Man with a Movie Camera

Dziga Vertov's classic Chelovek Kinoapparatom (Man With A Movie Camera 1929) available for free download from the Internet Archive

Doug Aitken's Sleepwalkers

Doug Aitken's Sleepwalkers an eight screen video installation on the facade of MOMA following the journeys of five New York city inhabitants.

China's Art factories

From Spiegel online Southern China is the world's leading center for mass-produced works of art. One village of artists exports about five million paintings every year -- most of them copies of famous masterpieces. The fastest workers can paint up to 30 paintings a day. - the article focuses on the village of Dafen and Huang Jiang whose enterprise in the 90's once produced 50,000 paintings in a month and a half for Wal-Mart!

via Eyebeam Reblog

Open Skies 2.0

Installation view of Hachiya Kazuhiko's Open Skies 2.0 exhibition at the NTT Intercommunication Centre, Tokyo. Hachiya is best known for his Air Board series of jet engine powered hoverboards based on the hoverboard from the Back To The Future.

This exhibition itself was a gallery based presentation of the process of planning, building and flying self built aircraft, but unlike the AirBoard you can't fly in a gallery so instead visitors were offered the chance to win a simulated ride by completing various tasks. I'm interested at the moment (as my MA show approaches) in approaches to presenting work which happens outside of the gallery in a gallery context and this impresses me wioth it's effective balancing of sculptural objects natural to a gallery space with process documentation which can come across sometimes as tedious and a bit overly precious if not handled properly. The obvious comparison (flying machines) is of course with Belgian artist Panamarenko except with the (not only) conceptual difference that these flying machines actually left the ground. Of course, me being me, I wondered did they actually fly, would it be better work if they didn't but the artist went to elaborate lengths to convince us that they did, or does it matter?
More images at my flickr page.

Garrett Lynch's Quote Me

Every good artist has at least one quote, aphorism or soundbite attributed to them, yet the new media artist barely has time to keep up with the rapid change of technology let alone spend time thinking of witty aphorisms.
Garrett Lynch's Quote Me is a work, triggered by users to its web page, that reuses quotes and the date they were expressed from various online sources for the busy new media artist who hasn't time. Quotes are relevant comments to current political and social events, both nationally and internationally, taken from the current headlines of a handful of global newspapers via their respective rss / xml feeds, yet placed without context or explanation.
more about the work here

Andy's on sale again

I've been thinking about Warhol a lot recently and really seeing his influence on a lot of current 'media art' so I was amused when I discovered (via Kottke) that Barneys department store in New York are selling

limited edition soup cans with authentic reproductions of Andy Warhol designed labels. Printed on special quality paper and with Andy's signature (reproduced). Campbell's soup with Warhol labels

Keeping with that theme I also discovered recently the BMW art car project which Andy did in 1979 painting, unlike other artists, directly on the car with a paintbrush and seemingly unlike other artists the only one who had a bit of fun with such a naff idea.
via hanne mugaas artblog

Chinese Crackers and Irish art

Art Forum has a fascinating account of the burgeoning Chinese contemporary art market (image from Chinese Crackers, 2006 film based on Ed Ruscha's 1969 Crackers) booming with new money and I can't help but compare it to the Irish contemporary art scene. Throughout art history important periods of development in contemporary art have tended to coincide with economic booms as new money got into new art, think of the Renaissance, the Impressionists, abstract impressionism etc.. It's obviously happening in China right now so it would make sense that with all the new money in Ireland that there would be an almost Frieze-like unseemly scramble for the latest cutting-edge art, right? Well... not exactly. Have a look at the results from the latest record breaking Adams Irish art auction and it becomes obvious that there is a boom in the Irish art market alright but it's not contemporary art that's selling. I wonder what is about the Irish that sets us apart from this particular historical trend?

Make Magazine in Dublin

An interesting event next Tuesday 12th, 7pm at the Odessa Club in Dublin Dale Dougherty and Sherry Huss of MAKE magazine will give an informal presentation followed by a conversation about their work in creating Maker Faire, an event bringing together art, science and home-made technology.

via the excellent Blackletter Irish Arts portal.

Art Stars vs local artists virtual soccer challenge

As part of the all hawaii eNtrées / luNar reGGae exhibition opening tomorrow at IMMA Pallas studios in the spirit of global and local exchange and by way of introduction to the artists of Dublin City, has invited the international artists from All Hawaii Entrées / Lunar Reggae, to select a Best XI of artists, for a Virtual football challenge, off-site in the Pallas studios. Participants include from the local side Brian Duggan, Mark Cullen, Gavin Murphy, Gillian Lawlor, Vanessa O'Riely, David Beattie, Mark Cullen, Niamh McCann, Seodin O'Sullivan, David Beattie, Vanessa O'Reilly, Conor McGarrigle,Tim Redfern, John Buckley and LIVE commentary from Nevan Lehart and on the art star side Anri Sala, Carsten Höller, Jorge Pardo, Dominique Gonzalez Forester, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Doug Aitken, Douglas Gordon, Liam Gillick, Sarah Lucas, Alighiero e Boetti, Sarah Morris, Cerith Wyn Evans and Michel Majerus. Kick off is 3pm Thursday 30th at Pallas Studios 17 Foley St Dublin 1.

GoogleBono back online

You may or may not have noticed that GoogleBono has been offline for the last few days, this was due to the Google Maps switchover to version 2 of the API which I had neglected to upgrade to. As the coding of the first version was such a terrible hack it was also an opportunity to do it properly but now I'm glad to say that the new and improved Bono Probability Positioning System V. 2.01 is now back online.

Claude Closky Net Artist

Net art by Claude Closky, I liked Pedagogy, U and his free wallpapers aren't bad either. And he's blogging too.

John Gerrard at the RHA Dublin

John Gerrard's new exhibition Dark Portraits opens at the RHA Dublin this Thursday and includes the sublime (pictured)Smoke Tree III. Highly recommended.

Second Life artist in residence

The Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center in Second Life has a call for proposals for their artist in residence (AVAIR)programme

Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR) is an extended performance that examines what it means to reside in a place that has no physical location.

Ars Virtua presents artists with a radical alternative to “real life” galleries: 1) Since it does not physically exist artists are not limited by physics, material budgets, building codes or landlords. Their only constraints are social conventions and (malleable-extensible) software. 2) The gallery is accessible 24 hours a day to a potentially infinite number of people in every part of the world simultaneously. 3) Because of the ever evolving, flexible nature of Second Life the “audience” is a far less predictable variable than one might find a Real Life gallery. Residents will be encouraged to explore, experiment with and challenge traditional conventions of art making and distribution, value and the art market, artist and audience, space and place.

deadline is 21st of November and there is a stipend in real money.
via Rhizome

Conor McGarrigle @ Reno Interdisciplinary Festival of New Media

I'm exhibiting in the 1st Reno Interdisciplinary Festival of New Media at the University of Nevada, Reno until December 15th. RIFNM 06 highlights an international selection of work by graduate and Phd students working with new digital technologies for the creation of art. Artists working in and across disciplines were invited to submit works to be considered for five interrelated events/venues: exhibit, netart, perform, project(full-dome) and present. The resulting festival schedule of events presents a unique opportunity to directly experience innovative work being created by a diversity of emerging artists exploring digital systems for visual and experiential production.

Participating Artists/Affiliations:
-Arthur Elsenaar and Remko Scha, Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom
-Gudmundur S. Gunnarsson, Mills College
-Sabrina Berryman, University of Utah
-Margaret Noble and Edyta Stepien, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
-Jolanta A Lapiak, NSCAD, Nova Scotia, Canada
-Martin Machado, San Francisco Art Institute
-Suzanne Yo Martinsen, University of Central Florida
-Pete Froslie, Massachusetts College of Art
-Alejandro Duque, European Graduate School, Switzerland
-Jamie Timms, University of California, Santa Barbara
-Mike Godwin, University of California, Santa Barabara
-Conor McGarrigle, National College of Art & Design Dublin, Ireland
-Stephanie Jeanjean, Graduate Center of CUNY (City University of New York)
-Melissa Grey and Robert Kirkbride, The New School, New York City
-Pamela Kray, The New School, New York City
-So Jung Kwon, Otis School of Art and Design, Los Angeles
-Si Jae Byun, School of Visual Arts, New York City
-Walter Nelson, Griffith University, Australia
-Stephen Cady, University of Illinois, Chicago, School of Art and Design
-Jeanne Jo, Rhode Island School of Art and Design
-Jake Lee High, Massachusetts College of Art

Paper Rad

Installation view of the Paper Rad exhibition at the Green on Red gallery, Dublin. The exhibition continues until the 19th of November.
More images here

Limit Telephotography

Trevor Paglen's photographs of 'secret' US military bases and CIA 'black Sites' using high power telephoto lenses in the 1300 - 7000mm range at distances of up to 40 miles.

via Rhizome

Every Death in the Friday the 13th Series

From Rhizome every death in the Friday the 13th series, 7 minutes worth back to back in chronological order
Similar is Jamie Shovlin's print Every Victim and Manner of Death in the Friday the 13th film Series

and of course the McCoys sublime Every Anvil which does a similar thing with Looney Tunes.

