whatamidoingwithmylife?

Like and Don't Like

2011-11-02T11:58:00.005-04:00

In my hiatus from blogging, I neglected to post a ton of stuff. I'm in the process of overhauling my website, so the level of documentation there should step-up, but for now here's some info on a recent performance and a contest I'm co-jurying that might interest you.

This summer I performed in the awesome series, LIKE, curated by Gene McHugh, at VOGT Gallery. My night was the first in a string of sweaty summer spectacles and I really enjoyed sharing the bill with my buds Rick Silva and Jeremy Bailey.

In my case, I did a live version of my piece, Performed Listening: Boomerang.

I enjoyed it a lot and see myself doing similar live pieces in the future...

In other news, I am co-juror (with Geoff Cox and Constant Dullaart)of IACOSE's 2011 NoTube contest. The project humorously raises a lot of questions because the stated agenda is to find the most valueless video on YouTube. The criteria for submission of found videos is that there be:

1) No reason to make it
2) No reason to publish it
3) No reason to watch it

Site visitors then vote on the videos they like. BUT! The more "LIKES" or votes, the more perceived value, and the less likely the video is to make it to the final round... IOCOSE explains it all in this contest trailer:

REFERENCE Gallery Solo Show

2011-10-25T21:43:00.014-04:00

Here are some installation shots from my Oct-Sept 2011 show at REFERENCE:

Click-through to the photo set to see larger pix. More words on these images coming someday... :)

Poly Styrene music video

2011-09-07T12:58:00.006-04:00

If there were anything to notice, one might have noticed that I've not blahgged in over a year. I'm just kind of sick of blogging, believe it or not. When I stepped back as Editor/Curator/Staff Writer at Rhizome (I had a zillion titles from 1999-2009), I realized my RSS addiction was out of control and I needed to unplug. The same thing kind of happened a few years after we founded Nasty Nets. The thing about blogging, in general, is that I just don't like talking about myself. (I know, surprising coming from a sometimes new media self-portraitist!) But I am honored to talk about this project of someone else's that I got to play a small roll in...

"Ghoulish" - POLY STYRENE OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO from Lauryn Siegel on Vimeo.

Lauryn Siegel directed Poly Styrene's final music video (R.I.P.), a posthumous tribute to Michael Jackson, called Ghoulish. I got to play an MJ-impersonating auditioner (something I've sorta done before) and learn a bunch of new dance moves! The whole shoot was a super fun and pro experience (full credits at the Vimeo link), and something I loved being a part of. I'm obviously a Michael Jackson fan, but Poly was a personal hero, and I'm happy to see her work getting this final push of attention, starting with the NY Times article that launched the video, and continuing with SPIN, Vice, et al... Congrats to all involved!

TEEN AGE at Catherine Clark Gallery + 01SJ Biennial

2010-08-30T14:59:00.005-04:00

I'm in a group show at Catherine Clark Gallery, in San Francisco, entitled Teen Age: Parents Just Don't Understand. The show is curated by Ken Goldberg and Catherine Clark. The show is organized in conjunction with the 01SJ Biennial. More details here.

Double Bind at the Berkeley Art Museum

2010-06-20T15:03:00.002-04:00

I've got a BAM/PFA solo show through August 31st, curated by Richard Rinehart. It features my new two-channel piece, Double Bind. Here's a little statement on the piece:

A double bind is commonly known as a paradox or conflicting set of demands. But it also has a specific meaning in the world of cybernetics, where it refers to messages that conflict with each other at different levels of meaning, making it difficult for the recipient to determine the nature of the paradox, to confront the inherent dilemma, or to escape the conflict.

Marisa Olson's Double Bind (2010) is a two-channel internet video project involving two clips simultaneously and perpetually linked to each other as YouTube response videos. While the webcam-recorded clips clearly represent the before-and-after actions of Olson wrapping and unwrapping her head in pink vinyl bondage tape, their recursive linking and synced looping problematize their chronology. This perpetual feedback loop takes the word 'tape' as a double entendre, as it plays back the tropes of early feminist video art, while venturing into the stickier, tapeless world of digital memes. Despite the cause and effect narrative structure embedded in the work, there is a glaring lack of motivation beyond the recitation and unraveling of these pre-recorded histories.

Like much of Olson's interdisciplinary work, Double Bind embodies a desire to both participate-in and critique cultural phenomena. The artist's parallel research practice explores the ways in which the internet and other social media enable such forms of critical parody. In this case, she takes on what she perceives as the relative "prohibition" of art history (its own form of pop), and explores the public platform of the internet as a viable site for cultural critique.

Both channels of Double Bind will be presented side-by-side on a dedicated webpage, for Olson's exhibition. However, behind this screen the videos will be subject to the unanticipatable comments and response videos of a viewing public predominantly unaware and unconcerned about the work's status as art or its participation in art historical discourse. The artist explains that relinquishing control over the reception of her work in this way is just as pleasurable to her as any of the more classical forms of masochism implied in the videos. Essentially binding herself to broader digital culture, the true impulse in Olson's critique is a desire to pierce the confines of the white cube so as to engage more directly with participatory media. Double Bind therefore positions us between the false dilemmas of high and low culture or utopic and dystopic views of media culture.

May Flowers

2010-05-08T19:27:00.002-04:00

I just realized I never posted the video above. I made it for Tan Lines single, New Flowers, which they made in response to one of my high school poems! It's in a nice show in Poland, this month. Below are some other shows opening in the next two weeks.

Tate Modern, London, UK
No Soul For Sale, Broadcast Yourself, curated by Embassy Gallery

Galerie Dana Charkasi, Vienna, Austria
Curated By_ 2010, FILMIKI, curated by Pawel Althamer

Artboom Festival, Krakow, Poland
Made in Internet, curated by Marcin Ramocki

Espace Gantner, Bourogne, France
Surfing Club touring exhibition

M21, Athens, Greece
Full/Operational/Toolbox, Index of Potential, curated by KERNAL

Fisher Gallery, Oberlin College
SOUNDINGS, Cinema 062 Media Arts Festival
I had a slightly-expanded role in this one. Funfun!!

Long Time No Post

2010-01-23T19:40:00.001-05:00

Hi, there. I'm way overdue on updates so below are notes on some recent & upcoming things.

SOLO SHOWS

Noise Pollution at Bard CCS - Sculpture, drawing, and installations, curated by Gene McHugh

Whew! Age at PS122 - PBS' Art21 had a nice preview of it

Double Bind - Berkeley Art Museum (Stay tuned for more details on this new two-channel video project.)

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Drawing Contemporaries, at Eyebeam, NYC (video)

Saturn Returns (premiered at IMAGES Festival, Toronto) toured to Galerie Saw (Ottowa, Canada), and featured me (obvs!), Michael Bell-Smith, Jacob Ciocci, Oliver Laric, Takeshi Murata, Seth Price, and others, curated by Brett Kashmere

X: Multiples, at Christina Ray Gallery, NYC (nee Glowlab)

NETMARES & NETDREAMS v 2.2, curated by Kari Altmann - There was a beach theme and I showed my Facebook-inspired video, Unlocking My Sandbox. (Originally a javascript animation!)

You Turn Me On and On and On, EMBASSY Gallery, Edinburgh - A show of artists' instructions for future works.

Surfing Club, Plug-In (Basel) and Espace Multimédia Gantner (Bourogne, France)

PUBLICATIONS

LACMA's book, Words Without Pictures, to which I contributed an essay entitled, "Lost Not Found: The Circulation of Images in Digital Visual Culture" has apparently sold out, thanks to nice reviews in Artforum, Art Journal, and several other Art-periodicals! A 2nd Edition of the book is being published by Aperture, for distribution by Thames and Hudson.

I wrote an article on "The Early Videos of Terry Fox," which is in the forthcoming book, The History of West Coast Video Art, published by University of California Press

ASDF's Wikipedia Reader was commissioned by the Art Libraries Society of New York for the Contemporary Artists Books Conference at Printed Matter's 2009 NY Art Book Fair. It was organized through David Senior at the Museum of Modern Art Library.

In other news...
According to the Wall Street Journal, I'm now a Walkman Historian!!! (Check-out Andy Jordan's article & video!)

I've also continued evangelizing about animated gifs, as in this Toronto Globe and Mail article.

TALKS

I was recently inducted into Project Blackbird, a semi-secret Internet Lulz Think Tank centered at the Eyebeam Center for Art & Technology, where fun things are always happening. On November 21st I moderated a PERFORMA 09 panel there, called Performing the Web, which featured net art pioneers JODI and fellow Project Blackbird members Jeff Crouse and Aaron Meyers.

I was also invited to speak at this CAA panel on The Culture of Dispersion

Please come to the CUNY Grad Center for the Humanities on March 17, when I'll be on a panel with Michael Mandiberg and Patrick Davison (1, 2), entitled Mashups, Memes, and HOWTOs: New Forms of Online Video. I'm actually quite excited about my talk, which introduces my research into the history, theory, art, and politics of Participation.

Also upcoming:
Alfred University - March 22*
University of New Mexico - March 26
Pacific Northwest College of Art - March 30
Brown University - April 15
School of the Art Institute of Chicago - April 28
Columbia College - April 29
Oberlin College - May 11-12**

* As artist in residence at Alfred's Institute for Electronic Arts
** My Oberlin visit is in collaboration between The Margin Release Series and the Exhibtion Studies initiative in the Cinema Studies Department.

And then this summer I'll be a visiting artist at Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (aka the Summer MFA program), and I'll be teaching a class entitled Performance Objects at Ox-Bow.

Also, here are videos from an artist talk at DorkbotPDX, while I was an Artist-in-Residence at PNCA (Portland, OR), and a talk at the Sego Art Center (Provo, UT) on The Art of Conspicuous Consumption--which moves from Renaissance portraiture through Pro Surfer net art! :)

CURATORIAL

Lately I've been most excited about organizing performances, situations, discussions and other one-time events... I recently curated [the world premiere!] of Nao Bustamante's "filmformance," Silver & Gold, for Rhizome at the New Museum.

Keep your eyes out for videos of these events on Rhizome's Vimeo channel, where all New Silent events go to live forever--including the Craft Hackers and Experimental Geography programs I organized. Here's one from the panel I organized around the installment of the Unmonumental show that Lauren Cornell and I curated.

NEW JOB
(Drumroll, please....)

As you may know, I was teaching in the ITP Graduate Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for a couple years. This year I took a new position as Assistant Professor of New Media at SUNY-Purchase. It's an exciting, expanding program and I'm already loving it. In addition to teaching classes in net art, video, performance, and visual theory, one of my first official duties was helping to organize the New Media Lecture Series at the Neuberger Museum of Art. I invited Oliver Laric and Marina Zurkow and Gabriella Coleman are speaking soon. There's also a great Tania Bruguera show up now... You should come see it and say hi!

Solo Show at Bard CCS plus ISCP

2009-04-29T13:38:00.000-04:00

Gene McHugh has curated a solo exhibition of my work at Bard CCS. Entitled, Marisa Olson: Noise Pollution, the show is up through May 24th. You can see images, read the curatorial statement and an interview between myself and David Horvitz, and download ASDF's catalogue, right here.

The work revolves largely around the pollution that piles up as a result of upgrade culture. Along the same lines, I'll be showing a new sculpture (a rocket-like stack of gold tv's), entitled The Terrestrial Race in "Financial District," an exhibition at ISCP curated by Miguel Amado and opening May 8th. Here I'm interested in the ways in which international governments are competing with each other by forcing their citizens to upgrade the terrestrial broadcast signal (and thus their tv's and other gear), in a way that I think mirrors the space race.

Feb-March

2009-02-03T21:20:00.000-05:00

Hiya! Here's a roundup of stuff happening in the next few months...

I'm currently in LA to sit on the curatorial committee for the Beall Center for Art & Technology. I'm sticking around for CAA, so if you're reading and you're around, let me know!

On February 26th, the Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, opens Recycling_Sampling_Jamming, where curator Sabine Himmelsbach will present my work.

I'll show a new piece called Performed Listening (Boomerang) in The Real Thing, opening February 27 at MU, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The show is curated by VVORK and revolves around the ideas about representation laid out in the great Henry James short story (1892) of the same name. It includes some of my favorite artists, like Cory Arcangel, John Baldessari, Pierre Bismuth, Claude Closky, Aleksandra Domanović, Claire Fontaine, Gelitin, Matthieu Laurette, Seth Price, Dexter Sinister, Lawrence Weiner, and others.

From March 1-7, I'll be in Buenos Aires, where I'm speaking at the NET.ART (SECOND EPOCH) conference at the Centro Cultural de España.

From March 14-15, I'll be in Boulder, CO, at the 2009 Brakhage Symposium, where Steve Seid has asked me to give a "semi-academic, semi-performative" lecture in connection with a screening he's organized around the subject of weirdness with some great artists: Brian Bress, Ryan Trecartin, Desiree Holman, Mike Kelley/Paul McCarthy, Shana Moulton, Half-Lifers, Ben Coonley, eteam, and others.

On March 17, I'll wear green to my talk at City College of NY.

On March 19, Michael Mandiberg and I will go down to Philadelphia's Moore College of Art to talk about our solo & collaborative work.

On March 21st I'm organizing a panel at the New Museum, as part of Rhizome's New Silent Series, that revolves around Experimental Geography, the ICI exhibition and Melville House book curated & edited by Nato Thompson. Mr Thompson, Lize Mogel, and Damon Rich will sit on the panel and discuss the creative use of landscape hacking, cartography, locative media, and radical urbanism as a means of engaging with the politics of contested spaces.

On March ~~30th~~ 26th, I'll give a visiting artist talk at Yale University.

Moving into April, on the 2nd I'll give a talk in Provo, Utah, at the Sego Art Center, in connection with the exhibition Forms of Melancholy, curated by my Nasty Nets colleague C. Coy.

Finally, Brett Kashmere has included my work in a screening called "Saturn Returns" at the Images Festival in Toronto April 2-11. He says, "the program focuses on artists who grew up during the 80s, and whose work utilizes music in a central way." That's me! The screening's organized in connection with the launch of a new journal he's editing, called INCITE! Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics.

That's it. Email me if you'd like more info on any of these events.

Sundance Film Festival

2008-12-14T16:52:00.000-05:00

Nasty Nets is having an installation at the Sundance Film Festival called "endless pot of gold cd-rs" and we're doing a night of performance there on January 17th, called "Night of a Thousand Megabytes." More details.

I'll also be sitting on an artist panel at Sundance, chaired by Creative Capital director Ruby Lerner, at noon on Friday, January 16th.

Speaking of fun things happening in Utah at that time, Nasty Nets member C. Coy is curating a show at the Sego Art Center, called "Forms of Melancholy" that includes a bunch of awesome net artists. I'll be writing a catalogue essay for that and will post it here with more info in a bit.

Meanwhile, happy new year to everyone! I'm looking forward to some fun stuff in 2009 including a solo show at the Bard CCS and a performance run at PS122. More to come!

Craft Hackers Panel Discussion

2008-11-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

Friday, December 12th at 7:30pm
at the New Museum
235 Bowery, NYC, 10001
Tickets

Craft Hackers is a panel discussion among artists who use crafting techniques to explore high-tech culture and the relationship between needlework and computer programming. Panelists include Cat Mazza, who translates moving images into stills knit in yarn; Christy Matson, who uses Jacquard Looms (some of the earliest computers) to knit landscape images from computer games; Ben Fino-Radin, whose witty needlepoint sculptures translate the World Wide Web into yarn and plastic, one pixel at a time; and Cody Trepte, whose embroidery of retired computer punch cards rekindles an old-fashioned love affair with the hand of the artist.

