Markus Hofer

Bildträger, Leinwand, vor Ort vorhandener Besen; ca. 100 x 200 cm; 2004

One of my favorite Markus Hofer's piece is Bildträger.
Markus' work is very fresh, an in between graffiti and installation. Obviously site specific, his work consists of redesigning elements of a space to make it an object altogether. His work is very inspirational for my current attempts in sculpture.


Blackbox Holz, Spachtelmasse, Kabel, Lack; 25 x 40 x 3 cm; 2004

Eness

Everlab's 1 hour circle by Eness

I recently had the pleasure to meet Nimrod Weis, co-founder of Eness.



I discovered his Pixile work, an interactive digital sculpture which transforms a series of static objects into an interactive illusion giving this powerful illusion of real-life objects spinning, changing and responding to each other.



I love Virsual, their digital rocking horse, a wireless, ride-on rocking horse equipped with its own motion sensor device. As riders saddle up a 3D game is activated and displayed on screen. I definitely can tell how much children would love this.



Their latest installation commissioned by Audi to exhibit at the New Audi TT launch in Sydney next week. So if you are in Sydney, check it out!
Video.

A series of four translucent screens, each representing a solid cross section of time and space, Three dimensional objects rapidly passing through. These sections deflect, ricochet and manipulate thousands of virtual particles contained in these cross sections. The high impact point of collision between space and matter create an endless amount of esthetical beautiful iconic formations. The gravity of the particles are effected by camera tracking, meaning that the particles direction and velocity change depending on the position of the viewer.

More on Eness' web site

Zen australia

the zen robot

The Zen Robot creates spirals in the sand, reaching perfection and zenness... Created by Eness.

Sock Monkeys

Sock Monkeys, Private Collection

I collect toys. I prefer the ones that tell a story. I love the sock monkeys, they are made from socks, stuffed socks and arranged to represent an animal. It is interesting how simple stuffing socks are at the end registered and how their interpretation changed over time.

Sock monkey toys, a tribute to U.S. thrift and inventiveness, became a part of American childhood in 1953, when the Nelson Knitting Co. registered its design for turning a pair of socks into a stuffed toy. As interpreted by generations of home sewers, the sock monkey is now seen as a form of folk art, its basic pattern transformed through costuming, stitching, and stuffing. This private collection was started in 1985 and now includes over 1,500 monkeys. Approximately 100 of these whimsical and unique stuffed toys are included in the exhibition.

Found at the institute of contemporary art, University of Pennsylvania


Illustration found on the art of popular craft

Richard Nonas

55 meter long double-line of double-bolders cutting diagonally trough a formal grid of trees - Permanent work
Image from Galleri Andersson Sandstrom

Not the forest, or even the North, but simple places barren, and hard when you touch them - places that are clear about excess... 1997

Invited by Helen Mirra, Richard Nonas came to lecture in our sculpture class. He discussed his view on art, art trying to confuse the categories in a way the culture hesitates to or is not meant to do. He raised the question of the difference between entertainment and art. He compared to a meal "this is the difference between a meal that makes you feel well fed and a meal that you remember twenty years later." An artist is someone who devotes his life to the cause of what he is trying to achieve. It is not per se a profession. An artist looks at everything and question everything.

He explained that he became an artist by coincidence, being an anthropologist at first. He started building sculptures of objects that were powerful for him, such as two pieces of wood. He watches and observes people in their environment before creating anything. Richard Nonas invests in space and place. In the notion of space the world is untouched and undefined by human counsciousness, rather in place there is a direct interaction between the physical world and the human mind. It contains an emotional content of that of an hybrid between the physical world and the human being.
He builds sculptures as place and unsettled, for him the tension is the power. The notion of fragment is key because it is in the middle of something.

He is interested in the strong power of an object into a space. For instance, a dog shit on the ground and everybody walks around. The dog shit recreates the space. He is working on that type of power of an object that transforms a place within his work. He thinks that most outside sculptures are confusing: are they about entertaining? are they a logo? ...
Some outdoor sculptures that were powerful and moving to him, such as the ones of Richard Serra, have been removed and this argumented with practical reasons: terrorism, people using the sculpture as a toilet, ...

The confusion that Richard Nonas creates, is an opening, a discovery, it is not a closing. He does not try to annoy people. He mentions that it is very hard to draw this line. He needs to seat on a bench and watch people to understand their habits and not distub them with his sculptures. He wants to create a shift, a move, so that, for a piece of time, one cannot see the world the same way. This is important because we live in a wolrd of compromises and we makes choices that are important. We need to filter, and certain things are ambiguous while others are not. He finds this type of shift exciting, energizing, and also it is about wander. That way the world changes. He compared this shift with drugs, and he says "with drugs it is always the same thing" with art it is always different. Unfortunately with time everything becomes a cliche, for the artists of his generation, it is hard to see something new. He says he has this responsibility as an artist to keep this dialogue, and create this shift happening.