Via Rhizome

Pinchneck & Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square

From the autumn update at the great UbuWeb Bruce Nauman's Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square available to download. I saw this during the summer at the excellent Mouvement des Images exhibition at the Pompideau in Paris and it really is worth the download.

I wonder what's on TV now

From a nice new batch of graffiti on Moss St in Dublin

Denis McNulty wants to perform in your apartment

As part of his Anti Tour 2 - the Nineties for DEAF06 festival musician/artist Denis McNulty is touring apartments (preferably built in the 90's) in Dublin city centre (i.e. the part of the city between the North and South circular roads). Interested in hosting a performance check out the details here.

Thomas Hirschorn's Camo-Family

One of two large Thomas Hirschorn pieces at Frieze, the more I see his work the more impressed I am by it and he's now 42 in the art power list. When I was looking at this there were two young Americans taking great offence at what they saw as it's anti-american stance.

Nobuyoshi Araki's A/film light box with slide strips, one of three at $70,000 each which sold out with the gallery reporting that demand was so high they could have sold 100s of them.

More images of both in my Flickr Frieze Set

Do-Ho Suh installation

Detail of the floor of Do-Ho Suh's installation at Frieze. He really is one of the most interesting artists around today.
More images of the installation in my Flickr Frieze Set

The more I work the poorer I am

Estonian artist Kai Kaljo documents a week of work in 25 photos with text and discovers The More I work the Poorer I Am. I know that feeling.
More images at my Flickr Frieze Set

Frieze Art Fair

Kicking off an idiosyncratic series of reports of what caught my eye at the Frieze Art Fair in London which I caught on Saturday. The image is of Alexei Shulgin (of easylife, 386dx fame) & Aristarkh Chernyshov's Medamirror an interactive work with a camera pointing at the viewer and software which then scrambles the image in a variety of ways. It wasn't clear if the software was contained within the frame or whether there was an external computer - though the only visible external cable was for power- all contained in a very slick acrylic/plexiglass type frame. I counted 15 red dots.
More images at my Flickr Frieze Set

Top 100 most powerful in art

Art Review's annual list of the most important people in art, topped by François Pinault owner of Gucci and Christies, biggest movers the Frieze founders up to 8 from 33 and Google in at 100. Interstingly Jerry Saltz, art critic for the Village Voice (who is actually a good critic) is at 57, Thomas Hirschhorn at 42 and Andreas Gursky at 22. Bruce Naumann is the highest placed artist at 9 followed by Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst at 10 and 11 respectively.

More celebrities then ever before : Frieze opens

The Art Newspaper (PDF) reports on the Frieze art fair preview in London yesterday with more celebrities, more collectors and Tracey Emin's breasts all the important topics are tackled.

I'll be heading over to London on Saturday to check it out.

McCoys in the Washington Post

Feature article about Jennifer and Kevin McCoy( one of the most interesting artistic duos working today) in the Washington Post.

Via Rhizome

A crowd is not a proper condition for the reception of a work of art

From Art Forum a report that curators Eric Troncy and Stéphanie Moisdon turned down an invitation to curate this year's Parisien Nuit Blanche citing technical and structural reasons with Troncy adding the immortal words

A crowd is not a proper condition for the reception of a work of art.

The Nuit Blanche was run by former Palais de Tokyo co-directors Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans and had 1.5m visitors up from last years 1.3m

Carsten Holler at the Tate

Carsten Holler's installation at the Tate Engine Hall which open tomorrow. The installation consists of five slides including one which falls five stories, and yes you can slide on them.

more photos here

Judging the Turner Prize

Celebrity interviewer Lynn Barber on her year as a Turner Prize Jurist, the big question is why was she on the jury in the first place?

Oh yeah and the short list is out too.

Real Time Rome

Real Time Rome is an MIT SENSEable City project which uses aggregated data from mobile phones, buses and taxis in Rome to give real visualisations of the dynamics of the city. Curently on show at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
via emprye list

Culture Night

Tonight is Culture Night in Dublin where museums and galleries and cultural institutions stay open until 9pm (some 'till 10).It's a great idea and I welcome it as such but the execution is so disappointing. 9pm is late night shopping, the Tate opens till 10pm every Friday and Saturday so it's hard to get excited about opening an extra 3 hours once a year. Culture Night is based on La Nuit Blanche in Paris which is a 7pm - 7am night of inspired mayhem which takes over the city. While I accept that you've got to start small it would seem to me to that midnight should be the starting point. Still go out and support it, maybe next year...

La Science des rêves

I saw Michel Gondry's brilliant (his best yet and Gael García Bernal's best role) new film La Science des rêves / The Science of Sleep in Paris during the summer. Watching it I thought that the sets belonged in a gallery - turns out I was right and Deitch Projects in New York have an exhibition of the sets. Interestingly Sophie Coppola's Marie Antoinette was also released in France this summer and like The Science of Sleep has still to hit the cinemas here yet.

Hellfire

I was at the launch of newest Irish literary sensation Mia Gallagher's first novel Hellfire last evening. Hellfire is the big autumn Irish book from Penguin Ireland, the weekend papers were full of reviews and interviews, and you can't miss it in all the bookshops. It's great to see books of this calibre get the attention they deserve. IMO this is a major new Irish literary voice and Hellfire is an important novel about where Dublin is now that everyone should read. Recommended.

Fold Together Nuclear Shelter Model

Make your own fallout shelter.
via The Fat Channel

Conflux

Conflux is the annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice. It also has lots of very cool projects and is well worth checking out.

John Maeda's advice to students

When you're younger: Do More. Think Less.
When you're older: Do Less. Think More.

via Maeda's simplicity

Google Bono in El Pais

Google Bono was featured in Spanish daily El Pais yesterday in an article about artists working with surveillance cameras.

Vending Machine art

The art vending machine at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin. I attended the opening at Crawdaddy last night where it was an almost complete sell out but there should be still work left in the Project and Connolly Station.
More pictures at my Flickr

Little People

Little people fending for themselves on the streets of London.

Via Wooster

The Vending Machine Project

The Fringefest Vending Machine Project launches tomorrow at Crawdaddy 6pm, all are imnvited. The machines will be in the Project Arts Centre, Crawdaddy and Connolly Station and there's a full list of all the works available. Some pretty good stuff there and all for a fiver! Methinks you'll have to move fast to get your hands on some of those. I must mention that my work whereismyart.com - a limited edition of 12 - will be for sale in the Project Arts Centre machine.

X-ray records

In the 1950s in eastern Europe nightclubs made pirate copies of western records which were cut onto recycled x-ray films, digibodies has a gallery of them.

via Kevin Kelly

A portrait in Google Earth

A collection of over 100 placemarks for Google Earth showing locations mentioned in Joyce's A portrait of the Artist
via Google Earth community

Broken Forest

Henrik Håkansson's Broken Forest at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Henrik Håkansson's After Forever (ever after) at the same exhibition. More at my Flickr account
.

Turn me on dead man

Turn me on dead man an exhibition by Paul Murnaghan at the Basement Gallery Dundalk open this Friday the 18th 7.30 pm
The title of Paul Murnaghan’s latest exhibition refers to a reversed message embedded in a 1960’s vinyl album, it could also be read as an elastic mantra applicable to varied factions through the ages. This new body of work comprises of drawing, installation, video and sound. The drawing is a necessary device, used only to reference places and people from a past life accessed through hypnotic regression.

Murnaghan acts as documenter, illustrator and guinea-pig whilst exploring elements of cultural phenomena such as glossolalia 1 and reverie. By aligning diverse psychologies, he leads us to a place of obsessive yet common conviction, that allows the seemingly neurotic to be declassified and returned to the norm.

His practice is process-based, it often involves the construction of mnemonic devices and immersive research within disparate environments. The results when gathered, documented and positioned, display an intricate and potent sense of inquiry into the mechanics of memory and belief.