Organized and moderated by Marisa Olson, Rhizome curator at large.

Rhizome is a leading new media art organization and affiliate of the New Museum. This is the next event in Rhizome's ongoing New Silent Series at the museum.

Falling Forward

2008-09-28T20:22:00.000-04:00

Hi. Here are some brief notes on stuff I'm doing in October/ November (in addition to the Athens and Philadelphia shows listed below). More to come...

I've co-curated an exhibition with Vera List Center director Carin Kuoni, entitled Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding. There are some great artists in it. The opening is on 10/15.

For the 20th Anniversary Exhibition of the Instituto de Artes Graficas de Oaxaca (IAGO), Mexico, Abe Linkoln and I have been asked to show our Blog Art project. It opens 10/20.

Christina Ray is making Glowlab an official gallery and is showing my work in her first show, 30 Grand (they've moved from Williamsburg to Soho and that's the address), opening 10/23.

On Nov 7-8 I'm headed to the bay area to speak at a conference on appropriation in art, at UC Berkeley, entitled Takeovers & Makeovers. My paper's called "Playing by the Rules: Parody and Parasitic Media in Contemporary Protest Art."

The Promiscuous Pop screening I was in at the British Film Institute is traveling to the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art, Brazil, and will run Nov 13-23 in conjunction with the SP Biennial.

---
FYI, I've also made a bunch of updates to my website's Projects page and, for RSS readers, note that I've added sidebar links to recent interviews with Regine Debatty on We Make Money Not Art and Astria Suparak in NY Arts.

Philly Show and Net Art Essay

2008-09-20T17:45:00.000-04:00

I'm having a solo show in one of the galleries at Vox Populi, a really awesome Philadelphia-based art space. I'm showing Break Up Album (Demo) and some related prints. It opens October 3rd.

I was also asked by LACMA (the LA County Museum of Art)--big supporters of photography--to write an essay for their series, Words Without Pictures. I wrote one called "Lost Not Found: The Circulation of Images in Digital Visual Culture" and there will be official responses posted by artists Jacob Ciocci (Paper Rad), Pradeep Dalal, and Matthieu Laurette. I didn't get to write about everyone I wanted to, but I mentioned a lot of "pro surfer" artists (of Nasty Nets ilk) and looked at their work from the perspectives of found photography and montage.

Back-to-School Season

2008-09-05T18:43:00.000-04:00

If you happen to find yourself in Athens, Greece, between now and the end of the year, stop by the National Museum of Contemporary Art where they are showing Abe and Mo Sing the Blogs, the project Abe Linkoln and I did for our Whitney Artport commission. (The one that made Johanna Fateman call my voice "freaky" and "sultry." --Haha, just have to keep reminding myself!)

Speaking of back-to-school, I've actually taken the semester off of teaching at NYU to finish-up my dissertation. (It's on "The Art of Protest in Network Culture, for UC Berkeley's Rhetoric & Film Studies program.) Michael Mandiberg and I are doing a collaborative self-surveillance endurance performance project about it called Marisa Olson Writes Her Dissertation: An Endurance Performance in 31 Acts. It's already been intense, but also productive. Here's a description:

Veterans of web-based autobiographical performance, Olson and "Coach Mandiberg" have teamed-up to get Marisa through her dissertation by framing it as an act of endurance. Every day for the month of September, Olson will spend all day (i.e. EST business hours) writing while webcam shots and screencaps of her desktop are automatically uploaded to the net every 60 seconds. This gesture of transparency is a continuation of Olson's research into the role of sousveillance in "The Art of Protest."

Summertime

2008-05-30T16:15:00.000-04:00

Hi. It's been a while. I have a fractured hip, torn ACL, and a lot of damaged bone marrow. I've spent the last few months on a nice pair of hot pink crutches and I had knee surgery last week. I feel olllldddd, but I'm currently recuperating in Berlin, where the living's EZ. Anyway, I'm taking most of the summer off to write write write, but I am doing some live performing and showing my work in the following shows.

MOMA Performance, NYC, 5/19: I performed in a Lovid project called "Help Carry a Tune" at the Museum of Modern Art with eteam, Hanna Fushihara Aron, Michael J. Schumacher, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Thomas Beard, and Bengala.

Netherlands Institute for Media Art/ Montevideo, Amsterdam: From May 24-June 26, I'll be in a show called My [public] space, which is about the blurring of private and public information and spaces and which also features the work of Erich Berger/Elina Mitrunen, Hasan Elahi, Martijn Engelbregt, Kota Ezawa, Dora Garcia, Susan Hartig, Jill Magid, Eva and Franco Mattes a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG, Eduardo Navas, and Guy Ben-Ner

Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati: From May 24-August 31 I'm in American Idyll: Contemporary Art and Karaoke, which also includes Joel Armor, Candice Breitz, Phil Collins, Mark Harris, David Herbert, Mehdi Hercberg, Christian Jankowski, Ryan Mulligan, Reid Radcliffe and Jose Versoza.

WOOLOO's New Life Berlin Festival, June 1-15: Every day at 6pm I'll be performing as a parody of Martha Stewart, in a futuristic TV show entitled Assisted Living, which is focused on coping with the health & environmental challenges (including Global Warming-Related Illnesses or GWI's) of living a life prolonged by technology. I'll devise craft-projects and recipes for 130-year-olds, taping the show on-site before a "live studio audience." Stop by 13-15 Karl-Liebknechtstrasse (Alexanderplatz/Mitte) any time if you're around. On June 14th there will be a closing party DJ'ed by AIDS-3D's Daniel Keller with Oliver Laric, and Martin Backes...

Pompidou Centre, Paris: The "Real Time" show I was in at the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art travels to the Pompidou starting on June 13th, in conjunction with the Pocket Film Festival.

Kunstraum Muenchen: Abe Linkoln and I are showing our work in an exhibit called Into the Music, which also includes Johanna Billing, Jeremy Deller, Iain Forsyth + Jane Pollard, Hadley + Maxwell, Kristin Lucas, Elke Marhöfer, and Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay. It's up June 25-August 10th

Schroeder Romero Gallery, NYC: I'm in a group show here, called Fair Game, which explores sports and competition as political spectacles. It opens June 26th. I'm showing 96-00-04-08, along with a red and blue headphone duet...

Leonard Pearlstein Gallery/ Drexel University, Philadelphia: From June 23-July 25, the Bitmap show I was in at Vertexlist is touring to this venue and they are producing a catalogue, so look for more info on my blog, next month.

Light Industry, Brooklyn: On July 8th, something very exciting is happening. I'm releasing an artist book of my high school poems (designed by Robert Bolesta), called "Songs I Wrote While Listening to the Doors, 1992-1994 (Before the Internet)" and in this one-night event, some of the poems will be read by myself, poets Thom Donovan, Stephanie Gray, Christian Hawkey, Dorothea Lasky, and other surprise guests, PLUS original songs using my poems as lyrics will be performed by members of the bands Professor Murder/ Tan Lines, Aa, and Taigaa. These songs, and a few of my own will be accompanied by videos made by myself. It's going to be a very special night.

Esther Klein Gallery, Philadelphia: I'll be having a solo show here, called "Background Information," from July 11-August 30. The show will feature all new work, including installations, prints, and a video animation revolving around images culled from the internet.

I'm in Exit Art's summer show, "Summer Mixtape Volume One: The Get Smart Edition," opening July 24. The website says: "Drawing on influences from hip-hop and popular culture, the exhibition seeks to evoke the appropriated, personalized essence of the mixtape... The exhibition, curated by Exit Art's Associate Curator, Herb Tam, and Assistant Curator, Lauren Rosati, will also feature a jukebox with mixtapes produced by the artists and some special guests."

From August 22-September 26 I'm in a show at the University of Maine called "Seriously, Funny: Art as social, political, and cultural critique." The show is part of their fifth annual contemporary arts fest called Without Borders.

Extracurricular Activities

2008-04-18T09:02:00.000-04:00

Hi. As I've mentioned previously, I've been doing a lot of research and writing on surveillance, including teaching a grad seminar at NYU on "Sousveillance Culture," this semester. Below are notes on a few projects I've been involved in, in the course of this research.

I wrote an essay on online privacy (vs publicity) for the book that is accompanying the Michael Connor-curated ICI exhibit, The New Normal. It opens April 25th, at Artists Space.

The next day (Saturday, April 26th), my Sousveillance Culture students will be presenting their final projects in a one-day conference located at The Change You Want To See, in Williamsburg.
http://rhizome.org/announce/view/51385

From May 9-12 I'll be in Madrid to speak about Tactical Media at the Reina Sofia National Museum, in conjunction with the 15th Rencontres Internationales. More details to come.

Last, but certainly not least, on May 15th, Rhizome is having a Benefit that is sure to be the party of the year. :) Please come!

Nasty Nets at the NY Underground Film Festival

2008-03-28T02:21:00.000-04:00

That's right, Nasty Nets has just produced a DVD (with video & data for maximum pleasure!) and we're releasing it in a screening called NASTY AS U WANNA BE at the 15th (and final) NY Underground Film Festival.

It's Friday, 4/4/08, at 8:30pm, at Anthology Film Archives. Please come and enjoy, and get your discounted dvd's--$5 while supplies last!

Big thanks to RHIZOME for sponsoring the dvd!

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who came. I posted the final program in the comments.

March Madness

2008-02-17T15:32:00.001-05:00

There's a lot of fun stuff going on at the end of February and into March and early April, including a few talks, some performances, and shows in NYC, California, Dallas, Germany, Sarajevo, and London. Please email me for more details on any of these...

Lecture Series Performance, NYC
Charles Broskoski and I will be giving a Lecture Series performance. We put out a call, a while back, for images that could be used as slides in a Powerpoint lecture about the past, present, and future of the internet. Thomas Galloway is making the PPT and we'll give the lecture without having seen any of the slides. (Improv!) Afterwards, we'll post the PPT online in case any of you are ever called on to give a lecture about the internet. It's at The Canal Chapter, at 9pm on Weds 2/20.

Dallas Contemporary
I'm currently in this show at the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, called Real Time. I'm making a series of low-fidelity "video confessions" which get uploaded live. The museum's throwing a party from 10-midnight, on Thursday, 2/21.

CAA panel
I'll be speaking on a panel at the College Art Association conference, in Dallas, later this week. My co-panelists are James Morgan (moderator), Joel Slayton, and Patrick Lichty--all very cool guys! Come hear us wax art historical: Not Learning from Net.Art: The Rise of Newer Media -- Friday Feb 22, 12:30 - 2:00 pm, Adams Mark Conference Center, Houston Ballroom A

Just Play at the Edith Russ Haus, Oldenberg, Germany
Abe Linkoln and I are showing Universal Acid and Abe & Mo Sing the Blogs in a very nice show, called Just Play: Music as Social Practice, opening March 7 at the Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst, and touring in May to Kunstraum, in Munich.

Galerija 10m2, Sarajevo
Opening on the same night as Just Play, I'm showing a couple different videos (including a new one on surveillance, which I'll post online as soon as I find a moment), in a survey of contemporary video art, at Galerija 10m2, in Sarajevo. The show was arranged in collaboration with Glowlab.

And/Or Show
Opening March 8 is a two-person show with myself and Christine Gideon, at And/Or Gallery, in Dallas. I'm showing Monitor Tracings, Peace Offerings, and a few videos.

UPDATE: Here are installation shots and links to preview videos.

Artist Talk, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA
I'll be speaking about my work here, in conjunction with the current exhibition, We Interrupt Your Program, in which I'm showing my video, Golden Oldies. The talk is at 7:30pm on Weds, March 12th, in the Danforth Lecture Hall of Mills' Art Building.

I'm giving another talk at PSU's Palmer Museum of Art and this one will be webcast. The talk is on Tuesday, April 1st (site says Thurs; maybe it's an April Fools joke?), at 11:30am. The webcast link goes live 15 mins before... So high tech!

Promiscuous Pop, British Film Institute, 21st annual London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, London
My videos Black or White and No One will be included in this screening that also features Daniel Barrow, Jibz Cameron (Dynasty Handbag), Kalup Linzy, Tara Mateik, Jillian Peñam, Ryan Trecartin under the tagline "a new generation of performance artists queer the boundaries between art and entertainment."

Martha Stewart Assisted Living, at the Hayward Gallery, London
In conjunction with the Hayward Gallery exhibition, It's OK, I'll be making a series of daily performances called Martha Stewart Assisted Living. It's basically a futuristic version of our favorite homemaking show, geared towards people living abnormally-long lives, prolonged by technology. I'll be presenting craft projects and recipes for these folks, who will surely be suffering all kinds of telecommunicational ailments and global warming-related illnesses. (Stay tuned for videos!) The project is a part of my old bandmate/ongoing collaborator Marc Horowitz's Center for Improved Living project.

Also, SAVE THE DATE for the April 4th release party screening for the Nasty Nets DVD, at the NY Underground Film Festival. It's at 8:45pm on Friday, April 4th, at Anthology Film Archives. More details to come!

Montage at the New Museum of Contemporary Art

2008-02-17T15:13:00.000-05:00

My Rhizome colleague Lauren Cornell and I co-curated the 4th installment of Unmonumental, the inaugural exhibition at the new New Museum of Contemporary Art. Entitled Montage: Unmonumental Online, the show introduces works by an international group of artists who use appropriation to create internet-based assemblages. The artists extend the radical practice of collage to the internet. Using digital images, sounds, and code, they interpret fictions and fantasies found online. There's a lot of great work here, and the online version of the show can be found here.

Weight of the World

2007-12-31T12:08:00.000-05:00

I'm showing my new "video album," Break Up Album (Demo), at Cincinnati's Reed Gallery, in a group show called Weight of the World:

Curated by Maiza Hixson and Ryan Mulligan, “Weight of the World” testifies to art’s potential for self-healing/coping/and emotional survival. The exhibition features 17 artists, each of whom examine his/her own own life through the practice of art making, using the process of making as a step in healing. The works are simultaneously self-centered and universal. With subjects ranging from homemade support groups, coping with death and grief, self-actualization after a break-up, financial difficulties, and an artist place in a post 9/11 world, the show resonates with sincerity and humble self-reflection. Please join us for an opening reception Thursday, January 10th at 5:30 pm.

"Break Up Album (Demo)" is a four-channel video project about pain as a medium, the breakup album genre, and the notion of a demo--something that shows what an artist may (or may not) have to offer or be capable of... in hopes of getting "picked up." Excerpts from the project can be seen here

Oh Yeah!

2007-12-19T02:33:00.000-05:00

Hi! Below is info about a new project and a couple of articles...

Oh Yeah I Love You Baby is my remix album of pop music samples in which each word in the album title is also the title of a respective track whose lyrics consist solely of that word. These are the "greatest hits" of pop music! Enjoy the tracks and please visit the credits page, where you can download the samples to make your own remixes and where I share my gratitude for Daniel Iglesia.

Also, just a note to keep an eye out for the recently-released Jan/Feb issue of NY Arts magazine for which Astria Suparak interviewed me. A bunch of artist friends are in this issue and it looks like a fun one.

Likewise, Andrew Lavallee's Wall Street Journal article, Even Boring Blogs Are Things of Beauty In Some Artists' Eyes, just went out. (Here's a PDF as it appeared in print.)

Happy holidays!

