SanArt

The conceptual artist On Kawara has produced an ongoing series of “date paintings” (the Today series), which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in simple lettering set against a solid background. If the painting could not be completed on the day it was begun, it was destroyed.

Date Paintings (Twitter) differs in that the creation of the actual date painting relies on the dynamic time stamp of the tweet. Once the tweet is 24 hours old the time stamp becomes static, and at that point the painting is destroyed.

short fast red green blue

Ronald McDonald has made an appearance outside the Banksy Versus Bristol Museum show. Sitting precariously on a ledge next to a whisky bottle high up above the front entrance he looks far from the official line of ‘Chief Happiness Officer’ for the company.

And if you want a chance of getting the ‘Donuts’ print by Banksy then 12 noon today (London time) is the last time you can register your interest on picturesonwalls.com 

At the core of “Suomenlinna Ornithological Society” is the invention of new bird species with electronic birdsongs. The concrete sources of these birdsongs are samples taken from a museum film about the history of the island of Suomenlinna, a Finnish sea fortress witness to scenes of conflict since the 18th century. Explosions, cannonball whistles, and grisly vocal narrations are re-shaped into the rhythms, timbres and frequencies of birdsong. This transformation references the Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), a supposedly paranormal occurrence where voices of the dead are heard via electronic technology.

The Society’s Website archives the invented bird species as well as a number of real species found in Finland. A curious presence can also be detected by the inquisitive visitor.

INSIDE OUT // THREE AND ONE [2] (2005)
Three-channels of which the first and third are really the same, but with higher (total) contrast between (imaginary) digital surfaces/depths. The second too is really the same as the first and third in that it constitutes the armature and narrative they manifest. The first and third were made by actualizing the second. The second is based upon subjective responses to the language furnished by the computer program Final Cut Pro. The hope of the makers (that is to say FCP and JM) is that this form of interfacing reveals something of the way in which both artist and program work towards unknown but shared ends and that this collaboration influences the modes of thinking of both. Further, through altering (even reversing) both typical creative processes and the typical spectatorial art object-activation/attention (to view blueprint/process as art object; manifestation as documentation) it is hoped that a greater consideration of the processual and inscriptive ensues. Also, there’s a not so hidden reference to Joseph Kosuth.

A meditation on technology, bi-fi psychedelia, spirituality and the icon using Bollywood Hanumans, text-based mesmer, “static” shapes and computer/cursor feedback commingle.

Exercise in emergent field of memo-dromology. Reprivileging of our four Favorite dimensions. 3D illusionism gets tricked bad: one eye perceives progressive acceleration towards indecipherable bliss-mash; one eye perceives a distancing, concretizing return to recognizability. A dozen hundred images collected over a few months in India merged, melded and morphed.

Ouch, apologies for the headline but it got your attention, right?!

‘Across the Tracks And Through The Looking Glass’

Jon Hammer (aka Elate) has extended his website to incorporate a great new blog. I’m rating it because it includes some pretty unique content from back in the day along with recent work and a nice conversational writing style to keep you wanting more. I featured Jon’s tribute to London’s Graffiti Pioneers on here earlier in the year and its story is finally explained in full here. There’s also a whole raft of Elate pieces mixed up with oil on canvas work throughout the blog along with some great photos of the Covent Garden Writers Bench 25 years reunion where rain only temporarily stopped mayhem. 

Elate in Brick Lane, 2009

And thank you for your support for yesterday’s blog post!

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

One problem thats come out of the rise in the popularity of street art is that work that used to be left to survive on its own (either ending up being removed by the property owner or gone over with other graffiti – both of which are fine by me) is now having to die a slow, undignified death above someones fireplace. Street art is meant to be on the streets (the clues in the title). ‘Street art’ removed from the streets becomes, well, just ‘art’. I’m not talking about copies of street pieces that are meant to be sold and displayed. I’m talking about the peel off carefully, chisel out of the wall brigade. Case in point this was the scene in Brick Lane this afternoon. Walking around a corner I stumbled on this not too stereotypical street art ‘liberator’ carefully peeling off a fresh paste up. She then proceeded to roll it up, stuff it in a bag and then made her (slightly shaky) getaway in the direction of the 24 hour bagel shop (the best place in London for all your Bagel needs). It’s not exactly a crime but it would be much better if it was left there for others to enjoy.

A bit later on in the afternoon and against my better judgement I had a look at the totally unofficial show of ‘reclaimed’ Banksy work in Covent Garden. Walking up to it and even walking around it you’d be hard pressed to determine that Banksy would have had nothing to do with this show (his verification agency ‘Pest Control’ famously always refuses to authenticate street pieces). Most of the work on display has been lifted off the streets over recent years. Large sections of walls, doors and plaster are amongst the pieces that make up the exhibition. It’s a very soulless look at some of his work with a totally different vibe to the Bristol exhibition. In fact it has no vibe at all. Simple labels next to pieces tell you nothing, not even the city the works have been taken from. Banksy’s street pieces are all about the context of where they are placed and in this empty whitewashed hall they lose an important part of their reasons for existence. I actually thought that Andipa Modern’s recent Banksy show was better than this – it was an unofficial show too but at least the work they had on display at the last one was pretty much exclusively never placed on the street. That’s not meant as an endorsement of Andipa in case you were wondering.

This sign summed up the whole seedy enterprise for me…my advice is don’t buy anything here – it’ll only encourage them to do it again. Don’t bother with this sorry show and get yourself down to Bristol if you can….