Basement Gallery Town Hall
Crowe St. Dundalk 042 9396437
basementgallery-at-dundalktown.ie
Opening Hours: Monday - Friday 10 - 4:30 Saturday 10 - 1

Turn me on dead man

Turn me on dead man an exhibition by Paul Murnaghan at the Basement Gallery Dundalk open this Friday the 18th 7.30 pm
The title of Paul Murnaghan’s latest exhibition refers to a reversed message embedded in a 1960’s vinyl album, it could also be read as an elastic mantra applicable to varied factions through the ages. This new body of work comprises of drawing, installation, video and sound. The drawing is a necessary device, used only to reference places and people from a past life accessed through hypnotic regression.

Murnaghan acts as documenter, illustrator and guinea-pig whilst exploring elements of cultural phenomena such as glossolalia 1 and reverie. By aligning diverse psychologies, he leads us to a place of obsessive yet common conviction, that allows the seemingly neurotic to be declassified and returned to the norm.

His practice is process-based, it often involves the construction of mnemonic devices and immersive research within disparate environments. The results when gathered, documented and positioned, display an intricate and potent sense of inquiry into the mechanics of memory and belief.

Basement Gallery Town Hall
Crowe St. Dundalk 042 9396437
basementgallery-at-dundalktown.ie
Opening Hours: Monday - Friday 10 - 4:30 Saturday 10 - 1

The Man on the Street

A great quote from composer Morton Feldman

My teacher Stefan Wolpe was a Marxist and he felt my music was too esoteric at the time. And he had his studio on a proletarian street, on Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. . . . He was on the second floor and we were looking out the window, and he said, “What about the man on the street?” At that moment . . . Jackson Pollock was crossing the street..

Via Alex Ross's New Yorker profile

GoogleBono at FILE 2006, São Paulo, Brazil

Thge 2006 edition of FILE Electronic Language International Festival opens today in Galeria de Arte do SESI São Paulo, Brazil. I'll be showing the Bono Probability Positioning System version 2 AKA Google Bono. The exhibition continues until September 3rd.

Memorius at Birr Arts Festival

Paul Murnaghan is restaging his project Memorious (mentioned previously) at the Birr Arts Festival in Co. Offaly this Saturday and Sunday (12th & 13th August) using advertising space to offer for sale, part of his memory capacity. The time and place of meeting is decided by the 'activator'and the chosen memory is then monumentalised' in the artist's brain, sealed in wax and returned to the individual.

Graffiti

Graffiti project at the Palais deTokyo in Paris, a few minutes later I saw this guy get what looked like a crit which kinda sucks the fun out of it all.

Severn Bridge

The Severn Bridge in Wales, taken while flying from Paris to Dublin.

Art Vending Machines

The locations for the Vending Machine Project which is taking place this September as part of The Dublin Fringe Festival 2006 have been announced. The machines will be selling art in Connolly train station, the Project Arts Centre and Crawdaddy (Harcourt St) and the participating artists will be:
Mark Beatty (IRL), Clare Louise Bligh (IRL), Cyril Briscoe (IRL), Alan Burns (IRL), Robert Christian (IRL), Declan Clarke (IRL/UK), Brian Coldrick (IRL), Roisín Cunningham (IRL), Niall de Buitlear (IRL), Nuisance Bears (IRL), Neva Elliott(IRL/UK), Tristan Fennell (IRL), Dermot Finn (IRL), Grainne Finn (IRL), Niall Flaherty (IRL), Damien Flood (IRL), Stephen Gaughan (IRL), Cliona Harmey (IRL), Joan Healy (IRL), Leah Hilliard (IRL), Barry Jacques (IRL), Annika Johansson (IRL/Finland), Frankenstyles (IRL/USA), Anthony Kelly (IRL), Tara Kennedy (IRL), Dogmedia Productions (IRL), Marina Kessopersadh (IRL), James Kirwan (IRL), K Bear Koss (IRL/USA), Lee Sang Hong (Korea), Hazel Lim (Singapore), Sarah Lincoln (IRL), Paul McCann (IRL), Conor McGarrigle (IRL), Caroline McNulty (IRL), Mark Garry/Nina Hynes/Karl Burke (IRL), Caitriona Moore (IRL), Eli Normal (IRL), Padraic E. Moore (IRL), Ben Mullen (IRL), Charlotte Murray (IRL), Paula Naughton (IRL), Barbara Nealon (IRL), Fergus Niland (IRL), Seamus Nolan (IRL), Jane O'Sullivan (IRL), Alex Pearl (UK), Christian Reeves (IRL), Sheila Rennick (IRL/UK), Emma Robertson (UK), David Roche (IRL), Ben Roosevelt (IRL/USA), Nina Tanis (IRL/USA), David Stalling (GER), Jason Taylor (UK), Keith Walsh(IRL), Robin Watkins (IRL/Sweden), Conor Wickham (IRL), John Younge (IRL).
via Blackletter.ie

Grey Gardens

The Maysles brothers cult documentary Grey Gardens is showing tonight on BBC4 for those of you who get the channel. The film tell the story of Big Edie and Little Edie, mother and daughter, lived with a menagerie of cats and racoons in their derelict mansion in the posh Long Island seaside resort of East Hampton. Their genteel squalor became a cause célèbre when Jackie Onassis, Big Edie's niece and Little Eadie's first cousin, tried to help them clean up the house.

James Coleman at IMMA

Don't miss James Coleman's slide-tape installationI N I T I A L S (which I'm glad to say is beautifully installed) at IMMA until the 3rd September. James Coleman is probably the most important and certainly the most influential contemporary living Irish artist whose work is bizarrely rarely seen in the country.

I N I T I A L S Coleman uses a slide-tape format (multiple transparencies projected with synchronised audio tape) in his continuing investigation of the psychological, social and historic conditioning of perception. We see an unusual assortment of people in what could be a hospital setting, but might, with equal relevance, refer to a TV drama studio, with the attendant preparatory rituals for both settings. As the piece progresses, the voice of what appears to be a child spells out words or utters disparate statements, diverging more and more from the sequence of events depicted visually, calling into question photography’s traditional claim to documentary authenticity.

A further element of uncertainty is introduced through the variety of different genres in which the artist chooses to present the images, from popular television soap opera style to the serenity of a 17th-century Dutch portrait. Cocooned in a darkened and carpeted space, the work challenges the viewer to move through the space and find their own vantage point, thereby becoming part of the core experience of deconstruction and reconstruction. Lynne Cooke in a recent essay on Coleman’s work describes the process whereby “weaving references drawn from film, from drama and from painting, Coleman situates his trilogy in a hybrid realm, one that allows him to comment obliquely on these canonical art forms and their traditions without, however, fully subscribing to any.”

Blackletter.ie Irish art portal launched

Blackletter.ie is a new collaborative workspace for Irish contemporary art created by Alan Butler, Cliona Harmey and Niall Flaherty the site features news, articles, an art calender with a self publishing feature but their opening project a google maps mashup showing ephermal, temporary and location based artworks around Dublin shows that this is going to be a lot more clued in then art.ie for example. Of course the success of projects like this rely on users so go sign up now!

Interview in the Sunday Tribune

While I was gone Eimear McKeith interviewed me about the Net Art Open for The Sunday Tribune and the article (which was excellent) appeared last Sunday (23rd July. I'll scan it and put on the site shortly. The Net Art Open also featured in Italian paper L'Unita and on two of my daily reads Rhizome and Random Magazine. Needless to say traffic to the Net Art Open has been pretty crazy since.

I'm back

I'm back, anything happen while I was gone?

Net Art Open 2006 launched

I'm pleased to announce that the Stunned Net Art Open 2006 launched today. Now in it's fourth edition the Net Art Open takes a different approach to the curation of Net Art online. Rather then present a single event based exhibition selected by a curator or panel of selectors the Net Art Open is an ongoing blog based process which will unfold over the next six months. Curatorial bias has been removed by accepting all work which meets the criteria. The result is a true reflection of the state of Net Art now.

The emphasis in this edition will be bringing the exhibition to the audience, taking account of the changing way people access the net. With so much new work being produced all the time even with the best will in the world it's difficult to keep up so the Net Art Open will be blogged one work at a time with RSS feeds for newsfeed readers and blog aggregators, each entry will be tagged for technorati and del.icio.us and a flickr pool will be created. In addition each entry will feature on the front page of Stunned.

The net art open was started in 2002 by Conor McGarrigle and Arthur X. Doyle as part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.com intervention, subsequent editions were in 2003 and 2004-5..

