c h r i s t i n a c h a u

Stephen Cornford

2012-01-09T19:15:00.000-08:00

I was looking at videos of Jean Tinguely's Homage to New York on Vimeo and stumbled upon Stephen Cornford's kinetic work. Here is Air Guitar, a guitar and amplifier each rotating under the power of a central motor. Together they make an 'eternal chord' :)

Air Guitar from Stephen Cornford on Vimeo.

There is a great harmony to this work, possibly because of its simplicity..

Amelia Whitelaww, The Fall (2008-2009)

2012-01-03T22:03:00.000-08:00

Commissioned installation by Amelia Whitelaw for the East Wing exhibition 'On Time' at Somerset House, London. There is an interesting article by Elizabeth Buhe that connects Whitelaw's work with other kinetic expressions of hesitancy, duration the anxiety of 'time sculptures'. You can find the article on Contemporaneity, here; Waiting for Art; The Experience of Real Time in Sculpture

Ron Incho

2012-01-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

Mindless Consumption from Ronin Cho on Vimeo.

Mindless Consumption is a kinetic artwork by Ron Incho. I'm not sure what he has in lined up for the Kinetic Art Fair in London this February, but hopefully it is something as brilliant as this work.

2011-12-12T22:45:00.000-08:00

The wedding that I went to over the weekend has planted something in my heart. It is glowing and strong and burning, and it's mine to hold proudly for a long, long time. I am ever so grateful to my friends of inviting all of us to celebrate their love and lifelong glorious partnership in this world. We celebrated with sack races, running around a bon fire, dancing barefoot in the rain, waiting for a lunar eclipse and rested on hay.

Luke Byrne

2011-12-02T23:20:00.000-08:00

Luke Byrne's Photography

summer is here, and still there

2011-12-02T22:57:00.000-08:00

Delaney Allen via variety meats and my photo of City Beach, Perth

Synchronicity 2 in Warsaw

2011-11-21T20:04:00.000-08:00

Propaganda and motion... that's what I am thinking about when I am not thinking about my thesis (which might be a side point related to said thesis). There is a strong connection between fascism and synchronised swimming and perhaps there is a specific affectivity of movement in whole public orchestrations. ... perhaps.

If only I had enough time to flesh out these kinds of ideas and then I would know what I think about when I see works like this: Synchronicity 2 in Warsaw

Artist Jakub Szczęsny says:

I’ve proposed a systematic approach: a water treatment plant powered by human muscles by Warsaw inhabitants performing fitness exercises and pumping poluted river water via kinetic pumps integrated in the fitness machines to four filters and four tanks to a fountain basin at the very end of the cycle. The whole installation is supposed to perform a role of a propaganda tool changing the consciousness of Warsawers by showing the efficiency of human action in the process of puryfing the waters of their river. What’s meaningful, is the fact, that many Poles, even after twenty years of liberalization, still don’t believe in their own potential as individuals or members of commuities, in positively changing their life environment.

Doug Johnston in my house

2011-11-07T20:04:00.000-08:00

I got a whole new set of goodies from Doug Johnston's online store, and they have finally arrived in time for my house-ridden days of writing and marking. Whenever I am frustrated, I just take them in another room, pat them, feel relaxed, rotate them, put things in/on/around them. They are my new silent housemates...

Johnstonin an artist in Brooklyn, New York and has been recently making these rope-work-sculptures. Johnston also has a background in architecture, design, installation, and you can see a range of his past projects here. I first saw his stuff on flickr and was taken by his rumpleskillkid - a kind of wearable, sash cord dome/igloo/stiff snuggie.

Ned Khan's Parking Structure 9

2011-10-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

Ned Khan is a strange one. His intersection with science and art positions him as a magician of sorts. Well, he is in my mind. He's known for his floating vortex fires, mini tornadoes and fog rainbows.

