Category Archives: Visual Art

Australian spaces

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The wide landscapes of Australia are the new spaces of contemporary sculpture

Neil Dawson’s Horizons, made of welded steel, is an imposing 15m high and 36m long.

Anish Kapoor’s Untitled is 25m long, 8m high and made of mild steel tube and tensioned fabric.

Andy Goldsworthy’s Arches was created in 2005. It is partly submerged at high tide. It consists of 11 5m-high sandstone arches.

George Rickey’s Column of Four Squares Gyratory III is 15m high.

Richard Serra’s 257m-long, 6m-high Te Tuhirangi looks delicate from above, but up close become as imposing as the wall of a full dam.

From The Australian

Playing the building

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Playing the Building is a sonic project by ex-Talking Head David Byrne that came to London in 2009. You could sit down at an “antique organ” and hit whatever keys or chords your heart desired—but you wouldn’t be producing notes.

You would instead trigger a “series of devices,” as Byrne describes them: hammers and dampers distributed throughout the building in which you sat. Distant windowpanes and metal cross-beams, hooked up to wires, would begin to vibrate, tap, and gong. Imagine someone like this sitting in the darkness beneath Manhattan, causing haunted musics and unexplained knocks inside rooms and abandoned buildings around the city. Now, even urban infrastructure will be musicalized.

The Ocean of Light

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The Ocean of Light project explores the creative and immersive possibilities of light-based visualisation in physical space. It uses bespoke hardware to create dynamic, interactive and three-dimensional sculptures from light.

Surface is the first artwork to be exhibited using the Ocean of Light hardware. It uses minimal visuals and sound to evoke the essence of character and movement. Autonomous entities engage in a playful dance, negotiating the material properties of a fluid surface.

The Ocean of Light project is a collaborative research venture, led by Squidsoup and supported by the Technology Strategy Board (UK). Partners include Excled Ltd and De Montfort University. Additional support and resources have been provided by Oslo School of Architecture and Design (Norway), Massey University, Wellington (New Zealand) and Centre for Electronic Media Art, Monash University (Aus).

Squidsoup is a digital arts group specialising in immersive interactive installations within physical 3D space. Their work combines sound, light, physical space and virtual worlds to produce immersive and emotive headspaces. They explore the modes and effects of interactivity, looking to make digital experiences where meaningful and creative interaction can occur.

The Ghostvillage Project

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The Ghostvillage Project was created over 3 days on the west coast of Scotland. 6 artists – Timid, Remi/Rough, System, Stormie Mills, Juice 126, Derm – were given free reign to paint in an abandoned 1970s village. Working together on huge collaborative walls and individually in hidden nooks and crannies all over the site the artists realised long held dreams and were inspired by the bleakness and remoteness of the site. Drawing on the history of the village the artists’ stated intent on completion of the project was to populate the Ghostvillage with the art and characters that it deserved.

The Ghostvillage Project from Agents Of Change on Vimeo.

Two videos, same music

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A music video which was derived from the visuals for the Insen Live Tour of Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto where it was generated in realtime and shown on a LED Screen on the stage.

The same music as soundtrack of a video showing the City of Berlin seen from the window of a train.

Ballentine the bird

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coverBallentine the bird is a digital drawing about 20,000 pixels tall and 30,000 pixels wide (roughly 20×30 feet @72ppi). She was drawn using one-pixel wide scribble lines colored red, yellow, blue, white, and black. Because she is so big, I’ve used the OpenLayers mapping API (similar to Google Maps) to allow zoom and scrolling features.

The concept behind the drawing is based on the idea that digital images can be infinite in size. Drawing her entirely of one-pixel wide lines (labor-intensive) is an attempt on my part to undermine the idea that drawing on the computer is merely a shortcut. She was drawn in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet.

Launch Artwork

From Rhizome Artbase

100 movies online

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Open Culture has compiled a list of 100 free movies online. There were 100 in 2009. Today there are more than 4,000 Includes masterwoks by Eisenstein, Huston, Hitchcock, Wilder, Kazan, Kurosawa, Lang, Leone and others. Some movies are for U.S. viewers only.

Now look at the Battleship Potemkin.

Melting men

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Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo created hundreds of sitting figures out of ice. The installation lasted until the last one melted in the heat of the day. Impressive.

Ex Libris

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Sometimes ex libris is more valuable than the book containing it.

That’s the intro of a beautiful page from Dark Roasted Blend (one of my favourites non-musical blog) about this matter.

Take a look, it’s worth while.

ex libris

A big screen

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“The Place” in Beijing, China, is covered by a giant LED screen – 250m (820 ft) long and 30m (98 ft) wide – claimed as the biggest in the world.

from Dark Roasted Blend (scroll the page down)