NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 45

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 45, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 44

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 44, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Ben Neill & Bill Jones: Performances this week

NEWSgrist regulars Ben Neill & Bill Jones will be performing in various places this week. If you missed them at Monkeytown in May, now's your chance to catch their new work...

UPDATE: See pics from this performance

Thursday July 17, 8:30 PM - $25
Bard Summerscape Festival
Spiegeltent
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson

The Spiegeltent returns to SummerScape for a third triumphal summer. Since the late 19th century, the Spiegeltent ("Mirror Tent") has been a beloved tradition in Belgium and throughout Europe. It is a marvel of engineering, a glittering mirrored pavilion composed of 3,000 detachable, portable parts, with an eye-filling interior of carved wood surfaces, a parquet floor, beveled mirrors, stained-glass windows, and fulsome velvet canopies. For families or couples, the Spiegeltent affords a sumptuous and magical environment to enjoy dance, circus acts, or cabaret.

Ben Neill and Bill Jones will present a set of new music and interactive video for Neill's newly designed mutantrumpet, an electro-acoustic instrument. As a composer and performer, Neill routinely crosses the boundaries between experimental music, popular culture and jazz. His music has been recorded on the Verve, Astralwerks and Six Degrees labels. Jones has created new interactive video for Neill's set of future dub jazz. The imagery evokes a late-night urban vibe inspired by sci-fi noir films such as Godard's Alphaville. The video and music are created as one hybrid form of expression, seamlessly integrated in real time by Neill's performance on the mutantrumpet.

---------------------------

Friday July 18, 11PM - $10
H.O.P.E. Digital Music Night part of The Last H.O.P.E. Hackers Conference
@
Hotel Pennsylvania (an endangered NYC landmark hotel)
7th Avenue between 32 and 33 sts, across from Madison Square Garden

Ben Neill and Bill Jones will present their set of future dub jazz alongside a host of other fascinating electronic musicians and visual artists.  See Create Digital Music for full lineup.

---------------------------

Saturday July 19, 8PM - $10
@
The Stone
Avenue C at 2nd Street

Ben Neill will present a solo concert of interactive computer pieces for the mutantrumpet which utilize sampling of 19th century music. Joshua Fried also performs at 10PM, Neill will join Fried for a duet in his Radio Wonderland set.

The Bad Frame: New Yorker Cartoon Draws Fire

Here's a better "frame", also via The New Yorker: Barack Obama on the South Side during his first campaign, for the State Senate. (No mediocre self-defeating cartoons here, thanks.) 

Here's a smart piece on the Obama cartoon flap, via Alternet {excerpts}:

The Bad Frame: Why Are the New Yorker, Salon and Other Liberal Media Doing the Right's Dirty Work?
By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted July 14, 2008.

This week's New Yorker cover image of the Obamas is shocking in the racism and gross stereotyping that is built into its supposed satire.

New Yorker magazine hits the newsstands today with a shocking cover -- a caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama depicting the presidential candidate in a turban, fist-bumping his wife who has a machine gun slung over her shoulder, while the American flag burns in the fireplace. The cover is shocking in that it depicts the Obamas in bizarre, caricatured images and associations that reflect the very stereotypes with which the conservatives, particularly Fox News, have been trying to frame both the Obamas. Thus, instead of satire, the cover becomes a political poster for conservatives to reinforce their messages. Sen. Obama was shown the cover image by a reporter covering the campaign on Sunday, and while seemingly taken aback, he declined to comment.

But the Obama campaign quickly put out a release condemning the magazine cover. Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said in a statement: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

Unfortunately the impact of this image will extend far beyond the reading audience of the New Yorker; cable news and the right-wing media noise machine will amplify the derogatory image to millions more. And the New Yorker of course will reap enormous publicity, clearly translating to increased sales and notoriety for the brand, and for corporate owner Conde Nast -- one of the largest and most powerful media companies in America.

But the publicity could very well backfire. Editor David Remnick and artist Barry Blitt's attempt at satire seems so arrogant and indulgent in its insensitivity, and so out of touch with political and media dynamics of tabloid TV and blogs, that it just might make a lot of people angry, including some subscribers. The cover turns the magazine into a potential Molotov cocktail, to be gleefully tossed by Fox News and the conservative blogs, into the already combustible tinderbox of race and Muslim stereotypes just below the surface of America's public discourse. (Remnick has since done an interview about his decision to run the cover.)

John Aravosis at America Blog writes:

A liberal publication like the New Yorker thinks it's funny to make Mrs. Obama some radical black panther, and Barack Obama basically a terrorist (you'll note that he looks just like Osama bin Laden on the wall). ... And this is funny? Is the New Yorker so out of touch that they don't realize that much of America, or at least too much of America, harbors these very concerns about Obama and his wife?
[...]

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post added on Sunday on his CNN media show Reliable Sources that the cover is arguably "incendiary." In the end, it is shocking how the experienced editors of the New Yorker don't have the remotest idea of how framing the Obamas in this way completely reinforces the negative and harbored feelings that they are absurdly trying to satirize. This is satire run amuck, and it is a perfect example of how antiquated notions of journalism can play a role in provoking the worst of stereotypes and off-the-wall fantasies. [...]

