Thursday, February 25, 2010

National Poetry Month

Another beauty from Marian Bantjes and Poets.org. You can order a free poster or download a full-sized one. via Poets.org
the site of the American Academy of Poets .


Another great thing to have for National Poetry Month is Poem Flow 1.0, the poem reader for your iphone! Another great way to have a poem in your pocket 365 days a year. Inspire yourself anywhere!

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Friday, February 19, 2010

This is so beautiful! I love Dennis Lin's work!


If you are in Toronto before March 5th, see Dennis Lin's work at 47!

From the press release:

n° 1-60
February 5, 2010 (All day) - March 5, 2010 (All day)

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*

47 PRESENTS

n° 1-60
Dennis Lin Solo Exhibition
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday February 5th 2010
8 pm – 12 am

Dennis Lin has collected it, bypassing the mill and has prevented it from being turned into something other than. The Maple has been debarked, sectioned into cookies, sanded, oiled, and waxed: preserved. The 60, three-inch wide slabs are sequentially hung on purpose-built hooks. Each has been numbered and tagged with a brass plate; the tree has been documented and cataloged.

“To see the sections of the tree is to wonder how it grew, how it lived and how it died,” said artist Dennis Lin. “I’ve cataloged this tree out of my own curiosity and to make it accessible for others to question how this organism came into being.”

More about the gallery (read on it is actually quite cool!)

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

This is an interesting piece via David McCandless's information is beautiful via the guardian newspaper

















After Google announced it may stop censoring the internet in China, I became curious about what exactly that meant. What kind of censoring are they doing? How extensive is it? What can and can't you do online in the People's Republic. What does China censor online?

Broadly speaking, most of the big social websites - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - are all blocked. Many familiar sites, such as Wikipedia, remain but with entire sections or contentious pages disappeared by The Great Firewall. Porn is pretty much outlawed.

Data in this area is difficult to come by. ConceptDoppler.org is a good source but most of the information dates back to 2008. Censored search terms and online materials often vary from region to region. Sites are routinely blocked and then unblocked, sometimes on a weekly basis. You can check it for yourself in this Google Doc. More...

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

from the inspirational letter

I have always loved the concept of the Inspirational Letter from Bombay Sapphire--they lean slightly more toward design and design issues but I like the way they really tackle experiences not necessarily breaking up art-design-architecture-words...only wish they still had the English translation so more people could enjoy it! I love this recent entry and how the "letter" mysteriously shows up in my inbox...


Aquilone
Inspirational object #41

Si dice che l’aquilone fu inventato dal filosofo cinese Mo Zi, intorno al 400 A.C. Egli impiegò tre anni di studi per fabbricare quello che chiamò “il falco di legno”, il quale volò alto nel cielo per un giorno intero prima di rompersi. Questa è la leggenda ma l’origine è effettivamente cinese, e l’inventore, che sia stato Mo Zi o meno, senza dubbio doveva essere un filosofo o un poeta o uno di quegli ingegneri che si interrogano sul significato ultimo delle leggi della fisica. L’aquilone è infatti tutto questo, un semplice pezzo di tessuto che può invece rivelarsi tecnologicamente complesso, un gioco per i bimbi ma anche un oggetto evocativo e poetico, carico di molti significati.
Da principio era in legno di bamboo e fogliame, poi, con la diffusione della carta iniziò ad essere sempre più grosso, più leggero e soprattutto decorato. Dalla Cina arrivò presto in Giappone, dove ancora oggi è diffusissimo, utilizzato per la celebrazione di feste e ricorrenze e decorato in mille modi. Negli anni è stato utilizzato per gli scopi più vari, anche bellicosi, come vessillo, come lampada volante, come mezzo aereo per portare cariche esplosive oltre le mura delle città assediate. Oggi le pratiche aquilonistiche sono le più svariate, dalla fabbricazione di complessi aquiloni statici dalle forme più strane, alle gare con leggerissimi e supertecnologici aquiloni acrobatici, a quelli da traino, vere e proprie vele in grado di trascinare il vostro surf sulle onde o la vostra tavola sulla neve, e con un buon vento portare anche voi in alto nel cielo.

txt Daniele Druella

Monday, February 08, 2010

Yam Lau at Musee de Arte Joliette


Yam Lau
Hutong House, 2009
Image from the video
© Yam Lau
Courtesy of Leo Kamen Gallery
YAM LAU
(Version française)








In Praise of Evanescence: Space, Time and Image of the Everyday

January 31 – May 2, 2010

OPENING : January 31, 2010, 2 pm
Tour of the exhibition with the artist and the curator, 1 pm

Curator : Gaëtane Verna

In Praise of Evanescence: Space, Time and Image of the Everyday brings together three recent works by artist Yam Lau that combine digital video and 3D animation.

In the first two works, Room (2006) and Room: An Extension (2008), the domestic space and everyday acts are presented to us in a setting that overturns conventional representations of space and the passing of time. Using three-dimensional modelling software, Lau constructs a virtual environment in the middle of which stands a framework, a sort of cubical dwelling. Filmed sequences showing the artist in his private life are projected on to the translucent virtual walls of the structure, which slowly rotates. The effect of this movement is to make the planes multiply, pivot and nest, forming a cycle in which places endlessly break up and re-form from a different viewpoint or angle. The illusion of reality is thus blown away, leaving us with a moving world where our gaze cannot find any fixed landmark to focus on, but where, paradoxically, everyday, ordinary acts and familiar objects take on a new dimension.

The third work, Hutong House (2009), takes us into a Beijing siheyuan, a traditional type of house with a square courtyard, now becoming rare. As in the previous works, the architecture unfolds in the form of filmed sequences projected onto the walls of an animated virtual structure. Inside we see Yam Lau and a friend busy with a host of little everyday actions that are interrupted, resumed, repeated and shown on another level as the various parts of the dwelling move back and forth under our eyes. Time seems to have become frozen – and with it this ancient house and its modern occupants – in an endless present, balanced on the edge of the void.

Yam Lau was born in Hong Kong. He now resides in Toronto, where he is represented by the Leo Kamen Gallery. His work has been exhibited on numerous occasions in Canada, the United States and Europe and has been the subject of many publications. He currently teaches in the Department of Visual Arts at York University.


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Titles VI at the Musee de Arte Joliette





Wednesday, February 03, 2010

invitation

Final installation



And this was on Monday after the first day of installation...



Arounna has some nice process images of the installation on her blog too--you'll have to scroll down a bit to see them...You can also see what inspiring project she is working on...

catching up





This was last week as I was cutting for the installation...