We Interrupt Your Program at Mills College Art Museum

2007-12-09T23:55:00.000-05:00

Heyhey. Happy December. I'm trying to move into cruise control for some things so I can step-up my work on other things. I just sent off my installation for the show above, at the Mills College Art Museum, and I'm pretty excited about the show (I love these artists and Marcia Tanner is a legendary curator whom I've long admired), so I'm posting now and I'll be back in January with more news. Meanwhile, at Mills I'm premiering a video called Golden Oldies, which will be shown with one of my headphone installations. I posted an excerpt here and below is the 'official' description from my website. I want to say thanks to my assistant, Thomas Galloway, who helped me out on the sound design for this piece.

In this performance taped during a residency at the Experimental Television Center, I attempted to instigate communication between a CD boombox, child’s record player, and various defunct media: vinyl records, VHS tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs. Like the garbage that piles up as we upgrade our phones and computers, the detritus accumulated in these efforts gets blindly swept aside in this ultimately fruitless effort.

on archives, or just a random roundup

2007-11-17T09:06:00.000-05:00

I somehow have five shows happening in March, so between now and then, I may not make too many posts. (Though you should definitely stay tuned for notes on Unmonumental!) But just a few random notes... Rachel Wolff kindly included me in her New York Magazine List of the Top 5 Art Videos online. You can click-through to all the videos from that link.

I'm trying to be more on the ball about archiving my own work. I just put up a bunch of scans of my Monitor Tracings drawings. (Shout out to my new studio assistant, Thomas Galloway, for doing the glam work of scanning these!)

Lastly, I just got back from Berlin, where I spoke at the Re:place conference about the relationship between artists, archivists, and communities, as it is effected by the evolution of technology. Consider this a placeholder--I'll come back and link-up the audio of the talk once they get it online. Meanwhile, thanks to the Boltzman Institute for bringing me out and the VVORK kids, the AIDS-3D kids, and all the other nice people who showed me a good time!

B I T M A P: as good as new, at VertexList/Blip Fest

2007-11-08T10:28:00.000-05:00

I'm in this show at Vertex (with a bunch of artists I really like) and will be showing new Monitor Tracings of 8-Bit related gear... The official description:

VertexList space and Blip Festival have the pleasure to present B I T M A P: as good as new - a group exhibition celebrating the history of the digital image, the aesthetics of early computing and early video-game consoles. Expect pixels, old monitors and 8 bit sounds! :: Reception: November 24, 2007; 7 - 10 pm :: Live 8 BIT music performance @ 8.30 pm :: until February 3, 2008 :: vertexList, Bayard St. (between Graham and Manhattan Avenues).

B I T M A P: as good as new will feature: Cory Arcangel, Chris Ashley, Mike Beradino, Mauro Ceolin, Petra Cortright, Paul Davis, DELAWARE, Notendo (Jeff Donaldson), Eteam, Dragan Espenschied, Christine Gedeon, Kimberly Hart, Daniel Iglesia, JODI,Olia Lialina, LoVid, Kristin Lucas, David Mauro, Jillian Mcdonald, Tom Moody, Aron Namenwirth, Mark Napier, Nullsleep, Marisa Olson, Will Papenheimer, Prize Budget for Boys, Jim Punk, Akiko Sakaizumi, Paul Slocum, Eddo Stern and CJ Yeh.

About Blip: The Blip Festival is a four-day international cultural event taking place in New York City this November into December, focusing on the 8-bit scene - musicians and artists who use low-bit videogame and computer hardware as their creative tools. The festival is the widest-reaching event in the history of the form, boasting a roster of over 40 international artists performing and exhibiting from places as diverse as Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, and across the United States.

Update: I just put a bunch of scans of the Monitor Tracings up here.

Update #2: The show's going to move on to Philadelphia's Drexel University, June 23 - July 25, 2008, and they're doing a catalogue, so I'll post more info on that when the time comes.

Performed Listening at OTO

2007-11-02T10:34:00.000-04:00

Next Friday, I'll have an installation at MTAA's OTO (Over the Opening) series, called "Performed Listening." I'm actually going to show a series of performance videos and ephemera from my series of the same name. Below is the description we worked out....

On Friday November 9th from 7pm to 10pm, Over The Opening is pleased to present "Performed Listening" by Marisa Olson

Marisa Olson's work often grows out of fan culture and her Performed Listening series explores the relationship between performer and spectator by underscoring the performativity of listening and watching. Began as a series of seemingly-silent performances in which Olson would listen to music on headphones, in a public context, the series has evolved into performances that sometimes incorporate other spectators and an expanded series of videos. In these tapes of Olson listening to music, the visual qualities are modified by the sonic elements of the music being listened to.

For her exhibition, Olson installs two previous works from the Performed Listening series: "Easy Listening" (2005) and "Black and White" (2006). Olson also debuts "Performed Listening: H" (2007). In this new work, video of the artist listening to the Velvet Underground's song, Heroin, is distorted by an analog "colorizer."

Marisa Olson's work (marisaolson.com) has recently been presented by the Whitney Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the 52nd Biennale di Venezia, the Pacific Film Archive, Postmasters Gallery, and the New York Underground Film Festival.

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Incidentally, this studio is where I taped the Universal Acid videos, so it has special vibes for me... Thanks for inviting me, T&M.

Update: Mike Sarff took some photos, which I've re-posted here. Thanks, Mike! And thanks to everyone who came. The turnout was awesome!

Peformed Listening: H

2007-10-23T01:17:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned before, I like to make videos where there's a relationship between the song I'm shown listening to and the appearance of the video itself. I call this series of videos & performances Performed Listening. In this newest installment, I'm listening to the Velvet Underground's song, Heroin. I made this at the Experimental Television Center, using Dave Jones's analog "colorizer."

Autumn

2007-10-21T17:50:00.000-04:00

The months are racing by and I've become very bad about blogging. I do tend to post a few more notes about my activities here, but I'll try to blog more frequently. I've been traveling a lot and working on lots of projects, so there's much more to come.

Meanwhile, please save the date of Friday, November 9th, if you're in town. I'll have an installation at MTAA's OTO series, in their Williamsburg studio. Stay tuned for updated details... Should be fun!

I'm also in a show opening 11/22 at Vertex List gallery, in Brooklyn. It's called "B I T M A P, as good as new" and is a part of the 2007 Blip Festival. I am really fond of the list of artists, which includes: Chris Ashley, Mike Beradino, Mauro Ceolin, Petra Cortright, Paul Davis, DELAWARE, Notendo (Jeff Donaldson), Eteam, Dragan Espenschied, Kimberly Hart, Daniel Iglesia, JODI, Olia Lialina, LoVid, Kristin Lucas, David Mauro, Jillian Mcdonald, Tom Moody, Aron Namenwirth, Mark Napier, Nullsleep, Marisa Olson, Will Papenheimer, Prize Budget for Boys, Jim Punk, Akiko Sakaizumi, Paul Slocum and Eddo Stern.

More soon on this and other upcoming shows and performances...

Update: I struck the reference to MSAL for those who were here earlier. That project's going to take more time and more resources, but will certainly happen someday.... Ok, no more pre-announcing...

September Stuff

2007-09-10T07:54:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like summer's almost over. It's been an eventful and productive one, but I can't say I'm ready to wish the sun farewell. In any case, the NYC art world is in full back-to-school mode and so am I. In fact, here is the blog for my new course at NYU (on Media Change), for anyone who's keeping tabs. The other fun thing about Fall is that the New Museum of Contemporary Art (with whom Rhizome is affiliated) is about to open their awesome new building on the Bowery and Lauren Cornell and I are curating part of the inaugural exhibition. More to come on that, but we're pretty pumped about it...

Meanwhile, two September things. The first is the Conflux festival, a super fun fest of "psychogeography" events in Bklyn & NYC organized by my Glowlab friends. I was on the jury, this year, and I'll be moderating this panel on Sousveillance, on Saturday the 15th. The panelists (Amy Alexnder, Hasan Elahi, and Jill Magid) are stellar and I'm really looking forward to digging into the issues. I hope you can come! Conflux's schedule is jam-packed with fun, crazy stuff. For instance, I'll also be competing in MTAA's Super Slow 5k (which promises to be nothing like this). I guess you could say I've been in training for a few months now (you know how I like to train), and can't think of a better way to end the summer.

Lastly (for now), if you're going to be in Philadelphia near the end of the month, come by the Esther M. Klein Art Gallery on 9/27, around 7pm, where I'll be giving a talk on art & science. I'll post an update here with more details, in a bit.

roundtable convo at the great internet sleepover

2007-08-19T21:56:00.000-04:00

Hey! Something really exciting is happening. Bennett Williamson decided to organize a Great Internet Sleepover at Eyebeam and old friends, new friends, and as-yet-unmet internet friends are coming in from California, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin, Texas, Georgia, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and all over NYC to participate. It's going to be legendary! It's on Friday, August 24th, and while the all-night sleepover part is only for the "pro surfers" (i.e. crews like Nasty Nets, Double Happiness, Supercentral, and Loshadka, plus a few indie surfers) the whole thing is open to the public from 8-10pm. Some of the guys asked me to moderate an artists' roundtable discussion, so I'm gonna do that around 9pm, and my co-panelists will be Bennett, Michael Bell-Smith, and Tom Moody. But I really want everyone to participate! We'll talk about things like the nature of this "scene," the forms of collaboration that have emerged, the creative/ consumptive practices at play in contemporary net art, the nature of web surfing-related art work, etc... So come check it out, if you're interested in this stuff.

PS I made a little video portrait of the artists who came.

Big thanks to Clint Chilcott, Bennett Williamson, and James Powderly for help with set-up!

Txt Me L8r - Houston Center for Photography

2007-07-31T10:57:00.000-04:00

I'm currently participating in a fun exhibit at the Houston Center for Photography, organized by the Aurora Picture Show, called Txt Me L8r. A bunch of great artists are participating. We're being sent instructions for images to send in, on deadline, which are getting posted here and will be up at the museum.

Turnstile - Single Use at Holden Gallery, Manchester

2007-07-17T13:43:00.000-04:00

Next week I'm in a show organized by Interval at the Holden Gallery, in Manchester, UK. Some details:

Turnstile is a new concept in art tourism - an innovative exhibition format developed around the idea that most people only visit an exhibition once. Interval has utilised this observation as a method and redesigned the structure of an exhibition, mimicking an audiences actions and flow.

Time is throwaway, a disposable and low valued commodity. Many contemporary objects and experiences are designed for single use, nurturing a short term, disposable society, a culture of quick consumption and fickle fashions. Art and media are often viewed in a similar way. Many people only pay a single visit to an exhibition, absorbing as much of the experience as possible and lingering if it interests them.

I'm included in one of three shows within the show:

SUCCESSFUL FAILURE

Though we rely on it to get us through tasks both quotidian and extraordinary, our technology is constantly failing us. Decay, malfunctions, errors, and other indicators of failure can be purposefully engineered into a creative work as part of a statement on how our reliance on technology is often founded on untenable hopes that today's cutting edge tools will last the test of time.

Katherine Behar | Marisa Olson | Ruth Pringle

Two Sound Things!

2007-07-02T16:59:00.000-04:00

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm currently in residence at Free103Point9's beautiful Wave Farm center. I wanted to let you know I'll be doing an online radio show with them, on the 4th of July, and and a live performance on July 7. Details below...

PLAYLIST FOR PROTEST
July 4, 2007 : 2pm - 3pm
free103point9 online radio

Presented in the spirit of George Carlin, who said there was nothing more American than "getting drunk and blowing shit up," here's a playlist of contemporary protest songs for your holiday party! Celebrate the freedom to speak, dance, and burn things--whether it's flags, [veggie] burgers, bottlerockets, or CDRs!

TUNE(OUT)))SIDE 2007
July 7, 2007 : 3pm - 9pm
Wave Far, Acra, NY

This outdoors variation of free103point9's Tune(In))) event features artists playing directly into five FM transmitters at free103point9's Wave Farm. No sound is amplified. Attendees tune in with radio headphones (provided) as they explore 30 acres of meadows, forests, and ponds.

A bunch of fun artists are participating. Here's a description of what I'm doing:

Marisa Olson will transmit her voice directly from her headphones to yours, in Mono A Mono, a single channel stream of songs "all about
you."

*Special thanks to ECC and Rick Silva for fresh 7/4 kicks.

Venice Biennale, Postmasters, Monkeytown, Joe's Pub, Free103Point9, etc

2007-06-09T13:05:00.000-04:00

Yay for summer fun! Below is info about some shows I'm involved in at the Venice Biennale, Postmasters Gallery, the Edith Russ Haus, and Monkeytown, plus performances at Joe's Pub and on the radio with Free103Point9.

VENICE BIENNALE
I've got some sound & video work at Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (PAN), in program curated by WPS1 Art Radio for the 52nd International Art Exhibition. If you can't make it to Italy, check it out online.

POSTMASTERS GALLERY (NY)
Not Your Parents MTV: Music Videos from Hell
June 28-July 28, opening Thurs, June 28 6-8 pm
459 West 19th Street (@ 10th Ave), NYC

My long-time collaborator Abe Linkoln and I are included in this really fun group show which also includes Michael Paul Britto, Kenneth Tin Kin Hung, Katarzyna Kozyra, Chris Larson, and MTAA. We're showing a new touch-screen version of Abe & Mo Sing the Blogs, which was originally commissioned by the Whitney Museum's Artport gate page program, and the piece will be accompanied by a new headphone sculpture "duet" made by both of us.

MONKEYTOWN - Video art semiennial
Friday and Saturday, June 15 and 16
Admission: $5
Viewing Time: 7:30 and 10pm
58 North 3rd, btwn Wythe & Kent (L train to Bedford)

*NOTE: I'm premiering a new piece here and it's one I don't plan to put online any time soon (it's NSFW!), so come check it out! It's called NETACRONYMS and some stills can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marisaolson/sets/72157600326481172/

The word: Everyone's favorite video art venue offers a video art "semiennial of the high water marks, the standouts, the stuff that made an impression. The immersive video equivalent of 'come hang out at my place and listen to some records.'" Reservations are highly recommended for this very popular event.

EDITH RUSS HAUS FUR MEDIENKUNST (Oldenburg, Germany)
My Own Private Reality
May 12 - July 1, 2007

This is a group show about "Growing up online in 90s and 00s." Artists include Cory Arcangel, Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Mike Bennett, Nick Crowe, Hörner/ Matthias Antlfinger, Marisa Olson, Tanja Ostojic, Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied, Jillian McDonald, Annina Ruest, Thomson&Craighead, Ubermorgen, and Angie Waller

JOE'S PUB - ROFL!
425 Lafayette Street, NYC
June 22 & July 27
11:30pm, $12 admission

Ok, this one's gonna be nuts. On both June 22 and July 27, I'll be performing (some might say "competing") in both rounds of ROFL, which can only be described as a hilarious night of comedic presentations of gems scoured from YouTube & other corners of the internet. The nights are hosted by Slovin and Allen and Reggie Watts and presented with The Onion and Paper Thin Walls. Hat tip to Paddy Johnson and my intimidatingly impressive, "internet famous" co-stars.

FREE103POINT9
4th of July Radio Performance

This summer I'll be a resident at Free103Point9's Wave Farm center. On the 4th of July, I'll be broadcasting a show/ performance (on the radio & online) called "Independence, Left and Right." This will entail a collaboration with my California-based buddies at Neighborhood Public Radio, as we check-in on the state of independence & freedom on the left & right coasts. Expect obscure patriotic tunez, awkward impromptu phone calls, and many surprises. Please check back at my blog as details emerge. (I'm still lining up some very special cameos.)

music!

