Jean Baudrillard

One of my favorite thinker, Jean Baudrillard, passed away yesterday.

The last book of his I read is l'échange impossible. In the book, Baudrillard confronts our relationship with our contemporary world to its ongoing hyperreality.

My friend Oliver Vaubourg posted a summary of one of Baudrillard's master piece: l'Ecran total. The main point of the book is to consider the repercussions of substituting formerly symbolic oppositions for a generalized culture with a passive consensus.

I just found out that on Turbulence that Ars Virtua will be holding a public tribute to honor the late social and political theorist Jean Baudrillard. Jean Baudrillard's criticisms and view on Simulation are influential to our discussions of the MMO. This short program will be held on the WoW Kilrogg server, 4-5pm PDT, March 17, 2007 near Orgrimmar. Please send tell to Zuluu upon arrival in-world for the location. Too bad my level 62 character is on another server, I will have to go visit with a level 1 ...

Interview in ArtDesignBy

Moving Pictures



An interview for Denis in ArtDesignBy. It is in French only, but I recently presented my work in English for Regine on We-Make-Money-Not-Art.>.


Petite peau de lait

Moore Pattern

Inspired by the wooden kinetic work of David Roy, Jeff Lieberman just created Moore Pattern a kinetic sculpture that overlays patterns on top of one another using two counter-rotating bead-blasted aluminum disks, driven from a single motor below with a belt drive mechanism.

Watch the video to witness the moiré effect.

Do strangers meet?

Drawing and Tag cloud I made for the Kendall T Band

Looking for a site to show Charles Goldman when he is in town, I finally picked the famous Kendall Band - Kepler, Pythagoras, Galileo designed, fabricated and installed by Paul Matisse.
In 1987, Paul Matisse installed in Cambridge, Kendall T Station, the The Kendall Band a musical sculpture. Passengers can move handles located on each platform and will activate hammers that strike the bells. The instruments are suspended in arches between the tracks. Made of aluminum, teak, steel, the band consists of :
· Kepler a 55-inch aluminium ring that hums for five minutes after it is struck by the large teak hammer above it.
· Galileo a sheet of stainless steel that imitates a train roaring in when a train roars in.
· Pythagoras twin sets of eight bells of the type of the new memorial bell in Washington.

The Kendall Sculptures are very much the thing I love to show to a tourist in town. Being a student at MIT, I am not afraid of technical objects, I find them sexy. Bringing technicality into the T station where it is full of machines and the metallic sound resonating with its own voice: the sound of the train, the aluminum as a metal and the reverberation of the vibrato into the station, is exciting. It is definitely unique and as Paul Matisse says: “it is MIT’s baby”.

Social challenge: talk to strangers
It seems contradictory to what my grand ma told me: do not talk to strangers. Well, artists are different, they want things to be different. Paul Matisse wants strangers to talk to each others and maybe meet. He also thinks music can help that to happen. Passengers waiting for their trains can play with the sculpture. Sometimes, strangers can meet: can look at each others, can smile, maybe play together? I believe that one can cut herself from the visuals, but it is harder to do with sounds. So one can notice the change of sounds. Because propagating the sounds throughout the entire station is not directed towards one person, people can then feel free to respond or ignore the gesture. The inside is invaded, but somehow no pressure is put on bringing it outside. One can choose. And sometimes strangers can meet.

Music
The Kepler strikes an F sharp to go with the B minor of the Pythagoras.

Pictures
No picture for this post so you can then fully discover it when you are in Boston!

For more info, read the article Kendall Sculptures Bring Music, Talk to Strangers, The Tech, Volume 115, Number 66, 1996.

my body is a hypertext

I love this concept of Yasmine Abbas



project number . 20050816
project title . shotcode tattoo
medium . ink or washable tattoo
my identity has shrunk to my skin...
<< I link therefore I am >> says WJM
my tattoo is no more a barcode that one scans
for revealing the identity of a product
the extension of my body is a url
we exist because of the envelope, the image
which is drawn, written, or projected onto it
our skin is a state of mind, a habitat, and our identity
the last private space?
my body is a hypertext

Also available for 5$, washable bar code tatoos - Via needled

Reflections

The artist Devorah Sperber recreates paintings by assembling spools of thread. Reflections is a permanent Installation at the Centro Medico Train Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico. The artist used 60,000 spools of thread and 23 convex mirrors for the installation.

