basic augmented reality system, with the typical PowerPoint deck replaced onscreen (TEDTalk style) by a video image of the presenter overlaid with text and graphics, such as a score that hangs above their head, showering them with coins when they earn a reward.

Following a pitch by Uhrman that felt at times like a stand-up routine (she explained that her common ground with Bailey was a shared narcissism and desire to “win” Seven on Seven), Bailey (clad in rather revealing cut-off shorts) demonstrated the project, moving manically about the stage and throwing glowsticks to the audience while keeping up a high-energy, high-volume commentary in order to earn the highest possible score. He also revealed that he’d been up all night working on the project, which is not surprising—it had no shortage of bells and whistles, with networked data, live video and real-time 3D graphics, and it worked without a hitch. 

The show-stopping moment, though, was when Bailey and Uhrman invited moderator John Michael Boling to present the last feature of the project. As a way of boosting the presenter’s confidence, their system includes "big penis mode," which superimposes a 3D animated penis over a presenter as they move about the stage. (It really loses something in the telling. Just look at the picture.) Boling handled this with supreme aplomb as the audience broke down in laughter, observing that "Google Image search results for me are going to be bad."

"Big Penis Mode," while hilarious, does warrant some serious thought: why, when we try to invoke confidence and power, do we always have to rely on the male symbols we inherit from a patriarchal society? It’s certainly not Bailey and Uhrman’s fault that the big penis plays the role that it does in our cultural lexicon; their project could even be seen as a satire of this. The big penis certainly looks ridiculous. Still, it’s a question that could be thematized in future versions of Bailey and Uhrman’s project – once Bailey manages to catch up on his sleep.

7. JILL MAGID AND DENNIS CROWLEY 

Crowley had a difficult week; after a close shave at the Boston Marathon (he was several miles from the finish when the bombing took place), he came down with a 24-hour virus on the allocated one day for collaboration. Still, he and Magid gamely continued to talk via Skype as much as possible, presenting their project at the conference as a dialogue rather than a finished work.

What was immediately clear from their conversation was that the two had a great deal in common. A former student of NYU’s ITP program, Crowley is the co-creator of projects such as Pac Manhattan, a real-life version of the iconic videogame played in the city streets, as well as the location-based social networking platforms Dodgeball and Foursquare. Magid is a contemporary artist who has won acclaim for embedding herself in systems of surveillance and power, from CCTV operators in Liverpool, England to the Dutch Secret Service. As a result, they have a shared interest in individuals’ relationship with the wider systems that surround them. If they had time to make a project, it might have been something that makes visible the workings of these systems, something like Bruce Nauman’s Performance Corridor for the technologically-mediated city.

It also became clear, though, that there were important differences in their respective approaches. Crowley is a founder of social networking sites, Magid is a social networking refusenik. Crowley builds systems and collects data that might (someday, somehow) be useful, whereas Magid is interested in the aspects of systems where they begin to break down, uncovering the human drives that run throughout seemingly rational, impersonal systems. At one point in the discussion, Crowley shared that he often collects data that he has no known use for, such as the output of a heart-monitoring device. In a moment that recalled Christian Nold’s project Bio Mapping, he recounted looking back at his data at one point, suddenly realizing that his heartrate had spiked during his purchase of an engagement ring. For Magid, this represented a moment of beauty within a seemingly impersonal data stream. “You should give a data visualization of your heartrate to your fiancée,” she suggested. “It’s so much more beautiful than a photograph.” 

Time is running short to participate in a survey of Rhizome readers organized by Nectar Ads (who organize the art-related advertising that you see in our sidebar).

Many of you will have seen my recent post "Breaking the Ice," which has generated a lively discussion about the editorial direction of this site (not to mention the role of community at Rhizome); think of this as an easy and anonymous opportunity to weigh in on the debate. If enough people respond, we'll share some of the insights we get from this in a follow-up post.

Here's a fresh new liveblog for part II of Seven on Seven.

2:44: We're back with John Michael Boling on stage: "A lot more exciting things to come." Next team: Cameron Martin and Tara Tiger Brown. They're both open about webstalking each other.

2:54: "Technology also serves as a wall or box that gets put up around you." - Cameron Martin

Cameron Martin and Tara Tiger Brown! #7on7htc instagram.com/p/YVllx6Qfyy/ — DISmagazine.com (@DISmagazine) April 20, 2013

2:59: Martin and Brown produce a great 3D model of a blue Koons baloon dog. "Today we're going to conduct an experiment we call real time crowdsource learning ... we want you the audience to transform from passive listeners to active participants." - Cameron Martin. Hands go up as Tara Tiger Brown asks who has done 3d modeling or 3d printing. Many more hands go up when Cameron Martin asks who hasn't.

3D model dog #7on7htc twitter.com/chrislr/status… — Chris Romero (@chrislr) April 20, 2013

3:05: Tara and Cameron utilizing #3DHelper to crowdsource volunteer Diego's 3d modeling:

Tweets about "#3DHelper"

3:10: Did we?

I think i just witnessed participatory art #7on7htc — «» (@1aurabrown) April 20, 2013

3:12: 60 seconds left for Diego's crowdsourced 3D printing challenge. 3D printer starts doing its work as Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Harper Reed take the stage.

Harper Reed, hacker and CTO for 2012 Obama campaign, has a sticker on his laptop: "My other computer is your computer." #7on7htc — Kareem Estefan (@KareemEstefan) April 20, 2013

3:20: Overlap between Lozano-Hemmer and Reed: metrics. Reed is a devoted self-tracker, has collected a lot of data about himself for "no reason." "It might be important some day." - Harper Reed. Reed and Lozano-Hemmer have asked one of the most asked questions of our time: what do we do with all this data? Sometimes you just end up knowing bulldogs hate tape measures.

3:28: Eventually, Reed and Hemmer came to the idea of erasure: Snapchat, A.R. Luria, and Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing share the screen. "Forgetting is fundamental to being able to transform." - Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Their creation: Friend Fracker. From the website: "The site deletes 1 to 10 friends from your Facebook account. Use friendfracker to decrease the number of people connected to you." It cannot be undone. Lozano-Hemmer deletes 3 friends to great applause!

3:30: "This is aggressively against the Terms of Service of Facebook ... let's keep the Tweets quiet. Or whatever." - Harper Reed

         "The art is not knowing who was deleted. And if you don't remember them, good riddance." - Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

         "We can take things away from our lives and we just won't miss them." - Harper Reed 

#7on7HTC Rafael Lozano-Hemmer just deleted 3 facebook friends! #Rhizome "Good riddance unknown friends!" twitter.com/jsnhff/status/… — Jason Huff (@jsnhff) April 20, 2013

#7on7htc tech trend update: deinstall — joelHolmberg (@dotkalm) April 20, 2013

3:38: Team 5: Matthew Ritchie and Billy Chasen. They've created Dabit. "The concept of Dabit is that you can choose your charity and everyday we're going to collect money for these charity. Only 50% of the money will go to the charities, the other 50% will go to somebody that donated that day." - Billy Chasen.

3:39: Live data visualization of Dabit donations takes the screen:

Wow digital fundraising genius. A captive audience and data visualization = lots of giving #7on7HTC cc: @ferra — zoë (@zoesalditch) April 20, 2013

3:45: Ritchie and Chasen take Seven on Seven from intellectual to financial interactivity.

3:46: Ritchie deploys reality diagram by Graham Harmon:

3:49: Overarching sentiment at Seven on Seven that we can use technology as a training ground for goodness. Dabit "appeals to both the worst and the best," says Ritchie.

3:55: "The division of labor between art and technology became apparent: I drank beer while Billy did all the coding." - Ritchie, before taking us through the evolution of Dabit logos:

"kind of like an eastern european airline?" #7on7htc instagram.com/p/YVsxpQQf_v/ — DISmagazine.com (@DISmagazine) April 20, 2013

3:58: $953 raised by Dabit in the last 30 minutes.