2007-06-02T20:06:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, I have a slight interest in music. It's currently a big focus of my time, from researching historic uses of broadcast media in protest, for my dissertation (something I'll be doing a lot of at my upcoming Free103Point9 residency--more on that soon), to writing more about contemporary music--particularly musicians who address politics and/or merge recording, performing, and visual art. On that note, I'll point you to the new music issue of Planet Magazine, in which I wrote about Beirut. I've been writing about visual art for them for almost six years (and for the next issue I interviewed Olafur Eliasson), but it was fun to branch out.

I've also been recording a lot of music and collaborating with a lot of musicians & sounds artists, lately, in tandem with my research. Stay tuned for announcements about that. Meanwhile, I wanted to give a little summer music shout-out to some of my friends who are currently involved in a group of exciting simultaneous projects, around New York. If you're around, you might want to check out the ongoing New York Electronic Arts Festival and the upcoming NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) conference & concert series.

96-00-04-08

2007-05-29T12:22:00.000-04:00

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day! This is how I celebrated:

This performance explores the similarities between the Pepsi Challenge & presidential elections. The title refers to all of the presidential elections for which I've been old enough to vote...

Update 11/13/07: Yay! This video has been included in New York Magazine's list of The Top-Five Online Art Videos of 2007.

My Own Private Reality, Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg

2007-05-04T20:35:00.000-04:00

I'm in a show opening next week at a cool space in Oldenburg, Germany, in case anyone happens to be headed there. Here are the details:

My Own Private Reality (Growing up online in 90s and 00s)
Edith Russ Haus
May 12 - July 1, 2007

Artists include Cory Arcangel, Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Mike Bennett, Nick Crowe, Hörner/ matthias Antlfinger, Marisa Olson, Tanja Ostojic, Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied, Jillian McDonald, Annina Ruest, Thomson&Craighead, Ubermorgen, and Angie Waller

Black or White in Aspect volume 9

2007-04-17T13:13:00.001-04:00

Aspect has just released a new special issue on performance and they've included my piece, Black or White, on the DVD with an optional audio commentary track by Matthew Lyons, from The Kitchen. They put a small sample clip of the video online, here, or you can see it on YouTube here, but you should really check out Aspect, because it's super rad and it includes Matthew's contributions as well as interesting pieces by several other performance artists. (Thanks, M!)

Break Up Album (Demo)

2007-03-26T22:14:00.001-04:00

My residency at Alfred's IEA was a blast and super productive. I made a ton of new work, including a new "video album" called Break Up Album (Demo). More images and a description here. (Click thumbnails to enlarge.)

Hasan Elahi in Planet

2007-03-26T22:06:00.000-04:00

I wrote an article on Hasan Elahi which appears in the just-released new issue of Planet. Right now I'm finishing up an article on Beirut, for the next issue...

Rad Rhizome Benefit Concert!

2007-03-15T16:23:00.000-04:00

Please come to what promises to be a super fantastic Rhizome Benefit Concert, on April 16, 2007. The concert will feature three of my favorite bands: Gang Gang Dance, Professor Murder and YACHT, all of whom blend a wide range of musical influences and instruments to create original sounds. The Benefit (MC'ed by the always awesome Cory Arcangel) will take place at the Hiro Ballroom in the Maritime Hotel, 371 West 16th Street.

Tickets are $75 - higher-level supporter or vip/ $35 - general public/ $25
- Rhizome Member and groups. Rhizome Members can bring up to ten guests at the discounted member rate.

Details and ticket purchase http://www.rhizome.org/benefit

March Madness

2007-03-12T02:36:00.000-04:00

I've really fallen behind on blogging, but a lot's happening on many fronts. I've been giving a bunch of talks, in random places, and sitting on some interesting panels & juries. I've got some new stuff in-progress, and I'm finishing Oh.Yeah.I.Love.You.Baby, with my "producer" Daniel Iglesia (who likes it when I call him "the DJ Jazzy Jeff to my Fresh Prince") and cooking up ideas for the "record launch." (Please feel free to hit me with your own ideas!) This week I head to Alfred University, for a residency at their Institute for Electronic Arts. Then I come back and help jury entries for the annual Conflux festival put on by my good friends, Glowlab. The same weekend, on 3/24, Nasty Nets is having a night of screenings and performances, at Telic, in LA. I'll be showing some video work. That's it for now. More soon.

drawings, records, plus WORLD TOUR!!!!!!

2007-02-08T13:47:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'm giving you lottts of notice on this one, so we can all be prepared! I am going to be showing a bunch of my new drawings (see above--that's one of them!) at Glowlab's show at the semi-new, super-awesome Fountain Art Fair, which happens during and notably close to the Armory Fair, February 22-26. I will also be showing some videos, and some awesome new blinged-out records!!!!!!!!!! (Totally conceptual, trust me! Come by and we'll chat about this and my ideas about records "going purple.")

Also, also, also, I am going on my first WORLD TOUR in a few years... This one happens entirely in NYC!!! As you may (or may not) know, I often make performances out of listening to music. The idea is that spectatorship is performative. (It totally is!) This time, you can play along, by donning custom headphones and joining me in a "world tour" of the "greatest hits" of bands named after geographic locations. I'll make stops in Berlin, Boston, Beirut, Chicago, Alabama, Kansas, Europe, Phoenix, and Duluth!

Here's my performance schedule:
Thursday, February 22: 2–3pm, 6–7pm, 8–9pm
Friday, February 23: 12 - 1pm
Saturday, February 24: 4–5pm
Sunday, February 25: 4–5pm

Fountain is at 660 12th Avenue [between 48th St. and 49th St., 4 blocks south of the Armory show at Pier 94]. More info here.

I have a new website!

2007-02-06T07:44:00.000-05:00

When it came to explaining why I had no "real" website, I always used to say that "the cobbler's children are the last to get shoes." Whatever that meant! But now, a mere ten years after I started working with net art, I have a real homeypage: http://www.marisaolson.com/

Please check it out. It's a simple white cube of a site, unlike this one... But the really nice thing is that I've made a list of some of my favorite projects from the last two years, whereas before there was no good list like this... Anyway, I'll keep posting here as I always do and my RSS feed won't change. Meanwhile, big big thanks to John Michael Boling for helping me take the leap.

Professional Surfer

2007-01-24T22:06:00.000-05:00

Some friends and I have started an internet surfing club, called Nasty Nets. It came out of a joy of sharing links with each other, but grew into a place where we post found and original/remixed material. It's been a nice place for me to follow thoughts I might otherwise censor or drop, and to make and post work I'd not likely post elsewhere... (Like my eBay search for my long-lost cool shirt, pictured above. Yeah, I was much hotter in those days...)

Anyways, Nasty Nets and some other cool peeps/ groups have been included in "a group exhibition that considers web browsing (aka 'surfing') as an art form," called Professional Surfer. It was organized by Rhizome (thanks, Lauren!) and is co-presented by the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Check it out.

Tactical Media at NYU

2007-01-18T16:01:00.000-05:00

Tonight I'm taking a red eye back from this conference so that tomorrow I can begin teaching my class in Tactical Media, at NYU's ITP program. Here's the currently-sparse course blog. We're going to have a pretty amazing lineup of guest speakers and I hope to post videos of their talks on the blog, for those of you who are interested and might want to check back. I'll probably post more about that, here, at some point...

The Year In The Internet--2007 Edition

2007-01-13T20:29:00.000-05:00

Michael Bell-Smith and Cory Arcangel asked me to send them my ten favorite internet links from 2006. I did the same in 2005. Somehow it was harder this year. I found myself more interested in politics and pop culture (and their intersections) than any specific art projects--with a few notable exceptions... Anyway, check out this year's page, which includes best-of lists by lotsa cool people.

Archiving the Avant Garde Symposium

2007-01-10T23:24:00.000-05:00

I'm headed to California, next week, to speak at the following symposium.

New Media and Social Memory
Jan. 18, 2007
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao

The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is proud to present New Media & Social Memory, a public symposium to discuss strategies for preserving digital art at a time when digital technologies are evolving and becoming obsolete at an astonishingly rapid pace. While focussing on digital art, the symposium will also address larger concerns about the long-term conservation of our increasingly digital culture, including how we decide what digital materials - from Web sites to video games - are worth saving. The full day of presentations and panel discussions by leading experts in the field of digital preservation, including Stewart Brand, Jon Ippolito, Michael Katchen, Kevin Kelly, Marisa Olson, Richard Rinehart, and Bruce Sterling, will be held in the museum theater on Thursday, Jan. 18.

This symposium is open to the public free of charge; however, due to limited space, online registration is required. See attached image for program. For more information or to register, visit http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao

Networked Nature at Foxy Production

2007-01-05T09:25:00.000-05:00

I've curated a show for Rhizome, at Foxy Production. If you're in NYC, please come by the opening, on January 11. (The show also tours up to Syracuse's Warehouse Gallery, this summer.) The work is fantastic and we published a nice, small catalogue with the show. Details below...

Update: The show was included on Artinfo's advance list of the top ten exhibitions of 2007!

2nd Update: Foxy posted the reviews from the NY Times, Village Voice, Artnet, and others, on the show's archive page, along with high-res installation shots. (Click thumbnails to enlarge.) Thanks to everyone who came out for the opening & other events! Stay tuned for details on the tour to Syracuse.

+ + + + + + + + +
NETWORKED NATURE

+ + + + + + + + +

Organized by RHIZOME, an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art

January 11 - February 18, 2007 Opening reception: January 11, 6-8 PM

Foxy Production presents Networked Nature, a group exhibition that inventively explores the representation of 'nature' through the perspective of networked culture. The exhibition includes works by C5, Futurefarmers, Shih-Chieh Huang, Philip Ross, Stephen Vitiello, and Gail Wight, who provocatively combine art and politics with innovative technology, such as global positioning systems (GPS), robotics, and hydroponic environments.

In their work Perfect View, San Jose-based collective C5 reached out to the subculture of recreational GPS users, or geo-cachers, asking them for their recommendations of 'sublime locales.' The submitted latitudes and longitudes provided the guide points for a thirty-three state, thirteen-thousand mile motorcycle expedition by collective member Jack Toolin, who photographed the terrain at the given coordinates. The results, presented in triptychs, smartly subvert traditional representations of landscape and notions of the sublime.

San Francisco-based collective Futurefarmers' Photosynthesis Robot is a three-dimensional model of a possible perpetual motion machine driven by phototropism - the movement of plants towards the direction of the sun. Their proposal that a group plants will very slowly propel a four wheel vehicle is a witty take on the pressing search for new forms of energy.

New York artist Shih-Chieh Huang's inflatable installation, Din-Don I, is inspired by everyday household electronic devices and his studies of physical computing and robotics. In this ingenious exploration of organic systems, he creates a dynamic circulation of electricity and air: a living micro-environment.

San Francisco-based Philip Ross' Juniors are self-contained survival capsules for living plants. Blown glass enclosures provide a controlled hydroponic environment, where plants' roots are submerged in nutrient-infused water, while LED lights supply the necessary illumination. The artist has drawn on two culturally divergent traditions - Chinese scholars' objects and Victorian glass conservatories – that share the belief that nature is best understood when seen through the lens of human artifice.

Virginia-based artist Stephen Vitiello's Hedera (BBB) unsettles our assumptions of what an appropriate soundtrack might be. The artist has constructed a sprawling vine installation with speakers hidden between the branches that quietly broadcast percussive sounds woven from the speeches and private conversations of George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

Creep, by Oakland-based Gail Wight, is an hypnotic three screen time-lapse video of the growth of dyed slime mold. Separately edited sequences play alongside each other, cycling through a sequence of fluorescent color shifts. In her aestheticizing of the normally repellent, Wight creates an ode to the beauty of natural growth patterns.

Networked Nature is organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator at Rhizome. The exhibition will tour to the Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, New York. Networked Nature is supported in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The College Arts Association, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and The New York State Council on the Arts. A full-color catalogue will be published by Rhizome and available at the gallery.

Rhizome is a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Its programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. This exhibition is the final event in Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival of Art & Technology.

www.rhizome.org
www.newmuseum.org

For further information or high res images contact Chelsea Goodchild:

FOXY PRODUCTION
617 WEST 27TH ST. GROUND FLOOR,
NEW YORK NY 10001

t: 212 239 2758
f: 212 239 2759
foxyproduction.com

Mixing it up Offline

2006-12-26T16:34:00.000-05:00

I've been pretty busy with some offline stuff. Lots of writing, reading, drawing, and other things that tend to involve paper. It's been nice, if not utterly bloggable. But as those activities become tangible, they'll make their way here. For now, here's Tom Moody's 'remix' of a headphone drawing by yours truly. I've been doing a lot of monitor tracings of google img search results and wasn't sure I was going to post them online, but this seems like a good excuse. Being remixed feels so good!

Happy new year!
I have high hopes for 2007.

Miami

2006-12-03T19:50:00.000-05:00

I've got some work in a show that is organized by Scope, for this year's Art Basel Miami Beach:

Rules of Engagement -- For a second year, the Guerrilla Media Vehicle takes to the streets of Miami to spread the words and images of socially aware international artists in a program of new video art. Stretching the boundaries and definitions of contemporary video in a mobile format, the Guerilla Media Vehicle brings the art to the people in a beautiful yet confrontational way.

Also, speaking of Miami interventions, my good buddies The Organizers are looking for performers for their project, The Sams.

Talks, Tapes, and Other Dates

2006-11-26T23:24:00.000-05:00

{Note: some updates, here, as of 11/29:)

Ok, get yer calendars out! Here's some stuff I'm doing or attending, in the next few days, starting Tuesday. Please scroll all the way down, for the Monkeytown benefit & La Superette! (p.s. I heart NYC!)

Weds, 11/29 - I'm moderating a casual discussion with James Deavin and Eva & Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG)--both of whom have been making work in Second Life--at Jen Bekman Gallery. Deavin's work is mostly landscapes and interior shots, showing now at the gallery. The Matteses' portrait series, 13 Most Beautiful Avatars, is showing now at Ars Virtua Gallery in a show I curated for the Time Shares series co-presented by Rhizome and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and will be in a "real world" show opening on 11/30 at the Italian Academy, at Columbia. Please join us for this chat! Updates: Time: drinx at 6, talk at 7, ends at 8. RSVP: recommended. rsvp(at)jenbekman.com.

Thurs 11/30th - Big night! Eva & Franco Mattes have their opening @ Columbia (see above); Darmstadt ("classics of the avant garde performance series) celebrates their 2nd anniversary @ Galapagos with Zach Layton, Nick Hallett, Ray Sweeten, Luke DuBois, David Linton, and a TON of other awesome people, performing Terry Riley's In C. Also, the Unisex Salon series (organized by Earl Dax & James Coppola, and friends) starts tonight, at The Delancey, and the Blip Fest celebration of all things 8-bit starts tonight and runs through 12/3.

Fri 12/1 - Jon Brumit is visiting from Oakland and doing this: "i've been working on the soundtrack for a 'store' with my friend sean (meadows) and by opening time friday the piece will play repeatedly for six months until an entirely new collection is presented in the space, we're finishing up a long series of micro-compositions which will shuffle endlessly, using samples of the pieces in the collection and extensive use of object-based processed feedback via fm radio through the soundsystem in the space." 6-11 pm 1565 lexington ave @ e 100th, opening of anthony deluca's 'shopshop.'

Sat 12/2 - The autumn Harkness Salon... Actually, just kidding, this was cancelled!!!

