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GIF grid by eyekhan
Based on my MSPaintbrush "Waves" drawing.
Hello to all at artMovingProjects today. This continues the series of remote posts to the "terminal" which are also simultaneously viewable on the larger Internet, as part of the performance work BLOG. Aside from routine schmoozing, much of my time at the opening last night was spent explaining (a) how blogs work, (b) how long I've been doing it (six years, three months), and (c) the purpose of showing the blog in the gallery when it could also be consumed at home. Please see earlier posts for writing on some of these issues.
Zoe Sheehan Saldana (umlaut over the "e" and tilded "n" in Saldana), who is showing in the artMovingProjects main space. In her exhibit "Homegrown" she is growing an edition of 96 tobacco seedlings (Nicotiana tabacum Burley) under indoor lights. A webcam showing the seedlings, refreshed every 30 minutes, is here.
Behind her is BLOG, a performance work consisting of the blog you're reading, situated in the gallery's project space for a month. A couple of posts were made during the opening and those of us standing around the terminal from time to time enjoyed reading the comments. I did not put up any cats (or Katz--see comments) but that could happen at any time.
Some gallerygoers chose to use BLOG to explore sidebar links without returning, read up on global warming, and possibly check email--that's part of the art, I guess, but those actions will not be documented.
This is my inaugural post for BLOG, the exhibition. I am at the opening now. Wish you could be here. If anything particularly noteworthy happens in the next two hours I will post about it. In anticipation of a few people standing around wondering what I'm going to do I will also be posting some artwork and possibly a cat.
Good Art of the Day (with Quote)
Joel Holmberg: Scratching Post Vortex and rear-screen-projected sculpture/installation based on same.
"One could criticize young artists in America for attacking trivial subjects when the world is busy coping with the misfortunes inflicted by their country of origin. Yet the solipsism of Scratching Post Vortex doesn't necessarily respect national boundaries--the work's debased Pop values indict all of Western consumer culture, those complicit with Empire or aspiring to be like it. The piece suggests a despairing nexus of humans and what's left of the animal kingdom--overbred domestic pets in a species-depleted world spastically scratching out their frustrations as if on treadmills. Treadmills that grow to encompass other treadmills in a hellish recursive universe of landfill-bound products." --Theodor Adorno
Thanks to ArtCal for the nice advance listing on the "Blog" opening tonight. I will be there and plan to do some "live posting." As explained in this earlier thread on the methodology of the piece:
I see this performance as a lot like the cubicle group show I was in, where I sat in the cube and worked at the computer in my business casual attire: on the opening night, but also during "office hours"--in other words, every day the space was open I came in and worked. The unrented office where that show was held had no net connection and I was channeling "my working conditions circa '95" so I posted about it during non office hours. For BLOG I will also be working during gallery hours, but from home--the posting will be the work, not about the work. (Or both, if I'm feeling "meta.")As for the "how do you sell this?" question:
[...]
I'm going to be performing with changing content, graphics, etc. Not really any different from what I normally do but with an awareness of a specific, physical audience, what will work on the gallery's screen, how to explain to a reader not physically in the gallery what I'm doing and why.
Also I will post any documentation the gallery sends me of how the blog screen appeared on a given day, whether or not anyone looked at it, etc. The gallery will also save each day's posts as documentation.
[T]his'll be structured as a "classic" economic exchange. An agreed amount of funds for an editioned disc with the data for the show (html files for each day's posts plus associated files--images, etc.) and a certificate authenticating the work and the size of the edition.Also, besides the edition, the "terminal" (pedestal/keyboard stand, gear) will be offered as a stand alone work, with the month's posts and associated files burned on a dedicated hard drive.
As for the press release's statement, "For the first time a blog is shown in a gallery space," commenters in the thread mentioned some possible precedents but no serious documentation was put forward of a previous, month long performance work called "Blog." As stated in the thread, I'm open to having a "beef" with anyone on this issue. On some level mine is a protest piece: that blogging has made no serious inroads into the rigid gallery/museum/art mag system of evaluating art and must be physically present in a gallery to have "cred." But it is also the second generation of "net art"--a much more casual and un-self conscious use of available technology as a content delivery system. It may seem paradoxical to say a blog bearing the artist's name is un-self conscious but the scope of this blog has always been bigger than talking about my cat (if I had one). Commenters keep the place lively and interesting, for me and I think others.
"BLOG," the gallery exhibition, opens tomorrow night in the artMovingProjects project space. Above, artist Aron Namenwirth gives the artwork a test drive. What we have is a dedicated, frequently updated, remote content delivery system in the gallery, clearly visible in the space, which is as interactive as the viewer wants it to be. Using a feature called "comments," one can communicate directly with the artist. The future arrived early.
(Images on screen are by Ina Barfuss, culled from Google as a hybrid activity of appropriation, curation, and journalism.)