I'm particularly taken by this more simple installation: 20 000 small mirrors hanging off cables that connect two sections of a parking lot. Natural wind and light make these mirrors chime a light rhythm into the space, creating new spaces... in a controlled, orchestrated manner

Party Paella Pan

2011-10-09T18:43:00.001-07:00

I'm an idiot. I didn't know who Heidi Swanson is until I bought Super Natural Everyday last week. Now there will be constant stalking of 101 Cookbooks whenever I am procrastinating, or hungry.. So far I've cooked a handful of recipes from it and each time I open it I am amazed at how much her love for food translates so well into the book. Her diligence to variety, whole food and flavour is refreshing and I haven't found a cookbook that displays such intimacy with each recipe since buying the Moro books 7 years ago. I really appreciate when an author tells me what they feel is the heart of each recipe, what can be changed, how you can tell something is ready without having to regulate everything to a timer, why they chose particular ingredients, and how often they cook it and why.

Yesterday I made all appetizers from Swanson's book, the accompany and celebrate my new 40cm paella pan. The paella recipe is from Moro, which I doubled everything (or nearly doubled) to fit the pan, cooked on our mini barbeque.... somehow I forgot to take a photo of the goods...

Chorizo, broad beans and Manchego

2011-10-09T18:31:00.001-07:00

This weekend was all about food (well, most weekends are). Saturday morning started off with forgetting about breakfast, going to the markets and then realising that we were starving at 12, so I made chorizo, broad bean and manchego for lunch. The recipe is from the latest edition of Gourmet Traveller, and even though they spend a lot of time and money on their images, I can't find a reasonable one on the internet.

I often find their recipes a little posy, cold and catering to a delicate and timid palette, so I mostly followed the heart of their recipe, and added extra punch wherever I could.

The real romance to this entry is the Dansk Brot by the Organic Loafers - undoubtedly the best bread in Perth, who has stolen my heart.

Robert Breer

2011-10-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

I have only just found out that artist Robert Breer died on August 17th 2011. Even though this is still quite recent, I can't help but feel a pang of guilt that I didn't know about this. There is no excuse in the contemporary digital climate, right?

Even though Breer is mostly remembered for his contributions to film and animation, as well as his styrofoam floats (figure 1.), I like to remember his Bucky Fuller-esque floating fibreglass domes at the E.A.T's Pepsi Pavilion at the 1970 World Expo in Japan, 1970.

In my research, Breer often gets tagged as an artist that contributes to the interrogation of the distinctions between painting and art. He's often grouped together with Carl Andre, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, etc - but as the humorous, kinetic counterpart that exists as a failed one liner; sculpture taken off its pedestal and walking (or rather, wheeling) out of the gallery doors. Breer's work is of course, much more than that.

These enormous, slow moving utopian, already reminiscent of the sci-fi space art popular in the 1960s divert from the site-specific installations that resist institutional control of and both celebrate and satirise American culture. In November 2010 Artforum featured an interview with Breer, to which he commented that works at the pavilion were inspired by Jack Burnham's comparison of Breer's work to Japanese zen gardens. Breer's delightful and apt response, 'I thought, how typically American it would be to actually motorize a Zen garden!’

Figure 1. Robert Breer, Floats (1965)

Figure 2. Breer's Floats at the E.A.T Pepsi Pavilion at the World Expo, Osaka 1970

Figure 3. Breer's retrospective exhibition at the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art - June 11 - September 25, 2011

Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons, Robert Breer (1980)

Ocean of Light - Surface

2011-09-29T01:16:00.000-07:00

Ocean of Light - Surface

Arthur Ganson's Thinking Chair

2011-09-26T23:47:00.000-07:00

I have been pondering about Arthur Ganson's Thinking Chair for the past two days now. I initially saw the video without my earphone because I left them at home. Now I'm surprised to hear the mechanical noise that is produced by the sculpture. Everything about this sculpture is perfect; the selection of chair, lighting, the found rock all compile together to produce a self portrait that is lonely, meandering, circuitous, and cinematic in its gesture.

There is a small rock outcropping on a favorite trail in the woods near my studio. I often find myself deep in thought, walking in slow circles around the edge of this stone mound. For me it is a walking meditation, where each cycle finds me back in the same physical place but in a slightly different emotional place. One day I found a loose rock with a flat face and the idea for 'Thinking Chair', a self-portrait of this experience, came into being.

