Sadie Benning's "Play Pause" at the Images Fest

at the Power Plant, Toronto – wish I could see this!

More on Sadie Benning's work at Video Data Bank.

"Blueprint" at The M.A.C.

(in Dallas), curated by James Cope of the Goss-Michael Foundation, the show includes work by Brian Fridge, Amy Revier, Ted Setina, and Paul Slocum.

For Slocum's triptych, Skiing cat, Heathcliff, Garfield (2009), he appropriated an image of the cat and cleaned up the resolution, then created two more rather eery, Garfield-ish images, including the one at right. Also included in the show is Slocum's One frame of a GIF animation printed and hung above a video projection of the same animation scaled to approximately 66%, which is well worth seeing in the flesh. Slocum is represented by Dunn and Brown Contemporary.

Setina's most impressive piece, Concentrations # 2:DOPP[L(E)(L)REFLE[X(CT)ION] (2009), involves a video projected onto a free-standing, frosted glass screen mounted on a low white pedestal (note: a related piece has a similar title, punctuated slightly differently; the foregoing title is as shown on the List of Works available at The M.A.C.) In the video, a life-size Setina, wearing a white space suit, is on his hands and knees – which seem to rest directly on the white pedestal – and he appears to be vomiting. On the pedestal beneath Setina's head is a one half of a large, dark red pool – on the side of the screen away from the projector and toward center of the room; the half of the pool that should be on the other side of the screen is missing. (The image is a documentation photo shot during the filming of the video.)

There's a lot to think about re- these and other works in the show, so check it out; through Sat., Oct. 10. More info at The M.A.C.'s site.

Rome to Be Re-Built in a Day

at the Arthouse in Austin, TX, and you're invited to help; starting Friday, Sept. 25 at midnite. From the ArtHouse website:

A durational, participatory model-building extravaganza and dynamic history lesson, The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project is a recreation of the ancient capital city in historical order. Over the course of 24 hours, more than a millennium of Roman history is brought to life. . . . [the project] unfolds at approximately 1.238 years per minute, beginning at midnight with the building of Romulus and Remus’ huts in 753 B.C.E. and ending 24 hours later as Alaric and the Visigoths sack the mini-empire in 410 C.E. The city’s rise and fall takes place within Arthouse’s walls, under the direction of Los Angeles-based artist Liz Glynn, and with the help of diverse Austin community collaborators and energetic volunteers. The giddy, almost manic progress is photographed and recorded as night becomes day and day becomes night. The city is constructed from salvaged building materials, like wood and cardboard, while special guests enact climatic moments of Roman history. Musical performances, poetry readings, scholarly lectures, architectural tours, hands-on workshops, athletic competitions and feasts are among the many planned events and activities that breathe life into the ancient historical record. In a spectacularly delirious finale, the kingdom is trampled and destroyed by a once constructive and now bloodthirsty team.

The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project epitomizes Glynn’s persistent use of classical antiquity to refract truths about contemporary society. The artist initiated what became months of intensive research for this project as a response to the re-building of post-Katrina New Orleans and war-ravaged Iraq, in which contexts the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is often cited. Rome’s political and military history is, of course, inscribed into its architecture, making this project more than an investigation of streets and buildings; Glynn is touring us through the life and death of a world and a people.

The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project was presented in 2008 . . . at Machine Project, an alternative space in Los Angeles and in the recent exhibition, "The Generational: Younger than Jesus," at the New Museum, New York. Glynn’s iteration of the project at Arthouse has been customized and “Texas-sized”—that is, conceived on a much larger scale and augmented with many additional activities. . . .

Sounds cool; more at the link above.

World's Stocks Controlled by Few

A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each country's financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country's market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.

"You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense," Glattfelder said. “From that you're able to . . . unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn't at all important."

The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston's analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.

More at InsideScience.org.

Vitreous Viruses

by Luke Jerram. The sculptures will be exhibited at The Smithfield Gallery, London, Sept. 21 - Oct. 3. More info at the artist's site.

Jerram also has an interesting-sounding book coming out soon, Art in Mind.

The sculptures remind me of Texas artist Jen Rose's STD Glasses (2004) – drinking glasses with portraits of Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Herpes microbes etched on them.

Re- Facebook

Great article at ReadWriteWeb, "What Facebook Quizzes Know About You":

"[M]illions of Facebook users taking quizzes are revealing far more personal information to application developers than they are aware of. . . . whether or not your profile is set to 'private.' Even worse, the ACLU reports that even if you shun quizzes yourself, your profile info is revealed when one of your friends takes a quiz. Want to see how bad the problem is? Just take the ACLU's Facebook Quiz and prepare to be shocked."

(Emphasis supplied.) "Application developers" means, of course, anyone who develops quiz or other application for use on FB, including various Big Bros. and, potentially, crooks.

"[U]sers can limit how much information applications (including friends' applications) can see by tweaking their privacy settings. . . . To do this yourself, go to Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Applications [-> Settings]. From there, you can uncheck the boxes next to the items which you don't want apps to have access to."

Note: if you've ever taken any FB quizzes or used any other apps, you'll need first to go to the Applications page and uncheck all the applications with x's across from them (which are still authorized to share all your info).

From a friend who teaches

"My student was showing us his tattoos. He has his mother's name on each arm – first name on left, last name on right. I said, 'Oh, how sweet! Why did you get your mother's name on your arms?' He said – completely deadpan – 'That's the only way she'd let me get a tattoo.'"

(Thanks, Deb!)

Why We REALLY Need the Public Option

As you know, the rationale is that the public option would give private insurers competition.

Opponents of the public option say, we can achieve our goals by passing laws prohibiting private insurers from cherry-picking insureds, excluding pre-existing conditions, etc.

(Of course, if we don't include a public option, we'll also have to regulate premiums. Otherwise, private insurers will have no incentive to keep costs down – including excessive executive pay and costs due to inefficiency or fraud – and they'll just pass those costs on to us and our employers. But of course, opponents' real plan is to try defeat any meaningful regulation – i.e., to avoid any meaningful restrictions on premiums, any requirement of universal coverage unless fully subsidized by taxpayers, etc.)

What I have yet to hear mentioned is that, if we just pass a lot of new prohibitions and requirements for the insurance industry without creating a public option, we'll also need to create a substantial new regulatory apparatus to make sure the insurers comply with the new rules. And we'll all have to stay on our toes to make sure that Congress continues to fund that agency at adequate levels.

The SEC was once known as one of the most effective regulatory agencies in government. Then it was defunded to the point that it simply lacked the manpower and resources to properly perform its responsibilities. Voilà Madoff and many other disasters.

Having a public option means we won't need a new regulatory apparatus to keep watch over private insurers' every move. Instead, insurers will be inherently incentivized to create and sell insurance products that match or better the public option.

We've been told for decades that private companies are more efficient than government. I'm sure that if the real costs of a public option turn out to exceed those for private insurance, the private insurers will let us all know about it.

(And I'm sure that if the healthcare provided by the public option turns out to be as terrible as they say, private insurers won't have any trouble selling us their whole or supplemental policies.)