Google vs. Bloggers

A new user interface is being forced on us bloggers. My and others' experience indicates it's harder to use and offers much less control over the look of posts. Presumably it's also designed to facilitate greater incursions on our privacy. So far, we've been allowed the option to continue to use the old interface, but that's supposed to end soon.

Tenuously related UPDATE: Google's now getting heat from regulators for its collection of people's emails and other private data in the course of its street view photography – invading our privacy without our permission or knowledge – and then lying about it to regulators; more at Wired.

The Armory Show, and a Few Observations

So here, finally, are my photos from the Armory Show 2012 – the "Contemporary" pier only. I saw lots of wonderful work, although I can't say anything totally blew my mind this year, either here or at the other shows seen on this trip; but that may have more to do with my previously perhaps-somewhat-retarded state of understanding of contemporary art, and the fact that art in Dallas may be catching up with the bigger art centers, than with any deficiency in the art on offer in these shows. (In fact, it seemed to me that, on a per capita basis, there may be as much or more great contemporary art being made here as in NYC.) A few general observations. Admittedly, it may be that what I noticed had a lot to do with the interests I went in with, which lately trend toward big-picture, substantive concerns . . .  

1. Complexity. While minimalism gave us (among other things) an appreciation of how much info is actually embedded in or implicated even by sensory fields that appear quite simple, art now seems to reflect our attempt to process how complex our world has become and to come to grips with complexity itself. We're deluged with more info, faster than ever before, and must not only process the individual bits, but try to understand how info in different areas of experience interrelate – how things intersect or are layered, reflected or echoed, how that makes them appear from different points of view, and what kinds of over-arching order can help us interpret and manage them without over-simplifying them, etc. [My apologies that I failed to note the artist or other info re- the work shown at left; if you can enlighten me, please do, and I'll update this post.] 

In contemporary art, this seems to me to show up not only in the kinds of juxtapositions of various, often incongruous styles and subject-matters characteristic of post-modernism, but also in the presentation of lots of detail in ways that are very inter-related and layered, both substantively and often in quite literal, physical ways – often while evincing a retained, minimalistic awareness of how much info is actually carried by even the most basic elements within the work. In addition to the image at left, see, e.g., the mobile by Pae White starting here, at the Independent Fair. Many works that embody or refer to this kind of inter-relatedness, intersection, layering, and/or reflection also seem to me to refer to issues of dimensionality.  

2. Multi-Dimensionality. As some of you may be aware, I'm very interested in such questions as: what can exist in which dimensions; how are or might things that extend into higher dimensions be perceived in or otherwise affect things in lower dimensions, and vice versa; what are the relationships among the dimensions themselves; etc.? Art has in the past been concerned with the fundamentals of manufacture and perception; the pendulum's been swinging back, and/or has perhaps now come full circle, to concern itself with metaphysics. (Installation at right: Jonathan Schipper, Slow Room in Miami (2011); a related video shows an even larger roomful of furniture being slowly pulled toward a similar hole in the wall.) I think of time as the fourth dimension – I understand that's appropriate from a scientific point of view – but in addition to points, lines, planes, spatial volumes, and time, I'm also thinking of, e.g., virtual spaces, such as in imaginative or conceptual, mental realms, or in cyberspace, or in the realm of data generally – the latter three seeming like more or less the same thing. More of us are actually living our lives more and more fully and more collectively in these virtual realms.  

One artist dealing with both complexity and dimensionality is Mary Reid Kelley (mentioned in my post on the last Site Santa Fe biennial here), whose b&w videos emulate the look of slightly surreal graphic novels, i.e., 2-D, though obviously shot in 3-D and recorded in 4-D, with titles and settings that literally invoke the imaginative dimensions of ancient myth and somewhat more recent history, and with relatively wordy, rhyming scripts that remind one a bit of epic poems. Dimensionality was also explicitly invoked in the work shown starting here, at the Independent Fair. (Still at left from Kelley's The Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011).)  