So far neither the conservatives nor the McCain campaign have been able to negatively frame Obama in a way that has stuck. Hillary Clinton and partner Bill were not ultimately successful either. But that hasn't been for a lack of trying. Charges suggesting Obama is weak on defense, untried under pressure, inexperienced, and even a male chauvinist a la Geraldine Ferraro, haven't succeeded. It may be that Obama is a far more nimble politician than his predecessors, that Gore and Kerry's painful lessons have been well learned by the Obama team, or that the media for whatever reason haven't yet ganged up on Obama as they did in the past. Or probably some combination of all three.

Thus far the attempt to raise questions about Obama's religion represents the most persistent attempt to create a false narrative about him. So it was pretty shocking recently when I saw "Barack Obama is a Muslim and other stories" as the headline of the lead article on Salon. Maybe Salon is still sweet on Hillary. But one wonders why this headline and message? It does heavy lifting in support of the frames that Obama is a closet Muslim -- not a Christian -- with a secret agenda. It's the same message that Fox News, right-wing talk radio and conservative pundits have been pushing for months. Questions about Obama are consistently linked to Fox's repetition compulsion connecting Obama with the word "madrassa" -- which happens to mean school -- and are now planted firmly in the media's psychology as school "for terrorists in the making." [...]

Elements of a Frame

There are some basic rules about frames that editors and writers might want to think about, if they are interested in avoiding persistently reinforcing conservative language and ideas. The fundamentals include: every word is a frame; evoking a frame reinforces and strengthens that frame; negating a frame, i.e. attacking it, reinforces that frame; and finally, words defined within a frame evoke the frame.

[...] My objective is point out that often progressive and independent media -- perhaps because we imagine that our readers are different than normal people -- frequently undermine progressive messages, or more likely reinforce conservative messages.

I believe that the words and images editors and writers use to frame their stories is what most people will take away from the articles, especially since many people get their news from just glancing at the front page and cover story. Headlines, subject lines and teasers are the most powerful and visible communication tools to connect immediately with readers. With journalism on the Web, a split-second medium, some readers spend only brief moments on sites or on articles, merely glancing at headlines and teasers.

The lead, or opening paragraph, of the story is also important, but a lead is only as good as its opening headline. If the lead paragraph never gets read because the headline or teaser doesn't effectively communicate, some great journalism and information can be wasted. [...]

One essential point is that drawing attention to negative frames and reprehensible media figures, even in an attempt to answer them, can have the effect of reinforcing them. It is almost always better to frame one's own positive message and not mention the bad frame or framer.

[read full article]

The Art Life Fights Censorship [...]

reblogged via The Art Life:

Press Release: Fighting Censorship

In the interests of the dignifying debate on art and censorship, The Art Life today has taken the bold step of publishing on its blog a photo of a ball of dividing cells from the moment a zygote implanted itself on a uterus wall.

Although the zygote in question is currently still too young to understand the full ramifications of this decision, we feel that by exploiting these eight cells we will dignify a debate that for too long has been dominated by hysterical sections of the media clamouring for "controversy".

A press release has been sent out to newspapers, television and current affairs programs in the hope that - by playing the media's own game - we will be able to widen discussion.

We're also hoping that a journalist, researcher or moral rights campaigner will trap the Prime Minister into making a comment about the morality of exploiting zygotes without seeing the image in question.

Phase two of our campaign will be the revelation that both parents of the currently healthy eight celled object are completely in favour of publishing the photo on our blog and will be available for a 9am media call on a day of the media's choosing.

The zygote, knicknamed "Morula", will also be available for comment in approximately 2 years.

It is our sincere hope that our decision will help widen debate on art and censorship.

Although we understand the irony of creating yet another controversy in the name of debating controversy, this irony will be overlooked and that we sincerely believe we will not alienate the rest of the art world through our act of staggering bad faith.

Art Life Editorial Team.

Labels: fake controversies

   

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 1:02 PM. Comments (7) | Trackback (0)

On Obama (Listen to Larry)

Brilliant. You Left: Wake up!

reblogged via Lessig.org:

The immunity hysteria

July 10, 2008  6:11 PM

The hysteria that has broken out among we on the left in response to Obama's voting for the FISA compromise was totally predictable. Some more cynical types might say, so predictable as to be planned. National campaigns are dominated by people who believe a leftist can't be elected to national office. That means events that signal a candidate is not a leftist are critical for any election to national office.

But without becoming part of the cynical plan, some reactions to the outrage.

