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From the series Midway: Message from the Gyre

“These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.” Courtesy of Chris Jordan.



http://www.chrisjordan.com/
http://flavorwire.com/45351/pic-of-the-day-2-4-million-pounds-of-plastic-pollution
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=8

Maryanne Amacher (1943-2009)

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/10/maryanne_amacher_1943-2009.html
http://www.maryanneamacher.org/Amacher_Archive_Project/Amacher_Archive_Project.html

TRASH HUMPERS, new film by HARMONY KORINE

Sarah Maple

Interviewed in Flavorwire.


A post in Bitch Magazine.


Her official site

'SCHENGEN Control Observation Point' by Schauplatz International

taken from Laura Palmer Foundation project's description

Schauplatz International, one of the most interesting Swiss independent theatre groups of the moment, employs journalistic methods in its work. The artists always begin by conducting thorough research: interviewing people, searching for information on the Web, inspecting the site, and comparing various viewpoints. The result is a theatre that is community-oriented, political, and documentary. Schauplatz has, for instance, recreated onstage the interviews immigrants have to go through when applying for asylum in Switzerland, re-enacted live the movie Free Willy, and exposed tax fraud in the Swiss town of Zug through the active participation of tax experts and corporate managers. Poland’s admission to the Schengen zone and the fact that Frontex, the European Union’s external-border security agency, is located in Warsaw, were the reasons for Schauplatz’s interest in Warsaw and the 10th-Anniversary Stadium. In the middle of the field of grass that had overgrown the pitch the artists recreated a portion of Poland’s eastern border, which is also the EU’s Eastern border, on a scale of 1:1. A control observation point was constructed on the crown of the stadium, from which viewers were able to monitor the EU’s Eastern frontier. During the eight hour-long live installation, the artists picnicked on the pitch, held discussions about the abstractness of borders, the construction of national identity, and the meaning of the EU flag. Their voices were relayed to the crown of the stadium, and binoculars and telescopes were provided for the viewers to view the action.

The starting point for the performance was the reflection that stadiums and borders are meant to build national identity. While stadiums are concrete architectural objects whose construction takes several years to complete, borders are products of our imagination, involving contracts, symbols, and potential violence. Both borders and stadiums are supposed to tell us who we are. Until recently, Frontex had its offices near the Stadium. The agency, in collaboration with the police, the military, and the secret services operates rapid-intervention teams and organises people-hunts and charter deportations. As a result, illegal immigrants resort to ever more dangerous ways of crossing borders. On their way to work every day, Frontex employees passed the Stadium, a place that, like national borders, used to divide people between legals and illegals. Schauplatz’s one-day live installation required close observation. When the artists saw the 10th-Anniversary Stadium for the first time, they immediately realised that their performance had to dialogue with scale, with dimension — ‘large’ vs. ‘small’, the hugeness of the stadium vs. the littleness of the individual within it. They wanted to give the viewer the possibility of different views. One of those was looking through binoculars at an ordinary piece of grass, where nothing happens. The artists did not force themselves on the stadium; instead they created a situation of live exhibition, turning themselves into objects of display. They also invited special guests.

One of those was software expert Hubert Kowalski, who in a matter-of-fact manner described the functioning of software that makes it possible for border guards to tell whether it is a human or animal crossing the border. He described robots that can recognise movement, objects, or the presence of living organisms, and explained the functioning of heat-sensitive cameras installed along borders. He also added that his hobby was re-enactments of historical battles. A little earlier a refugee from Chechnya, Aslan Dekaev, had appeared on the pitch, followed by someone who re-enacts events from World Wars I and II. The artists then wondered out loud whether fifty years from now military-history enthusiasts will be re-enacting the events in Grozny. The situation of obliqueness, uncertainty, and non-action created by Schauplatz was intentional, as the artists consciously renounce control of the situations they set in motion. With their subdued inaction, they provoked viewers to stroll about the Stadium, to enter the field of action — as if the artists’ presence were not important, and they were the reason the viewers were there. ‘We had the impression we had become a sonic background for the audience. It may be somewhat disappointing for an actor, because it means he has failed to attract viewers’ attention. But the Stadium seems to have simply been more important than us.’

http://www.schauplatzinternational.net/

Harold Cohen

Harold Cohen, former director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA), was an English painter with an established international reputation when he came to UCSD in 1968 for a one-year Visiting Professorship. His first experience with computing followed almost immediately, and he never returned to London. Cohen is the author of the celebrated AARON program, an ongoing research effort in autonomous machine (art making) intelligence which began when he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1973. Together, Cohen and AARON have exhibited at London's Tate Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum and many more of the world's major art spaces. They have also been shown at a dozen science centers, including the Ontario Science Center, the Boston Science Museum and the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry. Cohen represented the US in the World Fair in Tsukuba, Japan, in 1985. He has a permanent exhibit devoted to his work in Boston's Computer Museum.

