NaJa & deOstos, The Hanging Cemetery of Baghdad, 2008

In a recent article published on the Foreign Policy in Focus website, Provisions’ associate John Feffer writes about a compelling political project initiated by artist Joseph DeLappe. Iraqimemorial.org is an online exhibition and call for participation to propose concepts for memorials to the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed in the War. DeLappe has invited artists, architects and designers to submit their projects to a website, where they will be judged by jurors and the general public. The website itself will then be a virtual monument to the 81,632-1,120,000 civilians who have died. Reflecting on various issues that block the actual realization of monuments, Feffer writes: “In a world increasingly dominated by Facebook, Google and YouTube, such a virtual monument may well have as much longevity as anything made of concrete or granite.”

The diversity of approaches is remarkable:

* A three-panel painting of an aerial attack on civilians in homage to Diego Rivera.
* A representation of a wall destroyed by a bomb attack.
* A billboard proclaiming This War Is Unjust.
* A thin copper strip that encircles Baghdad.
* Photographs of a model in various locations wearing a T-shirt saying Kiss Me I’m Iraqi on one side and Kill Me I’m Iraqi on the other.
* Test of tubes of blood substituting for the profits of major oil companies as represented in a bar graph.
* A garden in the shape of Iraq.

Here for the online exhibition.

Here for the article.

Sam Durant, Proposal for Iraq War Memorial, Symbolic Transposition of effects of war in Iraq to the U.S. and England: 10 Downing St., Parliament, U.S. Capitol and the White House [detail], 2007

The ICA in London did a similar project last year when they invited 26 artists from around the world and used the exhibition medium as a backdrop for proposed memorials to the War. The memorials addressed topics such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the country’s slide into civil war, the deaths of soldiers and civilians, and the conflict’s relation to global jihadism and the War on Terror. The exhibition was self-critical, in the sense that it recognized the impossibility of finding a definitive memorial. It explored different views of the Iraq War and questioned what can or should be memorialized in the context of an ongoing conflict.

Here for an article on the ICA show, Memorial to the Iraq War.

Brian Boyko did a short-subject documentary (27 minutes) exploring the DIY/Maker movement via last Fall’s Maker Fair Austin.

The third annual Bay Area Maker Faire will be held May 3-4 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. If it’s anything like last year’s, it should be a spectacular event. I’ll be there. Here’s what I had to say about last year’s Faire: Makers vs. The Blob.

Here to watch the documentary.
Here to find out more about Maker Faire.

When I was a teen, I had this perverse fantasy of wanting to break out into musical numbers in stultifying and stupid situations. Did life really have to be this routine? This predictable? This gol-dang sonambulistic?

Not if Improv Everywhere has anything to do with it. Originating in New York City, and now with growing chapters across the world, the group stages elaborate musical numbers in public places, such as this one, done in a mall food court. The group is also involved in the No Pants events, where people agree to ride the subways (of New York, DC, and other cities), on a given day and time, sans pants. The whole thing is coordinated online so that participants get on at different stops, giving the appearance of a spontaneous desire on the part of citizens to drop trou.

There appears to be a growing “movement” of people interested in doing these sorts of playful dada-esque street actions. Zombie walks are another, where groups of seemingly unconnected people show up in an urban area in full Zombie costume and makeup, shuffling along, mewing for brains. All of these types of events use emailing lists, sites and services like Facebook and Twitter, and the supreme tool for so-called “flash mobbing,” the mobile phone/text messaging to organize.

I for one can’t wait to see more of this sort of thing and can’t wait to be on a street corner or in a dreary mall food court when somebody busts out into a showy number, ’cause I’m going to join in. Hell, maybe I won’t even wait. “Springtime for Hitler” in Lafayette Park, anyone?

Here for more about Improv Everywhere.
Here for Improv Everywhere Global.
Here for more on Zombie crawls
(more…)

I recently fell upon a book called Art of Justice: An Eyewitness View of Thirty Infamous Trials. The book, by Marilyn Chruch, is an assemblage of courtroom illustrations of the most talked about US trials over the past quarter century. In her sketches, Church has captured the emotional roller coaster-ride of thirty high-profile trials, featuring courtroom scenes with OJ Simpson, Sean Combs and Martha Stewart. With a love for detail, the artists’ fast and vivid pencil strokes are accompanied by some of the her own commentary on her perspective inside and experience outside of the courtroom: “I’ve drawn the tears of victims, the pointing finger of the accuser, the despair of the condemned, and the joy of the acquitted. While other artists are drawing still lifes, landscapes, and nudes, I knew after my first day in court, that I was hooked on drawing people in open warfare battling to save themselves.”

Skimming the pages of the book, I began to ponder about the job title “courtroom sketch artists”, its meaning, the different artistic styles and the implication of modern technology and recent laws passed in several states finally allowing cameras to videotape courtroom trials.

I continued my research and found this highly informative web post on Iconic Sans answering many of myquestions.This post is a great survey of several different courtroom artists, featuring their different artistic styles and influences, their lives outside of the courtroom, and what has made them become a courtroom sketch artists in the first place.
Enjoy!

I love the ingenuity that folks frequently exhibit online and how a simple and effective solution to something can get scooped out of the Net and passed around the blogosphere so that thousands, even millions of people can benefit. Today’s example of that is a macro lens a guy bodged together for his iPhone camera from a lens off a dead digital camera. Add a paper clip and some tape to hold the lens on and protect the iPhone body, and he had a clip-on lens. The second picture above shows the results. And probably in the time it took me to post this item, 100 more such small hacks were likely posted… to Flickr alone.