4:01: "We can always be charitable to big organizations, bet we can be charitable to each other too." - Billy Chasen

         Ritchie emphasizes the exciting danger of Dabit: part philanthropy, part gambling.

"This sounds like a great project. I'd like to see it continue if it doesn't get shut down." John Michael Boling. #7on7HTC — Paddy Johnson (@artfcity) April 20, 2013

4:04: 30 minute break before the last 2 teams: Jill Magid + Dennis Crowley and Jeremy Bailey + Julie Uhrman.

4:17: While you were getting coffee:

Prepping tech is always a fun affair. @jeremybailey #7on7htc vine.co/v/bUtDDedOB2t — JK KELLER(@jk_keller) April 20, 2013

4:28: Jeremy Bailey and Julie Uhrman are cracking glowsticks on stage.

4:39: Moderation John Michael Boling introduces famous new media artist Jeremy Bailey and Julie Uhrman. "The famous is self-proclaimed, right Jeremy?" - Boling

         Uhrman: "I'm not so sure why I was invited as a technologist ... and after seeing previous presentations, I'm even less sure."

Jeremy Bailey repping #cutoffs and a #turtleneck. Signature look! #7on7htc instagram.com/p/YVxx-Fwf4D/ — DISmagazine.com (@DISmagazine) April 20, 2013

4:44: Uhrman and Bailey both love winning and video games. They're both "enablers." "What I try to do is create the best platform to enable your genius." - Uhrman. Takes the entire presentation apparatus as a target!

Throwback:

infobesity might actually be a word from the 1970s book future shock and not in reference to the current media culture. #7on7htc — alyssa wright (@alyssapwright) April 20, 2013

4:46: "We wanted to reinvent the presentation so that you get feedback to how you're doing halfway through." - Uhrman.

4:47: "We're vain, but we're vain enough to know ... it's all about you." - Jeremy Bailey. He's taken to the stage with a live projection on screen, the interface rewarding him based on movement, Tweets, and loud noises. It also gives motivational cues. 

#7on7htc @jeremybailey winning! twitter.com/chickfoxgrover… — chickfoxgrover (@chickfoxgrover) April 20, 2013

Hot gams and glow sticks! #7on7HTC — nick hasty (@jnhasty) April 20, 2013

4:51: "The future of presentations is measuring their success in real time." - Bailey. Another instance of the dominance of metrics and looping-- I wonder what Paul Pfeiffer and Alex Chung think about this?

4:53: John Michael Boling takes advantage of "big penis mode" in the reinvented, gamified presentation. He says it feels amazing.

IT ALSO HAS A BIG PENIS MODE: #7on7HTC @jeremybailey @juhrman twitter.com/thebeff/status… — Jeff Frank Petriello (@thebeff) April 20, 2013

4:58: John"Google Image search results for me are going to be bad"Boling introduces the final duo: Jill Magid + Dennis Crowley

5:04: Dennis Crowley: "We're presenting this more as a conversation than a presentation." Magid: "We both engage privacy and surveillance in different ways." Metrics and tracking foregrounded once more. Watching these two translate each other is really interesting, both have a focus on the city and its transformation by technology. Crowley wonders whether we are statistics or indivduals -- Magid tries to make herself an individual through "the system."

@foursquare founder @dens & artist @jillmagiddiscuss tracking/love affair with the city for finale of @rhizomedotorg #7on7HTC — Elena Soboleva (@elenasoboleva) April 20, 2013

5:10: Magid forces the system to see her as an individual. Some ideas discussed by Orit Gat. How to combat the anonymity of techno-masses is a big question for Crowley. "We kept getting deep into these conversations and then asking: 'What do we make of this?'" - Jill Magid.

5:13: "Could there be something in technology that delays, that makes us more aware of how we appear?" - Jill Magid. Brings up Bruce Nauman's Performance Corridor:

5:17: "What does a Twitter mirror look like? Something that allows you to see your online persona." - Crowley. Crowley says of his tracking devices: "Someday, someone will find all that interesting, and make something of it," much like Harper Reed's conceptualization of his own self-metrics. In the future all this data will be useful.

Aww @dens talking about looking back his heart-rate monitoring watch's data & seeing a huge spike when buying his engagement ring. #7on7htc — Jeff Frank Petriello (@thebeff) April 20, 2013

5:20: Jill Magid: a data visualization of your decision to get engaged is so much more beautiful than a photograph.

The quantified self - body as data source.Tthe last pair of the day at #7on7htc thinking about the potential for beauty in bio readouts — Kelani Nichole (@KelaniNichole) April 20, 2013

5:24: Crowley brings up Timehop as an example of interesting things to be done with our archived social media selves. "We've all done a lot of work to create all this meda. We've been taught to think of it as ephemeral. How powerful can software be that goes through all this stuff and finds the meaningful nugget that you need to see right now to change your perception." - Dennis Crowley

5:26: Interesting to think of awkwardness as an intended consequence of social media.

5:28: "I'm never out to screw a system so that it collapses ... but it's interesting to use them for their latent purposes." - Jill Magid. Says her instinct is always to think of how a system can fail.

@dens just mused on a map app that gets you lost. Sounds like the experimental Drift app, which I love: brokencitylab.org/drift/ #7on7HTC — Jason O. Gilbert (@gilbertjasono) April 20, 2013

5:31: Too bad circumstances prevented Magid and Crowley didn't get to create an object together -- but their thought process was rigorous enough to make up for it. Perhaps the system they made together would have been fully realized by Crowley; taught to fail by Magid.

5:40: "We're all trying to do the same things, just through a different lens." - Dennis Crowley

5:41: "All systems and all technologies are defined by how you use them, how you interpret them ... I think you make meaning from a system" - Jill Magid

5:44: Moderator John Michael Boling announces the end of Seven on Seven, Rhizome Executive Director Heather Corcoran thanks everyone. This liveblog is officially over.

Animated GIF from the website Parked Domain Girl Tombstone (2013)

DR: On first inspection, a lot of your work appears to be rooted in the 90s, drawing on the low bandwidth aesthetics inherent in GIFs, midi plugins, embedded frames, ASCII art, and forgotten webring hyperlinks. But the 90s comes out in other ways, too. Pop-cultural undercurrents include Nintendo and Leisure Suit Larry; mixtapes and a particular flavor of Europop. How/why do these things speak to you as a contemporary (Web) artist?

EG: The origin of the meaning of most collected n found elements i use in my work is rooted in the 90s. My work itself isn't rooted in the 90s. I've been dragged to use that type of stuff mostly bc i like it n its accurate w the topics im interested in rn. Still tho the source material or what it evokes isn't really important. It jst adds semantic layer/s for some people n so does the aesthetics. Everything linked to that part of my work is treated as game elements (to be inserted) in different contexts of reception w diff codes of conduct. Its about notebooks. All that content is accessory to my work. You could really jst take the whole structure/s n insert totally diff content. It'd still make sense. Maybe Im already doing that but its not linked anywhere rn. Its kinda like people who enjoy playing Canabalt but hate playing Robot Unicorn. The gameplay is literally the same. Jst the content n aesthetic is different. That changes the whole experience. Whats a contemporary web artist?

Blinking Girls Cave (2012)

DR: I love the idea of interchangeable (aesthetic) content, as if Andy Warhol could have changed the contents of a "textures" subfolder and suddenly transformed a Campbell's Soup painting into a Heinz. How is play more than a structural component to your work? I'm thinking about rulemaking and breaking, especially your collaboration with Sarah Weis, Blinking Girls Cave, which the park authorities took a disliking to while it was in progress.

