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.

Hello all,

Apologies for the delay here. Fieldwork has left me terribly behind on
correspondence this summer.

I'm Dan Greene, a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of
Maryland. My dissertation focuses on the hope that access to ICT and
ICT-related industries will help individuals, cities, and countries lift
themselves up by their own bootstraps. The Clinton administration built
this belief into a common sense as they steered the US into a supposedly
New Economy, deregulated the telecommunications industry, and replaced
welfare with workfare. Today it manifests on the one hand as a mission to
close the so-called digital divide, and on the other as an effort to
recruit or cultivate Richard Florida's creative class and save desperate
cities. The dissertation first traces the roots of this common sense to the
neoliberal political economy of the 1990s and the framing of the 'digital
divide' as a problem of getting computers to poor people rather than ending
poverty per se, and then tracks how th

Greetings from balmy New York City. It has been exciting to read through
all of your proposals and now the introductions, and posts to the mailing
list.

This is just as good a time as any to jump in and say hello, starting with
a reference to a short intervention that I just wrote for Public Seminar,
trying to decompress my thoughts about the so-called "sharing economy." I
will just leave it at that and see if there is anybody on the list who has
followed the protests against Uber, and the regulatory efforts concerning
Airbnb.

http://www.publicseminar.org/2014/06/the-politics-of-the-sharing-economy/#.U7FkPaiXvjA

~ Trebor

=============
R. Trebor Scholz
Associate Professor
Culture & Media Department
THE NEW SCHOOL
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY 10011

This will be my second digital labor conference. I'm happy to see how much
the concept has developed over the past five years.

I am presently completing an essay on automation
<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-more-nuanced-view-of-legal-automation.html>,
in response to a call for proposals
<http://canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/2014_commission_recipients> from
Triple Canopy. I edited and wrote for a New Museum-sponsored project on "The
Last Newspaper <http://newcityreader.net/issue08.html>." My book, The Black
Box Society <http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674368279>,
will be published this fall.

My presentation at the conference will explore proposals to "automate the
automators"--i.e., how to computerize (and thus render redundant) the
managers and investors who claim automation should render most workers
redundant.

--Frank


Frank Pasquale
Professor of Law
University of Maryland Carey School of Law
500 W. Baltimore St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
(410)-706-4820


On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 5:06

$10 / FREE Western Front members

Advance registration required. 

To register contact: newmusicadmin@front.bc.ca

Musician-in-Residence with the Sound of Dragon Festival, pianist and composer Lee Pui Ming is recognized for her work in combining contemporary classical, jazz, and traditional Chinese music.

“We improvise all the time. We listen, assess, initiate and respond to what arises within and around us. In this gathering, we will explore more mindfully what we do automatically, and share our individual practices of improvisation. Bring yourself, and bring an instrument if you wish.”

Lee Pui Ming is an artist who is curious about the space where the Known meets the Unknown. Through the years, that exploration has led her to new ways of transforming and integrating Chinese material into her work; creating a live performance gestalt that includes sounding all parts of the piano, engaging her body and her voice; finding fresh ways of weaving tonalities; and diving into the wide expanse of open improvisation. And always, the intent is to communicate and connect with the listener, heart to heart.

In Lee’s performing career, she has played in jazz, new music, and folk festivals in places like Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, Edmonton, White Horse, San Francisco, St. Paul (Minnesota), Honolulu, Berlin, Bern, Worpswede, and Hong Kong. She has been presented by presenters like Honens International Piano Festival in Calgary, Art Gallery of Ontario and The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Vancouver New Music, and Hong Kong Urban Council. Recently she made concerto appearances performing she comes to shore with The Hopkins Symphony, Windsor Symphony, and The Bay-Atlantic Symphony.

Co-presented by Sound of Dragon: A Festival of Chinese Music.

Western Front Curator in Residence Shama Khanna will present a series of films, writing and research related to her ongoing project Flatness. The Flatness project extends from the thematic programme of artists’ moving image works curated by Khanna at Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in May 2013 entitled, ‘Flatness: Cinema after the Internet’. Returning to the small screen, in July 2013 Khanna launched the website flatness.eu presenting many of the works from the festival, (including programmes by sub-curators Oliver Laric, Anthea Hamilton and Ed Atkins), and research and writing about them, online.

Through commissioning new work by artists, technologists and writers, such as Robert M Ochshorn, Isobel Harbison and Mercedes Bunz, flatness.eu aims to test the possibilities and limitations of the web as a creative site and space for viewing. The website programme is punctuated with screenings and discussion events at venues including Chisenhale Gallery, London and Palais de Tokyo, Paris and Manchester University as opportunities to engage in feedback with artists, technologists and the audiences around them.

Shama Khanna is an independent curator and writer based in London. She curated the thematic programme at Oberhausen International Short Film Festival 2013, entitled Flatness: Cinema after the Internet which she developed into the online platform flatness.eu. She has previously worked with Showroom Gallery, E:vent, BFI London Film Festival and LUX / ICA Biennial of Moving Images in London, amongst other collaborations including events at Chisenhale Gallery and Tate, London and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. She is a regular contributor to frieze, Art Agenda and Art Review magazines and is a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths, Central St. Martins, Chelsea Colleges and Bournemouth Arts University in the UK.

1. Start with a bale of Straw.

2. Saturate it with water for about 3 days.

3. Sprinkle the top of the bale with 1/2 cup granular nitrogen fertilizer and continue watering, adding 1/2 cup fertilizer for the next 3 days. Then for the next 3 days only add 1/4 cup fertilizer and water.

4. On day 10, begin digging 3 holes in the the top of the bale, a little larger than the plant pot diameter. Then fill the holes with potting soil or compost, or a combination, and water gently.

Be sure to dig your holes slightly larger than the plant pot diameter

5. When the soil is no longer hot to the touch, plant and water gently. Clean gallon milk jugs with their bottoms removed make a good cloche if the temperature drops suddenly!

6. Continue watering gently and occasionally add dilute fertilizer or compost tea about once per week. The continued watering will leach the fertilizer out.

Advantages to Straw Bale Gardening

• Easier (raised) for folks with limited mobility
• Useful if your garden soil is poor
• Useful if you have little or no soil in which to garden
• Virtually no weeding (Don’t use hay bales!)
• Don’t have to rotate crops, use a fresh bale each year
• At season’s end, provides great compost for rest of garden

Possible Disadvantages to Straw Bale Gardening

• May look a little messy as the bale decomposes
• Bales dry out quickly, so ultimately may use too much water…jury is still out on this one

Turbulence Commission: Shadow Play: Tales of Urbanization of China by Lily & Honglei [Download Second Life for desktop and Layar for mobile devices]

Over the past few decades China has been urbanizing at an astounding pace. In 2013, the People’s Republic unveiled its plan to relocate 260 million people from China’s countryside to one of 21 “mega regions” by 2020 (cbsnews.com). Such a significant shift will undoubtedly transform China’s national character, which has been predominantly agrarian for millennia. Shadow Play weaves three interfaces, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Physical Reality (PR), and combines the past and present — through time-honored imagery, paint, “shadow play,” and new media technologies — to immerse participants in the realities of contemporary China.

Shadow Play: Tales of Urbanization of China is a 2014 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence.org website. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

BIOGRAPHY

Based in New York and Beijing, Lily & Honglei is an artist collective consisting of Xiying Yang, Honglei Li and He Li. Utilizing traditional painting, video, and new media Lily & Honglei creates ‘visual fables’ which intertwines current social issues with cultural heritage. Their artworks have been presented at numerous international and national venues including Museum of Art and Design in New York, Queens Museum of Art in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, He Xiangning Art Museum in China, ICA Boston, The Painting Center of New York, Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, Electronic Visualization & Arts at British Computer Society in London, ISEA–Intel Society of Electronic Arts in Istanbul, New York Artist Residency Foundation Gallery, Shanghai University Gallery, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, SIGGRAPH 2008, SIGGRAPH Asia 2013, Dumbo Art Festival in New York, among many others.

“Like” us on Facebook:
http://facebook.com/nrpa.org
http://facebook.com/turbulence.org

Follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/turbulenceorg

Are you or do you know a Toronto-based artist who is enrolled in or has recently graduated from an MFA program focusing on photography? If yes, the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize has an opportunity to share.

This August, one of the artists on the yet-to-be-announced shortlist for the 2014 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize will be in Toronto to participate in the Prize’s residency program. Each year, all four artists on the shortlist receive a fully funded, self-directed residency designed to deepen or enrich their respective practices.

credit

There will be three to four group meetings, and the artist will meet with each of the students individually two to three times over the course of the two-week period. The students will work between the visits to develop ideas and/or create new work. Each student will receive a $500 honorarium to support production and expenses during the study period.

Applicants must be currently enrolled in an MFA program in Canada or internationally or have graduated from such a program after Jan. 1, 2013. Applicants must be based in Toronto between Aug. 18 and 29, 2014, and be available for regular meetings and studio visits during this time.

Although the artist’s identity won’t be publicly revealed until the Aug. 13 shortlist announcement, students under consideration for the program will be notified of the artist’s identity before their participation is confirmed.

Applications must include an artist statement, CV and portfolio of as many as 25 images and/or 10 minutes of video work with detailed credit information (title, date, medium, dimensions). Applications to the program are due July 9.

To submit an application or for more information, please contact Sean O’Neill, Manager, Aimia | AGO Photography Prize at sean_oneill@ago.net.

The Art Gallery of Ontario shares in the loss of Lynne Cohen, one of Canada’s finest visual artists. Lynne’s remarkable body of work took us to extraordinary, often-foreboding places — places we would be unlikely to encounter in our daily lives, except through her compelling photographs. Her enigmatic, real-world photographs of interior environments, uninhabited by humans, alluded to her sense of wit and irony.

Lynne Cohen, Untitled (Column), 2009. © Lynne Cohen, 2010.

Lynne’s legacy will be remembered by all who admired her vision, dedication to students, loyalty to those who knew her and her incredible strength the past three years. Our deepest condolences to Andrews Lugg, her partner of 50 years, who was closest to Lynne in every way.

— Maia Sutnik, Curator, Special Photography Projects at the AGO

• Day of mourning in Netherlands
• Bodies flown from Kharkiv to Eindhoven
• Black boxes from MH17 arrive in Britain
  
• Eyewitnesses tell the Guardian of likely Buk system in Torez
  
• Previous live blog
  

1.37pm BST

My colleague Peter Walker peterwalker99 has useful background on the flight recorders that will be examined by UK aviation accident experts.