Ganson studied his BFA in Sculpture at the University of New Hampshire in 1978, with his first solo exhibition in 1993 and has been working consistently in both solo and group shows in the US. You can more of his works on his youtube, here.

pumpkin scones

2011-09-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

This week is one of those weeks where I know that we wont get through all of the vegetables by the time market day comes around. I'm trying desperately to sneak extra vegetables into our days here and there (quite hard considering we eat mostly vegetables and we make dinner/lunch/breakfast most days).

I decided while we were waiting for the lamb stock to work it's magic for our lamb, vegetable, barley and pulse filled soup, and mushroom risotto, I'd make up some pumpkin scones. I got the recipe from the Organic Hunter - a food blogger who notoriously takes beautiful photos of fresh juices in the morning, as well as her entire organic adventures. You can see her recipe here, and note that my version is guiltily NOT made from all organic produce because I am weak and shit.

Tim Hawkinson

2011-09-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

I am quite hypnotised by Tim Hawkinson's Gimbled Klein Basket ( Pace Wildenstein Gallery in New York in May 2007). To have a shape that has an interior that folds through to its exterior, in a perfect mathematical loop alludes to something quite elegant in nature. I cannot help but think of Rodchenko's hanging mobiles, or even some of the photograms and collages made by Moholy-NAgy at Bauhaus... maybe that's a weak link, but it's where my daydreams lead me today

La Vittoria

2011-09-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

Jean Tinguely's La Vittoria (1970) at the Nouveaux Réalistes' 10th Anniversary in Milan.

I've become well acquainted with Tinguely's work - mostly his meta matics and of course, Homage to New York in MoMA. His humor, irony and notoriously ludicrous events give warmth to my days at my computer. Somehow I only came across this work today while reading Nouveau Realisme, 1960s France, and the Neo-avant-garde; Topographies of Chance and Return by Jill Carrick; a massive exploding and self destructing cock as a commemorative event for the Nouveaux Realistes' birthday

2011-09-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

I am stu-tter-ing on an introduction for drat 2 of a chapter, and these kind words were linked over to me from a friend

Kierkegaard and Sartre were right: unless you take a “leap of faith” or simply choose despite the absolute contingency of your decision, you will never manage to write or produce work, whether you’re a philosopher, a social scientist, a scientist, an artist, a poet, and novelist, etc. Until you can accept the contingency of your decision and follow, as Badiou might say, the logic of its unjustifiable deductive fidelity, until you overcome your belief that there is an Other that “knows” and not just others that are navigating their way through the contingency of existence, you will never write. All you can do is throw your dice, maintain deductive fidelity to your decision, value your encounters, and hope for the best. You will never please everyone because, as Luhmann observes, every decision is contingent and could have been otherwise. Some will hate it, others will be mystified, others will love it, some will be indifferent. You will never know why they respond in these various ways, nor will you ever be able to make a move that pleases and appeals to everyone. The most paralyzing thing is always the belief that we know what others desire and our belief that there is someone out there that knows. All you can do is make your cut, make your distinction, and choose. We are always looking for masters, leaders, sovereigns, and priests that we believe “know” so as to extinguish the anxiety of the contingency of our choices. What we don’t recognize is that our very act of choosing these phallic priests and kings is our choice and that, as Sartre recognized in “Existentialism is a Humanism”, a way of transferring our decision to someone else even though that choice of someone whose voice can “speak truth for us” is still a voice that we chose. The tragedy is that our very desire for a father is also the source of the extinction of our ability to speak and act. We believe they’ve already done so in our stead. You must kill your mother and father to act and write.

kill kill kill

F R I D A Y

2011-08-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

Here is a friday video. I occasionally internet stalk the girl who directed/choreographed this video

Three of a feather from celia rowlson-hall on Vimeo.

Her name is Celia Rowlson-Hall

2011-06-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

Calder at Lousiana was a lot more breathtaking than I thought it was going to be.

Din Blinde Passager, Arken

2011-06-26T06:17:00.000-07:00

I hadn't thought about my reaction to Olafur Eliasson's Your Blind Passager at Arken in Copenhagen - all I had thought about was going to check it out. To blindly walk through a 90m fogged hallway without any sense of depth perception and sectioned with extreme pink, orange, yellow, white and black light, gave be a surge of instant happiness. I fumbled along, bumped into people and even became fearful when, towards the end, I was in absolute darkness, but when I was in the pink/orange/yellow stages, it felt like those small moments of absolute joy, stretched out in time to absorb, alone. I did think of corny film scenes of people in heaven; white cloud surrounding them, bumping into people who are blissfully happy, but aside from that, or actually, with that I had the urge to stay in the corridor, sit down and wait for people to come along. Time doesn't really feel as though it exists in there - perhaps because our culture equates space with time and Eliasson very cleverly distorted perceptions of space with his fog...