Sun 12/3 (8pm) - New event! One of my studio assistants, Daniel Iglesia (a music genius getting his PhD at Columbia) has a piece for string quartet and live electronics in a FREE concert at Lincoln Center. He says: 'It’s in one of their other 20-some venues: the Rose Studio, a small chamber music space in the Rose Building at W 65th and Amsterdam (NE corner), 10th Floor. (NOT to be confused with Rose Theater, which is a L.C. venue at the Time Warner Center.) It is free, no ticketing, with five other chamber pieces by Columbia colleagues, some others with electronics as well.' Fun!

Mon, 12/4 (6:30pm) - Rhizome panel on open source issues (organized by Lauren Cornell), at the Vera List Ctr. Panelists include Daniel Mayer, co-founder, Wikipedia; Cory Arcangel, artist; and Joy Garnett, artist; and Laura Quilter, founder, Fair Use Network. Moderated by Christiane Paul, adjunct curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art. Note updated time (not 7pm!)--thanks JG!

Weds, 12/6 (7pm) - Rick Silva, Sam Freeman, and I present our work at Dorkbot, at Location One, in Soho. Descriptions at the link. I'm scared...

Thurs, 12/7th (8pm-2am) - Totally super awesome Monkeytown benefit/ holiday party, featuring performances by the amazing My Robot Friend, Dynasty Handbag, Nicklcat, and others... Monkeytown is a one-of-a-kind art venue and awesome restaurant and they need our support, right now! If they disappear, it will be a huge loss to the arts in NY/Bklyn!!

Sat, 12/9 - Tali Hinkis (Lovid), et al's La Superette! This is a holiday shop at which you can pick up artists' projects, clothes, zines, and other good stuff. I'm co-starring in Tali's artists' dvd cookbook, and I'll also present some brand new tapes in my series of Self-Personalized a Cappella Serenades, custom audio cassettes with secret, sealed serenades and instructions for Self-Personalization and Optimal Serenade Enjoyment. The fun happens at Eyebeam, this year.

Then, over the weekend, I speak at an entertainment conference at a comedy club in Times Square, where the founders of MTV and E! will also be speaking.... Surreal... And then I sleep!!! :) {Uhh... except that I'm about to start a new video performance blog for the holiday season!!} But I hope to see you before then!

Dorkbot-NYC talk Dec 6

2006-11-22T11:43:00.000-05:00

Hi! I'm doing something scary.... I'm talking about a complicated new project on which I've barely started research, and playing samples for public scrutiny. Yikes! I'm not sure how this happened, but here are the details... It's for Dorkbot (awesome series!), and Rick Silva (aka my frequent collaborator, Abe Linkoln!! shhhh....) and Sam Freeman will also be presenting. Also, Daniel Iglesia, one of my two amazing studio assistants (more on this soon!) will be on hand to break down the technical details, with me. (Check out his great work!) Ok, so info here:

DORKBOT-NYC: Sam Freeman, Marisa Olson, Rick Silva
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006, at 7pm at Location One in SoHo.

My excerpt....

Marisa Olson: Oh.Yeah.I.Love.You.Baby
Marisa's work deals with popular music and the cultural history of technology. She's just started research on her first sound art album, "Oh.Yeah.I.Love.You.Baby," in which each word in the album title is also the title of a respective track whose lyrics consist solely of that word. To her, these words are the "greatest hits" of pop lyrics, and each utterance of them is culled from hours and days of pop music samples. Of course, Marisa's work is also often about failure, humiliation, and a lack of talent. Accordingly, she's not sure whether her project sucks or not. She could use a little feedback on this work in progress.

Black or White

2006-11-18T13:21:00.000-05:00

I just uploaded a new video to utoob, called Black or White. In it, the audio signals from Michael Jackson's song, "Black or White," modify the processing of a video of me listening to the song, via Nam June Paik's rasterizer/"wobulator." I made this on my summer visit to the Experimental Television Center and it's one of many headphone pieces in which I perform the act of listening. The B/W question is tongue-in-cheek, but I was really inspired by the song's original music video, in which a series of faces/video portraits morph into each other... There are actually a few different versions of this video, with nice feedback loops and color processing, and it will eventually be a multi-channel installation, but for now, here's the "original."

13 Most Beautiful Avatars

2006-11-18T13:06:00.000-05:00

I've just worked with Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG) and James Morgan, founder of the Ars Virtua gallery, to organize an exhibit in the online game world of Second Life. 13 Most Beautiful Avatars, captures the most visually dynamic and celebrated "stars" of Second Life. The Matteses have been living in this virtual world for over a year, exploring its terrain and interacting with its peculiar inhabitants. The result of their "video-game flanerie" is this series of portraits. The 13 Most Beautiful Avatars images will be exhibited, in the real-world, at the Italian Academy at New York's Columbia University. For the Ars Virtua show, in Second Life, a 3D replica of this physical exhibition space has been recreated for presentation of an exhibition identical to the "real" one. This show is the newest installment in Time Shares, a series of online exhibitions dedicated to exploring the diversity of contemporary art based on the Internet, organized by Rhizome and co-presented by the New Museum of Contemporary Art. This link will transport you directly to the exhibition site in Second Life. Viewing the show requires user registration and a software plug-in.

Coming Attractions

2006-11-04T14:46:00.000-05:00

A sneak preview of a piece I'm working on, at ETC, right this second.......

Thanks and shout-outs to David Webber, my Zombie Lazer Technician for the week. (He picked his title and it's spelling!)

Mix Festival and ETC Residency

2006-10-27T14:37:00.000-04:00

Hi, there. Happy Fall. It's getting cold! I'm sure I'm about to be even colder, as I'm headed upstate to Owego, for another residency at the Experimental Television Center. I can't wait! When I get back, a video I made last time I was at ETC (Dark Stars) will be screening at the 2006 Mix Festival, in a program called Video Burnout. The screening, curated by Joshua Thorson, is on Friday 11/10, at 8pm (3LD Theatre, 80 Greenwich @ Rector), and includes work by Peter Brinson, Paul Bush, Donigan Cumming, Dale Hoyt, Seth Kirby, John Knecht, Les LeVeque, Sarah McKiel, Frederic Moffat, and two 'anonymous' artists that I really like.... Check it out, if you can!

Creative Commons talk - NY - Oct 13

2006-10-05T14:29:00.000-04:00

On Friday, 10/13, I'll be giving a low key artist talk at a Creative Commons salon. Paul Slocum will also be presenting. He's in town from Dallas, where he also runs the And/Or Gallery, but I should really say he's in town from The World, which he tours as one half of the very awesome Treewave duo. He's setting up his solo show at Vertex List (from whence the above image comes--it opens 10/14, as mentioned below), and will be making a star appearance at the premiere of the 8 Bit documentary, this Saturday, at MOMA.

He's awesome, and so is Creative Commons! They are a nonprofit aiding and inspiring creativity through the events, tools, and licenses related to copyright alternatives and remix cutlure. I'm sure they describe themselves better, so check them out. Their salons are lots of fun. I spoke at one in San Francisco, this summer, and had a great time. This one is at Nublu, in the East Village, It will be really low key and there will be drinking before, during, and after--so no panel discussion leg cramps at this one. It starts at 8pm, leaving you plenty of time for Friday the 13th festivities, afterwards. Stay tuned for more info on this one. It would be fun to see you. More here.

Update: Please note the updated time. This starts at 8pm, rather than 6pm, leaving you time to get there after work, since I know all my friends work late on Fridays.

2nd Update: Evan Harper, of Eyebeam is going to join the lineup! Cool!

Also, a shout-out to Fred Benenson, who put the event together and is, among other noble things, a maker of awesome halloween costumes.

Calendar Items

2006-10-02T11:22:00.000-04:00

There's currently a lot happening, new media-wise, in New York. Cory Arcangel's show at Team Gallery just opened and On and Off, a survey of important net art, curated by Caitlin Jones, opens this week (10/5). Also upcoming (10/14) is Paul Slocum's show, at Vertex List. And the list goes on and on.......... But I'd especially like to point your attention to two upcoming events. The first, at The Kitchen, is curated by my colleague, Lauren Cornell, and I'm really looking forward to it. The second, at The Guggenheim, was curated by moi. Both are a part of Rhizome's 10th Anniversary festival.

THEY HEART A COMPUTER
Tomorrow (10/3), 8pm
The Kitchen, 512 W.19th, NY
This evening of live performances and video screenings explores forms of expression, desire and anxiety prevalent in a culture increasingly influenced by the Internet. Doo Man Group (made of Ben Jones, Jessica Ciocci, and Jacob Ciocci of Paper Rad) interweaves live percussion with a dense collage of web-based visual emphemera. Jona Bechtolt (of Yacht) and Claire L. Evans combine music, dance and Powerpoint to explore the possibilities and fallacies embedded in online communities. In addition, videos by Michael Bell-Smith, JODI, Shana Moulton, Takeshi Murata, and humorist Ze Frank investigate how the Internet amplifies and exxagerates life offline.

SHOW & TELL
Tuesday, October 17, 6:30pm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave @ 89th, NY
Box office (212) 423-3587 ($10/7)
Artists Tara Mateik and the Yes Men present performative lectures as subversive as they are witty.

In his words, Tara Mateik's work “stategizes to overthrow institutions of compulsory gender… through performance, video, and intervention.” In "Putting the Balls Away," he will reenact a legendary "Battle of the Sexes:" Billie Jean King's 1973 defeat of the former Wimbledon men's champion, Bobby Riggs. By playing both roles in a video version of the match, and reviving remarks by sports commentators Howard Cosell and Rosie Casals, Mateik recalls the controversy sparked by the most watched televised sporting event of the era.

The Yes Men will present the first public demonstration of their SurvivaBall, an advanced new technology designed to keep corporate managers safe, even when climate change makes life as we know it impossible. Recently unveiled at a corporate conference by Yes Men masquerading as Halliburton executives, the SurvivaBall is “designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way,"

I hope you can join us!

Update: The Village Voice just ran a nice piece on Show & Tell:

Yes Men & Tara Mateik
In 1999, culture-jamming activists the Yes Men set up gwbush.com, which spoofed W.’s real website and pointed out his hypocrisies. When asked about the prank, Bush delivered the unforgettable response, “There ought to be limits to freedom.” Tonight, the notorious duo (most recently using the aliases of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) demonstrate their disinformation techniques by giving a talk and assuming different guises. (Those unfamiliar with the Yes Men’s antics should rent their self-titled 2003 documentary, in which they pass themselves off as spokespersons for the World Trade Organization, among other feats.) They’re joined by fellow pot-stirrer Tara Mateik, who discusses his current project “Putting the Balls Away,” an exploration of gender via a re-enactment of the famous “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Part of the new-media arts organization Rhizome.org’s 10th Anniversary Festival. (Switzer)
Tue 6:30pm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1071 5th Ave New York, NY 10128 Upper East Side (212) 423-3587 www.guggenheim.org, $7–$10

The Ben & Marisa Show!!!!!!!

2006-09-13T10:49:00.001-04:00

If you're in NY, please come to Monkeytown on Saturday, 9/30, for The Ben & Marisa Show, curated by Nick Hallett. It's going to be a fun screening in which Ben Coonley and I both show some rarely-seen pieces and some brand new work--including my first multi-channel works and some fun collaborative videos we're making just for the event. There will also be a bit of live performance by Ben, who is as hilarious as he is smart! There are two screenings: one at 7:30 and one at 10pm. Monkeytown only seats about 30 people per screening, so reservations are encouraged... I hope to see you there!

Meanwhile, thank-yous to Ben, Nick, John Michael Boling, and Montgomery Knott

Update: Thanks to everyone who came. We had a great time. Mriver posted some pix on his photo blog.

A Monumental Day

2006-09-11T12:20:00.000-04:00

Today I begin teaching at Parsons. I'm teaching an MFA thesis class in their Communication Design & Technology department. I usually post my syllabus here on the first day of every class I teach, but this semester I'm waiting to meet the students and hear about their projects before finalizing the reading list. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, I feel compelled to say something about the fact that today is the 5th anniversary of 9/11--mostly because I can't believe we're still in this stupid sham of a war. Somehow, I've always associated Parsons with 9/11. A couple days after the attack, I had a residency at the Banff Centre and I met Scott Paterson at a New Media Institute seminar on 'Emotional Architecture.' We all put everything on hold to talk about 9/11 and Scott said that he was teaching a class at Parsons that morning. He said that someone dragged a tv into the room and even though they could see the towers very clearly from the classroom windows, they could not remove their eyes from the tv. I've probably thought about this anecdote every day for the last five years. I feel like many of us take comfort in representations--even horrific ones, because there is the possibility that they aren't real. It's sort of the opposite (yet semiotic equal) of Freud's 'wish fulfillment.' But I also feel like the Hollywoodizing of terrorism and even the YouTube aggrandizing of the war in Iraq are keeping us in an imaginary make believe state about the disgusting things happening in our own country and as a result of our country's policies. So while I'm excited about teaching at Parsons, on a day like today, I must admit that I feel weird taking on a new position of authority when all I can think about is our public responsibility to question authority.

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K is for Karaoke! And Knoxville!

2006-08-28T14:19:00.000-04:00

I am very excited to be included in an exhibition called Karaoke, at the Art Gallery of Knoxville. The theme of the show is self-evident and Tennessee seems like the perfect place to mount it. This gallery is especially forward-thinking and the lineup includes some people that I really admire. If anyone out there happens to see it, please let me know...

chicago and other stuffs

2006-08-24T02:54:00.000-04:00

Hi! How's your summer going? What's new? I remember when I used to post about every little dinner, deadline, and coffee meeting. Too busy now. But still drinking coffee. Plus I read other people's blogs in which they post about every coffee and dinner and, well... it bugs me. So. No more of that. But, at least belatedly, so I remember later, I wanted to make a note that the Chicago Underground Film Festival asked Linkoln and moi for some videos. We don't know where/when they are showing, but such is the nature of awesome festivals. :) I also just kind of wanted to post because it had been a few weeks--which is exciting and weird. I'm moving next week and working on lots of big stuff. If you're reading this (?) and you're in/around/visiting New York, let's hang out. Also, please save the date: Saturday, 9/30, Ben Coonley and I are sharing the screen(s) at Monkeytown. He's a riot and we're also going to make some collaborative, event-specific vids. So please come! (I will post again, soon, because reservations are recommended.) Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Rhizome 10th Anniversary Festival

2006-08-09T17:36:00.000-04:00

Hi! Next week is the first anniversary of my employment with Rhizome (I can't believe it's blown by so fast) and I've spent a lot of the last year collaborating with my rad colleagues to put together a seven-month Tenth Anniversary Festival of Art & Technology, which we launched today. Check it out! There are online exhibits, offline exhibits, a major writing project, book launches, parties, performances, panel discussions, and more... It's all pretty exciting. I'll post notes, here, about some of the individual events, when they pop up.

Coast to Coast

2006-08-08T18:00:00.000-04:00

I've been bouncing back & forth, between NY & CA, all year. I just returned to the west coast but am about to make the east my more full-time residence--real estate market woes notwithstanding! Meanwhile, some east/west notes & shout outs...

While back east I had a busy schedule, but most enjoyed some great music at Darmstadt, videos from Aurora Picture Show at Monkeytown, and performances at Free103's Wave Farm. I also went to a Creative Capital retreat, which put the 'treat' in retreat! They are doing *amazing* things to support artists and the weekend was a rare chance to see/hear presentations from a few dozen great artists. Because they gave grants in 'emerging fields' (which includes new media), I already knew a lot of artists who were there, but I also had a chance to learn about new people I might not ordinarily seek out or hear about, which was great. I hate to play favorites, but the ones I find myself really thinking about, at the moment, are Hasan Elahi, Christian Hawkey, Danny Hoch, Locust, Ruben Ochoa, Sheryl Oring, Kerry Skarbakka, and Allison Wiese.