[Ed. – Blinking Girls Cave (2012) was a part of Apache Project, a series of artworks installed at Mother Neff State Park in Moody, Texas, in a cave that was once used by the Tonkawa Indians as a shelter as well as a burial site. After an initial proposal for an installation in the cave was rejected by park management (despite having been initially approved), the project ultimately took the form of a photo shoot, in which GIFs—some of them drawn from the imagery in seduction-based adventure game Leisure Suit Larry—were displayed on tablets, smartphones and laptops that were placed within the cave and documented. This scaled-back version also proved unacceptable to park management.]

EG: I think play is a structural component of life. It's related to how i conceptualize, process n think stuff. It opens space for experimentation. To me, its more related to what sociologists do than anything performance art; like how-to approach different types of social dynamics from diff point of view per example. Also, like that Andy Warhol eating a hamburger video; a partly exhibited learning process. Breaking rules wasn't really a thing in ♡ ♥ Blinking Girls ♥ ♡. What happened at Mother Neff is that our first intended installation, which involved light effects n bubble machines, was disapproved at the last minute bc of the damage it could cause to the cave walls. Blinking Girls Cave thus became about hardwares n gifs. During the documentation - that being the installation - Nate Hitchcock, the director n curator n everything at Apache Project, was interrupted by a park ranger who requested him to leave the park because taking pictures n or making videos in the cave wasn't appropriate.

DR: There’s a real sense of a partly exhibited learning process in your URL works: an ever growing array of Web 1.0 motifs, exhibited as unique URLs. For me these works expose the Internet as a spatial, material thing, still begging to be explored. You spoke of sociology, is there perhaps something archaeological in your practice?

EG: The internet is def abt spatiality and materiality. One can relate to these notions differently. To me, its really more abt physicality. I wasn't really thinking abt them topics when i made these. It's jst kinda there in all websites. Thats the internet. I wouldnt say that these r really web 1.0. The user in both cases isnt primarily a content consumer. Backdoor trojan girl was exhibited at Domain Gallery in a way that highlighted the urls. Under other circumstances, it'd prob be different. The archaeological in my practice is kinda superficial rn.

DR: Your URL artworks, http://backdoortrojangirl.net (2012) and http://w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r.net (2013), both flicker between female and male signifiers. Do you think the Web is gendered? How would you approach gender differently in work produced for a gallery context?

EG: I don't think the web is gendered. Culture is n adds gendered filter/s to it in some cases. I don't know if i would approach it; maybe i'd dig a hole for feminists/feminism or i'd do a show about postpostpostpostpostpostpost-transexualism. It'd be really fun.

DR: For your ongoing collaborative online exhibition Art Object Culture (2011-), you and Lucy Chinen bring together two artists each month to create a new work based on trinkets that were purchased online. These readily available objects accrue value as they pass through the project. I could ask you about the long shadow cast by Duchamp’s readymades, about ownership, exhibition value and artistic identity as they relate to the Web. Instead, I’d really like it if you shared some AOC secrets with us. What criteria do you use to select the artists? Which is your favorite submission so far and why?

EM: Art Object Culture offers a website template for artists to explore art making within one rule: create new art objects from items pre-existing in various online stores. We mainly seek artists that have the ability to bend that rule. I don't really have a favorite submission. I like some more than others but my opinion on this is not important. There is no secret. The current format is a translation of our ideas on AOC related topics from 2011. It might eventually mutate. Hopefully we'll sell all the artworks that were made for it before that n or have a show; some kinda showcase for all of them together w everyone that made stuff for it n other people too.

Émilie Gervais 

Age: my age range is 7 to 77.

Location: Paca/FR.

How long have you been working creatively with technology? How did you start?

Since forever. I started by playing games on some used pc and recontextualizing movies, game related stuff as improvised play based on the characters n plot/s with friends at school. I've always spent a lot of time randomly surfing the internet while chatting on microsoft comic chat, mIRC, the palace n was really into customizing anything that was customizable ie. winamp skins, mirc themes, etc... Beside that, my fav drawing thing is Lite Bright n i've been deleting, moving, opening files since ive been typing on a keyboard. I've crashed the home computer a couple of times.

Describe your experience with the tools you use. How did you start using them? Where did you go to school? What did you study?

Experimentation n play! My main tool is the internet or jst even information. In college, ive done a dble cursus in literature n social studies. Then, I dropped out of art school in Mtl n went to Paris. In 2010/2011, i did a dnap/bfa in 1yr at the Ecole d'Art Superieure d'Aix-en-Provence where I'm currently finishing a dnsep/master w a focus in hypermedia. My thesis text thing's title is Fuck Privacy Demo Game Over.

What traditional media do you use, if any? Do you think your work with traditional media relates to your work with technology?

I'm not media based. The traditional/non traditional dichotomy makes no sense to me. I jst use whatever depending on the project im working on. It's more about ideas n processes.

Are you involved in other creative or social activities (i.e. music, writing, activism, community organizing)?

I tweet n play music on my iphone everyday. Before that, i played ice hockey n have done some cycling as a summer training thing. I love dancing. Also, health related stuff; superfoods n other stuff, but i mostly eat pizza n candies. Thats creative. I'm involved with adrenaline, gaming, immersive as non immersive n fun everyday. I'm really concerned about open source n how it affects education/academics. But im not seriously implicated in anything, im jst personally into it rn.

What do you do for a living or what occupations have you held previously? Do you think this work relates to your art practice in a significant way?

I worked at HMV Megastore n Liquid Nutrition in Montreal while being in college. I spent one summer selling autoportraits on the Pont Saint-Louis in Paris w a friend. I worked at some pizza place on bd de Belleville. The boss never slept, ate one fried egg a day and gave us free pizza n drinks everyday. Clients ordered one expresso and remained seated for hrs jst talking abt whatever. Total Belleville cliche. Everything influences the way i process stuff. RN im an art student.

Who are your key artistic influences?

Toru Iwatani, Kassia Meador, Gustav Klimt n the internet.

Have you collaborated with anyone in the art community on a project? With whom, and on what?

I collaborate w Lucy Chinen on Art Object Culture n conducted the Blinking Girls project w Sarah Weis. I work/ed w friends that are mostly into painting n music. I ghostpost alot n collaborate w lots of people actively n passively everyday on everything. Its mostly passive networked collaboration/s.

Do you actively study art history?

Im surrounded by it. I've been into it for as long as i can remember. My dad always brought the family to museums. When i was living in San Francisco, we went to Los Angeles one time mostly jst to go n visit the Getty museum. My college art history teacher was totally awesome. Art history entertains me.

Do you read art criticism, philosophy, or critical theory? If so, which authors inspire you?

I have phases in which i read alot and others in which i dont at all. Most of the time, i try not to remember the authors so it remains jst about the ideas. RN im reading Critical Play by Mary Flanagan.

Are there any issues around the production of, or the display/exhibition of new media art that you are concerned about?

Yes, but no at the same time. It really depends on the whole concept of a project. I kinda hate almst everything that is JUST about representation when it comes to new media related art tho, so i'd say im concerned about that.

This conversation took place between 22 March and 1 April on a Google Drive document.

Western Front is pleased to welcome Vancouver/London UK based artist Una Knox as media artist in residence. Continuing her investigation into human perception, during the residency Knox will produce a new video and audio work related to the relationship between sound and architecture.

In this third segment of our genealogy we begin to form a connection, and to examine those lesser-known but foundational figures that radiate out from Turing's early work. Perhaps appropriately, given the venue, this second figure leads us to one of the earliest examples of computational art ever produced, though he did not claim the title of artist for himself. This history also moves us forward to those pivotal years surrounding Turing's arrest and death. While Turing underwent a highly visible crisis, Christopher Strachey's work was coming into its own. Once again the connection is tenuous, and little record survives to document more than a passing relationship between these two men, but what remains is a surprisingly poetic attempt to play at the machine.

