Art:21 Systems Episode tonight

Art:21 tonight 10:00 PM ET "Systems" with Julie Mehretu, John Baldessari, Kimsooja, and Allan McCollum.

Synopsis: Whether through acts of appropriation, repetition, or accumulation, the artists in this episode realize projects both vast in scope and beyond comprehension. (link)

Julie Mehretu's Grey Area for the Deutsche Guggenheim (link)

John Baldessari at Sprueth Magers (link)

Kimsooja's website (link)

Allan McCollum The Shapes Project (link)

August Coppola: a great man who devoted his life to teaching

image via the CRC Blog (link)

Dr. August F. Coppola (16 February 1934- 27 October 2009), Dean of Creative Arts at SFSU, professor of comparative literature, creator of the Tactile Dome at the Exploratorium (Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception) in San Francisco, world traveler who celebrated other cultures and peoples. Son of Carmine and Italia Coppola, brother of Francis Coppola and Talia Shire, father of Christopher Coppola, Marc Coppola and Nicolas Cage, grandfather to six; teacher and inspiration to countless students. Farewell Sir.

The Yes Men Fix the World

SurvivaBall! (shown at Warhol Museum 2007) image by 2Things@Once on Flickr (link)

Man Michinaga of Lovers Lane Studios and Second Front (Patrick Lichty) has work in the well-received (Sundance, Berlin) 2009 gadfly activist film The Yes Men Fix the World as animator. The Yes Men are Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno.

“What we do is pass ourselves off as representatives of big corporations we don’t like,” Mr. Bonanno cheerfully explains at the beginning of the film. “We make fake Web sites, then wait for people to accidentally invite us to conferences.”

Read more at NYTimes.com (link)


The Yes Men Fix The World (2009) official trailer

The Yes Men Fix the World (link)

The film on IMDB (link)

SurvivaBall (link)

Yes Men Videos on Babelgum (link)

Burning Life

Mab has been out sick, or traveling, or sick and traveling, for the past couple of months but did get inworld to juggle fire torches and watch the Burning Man in Burning Life burn down last night.

View large on black (link)

Burning Life (link)

Art:21 Fantasy Episode tonight

Fantasy presents four artists whose works or personal stories transport viewers to imaginary worlds and altered states of consciousness. With works that seem at times hallucinatory, irreverent, and sublime, each of these artists pursues a vision first held in the mind’s eye.

Art:21-Art in the Twenty-First Century tonight on PBS 10:00 ET Fantasy episode with Jeff Koons, Mary Heilmann, Florian Maier-Aichen, and Cao Fei, who identifies herself as the avatar of SL artist China Tracy:

Through a blend of documentary and magical realism, the artist investigates various aspects of role play: costumed youth and their families, workers’ dreams come to life at a Siemens light factory, and the simulated romance between avatars. The segment culminates in the artist’s ongoing project, "RMB City," an artificial island built in the 3D virtual world of Second Life that resembles a postmodern collage of landmarks, urban over-development, and Chinese landscape painting.

Read more (link)

Cao Fei biography (link)

Field Trip: How It Is

Tenth commission in The Unilever Series, Miroslaw Balka's new work opens today in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London and runs till 5 April 2010.

How it is, is only complete when you, the viewer, enter.

-- Curator's Introduction (Flash interactive exploration) (link)

The title, How It Is, is taken from Samuel Beckett's novel of the same name and Balka said the piece should be seen as being about everything and nothing. "There is no one single direct inspiration for the piece and the words of the artist are not so important. The work is important. It is good or bad. It works or it does not work."

-- Mark Brown, guardian.co.uk (link)

More information at Tate Modern (link)

Miroslaw Balka bio at White Cube (link)

eyebeam

video via Alan Sondheim (link)

Last Friday (9 October 2009) was SL Performance Night at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City. Artists/groups included Alan Sondheim with Foofwa d'Imobilité, Lily & Honglei, and Second Front members Patrick Lichty and Scott Kildall. The evening was also occasion to a formal launch party for Second Front's Second DVD of performance works, Avvie Road.

More:

Performing in Second Life (eyebeam.org) (link)

Lily & Honglei (Land of Illusion) (link)

Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (link)

Art:21

Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 5 begins tonight on PBS 10:00 ET with the episode Compassion (link)

Yoko Ono: Imagine Peace Tower

Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower practice lighting in Reykjavik, Iceland on left, and in SL on right- photos © Yoko Ono official (link)

Yoko Ono will unveil the Imagine Peace Tower in Second Life® Friday, 9 October 2009, soon after the real world lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland on John Lennon's 69th birthday.

Jura Shepherd writes in ROLE magazine:

The tower will replicate, as closely as possible, its real world counterpart which opened on October 9th, 2007 on Viðey Island in Kollafjörður Bay near Reykjavík, Iceland. The terrestrial version is made of fifteen powerful searchlights manipulated with mirrors to form a column of light that is tall enough to not only reach cloud cover, but has been seen to penetrate well beyond it. According to the University of Iceland, the light is so powerful that, if within the column itself, the light would still be visible with the naked eye from space and could be easily detected with instruments from much further away from our planet. The base of the tower is an elegant but austere cylindrical structure made of white stone that is meant to symbolically represent a well, specifically a wishing well. Circling the well are engravings of the phrase “IMAGINE PEACE” written in 24 different world languages.

More at ROLE Magazine (link)

Hamlet Au comments at New World Notes (link)

More photos and descriptions at Yoko Ono's IMAGINE PEACE TOWER Flickr set (link)

Information and schedules at Imagine Peace (link)

Imagine Peace Tower Island (open 9 October) (slurl)

soror Nishi on Magoo

The Temple of the Prim

Magoo (slurl)

NPIRL Preview 2 October 2009, 12:30 PM SLT

Opening 3 October 2009, 1 PM SLT

From soror Nishi's blog:

Increatum

The Prim is the Prima Materia of Second Life, everything is made of this "stuff", and like alchemy (often called The Art) we can, through diligence, ritual and devotion turn this humble prim into pure gold. "Everything is made by prim and without prim is nothing made that was made." (more)

The Temple of the Prim, Beta v 1.0

The Prim is totally neutral, even more neutral than matter which has imbued feeling depending on whether it is wood, silver, etc. The Prim ONLY manifests its creator's psyche, nothing else.

It is the blankest of blank canvases.

It is, actually, nothing. Matter is actually an illusion too. Atomic physics teaches us that electrons are energy defined by their general relative positions, there's no 'stuff'. Solid is illusion. (more)

Update: See Bettina Tizzy's report on NPIRL (link)