Back on the west coast, a shout out to LA's Fringe Exhibitions gallery, who are currently showing Abe & Mo Sing the Blogs. It's nice to see it get some play outside of the Whitney. (Of course, it's all online, so you can view it from the coast or landlocked state of your choice...) This week is jam-packed with fun stuff in San Jose, at ISEA2006. I was on lots of committees for this one and worked quite a bit on the planning, early on, especially while I was still curator at Zero1, so I'm excited to see it come to fruition. I've also been helping out the fine folks at Neighborhood Public Radio. Check them out! And, most excitingly, I'll also be cruising in a limo, sipping champagne, and evaluating artists' pitches, as part of C5's verrrry cool Quest For Success project. Can't wait!

I hope everyone's having a nice summer. I'm working on a bunch of new new new video, music, and blog projects... Stay tuned!

Artkrush

2006-07-26T17:21:00.000-04:00

The current issue of the very cool online & email-based Artkrush newsletter is devoted to digital art. In it is a very smart interview with my Rhizome colleague, Lauren Cornell, in which she talks about the state of Net Art. She also mentions my work because she's the best! :) But the whole issue is a nice entree to very contemporary new media, if you're interested.

I'm sorry to be breaking my two weeks of blog silence with this post. It was kind of fun to push away from le blog... I'm travelling, right now, and will be bouncing around for the next month. Lots of fun stuff is in the works and I'll post more soon. Stay tuned for lots of info on Rhizome's tenth anniversary, September shows at the Knoxville Gallery of Art & Monkeytown, more than you ever wanted to know about my new teaching job at Parsons, a new music video, and more.... Meanwhile, I hope everyone reading this (???) is having a nice summer. Personally, I can't stop thinking about Lebanon....

Artist talk, this Saturday, in SF

2006-07-11T18:15:00.000-04:00

I'm giving an artist's talk that's open to the public, this Saturday, in conjunction with my being a 2006 Visiting Artist at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Above is a picture from one of my most recent talks, at the University of Colorado-Boulder--doesn't that look fun??!! And below are the details. (More here.) I really hope someone shows up!

Marisa Olson Gives Public Lecture July 15, 3pm
Lecture Hall, SFAI Third Street Graduate Studios
2635 Third Street, San Francisco 94107
(between 22nd and 23rd Streets)
415.641.1241
For more information contact: jdbeltran@sfai.edu

Future Perfect at Scope-Hamptons

2006-07-11T17:56:00.000-04:00

I'm showing my video, From Here (on which the music is a collaboration with Zach Layton), at Scope-Hamptons, in a show called Future Perfect, curated by Lee Wells. It will be screening July 14-16. I'll also have some videos in the Perpetual Art Machine installation, there.

keep on pushing it......

2006-07-04T01:58:00.000-04:00

If you're in New York this Saturday, consider stopping by Monkeytown for the screening of How the West May Save Us Yet, the awesome lineup of West Coast music videos curated by rock star Nick Hallet. {The program launched at this year's NY Underground Film Festival and has been touring Europe recently. No doubt the DVD is still hot!} It screens at 7:30 and again at 10:00. And Monkeytown is a Williamsburg gem, featuring comfy couch-beds and yummmmy food. Anyway, the screening includes the remixed version of my performance of Salt n' Pepa's Push It, from Universal Acid. Nick has also swapped out some artists' videos for new ones, since the NYUFF screening, so check it out if you can.

Update: Thanks to MRiver for sending this photo from the screening. It makes me realize that I forgot to mention the most interesting aspect of Monkeytown: Their four screens!

Independence?

2006-06-30T14:57:00.000-04:00

Two reminders for the July 4th weekend:

Dissent is Patriotic!
and
Art is NOT Terrorism!

From Here music video

2006-06-22T21:25:00.000-04:00

Hot on the heels of Dark Stars, here's another video. This one is a music video I made for Zach Layton's remix of my song, From Here.

Enjoy!

Update: A Quicktime version of this one & Dark Stars, along with very sweet comments by Michael Szpakowski, were posted on DVblog. -Thanks, MS!

Dark Stars

2006-06-22T04:12:00.000-04:00

My residency at the Experimental Television Center was amazing. It's a great place to make work--or even to watch work, in their extensive library, but the organization is also doing really ambitious and important things.

Anyway, I made a ton of work and some of it I'm still editing or sitting on, but I wanted to throw this one out there. It's called Dark Stars and it's pretty self-explanatory, though I should maybe indicate that the shifting of the image is all a result of analog knob-turning.... I'm not really one to tow the analog vs digital line and I have to say that this video pointed out to me how well the two can go together--analog processing of digital images & sounds and vice-versa. Anyway, I had fun making it! I also should thank Matt Underwood for his provision of the video game sample and heavy analog patch advice!

For now, the video's on YouTube (I know!), but stay tuned for higher quality Quicktime... But it's only 1.5 minutes--for today's attention span!

Update: A Quicktime version of this one & From Here, along with very sweet comments by Michael Szpakowski, were posted on DVblog. -Thanks, MS!

Second Update: Jimpunk has hacked Dark Stars!! He's started a vlog, called DVblogH4ck, on which he posts quicktimes of his hacks of the quicktimes posted at DVblog. Jimpunk is one of my favorite artists and I've been meaning to formulate a Jimpunk shout out, here, for some time. Stay tuned...

My Friends Electric, at Sonar

2006-06-10T16:13:00.000-04:00

Michael Connor (Head of Exhibitions at the British Film Institute/National Film Theatre) has included me in an exhibition he's curating at this year's Sonar Festival (Barcelona), called My Friends Electric. The other artists are Cory Arcangel, Emma Davidson and Paul B Davis, Jason Freeman, Olia Lialina, and Paper Rad--some of my faves! I'm showing Marisa's American Idol Audition Training Blog, a blog art piece in which I documented months of rigorous training for my American Idol audition. (See the fictional reenactment of that audition here.) The project had many aims, including thinking about the voice of the artist/individual in contemporary media culture, critiquing the show's gender/beauty-normative attitudes, thinking about the relationship between parody and participation, exploring the relationship between fame & talent, and perhaps mostly, thinking about voting and the discrepancy between the number of young voters in presidential elections versus the election of an Idol. Of course, it was also about the genre of the diary/personal narrative and tropes of self-(re)formation.

Anyway, Michael's curatorial statement is below and more details are here. I am quite excited about the context of this show and the way that he interpreted my project...

My Friends Electric
Curated by Michael Connor
Sonar2006: Digital a la Carte
CCCB/MACBA
Barcelona

Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol produced 500 three-minute filmed portraits of people he thought had ‘star potential’. Warhol’s subjects would be seated in front of the camera and asked to keep still and to blink as little as possible. With such a simple set of stage directions, the resulting Screen Tests allowed Warhol’s starlets to make their own decisions about how to perform for the camera: Do I want to smile? Frown? Smoke? Laugh?

Since Warhol’s time, preening for the screen has gotten slightly more complicated. In this day and age, onscreen identity requires much more than a hairdo and a smile. Just ask anyone who signed up for MySpace recently. The website allows users to create their own web presence in minutes, no technical knowledge required. Users create lists of their ‘buddies’, upload music and video, post blog entries, customise their home page, and generate site traffic in no time flat. The appeal is far-reaching: over the past eight months, the number of people using MySpace has nearly doubled, now standing at about 79 million registered users. It’s certainly no utopia – MySpace is owned by hawkish media magnate Rupert Murdoch – but social networking sites have emerged as the pop culture phenomenon du jour.

If you’re new to this whole scene, don’t let the amateur appearance of MySpace pages fool you. The online community has given birth to a steadily evolving set of social conventions, making MySpace as difficult to navigate as any high school lunch room. My Friends Electric is an exhibition inspired by these emerging rules of etiquette and aesthetics. From the animated gif to the embedded mp3, the artists in this selection reflect on and critique the transformations taking place in the way identity and social life are negotiated on screen. The self-portrait will never be the same.

LIST OF WORKS:

Da MySpace Hustlerz
Emma Davidson and Paul B Davis (2006)
Online tutorial and screenshot gallery

Paul B Davis and Emma Davidson make work that explores the creative potential of overlooked software and hardware tools. For this project, they have created a tutorial that explains how to ‘pimp out’ the design of a MySpace page, presented alongside an exhaustively researched gallery of the most pimped-out MySpace page designs on the web.

Friendster Suicide
Cory Arcangel (2005)
Live Internet performance (documentation)

On 8 December 2005, Cory Arcangel committed the ultimate act of social self-harm: in a public performance, he deleted his account on Friendster, a social networking site similar to MySpace. Personal messages, comments from friends, and a ‘buddy list’ of personal contacts disappeared into the ether at the click of a mouse. The performance is exhibited here in the form of the ‘suicide note’ Cory posted on his blog prior to the deletion of his account.

iTunes Signature Maker Jason Freeman (2005)
Audio clips produced with bespoke software

One of the most difficult things about MySpace is how to express your musical tastes. Striking the right balance between savviness and pretentiousness can spell the difference between popularity and loserdom. This software artwork opens up a new possibility for sharing your musical taste. It allows you to combine your entire music collection into a single file, by analysing your iTunes and creating an audio ‘signature’ that purports to represent who you are and what you listen to.

Animated Gif Model
Olia Lialina
Web-based animated gif gallery

Olia Lialina is a net artist, wife of Rockstar, and Animated Gif Model with star potential to rival any of Warhol’s screen test subjects. In this project, she redefines the meaing of the word ‘icon’, appearing in a collection of self-made animated gifs. These low-resolution, looped animations are a must-have for the net savvy MySpacer. Please feel free to download Olia’s gifs and re-use them all over the web!

A Vernacular Web: The Indigenous and the Barbarians
Olia Lialina (2005)
Web-based visual essay

One of the most interesting developments of social networking sites has been the rebirth of a ‘vernacular’ style on the web. Instead of slick design and professional copy-editing, the new style is messy, amateur, and fun. In this visual essay, Olia Lialina explains how this style typified the early web, connecting this emerging trend with its historical precedent.

Marisa’s American Idol Audition Training Blog
Marisa Olson (2004)
Online documentation of media intervention

The online diary is one of the defining features of the MySpace phenomenon. Marisa Olson’s project is an online diary, or blog, that she kept while training to audition for American Idol. The work relates directly back to Warhol’s Screen Test project: it is a record of a screen test, but it tells the story from the perspective of the subject, rather than the camera.

Welcome to my Home Page
Paper Rad (2003)
Single-channel video

Paper Rad’s compilation of low-tech computer animations celebrates the utopian electronic messiness of the personal home page.

Creative Commons Salon discussion, SF 6/14

2006-06-06T19:23:00.000-04:00

If you're planning to be near the Bay Area on Weds, June 14, please save the date for this Creative Commons discussion salon in which I'm participating, alongside some very important and interesting participants in the CC community. I'll be talking about my own work, which involves heavy sampling, and participating in a wider discussion about copyright issues. Details below (via CC) and more to come:

It's time for another CC Salon in San Francisco. Please join us on Wednesday, June 14, from 6-9pm (don't worry if you're late; there will be stuff happening all night) at Shine, (1337 Mission Street between 9th and 10th Streets). Note: Since Shine is a bar, this month's Salon is only open to people who are 21 and older.
CC Salon is a free, casual monthly get-together focused on conversation, networking, and presentations from people or groups who are developing projects that relate to Creative Commons licensing, content, and tools. Please invite your friends, colleagues, and anyone you know who might be interested in drinks and discussion.
We've got a terrific line-up of speakers:
RickPrelinger (Prelinger Archives), who will screen the film Panorama Ephemera and discuss using the Internet Archive as its primary means of distribution.

Victor Stone, who will talk about the development of the music remix community ccMixter.

Marisa Olson, artist and Curator at Large for Rhizome.org, who will present some of her recent work and discuss sampling, remixing, and licensing art.

Amit Asaravala, Manager of Editorial Content & Strategy for Techsoup.org, who will talk about content distribution in the nonprofit world.
Additionally, Quarterbar will be spinning a mix of CC-licensed music.

You can track this event on upcoming.org. We look forward to seeing you there!

Experimental TV Center

2006-05-25T04:43:00.000-04:00

With any luck, you won't be hearing from me for a few weeks. I'm headed to Owego, New York, for a residency at the Experimental Television Center. I'm looking forward to experimenting on their awesome equipment, collaborating with the other residents, working on the music video for my summer single, and finishing my music video for a new track by Kid 606. (Details on both of those to come.) While I'm there (on Thursday, June 8, at 7pm), I'll also be giving a lecture on Rhizome.org and new media art, at the Ti-Ahwaga Performing Arts Center. It should be total summer fun!

Check out my Mandelbrot Set!

2006-05-14T11:59:00.000-04:00

Hello. There are long & short versions of this story.

The short one: In a funny double use of the word "set," I posted a photo set of Mandelbrot Sets on Flickr. Haha. They are really pretty!

The longer one: Lately I've been somewhat obsessed with a number of math & physics questions. I guess, as a humanities gal, these things mystify me. But I'm also interested in overlapping vocabularies and concepts--i.e. radio astronomy meets the radio countdown, etc... More recently, I've been thinking about the idea of chaos. It's an important concept, in math & physics, but also in the social realm. (Obviously these realms aren't mutually exclusive!) I'm basically researching the positive outcomes & aesthetics of chaos. This is part of my larger project on Disorder, in which I'm currently writing about the relationship between social disorder (as a form of protest) and disorder in a work of art (ie remixing, hacktivism, etc).

See, I told you it was a long story.... Anyway, this has all led me to the Mandelbrot set. The images in my photo set are visualizations of the scenario most simply describe here (the earlier link has more math details @ wikipedia):

The Mandelbrot set, named after Benoit Mandelbrot, is a fractal. Fractals are objects that display self-similarity at various scales. Magnifying a fractal reveals small-scale details similar to the large-scale characteristics. Although the Mandelbrot set is self-similar at magnified scales, the small scale details are not identical to the whole. In fact, the Mandelbrot set is infinitely complex. Yet the process of generating it is based on an extremely simple equation involving complex numbers.

Mandelbrot visualizations are all, naturally, quite similar, and yet can be totally diverse--though they are almost always beautiful. There is also a whole culture of nerds like me for whom fractals & computers go hand-in-hand. Computers allow us to visualize these things in new way, and share them with friends. In fact, check out this funny Friendster-inspired Fracster site, in which people identify themselves in relation to their favorite parts of Mandelbrot set!!

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I also have a bit of a drag & drop problem, so posting 272 of my favorite Mandelbrot images online allows me to share them with you (returning them to their natural homes online), while purging them from my computer. Enjoy! By default, or for good measure (haha-math joke!) there are also a few Julia's in there, too... Oh, and if you do some secret Flickr hacking, you'll find that some of these are really amazing animated gifs!

Yes Men in Aspect Issue 7

2006-05-13T14:58:00.000-04:00

I just received Issue 7 of Aspect, the biannual DVD 'magazine' that covers new media art. It's a really brilliant publication model in which each issue offers video documentation of artists projects and optional audio commentary. I've frequently used Aspect in the classroom, as it's a great way to give a real impression of the experience of a work, and watching videos without and then with commentary is a nice way for students to compare their interpretations with others.' Both the artists and commentators, in each issue, are always great and there tends to be a nice balance between emerging & established artists. Each issue is thematic and previous themes include West Coast artists, humor, and site-specificity. I've previously recorded commentary on Anthony Discenza, Jim Campbell, MTAA, and Lee Walton.