This Way Up

Issue three of the excellent collaborative Dublin Comic This Way Up is now available for download and should be hitting the streets in print format before too long

Drawing Restraint

The opening of Matthew Barney & Bjork's Drawing Restraint in San Francisco gets, appropriately enough, the Artforum social diary treatment. Check out the ad at the end of the page, the hottest new space for the arts community, classy.

Graffiti in Oslo

Darklight Events

The Darklight Film Festival kicks off this Thursday at Filmbase in Temple Bar starting at 6.30. Two events that caught my eye on Saturday a public interview with John Thompson of Electronic Arts Intermix conducted by John Gerrard 2.30-4.45 and Straylight Curator Mark Cullen presents an Al and Al artist talk at Filmbase 5pm

Happy Bloomsday

Barry McGovern reads from Ulysses on top of the Joyce Tower in Sandycove.

NCAD Graduate Show

K Bear Koss's robot and friends at the NCAD Graduate exhibition opening last night. The exhibition continues until the 18th, post grads are at the Digital Hub 10-13 Thomas Street and under graduates at NCAD 100 Thomas St.
Opening Hours
Saturday 10.00am to 5.00pm
Sunday 2.00pm - 5.00pm
Monday to Friday 10.00am to 8.00pm

NCAD MA show

Fine Art Postgraduate Exhibition opening Friday June 9, 6 to 8pm at the Digital Hub, 10 to 13 Thomas St. This years exhibtion features a diverse range of artpractices that are socially and politically engaged with aspects of contemporary life. Many of this years graduates have employed participatory and collaborative strategies in their work. There will be three performance taking place on the opening night Friday the 9th June 6 to 8 pm Digital Hub Warehouse Thomas street, Barbara Knezevic, K Bear Koss, and Augustine O’Donoghue. Exhibition runs 10 to 18 June. The exhibition runs 10 to 18 June. The undergraduate show takes place at NCAD at the same time.
As a 1st year MA student at NCAD I'd like to add that it'll be great and that all the cool kids will be there!

The Photography of Richard Mosse

From Beiruit to Pakistan, Srebrenica to Iran Richard Mosse shows the aftermath of war and natural disasters through it's effects on the architecture in his extraordinarily powerful photographic series.

Better then the real thing

Opening tomorrow 6pm at Four Gallery Dublin Better Than the Real Thing? is an exhibition-in-progress featuring Saoirse Higgins & Simon Schiessl, Enda O’Donoghue, Martin Shannon and Jürgen Simpson that enables endless reinterpretation of ideas by sidestepping the creative limitations of copyright, each of four original artworks by the artists explores separate aspects of reproduction and re-telling of a story and each work discloses different information about the mark of authenticity in art of the present day.

The opening clashes with the Dun Laoghaire IADT School of Creative Arts Graduate exhibition opening also at 6pm, the DLIADT exhibition continues 'til the 8th June and the Four Gallery until 22 July both are worth checking out.

Google Bono

Google Bono has been getting a spectacular amount of visitors since it was launched here last Tuesday thanks in no small part to all the sites that have carried it including (but not limited to) u2.com, u2star.com, U2twilight, rhizome.org, googlemapsmania, nitenichiryu.org, random-magazine, turbulence, pajamasmedia and updaters. A big thank you to all these and everyone else who helped spread the word.

The Challenges of Curating Net Art

An International web conference on the challenges of curating Net Art tomorrow the 26th 10-12pm (Dublin +2hours) streaming live from Mobile Studios, Sofia

via networked performance

Google Bono

Stunned is pleased to announce the Bono Probability Positioning System version 2 : Google Bono

We know that for a visitor to Dublin an important attraction is the possibility that they may see U2 frontman and international celebrity Bono.

The Bono Probability Positioning System version 2 Google Bono (beta) is a mashup utilising Dublin's extensive surveillance camera network in conjunction with facial recognition software, Google Maps and advanced probabilty techniques to allow visitors to determine the probability of seeing Bono in any of the most probable locations in Dublin's city centre in real time.

Ten Ways

Getty Images have invited five designers to create ten innovative ways to access their database of images pictured above is Information by Sumona - keep zooming in on the image in a neverending chain.
Via Rhizome Raw

Cannes film festival

It's Cannes time again, watch the goings on with the live web cam and blogging the festival the IFC blog, Cinematical, the Guardian , Greencine and Indiewire

Paris night life

Very cool Paris night life photographic montages by Nyctaloop aka Julien Taylor.
via coolhunting

The best art is the most expensive

The best art is the most expensive, because the market is so smart.
Tobias Meyer, Sotheby's wunderkind, in Art Forum's art social diary.

An art education

MFA students in Brooklyn College NY who previously had their graduate show shut down because it was 'unsuitable for families' now find that not content with merely censoring their work the college has gone the extra mile and destroyed and lost much of it.

Seoul Net Festival

The 2006 Seoul Net Festival kicked off yesterday with lots of good work including my own project Cyclops which is a finalist in international competition in the webwork category

Urban Fiction

Xing Danwen's Urban Fiction series in which the artist creates narrative by inserting herself into photographs of architectural maquettes of real estate projects in China

CORRUPT™

CORRUPT™ by Recyclism, upload an image to get it corrupted.

The Virgin Prunes on the Late Late 1979

Here's a bit of Irish music history the Virgin Prunes on the the Late Late Show in 1979, a curiosity piece. Check out this if you want to see the legend in action.

Dead in Iraq

Joseph DeLappe's (who I've mentioned before) new work Dead in Iraq in which he enters the online US Army recruiting game America's Army using the login "dead-in-iraq" takes no part in the action and proceeds to type the names of dead US soldiers using the game's text messaging system until he is killed. Since he started in March he's entered 250 just another 2200 odd to go.

Exhibition Opening Wednesday

I am taking part in an exhibition of work in progress by MA students at the NCAD which opens this Wednesday 6pm at the Backloft Gallery. Augustine St(off Thomas St).. It should be a really interesting show and I'll be showing something quite a bit different from my usual so I hope you'll all make it along. Full details below and please note that it's a short run exhibition ending Sunday the 30th.

You are invited to the opening of
MAPLESS
Backloft Gallery,
7 - 11 Augustine St.
Dublin 8

Wednesday April 26th, 6-8pm
to be opened by
Mick Wilson

Samantha Corcoran,Ed Cunniffe,Shea Dalton,Francis Fay,Barry Foley,John Graham,Rory Greenan,Sarah Kenny,Barbara Knezevic,Katharine Lamb,Aissa Lopez,Jonathan Mayhew,Conor McGarrigle,Grainne Nolan,Aiseling Noone,Emer O Boyle,Sarah O’Brien,Michael O’Hara,Magnhild Opdoel,Dominic Thorpe,Lorraine Walsh

Weds 26th to Sun 30th April 2006
Continues through to 5.00 p.m. Sunday April 30th.
Opening times 11.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. daily.

Mapless is independently organised by M.A. students from the National College of Art and Design

Art vending Machines

Here's an interesting call for submissions for art content to be sold via art vending machines during the Dublin Fringe festival, how can you resist?

DUBLIN FRINGE FESTIVAL 2006 VISUAL ART EVENT

'THE VENDING MACHINE PROJECT' (curated by Alan Butler and Lola Rayne Booth) are seeking submissions from artists/designers/musicians to create small works to be sold in vending machines around Dublin for the duration of the Dublin Fringe Festival 2006. As part of the Dublin
Fringe Festival, The Vending Machine Project will offer an alternative space for artists to exhibit, engage with the public and promote their work. Selected artists will be required to make 10 small works under the dimensions of 15cm x 15cm. Proposed artworks can be multiples, editions, originals, photos, CD, DVD, etc.

E-mail submissions:
thevendingmachine -at- gmail.com .

- 3-6 images of previous work (.jpg only)
- current C.V .
- short proposal (no more than 300 words)3-6 images of previous work (on CD or prints – NO SLIDES & DO NOT
SEND ORIGINAL WORKS AS SUBMISSIONS WILL BE KEPT ON FILE FOR FUTURE
REFERENCE)
- current C.V.
- short proposal (no more than 300 words) THE VENDING MACHINE PROJECT c/o Studio 5, Temple Bar Galleries & Studios, 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland.
DEADLINE: 31st May 2006.

Beckett Centenary

On the centenary of Beckett's birth, his grave in Montparnasse Cemetry, Paris.

