tom moody
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studio view - early '90s
The VVork blog gets props for (a) its relentless research, (b) bringing so many conceptual art projects from all over the world under one roof without being monotonous or repetitive, and (c) its use of photographs rather than text to convey ideas. Usually just a few words (e.g. "a crane trying to lift itself") are employed to get the message across if the photo alone does not suffice. This is a refreshing contrast to classic conceptual practice, which is to bury the art consumer under a mountain of words, cribbed from Lacan and the like, with practically nothing to look at.
Still, what's needed is a parallel blog, VVork Annotated, which attempts to make sense of this image stream. Projects compared and contrasted, stale ideas exposed (they can't all be good), connections to past art made using words and more pictures, and a consideration of what's missing from the blog. Without this the flow of ideas risks being a flow of novelty. If a group of critics spent the next six months annotating VVork online, we would have the beginnings of a real history of the present visual moment as seen through the eyes of artists.
Update: the Anti-VVork.
"Black Ice": YouTube of ESPN story. Authors George and Darril Fosty have done historical research showing that many attributes of modern day hockey, such as the slap shot and athletic goal tending, were the innovations of the sons and grandsons of African American slaves who settled in Nova Scotia. Their book is Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925.
earcon (aka John Parker, other aliases) has put up a web page version of our "Mods and Rockers" show installation in Toronto. Video versions of the GIFs played on separate screens while the sound file was listenable through headphones.
same as below but set at 20 frames per second. on my PC Firefox plays it at 20 but IE won't play any GIF above 10.
Same GIF at 580 pixels square (265 KB--each GIF frame is 580 X 580, it's not just scaled up in html)
...and 580 pixels square, 10 frames per sec (also 265 KB--not quite ready to exceed 100KB on the main blog page yet).
any comments on the relative success or failure of these different sizes and speeds would be appreciated. I'm trying to get some "optimum" standards across browsers and machines.