Art Basel Miami 2010

Bored? Wondering what to do with your millions? The online catalog for Art Basel Miami 2010 is now available. Because this is Basel Miami it's an exhaustive/exhausting listing of the world's most connected, well stocked, and sought after galleries.

Mary Ellen Carroll - Performance Architecture

Live video stream of the performance today, 11/11 at 11am CST. View HD stream of the performance at the prototype 180 site.

From the website:

The only metropolitan area in the United States without a formal land use policy/no zoning, the city of Houston selected itself as the site for prototype 180, where there is an implicit freedom associated with Houston's 'free enterprise' development.

prototype 180 is, literally, a ground-shifting exercise, in that it structurally involves the rotation, back to front, of a house and its surrounding land by Cherry House Moving. By rotating the house and land 180 degrees, Mary Ellen Carroll is calling for a total reorientation of thinking, of vantage point, and of how we work and how we live. This process Carroll believes a complete reconsideraton in standard operating procedure must occur to encourage new policies of the urban, cultural, and the social. Post the structural rotation, Carroll will retrofit and rehabilitate the unoccupied structure and it will be reprogrammed architecturally.

people people people people people

This is a detail shot from a massive photography project that artist David O'Brien (my brother) began several months ago. After many photo shoots and unimaginable time spent in front of the computer he's begun to finalize several new pieces. Take a look.

Cornell Computational Synthesis Laboratory

From the website -- At the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab we explore biologically-inspired computational and physical processes that allow complex high-level systems to arise from low-level building blocks—automatically. We seek new biological concepts for engineering and new engineering insights into biology.

Nervous System

Nervous System is an industrial design studio founded in 2007 by Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg. Using the Cell Cycle application they developed you can create your own product based on generative software that models geometric patterns and biological functions. Plus it's fun! Follow the link and design your own ring/lamp/brooch/bracelet/dinnerware...

New York Art Book Fair

I guess it's good that I'm not in New York this weekend otherwise I'd spend all my money here at the New York Art Book Fair. 100+ exhibitors plus tons of other events/lectures, etc. Sponsored by the artist book store, Printed Matter, also in New York.

Brion Gysin: Dream Machine at the New Museum

“Had a transcendental storm of colour visions today in the bus going to Marseilles. We ran through a long avenue of trees and I closed my eyes against the setting sun. An overwhelming flood of intensely bright colors exploded behind my eyelids: a multidimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was swept out of time. I was out in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees. Was that a vision? What happened to me?”

-Extract from the diary of Brion Gysin, December 21, 1958

You can find more of the artists work at briongysin.com. Note - the site is under construction but you can still access some images and a number of articles/essays on the Dream Machine and other works.

Ubu Web

Ubu is the absolute best resource on the web for video and performance art. Through an extensive network of supporters this site has created an exhaustive database of early and hard to find film and video works ranging from the earliest film works of the Lumiere brothers to documentaries and works by contemporary artists such as Matthew Barney, Paul McCarthy and Cory Arcangel. A full list of the film and video works is here.

Time Bank

From the website:

Through Time/Bank, we hope to create an immaterial currency and a parallel micro-economy for the cultural community, one that is not geographically bound, and that will create a sense of worth for many of the exchanges that already take place within our field—particularly those that do not produce commodities and often escape the structures that validate only certain forms of exchange as significant or profitable.

Time banking is not barter. Barter economies have been in practice throughout history, but the idea of using time as a unit of exchange only appeared shortly after the Industrial Revolution. The origins of time-based currency can be traced both to the American anarchist Josiah Warren, who ran the Cincinnati Time Store from 1827 until 1830, and to the British industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen, who founded the utopian "New Harmony" community. While both systems are based on the principles of mutualism and the labor theory of value, Josiah Warren's currency was explicitly pegged to time as a measure of specific goods or labor.

-Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle

Wolfgang Tillmans at the Frieze Art Fair

An excellent podcast by the artist Wolfgang Tillmans from this years Frieze Art Fair in London, which just wrapped up. Another great podcast (with video!) can be found here at the Tate London site. Tillmans is known for his unconventional photographic installations where he insists on maintaining complete control over the placement and selection of works to be displayed. The content of his images varies widely and ranges from night club scenes to classical still life images. Most notable is the fact that Tillmans sees no conflict in displaying highly varied subjects and print sizes next to one another as it conveys his ideas of "the everyday" and his interest in the photographic print as a physical object.

Peter Happel Christian and Dan Gilsdorf

Magnitudes and Increments, opening this week at Archer Gallery in Vancouver, Washington features the work of Peter Happel Christian and Dan Gildsorf.

Paul McCarthy at LM Arts

L & M Arts new gallery in Venice is currently showing a new body of work by sculptor and video artist Paul McCarthy. In his first show in Los Angeles in over a decade McCarthy brings together and reworks several different series including his Hummel works - based on kitsch german figurines, and Pig Mechanical - an exercise in political satire as well as McCarthy's own fascination with animatronic rides such as Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean.

Data Visualization

The mid term election is tomorrow and there's plenty of red and blue maps out there to look at. Among the more interesting info-maps is this one available on the New York Times website. It illustrates the twitter feeds of political candidates. Various bubbles shrink and enlarge over time depending on the amount of twitter posts, re-posts, and followers.



Data visualization is a pretty hot field right now, with various artists, designers and programmers finding new ways to illustrate just about anything. Some of the best sites out there include flowing data from Nathan Yau and my favorite, information is beautiful from David McCandless. Check out his TED talk below.



Finally, have a look at MoMA's fantastic show from a few years back, Design and the Elastic Mind.