The voice recorder carries two hours of cockpit audio recording. Analysts looking into crashes will examine not just what the pilot and co-pilot say but also any telltale clicks as instruments are engaged, as well as possible sounds of an explosion. On the assumption that MH17 was hit by a missile it seems unlikely the pilots' actions played any role, but everything must be analysed.

The data recorder, which like the voice instrument is encased in a protective shell of metal and insulation, collects an entire flight's worth of information from dozens of sensors, which on modern planes can total several terabytes of data.

1.29pm BST

Agence France-Presse has a bit more on the shooting down of the two fighter jets. The location of the incident remains unclear.

"Two Sukhoi Ukrainian fighter jets have been shot down. The fate of the pilots is not known," spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky said, adding the planes were brought down some 25 kilometres (16 miles) from the crash site of MH17.

But a second military spokesman said the jets had been downed at a different location by rockets fired by insurgents. The two pilots managed to parachute out, he said.

12.41pm BST

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will not approve new investment projects in Russia. This is a statement on the EBRD's website.

A majority of the Board of Directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), including all EU member states and several non-EU shareholders, have given clear guidance to the EBRD management that, for the time being, they will be unable to approve new investment projects in the Russian Federation.

Their guidance follows a declaration by last week's European Council which called on the EU member states to coordinate their positions within the Bank's Board. The EBRD management will be guided by this in its operational approach in Russia. The Board of Directors represents the Bank's shareholders (64 member states, as well as the European Union and the European Investment Bank).

12.37pm BST

The spokesman said the two were downed near Savur Mogila in eastern Ukraine.

12.35pm BST

Reuters is reporting that two Ukrainian fighter jets have been shot down. It is citing a Ukrainian military spokesman.

12.27pm BST

12.07pm BST

Arseny Yatseniuk, the Ukrainian prime minister, said Kiev would impose sanctions on Russian individuals and companies who directly or indirectly support "terrorists" fighting against government troops. Yatseniuk told ministers that he had set up a special committee to work on the punitive measures.

"I instruct the committee to propose for the government's consideration a list of individual and sector sanctions on Russian citizens and legal entities supporting and financing terrorism in Ukraine in 10 days," Reuters reported.

12.02pm BST

France is still bristling at British criticism of its decision to sell two warships to Russia. Kim Willsher @kimwillsher in Paris reports on French ire. The Russians must be chortling at Anglo-French discord.

Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, responded to David Cameron's urging that France scrap the 1.2 deal by saying the UK should put its own house in order.

"The English in particular were very kind, in quotes, to say 'we would never do that', but I told my dear British friends, 'let's talk about the financial sector'. I understand there are quite a few Russian oligarchs in London," Fabius told TF1 television after a meeting of European foreign ministers in Brussels to discuss increased sanctions against Russia in the wake of the MH17 tragedy.

11.52am BST

Jessica Vanderende @jvdende7 from Seven News in Australia tweets a statement from Anthony Maslin and Marite Norris, who lost their three children and grandfather on flight MH17.

Here's the full statement, my thoughts go out to the entire Maslin & Norris family #MH17 pic.twitter.com/pEmKQUyjU2

11.29am BST

My colleague Kate Hodal @katehodal, who is in Kuala Lumpur, has come across a macabre twist to the MH17 and MH370 disasters: A company called Seyefull Investments in Belize has filed to trademark the terms "MH17" and "MH370" so it will get paid every time either term is used in print, radio, TV or online media. She emails:

The Coconuts website reports: The company's application to register "MH17" as one of its trademarks, in fact, was filed on July 17, aka the exact same day Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

The application for "MH370" was made on May 2, after a more "respectful" period of time had passed since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

11.16am BST

Eliot Higgins, founder of the Brown Moses blog, who won praise for his work on weapons used in the Syrian war, has been applying his analytical skills to the downing of MH17. On his new Bellingcat blog, Higgins writes that there is a growing consensus that the plane was hit by shrapnel on the front port side, not the rear of the aircraft as some have claimed. But Higgins believes the Ukrainians have sown confusion through their use of pictures of a Buk missile launcher which they claim was used by separatists.

One theory thats been doing the rounds involves Buk 312, a missile launcher some have connected to the attack. This appears to be a case of confusion, maybe the result of the use of a library image, or just a straight forward attempt to deceive...

Personally I believe theres two things that would be useful here, having satellite map imagery from the day before the attack to confirm the tracks are fresh, and having someone on the ground examine the tracks, ideally measuring the distance between the two sides of the tracks to see if it matches the specifications of the Buk. While I dont feel the posts are conclusive, its something that warrants further investigation.

10.48am BST

Floral tributes at Schiphol airport for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17

10.43am BST

Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) says the black boxes have been delivered by Dutch safety authorities to the AAIB's headquarters at Farnborough in Hampshire. The AAIB team will now go through the information from the cockpit voice recorder which will give them two hours of pilots' conversations as well as studying the contents of the flight data recorder (FDR). The AAIB will be able to send details of their findings to the Dutch within 24 hours.

10.40am BST

Boris Johnson, the London mayor, has told Sky News's Kay Burley that he won't play tennis with a "Putin crony". As the Guardian's Robert Booth reported yesterday, the Conservative party is facing calls to hand back £160,000 given to its general election fighting fund by the wife of a former minister in Vladimir Putin's government after she won an auction at a fundraising event.

Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Vladamir Chernukhin, deputy finance minister under Putin in 2000, won the auction last month to play tennis with David Cameron and Boris Johnson but both Labour and Conservative politicians have questioned if the PM should accept the money while attacking the Kremlin. The French have accused the UK of hypocrisy in telling them not to sell warships to Russia, while leading Tories hobnob with Russian oligarchs.

Boris tells Sky News he won't play tennis game if winning bidder is 'Putin Cronie' #MH17

10.33am BST

The scene at Eindhoven air base, where the bodies are due to arrive this afternoon.

Flowers at Eindhoven air base. Picture by the BBC's @Imeldaflattery The bodies from #MH17 will arrive later today. pic.twitter.com/UMyw3MXnqg

10.29am BST

The two military transport planes, one Dutch and one Australian, left Ukraine at midday local time, heading for Eindhoven air base. They will be met by King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima, prime minister Mark Rutte and hundreds of relatives.

About 60 coffins were expected, although the number was not immediately confirmed. There was confusion as well about how many of the 282 corpses which the rebels said they found were on the train which arrived in Kharkiv, a government-controlled city, on Tuesday.

10.25am BST

Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, says trying to determine the number of bodies retrieved from the site of the crash in eastern Ukraine has been difficult.

10.19am BST

There will be a day of national mourning for the victims of MH17 with flags at half mast as the bodies arrive in the Netherlands. There were 193 Dutch citizens aboard the plane.

Dutch king and queen to lead national day of mourning for victims of #MH17 http://t.co/CrQHXAZ01V

10.10am BST

Jess Brammar from BBC's Newsnight spotted this sign in Amsterdam.

Signs in Schiphol airport this morning pic.twitter.com/vbEki7qqPT

10.06am BST

Larry Elliott, the Guardian's economics editor, says a meltdown scenario of oil prices above $200, energy shortages in western Europe and the return of recession is preying on the minds of policy makers. Although analysts believe that the west and Russia will draw back because of the high risks of increased confrontation, he points out that the optimism of markets is not always to be trusted.

It was only in the last week of July 1914 once Austria-Hungary had delivered its ultimatum to Serbia that bourses woke up to the fact that the assassination in Sarajevo had the potential to lead to a war involving all the great European powers. Up until then, the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was seen as merely a local affair and nothing to worry about.

9.41am BST

This is continuing live coverage of the downing of MH17 in eastern Ukraine. The main points so far: The black box flight recorders from the Malaysian airliner have arrived in Britain. "Today ... the black boxes from the airliner Boeing 777 arrived in Britain under the supervision of ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization)," the commission said on its Facebook page. Meanwhile, Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister said that it was still unclear how many bodies from MH17 had arrived in Kharkiv and how many may have been left behind at the crash site.

"Based on early inspection of the trains in Kharkiv, we just don't know how many bodies we have," Abbott told reporters. Continue reading...

New Forest park scheme encourages visitors to store electronic devices in a safe and enjoy nature without staring at screens

The trilling of mobile phones in the forest may be a thing of the past with the introduction of what is being termed a tech creche in a national park to encourage visitors to leave their gadgets behind and interact with nature instead.

The New Forest national park, which stretches across Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset and is visited by 15 milllon people a year, has fitted the free safe to store electronic devices. People will also be encouraged to leave their car keys in the safe and arrive at the park on foot, by cycle or on public transport instead. calls-smartphones-left-out-of-woods-new-forest">Continue reading...

The two-year-old son of singer Adele has been awarded a five-figure sum from a photo agency in settlement of a privacy case brought by his parents over paparazzi photos of his milestone moments.

Lawyers for Adele, who launched the proceedings against Corbis Images UK with her partner Simon Konecki, said she was emphatic that Angelo Adkins was not and must never be public property. Continue reading...

Edgar Wright's next film will be Baby Driver, a project described as "a wild spin on the action and crime genre" by Empire magazine.

deadline.com/2014/07/comic-con-off-ant-man-hill-edgar-wright-sets-sights-on-baby-driver/">Deadline reports that the British director will resurrect the project after his high-profile departure from Marvel's comic book movie Ant-Man. Baby Driver will be put together with Working Title, the British production company with which Wright collaborated on his "Three Cornettos" comedy trilogy: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End. Continue reading...

There are the role models we want, and the role models we get lumbered with. If you'd asked me as a teenager whether I wanted to be Billy Fisher from the 1963 film Billy Liar, I'd have said no. But that didn't mean this smartarse fantasist didn't act as an enabling soulmate who aided and abetted my bedroom-ridden years of angst and procrastination, years that I can't say have ever truly come to an end.

Stradhoughton, a fictional Yorkshire town, the start of the 60s. Billy (Tom Courtenay) is lingering in bed, wishing away his humdrum surroundings and his mother's repeated calls to the breakfast table by fantasising that he is the beloved revolutionary leader of a land called Ambrosia. He interrupts his own reverie to muse that this is a day of important decisions: he will start writing his novel and he will start getting up in the mornings. He looks at his watch and quickly postpones the second of this resolutions. The day takes on a familiar flavour. Continue reading...

Of all the Greek islands, Crete is one of the most distinctive and beautiful. Our guide lists great places to stay (from campsites to boutique hotels), the best tavernas and the islands must sees

Crete is exceptional in many ways. It is the largest Greek island, has the most diverse mix of landscapes, and stands far to the south of most of the rest of the country. Bits of it are reminiscent of other parts of Greece, but on the whole it stands alone and has its own unmistakeable culture and atmosphere.

