portraits from look art

  
  

  

look art opens

last week the project look art—a turbulence commission—opened and it even seems like it has been well received. it has taken me a couple of days to recover, because i was testing right up to the last. my insomnia payed off; i was able to stack up the gallery and extras in time. i will wait for another post to talk about the extras.

this first instantiation of look art is three artist's take on the classic multi-user gaming format. known as a Multi User Shared Halluciantation (MUSH) or Multi User Dungeon (MUD), these socially (and usually fantasy) oriented game environments thrived at the advent of our network culture. partially an expression of the need to communicate and partially because the computing of the time could only operate with very limited graphics, these environments were (& are) the domain of text. akin to today's fan fiction or that era's choose-your-own-adventure novels, this was(& is) a highly interactive platform that were shifted toward a high level of imagination rather than a suspension of disbelief.

i proposed to use the space to explore Lewitt's art and language methodologies. my work with geometries and pattern in the space bored me and i soon found it was much more interesting to work with portraiture. i began to incorporate the social aspect into the work by painting a series of colleague portraits. the process was challenging it required me to use photo processing, automated coding, and then i spent a considerable amount of time (sometimes hours) at the end on the portraits 'correcting' the ASCII characters to build better images. in the end it was much closer to my traditional painting process than i first imagined it would be.

the other two pieces in the show are very intriguing exploratory works.

Christopher Poff has created a interactive manifesto that burdens the players with the weight of Meaning and Purpose as well as Artist and Art. Alejandro Duque is using the work to prototype out a mixed realities type of piece where he wants to connect up physical interfaces with the MUD. this is definitely an intriguing idea and i will be watching his progress closely.

if you want to go in with a guide, i would be glad to play Virgil, just drop me a line.

a lecture proposal with dramatic Keanu expletives

i will be doing a lecture for the Leisure Learning Society this October on the history of the Internetz and WWW from the perspective of an artist. after i sent it in, i found out that the guy who had encouraged me to lead a community ed. course actually served on the board of the non-profit company that ran the backbone for NSF.

<Keanu>

WHOA!

</Keanu>

and then he told me that he was one on the authors on the incorporation documents for Edunet.

<Keanu>

Dude.

</Keanu>

i have asked Bob if i can interview him and i will definitely have to do more homework! anyway... here's the proposal:

The Byzantine History of the Internet and the World Wide Web

This lecture is a detailed look at histories of the Internet and World Wide Web from the perspective of an artist and research academic. Thomas will examine the confluences of military, social, and technological advances during the 19th and 20th Centuries which led to our contemporary world of highly connected and intertwined information systems. Some (but not all) of the historic figures and institutions to be covered include: Optical Telegraphy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, DARPA, Paul Baran, Stanford Research Institute, Eglin AFB, Tim Berners-Lee, the National Science Foundation, and the W3C.

when it rains it pours!

YAY (mini)Maker Faire is coming to Atlanta! ...while i am in Istanbul. Wow. That was one of the fastest let downs in history.

¡you! yes, you. you need to go. unless you are accompanying me to Turkey this is a special thing, i was at Maker Faire 1 and 2. do not miss this opportunity.

http://www.makerfaireatl.com/Atlanta_Mini_Maker_Faire/Home.html

the Kickstarter campaign marches on

i am discovering that fundraising is a game in the truest sense. it is not that i am specifically looking for loopholes to game Kickstarter. i have just come to the conclusion that the whole nature of raising money for a project is actually a quest based resource gathering system with tons of variables. I can compare it to a kind of puzzle quest that requires solving to unlock the next in the quest line. fundraising requires a balance of tone and honesty; no glory-hounding but not feel embarrassed about saying that we really believe this to be a cool project. and the way you say it is so different in formality and tone depending if you are addressing the Dean, a friend, or a philanthropic agency.



we are about 10 days from the deadline and very close to 50% which has raised our visibility on the Ks webpages considerably. i believe that if we can get a few more bucks from several people—can you spare a $10, friend?—that we will be well on the way to getting on the front page. we have pulled ahead of two CNC projects as of this week which is no mean feat because those project are very important right now.

so...
if you are one of my readers/friends even a $1 helps so please consider donating. here's the link