Art21 Season 5 and SL's China Tracy

China Tracy's i.Mirror part 1 (2007), part of the China Tracy Pavilion Project, exhibited in China Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale 2007

Today's Art:21 blog (link) featured a screenshot from Cao Fei's RMB CITY. Known as China Tracy in Second Life®, Cao Fei will be spotlighted in Art:21 Season 5 in the upcoming Fantasy episode along with Jeff Koons, Mary Heilmann, and Florian Maier-Aichen. The episode will air Wednesday 14 October 10PM (ET) on PBS.

Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century is the Peabody Award-winning series produced by contemporary art organization Art21. From the press release:

In its most international season to date, Art21’s four-part series reveals artists’ perspectives on current affairs, politics, economics, history and popular culture, as well as showcases the artists’ working processes and their studios. For the first time ever, the series is presented in high definition and made available, beyond broadcast, in its entirety on-line via Hulu, iTunes and other digital platforms. (more)

art:21's Youtube channel (link)

About Cao Fei (link)

China Tracy's RMB City on Youtube (link)

Field Trip: About Last Night

Congratulations to Terry Teachout and Paul Moravec on the first night success of The Letter, which was premiered last night by the Santa Fe Opera!

How it felt (link)

The Letter (link)

The Letter in the New York Times (link)

SLon: Salon des Refusés

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Édouard Manet

In preparation for the Beyond Casual SLon des Refuses being organized by digital curator MonCherrie Afterthought with Mab MacMoragh, to be composed of artists nominated in the wiki for Best of Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 but not voted into 30 Best (link), Soup offers the following explanation for the spirit of the show:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects”, is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.

It should be taken into account that during this time, Paris was a breeding ground for artist of all forms, poets, artists, sculptors, etc. Paris was the place to be, and the capital of the art world, any artist that wanted to be recognized, at that time, was required to have exhibited in a Salon, or gone to school in France. Being accepted into these Salons was a matter of survival for some artist; reputations and careers could be started or broken, based solely on the acceptance into these exhibits.

As early as the 1830’s, Paris art galleries had mounted small-scale, private exhibitions of works rejected by the Salon jurors. The clamorous event of 1863 was actually sponsored by the French government. In that year, artists protested the Salon jury’s rejection of more than 3,000 works, far more than usual. "Wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints," said an official notice, Emperor Napoléon III decreed that the rejected artists could exhibit their works in an annex to the regular Salon. Many critics and the public ridiculed the refusés, which included such now-famous paintings as Édouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l’herbe) and James McNeill Whistler's Girl in White. But the critical attention also legitimized the emerging avant-garde in painting. Encouraged by Manet, the Impressionists successfully exhibited their works outside the Salon beginning in 1874. Subsequent Salons des Refusés were mounted in Paris in 1874, 1875, and 1886, by which time the prestige and influence of the Paris Salon had waned.

Émile Zola incorporated a fictionalized account of the 1863 scandal in his novel L'Oeuvre (The Masterpiece) (1886).

Today by extension, salon des refusés refers to any exhibition of works rejected from a juried art show.

For information as to the progress of the juried show, see the official Brooklyn is Watching blog (link)

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves*

Penumbra Carter's mysterious cosmos spins technology and wonder into a tender dialectic with The Unkempt Hair of the Dead.

Arthole Season 3 (link) (slurl)

From the notecard for The Unkempt Hair of the Dead:

I have entitled my piece "The Unkempt Hair of the Dead" from a line in a Walt Whitman poem. He writes that the grass in cemeteries is the unkempt hair of the dead. I don't think he was being morbid, but just celebrating the fact that eventually we are swallowed back up by the earth and defacto the universe. The cycle of small matter to large matter, and back to small matter.

I have always been fascinated by people in the past who have tried to study and look at the universe and imagine how it all works. So I have paid homage to a few devices from the past created to explore and understand such things.

William Pearson's Orrery (link)

Johannes Kepler's Solar System (link)

Johannes Hevelius's Telescope (link)

I have placed grass underneath my version of our universe and made a device that is the initial maker of stuff of the universe. Whales to me represent one of the few remaining ancient mysteries we have on earth, they seem to be more of a creature of the universe than the earth.

Penumbra Carter is a talented artist and filmmaker in both Second Life® and Real Life℗. Her machinimas can be viewed on Youtube (link).

*Walt Whitman, from "A child said, What is the grass?"

Field Trip: James Kalm visits James Little

via James Kalm, aka Loren Munk (link)

Field Trip: Topological Gardens

Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens—the official U.S. entry at the 53rd International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art—presents a thematic survey comprising four decades of Bruce Nauman’s innovative and provocative work over three exhibition sites: the United States Pavilion at the Giardini della Biennale, Università Iuav di Venezia at Tolentini, and the Exhibition Spaces at Università Ca’ Foscari.