The north coast of the island is the most populated area, and most well known to tourists. Heraklion (or Iraklion) is the islands capital and main entry point. A working city, it can be off-putting at first, but it has a world-class museum. Rethymnon and Hania to the west are much more pleasant and retain a distinct Venetian influence. To the east Agios Nikolaos, or Ag Nik to Brits, is one of the islands major resort, but still retains some character. Continue reading...

Mazher Mahmood is a clever, canny and creative reporter who generates his own stories. It's important to place that on record because, before we delve into his use of the darker journalistic arts, there should not be any illusion about his reporting skills.

He is a genuine one-off, a self-starter who, when properly directed and chasing a story of genuine public interest, has much to be proud of. Down the years he has been responsible for many people going to jail for breaking the law perhaps not quite as many as he has boasted, but a lot all the same. His greatest triumph, the exposure of Pakistani cricketers in 2011 for so-called spot-fixing during matches, rightfully won him awards. Three players were jailed and banned from cricket. A bookmaker was also jailed. Continue reading...

"Water is the giver of life," says the great-great-grandson of the engineer who revolutionised London's sewerage system. "That's why people always ask if there's water on Mars to support life. But it is also bringer of death, as we saw in the 19th century."

Quite so. Before Sir Peter Bazalgette's great-great-grandfather Joseph built 1,300 miles of sewers and river embankments in London in the 1860s, raw sewage flowed into the tidal section of the Thames and got stalled in a hellishly insanitary circulation system. The stench of what politician Benjamin Disraeli in the mid-19th century called the "Stygian pool" was bad enough referencing the River Styx of Greek mythology, which formed the boundary between Earth and the underworld but, worse, Londoners bathed in and drank this water. "Before the great embankments were built, the Thames flowed more gently so the shit went up and down and people were drawing their own effluent," says Bazalgette. If you're eating your breakfast, apologies for that last sentence. Continue reading...

The landmark ruling against Google Spain presents the opportunity for a proper debate. Here are five strategies for reframing the ethics of our online lives

For more than two months now, the inaptly-named right to be forgotten has remained buoyant in the news cycle. The reasons are as complex as the distortions, but distinctly missing from the discourse is critical engagement with the foundations and implications of the European data protection regime that gave flight to the discussion.

Also missing is an exploration of the proposed course of action by Google and other players engaged in implementation, and an assessment of how those responses could be strengthened and improved.
Continue reading...

Raoul Dufy Exhibition
at Galerie Tamenaga (Ginza, Marunouchi area)
(2014-06-13 - 2014-07-26)

As a member of the fauvist movement centering around the likes of Matisse and Derain, Dufy came to develop his own unique style filled with a particular sense of rhythm. This exhibition takes the opportunity to place a spotlight upon Dufy’s watercolor works which with their soft light and buoyant color reveal another side to this French master. [Image: Raoul Dufy “Trouville” (1933) oil paint 50×73cm]

Summer Show
at Maki Fine Arts (Chiyoda area)
(2014-07-05 - 2014-07-27)

Maki Fine Arts presents a group show of new and recent work from the 4 artists Shu Ikeda, Atsushi Tawa, Wataru Yamakami and Kazuhito Tanaka. Well-known for his photographic cut outs Ikeda features a collection of work previously un-exhibited in Japan, Tawa showcases a new body of abstract prints, Tanaka presents a range of photography which shifts between the line of abstract and figurative, while 2013 winner of the Tokyo Midtown Audience Award Yamakami unveils recent painting work.

Mission [Space X Art] －Beyond Cosmologies
at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (Kiyosumi, Ryogoku area)
(2014-06-07 - 2014-08-31)

In the second decade of the twenty-first century both outer space, into which research and development progresses, and artists’ expressions of inner space are rapidly expanding/converging to constitute a parallel world. Coinciding with the 2014 space boom, this exhibition examines how outer space has been drawn infinitely closer to our daily lives, along with the inner space created by artists as a multiverse, surpassing individual cosmologies. Japan joined the exploration space after the war, and the since this time artists have also come to interpret our steps into the universe through their own particular expressions. This exhibition will present art installations; items connected with space exploration, such as parts of satellites and rockets (fairings); documents from the world of entertainment, such as literature, manga and anime; interactive exhibits; discussions and other events to explore the new possibilities that ‘reflect the expanding/converging world’. It will offer the opportunity to experience and consider ‘space’, not only as some different world or Utopia, but also as something that is ‘ordinary’ in a true sense. [Related Event] Shintaro Tanikawa Book Reading “The Next Universe” Date: June 29(Sun) 14:00-15:30 Venue: B2F Auditorium

In Search of Modigliani— From the Avant-Garde to Classicalism
at Pola Museum of Art (Yokohama, Kanagawa area)
(2014-04-12 - 2014-09-15)

Born in Livorno, Italy, the painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) lived a short but storied life, producing art in a unique style that continues to strike viewers with its vividness. While Modigliani has long been considered a representative of the School of Paris, in the past century there has been a growing movement to reexamine his work on its own merits. With a similar awareness, the primary aim of this exhibition is to reconsider the meaning of the work left by an artist often said to be in a class by himself, while also shedding light on Modigliani’s era and artistic environment. Tracing the first fifteen years or so of the 20th century, a time when artistic and aesthetic values underwent dizzying changes, it explores to what extent Modigliani’s art was a subject of its times and to what extent it focuses on unchanging elements. Art from early in Modigliani’s career through his stay in southern France is presented along with works contemporaries who influenced or interacted with Modigliani, revealing his development as an artist. [Image: Amedeo Modigliani “Reclining Nude With Loose Hair” (1917)] [Related Event] 130 Years of Modigliani - A 3 Day Festival of Celebrations Dates: July 25-27 An opportunity to join a host of workshops, concerts, gallery talks hand games in the discovery of Modigliani. Also including a lecture from Italian art expert Kikuro Miyashita.

Depicting the Indelible Japanese Landscape: Hiroshige’s “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” and Contemporary Artists
at Bernard Buffet Museum (Greater Tokyo area)
(2014-07-19 - 2014-09-28)

The Musée Bernard Buffet is holding an exhibition of the Hoeido edition of “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” by the ukiyo-e master Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858) and works by contemporary artists who have been inspired by him. The Hoeido edition of “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido,” regarded as the artist’s ultimate masterpiece, presents scenes along the highway as they change over the seasons and over time with abundant lyricism. The prints in this series are also known for the rich variety with which Utagawa depicts the human figure in the landscapes at each location. The world these prints creates, abounding in its rich sense of humanity, continues to capture the hearts of artists today. Leiko Ikemura (1951- ) is an artist who lives and works in Europe, where she continues her fundamental questioning of human existence. After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, she began engaging in a dialogue with Hiroshige’s “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido,” which could be said to depict the essential, primordial landscapes of Japan. That experience has led to her creating poems and a new series of drawings. Samurai warriors coexist with contemporary individuals in the Yamato-e style miniatures of Akira Yamaguchi (1969- ). In them, Yamaguchi engages in a dialogue with styles from the past while humorously applying the spirit of modern criticism. Yamaguchi creates new landscapes based on places that have caught his eye in the Mishima area, such as the Mishima Taisha and other shrines, expressed through his own interpretations of them. “Hiroshige is my hero!” says Kazuyuki Takezaki (1976- ). Staying in the Mishima area, he has become enthralled with the landscapes along the Genpe and Kakita rivers and has created paintings and built installations inspired by phenomena he has observed there. This exhibition is an opportunity to rediscover the fascination of Utagawa’s “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido,” to experience the work of several contemporary artists, and to contemplate the indelible, essential landscapes within each of us. [Related Event] Workshop “Let’s Make a Landscape with Takezaki-san!” Date: Jul. 21 (Mon, public holiday) 13:00–15:30 Participants: 18 (Young children through Junior High Students) Admission: ¥1000 Please see the venue’s website for reservations, details, and information on more related events.

Hideo Ogiwara “Playing with Lines”
at Kichijoji Art Museum (Musashino, Tama area)
(2014-07-03 - 2014-11-03)

Exhibiting the print works of Hideo Ogiwara with an opportunity to compare the various techniques employed in his practice with such impressive works as “Fairytale Land” and “Aesop’s Fables”.

“Art as a Haven of Happiness”
at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (Ueno, Yanaka area)
(2014-07-26 - 2014-10-08)

At the art studios “Atelier Element Present” (Mie and Tokyo) and “Shobu Gakuen” (Kagoshima), people born with Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities are daily producing artworks that evince rich sensibilities and intellectual insight. Their world of jewel-like colors, full of bright, festive energy, easily calls the words “happiness” and “harmony” to mind. Their creative approach—light in spirit and as natural as breathing—seems to epitomize true freedom in art. The profound beauty of form they achieve forces us to reconsider our definition of the word, “disabled.” As a special feature, this exhibition will allow visitors to observe the artists’ production process, normally something only the studio staff is witness to. The exhibition venue will thus become a place to consider anew “the meaning and possibilities of art” in human life. (Some 100 artworks will be presented.) [Related Events] Lecture “What has been made, What can be made” Date: July 26(Sat) 14:00-16:00 Speaker: Shin Fukumori (Shobu Gakuen) “Art as a Haven of Happiness” Date: September 15(Mon/Public Holiday) 14:00-17:00 Part 1: Speaker - Genichiro Takahashi(writer) 14:00-15:00 Part 2: Speaker - Hiroatsu Sakuma (Atelier Element Present) Moderator: Atsuyuki Nakahara (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)

2014 Tokyo Art Directors Club Exhibition
at Ginza Graphic Gallery (Ginza, Marunouchi area)
(2014-07-04 - 2014-07-28)

With over 8500 submissions the annual open call exhibition of advertising and graphic design, including newspaper and magazine adverts, packaging, logo designs, displays and TV commercials, the group of 80 jurists of the Artistic Directors Club have carefully selected their choice of the best innovations which have appeared between May 2013-April 2014 and here present them across two venues, Ginza Graphic Gallery and G8 Gallery.

WINNER

No Walls Between Us, Pablo Munoz, Vancouver (British Colombia)

FINALIST

Round dance on Parliament Hill, Fabric, Acrylic, Sharpie, 2013, Roxanne Martin, Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario)

FINALIST

Sans titre, Matthilde Cing-Mars, Trois-Rivières (Québec)

FINALIST

United, Leo Samilo, Surrey (British Colombia)

FINALIST

Untold truth, Bogdan Salii, Toronto (Ontario)

FINALIST

Complexity, Brianne Walker, Windsor (Ontario)

The Michaëlle Jean Foundation, the AGO and WorldPride Toronto 2014 are delighted to announce the winner of the 4th Wall Youth Solidarity Project online vote.