The newest issue is on Personas & Personalities and I recorded audio commentary on The Yes Men. I focused specifically on their Dow-related projects, but I'm a big fan of their work in general. (Check out their most recent Haliburton project!) The whole issue is very impressive and engaging. In all honesty, whereas I was once quite interested in 'identity art' and self-portraiture, I now tend to feel like much of it is caught up in a tired, self-perpetuating academic cycle. (This is why the fuss over JT Leroy's 'real identity' bored me to tears.) But I think this issue of Aspect shows the diversity of the genre and presents some very strong pieces by folks like Lynn Hershman, Anthony Goicolea, Kristin Lucas, Christian Jankowski, Adrianne Wortzel, and others. Anyway, check out Aspect!

Universal Acid drops in Berlin, Vienna, London, Spain, SF

2006-05-04T19:44:00.000-04:00

Yes, Universal Acid is hitting the road. Here are some details on screenings of the videos. (All but the Free103Point9 events are tours of How the West May Save Us Yet, which was curated by Nick Hallett and started at the NY Underground Film Festival.)

Tomorrow (5/5) it will be at Twisted Robot (Berlin) with music by The Skaters.

From May 5-7, Free103Point9 will be at the Observatori Festival, in Valencia, Spain, and they will be presenting Universal Acid along with other work from their previous residents and other artists in the Surge exhibition with Rhizome. More details here.

On the 6th & 7th of May, we will be at Vienna's Schikaneder, as part of the Destroy America festival of "Music Videos From the Art Rock Resistance." There's a German article about this particular screening in Skug - Journal für Musik and I think there's an English option, somewhere.

On 5/9 we're at Barden's Boudoir (London), with the totally amazing BARR and The Sticks. More.

On 5/13 With ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES, we're on a UK TV program(me!) curated by the YYY's. Cool! We love TV!

Then we bring it home at San Francisco's Mission Creek Music Fest, where Artists Television Access will screen our stuff, on 5/21.

Eats Tapes & Nate Boyce perform at GIF Show opening, May 3rd

2006-04-29T22:26:00.000-04:00

BIG EXCITING NEWS!!!

The tremendously talented Eats Tapes will be performing live, at the opening of The GIF Show, this Weds. But, wait--there's more! The also tremendously talented Nate Boyce will be performing live visuals with them!!! Woah!! The opening is from 6-10 and they'll do one sweet set, at 9pm...

Please feel my excitement! To assist in that matter, here's a link to what's been referred to as "Nate Boyce's seizure-inducing, retinally-scorching video" for Eats Tapes' song, "Ptery D." Back in the day, when Abe Linkoln and I were first comparing notes on influences, for Universal Acid, we both clutched to this vid as extra rad. So thanks to Nate, Marijke, and Gregory!!

And here is the extra low-res Myspace testimonial invite for The GIF Show (hope to see you there!):

Update: I made a little del.icio.us directory of some (but not all) of the works, here:
http://del.icio.us/marisaolson/gifshow
Of course, many of these will look quite different, installed in the gallery... What's not there, as of now, are Tom Moody's drawings, Lovid's fabric pieces, Guthrie Lonergan's gif avatar video, Paper Rad's "Welcome to My Homeypage" gif video, or the email Cory Arcangel had me print with the code of a 4-pixel gif...

Second Update: What was I thinking? Why didn't I make a Flickr page for the show sooner?! Click on the images and then click the button above that says "all sizes," to see them animated. (All are animated, with the exception of the Peter Baldes & Paper Rad video stills/screen grabs.)

Folha de São Paulo & Paper Magazine articles

2006-04-24T18:03:00.000-04:00

Two articles have recently come out that relate to projects in which I've been involved. Paper did a nice story on How the West May Save Us Yet, the West Coast music video program curated by the super awesome Nick Hallett, for the NY Underground Film Fest and now travelling a lot (details to come). A video from Universal Acid is included in that one.

And then Folha de S.Paulo-Illustrada ran an article on blog art that discusses the projects I did in collaboration with Abe Linkoln. The article is below, for those who read Portugese! (I'm trying to get a copy of the print version, which had some nice images.)

Arte na BLOGOSFERA
ADRIANA FERREIRA SILVA

Uma subversão ocorre na blogosfera: alguns artistas estão transgredindo o formato mais conhecido dos blogs, de diários virtuais e de sites de notícias, e criando uma categoria de arte eletrônica batizada de blog arte.

Como é isso? Num blog convencional, a página de abertura geralmente traz uma série de tópicos, com datas, imagens e comentários do autor logo abaixo. No subvertido, do fundo da tela saltam animações, desenhos, músicas, vídeos, que, num clique, podem se transformar em uma cascata de janelas coloridas e dominar o computador do usuário. Este efeito, que pode ser um tanto desesperador para os desavisados, foi utilizado pela dupla Rick Silva e Jimpunk para remixar uma obra do francês Marcel Duchamp, numa série de "ready-mades" que está no Screenfull, site que contabiliza mais de 100 mil visitas.

Criado por Silva, 27, brasileiro radicado nos Estados Unidos que o assina sob o codinome Abe Linkoln, e pelo francês, de identidade desconhecida até por seu parceiro, o Screenfull é citado por net artistas como o melhor exemplar de blog arte, com seu mix de vídeo, animação, grafismos e música, que lhe rendeu resenhas elogiosas do museu de arte digital Rhizome.

"O que mais me fascina é que eles [Silva e Punk] pegaram o formato de blog e embaralharam todos os parâmetros", diz Marcus Bastos, 31, professor do curso de mídias digitais da PUC-SP. "Eles fizeram um layout completamente fora do tradicional, com um "postzinho" depois do outro."

A artista e pesquisadora Giselle Beiguelman, 43, também o destaca: "O Screenfull é o único blog que chegou ao limite", diz. "É uma somatória de quebra de regras. Tudo o que não é para fazer eles fizeram. Tem imagens gigantescas e animações no fundo da página", exemplifica. Silva, que mantém outros trabalhos de web arte no ar, define o Screenfull como uma "performance". "Para mim, é como a idéia de happening do Fluxus", diz ele, comparando-o com o movimento artístico dos anos 60, que agregava John Cage, Nam June Paik e Yoko Ono. "O que acontece com a net arte pessoal é que você faz um clique aqui, outro ali, e não precisa voltar mais ao site", acredita Silva. "Mas, com o nosso, as páginas mudam completamente. Há pessoas que vêm todo o dia para checar, porque sabem que vai mudar. Por isso é uma performance."

Sobre Jimpunk, que tem outros trabalhos de net arte na rede e faz questão de manter o anonimato, Silva "acha" que ele é francês e que nasceu em 1966. Eles se conheceram na rede, conversando sobre cultura, e passaram a fazer trabalhos juntos. "Não sei nada sobre ele, só que é um mestre."

Brasileiros
De acordo com o site de buscas especializado Technorati, o universo dos blogs hoje é de cerca de 35 milhões de endereços. O boom ocorreu, principalmente, pela facilidade de manusear o formato.

Para um web artista, que costuma desenvolver seus próprios softwares de criação, trabalhar com um blog é muito fácil. Mesmo assim, ainda não há muitos adeptos da blog arte no Brasil.

Um dos primeiros a se aventurar na blog, ou melhor "vlog arte" -de videoblog-, foi o espanhol radicado em São Paulo Nacho Durán, 26, que mantém seu Feito a Mouse desde 2003.

No site, Durán coloca vídeos manipulados que podem ser vistos de vários ângulos, acompanhados de trilha sonora.

Sua inspiração, conta, vem da videoarte. "Trabalho com narrativas simultâneas e com o loop, que permite construir vários tipos de leituras", explica Durán.
Atualmente, ele está atualizando o videoblog para torná-lo colaborativo. "As pessoas poderão enviar trabalhos", conta. "Também estou fazendo um software que vai permitir mixar os vídeos, trocar de lugar e mudar as cores, como se fosse um VJ [videojóquei] on-line." A baiana Andrea May, 40, vocalista da banda tara-code, também mantém um site com imagens, frases, fotos, cujo efeito acontece quando o espectador sobe e desce o mouse rapidamente.

"Aproveito minhas canções e desenhos para compor o espaço do blog, como se fosse uma tela", descreve May. "Quando há apenas uma tela, o espaço é limitado. O interessante do blog é que ele pode ter diversas tramas."

Making of
Se alguns o subvertem, há os que mantêm o formato original e transformam o blog em uma espécie de making of de suas obras, como o videoartista Daniel Seda, 32, autor do projeto Telepatia.

Seda montou um site em 2001 e passou a usá-lo como diário de anotações para o roteiro de um filme. Depois, construiu um videoblog para incluir cenas das filmagens. "Reuni trechos de três minutos, com os textos que geraram os fragmentos de vídeo."

Quando terminar, ele pretende fazer um DVD. "Mas pode ser também uma instalação interativa, que tenha textos e vídeos", divaga Seda. "Encaro ambos como parte da obra."

Pop arte
Para os interessados, é possível acompanhar as novidades do mundo da blog arte em uma galeria on-line. Os curadores são os entusiastas Rick Silva e a norte-americana Marisa Olson, artista e editora do museu Rhizome.

O site traz uma lista de links, com amostras de diversos tipos de blog e vlog arte, além de bizarrices, como o Universal Acid, série de performances de Silva e Olson, durante o Réveillon de 2006.

Olson, 28, defende que a blog arte é uma nova forma de pop arte. "A pop arte lidava com a comunicação de massa, com temas como mercadorias e produtos de entretenimento", explica. "A blog arte fala sobre todas essas coisas, e acho que, como a pop arte, é fácil para as pessoas entenderem."

Resta saber se haverá um Andy Warhol dessa nova onda.

Still moving

2006-04-24T17:52:00.000-04:00

Houston was amazing. I flew back, early this morning, to teach at Berkeley (we discussed a bit of McLuhan & tonight we're screening Videodrome)--where I spotted Mario! (After seeing so much video game-related art, this week, and taking a red eye home, I briefly thought I was hallucinating!) Anyway, on Wednesday I head to Boulder, to be a visiting artist at the University of Colorado and hang out with such lovely folks as Rick Silva, Mark Amerika, Abe Linkoln, and Anne-Marie Schleiner. Fun!

Media Archeologies Fest in Houston

2006-04-19T04:24:00.000-04:00

Today through Monday, I'm in Houston for the Aurora Picture Show's annual Software Cinema Festival. This year's theme is Media Archeologies and Lauren Cornell, Nick Hallett, and myself are the co-guest-curators. There's also an evening of events at the University of Houston, co-curated by myself and Golan Levin. The whole trip should be lots of fun and I look forward to meet Aurora's phenomenal staff and the artists. They are (in order of appearance): Share, Tommy Becker, Rick Silva, Golan Levin, Sue Costabile, Scott Arford, Tree Wave, Lovid, Yacht, Nate Boyce, My Robot Friend, and Madeline Minx.

Planet Mag pieces on Barney, Banksy, and CAE

2006-04-19T03:48:00.000-04:00

Planet Magazine is pretty cool. It's a San Francisco-based quarterly, published & edited by Derek Peck and made beautiful under the direction of designer Carolina Palmgren. I've been a contributing editor for them since 2001 and have admired Derek's ambition and drive, with the mag. Oddly, people rarely say to me that they read this or that article of mine in Flash Art, but they often comment on things in Planet. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm sure it says that Planet is rad. Anyway, for the just-released issue, which is their annual Visionaries issue, they asked me to write articles on Matthew Barney, Banksy, and Critical Art Ensemble. (That's Barney on the cover, there.) Check it out and keep an eye on Planet.

Psychotropic Drug Karaoke

2006-04-19T03:27:00.000-04:00

Ok, here goes a little love triangle... Abe Linkoln loved Hans Bernhard's blog in which he lists his daily consumption of psychotropic drugs, and he performed a post, called Breakfast Drugs, for our Whitney Artport project, Abe & Mo Sing the Blogs. Then Hans Bernhard loved Abe's song, so he used it to make a gate page for his website. And then the jurors of the Italian index page award, sitespecific.it loved it, and gave Hans the award. So yay! Congrats to Hans! And Abe! Go check out Mr. Bernhard's other cool projects...

And, meanwhile, here is an excerpt of what Domenico Quaranta, one of the jurors, said in their curatorial statement:

The project is completed by an mp3 file in which an interpreter sings the contents of the post as if it was a black metal song. By including this file in the project, Bernhard sets up an ironic cross-reference game with another project, Abe & Mo Sing The Blogs, by Abe Linkoln and Marisa Olson, recently included in the Gate pages of the Artport section of the Whitney Museum in New York: a blog once again, in which the authors shower from other blogs frequented by themselves some contents accompanied at the same time with a personal singing interpretation, enjoyable in mp3 format. While Hans Bernhard plays with one most typical characteristics of the blog world – the information redundancy – reducing its own blog to minimal terms, Abe & Mo accept to recycle the information but they introduce a new variable which sends it back to us full of completely new meanings. In the case of Psychotropic Drug Karaoke, the singing interpretation of the medical prescription is given credit for returning that expressive value which seemed to be lost in the black and white page of Bernhard's blog and for letting us revise the daily action of his author, who sits down in front of the computer every morning to share with us the medicines he has just assumed, for what it is: an outburst, a redeeming action. The project is presented as a Site Specific work in the most literal and complete sense of the term, living in the Net, for the Net and with elements taken from the Net, interpreting in a creative way one of the most interesting phenomena of the recent Internet: the blog.

Get on Board with GIFs!

2006-04-11T15:01:00.000-04:00

Hi, there. I've unashamedly followed the masses to Myspace, and there I've erected a page for an upcoming exhibit I'm curating. Please check it out and become our friend:

http://www.myspace.com/gifshow

The show is called The Gif Show (I briefly considered Meet the Giffords, Meet the Giffordz, Gif Starz, and Choosy Moms Choose GIF). It opens May 3, at San Francisco's beloved RX Gallery, and is co-presented by Rhizome. The artists are Cory Arcangel, Peter Baldes, Michael Bell-Smith, Jimpunk, Olia Lialina, Abe Linkoln, Guthrie Lonergan, Lovid, Tom Moody, Paper Rad, Paul Slocum, and Matt Smear (aka 893/umeancompetitor). Everyone's showing GIFs, and some are also showing videos, works on paper, sound, and other cool related stuff. Together, their work shows the diversity of forms to be found in GIFs, and many of them comment on the broader social life of these image files.

Hence the Myspace page... GIFs grow, breed, and comingle sparklingly on Myspace. Please come be our neighbor, there, and help us spread the word about the show. (More curatorial & opening party details to come, here, in a bit.)

Franklin Furnace Proposal: 29 FOREVER

2006-03-31T15:53:00.000-05:00

Dear Franklin Furnace, thanks for letting me submit my grant proposal in URL format. Below is a description of what I'd like to do. I could really benefit from your assistance. Thanks for your consideration.

The less-than-one-hundred-words description:
In a video blog called “29 Forever,” I will document twenty-nine singing lessons, taken on the occasion of my turning twenty-nine. The vlog will chart my ongoing efforts to be “heard” and will be a time-based performance: taking a chronological format, revolving around my aging, and preserving my voice for a time when we no longer hear each other’s voices. (Which will probably be next year: another reason to stay 29 Forever...)

The longer proposal:
I need singing lessons. Big time. My current work is all about the voice, but mine stinks. How long can I go on making art about the relationship between fame and talent when I have neither? I’m about to turn 29. I won’t be young and blonde forever. Every day I wake up and see that I’m aging faster than the ephemeral media on my blogs. I’m wrinkled, they aren’t. My vision’s failing, so my hopes of being a visionary artist are also diminishing. This is a crisis. Clearly voice lessons are the only thing that will help.