You know those moments when you are happy and you know it's only going to last a fraction of a second; jumping off a cliff into a river with eyes closed, dancing to a song while drunk, an orgasm, on a roller coaster ride that perfectly times when your heart jumps into your throat... somehow it felt a little like that, but drawn out, safe, foggy and dreamy

Behind the Screen

2011-06-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

sculpture of the day...

Behind the Screen from onformative on Vimeo.

It's, Behind the Screen

Wow, what a great book cover!

2011-05-24T20:37:00.000-07:00

Art & Agenda - Political Art and Activism, edited by Robert Klanten, Matthias Hübner, Alain Bieber, Pedro Alonzo, Gregor Jansen. With essays by Pedro Alonzo, Alain Bieber, Silke Krohn

via we-make-money-not-art

Another Segue

2011-05-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

I started up a tumblr in anticipation of our trip to Europe this year. You can find this, and other things on it too

Sooyeon Lee: Grand Slam

2011-05-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

while my thesis is on actual movement and not representation of movement (like film, photography, stop motion, etc). I do love this video from Nowness.

Here is some info that I pulled:

Korean table tennis champion, actress and former model Sooyeon Lee challenges herself to a high-fashion endurance match in today's film by NOWNESS contributor Matthew Donaldson. "It's a vehicle to show how extraordinarily elegant she is," says the filmmaker and photographer, who enlisted stylist Katie Shillingford to emphasize Lee's technique. "The sport requires the body to jolt into action in an aggressive manner that is mesmerizing," she says. "I wanted the clothes to accentuate these movements.” Shillingford commissioned designer Geraldine Chevrolet to create bespoke fringed tights, gloves and a hat, pairing the custom accessories with neon, black and nude jumpsuits, dresses and leggings from Christopher Kane, Mark Fast, Jil Sander and Versace. Originating in 1880s Britain as an after-dinner parlor game, the Olympic sport of table tennis has recently emerged as the boutique pastime of choice, evidenced by actress Susan Sarandon's SPiN, a chain of ping-pong clubs which counts Lee as its ambassador and has locations in New York, Toronto and Hollywood. "It's become very trendy," Lee observes. "It's sociable, you don't need to be super athletic and it's good for the brain."

Lately

2011-05-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

2011-05-10T23:41:00.000-07:00

I have a ridiculous fantasy about turning our trip to Europe this year into a video like this. Why? some dumb vain thing about pretending that life is prettier, or pretending to be in a band, when you're not even in one. Still, a wedding in a castle in Germany is pretty fucking awesome. So will the yoga/surfing group honeymoon.

This is Efterklang's poster and teaser for An Island.

AN ISLAND - 3rd TEASER - Vincent Moon & Efterklang from Rumraket on Vimeo.

2011-04-27T00:38:00.000-07:00

I just came across What Will Come (Has Already Come) by William Kentridge. The film installation is created with charcoal and projection where the drawn images are created with distortion in order to enable the projected images to presented with perfect scale. There is an inverse of relations here - usually what is projected is distorted, and what we see is directly in proportion.

Kentridge says, What Will Come (Has Already Come) (2007) which is about the Italian-Ethiopian war in the 1930s, works from the principle that what is distorted in projection gets corrected by the viewer's seeing of it in a mirror, so the distortion is the correction and the original is the distorted

There is also another longer video here on some of his works and an interview with Kentridge. Aside from many things, the following quote struck me .. hopefully I can use it at some point

Kentridge: I'm interested in machines that tell you what it is to look, that make you aware of the process of seeing, make you aware of what you do when you construct the world when looking at it, but more of how looking and seeing is a metaphor for how we understand the world.

