Australian Government Plans to Require Payments to Original Artists on All Subsequent Sales

[The Australian Government] "is determined to introduce a resale royalty scheme this year giving artists a percentage of the sale price whenever their work is sold. The details have yet to be finalised but some industry bodies have called for a flat rate of 5 per cent on all sales and for the royalty to apply to all works sold for more than $500. That would mean an artist who sold a work 10 years ago for $500 could reap up to $10,000 if it was sold again for 200,000." Per The Sidney Morning Herald (more that the foregoing link), via artkrush.

New Company to Assume Production of Polaroid Materials

"The investor and philanthropist Daniel H. Stern and long-time Polaroid artist John Reuter have reached "an agreement in principle" to assume production of the chemicals and products needed to make Polaroid images, The Wall Street Journal reports. . . . [but they are apparently interested in producing] a particular, and rather rare, form of Polaroid. Their new company, 20X24 Holdings LLC, will support only the Polaroid 20x24, which was introduced in the late 1970s as a glamor product. The 20x24 produces large-scale images and, according to [The WSJ], 'requires a camera as big as a refrigerator, an enormous lens, movie-bright lights, and, crucially, skilled operators.' Though only six of these cameras were ever made, the 20x24 was critical to the careers of such artists as Chuck Close, William Wegman, Lucas Samaras, Elsa Dorfman, and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders." Via Artinfo; more at the link.

ok it starts with a shredded forearm

Best DU OP of the Month

What if huge oil reserves were discovered up dick cheney's *ss?

Would we invade and occupy? Would the ol' face shooter move to an undisclosed location to protect his assets?

Would we drill there, drill now?

As one respondent said, "Shock and Ow!"

Thanks, Philosoraptor!

Why I'm not sure I can ever stay on Manhattan again, unless it's for free.

The cupcakes are cool; but.

If only the implicit promise were true, that you'll be cute if what you eat is cute!

For What It's Worth

Some work I'd have liked to have included in The Program, if we'd had the means, by the Russian collective, AES+F: see here et seq. (from the 2007 Venice Biennial; as usual, I felt like I missed getting the best parts) and here.

Sharp Intake of Breath

1,503,631 views so guess I'm the only one who missed this. If you haven't seen it, it's a must:



Ever-erect hair forever!

UPDATE: The Program, Week Four

So click here for full details regarding this week's exhibition, which includes two more pieces by Nathalie Djurberg, Stealing Beauty by Guy Ben-Ner, and iMirror (A Second Life Documentary Film by China Tracy a.k.a. Cao Fei).

But here's the scoop on one installation new this week. In Second Life, eteam has created a dumpster for the virtual things people there decide to delete. At right, see a bunch of "virtual-virtual" objects selected by me, Danette Dufilho, and AC Abbott per eteam's guidelines to resemble such discarded items (which were of course originally designed to look real). These objects were then photographed by Ben Britt and me from multiple angles, and eteam used the photographs to construct virtual-virtual-virtual objects, which they placed in their dumpster in Second Life -- see the following virtual photographs of the objects they made and put there (if you see the objects in "Real Life," eteam's work is even more impressive -- nice work, eteam!). Next, eteam "filmed" the programmed decay of these objects, sent me the file, and it's playing on the tv included in the installation.

The artists see Second Life Dumpster as "a continuation of their interest in the value of property, possibilities of land use, (web) site specificity, ownership, and investment."

I also see this project as, among other things, part of a trend toward art as mad scientist-experiment. See more of eteam's findings from this research here.