Christopher Strachey was born in 1916 in Hampstead, England to Oliver Strachey and Rachel (Ray) Costelloe.[i] The Strachey family may be familiar to some, as it has a long and distinguished history in England. Christopher's father Oliver served as an intelligence agent in the First World War and, along with Alan Turing, as a cryptographer at Bletchley Park in the World War II. Christopher's great-grandfather was Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet, and the family has ties back to John Strachey, an associate of the philosopher John Locke.

Perhaps most well known is Christopher's uncle, Lytton Strachey who – along with  Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and E. M. Forster – was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a widely influential group of writers and artists living in Bloomsbury, London in the first half of the twentieth century. Lytton is perhaps most famous for his biographical work Eminent Victorians (1918), which defied Victorian bibliographic norms through irreverent, comedic character assassinations of some of the most beloved moral figures of the Victorian era. The Bloomsbury Group is particularly famous for its modern views on feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. Much like Turing, Lytton was open about his homosexuality – at least between friends and other members of the Bloomsbury group – at a time when homosexuality was explicitly illegal. The Strachey family home was located at 51 Gordon Square, and Christopher would have grown up in the middle of the Bloomsbury group's most productive period. 

The Strachey home in Bloomsbury.

Appropriately, Christopher Strachey is also best known for a series of literary works. In 1952 Strachey developed a love-letter generator that ran on the Manchester Mark 1 using a random number generating algorithm, predating the ELIZA natural language processing program by twelve years. The project is considered by many to be the first example of algorithmic or computational art, though such claims are always highly contested. As a mathematician and computer scientist, Christopher Strachey was also one of the founders of denotational semantics and a pioneer in programming language design; yet this is not the path Strachey began on as a young man growing up in Bloomsbury among artists and intellectuals.

By most accounts Strachey was an extremely intelligent child but an altogether undistinguished student. Fascinated by puzzles and with a knack for mathematics and logic, he applied these talents only when it suited him, and wound up at King's College, Cambridge for his undergraduate education. While at King's college Strachey would first come in contact with Alan Turing, who was a junior research fellow at the university. According to Strachey's biographer the two met socially and not through what would become a mutual interest in computing, and as such it is unlikely that they discussed Turing's research on computability. As with the infamous Cambridge Apostles, of which Christopher's father and uncle had been members, King's College had a reputation for homosexuality and Marxist politics leading up to World War II. While Christopher was largely uninterested in politics, it was during this time that he seems to have come to grips with his sexuality, leading to a mental breakdown in the last two terms of his third year.

What little information exists on this episode comes from Strachey’s sister. As Martin Campbell-Kelley notes in his brief biography of Strachey, "The reason for his breakdown is obscure, although his sister supposes it may have been a coming to terms with his homosexuality. At all events, he recovered, and the problem did not manifest itself as a breakdown again." The time away from school was spent partly in a residential home for psychotherapy – Christopher's uncle James was a prominent psychoanalyst credited with first translating Freud's works into English and penning his biography – and on vacation in the United States. This is the only explicit mention of Strachey's sexuality, or indeed any personal struggle he may have had with his identity, in any of the historical material I've been able to gather, aside from passing declarative statements that identify him as a homosexual. Again, the extent to which this breakdown functioned as a transformative moment in Strachey's life is unclear, as is the way in which his sexuality evolved and came to affect his life as an adult. Strachey would return to finish his education in the year following the episode, graduating with a disappointing "lower second" that dashed any hopes of a research studentship. Instead he would turn to education, and spent the next thirteen years at various educational institutions performing the role of schoolmaster.

Strachey's draughts program.

Things began to change in January of 1951 when, through a mutual friend, Strachey received an introduction to Mike Woodger of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). At that time the NPL was one of three institutions in the UK constructing computers – in this case the Pilot ACE, a preliminary version of the full Automatic Computing Engine or ACE, which had been designed by Alan Turing. Inspired by his visit, Strachey immediately began work on a program to make the Pilot ACE play draughts (checkers). He also worked on a program that would allow the machine to do its own coding, a self-reflexive gesture that reflected Strachey's interest in logical puzzles. The following spring he learned of the Ferranti Mark I computer at the University of Manchester, for which Alan Turing had written the manual. Through his earlier connections with Turing, Strachey managed to acquire a copy of the manual and began reprogramming his draughts program for the new machine.

The Manchester Mark I computer.

Strachey would visit Turing in Manchester twice in the second half of 1951, and on his second visit he was given access to the Mark I to try out his program. Over the course of an intensive session that began in the early evening and lasted through the night, he was able to get the program mostly working, and on running to completion "it finished with a characteristic flourish by playing the national anthem on the 'hooter.'"[ii] In fact during his visit Strachey programmed the Mark I to play a number of songs, including "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "In The Mood" - which were captured for BBC radio in the autumn of 1951. While his love letter generator would come the following year, and is perhaps more strictly a computational artwork, these tunes are considered to be one of the earliest examples of computer generated music, produced by a total novice and programmed in the course of one evening.[iii] The speed and ease with which Strachey appeared to work the Mark I cemented his reputation overnight, and he would soon become known as the man who wrote "perfect programs," which would lead to a job offer at the National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC) the following year.

In June of 1952, Strachey began his position at the NRDS. With a lack of projects to occupy him at the start of his employment, he kept himself busy by building his own programs to entertain himself. Then, beginning in August of 1953, short notes began appearing on the notice board of the Manchester University Computer Department. They appeared to be letters of love and adoration addressed to an unnamed, genderless other, signed only with the initials M.U.C.

The list of adjectives in Strachey's love letter generator.[iv]

M.U.C., it turns out, stood for Manchester University Computer, and the letters were the product of an algorithmic generator that Strachey had written in his spare time. Each letter follows a similar structure, and is full of melodramatic Victorian overtones, with pet names like "honey," "jewel," and "moppet" along with other saccharine and yearnful descriptives. The letters were constructed via a generative algorithm that produced a variety of orders and combinations. In "There Must Be an Angel: On the Beginnings of the Arithmetics of Rays", David Link describes its execution in detail:

Apart from position commands like carriage return ("CR"), line forward ("LF"), and spaces ("spaces" or "sp"), the algorithm prints two salutations ("Add." = address). Then it enters a loop, which is carried out "5 times" and, depending on a random variable ("Rand"), follows one of two alternative paths. One generates a sentence following the syntactic skeleton "You are my—Adjective (adj)—Substantive (noun)"; the other path gives "My—[Adjective]—Sub- stantive—[Adverb (adv)]—Verb (verb)—Your—[Adjective]—Substantive" (the static words are underlined, the optional words are in square brackets). [...] Each phrase ends with a "Full stop". After the programme leaves the loop, it closes with the ending "Yours—Adverb (in the schematic this is given erroneously as 'Adj')—MUC."[v]

Previous scholarship by Andrew Hodges and others has suggested that the letters – surviving examples of which conspicuously lacked any variation of the word "love" – might have indicated a negotiation with the terms and legitimacy of desire, and a fascination with or alienation from love. More recent work done by David Link[vi] and Noah Wardrip-Fruin[vii] in the Strachey archives – in which the love letter generator is well documented – shows that in fact the original list of words that the computer could pull from via random number generation did include several variations on the word love, there simply were no examples of such letters in wide circulation.

Schematic of Strachey's love letter program.

Rather than examine the love letter generator in terms of identity, Wardrip-Fruin chooses to view it as a literary project despite the mechanical, even comical tone of these letters. In other words, he attempts to analyze the process of the generator rather than the content of the letters, to understand the materiality of the technical object rather than the meaning of its output. This is a particularly interesting method, one that is especially valuable for the study of computational systems, which function through mechanical processes in which authorship is neither a privileged site to be investigated nor – as Roland Barthes so famously suggested – evacuated. Ultimately this turn suggests that, as Jeremy Douglass puts it in "Machine Writing and the Turing Test," "the true message of this love letter is 'this is a love letter'"[viii] - in other words, that the process by which this message is constructed and conveyed is of greater interest than the content of the message itself.

