shrinking beads

beads tested in mini-photodotes

studying the beads

light & beads

water beads

Photo credits: Kristophe Diaz

Photo credits: Kristophe Diaz

Photo credits: Kristophe Diaz

IKEA disobedients

Source: MoMA PS1

IKEA Disobedients, an architectural performance by Madrid-based Andrés Jaque Arquitectos, was recently acquired by MoMA. The international premiere of the performance at MoMA PS1, part of the 9+1 Ways of Being Political exhibition at MoMA, reveals how recent architectural practices utilize performative actions to engage audiences with architecture in a non-traditional way.

The performance takes place in a setting made of IKEA-hacked pieces and invites neighbors in Queens to reenact their politically-charged domestic activities. According to Jaque, the performance suggests disobedience to the lifestyles proposed by brands such as IKEA, proposing "an urban counter-notion of the domestic" instead—one that discloses how politically active citizens can and do act outside of the privacy of their homes. Excerpt text: MoMA 

...Each of the nine participants...were selected on account of how their own domestic lives exist apart from the professed "norm".  Whether through activism or entrepreneurship these individuals are bringing social and political actions into the personal sanctum of the home. Throughout the two performances each performer will go about the social actions that routinely take place within their own homes, from providing haircuts and food to discussing the nature of their own ideas about what a contemporary domestic idyll encompasses.  The audience is encouraged to participate and interact within the space and voice their own thoughts on the idea of the home as not a neutral space but one where "controversy and disagreement (can arise) at the site where affections may also emerge..." Excerpt text: MoMA PS1

gutai: splendid playground

Source: A/N Blog

Source: Guggenheim

Gutai: Splendid Playground

“Don’t imitate others!” and “Engage in the newness!” are just two of the signature slogans of the Gutai Art Association, founded in July 1954 by Jiro Yoshihara. The Gutai—which translates to “concreteness”—artists dared to breakthrough the boundaries presented by traditional Japanese art. As their name suggests, the artists directly engaged with concrete materials (such as remote-control toys, sand, light bulbs, and paper screens) to create a new, never before seen, kind of art. The creative genius of these avant-garde artists manifested itself in the form of various mediums including, but not limited to, painting, installation and performance art, experimental film, and environmental art. Gutai: Splendid Playground explores the works of these artists, created over a span of two-decades, and features an enormous installation by Motonaga Sadamasa composed of a series of plastic tubes filled with colored water. The structure, created specifically for the Guggenheim’s rotunda, invites visitors to look up and use these “brush strokes” to create their own individual composition.

Text Source: A/N Blog

all star cast

Les Levine, All Star Cast, 1967
Source: Canadian Conceptual Art

Scrim

Robert Irwin (b.1928), Scrim veil—Black rectangle—Natural light, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1977. Cloth, metal, and wood, 144 × 1368 × 49 in. (365.8 × 3474.7 × 124.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist 77.45. Photograph © Warren Silverman, 1977

Source:  Whitney

body and light

Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body Taken at Ten Inch Intervals is a self-portrait in absentia.  The shapes of the neon tubes were molded against the contours of the artist’s body...

...Due to the sculpture’s popularity and fragility, the practice of fabricating replicas for temporary exhibitions was developed.  Loan agreements required potential borrowers to meet four criterion.  First, artist Bruce Nauman required that the original neon must be in existence and in working order.  Second, the current owner of the artwork must agree to the loan before a replica exhibition copy is fabricated. Third, the credit line for the loaned artwork would specify that the work on view is an exhibition copy and acknowledge the owner of the original.  The final criteria required the destruction of the copy at the conclusion of the exhibition.  Borrowers were asked to provide photographic documentation that the destruction had taken place.  