Topological Gardens (link)

Tyler Green on Bruce Nauman's chilling Double Steel Cage Piece (link)

53rd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale (till 22 November) (link)

Update: Tyler Green has more to say on Bruce Nauman, art and torture:

Bruce Nauman's hanging chairs become us, part two (link)

Bruce Nauman's hanging chairs become us (link)

Bach- Partita #2 (Glenn Gould)

via Werner Van dermeersch (link)

Arahan Claveau's Brooklyn is Watching Best of Festival Slideshow

Find more photos like this on Watashi Wa Iru

Slideshow via Arahan Claveau at Pink Narcissus (link)

Brooklyn is Watching: 30 Best Press Release

Selavy Oh's Spiral and Ichibot Nishi's Episodic.Atomized @Biw 30 Best (slurl) (link)


From Jay Van Buren:

The Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas Sim is proud to present “The Brooklyn is Watching 30 Best,”a juried selection of the year’s best artworks installed on the Brooklyn is Watching SIM in Second Life (SL). “The 30 Best” is part of the Brooklyn is Watching Year One Festival, and runs from July 7th through August 23rd in both SL at KU ART SIM, and in real life at Jack The Pelican Presents in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The festival began in SL with open nominations in June, and in early August a celebrity judge panel will select the top five artworks. Judges include SL greats Amy Wilson, Annabeth Robinson, Stacey Fox, and SL avatars AM Radio and Bettina Tizzy. The festival continues in real life at Jack The Pelican Presents, where the top five will be on display from August 7 to 23rd. Panel discussions, performances and other programming based on the competition will be announced late July.

Nominated artists include: Dancoyote Antonelli, Dekka Raymaker, Gazira Babeli, Glyph Graves, Juria Yoshikawa, Misprint Thursday, Patriciaanne Daviau, Oberon Onmura, Pavig Lok, Rachel Breaker, Rezago Kokorin, two time nominated Arahan Claveau, Comet Morigi, Ichibot Nishi, Nebulosus Severine, Selavy Oh, Solkide Auer, and three time nominated Bryn Oh and four time nominated Alizarin Goldflake.

Brooklyn is Watching is a project, started by Jay Van Buren, and Sponsored by Popcha.com that takes place in Second Life, as well as the real world. In Second Life there is a virtual space where artists from all over display their computer art to be seen by people at Jack the Pelican Presents, a gallery in Williamsburg.

The Year One Festival began as a way to archive and celebrate the best pieces accumulated over the year, but also confirms that Brooklyn really is watching, inspiring and challenging artists to continue making computer arts.

For more information, please . . . visit our blog at Brooklyniswatching.com.

The Brooklyn is Watching project has been written up in the New York Times Magazine and Brooklyn Rail. Its podcasts have featured Tyler Coburn of Brooklyn Rail and Barbara London of MoMA.

Jack the Pelican Presents is a trendsetting Williamsburg gallery specializing in contemporary art and owned by Don Carrol, founding editor of Art Lies Magazine.

Popcha! is a boutique media technology agency focused on making virtual worlds work for its clients. As one of Second Life’s first Gold Solution Providers, Popcha! has been been singled out as a highly qualified provider who has demonstrated a high level of client satisfaction and has developed successful projects on behalf of businesses, governments, educational institutions, and other business organizations in Second Life.

Located in Lawrence, Kansas, The University of Kansas is a member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and is a research 1 University. The Department of Visual Art is comprised of 30 full time professors who teach painting, sculpture, printmaking, new media, ceramics, textiles, metals and art education, and has impressive studio space.

There will be an opening celebration on Friday at 6pm eastern 3pm SLT. The reception for the artists’ will be on August 7th at 7pm eastern 4pm SLT.

Soup: Selavy Oh's Mountains Dance with NPIRL

Selavy Oh's Dancing Mountains and Nested Cubes in Magoo (slurl)

She has managed to breathe life into the landscape in ways heretofore unimaginable. -- Bettina Tizzy on Selavy Oh's Dancing Mountains (read more and view machinima)

Bettina Tizzy of the Not Possible IRL blog (Happy 2nd birthday NPIRL!) showcased Selavy Oh's Dancing Mountains with an atmospheric machinima and thoughtful allusions to land artists Michael Heizer and James Turrell.

Soup is reminded as well of joy in the work of artist Andy Goldsworthy, whose pieces incorporate laws of nature in ways that directly address time and impermanence, inescapable aspects of any environment.



NPIRL (link)

Michael Heizer (link)

James Turrell (link)

Andy Goldsworthy (link)

Now is the time for all good Second Life® virtual art-lovers to come to the aid of Brooklyn is Watching!

Beholder Monet Destiny & Mab in the Watchtower, February 2009, on the occasion of Mab's first visit to BiW's Popcha sim

Open voting now until 5 July 2009 11AM SLT (link)

Wiki with full list of nominated artworks and descriptions (link)

Full explanation of Best of Brooklyn is Watching Festival (link)

Don't wait! Go now! It only takes a few minutes and anyone can vote! (link)

Vote!