3. No Monopoly on Truth. There are many aspects of the dimensional inquiry that interest me, but, e.g., the virtual or conceptual realm sometimes seems to exist outside of time and space, even if we can only experience it from within time and space; e.g., clichés seem true at nearly all times, everywhere; ditto math. And my own insights and artistic inspirations sometimes seem to involve not so much my personal creativity as my somehow simply accessing stuff that already existed in some timeless, etheric realm; and I suspect many scientists feel the same way about their discoveries. (Image right and the following two show works by Michael Riedel; see also here et seq.) Until recently, intellectual property law recognized that, while you can copyright a tangible expression of a fact, or patent a device or process that deploys it, you cannot own the fact itself; in a quite literal sense, no one could have a monopoly on truth, at least not for long. Now, of course, over-reaching extensions of law permit corporations to patent actual gene sequences and lock up inspirations for lifetimes after the artists who expressed them died.  

Artists have been exploring these issues for quite a while now, but they remain unresolved and continue in evidence in contemporary works. Perhaps no one can have a monopoly on truth not only because expressions of it are to some degree relative to particular contexts, but also because there's a sense in which truth "wants to be free" – though we all also want those who provide useful expressions of it to be able to make a living. And of course, many of the efforts of governments or corporate management to hoard or otherwise control the flow of info seem to many of us tragically wrong-headed at best, and more often than not, as Julian Assange has suggested, evidence of corruption. As devastating as many of our wars have been, there's perhaps no greater conflict now unfolding than the infowar, the struggle between old and new power structures over who will control access to information (as evidenced in the ongoing efforts to shut down Wikileaks and whistleblowers, promote our reliance on the Cloud, and otherwise control the internet). These issues seem part of Michael Riedel's concerns in his large images (resembling crosswords and QR-type codes; and consider the actual texts {as usual, click on any of these images for larger/more legible versions}, including the way they were installed (look at their "reflections" in the purple "surface" – something's wrong . . . ).  

4. Our Interdependence Within the Virtual World. Other aspects of the virtual that I think we're wrestling with have to do with ways in and the extent to which our "real" lives are being supplanted, absorbed, and consolidated into our virtual lives, and our dependency on one another and on the technologies and organizations that make our virtual lives possible. In "real" life, even though you might not want to live as a total hermit, it can be done, at least in some parts of the world. But our lives in cyberspace can't exist at all without the many other people and organizations that make and maintain the necessary hardware, software, energy sources, etc.  

As you can see from the images within this post, some of my favorite works seem to address more than one of the areas mentioned above. With respect to our dependence on "clouds" of other people and technologies, some works deployed literal images of clouds; Leandro Erlich's Cloud Collection (2011) aligned 2-D layers to create clouds, while Philippe Parreno's Marquee, Atlas of Clouds (2012) similarly layered 2-D neon "pages" in a "book" – in both cases, the results could be interpreted either as 3-D but not 4-D or vice-versa; i.e., each complete cloud could represent either a set of 2-D cross-sections of a cloud in one shape in 3-D, all at the same, single instant in time, OR a series of images of a cloud captured in 2-D only but taken over a period of time, as its shape changed. In the case of Parreno's work, of course, the title suggests that what he had in mind was a series of images of different clouds; yet the book format seemed to me nonetheless suggestive of a flip-book, with the possibility that the images might in fact be of one cloud that morphs to become something different at each moment in time. 

 5. New Media. In another vein, forgive my complaint that, while there's been an explosion of exciting video and other new media work during the last ten years and more, we're still getting to see very little of it. The Armory and the Whitney tried to address the problem by offering seated screenings of compilations of videos. This does not put the videos thus shown on par with works in other media, since the videos were shown just once or, at best, a few times, while works in other media were shown continually for the entire duration of the exhibition. The arrangement seems esp. paltry given that video, by its very nature (≥ 24 FPS, with audio), can encompass more info than works in other media – i.e., good video can require as much or more viewing than works in other media, not less. The Moving Image Fair is commendable; but much more needs to be done. You can find my posts on the other 8 fairs or shows I saw on this trip (with links to photos) here (scroll down to get past a repeat of this post).

Many too small boxes and Maru.

(Thanks, Ben!) More Maru vs. variously-sizes boxes at mugumogu's channel.

Ideas

. . . it occurred to me recently that perhaps life's a pendulum not so much between pain and boredom, as I understand Schopenhauer wrote, but, at least in the bigger picture, between consciousness and oblivion (both, in my experience, having their merits).