1. Obama is no (in the 1970s sense) "liberal": There are many who are upset by this who believe this (and other recent moves) shows Obama "moving to the center." People who make this argument signal they don't know squat about which they speak. You can't read Obama's books, watch how he behaved in the Illinois Senate, and watched how he voted in the US Senate, and believe he is a Bernie Sanders liberal. He is not now, and nor has ever been. That's not to say there aren't issues on which he takes a liberal position. It is to say that the mix of views he actually has and has had doesn't map on a 1970s spectrum of liberals to conservative. He is not, for example, "against the market," as so many on the left still make it sound like they are. He is for same-sex civil unions. So if you're upset with Obama because you see him shifting, you should actually be upset with yourself that you have been so careless in understanding the politics of this candidate.
2. Obama has not shifted in his opposition to immunity for telcos: As he has consistently indicated, he opposes immunity. He voted to strip immunity from the FISA compromise. He has promised to repeal the immunity as president. His vote for the FISA compromise is thus not a vote for immunity. It is a vote that reflects the judgment that securing the amendments to FISA was more important than denying immunity to telcos. Whether you agree with that judgment or not, we should at least recognize (hysteria notwithstanding) what kind of judgment it was. The amendments to FISA were good. Getting a regime that requires the executive to obey the law is important. Whether it is more important than telco immunity is a question upon which sensible people might well differ. And critically, the job of a Senator is to weigh the importance of these different issues and decide, on balance, which outweighs the other.

   This is not an easy task. I don't know, for example, how I personally would have made the call. I certainly think immunity for telcos is wrong. I especially think it wrong to forgive campaign contributing telco companies for violating the law while sending soldiers to jail for violating the law. But I also think the FISA bill (excepting the immunity provision) was progress. So whether that progress was more important than the immunity is, I think, a hard question. And I can well understand those (including some friends) who weigh the two together, and come down as Obama did (voting in favor).

3. Obama's shift was in his promise, as relayed by a member of his staff, to filibuster any bill with telco immunity: First, and most obviously, that promise was a stupid promise. However important holding telcos responsible is, certainly there is something more important that Congress could have done. E.g., if telco immunity were tied to a bill requiring a 70% reduction in green house gases by 2015, would it make sense to filibuster that bill?

   But second, even given it was a stupid promise, in my view, it was political mistake to change -- even if it was the right thing to do from the perspective of a U.S. Senator.

   It was a political mistake for the reasons I've already explained: it was self-Swiftboating. This shift is fuel for the inevitable "flip-flop" campaign already being launched by the Right. Their need to fuel this campaign is all the more urgent because of the extraordinary "flip-flops" of their own candidate. So anyone with half a wit about this campaign should have recognized that this shift would be kryptonite for the Barack "is different" Obama image. Just exactly the sort of gift an apparently doomed campaign (McCain) needs.

   But again, to say it was a political mistake is not to say it was a mistake of governance. To do right (from the perspective of governance) is often to do wrong (from the perspective of politics). (JFK won a Pulitzer for his book about precisely this point.) So at most, critics like myself can say of this decision that it was bad politics, even if it might well have been good governance. Bad politics because it would be used to suggest Obama is a man of no principle, when Obama is, in my view, a man of principle, and when it is so critical to the campaign to keep that image front and center.

4. Unless, of course, it was good politics: I actually don't personally believe that this was a decision motivated by politics, because, again, I've seen the actual struggle of some who advised on this issue (and I wasn't one of those few), but we should recognize, of course, that this decision to pick a fight with us liberals may well have been worth more than the campaign would lose by this one clear example of flipping. And here, if you let cynical instincts run wild, there's no limit to the games that might be imagined. For what better way to demonstrate (accurately, again, for remember #1 above) that Obama is not beholden to the left than by this very visible fight that Obama doesn't cave in on. When I received the blast from Moveon, demanding that Obama reverse himself (again), it was absolutely clear that he wouldn't. For how could he reverse himself then, and avoid the tag of being tied to the left? And certainly (more cynicism) Moveon recognized this. What greater gift than a chance to act independently of a movement that (while good and right and true, in my liberal view) is not anymore a spokesman for the swing votes that will decide this election.
5. But assume you reject #4 completely. Then one more thought: Isn't it time for Obama to resign from the Senate? Why should he allow the weird framing of issues that will come from this spineless institution to define his campaign? (Notice, McCain didn't even deign to show up.) Why not simply confess to his constituents that he can't do his job as United States Senator from Illinois while running for President of the United States. That the clarity of message necessary for the latter isn't consistent with the obligation of compromise required for the former?
6. Finally, and 2bc: please, fellow liberals, or leftists, or progressives, get off your high horse(s). More on this with the next post but: it is not "compromising" to recognize that we are part of a democracy. We on the left may be right. We may be the position to which the country eventually gets. But we have not yet earned the status of a majority. And to start this chant of "principled rejection" of Obama because he is not as pure as we is, in a word, idiotic (read: Naderesque).

   That taunt will be continued.

Found Art (Bowery): Unmonumental 43

Found Art (Bowery): Unmonumental 43, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 42

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 42, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Films on Nature & Land Use @ Sara Meltzer, Thursday

Cynthia Hooper, Bay Dredge, 2007, color video, 9:00 min.