Excerpt from:  

The Conservation of Bruce Nauman’s Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body at Ten Inch Intervals (1966) via The Glass House

Jikken Kōbō - experimental workshop

Jikken Kōbō - experimental workshop. Source: Artforum

Jikken Kōbō  Ballet Mirai no Eve (Eve Future Ballet), 1955, performance documentation. Source: Frieze

Jikken Kōbō and Takechi Tetsuji, Pierrot Lunaire (tsuki ni tsukareta piero), 1955, stage performance, Sankei International Conference Hall, Tokyo, December 5, 1955 (photograph © Ōtsuji Kiyoji). Source: Artjournal

Jikken Kōbō  (Experimental Workshop) was founded in Tokyo in 1951, against the backdrop of a country traumatized by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and suffering from postwar austerity measures. This determinedly interdisciplinary group of 14 artists, musicians, choreographers and poets orientated themselves towards the pre-war European and American avant-gardes. Its members, many of whom were self-taught, worked individually or in groups, and their guiding interests included the piano work of John Cage, Martha Graham’s choreography, and the sculpture of Alexander Calder and Isamu Noguchi. Active for about seven years, they operated mostly outside of museum spaces and distanced themselves from the academic discourses around musique concrète and electro-acoustic composition. One of Jikken Kobo’s co-founders, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, likened the workshop to ‘Bauhaus without a building’. [Excerpt text from Frieze Magazine]

more info: Bétonsalon 

initially spotted: Artforum

sayonara

photo via  Japanese Geta // to read more on Geta at Wikipedia

 

γράφει ο Γιώργος Δαμιανός:

Σαγιονάρα στα γιαπωνέζικα σημαίνει “αντίο”. Αυτός ο γιαπωνέζικος χαιρετισμός θα γίνει γνωστός στη Δύση, μετά το β’ παγκόσμιο πόλεμο, όταν ο Αμερικανός συγγραφέας James Albert Michener (1907; – 1997) έγραψε το μυθιστόρημα “sayonara”. Η λέξη, όμως, θα φτάσει στα λαϊκά στρώματα το 1957, όταν ο σκηνοθέτης Joshua Logan θα μεταφέρει το μυθιστόρημα του Michener στη μεγάλη οθόνη και θα σημειώσει πολύ μεγάλη επιτυχία για τα δεδομένα της εποχής του. Πρόκειται για μία ρομαντική αμερικάνικη ταινία με τον Μάρλον Μπράντο, στο ρόλο ενός Αμερικανού πιλότου, που ερωτεύεται μία γιαπωνέζα (την Ουμέκι Μιγιόσι). Κατά το σενάριο ο Μπράντο θα εγκαταλείψει την αγαπημένη του, εξ ου και ο “δακρύβρεχτος” τίτλος “σαγιονάρα” (: αντίο).

Καλά όλα αυτά, αλλά τι σχέση έχει ο χαιρετισμός, το μυθιστόρημα και η ταινία με τα τα υποδήματα/ παντόφλες*; Κατά σύμπτωση οι γιαπωνέζες ηθοποιοί της ταινίας φοράνε τα παραδοσιακά τους υποδήματα που μοιάζουν με τις παντόφλες (αργότερα, κυρίως εμεις, οι Έλληνες, θα ονομάσουμε “σαγιονάρα” ) και από τότε θα σημειώσουν μεγάλη εμπορική επιτυχία στη Δύση. Έπρεπε, βέβαια, να δώσουν και ένα όνομα σε αυτά τα υποδήματα και τι το πιο εύκολο από τον τίτλο της ίδιας της ταινίας : Sayonara. Φαίνεται πάντως ότι η λέξη παρέμεινε, κυρίως, στην Ελλάδα, αφού οι αγγλόφωνοι τα ονομάζουν: flip-flops, γαλλ.: Tong, ιταλ: infradito.

Για την Ιστορία της ταινίας, η Μιγιόσι θα γίνει η πρώτη Ασιάτισσα που θα πάρει το βραβείο Όσκαρ. το υπόλοιπο Cast: Marlon Brando (Lloyd ‘Ace’ Gruver), Patricia Owens (Eileen Webster), Red Buttons (Joe Kelly), Miiko Taka (Hana-ogi), Ricardo Montalban (Nakamura)

 

* Η παντόφλα, πιθανόν, ετυμολογείται από το πάντα + φελλός (: εξ ολοκλήρου από φελλό)

 

[via ΔΙΣΤΟΜΟ]

Bubble

SANAA's installation Bubble (2013) in the Calligraphy Square, Sharjah Biennial 11. Image courtesy of Hoor Al-Qasimi.

