MindTouch

A project by Camille Baker of the Smartlab Digital Media Institute, MindTouch is an ambitious dream of sorts. Its overarching background principle, according to the artist herself, is to deal with themes such as presence, in such audacious ways as exploring the idea of shared dreams during and after sleep.

Of course there are other more conventional project objectives such as collaboration and networked performance, and by themselves would make a fine project and artwork. I'm not sure how she's going to accomplish the primary idea, since a dream is so personal and difficult to understand for outside observers, but it's respectable simply because of how interesting and daring the project goals are. It will be great to see where the artist takes these projects, and if she is successful, what it means for our culture.

For more info check out SmartLab's coverage at: http://smartlab.uel.ac.uk/2projects/mindtouch.htm

Almost Perfect...

The project, "Almost Perfect Co-Production Residency" is about locational art. The Banff National Park's Rocky Mountains are the setting, and the project aims to decouple us from our harried technologized existence and face a more elemental side of life. The project aims to explore many forms of locational art using the medium of outdoor space. Led by Jeremy Hight, Fee Plumley, and Laura Silver, this project takes our ability to craft from the desktop to a much larger canvas.

The quintessence of creativity lies in the unconventional. As such, projects like this are key, not only to understanding their contexts (which, in this case, may be context itself), but to understanding the very nature and fabric of what it is to be an artist. It is one thing to reproduce a painting flawlessly, or to construct a photorealistic portrait. But similarly in stature and equally in creativity - and perhaps moreso - is the skill and craft of generating a new concept or pushing an existing idea to its next evolutionary step. This project is praiseworthy because it takes itself out of the conventional media on which we are all so accustomed to being the only way of doing things.
More info here: http://aranar.blogspot.com/2008/11/almost-perfect-banff-new-media.html

Frontier

The project "Frontier" by Doug Aitken is a spectacle of screens contained within a room to produce a powerful effect that would not be accomplished by a single monitor. The goal is to blur the line between fiction and reality. On the Turbulence post is more information.

One of the coolest elements of this project, in my opinion, is the fact that the entire enclosure contains no roof. This omission of an enclosed space gives a sense of what I imagine would feel like transience to the environment. Should the artist have included a roof, the entire structure would feel wholly artificial (Matrix-like) but in this form, the project should appear much more realistic and immersive to the participant/viewer.
More info at the artist's site here: http://www.dougaitkenworkshop.com/

Subvertisement

This project is about taking an ad and visually creating some kind of commentary which disputes or impugns that ad. 

After some consideration I found a topic that I thought would be a good choice.  The title of this work is "The oPhone."  As was suggested in a previous class, I've focused on one specific element rather than on a large topic.  The project is about how President Obama's choice to appoint a large number of czars appears almost like he has created a personal toolbox to handle situations without the oversight of a collective set of advisors.  Some people see this as an overcentralization of power, and while it is probably only an organizational effort, perhaps it could have been approached in a different way.

Black Shoals Planetarium

Again, Turbulence delivers a fascinating story. The Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium is, at first glance, merely a pretty star chart. Upon closer inspection, this work by Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway not only reacts to a huge influx of publically traded companies, but does so in such a way that causes the stars to cluster into groups which have similarities. On top of that, the display is programmed to generate artificial life forms which feed off of the light of strong stock-representational "stars", which form communities, devour other lifeforms, and interact with the "universe" on the whole.

This is the first turbulence post I've seriously wanted to visit, unfortunately due to its location in Denmark, I doubt it will happen anytime soon. Regardless, the technological and artistic innovation in this work is amazing to me. To combine The Game of Life with a planetarium that's reactive to our own "corporate monsters" is a very relevant topic to this week, but is just flat-out awesome regardless.

More info here.

Subvertisement: John Berger

John Berger, our focus for the topic Subertisement, is a grand master of its practice and theory. If the image above is as sinister as I've made it out to be in my perception, the catchphrase, "Things happen after a badedas bath." becomes a message of fear, even terror, as this strange man outside peeps on, and perhaps stalks this woman in what we see as her own home.

I'm looking forward to exploring this topic, it will be fun to use sarcasm in the form of our in-class movie, "The Corporation" not, mind you, to insult aimlessly a corporation which we consider an irritant, but to create a real cultural, functional, or marketing-based critique on how a given entity, represented in advertisement, conducts itself on a daily basis.

Perhaps not completely about Subvertisement, but I noticed an article on Berger at Turbulence. You can read more on the topic here.

Happiness Hat

In this post on turbulence, one Lauren  McCarthy has devised a hat containing a "smile detector" and a metal spike which drills into your head if you begin to frown.

This was too bizarre not to write about. Can you say coercion? This headgear unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally) speaks to elements of society we don't fully notice, where people are perhaps forced or at least coerced by society to wear a smile at all times. After all, if you smile at the world, the world smiles back. What happens if we stop smiling?

More info here: http://lauren-mccarthy.com/happinesshat/