Thursday July 17th, 8:30PM sharp

Sara Meltzer Gallery
525-531 West 26th, 4th Floor
New York NY 10001
info@sarameltzergallery.com

Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Landscapes for Frankenstein, a screening of films that observe the effects of man and technology on the natural landscape [as recommended by The Center for Land Use Interpretation].

Screening:

Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage, 2002, 19:00 min.

Cynthia Hooper, Bay Dredge, 2007, color video, 9:00 min.

Cynthia Hooper, Exportadora de Sal, 2007, color video, 7:30 min.

Cynthia Hooper, Cummings Road Landfill, 2004, color video, 6:30 min.

On view thru August 1:

Landscapes for Frankenstein
Curated by Rachel Gugelberger
and Jeffrey Walkowiak

More information here

MOMO & Melissa Brown Destroy Each Other's Work @ Espeis

MOMO and MELISSA BROWN destroy each other's work, every other day, all through June... they've made a video of the process, and a print.

July 12th - 26th, 2008
@
Espeis
90 Wythe Avenue (at N. 11th street)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
New York, NY 11211
take the L train to Bedford Avenue.
hola@espeis.nu
Mon. through Sat. from 1pm to 6pm. Also by appointment.

This month at Espeis, one of the gallery's longtime favorites- MOMO, has been painting and repainting over our new art-obsession, Melissa Brown. This month-long battle, in which one painter covers the other with fresh perspective every other day, has resulted in an active painting where reception and reaction are key.

Curatorially, the project borrows the competitive nature of the street by placing the two painters in public view. Each is left to outwit the other and anonymous critique is invited. Melissa has exhibited her paintings and prints in galleries for the past ten years while MOMO has earned his crown as one of the reigning princes of the New York StreetArt scene.

While their roots differ, MOMO and Melissa Brown's works both revolve around issues of chance, probability and color palates deft enough to hold taupe with fluorescents. This outdoor painting, 30 feet long and 8 feet tall, is the residue of a convergence of attitude where vitality trumps all.

Additionally, Espeis is proud to announce the release of a collaborative screenprint by MOMO and Melissa Brown. While the painting series may be categorized as a battle, this limited screenprint ends the project with a four-color, two part printmaker's duet.

The Way Things Go: When Appropriators Collide

A still from Christian Marclay's 1995 video "Telephones." [Link] Appropriated from ---??

reBlogged from Palladio;

via NYTimes:

Art
The Image Is Familiar; the Pitch Isn't
By MIA FINEMAN
Published: July 13, 2008

IN February 2007 the Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay was installing a solo exhibition of his work in Paris when he received an e-mail message from a friend about a commercial for the Apple iPhone that had been broadcast during the Academy Awards show.

     Slide Show: Art and Advertising

The 30-second spot featured a rapid-fire montage of clips from television shows and Hollywood films of actors and cartoon characters -- including Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Dustin Hoffman and Betty Rubble -- picking up the telephone and saying "Hello." It ended with a shot of the soon-to-be-released iPhone.

Mr. Marclay tracked down the ad on YouTube and watched it.

"I was very surprised," he said recently by phone from London. Like many in the art world he saw an uncanny resemblance between the iPhone commercial and his own 1995 video "Telephones," which opens with a similar montage of film clips showing actors answering the phone. That seven-and-a-half-minute video, one of Mr. Marclay's signature works, has been exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States.

About a year before, Mr. Marclay said, Apple had approached the Paula Cooper Gallery, which represents his work in New York, about using "Telephones" in an advertisement.

"I told them I didn't want to do it," he said. His main concern, he said, was that "advertisers on that scale have so much power and visibility" and that "everyone would think of my video as the Apple iPhone ad."

Mr. Marclay said he spoke with a lawyer after learning of the commercial but decided not to pursue legal action. "When people with that much power and money copy you, there's not much you can do," he said.

In any case he did not want a controversy to draw attention to his own appropriations of scenes from other sources -- mostly Hollywood movies -- without permission from the copyright holders.

"I don't consider what I do stealing," Mr. Marclay said. "I'm quoting cultural references that everyone is familiar with. I make art that reflects the culture I live in." And unlike advertisers, he said, "I'm not trying to sell phones."

Contacted by telephone and e-mail, neither Apple nor its advertising agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, would comment on the iPhone ad for this article.

A still from a 2007 commercial for the Apple iPhone.

Artists have been appropriating images from Madison Avenue for decades. In the 1960s Andy Warhol made silk-screened copies of Brillo boxes and Campbell's soup cans. In the 1980s Richard Prince rephotographed magazine ads for Marlboro cigarettes, enlarged the pictures and exhibited them as his own. Works like these are comments on consumer culture that also challenge the idea of originality itself.

But what happens when the tables are turned? In recent years a number of advertising campaigns have seemed to draw their inspiration directly from high-profile works of contemporary art. And the artists who believe their images and ideas have been appropriated are not happy about it.