Selected as winner by more than a thousand Canadians of all ages from across the country, Vancouver-based artist and rights activist Pablo Muñoz receives $1,000 and will work with a seasoned public art practitioner to see his art mounted on the western wall of the AGO.

His work, No Walls Between Us, highlights the unique experiences of migrant and racialized LGBT youth. It was one of six pieces of art chosen by a jury to represent the theme of “Solidarity with Canada’s Two-Spirited and LGBTTIQQ Communities,” in an unprecedented exhibition celebrating WorldPride Toronto 2014.

On view at the AGO between June 22 and Nov. 15, 2014, the Youth Solidarity Exhibition will inspire Canadians to work together to promote safe, inclusive and healthy communities for Two-Spirited and LGBTTIQQ youth throughout the country. The other young artists featured in the exhibition are:

• Mathilde Cinq-Mars, a multidisciplinary visual and animation artist from Trois-Rivière, Que. who has a BA from the University of Strasbourg;
• Roxanne Martin, a digital artist from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., and the great-niece of Cecil Youngfox, a trailblazing Anishinaabe painter and gay rights activist;
• Bogdan Salii, a passionate visual artist from Toronto, Ont., who recently immigrated to Canada from Ukraine to pursue his dream of transforming his love for art into a lucrative business;
• Leo Samilo, a nascent artist and recent high school graduate from Surrey, B.C’s Filipino community; and
• Brianne Walker, a 17-year-old human rights activist from Windsor, Ont., and aspiring visual artist and filmmaker.

This project is actively supported by more than 55 human rights, faith-based, arts, newcomer, Aboriginal and health organizations across Canada. For a full list of project collaborators, click here.

About Pablo Muño
Colombian-born Pablo Muñoz arrived to Canada as a refugee in 2000. Today, he is an accomplished citizen whose artistic work extends from painting, design, performance art and writing, and his community work centers around immigrant and refugee youth issues, intersections of queer and racialized identities, and solidarity with indigenous communities. Over the past year, Pablo worked on the Make it Count campaign — a project that created community dialogues across the province addressing challenges faced by migrant youth. He is currently working as a story editor on a documentary telling the story of queer refugees coming into Canada. He also is a member of the Vancouver Foundation’s Education Granting Committee and the City of Vancouver’s Youth Advisory Committee.

The Youth Solidarity Project is funded in part by StreetARToronto, a program of the City of Toronto, as well as the K.M. Hunter Foundation.

About the 4th Wall program
In theatre, the “fourth wall” is an imaginary screen that creates a virtual separation between actor and spectator. There are many ways to cross the fourth wall and to make the invisible visible. The Michaëlle Jean Foundation chose to do so through the 4th Wall: Make the Invisible Visible program, in collaboration with several prestigious Canadian museums and art galleries. The goal is to invite young creators to break down the invisible walls that create solitudes between individuals and communities across Canada, by opening the doors of our major cultural institutions to emerging creators from marginalized backgrounds. The Foundation offers museum and art gallery space and bursaries to youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, often cut off from museums, so that they can produce original art that conveys their experiences, ideas and challenges. On display for the public to see, their work provokes debate and builds solutions. The first 4th Wall exhibition was launched on Feb. 5, 2014, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, to mark Black History Month in collaboration with FRO Foundation.

Click to play:

Download 81.4 MB MP3

Recorded: March 26, 2014, at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Duration: 01:29:05

In this podcast, hear AGO artist-in-residence Jim Munroe in conversation with artists Mark Connery, a Toronto-based comic and zine artist, and Jonathan Mak, a Toronto-based game developer, about their work, indie culture and how playfulness factors into their practices.

Jonathan Mak is a Toronto-based game developer working under the title Queasy Games. He recently collaborated with I am Robot and Proud (aka Shaw-Han Liem), a Toronto-based electronic music artist, on Sound Shapes for PS Vita and PlayStation®3. Sound Shapes features music by Beck, Deadmau5 and Jim Guthrie and graphics by Capy, Superbrothers, Pixeljam and Pyramid Attack.

Mark Connery is a Toronto-based producer of comics and zines. He is most known for the mini-comic adventures of Rudy. In addition to his own publications, his work has appeared in many group exhibitions and has been published in Exclaim!, Kiss Machine and in many small-press lit zines in Toronto and Vancouver.

This year the AGO celebrates moms with special programming all over the Gallery. Here’s what’s on:

Maternité au lit jaune, or Madame Fontaine et le petit Noël, 1896. Denis, Maurice. Oil and graphite on canvas. 44.6 x 50.9 cm. Framed: 64.8 x 70 cm. Gift of Mrs. Judy Simmonds, 2008. © 2014 Art Gallery of Ontario.

Mother’s Day brunch
Edit, May 9, 4 p.m. SOLD OUT
On Sunday, May 11, FRANK restaurant celebrates moms with a special Mother’s Day brunch buffet. The menu features an enormous selection of offerings including traditional breakfast fare, a seafood station, a carving station featuring roasted AAA tenderloin, a la carte [check accents] menus, kid-friendly options and more. Brunch will be served from 11 a.m to 3:30 p.m. at a cost of $75 per adult. Children ages 6-10 can dine for $20 and children under 5 eat for $12. Reservations are encouraged as space is limited. Please call 416-979-6688 or visit FRANK online for more information.

Mother’s Day tea at The Grange (members only)
Enjoy Mother’s Day with a deliciously modern version of a Victorian tea on May 11 (seatings at 11:30 a.m. and 1:15 and 3:15 p.m.). Members are invited to enjoy a wide variety of tea along with delicious scones, croissants, sandwiches, assorted desserts and a few surprises. Book tickets for this exclusive Mother’s Day event and spend the rest of the day exploring the Collection at the Gallery.

Mother’s Day card-making at AGO Family Sundays
Part of our Family Sunday programming on Sunday, May 4, includes card-making! Get ready to cut, paste and draw something special for Mom.

Mother’s Day gift ideas

Our shopAGO team has selected a range of items perfect for Mom. See some of them below and visit the shop’s special Mother’s Day display for more options.

Design Ideas

Soapstones – 9

IMM Living

Duck Cake Plate Holder - 54

IMM Living

Swallow Wings Ring Holder - 19

Marina Babic

Small Vine Silver Earrings - 175 Small Vine Silver/Gold Earrings - 195

Schleeh Design

Red Tail Wood Vase - 1,600

Atelier Trema

Assorted Ceramic Pears - 26

IMM Living

Duck Body Container - 27

Uta Ottmar

Pebble Earrings - 50

Misa Hiramatsu + Mayumi Tanabe “Polymorphic”
at SCAI The Bathhouse (Ueno, Yanaka area)
(2014-07-11 - 2014-08-02)

Misa Hiramatsu creates dramatic installations which evoke the specter of death through the transformation of everyday waste, pointing to the grotesque side of existence. Mayumi Tanabe meanwhile calls upon that sense of dizziness experienced when the weight of our tired body urges itself upon us, directing the formation of sculptural space through the melting forms of wax and vaseline. Here both artists call upon our physical senses in the processes of melting and rotting, as a metamorphosis assailed by the unknowable agent of time.

Mission [Space X Art] －Beyond Cosmologies
at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (Kiyosumi, Ryogoku area)
(2014-06-07 - 2014-08-31)

In the second decade of the twenty-first century both outer space, into which research and development progresses, and artists’ expressions of inner space are rapidly expanding/converging to constitute a parallel world. Coinciding with the 2014 space boom, this exhibition examines how outer space has been drawn infinitely closer to our daily lives, along with the inner space created by artists as a multiverse, surpassing individual cosmologies. Japan joined the exploration space after the war, and the since this time artists have also come to interpret our steps into the universe through their own particular expressions. This exhibition will present art installations; items connected with space exploration, such as parts of satellites and rockets (fairings); documents from the world of entertainment, such as literature, manga and anime; interactive exhibits; discussions and other events to explore the new possibilities that ‘reflect the expanding/converging world’. It will offer the opportunity to experience and consider ‘space’, not only as some different world or Utopia, but also as something that is ‘ordinary’ in a true sense. [Related Event] Shintaro Tanikawa Book Reading “The Next Universe” Date: June 29(Sun) 14:00-15:30 Venue: B2F Auditorium

Big Sky Friendship
at Towada Art Center (Greater Tokyo area)
(2014-04-19 - 2014-09-23)

This exhibition brings together artworks addressing the way that loose forms of communication can develop between strangers as a result of unlikely catalysts. In the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake - “3.11.” disaster we were met with the refreshing and encouraging sight of people joining hands and helping each other, above and beyond the frameworks and rules provided by local governments or society. In those unprecedented circumstances it required courage for people to rely not on social systems or ideas of reciprocity, and instead reach out to strangers of their own accord. And yet the world that opens up when such courage is demonstrated, although it might be fleeting can be seen as being full of love. Sociologists such as Itoko Kitahara and Rebecca Solnit have called such impromptu communities a type of utopia. Nevertheless, as reconstruction projects proceed and things return to normal, it at least appears that they gradually disappear. In this exhibition we explore through artworks and other post-disaster activities exactly what those spaces, full of creativity and love, were. In the teaching of “form is emptiness,” which appears in the Buddhist Heart Sutra, the “emptiness” is the whole world and the “form” refers to everything in it. This is an attempt to address once again the strength of the people who attempt to overcome difficult days, amidst a world that is forever changing.

Metal Art Museum Hikarinotani Permanent Exhibition
at Metal Art Museum Hikarinotani (Greater Tokyo area)

Our permanent exhibition, held on the first floor, features the work of metal-cast artists Hotsuma Katori and Shinobu Tsuda. Both being born in the same period, in the Hokuso area of Chiba Prefecture, the two were opposites in artistic viewpoints; Katori emphasized tradition while Tsuda called for revolution. Works on display will be rotated every three months.

The 2014 World Cup in Brazil marks the first time that goal-line technology has been used for FIFA’s international tournament and with that in mind National Football Museum commissioned me to give an overview of where these systems are coming from, and where they might be going. This essay was originally published at The Commentary Project.

