The Third & The Seventh

Alex Roman. He made this 12 minute film, and called it "The Third & the Seventh" and blew my mind. I would highly recommend going to Vimeo and watching this HD and full screen.

And just remember, this is 100% computer graphics. CGI. Not real.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Wet

I dusted off the old time-lapse controler, put in a new battery and it still works just as well. I have work on remembering a few things though.

Here is our wet street, over the course of about 30 minutes.

The Reverse Graffiti Project

I have talked about this artist before, known as Paul "Moose" Curtis, but he has a new video out that highlights his amazing work:

St. Paul Art Crawl!

The St. Paul Art Crawl 

Friday April 25th: 

6:00 - 10:00 P.M

Saturday April 26th: 

2:00 - 10:00 P.M

Sunday April 27th: 

12:00 - 5:00 P.M 

Yes thats right, the St. Paul Art Crawl is this weekend, well right now in fact, an I am in it! I am showing a remix of 30:1 and Rabbit Logic, so nothing new I am afraid. Stop by any time and say hi. 

The Most Unwanted Music

I remember these paintings from the Dia center by Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid. Here is a short description for how they came across this idea

Upon emigrating to the United States in 1978, they searched for an American secular religion on par with Marxism, and found it in the psuedo-science of public opinion polling.

They are manifestations of the "Best" and "Worst" paintings as chosen by the public using a general survey. Yes that is George Washington. They show that if we get everything we want, or nothing we want, the end product is equally unsatisfying. What we really want to see is not some list of things together, but something that makes us feel something and want to talk to other people about it. Which of course does make this  a good piece of art, once you know why it was made.  

So when I heard of of these songs they made in 1997, I had to hear it. "The Most Wanted Song," (unavoidably and uncontrollably "liked" by 72 ± 12% of listeners) and the "The Most Unwanted Song" (Fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population will enjoy this ). Of course after listening, I love the most Unwanted song (it is on right now) and I hated the most wanted song. I had to turn it off. Interesting that this is the opposite reaction that the paintings invoke. The popular one is interesting, and the unpopular one is flat. Where in music, the popular one is flat and the unpopular one is dynamic, and hilarious. 

Here is an article describing their work more. They come out of a post-soviet ironic movement that uses tools of mass popular appeal - and somehow making them wrong.

Dog-Cat-Mouse!

Wow. This is mythic for me. My mentor in College mentioned Dog-Cat-Mouse once but I have never found anything more about it. All I knew was that he was from Colorado. Well, via Cute Overload here he is, Greg Pike now in Bisbee Arizona:

The Graveyard

Via BoingBoing is a game entitled "The Graveyard" for Mac and PC. The game is a "Demo" but paying $5 to unlock the full game releases just one new feature - death.  The entire game (if you want to call it that) is you as an old woman walking through a graveyard, turning around and siting on a bench. Then walk out when you are done. There is more to it than that but I don't want to give it away. 

This is an art video game and one of the first to really get it right I think. The common thread to these art games is that they are usually not goal oriented, instead using the interactivity of the game to create an environment for something else to happen. The added element of "unlocking" death in this game is really  intriguing to me, especially since it costs money. 

Try it out! 

Last day at St. Olaf

Today is my last day at St. Olaf. It is kind of a funny thing, every one else's last memory is of graduation, saying goodbye and taking off in the spring time. I have lingered, through the apprenticeship, through work, and through this summer. So now it is my time to go, only it is the fall and I am the only one left. The halls here are full of new students. I just walked by color design to hear Wendel saying "to call it blue is not enough.." just like I heard five years ago. Everything seems so familiar now, but yet totally different.

For years the drive down to St. Olaf has become a blur. A time to listen to NPR and zone out as you pass countless trucks and landmarks. But this time down I was aware, more so than I have been for years. I remember driving down in the 4-runner before week 1 with my parents and my stuff for College. I remember riding in the back seat down highway 19 and leaning forward, eager for what St. Olaf had waiting for me. Now I drive out and it is a good thing. My life on University ave is great, and my new position at Mac is fantastic. But I will also miss my time here, and the place here, and the people here. St. Olaf was more than just school - it was a home, a studio, a community and a job. So as I fade away I think there is something nice about a quiet goodbye.

Tonight I also get on a Northwest flight to the land of Austin TX for a 32 hour visit. Mac is paying my way to this mini conference for visual resources and I get back Sunday for lunch. I am going to get to see Zach who is driving down from Dallas.

New adventures await!

Rant Chaser

Hate to have such a rant as the first post (Direct TV sucks! Sorry couldn't help my self) so here is a cool Wednesday chaser. Reverse Graffiti! The basic idea is that the artist uses soap and a brush to selectivly clean the grime caused by pollution, advertising, or what ever and write your message using that negative space. Its legality is in question, but obviously it is far more legal than using paint. Over time, (as shown in this photo) more grime covers up your work. And the only way to "clean up" the wall is to wash the dirt off! So Dirty = Clean. Clean = Dirty.

"Banksy" is one of the big names in this in the UK, and here is his web page.

Also, Here is an NPR slide show of some of his work.