Donn Zaretsky, a lawyer in New York who specializes in art law, is often approached by artists who perceive echoes of their own work in advertisements. "It does seem like advertising people are pushing the envelope on this," he said. "They're being more and more brazen in their borrowing. On the one hand they should be mining the art world for inspiration, and you would expect them to be referencing works that people are familiar with. But more and more they seem to be getting into the territory of blatant rip-offs."

The law governing the unauthorized use of copyrighted images and ideas, he said, is notoriously murky. "Copyright law doesn't protect ideas, it only protects expression. The question is, where do you draw the line? Is the agency being inspired by the idea? Or did they copy the artist's expression?"

When artists go after advertisers in such cases, the disputes are most often settled out of court. But there have been a few notable cases in which artists successfully sued advertisers for copyright infringement.

In 1987 a federal court granted summary judgment to the artist Saul Steinberg, who claimed that a poster for the Columbia Pictures film "Moscow on the Hudson" copied his famous New Yorker cover "View of the World From 9th Avenue." (Like Steinberg's drawing, the poster had a detailed rendering of four Manhattan city blocks in the foreground and a sketchy view of the rest of the world in the background.)

In May 2007 a French judge ordered the fashion designer John Galliano to pay 200,000 euros, or about $270,000, to the photographer William Klein in a dispute over a series of magazine ads that mimicked Mr. Klein's technique of painting bright strokes of color on enlarged contact sheets.

Recently Mr. Zaretsky was approached by the artist Spencer Tunick, who is known for his photographs of large installations of naked people in public places around the world. Mr. Tunick was concerned about a television commercial for Vaseline shown in Europe and the United States in 2007.

The 60-second spot, called "Sea of Skin," features large groups of naked men and women posed in artful configurations in various outdoor settings. They stand and sway in a forest, sit on a concrete rooftop, bounce gently in a glacial lake and wave their arms on a city street.

"There was such a close resemblance to my work that it was uncanny," Mr. Tunick said in an interview. "When I saw the ad, I thought it was definitely inspired by my photographs and videos of installations."

Was it? Not according to Kevin Roddy, the executive creative director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York, who developed the commercial for Vaseline's parent company, Unilever.

"I'm familiar with Spencer's work," Mr. Roddy said, "but I can't say that was an influence at all. Spencer is about masses of people and nudity. We're about representing the functionality of skin. Sure, it's hundreds of thousands of bodies, but they’re meant to represent one thing: skin."

Mr. Tunick said he had not decided whether to pursue legal action.

In some cases artists who see variations on their own images may be victims of their own popular success.

In the late 1990s there were several well-publicized disputes in which young British art stars accused advertisers of pilfering their ideas. The conflicts arose around the time the so-called Young British Artists, or Y.B.A.'s, were featured in "Sensation," a 1997 London exhibition of contemporary art from the collection of the British advertising mogul Charles Saatchi that later traveled to Berlin and New York. 

In 1998 one of those artists, Gillian Wearing, complained that a Volkswagen commercial featuring people holding handwritten signs had copied the style and idea of her series of photographs titled "Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say" (1992-93).

For her series Ms. Wearing photographed people on the street holding paper signs on which they had written brief statements describing their feelings or states of mind. In the best-known image a smirking young man in a business suit holds a sign that reads, "I'm desperate." Similarly the Volkswagen ad includes a shot of a tough-looking security guard who holds a sign bearing the word "sensitive." Ms. Wearing did not pursue legal action.

The following year Damien Hirst threatened to sue British Airways over a billboard for its low-cost subsidiary Go that featured a grid of colored dots. Mr. Hirst claimed that the design was based on his paintings of grids of colored dots against white backgrounds. At the time a spokesman for Mr. Hirst told the newspaper The Independent that he had discussed licensing his dot paintings to British Airways, but that the deal had fallen through.

Advertisers have traditionally tapped into the cultural cachet of fine art by commissioning works for hire. From 1950 to 1975 a Chicago company, the Container Corporation of America, commissioned dozens of artists -- including Fernand Léger, René Magritte and Willem de Kooning  --  to create paintings that were reproduced in print ads that ran in upscale magazines like Fortune.

In 1985 Absolut vodka began its famous magazine ad campaign featuring variations on the distinctive shape of its bottle, executed by hundreds of contemporary artists, among them Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Lisa Yuskavage.

But plenty of other artists have staunchly resisted agencies' requests to license their work.

Mr. Tunick said he had been asked to work on campaigns for Dove, Lipton, Microsoft and Blue Cross Blue Shield, among others. "I think I get two e-mails a week from ad executives or publicists who want to use my work, and I always tell them I’m not an advertising photographer," he said.

The Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss have turned down numerous requests from ad agencies interested in licensing their award-winning 30-minute short film, "Der Lauf der Dinge" ("The Way Things Go"). Produced in 1987, it follows a Rube Goldberg-style chain reaction in which everyday objects like string, balloons, buckets and tires are propelled by means of fire, pouring liquids and gravity.

Yet in April 2003 Honda ran a two-minute television commercial, "Cog," in which various parts of a car -- tires, seats, windshield wipers -- form a dominolike chain reaction that culminates when an Accord rolls down a ramp as a voice-over (read by Garrison Keillor) intones, "Isn't it great when things just work?"