Ultimately Wardrip-Fruin concludes that the generator is "a process designed to fail that employs a thesaurus-based set of word data and that can result in particularly inhuman surface texts." Thus, "we can see the generator as a parody, though its operations, of one of the activities seen as most sincere by the mainstream culture: the declaration of love through words. That is, [Wardrip-Fruin sees] the love generator, not as a process for producing parodies, but as itself a parody of process."[ix] The letters lack the subtlety and complexity of, for example, the parody of Victorian morality played out by members of the Bloomsbury Group thirty-five years earlier, but this is not where the parody lies. Instead it is a parody of the process of producing love letters, of producing love through this highly formal yet deeply affective medium. It is in this sense a queer critique of normative expressions of love, enacted through a kind of generative, computational performance, through a purposefully deficient simulation.

The interface for artist-researcher David Link's recreation of the love letter generator.

In his biography of Alan Turing, Andrew Hodges writes of the love letter generator, that "[t]hose doing real men’s jobs on the computer, concerned with optics or aerodynamics, thought [it] silly, but [...] it greatly amused Alan and Christopher."[x] It is interesting and perhaps appropriate that what might be considered the first work of computational art was a kind of joke, a critique of "real" epistolary writing and "real" love by means of automation through digitization. It is even more fascinating that it seems to have come from a queer history - not of "passing" as has been suggested with regards to Alan Turing's work on gender and artificial intelligence in the Turing Test, but of camp and the ostentatious performance of "authentic" affect.

Screenshot of DISimages.com, 2011-2012 Rhizome Commission

Rhizome is now accepting proposals for the Rhizome Commissions 2013-2014 cycle. Each year, the program supports emerging artists by providing grants for the creation of significant works of new media art. This year, Rhizome places a focus on promoting emerging artists based in New York City. Grants will not be restricted to New York based artists, but made a priority. This cycle, we also have a specific focus on one project that addresses social issues and/or promotes individual advancement through education or participation. Rhizome will award up to six grants for the creation of new works of digital and new media art. Five awards will be determined by a jury of experts and one award will be determined by Rhizome's membership in an open vote. Rhizome Commissions awards generally range from $1,000 to $5,000.

This year, Rhizome has also partnered with Tumblr to offer an additional strand to the commissioning program: The Rhizome | Tumblr Internet Art Grant. The Internet Art Grant expands upon Rhizome's existing Commissions program to specifically target Tumblr's significant artistic community. The Internet Art Grant will make three commissioning awards with a special focus on projects from artists engaged with Tumblr.

The commissions award will be determined by a jury of experts: Laurie Anderson, noted experimental performance artist and musician; Massimiliano Gioni, Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions at the New Museum and Artistic Director of the 55th Venice Biennale; Renny Gleeson, Global Director at Wieden + Kennedy; and Zoë Salditch, Rhizome's Program Director. For the Rhizome | Tumblr Internet Art Grant, jurors include Gioni, Anderson, Salditch and additionally, artist Jon Rafman and Topherchris, Tumblr Editorial Director.

The Rhizome Commissions program is supported, in part, by funds from Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts. Additional support is provided by generous individuals and Rhizome members.

Still struggling with the seasonal shopping? It doesn't all have to be trawling through Amazon or fighting the crowds at Churchill Square. Christmas is the perfect opportunity to support the arts and buy something truly special. Here are three of the best places in Brighton to buy creative Christmas gifts.

The post ART: Where to buy artist-made Christmas gifts in Brighton appeared first on Brighton Culture.

Max Dean, As Yet Untitled , 2007/670, Puma 550 industrial robot, found family snap shots, conveyor, shredder, metal, electronics, installation: 60” x 144” x 120” (152.4 x 365.8 x 304.8 cm), edition of 3. Gift of Jay Smith, David Fleck, Gilles Ouellette and Terry Burgoyne, 2007. Collection Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo by Sean Weaver/AGO.

By Sherry Phillips, Conservator of Contemporary and Inuit Art

“The viewer has the opportunity to determine the fate of found family photographs. The robot is programmed to pick up a photo from the hopper on the right, present it to the viewer, wait several seconds for a response before proceeding. Should the viewer choose to intervene by covering one or both of the hand silhouettes in front of them, the robot will place the photo in an archival box. Should the viewer choose not to act, the robot will place the photo in a shredder and the shredded photo will be conveyed to a pile. The robot runs continuously.” (Dean, 2013)

The passage above, taken from artist Max Dean’s website, provides a description of As Yet Untitled as the robot featured in the artwork might: succinct and detached, without any of the emotion we often attach to a family photo. Photographs are often the first personal possessions rescued from a fire or flood that has devastated a home. They are records of times past and loved ones who may no longer be with us. On the other hand, the photographs used in this artwork were all found, which means that someone discarded them. What circumstances could lead to the discarded family memories? And when faced with shredding or salvation, what response will the viewer, a stranger, choose for someone else’s photographic memories?

The concepts that the time-based media installation evokes are complex, and so are the physical components that allow it to operate. Like all pieces of technology, they need upkeep. The Conservation Department of the AGO is undertaking a restoration and mechanical upgrading of As Yet Untitled, in collaboration with Max Dean, Dr. Richard Voyles — associate professor in the University of Denver’s Department of Computer Engineering — and Marcel Verner of the Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute. The aim is to prepare the work, which became part of the AGO’s collection in 2007, to be exhibited and ensure that the technology is rugged and reliable well into the future. The work has been promised for loan to the city-wide Le Mois de la Photo, in Montreal, Quebec, September to October 2013.

Time-based media, meaning that time or duration is a dimension of the artwork and is revealed to the viewer over time, often involve a kinetic component. In the case of As Yet Untitled, there are several synchronized moving parts and as with any mechanical system, components wear or become obsolete. Unlike more traditional areas of art conservation, the conservation of contemporary art may involve the replacement of an artwork, in part or entirety, in order to continue the operation and comprehension as the artist intended. In this case, all components of the work will be inspected and upgraded as needed, and a new controller will be designed and programmed to correctly operate the various components. Max Dean as well as computer and robotics specialists will take the lead on upgrades to the mechanical and operational program systems and, as the conservator, my main role will be documentation of changes to the current format of the artwork.

Sherry will be conducting work on As Yet Untitled until mid-August, 2013, and will add updates to the blog along the way. Use this link to find more As Yet Untitled posts!

Curious about Conservation?
If you have a burning question about Conservation, leave a comment below. We’ll do our best to give you an answer in an upcoming Conservation Notes post.

Signature Partner of the AGO’s Conservation Program

Where can you find his sculptures? Explore the map below, and help us expand it

View Seeking Sorel Etrog in a larger map

This spring we’ll have a lot of Sorel Etrog’s work inside the Gallery, but we’re also seeking photos of his work to add to the map above. Etrog’s sculptures are visible in many public spaces around Toronto, from Sunlife at the corner of King Street and University Avenue to a cluster of works near Yonge and Davisville, and we’re inviting you to help us celebrate his impact on Toronto’s streetscape with your own photography.

Do you have your own photo of Etrog’s work to add, from around Toronto or beyond? Email the photo, title and date of the work (if available), the date when you took the photo and the location to seekingsorel@gmail.com and you could win a prize pack, including a Sorel Etrog exhibition catalogue, a poster and two passes to the exhibition Sorel Etrog.

Please note:

We’re happy to receive new views of the works already indicated on the map, as well as photos of other works in Toronto, both on the street and even inside buildings (just no trespassing, please). Some of Etrog’s sculptures are also in public spaces in cities around the world, so if you spotted one while travelling, we’d love to add those to map. Submissions are welcome from anyone, but due to the nature of the prizes, the contest is open only to residents of Canada (excluding Quebec).