What an inspiring person! My PhD work is very different and extremelly practical. Yet I always integrated this shift component as a principle in my work. I try to empower people by letting different kind of complexity emerged and this by reducing the technical complexity of expressive tools. I also always worked on what can be seen as two contradictory elements: designing tools for people to create their personal content to be driven into someone else's perspective.

With the class and Richard Nonas, we will all go out for a drink later tonight, I cannot wait to continue this discussion!

Clothing with memories

For my sculpture class, I created a dress that works as a low-tech magnetic tape of tactile sensations. I vaccum formed hands, objects, textures throughout the fabric of a dress I made in transparent plastic.

I depart from scarring on the body: tatoos, percings, scarves in our western societies. I am looking for envelops: mental but also physical. These envelops that people try to create after traumas. I want to represent these envelops in a sculptural form.

I would like to create a skin shell, in the form of a coat, that can be worn. A skin shell that is a souvenir of a previous body and that was left out. This skin shell that showcases traces of influences, people, and objects. Yet I want this skin to be vulnerable, fragile. A skin that tries to protect, to be useful and accepted. I also want the skin to be obvious and a showcase of its internal fight.

I like the vinyl raincoat metaphor because it protects against the rain, but it does not comfort, nor does it contain. It does not isolate, because it is transparent. It feels vulnerable. I was envisioning creating clothing elements in transparent vinyl / PVC / plastic. Vinyl could symbolize the material used for the outside against the rain. Clothing and fashion, the showcase. A coat could work as to represent the cocoon, the shell, a protection against the outside.

I mold objects, textures, persons within the transparent pieces of clothing, objects that have been internalized and been forced to appear for a showcase. It has to be a mess of objects, or organs or things that can show the violence of the showcase done onto someone.

Because I want this sculpture to be a left over of a fight, I want it to be left on the ground, like an animal mutation. Yet in this case it could also be re-worn and re-appropriated.

More bad guys

More guys are doing bad stuff on the web. This time amazon noir.

Amazon Noir was scripted as a internet-movie. The whole digital action (media hack) was carried out in the global massmedia, within the art world and on a highly sophisticated technical level in the clandestine matrix of our global networks.
The Bad Guys (The Amazon Noir Crew: Cirio, Lizvlx, Ludovico, Bernhard) stole copyrighted books from Amazon by using sophisticated robot-perversion technology coded by supervillain Paolo Cirio. A subliminal media fight and a covert legal dispute escalated into an online showdown with the heist of over 3000 books at the center of the story.

More on the The Big Book Crime by Regine Debatty on wmmna, also Burak Arikan shares his analysis of the holes in sociable web media systems and is looking for ways to use the holes for reverse exploitation. In his artwork he uses software-as-service strategy.

A while ago, I heard of the WhiteTunes, bad people who used to download high-res iTunes music videos from mac G4's. The WhiteTunes were not responsible for these illegal actions. It was definitely due to these huge temporary/(in)visible files that iTunes was infesting the computer with. Such a software bug is unforgivable!

performative constructions

short cut Images © Elmgreen & Dragset, courtesy Galleria Massimo De Carlo - Short Cut was commissioned by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi

I am a big fan of the big picture outside the box: when pieces from an artist are put together in an ensemble. A catalog, a museum brochure or a web site. The nature of the work to be experienced is missing for sure, but some intellectual participation is taking place. I like to understand and connect with the artist maybe more than the piece itself.
I think that the art pieces don't need to be obvious, but they need to give you hints, and like a detective the viewer carefully inspects a site and experiences.

I found that to be especially the case with the work of Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset. Their web site presents visuals that communicate with the viewer very efficiently. I like their site-specific famous Prada Marfa, Public Art Project in Marfa, Texas, USA in 2005. A Prada sculpture-store installed in Texas in replacement of a Gas Station. Apparently the Prada Marfa building was made biodegradable to slowly melt back into the landscape ...


Prada Marfa

I love their powerless structures series. These artists seem to always challenge the conventional structural space.


Powerless Structures (kunsthall / temporary art) (2001), Installation view, Istanbul Biennial 2001

Fresh, fun and innocent anti-littering ad

wfmu showed a public service announcement by David Lynch (photography Frederick Elmes): "The message is clear: trash creates rats who will gnaw away at your existence with their razor sharp teeth and whip your legs with their heavy, hairless tails".

video

The Youtube of the Avant-Garde

Do you prefer to listen to sounds or to the relationship between two or more sounds? That is the question even though it may not be exclusive ...

A new addition on ubu, Four American Composers, Directed by Peter Greenaway.

For those who do not know Ubu, UbuWeb is the YouTube of the Avant-Garde.

UbuWeb has converted all of its rare and out-of-print film & video holdings to on-demand streaming formats à la YouTube, which means that you can view everything right in your browser without platform-specific software or insanely huge downloads. We offer over 300 films & videos from artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Vito Acconci, Pipilotti Rist, Jean Genet, The Cinema of Transgression, Richard Foreman, Terayama Shuji, Paul McCarthy Jack Smith, Carolee Schneeman, John Lennon and hundreds more -- of course all free of charge. Presented in conjunction with our partners at Greylodge.

List of the avant-garde films available.