Honest Graffiti

Philip-Lorca diCorcia legally proved to be an artist

Philip-Lorca diCorcia has won in a privacy case brought against him by one of the subjects of his Heads series in which he covertly photographed passerbys on Times Square in New York. When Mr. Nussenzweig saw his portrait he sued the artist and Pace for exhibiting and publishing the portrait without permission and profiting from it financially and also argued that use of the photograph interfered with his constitutional right to practice his religion, which prohibits the use of graven images. In New York right-to-privacy laws prohibit the unauthorized use of a person's likeness for commercial purposes, but permit it if the likeness is considered art. Gallery Hopper raises some issues with the criteria used in court to prove that the image was art, namely exhibition in a gallery; sale of limited edition prints; and publication in an artist's monograph which seem to define art into a specifically gallery based commercial practice. Interestingly the NY times articles cites Walker Evans NY subway portaits as a classic example of covert street photography, a practice that would, of course, be banned today, not for privacy reasons but under the "war on terror".

Beckett centenary

Now that the Beckett Centenary Festival has kicked off a few things around town that caught my eye. Start with I not I, Samuel Beckett, Philip Guston and Bruce Nauman at the RHA gallery which includes the Bruce Naumann's great Clown Torture installation

and the Neil Jordan directed Not I. The exhibition was having a few teething problems at the opening with monitors on the blink and the sound from Not I being drowned out by another piece but I loved the rooms constructed in the main gallery to show the shorts.
Also check out John Minahan's iconic Beckett photographs at the National Photgraphic Archive and I see that Dublin is going to get a Beckett themed series of projections by Jenny Holzer

The Net Art Open

I haven't posted in a while as I've been busy with the Net Art Open among other things. There has been a huge response to the call for entries (in no small part thanks to Rhizome who including it on their front page and in the Digest), from the quality of the work submitted so far this is going to be a really exciting exhibition.
The deadline for the first call is April 20th so there's still plenty of time to get your entry in.

An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life

The Siqueiros Image Bank is a collection of over 5000 images from the 20th century collected by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros who compiled the photographs as source material and for the use of fellow artists as a means of inspiration and a source of found imagery. As Siqueiros wrote,

Nothing can give the [artist] of today the essential feeling of the modern era's dynamic and subversive elements more than the photographic document.

How to get ahead in the artworld

LICKING CURATORS ASS by Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau, Curator Jan Van Woensel invited the artists to do a surprise intervention at the exhbition in the Higher Institute for Fine Arts Antwerp, Belgium. They did and, boy, was he surprised. Warning it does what it says on the proverbial tin.

Dublin Art openings

Get your art shoes on for this week's crop of Dublin openings

PALLAS HEIGHTS
Pallas Heights have four exhibitions opening this Friday 24th 6.00 - 7.30pm which'll also be the last exhibition there before the building is demolished.

Fergus Byrne, Fiction, flat 25
Clodagh Emoe, Metaphysical Longings, flat 28
Vanessa O'Reilly, SWARM, flat 29
Via, flat 30

Pallas Heights, 29 Sean Tracey House, Buckingham St, Dublin 1.
Exhibition continues March 28th - 15th May.

LUMENS
Lumens a light based public art work by Seamus Kennedy based at Newtownsmith in DunLaoghaire is being launched today at 6.30 in the County Hall Marine Rd, Dun Laoghaire.

SAMUEL BECKETT, PHILIP GUSTON & BRUCE NAUMAN AT RHA
To celebrate the centenary of Samuel Beckett the RHA exhibition combines two of America¹s most outstanding artists of the twentieth century together with three recent films of Beckett¹s shorter plays. The three Beckett plays chosen are from the recent productions by Blue Angel Films/ Tyrone Productions. The British artist Damien Hirst directs Breath, Neil Jordan directs I Not I and Karel Reisz directs Act Without Words 1. These plays will be shown as continuous video projections in three separate rooms in the Academy¹s main gallery.

They will be punctuated by six of the late paintings of Philip Guston
(1913-1980). Bruce Nauman (1941) shows Clown Torture, 1987 and Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk). Nauman will also be represented by a major sculpture South America Triangle, 1981, where the lexicon of Nauman¹s and Beckett¹s props overlap.

Opening Thursday 23rd 6-8pm at the RHA Ely Place

MARIE FALKSTEN AT THE LAB
An exhibition of photographs by Swedish artist Marie Falksten opens at the LAB Foley Street, Dublin 1 on Friday 24 March to 22 Apri at 6pm

RAYMOND WATSON AT THE JAMES JOYCE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
Hands of History opens Thursday 23 March 2006 at 6.30.
Exhibition continues until the 23 April. James Joyce House of the Dead, 15 Usher¹s Island, Dublin 8.

Archival Issues for art DVD editions

Tom Moody has an interesting post about archival issues for artists DVD editions, make sure to read the comments.

The Net Art Open 2006 call for entries

I have just launched the 2006 call for entries for the Net Art Open. The Net Art Open is an open submission exhibition for internet based artwork which accepts all valid entries. I first created it with Artie Doyle in 2002 as part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.com intervention subsequent editions took place in 2003 and 2004-5

Click here for more information on how to participate

Spencer Tunick

An investigation is underway in Newcastle after surveillance camera footage of Spencer Tunick's Tyneside photoshoot involving 1700 nude volunteers were found to be on sale in local pubs.

Jennifer & Kevin McCoy

Jennifer & Kevin McCoy's latest exhibition Directed Dreaming at the Postmasters gallery New York

Beukelsblauw demolished

Florentijn Hofman's Beukelsblauw public art project is demolished

via trendbeheer

245 Kubikmeter

Update : Der Spiegel has a photogallery, via trendbeheer

Santiago Sierra's latest project 245 Kubikmeter which involves transforming a former synagogue near Cologne into a gas chamber.

At the Stommeln Synagogue in Pulheim, Germany, the Spanish artist has installed tubes to funnel carbon monoxide into the synagogue from six running cars parked outside. Visitors, who must don gas masks to protect themselves from the toxic exhaust fumes, can enter the site one at a time and stay for only a few minutes in the accompaniment of a fireman.

When Parody becomes reality

Yet another spoof becomes reality, I see that Christophe Bruno's WiFi- SM

WiFi-SM is an Internet connected wireless device that you can fix on any part of your body. It automatically detects the information from approximately 4,500 news sources worldwide updated continuously and analyses them looking for specific keywords such as death, kill, murder, torture, rape, war, virus etc.. Each time the text of the news contains one of these keywords, your WiFi-SM device is activated through the Wi-Fi network and provides you with an electric impulse. This impulse is calibrated so that you can feel a certain amount of pain, but is completely safe.

How to make a clingfilm giraffe

Mark Jenkins explains how to make a clingfilm giraffe
via Wooster

Russian Urban decay

A site dedicated to photgraphing Russian urban decay.

The future of art photography

Kind of depressing Art News article on the future of photography where traditional black & white becomes an alternative process. The upside is that second hand film cameras have never been so cheap, I recently bought a Nikon F90x for under €200 as long as I can still buy film, hmm better go and buy some film while I still can.

Camera tossing

The very cool Flickr camera toss pool, all pictures taken by , yep, tossing your camera. You've got to wonder how it all started.

Chris Dobrowolski

Chris Dobrowolski Offer must end soon
at the Studio 1.1 gallery Shoreditch, London.

Bnjmn™ Gaulon public lecture

French new media artist Bnjmn™ Gaulon is giving a lecture in NCAD on monday 6th at 2.00 pm in the Noel Sheridan room, the talk is free and open to the public. If you're even slightly interested in new media art / hacking etc Bnjmn™ is responsible for some of the coolest art projects around you shouldn't miss this talk.

Ziggy Stardust Comics

Scans of a really really bad Ziggy Stardust comic where Bowie as Ziggy battles evil with the help of other superheroes like Ozzy Osbourne and Mick Jagger, so weird it's probably true.

via found objects

Embankment

I was in London at the weekend (and it seems that as soon as I left the city descended into chaos) on a flying visit and managed to catch Rachel Whiteread's Embankment installation at Tate Modern, it was very impressive photos really don't do it justice at all you have to see it in person. That said here's my flickr gallery of photos of the installation.

Also very impressive was Catherine Sullivan's six screen video installation The Chittendens which was quite brilliantly installed using multiple layers of overlapping video.