About the exhibition:

Sorel Etrog, running April 27 to Sept. 29, 2013, is a career-spanning exhibition that will cast the artist in a new light in his adopted hometown of 54 years. It will include his archetypal sculptures as well as drawings, paintings, book illustrations and prints from the AGO’s collection and private collections. One of the highlights, and one of Etrog’s pivotal works, will be his rarely seen film, Spiral. This meditation on the human condition, from birth to death, will be a catalyst for renewed reflection on the accomplishments of one of Canada’s most diverse and challenging artists.

FALL/WINTER 2012 RESIDENCY CALL

APPLICATION DEADLINE: All applications must have been received via online application by 12:00PM (noon) June 22, 2012. All applicants will be informed of their application status by August 13, 2012.

calls/eyebeam-2012-fall-winter-residency-call" target="_blank">read more

6.30–8.30pm
Belgrave Square, SW1

In anticipation of Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940, Patrons are invited to join the exhibition curator Adrian Locke for a drinks reception hosted by the Head of Cultural Affairs Vanessa Arelle at the Ambassador’s official residence.

Ticket information
Sold out – please call 020 7300 5885 to be put on the waiting list

This event is open...

5.30pm
RA Schools

Patrons will have the first opportunity to see and buy works from this exceptionally talented group of artists at the culmination of their study at the Royal Academy Schools.

Book on 020 7300 5885 or by filling in the form below:

8.45am
Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House

The Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition will once again bring together new works by both established and emerging artists presenting paintings, sculpture, print and architectural models. Now in its 245th year and co-ordinated by Norman Ackroyd RA this will be an opportunity to buy works before the public.

Book on 020 7300 5885 or by filling in the form below:

Built in 1773 by the architect George Gibson the Younger, Stone House is one of the oldest and most distinctive buildings in Lewisham. Originally called the Comical House for its idiosyncratic design, we tour the building, which is built from Kentish Ragstone and has a rustic appearance.

SOLD OUT

Jason Evans, A long, long time AGO / Media Productions / Lee, Gary, Pat, Danny, Zoé, Greg, Barb, 2012

Welsh photographer Jason Evans is the current photographer-in-residence at the AGO. As part the of Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, his photo series featuring 12 groups of AGO staff members, A long, long time AGO, will be on view on the AGO’s Dundas Street façade and inside the Elizabeth & Tony Comper Gallery on Level 1 throughout May 2013. Evans, a 2012 Grange Prize nominee, will also facilitate public photography workshops focused on portraiture and at AGO 1st Thursdays on May 2, he will move through the Galleries with a roving DJ station, playing records from his personal collection for artworks in the AGO collection in a performance titled Music for Looking.

Jason Evans

Your project at the next 1st Thursdays, Music for Looking, involves pairing pieces of music with works on display in the Gallery — how do you know if a song is “right” for a particular artwork. Did you choose the artworks first and match the songs, or was it the other way around?

When I was here for The Grange Prize I took in the collection and made notes of the rooms or objects that I was feeling, you have some lovely things and some sensual hangs. Instinctively I felt I could play that piece or this type of music as compliment or in dialogue. I often “see” stuff when I hear music so I wanted to work the other way around. Some associations are quite literal and others more formal or textural. It’s nearly all instrumental. After enjoying the atmosphere of the 1st Thursdays I felt encouraged to go as out-there as I needed. I think your punters can take it!

One of the invitations of our residency program is to draw on “the possibilities within the collections and exhibitions of the Gallery,” and other artists-in-residence have dug into the vaults and reacted to work on the walls, but for your A long, long time AGO series you decided to work with the Gallery’s people (our staff). Where did that project come from?

Institutions are pretty inhumane on the whole, yet they’re dead without people. The amazing narratives, cultures and objects sustained at AGO or any “museum” are facilitated by the staff; they’re the unsung heroes of Culture, while the authors get recognition. I want to promote a more holistic view. We’re all in this together. I subscribe to the belief that it’s often the “little people” that do the most important work… And in the meantime, I’m also reacting — the Janet Cardiff The Forty Part Motet can’t fail to influence. I love that piece and was stoked to learn it was here while I am and in dialogue with Moore too. I’ll be up there doing some drawing and soaking up the spiritual vibrations too.

Is Toronto a good place to take pictures? You visited Toronto last fall and you’re back again, this time for a longer visit. Is there one thing about Toronto that inspires you to pull out your camera?

Not yet.

The workshops you’re running as part of your residency are for beginner photographers and students will work with film cameras, not digital. What does film have over digital? Do you think it’s important to learn to work with film before digital?

I think that both formats offer different possibilities — it needn’t be a competition. I work on film most of the time because I like the texture of it. I wanted to share the thoughtful, slowness of film with folks who might not have had that experience before, and not just beginners either. In terms of learning, I think it’s unhelpful to generalize; we all find different ways to knowledge. Having said all that I am dubious of the market-driven motivations for digitalization and the pandemic social consequences.

Why doesn’t The Daily Nice have an archive? You must keep the photos, so why can’t visitors to the site see them? Is it about getting them to concentrate on a single image?

Here today, gone tomorrow. Just like life. Don’t hold on. The internet would be a whole bunch better if it wasn’t treated like a bottomless pit.

You’ve made it clear you prefer “photographer-in-residence” to “artist-in residence.” Why?

I’m broadly interested in Culture more than Art, and that’s what I contribute to, in different ways. This is facilitated by photography in relation to life, music, people, exploring… you name it. I guess you could say, “that’s art,” but to me it’s more than that. Art might be a part of what I do as a photographer, but I want to take into account my record sleeves and my curation, my writing and my teaching, my ‘eye’ and my fashion work —these are all informed by my relationship with photography, not with art. I’m being a bit mischievous for the sake of opening a discussion. What’s the difference between photography made by artists and art made by photographers?

How important is space you’re inhabiting for this residency (the Artist in Residence studio) to the overall experience? What do you want to do with it?

I am a “messy” person, yet every time I need to make something I have to clear the decks to clear my head. I’m working on some drawings for photography while I’m here and having zero physical distractions in a space is a luxury. Having said that, it’s a weird, fish tank–like room with no natural light, not very soulful. This is cancelled out by the ultra-supportive staff. I’m being spoiled here — I just wish spring would hurry up.

I also read this article and can only agree with Mark and support his 
criticism.

The crucial question (Table 13) only talks about government involvement 
in setting age limits, there is no talk about targeted advertising, 
company practices, political economy, capitalism, etc - the question 
formulation is manipulative and is framed by liberal ideology that stirs 
sentiments against government intervention and ignores (as in the whole 
study) political economy, advertising culture, and capitalism.

No surprise the only conclusion is "but the key to helping children and 
their parents enjoy the benefits of those solutions is to abandon 
age–based mechanisms that inadvertently result in limiting children’s 
options for online access".

No questioning of the corporate character of social media, etc etc. 
There was once a guy called Lazarsfeld making a distinction between 
administrative and critical communication research... This is just 
another study about social media in the whole vast universe of 
adm

via uncp.edu

Somewhere towards the beginning of Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will, in the middle of a long and tedious sequence of military men addressing the party congress on matters of public policy, Goebbels, in a suit, rises to the microphone to speak about propaganda. “May the bright flame of our enthusiasm never be extinguished,” he says, looking somewhat more comfortable in front of the crowd then you might imagine. “It alone gives the creative art of modern political propaganda its light and warmth. From the depths of the people it rose aloft. And into the depths of the people in must descend… It may be good to have power based on arms, but it is better and more joyful to win and to keep the hearts of the people.” It’s a telling moment, especially in light of Riefensthal’s insistence, for the remainder of her life, that Triumph was not and is not a propaganda film, but instead a work of ‘total art’ or of ‘cinema verite.’ Technically speaking, she is correct, insofar as Hitler had chosen her precisely for her pedigree as an artist, and she only agreed to make the film when he promised to keep Goebbels and his minions at the ministry entirely out of its production.