Watch the full episode. See more ART:21.

kale is the vegetable of the year

2011-04-26T02:15:00.000-07:00

Potato, kale and chorizo soup (gourmet traveller) with WA sangiovese on a night in

We went up a mountain and came crashing down

2011-04-26T02:02:00.000-07:00

2011-04-19T01:08:00.000-07:00

two kinds of flickering stars of the day

1. A spawn of baby jellyfish taking over the river

Tony Conrad's stroboscopic film, Flicker (1066) [Warning: contains stroboscopic lighting :)]

2011-04-02T01:49:00.000-07:00

Inspired by West Six Kitchen, I decided to make some bagels on the weekend. While I love cooking, I'm a horrible baker - which is lucky, considering I don't have a sweet tooth anyway. I followed the recipe exactly and was pretty happy with my first time result. Here they are, plus one of me in my country kitchen double denim cooking show outfit and pose

The recipe, as shown on west six kitchen:

1kg strong white flour
1tbsp salt
7g easy-blend yeast
2tbsp caster sugar
1tbsp vegetable oil
500ml warm water
2tbsp malt, or caster sugar

Combine all dry (except last 2tbsp malt or sugar) ingredients together. Combine wet ingredients together. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, and pour in the wet. Mix well with a spatula.

Knead for ten minutes by hand or with a food mixer fitted with a dough hook. The dough should be dry, but smooth and elastic, when you've finished. Put in a lightly oiled bowl to rise for 1 hour.

Divide the dough into 15 pieces each weighing 100g. Roll each portion into a sausage, then into a ring. Seal the ends by overlapping them a little and pinching them together. Lay the bagels on trays lined with baking paper, well spaced apart, to rise. Cover with tea towels.

Put a large papotn of water onto the heat. When it boils, add the malt or sugar. Preheat the oven to 240C.

When the water is boiling and the bagels are puffy, add them to the water two or three at a time. After 30 seconds flip them over, and take them out after a minute. Put them back on the baking sheets, and repeat with all the bagels.

When you've poached them all, sprinkle poppy seeds/sesame seeds/whatever, put them in the oven for 10-15 minutes until they're shiny and golden brown.

2011-03-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

ooh, I wish I could see this exhibition in the flesh:

2011-03-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

We get up at 6.30am every morning but only now have I discovered the joy of it. I'm vain enough to say that when my house is pretty, I feel better. I realised the other day that this house is the only house I've been truly happy in for 8 years. It's been a long time searching, but I found you. If only I owned it.

When I am in writing mode with a chapter deadline looming ahead of me, I shed my belongings constantly. I find cookies in the bathroom, my sunglasses under my pillow, and a lonely shoe in my car. How to stop this?

Agam's Beating Heart Sculpture

2011-03-11T00:53:00.000-08:00

"using the dimension of time, there are infinite possibilities"
"perfect disorder equals harmony... the kind of perfect disorder that is in the harmony of nature"

2011-03-03T17:31:00.000-08:00

I was blown away by Wildbirds and Peacedrums last night at the Beck's Box. They'll be my Autumn tunes for 2011

Jan Billycan

2011-02-21T21:25:00.000-08:00

I'm currently doing a little bit of research assistant work and have been pulled and rocked into a dream by Jan Billycan's paintings. She has painted prolifically for the past ten years and exhibited at William Mora, Short St. Gallery amongst others (and probably more) and was recently in the Bidyadanga Recent Paintings exhibition at the Chapman Gallery in Canberra.

Jan Billycan, Martagoolu (2010). Acrylic on canvas 91cm x 61.5cm

Zilvinas Kempinas - Double O

2011-02-20T18:54:00.000-08:00

I recently went to New York for the CAA annual conferencee, and for a general art field strip. There are so many things going on in my head about the things that I visited, stumbled upon and was confronted with, that it's going to take some time to digest. I wont go into too much detail here, but point to a few highlights of my short trip.

One of the things that has stuck in my mind everyday, since seeing it, was Zilcinas Kempilas' Double O at MoMA. Two industrial fans facing one another, blowing wind towards one another that suspended two rings of VHS tape at the entrance to the galleries at MoMA. I was floored by the charisma of the movement carried by the tape. In some moments it looked like a fight, or an entropic struggle, and at other times the tape was dancing, underwater. This is one of my favourite contemporary kinetic works that I've seen, without doubt. Although I wonder about why it was positioned at an entrance... as if there was some congratulatory spectacle upon your arrival..?