"Reflections" is a site-specific work, constructed from 60,000 spools of thread, which coalesce into a photo-realistic image when seen reflected in convex mirrors mounted on an opposing wall. My intention was to utilize the element of surprise to create a brief interruption in the lives of people as they move through the Centro Medico Train Station (...) Because people will be in motion, the images seen in the mirrors continuously change. As people step onto the escalator and descend to the lower platform, the reflections in the mirrors gradually dissolve from seascape to the neutral gray ceiling and blue skies seen through clear glass skylights above.

Detail

I discovered the work of Deborah Sperber on V magazine.
Two days after I posted on the work of Deborah, I found out via cool hunting that the Pulse art fair in NYC last week showed a large number of pixelized works.
Andy Diaz Hope uses gel-caps for creating images of people in front of their medicine cabinets.


The occupation 2006, archival photographs, gel capsules, acrylic, 18 W x 15" H

William Betts recreate surveillance camera pictures using acrylic paint. This reminds me of Gerhard Richter's Akt auf einer Treppe. Emma – Nu dans un escalier. 1966 in which the boundaries between painting and photography are blurred and through which comes a new form of expression in the arts.



Carlos Estrada-Vega combines pixel-constructivism of digital media practices to paint and wood dowels within the canvas.


Dona Clara, 2005. Margaret Thatcher Projects

In the Middle of the End, Isidro Blasco uses 2D photos and later turns the them into a 3d experience using board mounted architectural structures.



The Middle of The End

Knitoscope Testimonies by Turbulence, are surprising animations created using "Knitoscope" software, a program that translates digital video into a knitted animation.
Video


erica

An excellent interview on Turbulence featuring Jo-Anne Green by Régine Debatty on we-make-money-not-art

Reconstruction shown at Artefact 2007 is a matric of LEDs that projects shadows and lights of passerby in a pixelized fashion. More can be read on the show and project on multimedialab


reconstruction

Monumental ceramic pixel art found on coolfinds.
Pixel art by Swedish artist Maria Ängquist Klyvare. The artist has worked with mosaics since the eighties. More on her web site.


A child's face on Etsarbron near Gullmarsplan in Stockholm.

Sculpting Behavior

Hayes Raffle not only just had two full academic papers accepted to the first class conference IDC 2007: Interaction design and Children but he is also a talented sculptor and designer. His Super Cilia Skin reflects his aesthetic sensibility and his ongoing passion for kinetic sculpture.

Video

Super Cilia Skin

After co-creating and designing the award-winning ZOOB® building system, Hayes joined the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and created Topobo, a 3D constructive assembly system with kinetic memory and the ability to record and playback physical motion.
Video



a ZOOB® creature


a Topobo creature

If you happen to be in the bay area, don't miss Hayes' talk, open to the public, that he is giving at the Berkeley Institute of Design, UC Berkeley, March 6th, from 1 to 2pm.
Information about his talk.

During the talk, he will explain how with Topobo children can assemble sculptures that dance and walk. He will present Fuzzmail a program that allow children to write a message that unfolds in time. He will show how with Jabberstamp children can embed stories, sounds and voices in their original drawings.

Robotic furniture design

Woojuin


Woojuin magazine table

Designer Victor Vetterlein works on robotic furniture. His Woojuin (2007) is a light fixture inspired by pod architecture & robotics. In the Woojuin magazine table, the reference to robotic is clear, and proposes a critique on automated lives in a digital age.



More pictures on Moco Loco and Archinect

Issey Miyake by Etienne Mineur

Stunning interactive graphic piece for Issey Miyake by Etienne Mineur. Jean-Jacques Birgé talks about la derniere valse of this work.



Spring summer 2007 women collection.
Spring summer 2007 men collection.
Collections designed by Naoki Takizawa for Issey Miyake.

Charles Goldman

Sculptor Charles Goldman says : TIME + DISTANCE = EXPERIENCE.
So I look at his on work on his web site work and find ...

Spruce / Spree (2005) A grass-dressed shopping cart that was apparently chained up at various locations throughout a developing neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY ...



Finally, the chain was clipped and the shopping cart was confiscated

Elsewhere (2000) and in particular Infinity Walk, wood, 32' x 16' x 8'. It is an iconic infinity sign.
"In elevation, the walkway rises, falls and turns underneath itself, providing a never-ending pathway that the visitor may follow."



The work dealt with the repetative nature of time and experience.

Scrapwood (1998) made of 6,144 cubic feet of scrapwood and cardboard.
"About two years worth -- 18 boxes -- of wood scraps are assembled site-specifically, according to whim and using only gravity. "


Chicago

Charles Goldman's web site