Metropolis

Download Fritz Lang's 1927 classic Metropolis , I have the restored version on DVD and it really does deserve it's status as an all time classic.
via Bibi

Zone Interdite

A Guantanamo Bay walkthrough from Zone Interdite an art project by Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud which gives an interactive global survey of military restricted areas.
via WMMNA

PARK(ing)

PARK(ing) is a public intervention in San Francisco turning a parking space into a park, nice.
via Random Magazine

LED throwies

Very cool LED throwies from the Graffiti Research Lab, check out the video of them being deployed and a how-to-make-them. Their environmental impact is also discussed in the comments.
via Rhizome with their great new reblog which I've been meaning to mention for ages now

Lego stop motion fims

A collection of lego stop motion animation movies including One a Space Odyssey and Monthy Python and the Holy Grail
via Bibi's Box

Oblique Strategy for today

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Watch a trailer for The Devil and Daniel Johnston I 'discovered' Daniel Johnston fairly recently and have been captivated by his songs, his singing too (though it's not for everyone) and other artists cover versions - Beck does a great version of True love will find you in the end - the documentary, which won at Sundance last year, looks interesting but I'd be a little worried that it buys into the he's a genius because he suffers from mental illness fallacy rather then he's a talented artist who battles against illness.
Daniel Johston the visual artist is also in the Whitney Biennial of American art this year.

New Aosdana members

12 new members were elected to Aosdana recently, you can see the full list here

SVEN Surveillance Video Entertainment Network

SVEN the Surveillance Video Entertainment Network is a custom computer vision application that tracks pedestrians and detects their characteristics, and a real-time video processing application that receives this information and uses it to generate music-video like visuals from the live camera feed. The resulting video and audio are displayed on a monitor in the public space, interrupting the standard security camera type display each time a potential rock star is detected.
Hmmm now all I need is some way to use that technology into the second generation Bono Probability Positioning System which is under development.

Pallas Studios opening tonight

By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End a group exhibition by Pallas Studio artists opens tonight at CHQ( conservatory 1) at the IFSC at 6pm followed by a pay in event Diverse Means Live, from 8pm to 12.30am, featuring live electronic music, performance and video works from Lackluster, Si Schroder, Aoife Desmond, Arran McMahon and Video programmed by Anne Marie Barry + more. The exhibition continues Tuesday to Saturday from 12noon to 6:30pm until March 26th.

Whatever happened Skin

Remember Shelley Jackson's Skin project where she was looking for 2095 volunteers to have a word of her choosing tattoed on their body, the words making up a story that would never be published in any other format. I was checking out her website where she was stuck on 1780 last July. Anyone know is it finished and where are the pix?

The films of Guy Debord

In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni(1978),
Refutation of All Judgments(1975),
Society of the Spectacle(1973) are available as free downloads from Ubu Web

Image is Matthieu Laurette's The Daily Show

Armchair Activist

From Troika studios the Armchair activist, position the system outside your favourite spot for protesting, text it with your protest and the megaphone will make your protest for you without the need to stand out in the cold.

Nigel Rolfe @ the Graphic Studio

FLOWERS Absence and Loss an exhibition of limited edition digital prints by Nigel Rolfe opens this evening at the Graphic Studio Dublin and continues until March 4th. Nigel will also give a talk on the exhibition on Tuesday 7th at 1pm, book at (dublin) 6798021.

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik, pioneering new media artist died Sunday.

Panamarenko

Panamarenko retrospective at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, also check out WMMNA's flickr pix

Net art diagrams

Marisa Olson at Rhizome reblogged my what is computer art post and corrects a glaring omission - Abe Linkoln's masterful complex net art diagram. Not to be outdone I've added a crude remix of MTAA's simple net art diagram in the Dublin context.(That's NCAD my current place of study)

Beckett on Ubu Web

From Ubuweb winter 2006 MP3s of 8 Beckett radio plays including the novels Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable read by Cyril Cusack from a 1958 RTE production.

Parking meter lollipops

Parking Meter lollipops in Washington and many more cool street installations from Mark Jenkins
via Wooster Collective

What is computer art ?

What is computer art? Finally an explanation. I think I prefer MTAA's simple net art diagram. (pictured)

via Computergraphica

Pixel Art Tool

Very nice pixel art tool from halfshag for all your isometric scene making requirements.
via generator.x

Black Brain Radio opening

Black Brain Radio is a radio artwork created by Garrett Phelan opening at the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios tomorrow at 6pm. It'll also be broadcast on 89.9FM 24 hours a day for 30 days starting on the 19th and online at Garrett's website

Today's Oblique Strategy

How would someone else do it?

via Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies

Memorious

Paul Murnaghan is offering to sell part of his memory capacity. This is in order to create a monument* to the recollections of any interested party. Individuals that wish to preserve the memory of some moment, person or obsession should get in contact with Murnaghan at one of the contacts below. A meeting will be arranged where the memorious content will be communicated and stored in the artist’s brain. Due to the fallibility of the human memory and its continual exposure to contaminating influences, the substance of the monument may corrupt over time. The possibility of pollution by other experiences is seen as an inevitable part of this process. No test of recall or future examination will be entered into.
A text version of the memory will be wax sealed inside of a certificate of authentication. The sole copy will be offered to the purchaser as a precise record of the content of the described recollection. The monumentalizing of this content does not bear witness to its validity or act as ‘evidence of truth’ within the inherent material.

E: mail -AT- memorious.info T: 00353 1 4542254
*Monument fee is determined by purchaser.
Offer is valid 14 - 28 January 2006 only.

Nina Hynes @ Four Gallery

Here's one that caught my eye at Four Gallery on the 9th, 10th & 11th February.
Four is pleased to present Pockets, a 3 night performance by Nina Hynes. For the audience, the whole performance will be on headphones along with being blindfolded and led to the gallery for the performance where an atmosphere will await them.
Four is the one of a crop of new alternative spaces around town worth checking out, it's on Burgh Quay beside Bermingham's camera shop on the fourth floor.

More Sandymount Christmas Trees

Some more views of the Transplant art project, I went back to Sandymount strand later in the evening when the tide had come in and there was a big crowd and the trees looking great lit by car headlights from the carpark. I took some photos at night too but on film so you'll have to wait till I process them.

Gun Control

Scott Kildall's Gun Control installation in which motion tracking cameras aim the guns at viewers as they move within the gallery space.
via the always excellent we make money not art

Transplant art project

An image from Transplant the public art project by Tara Kennedy and Barbara Nealon on Sandymount strand in Dublin today. The project looks like a great success with big crowds participating, the tide is coming in so there's still time to get down there to see the trees being engulfed by the sea.

Call for participants in public art project

Transplant is a temporary public artwork, including the shooting of a documentary film, which will take place at Sandymount Strand this Sunday the 8 January. Artists Tara Kennedy and Barbara Nealon will collect Christmas trees in the local area and "plant" them on the beach for one day (the duration of one tidal cycle). They will plant the trees early on the morning of Sunday and make a film as the tide surrounds the trees and recedes again.Afterwards the trees will be removed and recycled. As they hope to collect several hundred trees, they are looking for help installing and removing this temporary artwork. Anyone who may be able to offer help with transport or 'planting' would be hugely appreciated. Contact Tara tarafitzgeraldkennedy -at- gmail.com or Barbara Nealon nealon.barbara -at- gmail.com if you can help. This looks like it's going to be a spectacular project and a fun day, they're still looking for participants and trees so make sure to get in touch if you can help at all.
via Visual Artists' Ireland newsletter

New Year Resolutions

The Forty Foot traditional Christmas Day swim, yep it was sunny this Christmas. Which brings us nicely to New Year resolutions.Last year my resolution was to be more unreasonable in the pursuit of my art. I think it went well even if I didn't carry it out as fully as I should have so this year's resolution is

To be even more unreasonable in all things especially art

This year is going to be a good year for art, my masters at NCAD continues and I'm working on some great ideas. The art year kicks off in March with my work exhibiting in Rio de Janeiro as part of the FILE exhibition. I'll leave you with Brian Eno's oblique Strategies and Sol Le Witts sentences on conceptual art (via Fluid Thinking)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year, hope you all had a great Christmas. And in keeping with the season a gallery of Calvin and Hobbes snowart to enjoy.

Yin Xiuzhen's Portable Cities

Yin Xiuzhen's Portable Cities are made from clothes and discarded materials the artist finds in the cities she's visiting and displayed in open suitcases. Click here for an installation view of Portable Cities - Guangzhou, Lisbon, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney, Wellington, 2002-2004 from the Bienniale of Sydney.
via we make money not art

Super Mario Clouds

Cory Arcangel's Super Mario Clouds (a hacked NES Super Mario cartridge with everything but the clouds removed) tutorial.

John Perreault on Marina Abramovic

John Perreault's account of Marina Abramovic's Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim NY in which she re-performed seven performance pieces (five by other artists) on consecutive nights.