And yet, watching the film today, it is clearly not only a piece of propaganda, but the apogee of the genre. By turns horrifying and deadly dull, it is wholly without irony or self-reflection of any sort. Quite literally a masterpiece, it is responsible for creating an entire arsenal of cinematic techniques later employed by everybody from Josef Stalin to Barack Obama. In effect then, the distinction, between art and propaganda, which mattered so much to Reifenstahl in the films production, has in some sense vanished. Art not only became propaganda but perfected it, the distance she fought to maintain damning her all the more for preserving the unique power of her vision. Triumph plays at Anthology this Saturday at 6 and 8:30, its worth seeing, if you haven’t before; even if the technical achievements no longer impress, the relentlessness of thing remains striking and, god willing, singular.

Yukimasa Okumura "2nd Okumura Festival"
at Creation Gallery G8 (Ginza, Marunouchi area)
(2013-05-07 - 2013-05-31)

Showcases the design work of Yukimasa Okumura. Features posters, record jackets, stage designs, and publications. New and recent works as well as projects for the bands YMO, Happy End, and Checkers. Event named after the celebration held when Okumura won the ADC Award in 1982. Occurring simultaneously at Guardian Garden. [Image: Yukimasa Okumura "TD'6 Fashion Week '80-'81" (1980)]

David Keshavjee and Julien Tavelli “Multi Plakatix：Maximage Société Suisse”
at G/P Gallery (Ebisu, Daikanyama area)
(2013-05-21 - 2013-06-20)

G/P gallery presents the typographic exhibition of Maximage Société Suisse, by David Keshavjee and Julien Tavelli. These two designers who graduated from Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne do not merely resist the current of the times in its ever increasing flow to digitalized design and simplistic printing methods, but follow their very unique form of modernism with a primitive twist. Their project “Using Tool”, earned them the 2009 Swiss Federal Design Award, combining a generative algorithm in the creation of a new font which was then made into a wood block print with its own analogue texture, and completed as a new typeface in a process coined “Typeface as Program”. Their approach towards a typography which may be seen to be rather inefficient in everyday life but this long procedure including scripting and programming combined with a hand crafted printing process results in a most complicated and most intriguing outcome.

Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney talks about his new film “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks.” He details the creation of Julian Assange’s controversial website Wikileaks, which facilitated the largest security breach in U.S. history. “We Steal Secrets: the story of Wikileaks” opens May 24 at Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center at Lincoln Center and the Angelika Film Center.

Peter Hessler, staff writer at The New Yorker and Beijing correspondent 2000-2007, and a contributing writer for National Geographic, discusses living in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions. His new collection of stories is called Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West, and includes his writing on his taste test between two rat restaurants in South China, and profiles of basketball star Yao Ming and an obsessive and passionate historian of the Great Wall, and other stories.

Dave Bry discusses the many things he’s sorry for, and how he’s come to grip with his past and his regrets. In Public Apology: In Which a Man Grapples with a Lifetime of Regret, One Incident at a Time, he writes funny and moving apologies to those he has wronged--to the girl whose ear he sung the last verse of "Stairway to Heaven" into while slow dancing in junior high school to his own father, who he feels more compassionate about now that Bry has become a dad.

Do you have something you want apologize for? Give us a call at 212-433-9692 or leave a comment!

Celebrated Icelandic novelist Sjón has won many international awards and has been compared to Borges, Calvino, and Iceland’s other literary superstar, the Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness. His new novel The Whispering Muse is set in 1949, and follows Valdimar Haraldsson, an eccentric Icelander who joins a Danish merchant ship on its way to the Black Sea.

Award - Winning Works - Going upstream for Niyodo river -“" />
Katsutoshi Kobayashi “The 19th Sakata City Ken Domon Culture Award - Winning Works - Going upstream for Niyodo river -“
at Shinjuku Nikon Salon (Shinjuku area)
(2013-05-14 - 2013-05-27)

It may be said that now in Japan mountain village communities have largely disappeared, with human presence in these regions on the brink of extinction. Katsutoshi Kobayashi first visited to a mountain village community 30 years ago in 1980, staying in a village along the Niyodogawa river in the heights of Kochi, Shikoku. This village was an active community with shops, a school and many children, yet now it has dramatically changed, with little possibility of returning to its former shape. But by tracing the landscapes and people of its past perhaps it is possible to reflect upon our human bonds and the strength of community. Here 30 monochrome photos propose the importance of restoring this way of living which has been disposed of in the modern age which strives for efficiency. [Image: Katsutoshi Kobayashi]

The 38th Exhibition of the JPS 2013
at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Ebisu, Daikanyama area)
(2013-05-18 - 2013-06-02)

38th edition of an exhibition featuring works by members of the Japan Photographers Society, founded in 1950 in support of professional photographers. The open call section of this exhibition presents works of impressive quality from photographers who have the ability to establish themselves professionally. This year sees the establishment of the grand prize as the "Tokyo Governor Award", along with a new section aimed at photography students under the "Young Eye Section" . Venue: B1F Gallery

Calle and Miranda July from the Museum Collection" />
Spinning the Word: Sophie Calle and Miranda July from the Museum Collection
at Hara Museum Arc (Greater Tokyo area)
(2013-03-16 - 2013-06-26)

Sophie Calle (b. 1953, France) is a leading contemporary artist whose work has been shown at major art museums around the world. She represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and created a special work with photography and a Japanese text for a solo exhibition at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999. Miranda July (b. 1974, America) has written and directed her own films, including "The Future", recently shown in Japan, and has attracted attention for her border-crossing creativity. Her text installation work "The Hallway", shown at the Yokohama Triennale in 2008, was acquired by the Hara Museum for its collection.

25 Years of Praemium Imperiale Award Recipients
at Ueno Royal Museum (Ueno, Yanaka area)
(2013-05-21 - 2013-07-14)

Photographs of winners of the Praemium Imperiale Awards over the past 25 years. Venue: Gallery

Toshihiro Hayashi “Orientation”
at Gallery Objective Correlative (Ichigaya, Kagurazaka area)
(2013-05-29 - 2013-06-12)

The 6th Maestro Guant Award exhibition presents the solo exhibition of this year’s award winner Toshihiro Hayashi. [Image: Toshihiro Hayashi “Orientation”(2013) Light Jet print, Aluminium 158.5×97 cm]

World Press Photography Exhibition 2013
at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Ebisu, Daikanyama area)
(2013-06-08 - 2013-08-04)

Each year, World Press Photo invites photographers throughout the world to participate in the World Press Photo Contest, the premier international competition in photojournalism. All entries are judged in Amsterdam by an independent international jury of 19 experts. The prizewining images are displayed in an annual exhibition that tours to 100 locations in 45 countries, and is seen by millions of visitors. In 2012, 5,666 photographers from 124 countries submitted 103,481 entries. The 2012 World Press Photo of the Year winner was Paul Hansen’s “Gaza City, Palestinian Territories” for The Dagens Nyheter, depicting the sadness and anger of men carrying the bodies of two young children killed by Israeli missiles. [Image: Paul Hansen]

Turbulence Commission: Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise by Jason Nelson [Needs speakers/headphones]:

Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise is an art/ poetry/ adventuring game, a playland for exploring our ever-present desire for constant and over-blown rewards. Our worlds (digital and breathing) are filled with needless and unearned praise, we are built to love exploding trophies for fifth place. This art/poetry game satisfies your compliment addiction by celebrating your walking/ jumping/ falling through strange and wondrous anatomical lands.

Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise is a 2013 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

BIOGRAPHY

Born from the Oklahoma flatlands of farmers and spring thunderstorms, JASON NELSON somehow stumbled into creating awkward and wondrous digital poems and interactive stories of odd lives, building confounding art games and all manner of curious digital creatures. Currently he professes Net Art and Electronic Literature at Australia’s Griffith University in the Gold Coast’s contradictory shores. He exhibits widely with work featured around globe at FILE, ACM, LEA, ISEA, ACM, ELO and dozens of other acronyms. There are awards to list, boards he frequents, and other accolades, but in the web-based realm where his work resides, Jason is most proud of the millions of visitors his artwork/digital poetry portal http://www.secrettechnology.com attracts each year.