Which may just be another way of saying what I've believed for some time, that the life of the universe is driven by entropy and syntropy, with first one and then the other predominating.

Based on what I see here on Earth, it looks to me like we're on the entropic swing toward greater consciousness (i.e., greater disorder in the physical world {per the second law of thermodynamics} and greater order in the abstract world of information and consciousness).

And as Yeats wrote, "All things fall and are built again, / And those that build them again are gay."

I'm also starting to wonder if all of reality is inter-dimensionally fractal.

May 1st: General Strike

More info here.

And just in time: if you missed the 99% non-violent action training, you can take it online here.

New Project

Provisionally called the OccuLibrary, instigated by me and Lizzy Wetzel.  Blog at OccuLibrary.blogspot.com.

Just What I Needed this Morning

(Thanks, Ben!)

OccuLibrary Project Debut Tonight

At the The Fallus Dart Air, 5 - 9PM, Shamrock Hotel
4312 Elm St., Dallas between Peak and Carroll (more details at the link): GlamROccuLibrarymentary Trailer Shoot 1 (2012), by me and Lizzy Wetzel, with performances by Sally Glass and George Quartz.

The Fallas Dart Air also includes works by Kristen Cochran, Lanie Delay, Vince Jones, Kirsten Macy, Margaret Meehan, Ludwig Schwarz, Marjorie Schwarz, Edward Setina, Lizzy Wetzel, Lily Hanson, Peter Ligon, Marianne Newsom, Brian Ryden, Noah Simblist, Sunny Sliger, and Saul Waranch.

R.I.P. Thomas Kincade

(Thanks, Paul!) More customized paintings at Something Awful.

Occupiers & Others Preparing for General Strike May 1; Noam Chomsky Endorses 99% Spring

Back in the 70's, experts believed that the improvements possible through technology would increase worker productivity to the point that the 40-hour work week would inevitably shrink to 35 or less, and that we'd all have more leisure while enjoying the same or a better standard of living.

Part of that prediction came true: worker productivity in the U.S has exploded since then. Yet instead of having more leisure and greater wealth, our inflation-adjusted incomes have actually dropped, even while our work week has increased to 50 hours and more, and even though, in most families now, both parents work.

What happened? If you read this blog, you already have an idea (e.g., see here or here).

May 1, a holiday in many countries, is the annual commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, when Chicago police fired on workers during a General Strike for the eight-hour workday. Now, OWS, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Chicago, Occupy Oakland, other General Assemblies, Labor organizers, immigrants’ rights groups, artists, faith leaders, and others are preparing for a General Strike on May 1, calling for all of us to take the day away from school and the workplace, to show that we will not continue to accept corporate and governmental systems that exploit the many in order to enrich the few.

More info on the May 1 General Strike here and here.

"99% Spring" is a congruent but separate effort – see my previous post here; more here, here, and here – which has now been endorsed by Noam Chomsky:

Independent Fair

Fair website here; NYT review here; my photos here. There was lots of great work; but if I had to pick one work that's really stuck with me, it was the 16mm film by Daria Martin, Closeup Gallery (2003), from Maureen Paley gallery, London. I was also happy to get to see another video by Laleh Khorramian, whose work I'd admired in the 2010 Site Santa Fe biennial. Additional posts on the NYC Armory week shows here.

 

More Cool Gifs

. . . at Flux Machine. (Thanks, Ben!)

"Crapestry"

– that's the name of the site; modification of a commercial pattern. More here (thanks, Julie!)

Drawdio

Thanks, Ben!

Dependent Fair

So you heard about the Independent Fair; but there was also the Dependent Fair, occupying 6 floors of a Comfort Inn on the Lower East Side. The offerings varied widely; OWS even got a room.

The rooms were small and plagued by darkness, glare, and color reflected from yellow walls; nonetheless, many galleries managed to mount interesting mini-exhibitions. I esp. liked the shows installed by Audio Visual Arts, Foxy Production, and Silvershed.

The first image (right) shows part of the "Ministry of Lamination" installation from AVA; the second, a frame of a video by Michael Bell-Smith, from Foxy; the third, offerings from Silvershed. Good articles with photos at Art Fag City and eyes-towards-the-dove; more of my photos here.

More posts on the 2012 Armory week art fairs here.