Classic Movie downloads

From archive.org a selection of classic movies to download :
Fritz Lang's classic M (pictured)
Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou
F.W. Munarau's 1922 Nosferatu
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari the sets of which were believed to have been a great influence on Kurt Schwitters Merzbau
Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin
Hitchcock's 1934 The man who knew too much
Bela Lugosi in White Zombie
And finally a 1942 propaganda film for ehh...hemp Hemp for victory

Art and sex

It's official artists have twice as much sex as all you non-creative types.

Thomas Struth : Audience

Thomas Struth's Audience photos of visitors to the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence viewing Michelangelo's David
And news that viewing David can effect your mental health!

Brian Duggan @ Pallas Heights

More often than most an exhibition by Brian Duggan opens this Friday 6-7pm at Pallas Heights, More information about the exhibition and Pallas Heights here. If you haven't been to Pallas Heights yet go now, it's easily the most interesting alternative exhibition space in Dublin, the block of flats housing it is scheduled to be demolished in the new year and it's very unlikely you'll see it's like again.

Parasite

Parasite is a guerilla projection project by Berlin artists which involves attaching a projection system to the side of the metro train with suction pads to project on the tunnel walls between stations, includes video step-by-step instructions.
via WFMU's beware of the blog

C'etait un rendezvous

A quicktime of Claude LeLouch's 1976 short C'etait un Rendezvous which is a one-take high speed run through the streets of Paris from a car mounted camera. The car was driven by an unnamed Formula 1 driver who for obvious reasons chose to stay anonymous. I first saw this when they showed it on Channel Four a few months ago and it's a real gem with a particularly good soundtrack.

Via Jerry Kindall

Broken Umbellas

Sean Hillen's fantastic broken umbrella project is back online, very appropriate with the weather we've been having recently.

Matthieu Laurette

Matthieu Laurette's The Daily Show

Cyclops at FILE São Paulo

My project Cyclops is part of File 2005 (International Festival of Electronic Language) which opens today in São Paulo, Brazil. Unfortunately yours truly is still in rainy Dublin but lots of good work included much of it available through their website.

Art

Theo Jansen's Strandbeest

Do Ho Suh's Floor

Tomoko Takahashi's Allurements of Mass Media causes a stir, if performance artists drink till they fall over how long before the rest of the population follow?

Found Photos

A wonderful collection of photos from film found in cameras by a camera collector.
via we make money not art

Artists' Tax Exemption postcard campaign

As you may be aware the Department of Finance are calling for submissions in their ongoing review of the Artists' Tax Exemption. The Arts Council have started an email postcard campaign to call on the Minister to preserve this vital lifeline for Irish artists, their press release clearly states the case for the tax exemption and kills many of the myths about the exemption.

More Bush mockery

Q.How many Bush administration officials does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. click
and while we're on the lightbulb topic
Q. How many performance artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. I dunno, I left after the first four hours

New York photography sales

A feast of photography goes under the hammer in NY, among the items that caught my eye were a complete set of Nicholas Nixon's 30 Brown sister photos (his wife and her sisters) for $180,000, Alberto Korda's uncropped Che print for $16,800 and a nice Robert Frank for $22,000.
Oh and that Yul Brynner mentioned at Galleryhopper, it's here.

Rachel Whiteread

From the Guardian first accounts of Rachel Whiteread's Tate Modern Turbine Hall installation

André Waterkeyn

Belated news that André Waterkeyn, creator of the Brussel's Atomium, died last week at the age of 88.The Atomium which was built for the world fair in 1958 representing a giant iron atom is currently undergoing a facelift and interestingly you can buy the old panels which are being replaced.

Peripheral Visions

Peripheral Visions is an ongoing video art exhibition which started in April and ends with a major symposium in November at the Cork Film Centre Curated by Nigel Rolfe and Cliodhna Shaffrey it features the cream of emerging European video art with the work of one artist being screened each week over 38 weeks.
The project features 28 artists from Britain, Western Europe, Scandinavia, the Baltics, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. A further 11 Irish artists have been selected to participate in the project, creating new works mentored by Nigel Rolfe. Participants in the Irish component have access to shooting and editing facilities at Cork Film Centre.
The climax of the project will be a high profile symposium to be held on 18th – 20th November 2005 in the Granary Theatre, Cork.
More information from Cork 2005 and from Cork Film Centre

Personal news

In some personal news, I have just started the MA in Virtual Realities in NCAD . Anyone who knows me knows I've been threatening do so such a thing for quite a while now and are now probably hoping that at last I'll stop banging on about the pros and cons of doing a masters. As yet I have no idea what impact it will have on Stunned.
I'm also taking part in a really interesting and thought provoking masterclass with Nigel Rolfe this week at the Firestation Studios which I might write a bit more about when it's finished

Speech bubble art

Nice idea, this guy made 50,000 speech bubble stickers placed them on top of movie posters, ads and signs all over New York City and photographs the results.
via memepool

Ubuweb film back online

After some initial difficulties over copyright issues the good news is that the Ubu Web film section is back online. Many, many downloads including films by Luis Buñuel, Guy Debord, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Robert Smithson, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Robert Morris.

Warhol and the sixties

From Factory Made a sociogram of Warhol's factory.

The Battle for Babylon

In the midst of an art boom all is not well in the NY artworld
via eyebeam

Sculptors Society EGM

The Sculptors Society of Ireland is having it's EGM to change it's name to Visual Artists Ireland on Thursday the 22nd 6.00pm – 7.30pm at the O’Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College, Great Denmark St., Dublin 1. It's important that all members you can attend the meeting because for the change to occur there needs to be a 75% vote in favour. Originally the Sculptors Society represented sculptors only while the Artists Association of Ireland represented other visual artists but since the demise of the AAI the SSI has taken up the slack andalso because the lines of demarcation in the art world today aren't as clear anymore this change is to be welcomed.More information here

The Post-it King

A how to guide to covering a wall with an image of The King made from post-its. There goes your day.

Templebar Studios open day

This Saturday afternoon 2-6 Temple Bar gallery and Studios are having an open day, admission is free and the artists participating are Robert Armstrong, Michael Boran, Mark Clare, Paul Coleman, Fergus Feehily, Sean Fingleton, Patricia Hurl, Gillian Kane, Katrina Maguire, Ronan McCrea, Paul McKinley, John Moore, Joe Moran, Makiko Nakamura, Isabel Nolan, Gavin O’Curry, Augustine O’Donoghue, Therry Rudin, Margaret Tuffy and Joe and Pat Walker

Ubuweb is back

Ubuweb which I've mentioned before is back, bigger and better after a summer of rebuilding and expanding bandwidth and storage. Unfortunately though the avantgarde film section has been suspended due to complaints from lawyers. A very shortsighted action that will only serve to keep these obscure hard to see films, well obscure and hard to get. Artists want their work to be seen and the more the work is known the more demand their will be for numbered signed editions (and other lucrative sales options). It seems to me that actions like this will server to keep the work obscure and the artists poor.
via bibi

UPDATE 26-9-2005 problems have been sorted and the films are back online.

Graffiti

I'm always complaining that Dublin graffiti is never as good as the Wooster collective but then I saw this nice graffiti along the metals near Glasthule which is much more like it. Anyone know who it is?

When good signs go bad

It happens when you least expect it, a busy Saturday afternoon in the metropolis of Dun Laoghaire a shop sign goes on fire, the mainstream media wants to cover this evidence of spontaneous combustion but the power of the bloggysphere can't be stopped (no matter how much we try), we call this post when good signs go bad!

Art Recommendations

Garret Phelan's Now at Dublin's Civic Offices.
Opening tonight at 6pm No Man's Land group exhibition with Daniel Cramer, Haris Epaminonda, Angela Huntbach, Tea Makipäa, Karen Land Hansen, Yvonne McGuinness, Ann Mulrooney and Christian Sievers in Pallas Heights Pallas Studios' space in a semi derelict block of flats on Buckingham Street.
Finally Tangent is a new independent art zine by London artist Karen D'Amico which is downloadable in PDF format.

André Gide on critics

Thanks to M River of MTAA posted this to the Rhizome list

Truman Capote wrote:

After listening to me grouse a bit about the piece, and the unwholesome nature of the critical mind in general, the great French master hunched, lowered his shoulders like a wise old . . . shall we say buzzard?, and said, "Ah, well. Keep in mind an Arab proverb: 'The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.'"