When Google unveiled its long-awaited wearable computer, Glass, in June of 2012, it did so through what might be called a lifestyle montage, a series of extreme sports events performed by “some of the world’s top athletes”. The Glass-wearers first skydived out of an aeroplane, then took to mountain bikes to manoeuvre through the conference centre onto the event stage. Throughout, what was streamed to viewers in the auditorium and watching online was not footage of the athletes undertaking the events, but what the athletes themselves were seeing, their point of view. What is spectacular about Glass, despite its real power as a connected, networked object, and what almost all discussion of it concentrates on, is its camera, the ability to see from another’s viewpoint, and everything this reveals.

While miniature high-definition cameras such as the GoPro Hero – particularly popular with the extreme sports community, bracketed to helmets, handlebars and snowboards – have made POV shots possible for a while, there’s something about Glass’ head-mounted position which appeals, as if it were not a camera, but the eye itself. Basketball teams have been early adopters of Glass. The Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers and Orlando Magic have all used Glass to enhance the “fan experience” by sharing headsets between announcers, resting players, support staff and coaches, and relaying the feed to giant screens above the action – but the NBA has yet to permit the use of Glass on court during play itself.

Another function of these cameras, aside from both the focus on, and the freedom from, a human-centred viewpoint, is that they transform our idea not only of vision, but also of memory. Many wearable cameras are marketed as such, like ‘Memoto’ (now rebranded as ‘Narrative’) and ‘Autographer’, small wearable digital cameras clipped to the chest or hung round the neck which photograph the owner’s viewpoint almost continually, building a continuous stream of images and data called a ‘lifelog’. The promise of such devices is total recall (“we can remember it for you wholesale”) – a promise, of course, which is always illusory.

A more rugged version of Glass, Broadcast Sports Inc’s head-mounted Ref Cam, has been deployed by Major League Soccer in the US. While it looks like a massive pain to wear, its wide-angle lens, bobbing with the referee’s pace, seems to open up a correspondingly wide field of view from the centre of the field, which feels liberating after the surveillance-like gaze of stand-mounted cameras. This is in stark contrast to Sky Sports’ version in the UK, whose chest-mounted ref cam was derided by former England hooker Brian Moore, writing in the Telegraph that “apart from nausea nothing was added to the viewing experience and the only previously unseen footage was that of the sky or the top of the scrum.” Moore’s real point, however, was that there was a fundamental flaw in the idea that such cameras could capture more of the “truth” of the game unfolding in front of them: “What is seen on camera is not a true rendering of what is actually perceived in a stressful moment.” Moore even cited a 2010 science paper on the use of wearable cameras by the Hillsboro, Oregon, Police Department, which found that even when every moment of a police investigation was recorded digitally, this evidence still had the potential to mislead officers, the judiciary and juries because of “the lack of understanding of important factors like the field of view, focus of attention and interpretation” – which sounds, too, like the advice of a particularly astute sports coach.

Indeed, much debate which happens in sports commentary around technologies of vision and adjudication would not sound out of place in academic journals of both the sciences and the humanities. Sporting fields have become the testing grounds for these technologies, providing as they do enclosed, hermetic fields of view, and strictly managed rules of movement and engagement – the kind of laboratory only dreamt of by scientists developing surveillance and monitoring platforms for military and urban situations, their most common applications.

When the English and Australian cricket teams faced each other in the Ashes series of the Summer of 2013, much of the commentary-box discussion focussed on the use of the new Umpire Decision Review System (DRS), a suite of technologies which assist – or rather, overrule – the umpire adjudicating some of sports greatest unknowables, the LBW, and the snick. Of course, these technologies, intended to increase accuracy, only inflamed controversy as their own accuracy was questioned as much as the human umpires. LBW is, after all, an epistemological problem – the question of whether a ball which strikes the batsman would have struck the wicket were the batsman not there is a question for Plato, not for machines. Nevertheless, cameras and sensors descended from military targetting systems are trained on the wicket in order to determine the best possible answer, and the algorithms which make up this situation determine the outcome of games – much to the frustration of many players and spectators. As Test Match Special commentator Jonathan Agnew, echoing Moore, noted: “The problem with the introduction of technology is the expectation of 100% accuracy” – a simple observation, but one which cuts to the heart of applying such supposedly rigorous approaches to sport, a fundamentally human endeavour which thrives on close calls, points of view, and, ultimately, chance.

Digital cameras are always more than cameras: they do not just make images, they ‘see’ and process them. Every connected digital-imaging system is also a computer, observing and making decisions about what it sees. This distinction is particularly well illustrated by “freeD” technology, which stands for Free Dimensional Video, a proprietary imaging system which debuted at Yankee Stadium in the 2013 Baseball season. Video feeds from multiple 12-megapixel cameras around the ground are combined within a dedicated server to produce a three-dimensional “scene”, through which the director can manoeuvre a virtual camera to produce unlimited, even “impossible” points of view. The entirety of the game world is simultaneously captured and re-viewed as a simulation. As with Eadweard Muybridge’s development of high-speed photography, which first allowed us to perceive a galloping racehorse with all four feet off the ground, the augmentation of the eye with technological systems allows us to see sport in new ways.

This total release of the visible “point of view” from any “human” viewpoint corresponds to the perceived freeing of decision-making from human error. This summer, the Football World Cup will for the first time utilise goal-line technology to determine whether the ball has crossed the line. Several different systems competed for selection, including the version of Hawk Eye used in Premier League, but the one which was chosen is a German surveillance system called GoalControl 4D. A total of fourteen cameras mounted on the stadium roof capture the three-dimensional position of the ball to within a few millimetres, enabling not only accurate decisions about goal-line crossings to be immediately relayed to referees via wrist-mounted “smart watches”, but also stored, replayed, and endlessly reanalysed. As in Cricket, the deployment of such decision systems has been much debated and often opposed, most volubly by FIFA president Sepp Blatter who has stated that “Other sports regularly change the laws of the game to react to the new technology. … We don’t do it and this makes the fascination and the popularity of football”. In this too we hear the deeply felt but ultimately fruitless appeal to the idea of sport as a fundamentally human endeavour, not at risk from, but essentially composed of, human frailty and fallibility.

Fruitless, of course, because we apparently find ourselves incapable of resisting the technological promise of an ever greater, ever more incremental, approach to some impossible “truth”, a Zeno’s arrow fired by a linesman towards the centre of the field. In sport, this truth-of-outcome is inextricably linked to the truth-of-performance, wherein one competitor, one side, ‘deserves’ to win because they are better prepared, better trained, better deployed, better equipped with what, in military circles, is referred to as “battlefield awareness”, leading to “full spectrum dominance of the battlespace”. As such, the same technologies of surveillance and appraisal are applied not just to decision-making during play, but also to data-gathering for post-game analysis by commentators and coaches alike.

From the beginning of the 2011-12 season, the NBA started installing STATS LLC SportVU cameras in basketball arenas, a technology expected to be mandated by the end of 2014 (again, like the application of surveillance systems in civilian environments, what begin as experiments in technology are ultimately and almost always codified in law). The SportVU system consists, like GoalControl, of a network of cameras around the arena connected to a data-processing system which tracks not only the ball in play, but individually identifiable players as well. The system’s sophisticated algorithms are capable of determining not only positioning, but through situational analysis, the events produced by and at these locations, such as dribbles, passes, touches and shots. The data is used to produce official NBA stats for every game, but also – for teams which pay a subscription of around $100,000 per year – to analyse and determine optimal strategy for the players themselves.

In March 2013, the Grantland blog revealed that the Toronto Raptors were using the data to – among many other things – “build computerized “ghost defenders” that reacted in optimal ways to every offensive action. The team could then overlay camera recordings of actual game play to see how closely Toronto’s real players mirrored the actions of their ghosts.” Once again, the real-world action on the court is filtered and replayed through simulations in order to re-direct the action back in meatspace. This is what is really driving the adoption of seeing systems in sport: truth-of-outcome not only produced by truth-of-performance, but, through technological feedback, fine tuning that performance as well.

To see where such systems might go in the future, we need only look to their current limitations – and the parallels of and responses to those limitations in other, surveillance-saturated spheres. Cairos Systems was another German-based bidder for the World Cup goal-line job, using a system called GLT which embedded magnetic sensors into the frame of the goal, and into the ball itself (of course, Cairos also has a system, called VIS.TRACK, which tracks player performance data through a network of cameras). On their website, Cairos writes – unusually explicitly for a technology company, that “In football, there are many decisions and scenes that may be discussed controversially. In the end the truth often lies in the eye of the beholder. Penalty or not? Red card or a dive? Active or passive offside?” It goes on to state that whether or not the goal line is crossed is one decision which “is clearly defined by the rules and does not leave space for interpretation. The question whether or not a goal has been scored can be decided without any doubts due to the rules.” As such, this particular decision is particularly amenable to technological intervention.

The counter-examples given here – penalties, red cards, offside – are instructive, because they fit far better what Brian Moore called the “focus of attention and interpretation”, the contentious, context-is-everything moments of sporting contact. Once again, we are in the domain not of observation, but of inference. The claim is now being made, however, that many automated, intelligent surveillance systems cannot only determine what happened, they can infer intent; they not only look back, but forward.

A study by the universities of Bradford and Aberystwyth in conjunction with the UK Border Agency in 2011 used video cameras and high-definition thermal imagery – essentially the same technology used to detect the “hot spot” in cricket – alongside yet more algorithms to determine whether study participants were lying. Telling signals such as eye movement, dilated pupils and nose wrinkling are visible to the human/video eye, but thermal imagery also reveals subconscious swelling of the blood vessels around the eye, a sign of distress or fear which signals that untruths may be in play. The UKBA stressed, as they prepared to install such systems at UK airports in the summer of 2012, that the technology is only useful when paired with an experienced human judge – and by that logic, why should it not be deployed alongside positioning cameras in the stands of the World Cup, to assist referees in determining which of two participants in a contested foul is telling the truth?

Why, after all, should we wait for fouls and other offences, such as offside, to be committed? It should be just as easy to award penalties and free kicks on the basis of players’ intent, and would be much safer and fairer for all involved. Recently, the US Department of Homeland Security’s “Project Hostile Intent”, for example, secured funding for a host of technologies claiming to predict crime based on “suspicious” behaviour. One of them, another camera-server assemblage produced by BRS Labs, uses “a range of in-built parameters of what is ‘normal’, [and] can track up to 150 people at a time to build up a “memory” of suspicious behaviour to begin determining what is inappropriate.” They are currently being installed in more than 300 locations in San Francisco, with strong expressions of interest from other global cities – although, as yet, none from FIFA. But if such systems can be trusted to protect our lives and livelihoods from the threat of terrorist attack, then surely they can be trusted to prevent another Hand of God?