In the video belo, Kempilas talks about the reference to time that he makes in the installation... Something that I wonder if Pamela Lee's eyes would spark in, in reference to her theory on Chronophobia

Here is my own video of the installation:

Here is another video of an installation by Kempilas that was exhibited at the 53rd Venice Bienalle - a little manifestation of Anthony McCall's A Line Describing a Cone, no? or do I just see that everywhere?

Zilvinas Kempinas, Tube - Direction Guillaume Blanc
Uploaded by AVFPROD. - Independent web videos.

Out if Context: For Pina

2011-02-20T18:31:00.001-08:00

Last night we went and saw Out Of Context: For Pina. We were blown away with the performance - the manifestations of both conscious and subconscious streams, and also just how genuinely humorous it was (in both comfortable and uncomfortable ways).

Alain Platel, the director/choreographer of Out of Context:

Now, I need to do my research on Pina Baushc. I think I'll start with this:

Stills from the film:

2011-02-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

Christina Chau was in Brooklyn

2011-02-17T22:53:00.000-08:00

DIA was amazing, but I only captured the ride back to New York

2011-01-10T02:07:00.000-08:00

aaaactually I complain about the work that I know that I have to do and haven't done yet and how my thesis looks like an unhappy hipster image, on acid... but really, I do make sure the good things about summer in check. Most days after work, Pete and I come home to 4 more hours on sunshine, laze in the back yard with wine, our garden and jarrah door-table.

I hate the idea of tacos, this is probably because I had them once as a kid and couldn't work out why in hell you'd want to eat mince in chips. Eating tacos like this has definitely changed my presumption about their abilities. It's one big table picnic of fresh goodness loaded spices and chili. Pete's fresh-bang-salsa that he made brought tears to my eyes, really. delicious.

In other words, I complain by day and gorge by sunset :)

2011-01-09T22:05:00.000-08:00

I have written a very scratchy draft of my thesis... about 50 000 words or so. The next year and probably a half is going to consist of re-drafting, sculpting, rewriting, and editing over and over again.

So now, to begin this re-chain, I'm currently identifying all of the impractical things that I say, in order to create a practical space.

Here is a gif by LiLi Huston-Herterich called, 'Impractical Object in a Practical Space' - it's a bit like what my thesis looks like now, in gif form, of course.

2010-12-01T01:28:00.000-08:00

One of those days that surge with early rushes of thought that exhaust themselves, leaving me worn and deflated. To then pick up this book, which reminds me all of the things that I'd forgotten to mention in my chapter.

I've tried all of the secrets, tricks and segues and I don't know how to clean this mess up that is splayed all over the screen. It doesn't help having drunk 3 coffees and a pot of tea.

keep going, keep going.

A Line Describing a Cone

2010-11-22T00:07:00.000-08:00

My current chapter will be looking at the various way in which the affect of movement can be discussed. The chapter hopes to create an opening for the means of affect to be discussed that is not dependent on phenomenology. Rather, it asks what a kientic art does, rather than what it is.

Amongst other works that project and modulate moving light, I intend to write on this particular piece, A Line Describing a Cone by Anthony McCall

2010-11-21T18:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we tasted a few beers in the backyard - some tea beer, chocolate beer, and a range of ales, stouts, etc...

2010-11-18T17:43:00.001-08:00

It's 38 degrees today, and even though I'm safely in air conditioning, sleeping in a house without it has made my body slow. I never sleep in and then today rocked up to my desk at 9.30 - urgh. There are sharks eating a dead whale 14km away and we're told not to swim - but they're happy over there eating the whale, they don't want sunblock slicked me. All I want to do is spin around slowly listening to this song.

2010-11-09T21:03:00.000-08:00

Working from home is pretty great

Today is

2010-10-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

the day Peter Weibel saved my life.