[via IBRAAZ]

If interested in seeing how the next generation of SANAA is working with circles, read my article at SHIFTboston, Playing with Circles, Curves, and SO-IL, December 2011 [link]

rain-making machine

[via Modern Mechanix]

light fantastic

A viperfish is ready to attack a deep-sea shrimp. (Edith Widder, ORCA)

The ghostly outline of a Japanese firefly squid. (Michael Ready / Visuals Unlimited / Getty Images)

Atolla vanhoeffeni jellyfish. (Edith Widder, ORCA)

Periphylla jellyfish. (Edith Widder, ORCA)

Jellyfish glow with the flow in the Gulf of Maine and the Weddell Sea. (David Shale / NPL / Minden Pictures / Ingo Arndt / Minden Pictures)

A cockatoo squid from the Sea of Japan. (Dante Fenolio / Photo Researchers / Getty Images)

A deep-sea shrimp spews bioluminescent material to thwart a viperfish. (Edith Widder, ORCA)

Finally, the kraken is captured: Widder worked with scientists last summer to obtain the first video of a giant squid in the wild. (NHK / NEP / Discovery Channel / AP Images)

[via Smithsonian Magazine]

light pollution

100 number of times brighter an average city's night sky is than a natural one due to light pollution [Smithsonian Magazine, March 2013]

light & food

175 average reduction in calories consumed per person when fast-food restaurants use softer, more relaxed lights [Smithsonian Magazine, March 2013]

illuminating inequality

Satellite photo of Earth's artificial lights at night. (NASA)

This map shows the levels of poverty throughout the world.(Map by 5W Infographics. Map source by Earth Observation Group, NOAA National Geophysical Data )

Photos from: "A New Way to Illuminate Inequality Around the World" »

Satellite photos of Earth’s artificial lights at night form a luminescent landscape. But researcher Chris Elvidge of NOAA and colleagues from the University of Colorado and the University of Denver realized that they could also illuminate something much darker: the magnitude of human poverty. By comparing the amount of light in a particular area and its known population, they realized that they could infer the percentage of people who are able to afford electricity and the level of government spending on infrastructure development. This allowed them to extrapolate levels of human development—a measure of well-being that includes such factors as income, life expectancy and literacy.

Their Night Light Development Index (NLDI) uses a composite of cloudless night images taken by Air Force satellites. They found that the NLDI (below) measured human development with uncanny accuracy. The results closely correlated with conventional indices and in some cases even surpassed them. “The NLDI helps us get at the spatial patterns that you can’t see with traditional economic indices,” Elvidge says. “For instance, most nations report their GDP at the country or province level, but the NLDI can reveal subregional patterns, down to the one-kilometer scale.” The index also provides information on some countries, mostly in Northern Africa and the Middle East, for which reliable economic data are simply unavailable. 
This text is excerpt from Smithsonian Magazine [link] 

specialization-not

"...the importance of going to a new field and "looking" stupid. there you can ask the right questions..."David Gersten, Winnipeg, February 2013

#the uncomfortable place

something very specific

Something Very Specific sign @ Salvation Army Thrift Store

Project by Giacomo Castagnola

Project by Giacomo Castagnola

Project by Giacomo Castagnola

Project by Yaejin Shin

Sausage Tank, Soyoung Kwon

Anne Callahan presenting her project

Come for the form, stay for the content,  Anne Callahan

Come for the form, stay for the content,  Anne Callahan

Project by Ryan Kuo

Hidden virus behind the curtain

Project by Micah Silver

Project by Micah Silver

Project by Floor Van de Velde

Featured audience (from left to right): Mariel
Villeré, Lydia Ross, and Irina Chernyakova

ART SHOW and EVENTS by Art, Culture and Technology graduate students at MIT. Exploring silence, ambivalence, non-knowledge and psychodynamic interaction. Featuring diagrams for living, Sausage Tank, a signifying baseball cap, and dynamic video displays. May 25 through June 10 at the former Salvation Army thrift store, 328 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

For more info: mit.edu/qwe/www 

People: Micah Silver, Yaejin Shin, Soyoung Kwon, Anne Callahan, Ryan Kuo, Carson Salter, Giacomo Castagnola, Leigh Christie, Floor Van de Velde