Blatter, Moore, and Agnew, are all, surprisingly or not, for better or worse, at the forefront of a debate which extends far beyond the playing field. When we see sport through the eyes of the machines, we fundamentally change the nature of sport – and reveal, too, the extent to which the rest of society is reformed by our drive to visualise and reframe it with these technologies. As in so many ways, sport itself becomes the lens through which we understand ourselves.

Today is International Migrants Day. Last week, I wrote about the failed deportation of Isa Muaza. Yesterday, entreglasgow.org/?page_id=914">Unity Centre Glasgow announced that another appeal by Muaza’s legal team had failed, and he was rescheduled for deportation, alongside a large number of others, on Tuesday night.

I heard at about 7pm that several detainees had been loaded onto vans at Harmondsworth Detention Centre and were on the move. I didn’t know where they were headed, but I knew that many previous flights had left from the private aviation area at Stansted Airport, a largely un-signposted collection of car parks and hangars on the western side of the airport. I arrived there at 8, just in time to see the first of several coaches and security vans, together with a police escort, arrive at the Inflite Jet Centre, a private customs and handling facility mostly used by private jets.

The coaches, five in all and probably from several different detention centres, arrived between 8 and 9, and were accompanied by silver vans bearing the logo of security company Tascor, formerly Reliance, who took over the role of deportation escorts from G4S in 2011 following the death of Jimmy Mubenga. Tascor has a page on its website called Our Values, where it boasts: “We steer clear of politics”. Most of the coaches were from WH Tours in Crawley, although one bore the bright yellow sun and jaunty typography of Just Go!

It is profoundly uncomfortable watching anonymous people of colour being loaded on and off vans and planes in the middle of the night under tight security. When you know a little of the background of the detainees, when you read their claims of torture and violence, their long battles to secure asylum, the institutional racism and homophobia, it’s terrible. But even without knowing these things, the manner in which it is done should tell you everything you need to know. The British Human Rights lawyer Gareth Peirce writes in Dispatches from the Dark Side, on UK complicity in torture, that “what is in fact the law precisely mirrors instinctive moral revulsion” but that “in this country, the government hardly needs such acceptance, since here the additional and crucial factor is that the public is unlikely to be given sufficient information to trigger revulsion.” Hence the night, the private terminals, charter flights, the hired coaches. All of this is deliberate: it is a policy of not being seen.

The detainees were kept on the coaches for some time, and there appeared to be some confusion about when they were going to depart. It’s standard practice in this situation to bring extra “reserve” deportees to the airport without warning, a practice condemned as inhumane by some MPs and the Inspector of Prisons. Before deportation, each detainee is issued with a plane ticket which gives the flight time – 22:20hrs in this case – and a flight number. As the flights are chartered, the flight number – here PVT091 – is internal, so it’s impossible to find out more details about it, except by going to the airport. The Home Office has been running deportation charter flights for some time, under as much secrecy as they can get away with, and refuses to disclose the companies involved in case it damages their commercial relationships. The ongoing deportation of Nigerians on charter flights is called “Operation Majestic”, but there are regular flights to many other countries, including “popular destinations” such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Corporate Watch published a comprehensive report on what they call collective expulsion last month.

On the tarmac by the jet centre sat a Titan Airways 767. Titan Airways is based at Stansted, and describes itself as “the UK’s most prestigious charter airline.” Its fleet ranges from small business aircraft to widebodied airliners:

Since it’s foundation in 1988, Titan Airways has grown into the UK’s most prestigious charter airline, specialising in bespoke air charter, tour operator programmes and high end / corporate air travel as well as airline sub charter and aircraft leasing. It brings the very best standards of care and comfort to all its passengers. Once safely aboard, they can relax and enjoy our superb in-flight service and a wide choice of cuisine and fine wines to complete the experience. Titan’s modern, reliable aircraft can operate from all major international and regional airports day and night, 365 days a year.

It’s cold, and wet, and dark, and some of the deportees have been sitting on board coaches for hours, while Tascor guards mill about, smoke and chat. As it approached midnight, there was more activity around the plane, and it appeared that all the deportees were on board as the coaches left the terminal compound empty and parked up outside. (The next day, Unity tells me that two people were taken off the flight at the last minute, but those people estimated that around 80 Nigerians and Ghanaians were on board, including Isa Muaza, who was taken straight to hospital on arrival in Lagos, and a woman who married a British citizen two years ago, and was not expected to be deported).

You can watch flights taking off from the far side of the airport, from a muddy lane alongside the north end of the runway. On the way over to it, I was stopped by the Police, who had been told I had been seen around the private aviation area. They were happy that I was a ‘spotter’ looking for planes – and advised me to join Essex Police’s Plane Watch scheme – but also warned me that the private aviation section was a restricted area, and I shouldn’t go there.

At 00:27, the Titan Airways 767 roared down the Stansted runway and into the night. Moments before, its call-sign appeared on Flightradar: AWC48A. And from there, an aircraft registration number: G-POWD.

We can see G-POWD on approach to Lagos a little after 6am. Two hours later, it’s on the move again, making the hop westwards from Lagos to Accra, the capital of Ghana, where it makes another stop. And then at 11am it appears to lift off back in the direction of London – at time of writing, it is probably somewhere over North Africa.

When I got back to my car around 1, I had a flat battery, and had to wait for a repair man. When he arrived, and I explained what I was doing in this godforsaken place, he told me he’d been at the Inflite Terminal recently too, to jump-start a brand-new Tascor transporter van, whose driver told him these flights happen all the time, and nobody knows about it, not even most of the people who work at the airport. “Makes you think,” he said. “Makes you think.”

*

Photos are available at Flickr

For some time, I have been threatening to write about the Render Ghosts. I was asked to contribute something to Electronic Voice Phenomena, an online literature and art project by Mercy and Penned in the Margins, and so I wrote about my recent trip to New Mexico, in search of the Render Ghosts:

I first noticed the Render Ghosts on the hoardings surrounding a new development near Finsbury Square. On the balconies of some vast, virtual tower, two pixelated figures looked out over a darkened London, a perfect red-pink gradient sunset behind them. He had short dark hair and stubble, wore a black jacket and blue jeans. She had a cropped red bob, white jacket, and a purple knee-length skirt. I didn’t know who they were, but I started seeing them everywhere.

Read the full piece over at EVP.

I also have a short essay and illustrations in the wonderful new Visual Editions‘ book of writing and maps, Where You Are, which also includes contributions from Joe Dunthorne, Geoff Dyer, Olafur Eliasson, Sheila Heti, and more.

To ask “Where You Are” invites a series of responses: cartographic, historical, social, spiritual, situational; discursive or prescriptive. The GPS system is a monumental network that provides a permanent “You Are Here” sign hanging in the sky, its signal a constant, synchronised timecode. It suggests the possibility that one may never need be lost again; that future generations will grow up not knowing what it means to be truly lost.

The book is available to order now, but you can read the essay, and see the illustrations (much beautified by the designers at Bibliothèque), alongside all the other contributions on the Where You Are website.

The astute among you might notice a strong similarity between the diagrams in Where You Are and the piece I made for Container some months back:

This 3D-printed object is the same thing under discussion in Where You Are:

This is a model of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a constellation of 24 satellites, in six orbital groups of four satellites, each orbital plane at 55 degrees inclination, and 60 degrees right ascension to its neighbour, 20,200 kilometres above the surface of the earth; a machine we are all living inside.

I’d had the original model sitting on my desk for some time before Tim asked me for a contribution to Container. In trying to draw and understand the GPS system as an abstract machine, I’d modelled the constellation in Sketchup – it was a natural step to flip-flop this nest of intersecting cones of influence back into the physical realm again, so that I could roll it between my fingers, as Einar and I did with airfix models of the drones, before the shadows (Einar’s own thinking about GPS, with Timo and Jørn, led to the Satellite Lamps project.) I call this the “Close Encounters” method.

A while back, I started the Laaaaaaandsat tumblr, which automatically posts, several times a day, every image released by the USGS Landsat observation programme – an ongoing, comprehensive survey of the planet by another satellite, 700km above the earth’s surface.

The endless stream of off-kilter images – reoriented so North is ‘up’ – remains a endless source of pleasure. So when Aperture magazine asked for 200 words on “What Matters Now” in photography, I thought of this little robot cameraman in the sky. 200 words is not enough, but it’s in the new issue.

NASA’s Landsat is the longest-running program dedicated to photographing the Earth from space, and has created millions of images since its inception in 1969. The first satellite, Landsat 1, was launched on July 23, 1972, atop a Delta 900 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Its mission was to photograph the whole Earth using three cameras which see both visible light and the near-infrared, and a four-channel multispectral scanner. The scanner was the project’s greatest innovation as it reveals hidden details about the planet’s surface, producing data and imagery used for everything from disaster relief, to agriculture, to studying climate change.

In February of this year, the program continued with the launch of Landsat 8. This incarnation features a more powerful scanner which sees in the ultraviolet; the panchromatic; the shortwave, near-, and thermal-infrared; revealing the presence of dust and smoke, of chlorophyll, of sub-surface rock formations, and the shape of clouds. The satellite captures four hundred images every day, creating a complete picture of the planet every sixteen days. Every one of these images is in the public domain, allowing every one of us to use, benefit from, and marvel at this ever-growing, ever-changing automated portrait of our planet.

This week I was due to install another Drone Shadow, this one in Brisbane, Australia (that’s a planning mock-up, above). I had been invited by the Brisbane Writers Festival, and we had received permission from the Queensland State Library to install the work on their premises. Unfortunately, due to the actions of Arts Queensland, the department of the State Government with overall responsibility for the arts, it has been impossible to proceed with the work. The actions of Arts Queensland in this case have been both incredibly frustrating and boringly familiar: they have stalled, dissembled, obfuscated and lied, all in the service of silencing an artistic work and preventing a proper debate occurring, either about the work, or the government’s censorship of it. (For the record, there is a full account of my dealings with Arts Queensland available here.)

I’ve often been asked if I have got into any kind of trouble for creating the Drone Shadows before, and the answer has always been no. This is despite the fact that we have drawn them in Istanbul, during a period when the Turkish government was in negotiation to purchase Predator drones from the US, and in Washington DC – right next to the White House – at the height of the US drone war. But apparently the image – the bare outline – of a drone was too much for the government of Queensland.

In Istanbul we drew a Predator, in DC a Reaper. In Brisbane I proposed to draw a Global Hawk, the largest military unmanned aircraft currently in service. Late last year it was revealed that the United States flew secret Global Hawk spy missions from Air Force bases in Australia in 2001-2006. The programme was revealed by a group of amateur aviation historians who tracked the Global Hawks arriving and taking off. When they revealed details of the flights, they were visited by Australian defence security officials who demanded they not reveal details of the flights. An Australian senator who proposed to notify the public of the flights was silenced by the US Air Force, which demanded the flights remain classified.

