"IMPERMANENCE" art installation with Ipods

"Impermanence" is an art installation by David & Hi-jin Hodge, part of Exhibition "The Missing peace, Artists consider Dalai Lama":


"A multi-media art exhibition that brings together over 75 well-respected artists, representing more than 25 countries. With the full life of the Dalai Lama as inspiration, the intention for this project is to shift the world's attention towards peace." (extract from the homepage)

The exhibition involves more or less 80 artists among which Yuriko Yamaguchi, Anish Kapoor, Marina Abramovic etc., and has as main purpose, the one of directing world's attention on peace..

The installation "Impermanence" is constitued by a set of 16 Ipods in circular disposition, each of them plugged on its "Ipod Hifi";



At all times, on every display, someone will be talking about impermanence.


There are more than 80 inteviews to several kinds of people, from street people to buddist monks, all speaking about their concept of IMPERMANENCE.
The hope of artists is that during the exhibit, each visitor can find "a face, a person, or a topic they can connect with in some way. Some viewers may choose to circle the room for a few minutes, taking in only a small sample of each speaker. Other may stay for hours." (extract from the project page).

"Beyond the installation": in addition to this, all the interviews will be available in Vodcast format, so everybody can download for free the interviews (there are funny, sad and wise ones); I think it is geat because the content of the interviews really makes you think, and could be an inredibly valid issue, either for psychological researches, either for school classes.

Today I've met the artists and seen some videos of the installation, besides technical aspects (they use Ipods and 100% Apple equipement!!!), there is always that thing that makes projects great: SIMPLICITY!!

Here some other images of the exhibition in Los Angeles.. In 2007 (or maybe 2008) will be at MACRO in Rome.

Tags: multimedia, dalai lama, ipod, art, vodcast, technology, museum

DIIGO, beyond social bookmarking

This web 2.0 application allows to move a step further from social bookmarking: through a browser integrated toolbar, you can easily add notes to websites texts, allowing an activity of SOCIAL ANNOTATION, your annotations will be shared with other users, and in your account page you'll have the bunch of notes related to your researches.. the application has many adds-on, useful to post to your blog with one click, pieces of information and complex posts (with images tags...) and to create linkrolls for your websites (a linkroll is a list of link dinamically updated according to your preferences)

Soon Blocus-amoenus linkrolls

Tags: social bookmarking, social annotation, web 2.0

ubuweb...the archive i like

UBUWEB is a website in which are available audio and video resources about avantgarde, ethnopoetics and outsider art. All the video and audio files are free and, trust me, it was very hard to find this kind of material both for the its peculiarity ( indipendent authors'movies) and for the copyright issues. "thank u web for this!" i want to scream. As the about UBUWEB state : "The pioneers of concrete poetry could only dream of the now-standard tools used to make language move and morph, stream and scream, distributed worldwide instantaneously at little cost."
IF you are intersted in poetry, literature...probably you will like this web archive as much as i like it, a free archive that survives only for an alliance of interest, for a sympthetic feeling.
ps do u like William Burroughs? check the UBUresources:
The Cut-Up Films of William S. Burroughs (1963-1972)

The NY Times raises attention on videogames

Recently the New York Times has published an article on the so called SERIOUS GAMES, referring in particular to the game "the peacemaker", developed by Asi Burak and a team of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Starting on this and other exampples, the article investigates some positions regarding the effectiveness of videogames in education, referring in particular to the study of contemporary political issues (such as the Israeli-Palestine conflict)... other examples are the overcited "12 september" and "FOOD FORCE" sponsored by the United Nations.
By the way the most interesting part is related to the emerging conunciousness of how videogames are nowadays considered as powerful means for communicating to young audiences, even if the lack of rigorous studies on usage doesn't provide accurate data.
I enclosed the link to the article, you have to register, but it's free, and it is always useful to be infromed about what happens around the world!!!

Tags: serious videogames, gonzalo frasca, education, videogames, politics, design, social impact, social

Meditation in the digital era

A Creative project: a meditation tool that uses sacred geometry and relaxing sounds, for an alternative experience during your lunch break!!