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residence.php">Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence :: Call for Proposals: Orwell Residence, Minecraft :: Deadline: March 21, 2013 midnight PST.

Artist, coders, poets, and engineers are invited to apply for a six week artist residency in the virtual environment / game space of Minecraft. Minecraft is a sandbox where creativity and ludology intersect in a highly social space rich with possibilities due to relative openness of the code and hosting options.

Ars Virtua is soliciting proposals for its Artist-in-Residence program (AVAIR). Established and emerging artists are invited to participate. The residency will culminate in an exhibition and opening in Minecraft and documentation in Minecraft and on the web. Depending on the nature of the exhibition a downloadable “world” may also be made available. Residents will also receive a $400 stipend, training and mentorship as necessary.

AVAIR is an extended performance that examines what it means to reside in a place that has no physical location. The purpose of the residency is to reflect on the nature of the game environment and terrestrial world in the context of contemporary art. NO Previous experience in virtual environments or Minecraft is necessary.

Ars Virtua is keenly aware of the power of virtual worlds. The arts continue to shape our understanding of technologies, this residency targets both gamespaces and virtual environments as a place for emergent art, performance art, coded art and social experimentation. It is the purpose of this residency to give direct attention to the interrogation of the space, place, and metaphor. Residents will be encouraged to explore, experiment with and challenge traditional conventions of art making and distribution, value and the art market, artist and audience, space and place, data and reality.

The residency will take place in Orwell on our semi-private server and in our building space. Potential residents are encouraged to visit beforehand.

Application Process:

Artists are encouraged to become familiar with Minecraft before applying. Be aware that there is a limited free trial, and that finalists will be contacted for an in world interview, if you do not have an account at that time one will be provided. Applications will be judged based on ideas presented and work previously executed. We are looking for an artist who is willing to work within what may be a new environment for them and be prepared to evolve in response to the malleable world that is Minecraft.

To apply send the following information to avair-at-arsvirtua.com:

1) Name, address, phone number, email address.
2) A brief statement about what interests you about Minecraft or what you might like to explore.
3) Link to an online portfolio (expect a 5 minute visit). If you do not have an online portfolio please briefly discuss your work.
4) one page proposal. Note that the proposal is NOT a commitment, but expresses your interest.

Applications are due on or before March 21, please send any inquiries or additional questions to avair-at-arsvirtua.com.

Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

AVAIR was originally commissioned in 2006 by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was possible with funds from the Jerome Foundation.

Film editing is all about making (mostly smooth) transitions from one shot to another. Here we briefly discuss the 6 frequently used transitions between shots:

1. CUT: The end of the first shot is attached to the beginning of the second shot. The most often used of all transitions, it creates an instantaneous change in one or more of the following: angle, distance, subject etc. In narrative films, normally only cuts are used within a scene.

2. MATCH CUT: A match cut (sometimes called a form cut) maintains continuity between two shots by matching objects with similar shapes or movements or both similar shapes and similar movements. One of the best known examples of a match cut is from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which a bone slowly tumbling end over end in the air is replaced by an orbiting spacecraft with a similar shape. Watch video below for reference:

3. JUMP CUT: A jump cut is a discontinuous transition between shots. For example, one shot shows a woman running on a beach towards the water, and the next shot shows her running away from the water. A jump cut is sometimes used to surprise or disorient viewers. It may also occur if the film print or video has missing footage. Many filmmakers and film schools associate a jump cut with bad editing.

4. FADE OUT, FADE IN: The first shot fades to darkness, (normally black); then the second shot fades in(by degree goes from darkness to illuminated image). The fade out, fade in can provide a short but meaningful pause between scenes and sequences. If this editing transition is doe slowly, it can serve as a leisurely transition.; if done rapidly, it is less noticeable or not noticeable at all. Perhaps because of the current popularity of fast pacing in films, this transition is used far less often than it used to be,

5. LAP DISSOLVE: The first shot fades out as the second shot fades in, overlaps the first, then replaces it entirely. Lap dissolves may be rapid and nearly imperceptible or slow and quite noticeable, creating a momentary superimposition of two images, sometimes suggesting similarities or even meaning.

6. WIPE: A wipe seems to push one shot off the screen as it replaces it with the next shot. The wipe, which comes with many variations, has been popular in science fiction, serials and action movies. but it has also been used in such diverse films as It Happened on Night, (1934), The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Seven Samurai (1954), Ed Wood (1994) and Battlefield Earth (2000).

Many other transitions are used but much less often than these six mentioned above. We will post more on video editing techniques on the Digital Filmmaking Blog in the coming days,

George Clooney will receive the Chairman's Award for his acting work in The Descendants and his directing of The Ides of March at the 2012 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

The award will be presented on January 7 at PSIFF's annual Awards Gala, a black-tie event that always hands out an array of awards to luminaries who figure to be in the Oscar race.

Like the awards given at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in late January, the Palm Springs event has become a valuable stop on the Oscar campaign trail. Previous recipients of the Chairman's Award include Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Ben Affleck.

Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams will also be rewarded for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn,” which is already generating Oscar buzz.

Williams, 31, will receive the Desert Palm Achievement Actress Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards gala at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Previous recipients include Academy Award winners Natalie Portman, Marion Cotillard, Charlize Theron and Kate Winslet.

“My Week With Marilyn,” which opens Wednesday in limited distribution, premiered Oct. 9 at the New York International Film Festival. Directed by Simon Curtis, the film was presented Nov. 6 as part of the AFI Fest at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where Monroe put her hand and footprints in cement in 1952.

The Palm Springs International Film Festival runs Jan. 5-16 2012 at various venues in Palm Springs

Sources: mydesert.com & Reuters

“We are excited to expand the reach and depth of our programming to support individual artists in the field,”

We give young filmmakers a topic and everything they need to create their own movie -- video, music, and sound effects. Then let them create the best short film they can using these materials. Because everyone's using the same "building blocks," contestants will be judged not by their budget but on their creativity and storytelling abilities.

Their first competition is called "The Marijuana Mash-Up." For this contest, they are asking contestants to “mash up” (that is, creatively condense and re-edit) an hour’s worth of hilariously dated drug education films from the 50s and 60s to create a short campaign commercial that convinces people to vote for or against legalizing marijuana. The contest is motivated by the California initiative that'll be on the ballot this fall, but young filmmakers across the country have passionate views on this issue, to say the least! Finalists will be named late in the summer and a winner just before the election.

2. Fleetflicks: FleetFlicks.com is trying to revive the short film as both art and entertainment. It's a place for filmmakers to expose their work to an international audience. The site hopes to spread the word to a diverse viewership and combat the stigma that the short film is only for crotch-punch and cat videos. The site has been up for a few months and has gathered a lot of followers, many of whom have uploaded their short films on the site.

3. Student Film Makers of India: SFMI is a site for student film from India where they can upload their films, make their profile and network with other film makers. The website has a decent design and has got quite a few members already who have uploaded their short films and animations there.

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp recommends an opportunity to meet, even paint with, the artist and buy her work to benefit the museum.

The RAW Awards will showcase design talent in Philadelphia, with winners advancing to compete on a national level.

The article ‘RAW’ talent showcased in awards ceremony by Taylor Farnsworth appeared first on The Temple News.

Jenny Drumgoole’s cream cheese art submission morphs into a representation of corporate America. Google “cream cheese recipes,” and one will be bombarded with recipes for cheesecake worthy to take to tea with grandma.…

The article Cream cheese commentary by Jessica Herring appeared first on The Temple News.