At the time Mr. Fischli told Creative Review magazine: "We've been getting a lot of mail saying, 'Oh, you've sold the idea to Honda.' We don't want people to think this. We made 'Der Lauf der Dinge' for consumption as art."

In a strange twist the Honda "Cog" ad, which was developed by Wieden & Kennedy, has inspired several parodies of its own, including commercials for BBC Radio and the British directory assistance service 118. The chain reaction of creative influence, imitation and homage was the focus of a panel discussion at the Tate Modern in London during a retrospective of Mr. Fischli and Mr. Weiss's work there in 2006.

In an age when sampling and appropriation have become widespread practices in contemporary art and in the culture at large, some find it paradoxical that artists are now guarding their own creations more vigilantly.

Michael Lobel, a professor of 20th-century art at Purchase College who has written about Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Prince, said the easy availability of digital images on the Web had helped foster this defensiveness. 

"There's a broader consciousness among artists about owning their work and keeping tight control over its distribution," he said. "The more available images have become, the more of a countermovement there is to clamp down on them."

Mr. Lobel said that while he sympathizes with artists who believe their work has been copied, they also need to recognize their own reliance on existing images. "Culture is about ongoing borrowing," he said. "It's about taking images, ideas and motifs and opening them up to new uses."

The cycle of influence goes round and round: Ad agencies borrow from artists who borrow from advertising. Isn't it great when things just work?

Obama's 'Tough Love'

Photo: Getty Images

via NYMag, DailyIntel, 7-10-08:

Why Jesse's Testy: Obama's 'Tough Love' for Black Community

Welcome to the "I had no idea that was being recorded" club, Reverend Jesse Jackson! Standing room only.

On Sunday, the man who until relatively recently was the most viable black presidential candidate in the country’s history went a little off message, you could say, on the set of Fox News. Believing that his mike was off, Reverend Jackson whispered to a visibly uncomfortable Dr. Reed Tuckson that Barack Obama had been "talking down to black people" and that he desired to "cut his nuts off." While it's debatable as to whether Obama has been "talking down" to black people, and indeed how effective castration would be as a remedy, it's true that Obama has frequently offered so-called "tough love" to black audiences throughout the presidential campaign. Focusing mainly on themes of education and parenting, Obama hasn’t shied away from criticizing aspects of black culture that he sees as contributing to the some of the problems the black community faces in America today:

- On Tuesday at a town-hall meeting in Georgia, Obama dismissed rapping and basketball as career aspirations: "You can't find a job, unless you are a really, really good basketball player -- which most of you brothas are not. I know you think you are, but you're not. You are overrated in your own mind. You will not play in the NBA. You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Lil' Wayne, but probably not, in which case you need to stay in school."                   

- On June 15, in a Father's Day speech in front of a predominantly black audience at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, Obama decried absentee fathers: "What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child -- any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father." He also mocked the unwarranted celebrations surrounding minor educational accomplishments: "Don't get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation. You're supposed to graduate from the eighth grade!"

- On February 28, in front of a predominantly black audience in Beaumont, Texas, Obama criticized the lax nutritional standards of some parents: "Y'all have Popeyes out in Beaumont? I know some of y'all you got that cold Popeyes out for breakfast. I know. That's why y'all laughing … You can't do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school."

- On January 20, Martin Luther King Day, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Obama addressed prejudice in the black community: "We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity."

- On July 15, 2007, at the Vernon Park Church of God in Chicago, Obama again focused on parenting: "There's a reason they go out and shoot each other, because they don't love themselves. And the reason they don't love themselves is because we are not loving them enough."

- On June 28, 2007, at a Democratic debate at Howard University, Obama discussed the relationship between homophobia in black communities and the lack of education on AIDS: "We don’t talk about this. We don't talk about it in the schools. Sometimes we don't talk about it in the churches. It has been an aspect of sometimes homophobia that we don't address this issue as clearly as it needs to be."

- In April 2007, according to the Washington Post, Obama told a group of black South Carolina state legislators: "In Chicago, sometimes when I talk to the black chambers of commerce, I say, 'You know what would be a good economic-development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren't throwing their garbage out of their cars.'"

- On March 4, 2007, in a speech in Selma, Alabama, Obama returned to the issues of education and parenting: "I don't know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs was acting white, we've got to get over that mentality."