Tags: mandala, web, creative, meditation

A message for the community: Making Technorati tagging easy

As maybe some of you noticed, my posts are often tagged with the technoraty tagging system.. doing that is quite easy, but if you want to make it even easyer follow the link..
Using Greasemonkey, a firefox (and not only) plug-in that allows you to run scripts on your browser, and downloading the appropriate script, you will have a tagging window integrated directly in your blogger editor.. easyer to do than to explain!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOCUS-AMOENUS

TODAY BLOCUS-AMOENUS HAS REACHED 500 VISITS... OK IS NOT THAT MUCH, BUT IF YOU THINK AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS "ADVENTURE" (I WAS WORRIED ABOUT REACHING 100 VISIT).. GREAT JOB GUYS!!!

When a simple idea becomes an amazing project

I couldn't stop watching this incredible movie.. colours are treated as actors: browse their portfolios, discover what are their ideal partner (complementary colours), and guess what is the movie more adapt to them.. watch movies that describe all the emotions and moods the different colours can depict, and finally check your understanding in the lab.. IMPRESSIVE!!!

Tags: colors, education, movie, interactive, communication, maria claudia cortes

CALL FOR MEMBERS!!!

RECENTLY I'VE NOTICED MANY UNEXPECTED VISITS TO THE BLOG.. IT WOULD BE A REAL PLEASURE TO INVITE WHOEVER INTERSTED TO JOIN OUR COMMUNITY.. DON'T ESITATE, SEND ME A MAIL, I WILL SEND YOU AN INVITATION... JOIN US!!!!

Tags: CALL FOR MEMBERS

A great example of how to make folksonomy funny!!!

This flash based experiment has been developed by Nick Goward, and realizes one one the dreams of many children around the world: attech a message to a balloon let it fly and hope somebody will read your message and send you back the postcard!!!
This project is real-time based, and explores folksonomy possibilities to create a living archive indexed on a geographic base..
I found it simply great!!!

Let's talk about games and art

Two interesting games can be example of how it is possible to depict art through new media: the first PACMAN MONDRIAN, is quite debatable, since in a way, it "rapes" Mondrian art skipping any educational aim, focusing on the visual similarities between Mondrian abstract works and the famous 80's videogame.. moreover any authorization has been asked, for the direct allusion to Mondrian..

The second is Mr. Picasso, and interactive sketch-pad, that allows to recreated images in a perfect Cubist style; in my opinion this is really nice, since an always growing collection of the created images is stored

Tags: pacman mondrian, mr. Picasso, videogames, art, interactive

FIRST REPORT FROM "BROWN BAG LUNCHS" OF SFMOMA

Ok guys, as I promised to some of you, I'm going to update you about the educational activihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifties for interns provided by SFMOMA (I went there yesterday, great place!!!):

Today issue is: SFMOMA ARTISTS GALLERY (founded in 1978)
Located in FORT MASON CENTER, near Golden Gate Bridge (see some picture on mminsf)
the Artists Gallery is a gift from Marina Parmenter and Sally Lilienthal
to SFMOMA, to support local artists.
The gallery offers the possibility to young artists to exhibit their works, supporting them economically through an innovative rental program: people can freely go to the gallery and browse works, rent them for a period of 2-3 months (privates do that, but even business companies, restaurants..).
The average permanence of works of art in the gallery is 6 months, but it often happens that they stay longer.
The gallery hosts works from 900 local artists, and there is an exhibiting space located on the first floor, that purposes works by several artists, selected by the curator.
Once a year there is a big exhibition, where celebrities come and buy works, only for the will of supporting local art (last year Michelle Phifer went there!!!).
The staff is composed of 8 people plus an intern (in the future may be you!!) with different roles, but each of them acts as a consultant for clients.
Since the "mission" of the gallery is to support local artist, artists take the 50% of rental fees, and the 60% of sale price (that has been told to be more than the average).
The environment is, generally speaking, very nice, people are kind, but the work is quite hard, since there are huge works, and workers have really to be trained in order to move the big works present in the gallery!!!
Finally an observation: there is no a call for artists, who wants to exhibit simply sends slides ( preferred to digital versions), that are evaluated, accepted or refused (more than 200 slides visioned each day!!). Artists are responsible for framing works, frames have to be simple and resistant (not elaborated ones), since works are constantly moved from one place to another.
The gallery mostly accepts:
- Paintings
- Sculptures
- Photographies

No ceramics are accepted (with some exceptions), since they are too fragile...
And now, what you all were waiting for: photos!!!

Tags: ARTISTS GALLERY, RENTAL PROGRAM, LOCAL ART