From Petapixel on the work of Lori Nix + Kathleen Gerber (Nix+Gerber).
“Since 2005, Nix has been working on an project titled “The City,” which shows various scenes from a post-apocalyptic world... Pretty much everything in each scene is created by the two artists, and each scene takes about 7 months to create and shoot, from start to finish.”
The first step forward is for Facebook, and anyone who uses algorithms in subjective decision making, to drop the pretense that they are neutral. Even Google, whose powerful ranking algorithm can decide the fate of companies, or politicians, by changing search results, defines its search algorithms as “computer programs that look for clues to give you back exactly what you want.”
But this is not just about what we want. What we are shown is shaped by these algorithms, which are shaped by what the companies want from us, and there is nothing neutral about that.
Makes me think of the witch in Snow White: “Magic mirror, on the wall – who is the fairest one of all?” Read full article for a good explanation how the algorithms on Facebook (and google) are controlling what we say while pretending to be neutral
Many posts on the great David Bowie and his impact on popular culture and the arts. He was fearless and one of my personal heroes “for [more than] one day.” His retrospective David Bowie is that I saw in Berlin was one of the most memorable exhibitions I have seen in recent years. He was fearless is his art, seemingly not afraid to fail by trying something new — an inspiration.
“…For me, as for so many, David Bowie represented a glittering, odd, unearthly reminder that life is about change, risk, madness and mayhem, and that while our domestic structures work hard to keep the madness at bay, we must be ready at all times to “turn and face the strange.”… “
And Bully Bloggers is a great blog to follow: “The Bully Bloggers are a queer word art group. We write about everything queer, so, pretty much everything. Politics, culture, etiquette, vampires, cartoons, the news, philosophy, utopia and revolution. This blog is our Bully Pulpit; we preach to the converted, the unconverted and the indifferent. We are very serious, but in a silly sort of way. ”
The startling 1929 surrealist silent film Un Chien Andalou made by Luis Buñuel in collaboration with Salvador Dalí is now a deeply unsettling video game. If the infamous eye slicing scene makes you recoil at its memory, wait until a digital moon soundtracked by hideous stretching noises morphs into a gaping oculus, and your only release from its revolting gaze is to slash it down the pupil.
#IlustradoresConAyotzinapa is a multi-artist blog with portraits of the missing 43 students created and uploaded by illustrators and artists—a powerful artistic response and act of online activism.
Born in the Bronx, Winogrand did much of his best-known work in Manhattan during the 1950s and 1960s, and in both the content and dynamic style he became one of the principal voices of the eruptive postwar decades. Known primarily as a street photographer, Winogrand, who is often associated with famed contemporaries Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, photographed with dazzling energy and incessant appetite, exposing some 26,000 rolls of film in his short lifetime. He photographed business moguls, everyday women on the street, famous actors and athletes, hippies, politicians, soldiers, animals in zoos, rodeos, car culture, airports, and antiwar demonstrators and the construction workers who beat them bloody in view of the unmoved police. Daily life in America—rich with new possibilities and yet equally anxiety-ridden and threatening to spin out of control—seemed to unfold for him in a continuous stream.
READINGS
When Images Come to Life After Death – by Arthur Lubow NYTimes.com The photographer Garry Winogrand was known for imposing an artist’s eye on messy urban life, but when he died in 1984, after a rapidly lethal cancer, he left behind an imposing mess of uncertain artistic value: a third of a million exposed frames of film that he hadn’t edited. More than 2,500 rolls — some 100,000 frames — were undeveloped. He had never seen them. read more
You’ve seen them before. You’ve seen them in war zones and funerals, even. More often than not, they result in disdain — or head scratching, at least — for the apparent soullessness and narcissism. This is just the latest I’ve seen. It appeared, in all it’s blasphemy, as the leadoff photo in The Atlantic “In Focus” Photos of the Week slideshow on Friday. Documenting the perceived insensitivity, the caption reads:
Tourists take a “selfie” as demonstrators burn a trash container during a May Day rally in Barcelona, Spain, on May 1, 2014. Tens of thousands of workers marked May Day in European cities with a mix of anger and gloom over austerity measures imposed by leaders trying to contain the eurozone’s intractable debt crisis.
How dare these tourists (ugly Americans, perhaps?) denigrate the anger and gloom of tens of thousands of European workers?
Well, I’m not prepared to say that this photo or its innumerable cousins have any moral implications at all. What is clear is that these types of photos need to be understood on two completely independent levels. [read rest of article]
Excerpt from essay > “On Tuesday of this week, the British creative arts website It’s Nice That published a feature on a photo-shoot by French multi-disciplinary studio Akatre entitled Tropical. The images consist of two young naked women painted entirely (and unrecognizably) black, stood in front of a brightly patterned tropically-themed seamless backdrop, or reflected in the smooth dark mirrored surface of a black table…” [ read more ]
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Happy to learn about thegreatleapsideways.com and greatleapsideways.tumblr.com, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, editor. The sites showcase contemporary photography with small and extended surveys of work by contemporary photographers alongside extended interviews, features, videos and extracts from texts that illuminate the practise of photography and its wider context. Looks like a great resource.
I just saw Ryan Trecartin’s exhibition at Elizabeth Dee Gallery (until April 26, 2014) which inspired this post.
From UbuWeb: Ryan Trecartin’s video narratives unfold like futuristic fever dreams. Collaborating with an ensemble cast of family and friends, he merges sophisticated digital manipulations with footage from the Internet and pop culture, animations, and wildly stylized sets and performances. While the astonishing A Family Finds Entertainment (2005) has drawn comparisons to Jack Smith, early John Waters, and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Trecartin crafts startling visions that are thoroughly unique.
The Drawing Room created a 8-minute mini-documentary about the work of photographer Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber, a duo now known as Nix+Gerber.