What to make of all this? There's no reason to believe Obama's critical messages are anything but sincere, but they happen to be good politics as well. The black audiences at which he directs his "tough love" almost always respond with approval or applause, and his support among black voters has been rock-solid, regularly racking up 80 to 90 percent of the black vote during the Democratic primaries. Meanwhile, Obama is partaking in what's basically tantamount to a long-running Sister Souljah campaign, demonstrating to white voters that he's not beholden to the black community nor scapegoating whites for its ailments. So it's ultimately a win-win. Unless Jesse Jackson gets ahold of some scissors, and then nobody wins. -- Dan Amira

Earlier: Jesse Jackson Apologizes for Badmouthing Barack Obama Before We Even Know What He Said      

More: Intel   »barack obama, campaigns, elections, jesse jackson, politics, race

Earlier: Jesse Jackson Apologizes for Badmouthing Barack Obama Before We Even Know What He Said      

Damien Hirst: Divide and Conquer

via The Art Newspaper:

Damien Hirst is rewriting the rules of the market
Roger Bevan | 10.7.08 | Issue 193

The final frontier protecting contemporary art galleries from the relentless encroachment of the auction houses has been emphatically breached with the announcement that Damien Hirst is creating an exhibition of new works for display and sale at the London headquarters of Sotheby's.[...]

[...] Hirst has crossed the market's Rubicon with a gambit which opens a new front for an admittedly very special situation: an artist with brand name recognition and a factory enterprise capable of producing a completely new series of seasonal variations to order. At a stroke, the judicious management of an artist's career by an agent who identifies which favoured collectors will be permitted to acquire material in conditions of secrecy gives way to the triumph of the highest bidder on the public stage. Now that Damien has demolished the moral barrier of using auctions for distribution and profit, other artists will follow suit.

The artist's regular dealerships, Gagosian Gallery and White Cube, will not like the development one little bit, but are obliged to support, or underwrite, it for the sake of their clients who have invested in Hirst's career and for the continuity of their own relationships with the income stream which he provides. They will be bidding against each other for Damien's attention as much as other prospective collectors will be bidding for themselves. Damien's divide and conquer policy may prove to be one of his cleverest and most entertaining strategies to date.

The Sum Of, er, Two Missiles (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Heart Photoshop)

via NYTimes blog, The Lede:

July 10, 2008,  9:16 am
In an Iranian Image, a Missile Too Many

By Mike Nizza and Patrick Witty

In the four-missile version of the image released Wednesday by Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, two major sections (encircled in red) appear to closely replicate other sections (encircled in orange). (Illustration by The New York Times; photo via Agence France-Presse)

Updated, 9:33 a.m., Agence France-Presse has retracted the image as "apparently digitally altered."

As news spread across the world of Iran's provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a fact that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.

Agence France-Presse said that it obtained the image from the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, on Wednesday. But there was no sign of it there later in the day. Today, The Associated Press distributed what appeared to be a nearly identical photo from the same source, but without the fourth missile.

As the above illustration shows, the second missile from the right appears to be the sum of two other missiles in the image. The contours of the billowing smoke match perfectly near the ground, as well in the immediate wake of the missile. Only a small black dot in the reddish area of exhaust seems to differ from the missile to its left, though there are also some slight variations in the color of the smoke and the sky.

Does Iran's state media use Photoshop? The charge has been leveled before. So far, though, it can’t be said with any certainty whether there is any official Iranian involvement in this instance. Sepah apparently published the three-missile version of the image today without further explanation.

For its part, Agence France-Presse retracted its four-missile version this morning, saying that the image of four missiles was "apparently digitally altered" by Iranian state media. The fourth missile "has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test," the agency said.

Found Art (Chinatown): Unmonumental 41

Found Art (Chinatown): Unmonumental 41, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 40

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 40, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Erreur 404 - superbe!

I was searching for a French cultural something-or-other, got this rather fabulous "404 ERROR Page Not Found" screen -- then became completely distracted from my original search. Click on the link to see the totally frivolous Flash movement of the color bars.

via http://www.culture.gouv.fr/First_T2.html:

Google Image Search (Through a Scanner Darkly?)

via Eyeteeth, 7.06.2008:

Google Image Search: Actual Edition
A reminder from Yorit to get away from the computer and live. Via Wrong Distance.

Obama's Difference (And Why It Matters)

There's an interesting post by Larry Lessig on his blog about the recent perceived Obama flip-flopping. I am excerpting it here, as well as including what I feel to be the more convincing and trenchant of the 33 65+ comments:

Self-Swiftboating 
July 7, 2008 3:12 PM

All signs point to an Obama victory this fall. If the signs are wrong, it will be because of events last month. These events constitute a so-far-unnamed phenomenon in Presidential campaigning -- what we could call "self-Swiftboating." To understand "self-Swiftboating," you've got to first understand "Swiftboating."

Some use the term "Swiftboating" to refer to harsh, even vicious attacks on an opponent. I use the term in a more restrictive sense: "Swiftboating" is (1) attacking the strongest bits of a candidate's character, with (2) false or misleading allegations. That was what Kerry suffered -- attacking his courage as a soldier, the characteristic that distinguished him most from Bush, with misleading (at least) allegations by some who knew him when he served.

Self-Swiftboating is to Swiftboat yourself: For a campaign to do something that has the effect of undermining its own candidate's strongest characteristic, with actions that are (at best) misleading. The Obama campaign has now self-Swiftboated candidate Obama.