One of the few artists ever to have become deeply involved in artificial intelligence, Cohen has given invited papers on his work at major international conferences on AI, computer graphics and art technologies. His work is widely cited in the literature, and it is the subject of Pamela McCorduck's AARON's CODE: Meta-Art, Artificial Intelligence, and the Work of Harold Cohen (Freeman).

In more than two decades AARON has produced many thousands of drawings, to a few dozen of which Cohen has added color. The goal of his current research -- by far the most difficult to date, he says -- is to have AARON do its own coloring. This phase of the project is now well under way. The painting machine with which AARON colored real drawings in the real world was premiered at an exhibit at the Computer Museum in Boston in the spring of 1995.

http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w05/cohen_h.htm

Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa the creator of 'The 99'

Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa is the creator of THE 99-the first group of superheroes born of an Islamic archetype. THE 99, has received positive attention from the international media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, Wired, Elle, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Recently, Forbes named THE 99 as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the globe.
http://www.al-mutawa.com/?Biography

The story of 'The 99' the comic
As the leader and mentor of The 99, Dr. Ramzi Razem directs the quest to find the lost Noor Stones of Baghdad, which is the comic book’s main plot line.

As legend has it, when the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, they razed the largest library in the city, Dar al-Hikma. To erase any record of the civilization, they threw the books into the Tigris River, which ran black with ink. But the caliphate guardians, in a desperate attempt to save the vast knowledge of the library before it was destroyed, concocted an alchemical solution that would absorb the contents of the books. The solution solidified into the 99 Noor Stones, which supposedly contain the lost knowledge of the Library of Baghdad.

Ramzi believes the legend, including the idea that the stones activate superpowers within certain people. He conducts his search through the nonprofit 99 Steps Foundation, and although possessing no superpowers of his own, he helps other characters to use theirs.

Darr-The Afflicter (one of the characters), an American paraplegic who manipulates nerve endings to transmit or prevent pain.
http://www.the99.org/the99/
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0619/p04s01-wome.html

Superflex

“The work of Superflex is about
social-economic practice. Unlike many visual artists, we don’t offer
criticisms or critiques, we propose real solutions to real problems”
http://superflex.net/

Bjornstjerne Christiansen, Rasmus Nielsen, Jakob Fenger form the Copenhagen based art collective SUPERFLEX. They have worked together for fifteen years. The focus of SUPERFLEX’s exhibition at ARTSPACE, If Value, Then Copy is on copyright issues. Exploring concepts around branding, ownership of products, images and ideas, their ongoing practice in this area includes projects such as Guaraná Power. For this project SUPERFLEX worked with farmers in the Brazilian Amazon to create a drink called Guaraná Power, this involved the formation of a new brand that closely followed and yet subtly challenged the leading brand, whose monopoly on the market was impinging on the rights and conditions of the local farmers.

SUPERFLEX are committed to questioning dominant world power relationships and developing economically viable structures for specific communities. Their strategy includes what they describe as tools:

“The work of SUPERFLEX is about social-economic practice. Unlike many visual artists, we don’t offer criticisms or critiques, we propose real solutions to real problems.” Says Bjornstjerne, who is in Auckland till the end of October. “Our fundamental premise is that there is too much ownership in terms of intellectual property, trademark and copyright laws, and this excess of power needs to be challenged.”
http://www.artspace.org.nz/exhibitions/2008/superflex.asp

The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal

http://www.toutfait.com
more on Art Science Research Laboratory
http://www.asrlab.org/

Edward Ihnatowicz

Edward Ihnatowicz was a Cybernetic Sculptor active in the late 1960's and early 1970's. His ground-breaking sculptures explored the interaction between his robotic works and the audience, and reached their height with The Senster, a large (15 feet long), hydraulic robot commissioned by the electronics giant, Philips, for their permanent showplace, the Evoluon, in Eindhoven in 1970. The sculpture used sound and movement sensors to react to the behaviour of the visitors. It was one of the first computer controlled interactive robotic works of art.
http://www.senster.com

Panoscope 360 by Luc Courchesne

http://panoscope360.com/
http://tot.sat.qc.ca/dispositifs_panoscopes.html
http://www.lamic.ulaval.ca/recherche/lieux_de_recherche/laboratoire_de_visualisatio
http://www.pfoac.com/zOLDSITE/artists/lc-english.htm
http://www.pfoac.com/index_FR.html#VIEW
http://www.din.umontreal.ca/courchesne/

"There is nothing in a Caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a Butterfy"

by R. Buckminster Fuller

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge Idea Index
http://challenge.bfi.org/ideaindex

The Whitney's Buckminster Fuller: Starting with Universe
http://www.whitney.org/www/buckminster_fuller/about.jsp