I am an artist!

I just finished my art interview at the lofts and I passed! There are normally 3 people (my friend Derek had 6 people!) but two of them were sick so it was just two of us talking. I told her about my work and showed her my webpage and talked about the apprenticeship and such. I also talked about my commitment to the loft community and to art in St. Paul/Minneapolis in general. In short, I can't wait!

I also got to question the idea that their main art space will be in hallways and entry ways and such since the gallery got converted into dance/movement space. The conversion is fine, they needed and use the space, but there still needs to be a place to show and discuss artwork that is separate from normal life. We need a gallery space that people can enter and partake in the unique rules of a gallery - or choose to ignore and walk past. Both are OK. What we expect in a hallway and what we will accept in a gallery are different! My interviewer responded that none of the hallways would be "public," with the logic that the "public" is people on the street. Thats just not true. The hallways are subject to people coming home and people visiting and just because people have been OKed as "artists" does not mean they are happy with seeing challenging work at all hours of the day - if at all. (Let alone the technical restrictions for sculpture, video, etc..)

What I think would be really invigorating is to have a "lab" gallery that any artist can show work in with out fear of public concerns. Derek's idea was to have a closed room that would be open for installation or more experimental work including "enter at your own risk" type work. Artists will be able to get invaluable feedback on ideas before they go public, and not have to worry about censoring what they are making.

For example, what if Kara Walker (right) were to live in the Lofts? Would her work be appropriate anywhere in the complex right now? No it would not, but she has the entire top half of the Walker devoted to her installation right now!

It would be a huge missed opportunity to gather together such a diverse group of people in once place and then not provide a testing ground for new ideas and new work. The final thing that struck me in my interview discussion, was her response to my space desire was that lots of people had been asking for storage space, and that would probably get priority. The more I thought about this, the more I was stunned. You build a fantastic building, gather hundreds of creative people in once place, and then rather than encouraging them to experiment and push things, you give them hallway space to show art and storage space to store junk. Hallways and storage, two things that virtually every apartment building has.

My Dad had a good idea if worse comes to worse, get some people together and rent a storage space, and then turn it into a mini-gallery like this. But I hope that the management will take into consideration their mission and realize what a great opportunity they would be throwing away.

That said I can not wait to move in. The place seems very open to change, I just want to be involved!

Spring Break!

Yesterday, Chris and I declared it a day off for both of us, and we headed up to the cities for a date day. Chris has spent over a year groaning every time I mention that a) I haven't been to the Walker since the renovation and b) I've never had sushi. So we set out to rectify both of those things in one night. Our initial plan was to go to Fuji-Ya for sushi for lunch, then go to the Walker for the afternoon. We got to Fuji-Ya around 2:10, only to be told that they closed at 2:00. Boo! Their website states that they close at 2:30, but the guy who kicked us out said that they've been closing at 2 for six months now, and that "websites are hard to change." Uh. Okay. So we were disappointed and starving, and had to settle for Subway instead of sushi. We reconvened and decided to go to Ikea to try to make some decisions about our bed, then to the Walker (for free!), then to Fuji-Ya for a late dinner.

The bed question has been a hard one, and since we started looking, I think we've changed our minds on almost everything at least twice. I didn't realize how ridiculously expensive beds are. Yesterday the goal was just to try out some mattresses to narrow our choices down. We did that until we felt overwhelmed and they started all feeling identical. We had pretty much settled on a $250 one that we both agreed was comfortable. We went to peak at the clearance stuff on our way out and found a mattress! Someone had torn open its plastic wrap, so it got a little dirty on one corner... and was marked down from $379 to $150! Ack. What a deal. We hid the clearanced one amongst the giant shelving so that no one would take it, and ran back to the bed department to try it out. We couldn't tell a difference between that one and the one we'd originally decided on, and Chris said that if it costs more, it must be even better, that settled it! So we have a mattress, and got a great deal. It barely fit in my car, and wouldn't have without the help of the nicest guy I've ever met, who helped us figure out how to shove it inside. I'm not sure how we'll get it out, but meh. We have a bed!

After that adventure, we went to the Walker, which was awesome and very refreshing. It's so easy to get stuck in the world of facts and numbers and figures and tables- vet school doesn't offer many creative outlets. I need to remember to turn on the right side of my brain every now and then.

We ended the night where we meant to begin- eating sushi at Fuji-Ya. It was a great first experience. We each got 6 different pieces of sushi, plus miso soup and sake (I'd never had either of those, either). For the first time this week, my brain finally quit worrying about tests or what I should have been working on or what's coming up next week. What a relaxing, refreshing experience. I also had my first encounter with wasabi... wow. I don't think my face has ever felt quite like that before. Alas, Chris' favorite piece of sushi was my least favorite, but we both loved the ahi tuna and the ebi (shrimp).

We left Fuji-Ya to pick up Winnie at my house, then drove back down to Northfield with mattress and puppy squished together in the back seat. A very good day off :-)

Bronze pour

Poured my chess set today! Here is video of it going down. Mine were the first two cups poured. I am going back to Dittman to check on how they came out now.