Since then, Australia has been in prolonged negotiations with the US to purchase Global Hawks itself, announcing an AU$1 billion programme in 2004, rising to AU$3 billion in 2012. The latest election, which takes place quite coincidentally this Saturday, has led to further fierce debates over Australian defence and the drone program.

Australia’s domestic drone program is primarily aimed at “securing borders”, and its preference for maritime versions of the Global Hawk is due to the need for surveillance of immigration by sea. This program aims to ensure, in the words of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in July 2013, that “any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees”, by shifting the problem to neighbouring countries such as Papua New Guinea. There is also a long history of asylum claimants being housed at former Air Force bases – and a long history of government objection to artworks dealing with the subject: see for example the story of Escape from Woomera, a political computer game about a detention camp in a remote Australian Defence Force base in South Australia.

One of the many reasons given by Arts Queensland for their opposition to the installation of the Drone Shadow was the opening at the Queensland Museum next door of an exhibition of thousands-year-old artefacts from Afghanistan, to which members of the local Afghan community had been invited. Arts Queensland expressed their view (after several weeks of denying any such issue) that this community might be made uncomfortable by the work. The community was never consulted, and the Museum itself raised no objection. Arts Queensland called it a “raw issue”. Indeed it is.

Australia’s Defence Forces have been involved in the war in Afghanistan since 2001. This contribution has included ships, manned aircraft, ground troops – and, more recently, drones.

The Royal Australian Air Force has been using drones in Afghanistan since 2009, when it first started to deploy the Israeli-built Heron drone, a twin-hulled surveillance drone the size of a light aircraft. At a 2012 promotional event on Australia’s Gold Coast, a short drive from Brisbane, Australia’s most senior military drone commander stated that the drone program was “like crack cocaine, a drug, for our guys involved – [they] just can’t get enough of it.”

These drones are in fact still owned by the Israeli manufacturer, and leased via a Canadian company – as Australia’s ABC News put it: “Israeli-owned drones, leased by Canadians, flown by Australians, fighting a war against Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan”. The RAAF drone teams are trained by Canadian and Israeli civilians at Amberley in Queensland, on the outskirts of Brisbane. Before they deploy to the field, they spend hours test-flying the drones over a simulated Afghan village, constructed in 2011, on the Woomera test range, close by the notorious refugee detention centre. (Picture above: a Heron drone parked at Woomera Air Base, South Australia, via Google Earth.)

The RAAF’s Herons are nominally unarmed, but they are equipped with lasers which allow them to mark targets for incoming airstrikes or artillery – the networking of contemporary military forces means that the formal distinctions between the capabilities of different weapons systems are increasingly meaningless. The drones are a key part of the “kill chain”, the process by which targets are selected and attacked by the entire system, and the ADF also calls on US and British armed Reaper drones to support its ground troops in battle.

In describing the contours of Australia’s relationship with drones, we see how, once again, such relationships extend beyond the individual aircraft to encompass far wider issues including domestic politics, international relations, warfare, immigration and networked technologies.

Drones are avatars of the the political process: they are instantiations of a set of ideologies and beliefs, made visible by their reification in electromechanical systems. When we talk about drones, we are really talking about the politics that demand, shape, and deploy them, and the politics which are made possible by them. This politics reflects the drones themselves: it is a politics of violence, of obfuscation, of radical inequality of sight and action, and it is sustained by that obfuscation and that inequality.

No wonder then that politicians are afraid of even artistic representations of the drone. No wonder they cite feelings of “discomfort” at even mentioning them, although in projecting this discomfort onto an immigrant population – without consultation – they reveal even more clearly the complicity of the technology in war and social oppression.

The Drone Shadow is not just a picture of a drone. It is a diagram of a political system. Every time we draw one, we use it to cast light on the actors who would prefer that the reality of their intentions and actions remain hidden.

This is the nature of networked technology today: it is the product of an embedded politics which it simultaneously obscures, through its apparent sophistication, and renders startlingly visible, through its explicit form. That invisibility is the intention of power; rendering it visible is the intention of art.

In the present case, power in all its petty exercise has done its utmost to render such a debate invisible. That it has succeeded for the moment, with the barest minimum of opposition from the cultural institutions which should oppose such exercises at every step, is saddening. It is also, I have to believe, unlikely and impossible to remain the case for long.

*

If you would like to draw your own Global Hawk shadow, you can download a schematic for the installation here.

Tamaki Shindo “Fly Over, Connect Paths”
at Gallery Art Unlimited (Roppongi, Nogizaka area)
(2014-07-09 - 2014-08-09)

Tamaki Shindo recreates unknown landscapes from fragments of cut-up pictures of places she has photographed herself. She then photographs and enlarges these collages to reveal original scenes that are all the more mysterious. Transcending the digital age with time and labor-intensive analog techniques, her works are worlds of new creation that cannot be called simply photographs.

Depicting the Indelible Japanese Landscape: Hiroshige’s “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” and Contemporary Artists
at Bernard Buffet Museum (Greater Tokyo area)
(2014-07-19 - 2014-09-28)

The Musée Bernard Buffet is holding an exhibition of the Hoeido edition of “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” by the ukiyo-e master Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858) and works by contemporary artists who have been inspired by him. The Hoeido edition of “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido,” regarded as the artist’s ultimate masterpiece, presents scenes along the highway as they change over the seasons and over time with abundant lyricism. The prints in this series are also known for the rich variety with which Utagawa depicts the human figure in the landscapes at each location. The world these prints creates, abounding in its rich sense of humanity, continues to capture the hearts of artists today. Leiko Ikemura (1951- ) is an artist who lives and works in Europe, where she continues her fundamental questioning of human existence. After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, she began engaging in a dialogue with Hiroshige’s “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido,” which could be said to depict the essential, primordial landscapes of Japan. That experience has led to her creating poems and a new series of drawings. Samurai warriors coexist with contemporary individuals in the Yamato-e style miniatures of Akira Yamaguchi (1969- ). In them, Yamaguchi engages in a dialogue with styles from the past while humorously applying the spirit of modern criticism. Yamaguchi creates new landscapes based on places that have caught his eye in the Mishima area, such as the Mishima Taisha and other shrines, expressed through his own interpretations of them. “Hiroshige is my hero!” says Kazuyuki Takezaki (1976- ). Staying in the Mishima area, he has become enthralled with the landscapes along the Genpe and Kakita rivers and has created paintings and built installations inspired by phenomena he has observed there. This exhibition is an opportunity to rediscover the fascination of Utagawa’s “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido,” to experience the work of several contemporary artists, and to contemplate the indelible, essential landscapes within each of us. [Related Event] Workshop “Let’s Make a Landscape with Takezaki-san!” Date: Jul. 21 (Mon, public holiday) 13:00–15:30 Participants: 18 (Young children through Junior High Students) Admission: ¥1000 Please see the venue’s website for reservations, details, and information on more related events.

South Korea's most prestigious film festival said Wednesday it has chosen Taiwanese director Tsai Ming Liang as its Asian Filmmaker of the Year.

The Pusan International Film Festival praised Tsai's work over the past three decades for pioneering unexplored areas that overcome the limitations of the art film industry.

"He is renowned for seeking fresh ways of communicating with his audience... We can find the root of his endless spirit of challenging himself and the borderlines of art in his earlier works in the 1990s."

Two Tyler students organized the “Call + Response” show.

The article Art students answer the call by Alexa Bricker appeared first on The Temple News.

Conrad Benner’s blog calls attention to Philly’s street art culture.

The article A View from the Top by Patricia Madej appeared first on The Temple News.

Visit Philly is teaming up with the campaign With Art Philadelphia for a contest that calls for some creativity. The organization is utilizing social media by encouraging Instagram and Twitter users to take photos of Philadelphia art and apply the hashtag “#PhillyArtContest.” Caroline Bean, the director of social media at Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, helped make the new photo contest come alive.…

The article Philly art contest asks users to Instagram by Chelsea Finn appeared first on The Temple News.

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.

One of the Royal Academy of Arts’ most senior figures has called for a quota to ensure equality between the balance of male and female members. Eileen Cooper, the first woman to be appointed to the role of Keeper of the Royal Academy in 2011, also thinks that national collections should display more works by women artists.

The United States is hardly known for its love of "the beautiful game", seemingly more in thrall to the pleasures of baseball and American football. But for Californian Austen Ezzell, football – or soccer, as he calls it – was always his sport of choice.

They do things (slightly) differently in the Emirates. Today, the Al Raha Beach Theatre in Abu Dhabi will host the grand final of the most popular TV talent contest not just in the UAE but across much of the Arab world. Its elimination format, which attracts up to 15 million viewers, in many ways resembles the spotlit stage ordeals of Pop Idol, The Voice or The X Factor. There's even a diva-like psychologist – Nadia Buhannad – on hand to interrogate the quivering (and mostly male) contestants. "They call me intimidating," Dr Buhannad recently told the local press. "I say, 'Queen of Intimidating'."

Creativity definitely runs in Girls star and creator Lena Dunham's family. Her mum, Laurie Simmons, has been nominated for the prestigious Prix Pictet photography award, along with 10 other leading photographers from all over the world, who are competing for the prize of £67,000. The winner will be announced on 21 May at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, followed by an exhibition of their work.

The visitor to Pangaea: New Art from Africa and Latin America at the Saatchi Gallery is confronted by sculptures of huge ants, crawling all over the walls of the first room. They are monstrous – the size of human babies. They clamber over one another, desperate to gorge on some hidden patch of honey. Some are solitary, others cluster in corners. They call to mind Kafka's travelling salesman Gregor, who transformed into an insect overnight and spent the rest of his days crawling up and down his bedroom walls.

Summer Show
at Maki Fine Arts (Chiyoda area)
(2014-07-05 - 2014-07-27)

Maki Fine Arts presents a group show of new and recent work from the 4 artists Shu Ikeda, Atsushi Tawa, Wataru Yamakami and Kazuhito Tanaka. Well-known for his photographic cut outs Ikeda features a collection of work previously un-exhibited in Japan, Tawa showcases a new body of abstract prints, Tanaka presents a range of photography which shifts between the line of abstract and figurative, while 2013 winner of the Tokyo Midtown Audience Award Yamakami unveils recent painting work.