(1) An attack on a core characteristic: There are at least two views about what makes Obama so compelling. One that he happens to have the mix of positions on policy questions that best matches the public's. The other that he is perceived by the public as "different," and hence (given the public hates politicians so) someone the public can like, or more significantly, get enthusiastic about.

I'm strongly in the second camp. It seems to me nothing more than consultant-think to imagine people choosing a President with a checklist of issues, finding the one to vote for the way they pick a place to vacation. It seems to me nothing less than obvious that people are passionate about Obama because he strikes them as a different kind of candidate -- one that stands for his beliefs, that speaks clearly and directly, that can be trusted to stick by his beliefs, that says what he believes regardless. Such a creature, in most people's minds, is "not a politician." Such a creature (i.e., "not a politician") is what people want in a President.

[...]

The Obama self-Swiftboating comes from a month of decisions that, while perhaps better tuning the policy positions of the campaign to what is good, or true, or right, or even expedient, completely undermine Obama's signal virtue -- that he's different. We've handed the other side a string of examples that they will now use to argue (as Senator Graham did most effectively on Meet the Press) that Obama is nothing different, he's just another politician, and that even if you believe that McCain too is just another politician, between these two ordinary politicians, pick the one with the most experience.

The Obama campaign seems just blind to the fact that these flips eat away at the most important asset Obama has. It seems oblivious to the consequence of another election in which (many) Democrats aren't deeply motivated to vote (consequence: the GOP wins).

Instead, and weirdly, the campaign seems focused on the very last thing a campaign should be doing during a campaign -- governing. This is not a try-out. A campaign is not a dry run for running government. Yet policy wonks inside the campaign sputter policy that Obama listens to and follows, again, apparently oblivious to how following that advice, when inconsistent with the positions taken in the past, just reinforces the other side's campaign claim that Obama is just another calculating, unprincipled politician.

The best evidence that they don't get this is Telco Immunity. Obama said he would filibuster a FISA bill with Telco Immunity in it. He has now signaled he won't. When you talk to people close to the campaign about this, they say stuff like: "Come on, who really cares about that issue? Does anyone think the left is going to vote for McCain rather than Obama? This was a hard question. We tried to get it right. And anyway, the FISA compromise in the bill was a good one."

But the point is that the point is not the substance of the issue. [...]

The issue cannot just be the substance alone. It has got to also be how a change on that substance will be perceived: And here (as with the other flips), it will be perceived in a manner that can't help but erode the most important core of the Obama machine. It is behavior that attacks Obama's strongest feature -- that he is different. It is, therefore, Swiftboating.

Or at least, it is Swiftboating if it is false. So is it? Is the impression that this bobbing and weaving gives a misimpression? Or are we seeing, as the pundits are now beginning to chant, the true face of Obama?

(2) That is false or misleading: It is false. I know it is false because I believe I know the man, and because I know some inside the campaign struggling with these issues. I see them struggling to get it right. They are struggling, in short, to govern. The ones I know at least are not bobbing and weaving for political gain. They're tuning the campaign as governing best requires. The flip on Telco Immunity gave Obama nothing, except the opportunity to do what he believes is right, in light of the compromises in the new bill. He acted to do what he believed was right. So the impression it gives -- of a triangulator, tuning the campaign to the song of the polls -- is misimpression. But that means it fits the definition of self-Swiftboating: The campaign sabotages its strongest characteristic, through steps that are misleading at best.

The campaign needs to stop this. This is not the time for governing. It is the time for making clear precisely what kind of President Obama will be. But in making that clear, it is critical to keep a focus on how actions are perceived. Will they signal a triangulator? Or will they signal a strong, principled man who stands for what he believes.

No doubt, compromise is the duty of anyone within government. But in the ADD culture we live in, compromise is poison to anyone trying to do what every politician now tries to do -- appear not to be "a politician." And thus if the oath to represent Illinois is getting in the way of signaling who Obama is, then maybe it is time to step away from being a Senator from Illinois. This is the time to keep the message focused on who (I know) this man is: someone different.

Hey HQ: You've got a guy who really stands for something (the tall thin guy, the one from Illinois). A man whose word really does matter. You've got to be extraordinarily careful not to give the other side the power to neutralize that.

Posted on July  7, 2008  3:12 PM | Permalink

from the Comments section:

July  8, 2008  6:37 AM
Dan wrote:                                          

Larry's position here is straight out of Lakoff, and for that I applaud the sentiment. Also, Larry taught with Obama at U. of Chicago, so he knows him as a colleague, not simply as a pundit or even as a professional advisor.

In fact, I do believe Obama is a different sort of politician, and I trust him to do the right thing when in office, to the extent that external events allow, and I trust him to adapt to changing circumstances. I don't believe he is triangulating on the religion stuff, for example. He's addressing the progressive sentiments that in fact do exist in some factions of religious communities, as Jimmy Carter wrote about two years ago. He's doing exactly what he should be doing, by finding the common ground with those communities that he already agrees with. There's no "flip" there, only the choice of time and place to talk about something that needs to be said in order for some of the swing vote to understand that he speaks their language.

As for FISA, yeah, it would have been