A major retrospective on Jeff Koons, the star of the ’80s Neo-Geo movement, opened several months ago at the Château de Versailles. Juxtaposition seems to be the key word here, American mod pop iconography, functioning in great contrast with ornate French Classicism. Koons’ sculptural installations are about a visceral response to exquisitely crafted kitsch and mundane. Although, the large-scale and ornate construction, of the works, does feel akin to the monumental backdrop, the state apartments that once were occupied by Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.
Château de Versailles presents the exhibition Jeff Koons Versailles in the Royal Apartments and in the gardens of the Castle. The show presents seventeen Jeff Koons works, including his most significant works from the Eighties to these days. The project focuses on the close relationship between each work and the space surrounding it. The works have been selected specifically for Les grands appartements at the piano nobile, composed by Les appartements du Roi (The Kings apartments) and Les appartements de la Reine (The Queens apartments), which formed a suite of several rooms en enfilade. These large apartments are the most prestigious and important spaces of the Castle, since they were the official halls of the Sun King, composed as one of the richest expression of art and architecture.
Bicycles are important, beautiful, and worth a closer look. Most bikes I paint are, or have been, used daily for transportation, recreation, messenger work and/or for racing. They are worn and customized uniquely, being at once a specific bike and a collective symbol of empowerment.
MUTO by BLU is a graffiti animation, possibly the most interesting piece of public art + graffiti art I’ve viewed in awhile. Just think of the time involved and the paint overs.
The ’shell house’ by architect Kotaro Ide, is a sculptural shell-like structure which has been built in the woods of Karuizawa, located in the Nagano prefecture of Japan. The house is meant to function as a vacation home, which is able to withstand the humid summers and cold winters of the region. To accomplish this, Ide opted not to use the typical wood structure of villas in the area because of their susceptibility to decay. Instead, he used reinforced concrete to construct two elliptical shell forms which are supposed to represent a conch.
I’ve been watching Soft Focus on and off over the last year. Its a show on VBS where Ian Svenonius interviews musicians, some of whom I revere and admire. Check out the episode below, Part 1 of 4, where Ian Mackaye of DC punk rock fame debates Svenonius about the state of music in today’s culture. Soft Focus is shot on location at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
The 2009 Swine flu has been sequenced. More out of curiosity than anything else, Stephan Zielinski wrote code to translate a key gene into a piece of haunting/jarring ambient music:
The algorithm I (Stephan Zielinski) used is a bit complicated, but just in case you’re curious: since the gene is expressed as a surface protein antibodies can sense, it’s considered as a string of amino acids. Each beat corresponds to one amino acid, and the piece is in 3/4 time, so each six measures would correspond to five turns around the alpha structure. (I’m weaseling because I haven’t the foggiest idea how the protein actually gets folded.) Amino acids with side chains that are neither aromatic not aliphatic control the piano and organ: the nine non-hydrophobics the piano, and the four hydrophobics the organ. The three amino acids with aliphatic side chains control the low synthesizer, while the four with aromatics control the percussion. Strictly speaking, this is a version of swine flu hemagglutinin, FJ966952:
Wikipediaart.org uses the term “wikipedia” in their domain name. “Wikipedia” is a trademark owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. Now the Foundation is demanding that the artists, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, give up the domain name peaceably or it will attempt to take it by legal force. Can a noncommercial website use the trademark of the entity it critiques in its domain name? I guess the usually open-minded people at Wikipedia feel differently on this matter.
I have supported the Wikipedia Art project from it’s inception. My understanding is the “WikipediaArt” artwork is intended to comment on the nature of art and Wikipedia. The artists created a Wikipedia article and invited the general public to add to it, following Wikipedia’s standards of credibility and verifiability. Some Wikipedia editors decided the project was not “encyclopaedic” and shut down the article within fifteen hours of it’s creation. I support and agree with the viewpoints of the artists involved. I believe that the domain name “wikipedia.org” (and project) should be protected by fair use and First Amendment rights since wikipediaart.org is a commentary on Wikipedia and is a non-commercial venture. Seemingly, Wikipedia doesn’t have much to gain by litigating this matter, except bad press and more negative debate. It will be interesting to see how this legal debate/art piece evolves.
I really like this “Chronotopic Anamorphosis” video effect (see video at bottom of post). It reminds me of a Muse video I saw a while back. Although, there seems to be subtle differences between the two effects. It looks like the Muse video is shifting pixels from different directions at various moments and creating transitions between those pixel movements. Check the Muse video below:
Here is a description of the “Chronotopic Anamorphosis” effect in the words of Arlindo Machado:
“This video shows the test of a software developed as a programming exercise.
The image is digitally manipulated by fragmenting it into horizontal lines and then combining lines from different frames in the display. The result is a distorsion of the figures caused by their motion in time, or, as Brazilian researcher Arlindo Machado calls it: chronotopic anamorphosis.
The effect was completely based on Zbigniew Rybczynski’s “The Fourth Dimension”, but transposed to Processing programming environment and performed in real-time.
The software still has some memory issues, specially when the image rendering is combined with video recording, as it can be seen in this video.
This experiment was made within the context of Marginalia Project. More information about it, as well as the source code of this software [soon], can be found at marginalia-project.blogspot.com.”
Here is a newer visualization interpretation of a well known piece of music, and just as interesting as Ligeti’s.
“I (Michal Levy) chose this piece because I’ve struggled to play it for many years and I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of it. “Giant Steps” was also a major breakthrough in the history of Jazz music. It was the first time that music was based on symmetrical patterns, which stemmed from a mathematical division of the musical scale. I translated Coltrane’s mathematical approach to architecture. His musical theme defines a space and the musical improvisation is like someone drifting in that imaginary space.”
Here’s a little piece of electronic music history. Check out the more detailed Rad Assembly blog post about György Ligeti’s Artikulation, an electronic music piece composed in 1958 in the Studio for Electronic Music of the WDR (West German Radio) in Cologne. Ligeti’s composition was way ahead of its time, it only used tape and oscillators.
In 1970, Rainer Wehinger (rector of the Academy of Music Stuttgart) created a “Hörpartitur” or “score for listening” for Artikulation, representing the various sounds with graphic symbols. d21dd34c55 scanned the pages and synchronized them with the music and uploaded the video to youtube.
Via Boing Boing
