A tiny robot walked in my office today ...

Ricordo

EMRos is this family of so-called World’s smallest autonomous self-propelled micro robots. Each creature is this tiny robot that can record and play back motions being guided by a flashlight.

Ricordo is 1 cm3 in volume and equipped with a recording and playback function. Rubie on the other end is equipped with capricious wandering function. Both were created by Epson in 1995, but I finally got to play with one today, and it is adorable! I found a web site that shows beautiful pictures of the robots as well as the nice packaging that hosts them!

Pour un art tres pauvre

Pour un art très pauvre that I made with vacuum formed plastic bags and thread.

I am a ghost specialist. Ghosts in my head, in my memory, in my life. I love their evanescence, their vagueness. They carefully hide their details.

A tour at the ICA

The ICA in Boston is full of surprises with for instance a welcoming Divine Gas by Chiho Aoshima, the Hanging Fire of Cornelia Parker and Josiah McElheny's mirrors reflected infinitely ...

Language based sculpture

Key and Cue, No. 288 by Roni Horn, 1994, Solid aluminum and black plastic, 51 x 2 x 2 inches
Photo by Oren Slor, Courtesy Max Protetch Gallery, New York

My relationship to my work is extremely verbal, extremely language-based. I am probably more language-based than I am visual, and I move through language to arrive at the visual. So I’ve always questioned whether I am really a visual artist. You get into this situation where your ‘identity’ takes over your actual being because you get stuck with whatever it is you resemble to other people—not who you are. They’re not necessarily the same thing. — Roni Horn

More about Roni Horn

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.