Leonard Shlain

Dr. Shlain is a best-selling author of three books, Art and Physics: The Parallel Visions of Space, Time and Light, Alphabet Vs. The Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image and Sex, Time & Power: How Woman’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution. A favorite among artists, scientists, philosophers, anthropologists and educators, he has lectured at such venues as Harvard, The New York Museum of Modern Art, Cern, Los Alamos, The Phillips Collection, Florence Academy of Art and the European Council of Ministers. His fourth book about Leonardo Da Vinci “Leonardo’s Brain: The Right - Left Roots of Creativity” is nearly completed and in typical Leonard Shlain fashion he is determined to finish it, however he will be canceling his currently scheduled speaking engagements.
http://leonardshlainsbrain.com/site/

Queens for a Day a film by Pascal Magnin

Part I


Part II, Part III, Part IV

Slavoj Zizek's "Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses"

speech in NYC. You can watch it here
http://www.lacan.com/blog/index.html
ot read it here
http://www.lacan.com/zizecology1.htm
more articles and relevant themes on: http://www.lacan.com/lacan1.htm

Pascal Lievre

http://www.lievre.fr/fr/index.php
Watch the videos of Pascal Lievre... and the re-contextualization of famous songs.
A Jesus Christ singing Gérald De Palmas's "Marie" or
two women in love singing Liz MC Clarnon's "Woman in love"
and many more like this...
Some reviews:
Pascal Lièvre born in 1963 in Lisieux. Lives and works in Paris.
Specialising in the diversion of pop music, Pascal Lièvre proceeds an a surgical manner, re-injecting some sense into well-known tunes, always with the intention of provoking revealing collisions. With very limited means, like a whole branch of contemporary young video artists (static shots, hardly any editing, minimal lighting...), the Parisian artist gives his often virulent opinion on the evolution of our societies. This is exactly what we expect of a video-maker today, humour included.
Pascal LIèvre, born in 1963, lives in Paris. His work as a painter began there more than ten years ago and has developed into the "musée des ombres". This video allows one to follow his research and his recent works were widely shown in major film festivals. Since 2000, the videos are based on the principle of karaoké by Abba Mao where the artist sings a passage from "petit livre rouge" of Mao Tsé-Toung to the rhythem of "Money, Money, Money" by Abba mixing the cultural symbols. While singing, his picture is erased little by little until his complete disappearance under red make-up, drowning itself in a background of the same color. .

"Charity is a humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation."

a line from Slavoj Zizek's book "Violence".
Read more in a piece entitled "Clash of the Titans" at the Haaretz.com blog, Shlomzion Kenan writes about the recent debate between two "superstar philosophers," Bertrand-Henri Levy and Slavoj Zizek, at the New York Public Library in late September.

Leandro Erlich

A master of illusion, Argentinean artist Leandro Erlich has amazed audiences with whimsical installations, sculptures, photographs, and videos for the past decade. His video installation Le Trottoir (The Sidewalk) is one of the highlights of the Chanel Mobile Art exhibition, and his celebrated Swimming Pool installation is currently enchanting visitors at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City. Artkrush editor Paul Laster recently sat down with the globetrotting artist at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel to discuss his past work and his new installation at Prospect.1 New Orleans.

http://www.artkrush.com/mailer/issue96/#interview

http://www.leandroerlich.com/

http://www.galerieperrotin.com/fiche.php?id_pop=100000506&&idart=24&&dossier=Leandro_Erlich&&num=39&&p=2

Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation by Brian Massumi

“If you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime” (Massumi 18).
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0822328976
http://notdetroit.wordpress.com/category/parables-for-the-virtual/
http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2182
http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=yXUPCX5axbcC&dq=Parables+for+the+Virtual,+Brian+Massumi&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=I7GSuJGvj3&sig=bmJ8h0aJqOLW2QD9e6kf9zfyH_A&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA46,M1

The Maastricht McLuhan Institute

The Maastricht McLuhan Institute (MMI), European Centre for Digital Culture, Knowledge Organisation and Learning Technology, was officially opened by Dr Eric McLuhan (the son of well-known media theorist Marshall McLuhan) in November, 1998 and began its formal activities in January, 1999 at the Grote Gracht 82 in Maastricht.
The mission of the Maastricht McLuhan Institute (MMI) is to study and develop methods for knowledge organisation and knowledge management in a digital, distributed, multimedia world. These methods will be applied to cultural heritage, the design of learning technologies and new electronic services for business. Research will also explore the implications thereof.

Here you can find all about perspective in many articles wtitten by Dr Kim H. Veltman - Scientific Director and Manager Digital Culture of the instistute.
Download for free two of the forth volumes of his seminal work:
Bibliography of the Literature and Sources of Perspective.
Volume 1. Sources of Perspective
Volume 2. Bibliography of Sources
Volume 3. Literature on Perspective and Appendices
Volume 4. Bibliography of Literature
http://www.mmi.unimaas.nl/people/Veltman/publications.htm#Perspective