Here to read the initial blog item.

Speaking about new and innovative ways of integrating the arts into our everyday lives, especially our workplaces:
In western Romania, traffic and law enforcement officers have started to take ballet lessons with professional dancers from the Timisoara Opera Ballet. “The aim is to develop an ability to regulate traffic and achieve elegance in their movements, which will not only be agreeable to the eyes but could also help drivers waiting at a red light get rid of their stress or sadness,” the head of the community police in the town of Timisoara, Dorel Cojan, told AFP.
Although this experiment is probably prone to encounter much ridicule and resistance, I personally am very much interested in the documentation process and the outcomes and findings of this exercise. For a quick peek at the elegance of their newly attained movements check out this link.

Mapping as artistic practice can be a highly subversive tool; I’m especially attracted to its ability to provoke radical new perceptions of places, people and power structures. Merging geography, art, science and activism, it’s a perfect vehicle to promote social change. An Atlas is a traveling exhibition of radical cartography. The participating artists, architects and collectives take on issues ranging from identity to land-use to migration while exploring the map’s role as a political agent.

Currently on view until March 12 at the Redhouse Art Center in Syracuse, New York.

The exhibition coincides with a publication by The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration:

[…] Such new understandings of the world are the prerequisites of change. We define radical cartography as the practice of mapmaking that subverts conventional notions in order to actively promote social change. The object of critique in An Atlas of Radical Cartography is not cartography per se (as is generally meant by the overlapping term critical cartography), but rather social relations. Our criteria for selecting these ten maps emphasized radical inquiry and activist engagement.

Edited by Lize Mogel & Alexis Bhagat, with contributions by Institute of Applied Technology, Trevor Paglen & John Emerson, Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), Jane Tsong, and many others.

Here for more info.

One of the cooler trends to come out of the high-tech DIY/hardware hacking movement has been the creation of a bunch of cottage-industry electronics parts and kit sellers, many of them run by couples. The products these people sell are frequently designed and assembled by them and have a quality and an attention to detail that betrays their labor of love status. Here are some of my favorite such home-grown Radio Shacks:

Solarbotics: Dave and Cheryl have been selling robot kits and parts for at least a decade. I’ve bought from them for as many years and am always impressed by everything they do. As the name implies, they specialize in solar cells, solar power circuits, and robotic parts and kits. The kits are amazingly well-made, fun to build, and very educational.

Evil Mad Scientist Labs/Evil Mad Science Shop: Lenore and Windell’s blog, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, is always a treat to visit as they thoughtfully explore their world, hack its contents, and share what they find, and what they make, with the rest of us. They sell a number of LED-based kits, including an amazingly cool motion-triggered LED coffee table. These kits and other cool stuff are now sold through their new online store: Evil Mad Science Shop.

SparkFun: The folks at SparkFun sell all sorts of microcontrollers, sensors, robot parts, and electronics tools. What started out as a pet project for a couple of college students has turned into a full-blown business.

Adafruit Industries: Limor Fried, AKA Lady Ada, is an MIT-educated engineer who’s become something of an icon in the open source hardware hacking movement. She makes and sells amazing kits and microcontroller boards and parts through her store Adafruit Industries. Above is pictured her extremely popular x0xb0x synth kit.

A few days ago, I blogged a video on MAKE, a 17-minute piece done by a French amateur radio hobbyist. It shows him creating triodes, an early type of vacuum tube used for amplification, from scratch. The “performance” on the video is virtuosic, the artisan showing such ease and panache in doing fabrications by hand that are unheard of these days, such as creating the glass bulbs that he uses. He even does little flourishes between each step, like a close-up magician accenting a complicated card trick. The whole thing, even the old-school Gershwin soundtrack and the little placards between “scenes,” is utterly charming. The builder apparently also built many of the machines he uses to create his tubes.

The video has become something of a darling of the Tech/DIY blogosphere, now showing up all over cyberspace. It’s amazing how resonant this kind of lost artistry and handywork has become for so many of us. So many people have posted on the blogs and emailed me saying how inspired they are by the piece. I’d love to think it’ll get more people into their garages, their basements, and at their kitchen tables, trying a new craft or building something cool and/or useful. There’s something about making physical objects, with your hands, learning new skills, and pushing the limits of your talent and creativity that is unmatched. And in this video, we see someone in a league by himself. But hopefully, not for long.

(Unfortunately, we can’t display the movie format in-line. You can view it on the Make: Blog link below.)

Here for Make your own vacuum tubes?

One of the more amazing web 2.0 enterprises to emerge in the last couple of years is Instructables, which bills itself as the “World’s Biggest Show & Tell.” Think of it as Flickr crossed with a how-to mag. Members post how-tos on everything from how to open a CD package to how to renovate your house or rebuild your car engine, you name it! The quality of the instructions runs from the elementary (as in grade school-level writing and spelling) to the most professional. Some people even combine the photos and how-to instructions with YouTube video tutorials that are shown in-line within the Instructable. Like any self-respecting web 2.0 social network-dependent site, there are various groups you can join, comments to the postings, tagging, and lots of Instructables done in response to, or inspired by, previous postings. Instructables also partners with various other companies and orgs to do contests, with prizes, centered on Halloween, green tech, creative re-use, science, and other themes. If you’re an avid do-it-yourselfer and you’re not already familiar with Instructables, you’re in for a real treat.

(Disclosure: I work for O’Reilly Media which is invested in Instructables)

Here to the World’s Biggest Show & Tell