Alexa's Dog And Pony show

I was checking the Artforum journal to keep up with the new york artworld hoi polloi and found this nice piece about the Jeffrey Deitch / Creative Time / Steve Powers Dreamland Artist Club event curated by no other then our own Alexa Coyne ex of the City Arts Centre who also gets interviewed. As my daughter would say, you go girl!

Spiral Jetty & Lightning Field

Tyler Greene of Modern Art Notes visits Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Walter de Maria's Lightning Field

Berlin Wall vs West Bank wall

The Berlin Wall vs West Bank Wall

Artists’ Resale Right / Droit de Suite

The Sculptors Society of Ireland (of which I am a member)position on Artists’ Resale Right/Droit de Suite, Alex Davis and Amy Strecker outline the workings of artist’s resale rights and its implications for artists. I've come across quite a bit of ill informed comment on this on the web particularly it has to be said in blogs, in contrast this is actually written by people who know what they're talking about. Is it just me or is the bloggysphere (irishblogs in particular)increasingly like being trapped in a taxi with a particularly opinionated and ill informed taxi driver?

Pompidou rehang

The Pomidou centre is rehanging it's collection in the exhibition Big Bang. The rehang which coincides with the closure of the forth floor for refurbishment will be based on the big themes central to art since the start of the 20th century - the artistic Big Bang ; destruction, construction / deconstruction, archaism, sex, war, subversion, melancholy and rediscovery (réenchantement). The exhibition opens on June 15th, more details from their website(french only) and from the Art Newspaper
The full collection of the Pompidou is online here

Dublin Art College Graduate Shows

It's that time of year again with graduate exhibitions at NCAD, Dun Laoghaire IADT and DIT

A Minima Interview

An interview I did with Pau Waelder while at the Metanarratives conference at Fundacio La Caixa in Barcelona has been published in Spanish art magazine A Minima. In the interview I talk about my work in progress and the advantages and difficulties of working in series and in particular of creating work based on Ulysses, a shortened version of the interview is available online at Furtherfield.

Rise Lord Vader

Dr D strikes again, billboard liberation from London.

Net Art Open : Bien Commun

David Zérah : Bien Commun

The image of Che

This image of Che Guevara is one of the iconic images of the 20th century, it was taken by Alberto Korda in 1960, he claimed no copyright on the image until 2000 when he was so appalled when Smirnoff used it in a advert that he sued for copyright infringement. One of the beneficiaries of his enlightened view on copyright was our own Jim Fitzpatrick here in conversation about his famous poster made from Korda's photo and his attitude to the copyright of the image.
On a related note Alberto Granado on his friendship with Che Guevara - you may remember him as Che's travelling companion in The Motorcycle Diaries.

New Aosdana visual arts members

Congratulations to Grace Weir who was elected to Aosadana

The selling of Jeff Koons

Someone in every generation has to be held up as a shining example of what is wrong with current art
How Jeff Koons has emerged from being a modestly priced middle ranking artist to the point where he now sells at auction for $5.6 million.

Art on the Internet

Art in America's 1995 cover story on internet art. Unfortunatly in Ireland the artworld is still back in 1995.
via Iconoduel

The big cover up

Ingres' La Source made safe for work thanks to Worth 1000
via Happy Famous Artists

Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville

An original print of Robert Doisneau's Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville was sold at auction by Francoise Bornet (the subject) for €155,000, ten times the expected amount but not quite a record.

On a related note a project which is rephotographing Atget's Paris, of course apart from cars Paris still looks the same.

Guerilla SMS Projection

From Troika studios a handheld battery powered projector which projects text messages.

Ubu web artist's film downloads

UbuWeb has launched a collection of historic artist's films to download including Luis Buñuel, Yoko Ono, Kenneth Anger, Luis Buñuel, John Cage, Guy Debord, Marcel Duchamp, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Morris & Stan VanDerBeek, Isidore Isou, Nam June Paik, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg, Hans Richter, Harry Smith and Jack Smith, George Maciunas, Robert Watts, John Cale.

Dr D liberated billboards

From the Wooster collective Dr D's liberated billboards

Abbas Kiarostami

A profile of Iranian fim director Abbas Kiarostami, I saw his brilliant film 10 fairly recently. I found myself surprised at the normality of the picture of Tehran life it presented and was a bit shocked at that reaction of mine, what did I expect, why wouldn't it be normal? Iran has been demonised for so long in the west that this caricature has seeped into my head without me even realising it. That's one reason why I like to see more of Kiarostami's work on tv and in cinemas here, the other is that he's one of the most exciting directors working today.

Rhizome commissions voting starts

The voting for the Rhizome commissions starts, I have a project called SIRENS up for consideration so any Rhizome members out there vote for me, vote for me! I've never done this before but after seeing the layout I think that if I do it again my project will be called aaaaardvark.

Banksy does New York

Thw Wooster Collective has all the pics from Banksy's exploits in the New York museum world. Can't be long now before he gets a show.

"It's art, man."

Or is it? even Art Forum putting-the-boot-in in grand style can't stop Damian Hirst's new painting (by assistants) exhibition selling out for a rumoured $18-20m.

Art Star

Artstar is a new reality TV show in the US ala you're a star (RTEs my lovely horse strategy to stop us winning the bloody eurovision 100% success rate so far) which has treated New Yorkers to the wonderful sight of wannabe artstars queueing down the street to audition(?). Newsgrist has a roundup of the reaction and Tim of MTEWW has been following it pretty closely.

Ridiculous or high concept? both and It'll work, read this account of Jeff Koon's 50th birthday party at Deitch Projects, coincidently one of the galleries behind Artstar and I'm sure you'll agree
a few minutes later, by a pair of white ponies pulling a cart with a three-tiered white cake, out of which popped a girl in a skimpy red bathing suit. Deitch had tried to get Jeff’s friend Pamela Anderson for the cake duty, but she had to be at the Sundance Film Festival.

More Gates

A very large 2MB+ satellite image of New York's Central Park, panoramas of the gates and from Iconoduel has an interesting round up of copyright issues surrounding the gates. From what I've seen so far it seems to be a much less impressive work then their previous work. Granted it's hard to judge when you're not actually there but I didn't physically see any of the other projects either so it's an equal comparison.

Laurie Anderson at IMMA

I went to hear Laurie Anderson give a talk up at IMMA last evening -crappy pic alert - it was an interesting evening where she talked more or less randomly, less about the art more about her celebrity art lifestyle. But she has a beautiful voice and exquisite phrasing so it very pleasant to hear her talk about walking with Brian Eno and showing really terrible pics of cows and stuff, the most interesting for me was her project proposal illustrations. Of course the Dublin art world hoi-polloi were out in force there is little more entertaining then listening to the bragging and namedropping that passes for conversation at these things, the conversation scene in Cyclops is understated in comparison. I managed to restrain myself from asking the question that was on everyones' mind, is it true that the reason Lou never smiles is that he paralysed his facial muscles through excessive use of speed in the 70s.

The exhibition continues at IMMA until May 2nd

The Gates

As Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates approaches you can follow the preparation with the new The Gates @ Central Park Blog and lots of construction photos

The Gates

As Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates approaches you can follow the preparation with the new The Gates @ Central Park Blog and lots of construction photos

Five films about Christo & Jean-Claude

As the countdown to the Central Park NY Gates project eh counts down, five films about Christo & Jean-Claude as background.
via thingsmagazine

Warhol Dolls

Warhol would have loved the net, not only because of the opportunities to sell ludicrously overpriced dolls of himself (available in 60s and 80s versions) but mostly because of sites like this: American travels to London to queue for days outside Apple shop and becomes net celeb on the process.
Well one explained 59,054,086 to go.

Bush Mosaic

A mosaic of Bush giving the one fingered victory salute made of images of apologising Americans from SorryEverybody.com, made with Mazaika mosaic maker

big (776kb) l medium (252kb) l small
(176kb)

Mary Hansen

Stereolab's singer Mary Hansen was tragically killed on Monday in a cycling accident in London. She was only 36.

Many tributes at the Stereolab website.

More Photos

I've been spending time recently going through all my old black and white negatives and contact sheets - I've got hundreds of photos stretching back years all developed and contacted but hardly any ever printed - so I decided to go through everything and start to print what I liked and try and figure out whether they're any good or not. While I used to use photos a lot as elements in the larger work when I was making boxes I've always seen my straight photography as being too traditional and maybe even a bit boring so I've never shown it in public before. Well enough excuses over the next while I'm going to post a few and maybe make a gallery of them. I find it hard to assess these pics impartially myself so I am very interested in your honest opinions.