2014 Tokyo Art Directors Club Exhibition
at Creation Gallery G8 (Ginza, Marunouchi area)
(2014-07-04 - 2014-07-28)

The Tokyo Art Directors Club was first formed in 1952 and is currently made up of 80 art directors. This association has come to hold an annual open call award exhibition in which the latest innovations in advertising and design are selected by the jury panel to present the very forefront of communication design in Japan. This exhibition is split over two venues, with work of general creators shown as Gallery G8 and the work of ADC members showcased at Ginza Graphic Gallery.

Masayuki Furukawa “Diary”
at Voilld (Ebisu, Daikanyama area)
(2014-07-18 - 2014-08-03)

The London-based photographer Masayuki Furukawa has done advertising, commercial, music video, and magazine work in Japan and abroad. His first exhibition is a special opportunity to see a portion of his enormous body of work from all over the world. A film Furukawa made in collaboration with director Eri Sawatari will also be screened.

Tamaki Shindo “Fly Over, Connect Paths”
at Gallery Art Unlimited (Roppongi, Nogizaka area)
(2014-07-09 - 2014-08-09)

Tamaki Shindo recreates unknown landscapes from fragments of cut-up pictures of places she has photographed herself. She then photographs and enlarges these collages to reveal original scenes that are all the more mysterious. Transcending the digital age with time and labor-intensive analog techniques, her works are worlds of new creation that cannot be called simply photographs.

“Semamori - Stitched Amulets on the Back of Children’s Kimonos - “
at LIXIL Gallery 1 & 2 (Kyobashi, Nihonbashi area)
(2014-06-05 - 2014-08-23)

Introducing the special forms of kimono popular up to the early Showa period with “Semamori” emblems designed to protect a child’s well-being and “Hyakutoku-kimono” created from cloth gathered from 100 people in a particular form of prayer, this exhibition features various examples and documents relating to this form of kimono, along with photographic produced by Miyako Ishuchi since winning the Shiju Hosho award. 「Related Event] Lecture “The World of Semamori” Date: July 29(Tues) 18:30-20:00 Speaker: Yukari Saji(director of Koriyama City Museum of Art) Venue: AGC Studio (Tokyo Chuo-ku Kyobashi 2-15-18 Kyobashi Souseikan 2F * 1 min from LIXIL) Admission: Free For further information on reservations please refer to the official website

Tsuneko Taniuchi “Micro-Events”
at Maison Hermès (Ginza, Marunouchi area)
(2014-07-18 - 2014-09-21)

Since 1995 Tsuneko Taniuchi has been enacting “Micro Events”, playing out through performance the various layers of society and their functions. Taking up the role of a variety of contemporary female characters, she has been known to take up the form of the “Bunny girl” in passing off ironical comments on the VIP system of art fairs and other such events, while at other times she has brought her room into the gallery and made it her living space pointing to the issues of residence rights in the city, often confronting social questions through her eclectic performances which mix acting with action, reality with fiction, conversation with exclusion, engagement and games, art and the kitsch, weaving between ideas and values in an examination of one’s right to be one’s self. 「Related Events] Micro Event No. 45 “6 Female Characters + 1 Woman / 7 Days” Taking on the roles of waitress, boxer, gymnast, ganguro, ninja and a homeless person the artist will perform her role each day, with the exception of Sunday when she will be her mere self, exchanging things her characters have made with visitors. Dates: Everyday Mon-Sat 17:00-19:00 Sun 14:00-16:00 Micro Event No. 46 “Wedding Tokyo” The latest event in Taniuchi’s Wedding Series, which has been developed since 2002, and has seen over 250 ceremonies to date. An open call is made for men and women to marry the artist and a series of 20 ceremonies will take place in the gallery. Date: August 3(Sun) For further details please refer to the official website.

Kei Ono “New Text”
at Place M (Shinjuku area)
(2014-07-28 - 2014-08-03)

[Related Event] Society of Photography Award Party Date: August 2(Sat) 17:00- Admission: ￥2000

Ichiro Kojima “To the North, From the North”
at Izu Photo Museum (Greater Tokyo area)
(2014-08-03 - 2014-12-25)

This exhibition marks the 50th anniversary of Ichiro Kojima’s death. Born and raised in the northern city of Aomori, Kojima was the eldest son in a family that ran a toy and photography supply store. He learned photography under the influence of his father, and began to publish his work in photography magazines. His subjects were everyday landscapes on the Tsugaru and Shimokita peninsulas, but his work stood apart from the mainstream realism of that era and soon gained notice for its poetic and compositional sensibilities. With strong encouragement from the pioneering photojournalist Yonosuke Natori, Kojima mounted his first exhibition, Tsugaru, in Tokyo in 1958. Following this strong start, he moved to Tokyo in 1961 to pursue a career as a professional photographer, going on to present further exhibitions of work. However, having emerged on the scene with photographs of his home country, he now faced great difficulty to produce work in a new environment. After the death of Natori, his main supporter in Tokyo, Kojima returned to Aomori. From here he embarked on a new project in Hokkaido, but he began to feel ill after repeated exposure to severe conditions and sadly died at the early age of thirty-nine. This exhibition features his small photograph prints from his “Trump” series, along with works from his two major exhibitions and those which reflect his love of the North, shining new light on the short life of this artist. [Related Events] Panel Discussion To Document the North: Considering Ichiro Kojima Picking up on questions raised by the 2009 Ichiro Kojima retrospective exhibition at the Aomori Museum of Art, this discussion will examine the question of what “The North” meant to Kojima. Participants: Hiroshi Oshima (photographer) Keizo Kitajima (photographer) Shino Kuraishi (professor, Meiji University) Shigemi Takahashi (chief curator, Aomori Museum of Art) Masashi Kohara (researcher, Izu Photo Museum) Date/Time: September 28 (Sun.) 2:30–4:00 Place: Clematis no Oka Hall (near the museum) Free (exhibition ticket required for entry), limited to 100. Gallery Talk A curator will provide commentary on the exhibition. Date/Time: Saturdays at 2:15 (approx. 30 minutes) August 30, October 25, November 15, December 20

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp says the show provides a rare opportunity to better understand a rigorous and complex artist.

Computational Fashion Master Class
July 18-26, 2014

Mon-Fri, 4-8pm
Sat-Sun, 10am-6pm
Tuition Cost: $1500 ($800 Students/Recent Grads)

APPLY NOW

Eyebeam and Shapeways are pleased to announce the first Computational Fashion Master Class. In this ten-day intensive course, participants will:

calls/computational-fashion-master-class-call-for-participants" target="_blank">read more

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

This weekend, June 7th & 8th, Canon is bringing their Canon in Action Tour to Seattle! The tour will be taught by Canon Explorers of Light Jack Reznicki and Jim Divitale, along with Amina Moreau of Stillmotion.
 
Jack is best known for his commercial work with companies like Hyatt and Time Magazine, as well as teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. 
 
Jim’s digital photography is featured in magazines like Rangefinder and Professional Photographer and lectures at WPPI, Imaging USA, and Photoshop World.
 
Amina is the cofounder of Emmy Award-winning Stillmotion, whose client list includes Apple and CBS.
 
There is going to be a Saturday seminar and a few Sunday workshops on June 7th and 8th.
 
The Saturday seminar’s goal is to teach imaging essentials and help you understand and expand your creative options. Thoroughly understanding photography principles like ISO and aperture is essential to putting your photography ideas to practice. The Saturday seminar will cover lens choice, camera settings and features, light exposure, portraits, landscapes, HD video, and a whole lot more. We’ll learn quality vs. quantity of light, incorporating video into your image making process. Jack, Jim, and Amina are going to let you discover the possibilities in your camera so that you can discover the possibilities in your photography.
 
The Sunday workshop is an opportunity to practice your new skills, work with live models, and try out professional Canon equipment. We’re going to have interactive discussions and hands-on exercises so attendees will receive feedback for every milestone hit. The workshop is designed to give attendees the tools to create visually stunning and engaging videos and photography.

The photography portion of the workshop is going to let you practice the concepts of flash photography, like functions of Speedlites and ETTL. Since light can be unpredictable, Jim and Dave are going to work with the class on mastering light using flash.

Camera movement, audio capture, and shot sequencing are the main points the video portion of the workshop will cover. Filmmakers use this knowledge every day as the foundation to any well-made video.
 
It’s going to be a weekend packed with learning! Head over to CanonInAction.com and use the discount code CIAMZED10 for $10 off Saturday tickets!

We’d like to congratulate Ulrich Pakker for being selected to receive the UNESCO art award for "Inspiring Peace and Humanity Through Art and Science". Ulrich is also a premier gallery member of SeattleArtists.com.

"I am honored to be receiving this UNESCO art award from Dr. Sheree Wen, U.S. National Commissioner for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).  It has been a great year and this is certainly the crowning glory." says Ulrich Pakker.

If you’d like any more information on the UNESCO award or on what Ulrich has been working on lately, please visit http://www.RPArt.com.

Hoarding is a disorder marked by the persistent need to hold onto things and extreme anxiety at the thought of having to part with objects, even things with no value or use. But even people who don’t have hoarding tendencies can find it difficult to get rid of things and to clear away clutter. Dr. Simon Rego, Director of Psychology Training and Director of the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Training Program at Montefiore Medical Center, and Collette Shine, who runs a professional organizing company called Organize and Shine and is the New York Chapter President of the National Association of Professional Organizers, discuss the psychology behind clutter and hoarding, why we find it so hard to let go of certain items, and what that reveals about our personality.

World War I began 100 years ago, and our word maven, Patricia T. O’Conner, looks at the words that came out of that war—like blimp, doughboy, cooties. She’ll also answer questions about language and grammar. An updated and expanded third edition of O’Conner’s book, Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, is available in paperback, as is  Origins of the Specious, written with Stewart Kellerman.

If you have a question about language and grammar, leave a comment or call us at 212-433-9692!

O'Conner and Leonard discussed a number of words and phrases that originated—or became popular—during WWI, including:

taxiing (as in a plane on a runway)
trench coat
zero hour
liaise
tailspinnosedive
cushy (to mean comfortable or easy)
shell shock
dud
hush hush
pushing up daisies
in a funk

Investigative reporters Tim Elfrink and Gus Garcia-Roberts uncover the darker side of competitive sports—the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs. Elfrink raised the alarm when he broke the story that a Miami clinic called Biogenesis had been supplying performance enhancing drugs to players, including Alex Rodriguez, the highest-earning player in the game. In Blood Sport: Alex Rodriguez, Biogenesis, and the Quest to End Baseball's Steroid Era, Elfrink and Roberts give an account of unraveling the story, with incredible details about tanning salon robberies, coded text messages, and furtive steroid injections in the men’s room.