Thank you

call for photocopies

2010-09-12T18:35:00.001-07:00

Some people might think of photocopiers as ubiquitous menaces of the past – they are large, noisy, and hold piles of paper hostage, jammed in their trays. But really, photocopiers have been there for us in so many times of need. Remember when your passport was stolen and you were grateful that you had a copy? Remember finding a copy of someone’s face in the bin and making a few replicas? Remember bookmarking a picture that made your day better, and copying it for a friend so she will love it too? Photocopy club began in 2005 for these reasons; small finds that are cheaply shared amongst friends. The love for photocopies has since grown due to their tangibility, texture and accidental deformations.

So, here’s the detail: Photocopy Club is getting bigger and is asking YOU to submit a photocopy before October 10 2010 – of anything you like, really; a poem, a copy blooper, collage, photo or prank. All submissions will popped onto the website and considered for the monthlyish Journal of the Photocopy Club, which will be sent out to you electronically (yay! Free!). And our art department will be making limited edition, quality photocopied, hand stapled hard copies too (because, well, pdfs aren't really real, are they?)

Consider the website. A miniature timeline of information distribution in itself, photocopyclub.tumblr.com brings an idea, made solid by Joe Gutenburg, via Tony Xerox to your personal device. Cool.

Get in touch now. We'll tell you what to do.

Thanks, Panda, Russ and Mick.

Art and Technology panel

2010-07-28T20:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a discussion between Nicolas Bourriaus, Michael Joaquin Grey and Peter Weibel chaired by Edward Shanken at Art Basel. Shanken will be chairing a similar panel at the CAA conference in New York 2011.

Title: Art and Technology | Contemporary Art and New Media: Towards a Hybrid Discourse
Participants: Nicolas Bourriaud, Curator and Writer, Paris
Michael Joaquin Grey, Artist, New York
Peter Weibel, Chairman and CEO, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
Moderator | Edward Shanken, Art Historian and Media Theorist, Amsterdam
Date: Saturday, June 19, 2010 | 1 – 1.30 p.m.

2010-07-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

I'm presenting a paper next week at Arts in Society in Sydney.

Hopefully I'll be posting some thoughts about the conference and other things that I get up to up here as I go along.. Hold you breath, I dare you.

2010-06-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of images of things that I thought about while writing today. Some of these things remained at the background of my brain, and I kept writing. Some of these things jumped to the forefront of my thoughts and became manifestations of procrastination.

This is what I think about when writing about kinetic art

A Deleuzian Light Space Modulator?

2010-06-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

I have been reminded by a few that I've directed people here and then 'done a runner'. So I ran in a circle and I am back with all of the promises and split-grins of someone with a shifty habit.

I'll change, I'll get better, just give me some time. Really, I mean it.

So anyway. I have been reading a lot on Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's Light Space Modulator and I am these days wondering if Deleuze's cinema books can help illuminate new meaning or provide another framework for which we can analyse works like the Modulator. Sometimes it all comes together and then before I scoop this new knowledge with my palms, it all disperses again. I am determined.... well I have to be if I want to present at a conference in July. ...!!!!

The sculpture was a work in itself but was also intended for theatre and film works. The film that is linked in this entry is one section that has survived.

There is a close correlation between the problems of this system of forces and the problem of freely floating sculpture as well as of film as projected spatial motion. The first projects looking towards the dynamic-constructive system of forces can be only experimental demonstration devices for testing the connections between man, material forces and space. Next comes the use of the experimental results for the creation of freely moving (free from mechanical and technical movement) works of art.

‘Dynamic-Constructive System of Force’
By Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Alfred Kemeny
Der Sturm, Berlin, 1922, No. 12. ‘Synamisch-Konstruktives Kraftsystem’.

2010-02-27T20:02:00.000-08:00

This semester, amongst other things, I am teaching Art in the Age of Modernism. I can't wait to talk about Callibotte paintings and then maybe they'll slip out from under my eyelids for a moment.

It's going to be a good year.

parelho Cinecromático (1964) - Abraham Palatnik

2010-01-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

A little note for later - via rhizome.

Thomas Wilfred's Clavilux

2009-12-09T00:22:00.000-08:00

In 1922 Thomas Wilfredmade his first colour organ, Clavilux. He features in a small part of my first chapter, which travels through early 20th Century inventions that combine motion, light and machine. The organ was constructed to project light on 6 screens - each key that was played corresponded to a colour that was projected. The user could also manipulate hue, tone and motion. Colour organs did exist before but they were a lot more primitive, such as the organ made by of Louis-Bertrand Castlel in 1725. His organ was equipped with painted glass panels, each behind a curtain, that would be pulled back when its respective key was played.

Today I was looking at Yale's digital archive on Thomas Wilfred's Clavilux. Even though the piece exhibited for a few years and had a lot of publicity and influence on Italian Futurists, Constructivists, and of course, Kinetic Artists, it was poorly documented. I think that Yale has the largest archive of his work - but still there aren't any films or videos of it, which I would love to see.

Here is a photo of one of the projections, titled Chalice and recreated in 1960, with its manuscript from The Thomas Wilfred papers, 1914-1993:

The Clavilux projectors and screens - much like a cubby house 'ready for performance'

It was envisioned that he Clavilux technology could be used for indoor and outdoor use. There were a few outdoor performances and there was a domestic model built for the home but I haven't read anything on that yet (too focused on writing the chapter, but it's on the to-do list). I think that this invention is pretty amazing. don't forget that film was still in its embryonic stage - colour tinting and stenciling did exist but it was both expensive and basic. Wilfred also attempted for the Museum of Modern Art NY to acknowledge light as a medium for art, however he achieved little success.

What I find compelling about this particular early work is that, unlike other inventors and artists, he side steps out of the discussion of public/private light and the idea of light to be used as an advertising medium. Soon after the invention of artificial light there were brief discussions (from memory, in Paris) about the use of profile lights to beam advertisements onto clouds. Even though today humans are bombarded with advertisements, the idea of cloud billboards does make me feel a little claustrophobic. He seems focused on representations of abstract thought, and the visualisation of virtual space. I guess Wilfred came in at a good time; when the Futurists and Constructivists were springing up and gathering together and when modern technology was catapulting forward.

Thomas Wilfred with a later work, Lumia

WOOLOO.ORG

2009-12-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

I've been taking a look at WOOLOO.ORG lately and have been surprised by its immense database. The site not only is open for artists to have a profile of their work, exhibitions and CV but it is also a pin-up board for collectives, exhibitions, festivals and events to call out to artist participation.

Anyone can call out, participate, promote and exhibit and it seems to be growing everyday. Some of the calls are for events but also for studio spaces in Berlin, book projects, residencies, and works that call out for global network participation

re:live 09

2009-12-01T23:29:00.001-08:00

Edward Shanken answers a question about ecology and systems aesthetics and uses Hans Haacke as an example

re:live MediaArtHistories 09

2009-12-01T22:38:00.000-08:00

I've just returned from Melbourne; an almost week's worth of MediaArtHistories, friends, food, beer and sun. The conference was brain filling and curiosity picking and it was relieving to hear research that intersects with my own. I anticipate that the next few posts will be on work/people/events that was mentioned at the conference that have sparked something in my brain - but to be referred to later.

For now, here is an installation by Hans Op de Beeck called Location 6. It was constructed for the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, 2008, which has since travelled elsewhere. The installation is a corridor that leads to a round room that invites the viewer to sit and look out to a view of infinite barren white fog. The isolating environment kind of straddles both the apocalyptic and the sublime.

The speaker at the conference, Dr Robrecht Vanderbeeken - brought up the concept of virtual unfamiliar non-spaces, which have come into new media theory recently. A "materialised copy of virtual reality" which with a "lack of detail is the artiface of the spectators own storage of memories".

During the discussion of the paper, a few questions were raised. One person asked about where in works like this is there a space of art criticism. How does one theorise this, in a domain that is predominantly taxonomic, that arise from the technology of fabrication? Are these judgements from digital culture or reminants form an analogue culture? -- which I find quite interesting. There is I think/suspect/wonder if such new media installations raise or flirt with modernist dialogues, and I wonder why there is a trend for analogue readings of digital works.

Professor Sean Cubitt also pondered afterwards about the notion of fabrication in regards to the practice of of weaving together humans and technology and proto image material. Fabrication is key because it suggests something… where the imagination is commanded which also flirting with notion that science gives truth –but also the imagination fabricates. Judgement becomes difficult in these systems. What is it when we fabricate realities in multiple ways with our imagination in highly technical works?