I propose that Franklin Furnace help fund twenty-nine voice lessons. This will be an important step in my career, one that might even help me become the "vocal" artist I’ve always dreamed of becoming. I’d like to document these lessons on a video blog so that my future fans can watch me work. Perhaps, in the course of the twenty-nine lessons, my voice will become more tolerable. The blog will not only be a diary of my ups and downs (emotionally and on the scales!), it will also be a way to preserve my voice for the future.
You see, in this world of highly-mediated communication, I feel like no one ever hears my voice. Who knows what things will be like when I’m 30 or 35? On the blog, I’ll be “29 Forever.” I’ve always liked the idea of blogs being spaces for time-based performances—spaces where everything has a time-date stamp and is ordered chronologically. In this project, time would determine not only the form but also the content of the work. In fact, perhaps the subtitle of the blog should be “It’s About Time.” Afterall, I’m sure I’ll hear that refrain when I tell people I’m taking singing lessons…

I’d like to thank Franklin Furnace for considering supporting my work and my descent towards geriatry in this way. To help in your decision-making process, please consider these other blog-based art projects that offer proof of my need for singing lessons:

Marisa's American Idol Audition Training Blog
Abe & Mo Sing the Blogs
Universal Acid (see especially Across the Universe & Landslide--or the original green screen versions, if you dare! Ouch!)

I also do a bit of "singing" in this fictional reenactment of my American Idol audition.
And in my moiMovies...

Please let me know if you'd like to hear more about these projects or my proposal, in general. Also, I've got a bio online, here.

Budget:
I would like to request $2,929.29 for this project. This would be $100 per lesson, for professional fees, video editing time, maintenance of the blog, and hosting fees. The remaining $29.29 would be used to purchase a small cup of tea before each lesson. I hear that’s very helpful.

Thanks!

Copy, Right?

2006-03-30T02:16:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's funny to think about this blog and how it effects what people think of me. For the longest time I assumed that no one read it (and I still really do, actually), but lately total strangers have been talking to me about it. Weird! Recently a friend asked me about the fact that sometimes I post more intimate (by which I think he really meant incriminating or embarrassing) thoughts or anecdotes on my blog than I share privately, and commented on how the same is often true in my performances. But I've also been looking over my blog posts, recently, and chuckling about how the nature of them has changed. I guess some of this sways with my mood, but at first I posted about every little thing I was or wasn't doing and now I feel like that's a bit (a) boring (b) sometimes braggish (c) generally lame....

But the end result of all of this is that it paints a weird picture of who I am and what I'm doing with my life, to invoke the eponymous question. For instance, many people out there who feel that they know me (and probably really do) have no idea that I have a very academic side. I mean, everyone knows I'm a nerd, but do you also know that I've frequently got my nose buried in the books of all kinds of hifalutin theorists? Or do you know that, at multiple times in my life, I've considered dropping everything to go to law school? It's true! Crazy!

Forgive me if I'm hitting categories A (boring) and C (lame), from above. The whole reason for this rant is that I wanted to post a note about copyright. No, not about copyright, but about copying. You see, the more I go about my life and the more theory I read, the more both experiences have pointed me to the conclusion that copying is a deep, fundamental part of who we are. As much as I try to stay clear of 'species' discourses, our compulsion to mimic (though not unique to our species) really does mark our species. I mean, before we were a chirographic (writing) culture, as Walter Ong said, we were an oral culture that survived via the repetition of stories. To further entrench bad biological metaphors, copying is part of our evolution! Blah blah blah...... all of this is to set up a bit from Aristotle's Poetics that I just re-read and found poignant. Surely it's been paraded around before and I've dilluted its solitary impact, but here it is anyway:

[T]he instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. [....] Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, "Ah, that is he." [....] Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature.

Actually, Poetics is full of commentary on imitation, mimesis, re-presentation, and parody. The latter, in particular, is the reason I keep re-reading it. I find that it has a lot to say not only about the rhetoric of representation, but it also offers substantial fodder for those interested in the politics of parody. Maybe I'm just projecting here, but I read Poetics as incredibly political. Tactical media peeps take note!

Surround Sound: All Systems Avalanche

2006-03-27T15:46:00.000-05:00

So one of the funny things about curating All Systems Go, at this year's Scope fair, is the fact that I became so sleep deprived. I entered the install period on day three of no sleep and I slept an average of 3-4 hours each night. This made the interviews that I gave... interesting. Looking back on quotes and even video, I hardly remember saying these things... In any case, here's a roundup of some of the coverage, so far...

Vernissage.TV video interview
(day three of fair = 9-12 hours of sleep in six days!)

ArtInfo Interview
(day three also, I think...)

Video interview with Mica Scalin
(last day! no sleep!)

You can see the decline... Cool Hunting also did an interview on the first official day, and I'll post it here when it's up. Will be interesting to compare... A few other blogs wrote about the show (including the ever austere Artforum diary) and I'm realizing that I need to do some link wrangling. Supposedly Artforum magazine is running something on it... Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I really want to thank Mica Scalin. This woman is tirelessly devoted to documenting and making art. Not only did she come to shoot the install and then return to interview me, but she also rolled up her sleeves to hang work and some very tricky vinyl signage!! (See above.) So she rules! See, also, her documentation of MTAA's Midnight in the Deli and Cat Mazza's KnitPro, both of which were in We Are All Together, a show I curated at Artists Space, during Performa.

PS I know this post (if not this blog) is a bit selfpromo-ish, hopefully the self-effacing nature/evidence of it will make up for that... It's really about shout outs to the artists and the kind documentarians mentioned here--none of whom (outside of Artforum) are making bank off of their 24/7 devotion to the field...

Universal Acid at Participant Gallery

2006-03-23T16:09:00.000-05:00

Next week the Surge exhibition is taking physical form at the super awesome Participant, Inc, in NY. See below for details. The show will also be travelling to Spain, in May, for this year's Observatori festival, in Valencia.

Surge Live
March 28th, 6:30-9 p.m, presentations by the artists at 7pm.
Participant, Inc., 95 Rivington St., NYC

free103point9 and Rhizome are pleased to present Surge Live, a reception to celebrate their collaborative online exhibition Surge which explores aesthetics involved in wireless transmission. Surge includes works by artists 31 Down, Abe Linkoln and Marisa Olson, Angel Nevarez and Alex Rivera, NYSAE (New York Society for Acoustic Ecology), Jim Punk, and Leslie Sharpe. All of their projects employ new media tools to both conceptually and formally address different possibilities for transmission art online. Some consider the nature of signals as they move through the ether; others appropriate forms of wireless transmission, such as the military’s aerial ‘drone’ or the programming format AsCii, to propose new kinds of digital communication.

At this one-night event and reception, all of the projects will be on view and Angel Nevarez, 31 Down and NYSAE (New York Society for Acoustic Ecology) will give brief presentations on their pieces (from 7-9pm).

More info here.

All Systems Go! at Scope-NY

2006-03-22T00:08:00.000-05:00

With thanks to everyone who helped make the show happen (especially Jennifer Fiore who helped so much with the installation; my Rhizome colleague Lauren Cornell; and MRiver, of MTAA, who snapped the install images here), I wanted to post an update on All Systems Go. Here goes...

Part of the Curator's Choice program at this year's Scope-New York Art Fair (March 9-13, 2006), All Systems Go! featured high-tech, low-tech, and hybrid work exploring digital, representational, political, and social systems. This exhibition constitutes an expansion of Rhizome's mission to connect art and technology. The artists comment on systems, in their various forms and themes, with works ranging from computer, video, and electronic installations to drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Here, technology is not the sole tool or object at play, but is often an indirect subject -- a backdrop on the social landscape within which all art practice now occurs. The harmony or dischord between these installations pinpoint areas of overlap between the various systems now navigated by each of us living in a technological society. The show was, thus, an update on the established field of 'systems art,' from the perspective of contemporary culture and practice.

The photos in [dNASAb]’s series, Obscure Sexual Habits of Wireless Data are unique hybrids inspired by his pursuit to visualize and create the possible aesthetics of wireless data, and the invisible, complex systems of overlapping networks.

Brody Condon’s 650 Polygon John Carmack (Version 2.0) is a low polygon likeness of the famous game engine programmer John Carmack, of ID Software. The sculpture is an appropriated portrait of Carmack from the game Quake III, CNC milled in polyurethane, and textured with hundreds of hand placed inket decals.

In preparation for her family therapist role in the Art as Therapy project, Desiree Holman studied therapist training videotapes that taught her to see the family as a system, and the therapist’s job as one of facilitating change to improve the overall functioning of the system.

Shane Hope’s drawings involve molecular modeling systems—collections of techniques to model or mimic the behavior of molecules—in a process whereby the three-dimensional architecture of molecules is interpreted (or predicted), visually represented, and manipulated.

Instant Coffee is an artist collective developed as a response to the exaggerated difference between studio and exhibition practice. For them, the triad of art practice production, presentation & reception becomes jumbled, incorporating the social as a priority. In this case, viewers can plug their ipod, walkman, or laptop into their cooler speakers and be a dj for few minutes at the fair.

Xylor Jane's work draws on mathematical algorithms to make intricate installations. This site-specific piece is called I have been alive 15,421 suns and is made in copic ink on latex.

MTAA’s One Year Performance Video (aka samHsiehUpdate) was originally an internet-based performance in which the artists’ take on Hsieh’s one year studio confinement is rendered in computer-processed clips of their short-term confinement. The one-year commitment was shifted to internet users who could log a year’s viewing time.

MTAA’s Simple Net Art Diagram is a witty illustration of exactly “where” internet art takes place. Originally an animated GIF, the piece has inspired a host of online remixes including Abe Linkoln’s notable Complex Net Art Diagram.

Abe Linkoln's Complex Net Art Diagram is a remix of MTAA’s Simple Net Art Diagram. The printed version, here, is a further remix of Linkoln’s original diagram, emphasizing the practice of cutting & pasting.

RSG’s Prepared Playstation series exploits bugs and glitches in the code of unmodified video games to create dirty, jolting loops. Video games are both the medium and the content of the work; no additional footage or editing is used. After being "prepared," the game plays itself perpetually.

Shirley Shor’s Urban Dream is a sculpture featuring algorithmic software animations generated in real time. The piece 'is about life and existence; spaces circulate within time around an unfixed center point. The time component activates and transforms the circular paths by challenging our perception of boundaries - constantly shifting the boundaries causes space to become temporal. The active component of the work is generated by software code that creates an on-going changeable system of circularity.'

Julianne Swartz’s magnet sculptures are made of string, wire, and magnets. Titled Aimants, these abstract structures embody the complexities and tensions of relationships. They demonstrate the articulations of strength and vulnerability, of distance and intimacy by mapping fields of attraction/ repulsion in space.

Jon-Paul Villegas’s Model engages various concepts of the taxonomic and of epistemological systems. The sculpture and prints here are derived from a store-bought model of a gorilla. The work evokes the familiar through corporeal allusion while maintaining a concurrent aloofness to categorical propriety.

Lee Walton has devised 162 unique systems to create one drawing for each of the games in a regular baseball season. According to the system, the specific events that transpire during a game (pitches, ground outs, strike outs, hit batters, etc.) will determine the drawing activity. Each drawing will be created pitch by pitch. When the baseball game is over the drawing is complete.

Double Reverse Out Shout

2006-03-17T00:52:00.000-05:00

I should preface this shout out by saying that Paddy Johnson, keeper of the fabuloso blog, Art Fag City, has now called me both hot and a maker of some of the most important work being made today, so there's a slim chance that I'm biased......... But nonetheless, I wanted to send out a shout to this artist, designer, critic, editor, mover, shaker, and social connector and say that she is thumbs up. And maybe I'm preaching to the blog-loving choir, but I particularly want to point our her raising of the bar for online criticism. In a day when print publications are dying off, stiffing writers, cutting word counts, running imageless, and often entrenching stuffiness, blogs must carry on the business of reporting and reflecting and Paddy does it oh so well. She also proves that it's possible to look deeper while maintaining a sense of humor and humility. You go girl! Anyway, check out her blog and maybe even consider attending her Green Card Benefit Party, this Saturday in Brooklyn. We need to keep Paddy in this Bushwhacked country of ours...

Use What You Like

2006-03-15T22:29:00.000-05:00

I am soooooooooooooo going to remix this.

NY Underground Film Fest screening

2006-03-02T16:39:00.000-05:00

The very cool Nick Hallett has curated one of the Universal Acid videos into a screening at the New York Underground Film Festival, called How the West May Save Us Yet. It's all west coast music videos, by some really rad people. Our contribution is Abe Linkoln's remix of my performance of Push It. Come see it in all it's high-res, big screen glory! And say hi to me! I'll be in town for my show at Scope.

More details:

NEW YORK UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL SCREENING:
HOW THE WEST MAY SAVE US YET

THURSDAY, MARCH 9 at 10:30 pm
ticket price $8.50
Anthology Film Archives at 32 Second Ave @ 2nd Street
(F to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleeker, L to 1st Ave)

From Olympia to Los Angeles, musicians and film artists up and down the Pacific coast are getting together to liberate the music video from its status-quo context as self-promotional tool and transform it into a new, confrontational art form, displacing major-label preen with honest, direct address and DIY visual kinesis Despite having next-to-nothing budgets, production values are way high.

Assembled by musician and curator Nick Hallett, the reel is a follow-up to last fall's '23 Reasons to Spare New York,' a syllabus of the Big Apple's new psychedelic wave. This screening will likewise involve its fair share of the heavy, heady visuals (this is the west coast, man!) Just imagine what MTV would look like if it still broadcast subversive, anti-consumerist, revolution-invoking, and seizure-inducing films, soundtracked by bands that actually push the boundaries of sound.

See the full, amazing program here.

New Work: Troy's (Non)Mixtape of Love

2006-03-02T16:00:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, MTAA invited me to make an audio piece for their new project, To Be Listened To. My only prompt was to make an MP3 approximately 15-minutes long, under the heading "To be listened to ...in a bar in Brooklyn on a spring Sunday afternoon, sipping a Bloody Mary, waiting for your love to appear." Somehow I wanted it not to be about being happy to see someone, but maybe about them never showing up, or about you waiting to dump them. (I'm a real positive thinker like that.) So I started making a Simon & Garfunkel midi operetta, mixing midi versions of their songs and my voice reading a Dear John letter, with the piece illustrating all the arcs of a relationship, from meeting someone and falling in love to hating their guts and setting their clothes on fire (in the Hollywood version). It was a large scale project. I never finished it.

You see, while I was working on it, I began having an affair... with this cute younger guy named Troy. Everytime I was supposed to be with Paul & Art, I was really sneaking off to listen to Troy. I fell in love and knew I had to switch tracks.

So now, after that long-winded story, I give you Troy's (Non)Mixtape of Love. In September of last year, while I was making the piece, Troy's Mixtape of Love became a huge meme on the internet. (A self-replicating, super popular item.) According to legend, Troy made this recording for his sweetheart Melissa, in order to celebrate their six-month anniversary. It's very sweet. He clearly loves her. The only problem is, she dumped him three days later. Her new boyfriend posted this online.

But I was disturbed by the fact that this so-called 'mixtape' (an item near & dear to my heart) had no music on it, except for a few brief moments when Troy sings to Melissa. So I added a soundtrack. I used midi versions of slightly ominous songs from the 80s (some of my all-time faves!), to harken back to the era of real mixtapes. Except for modifying their start & stop time, I left the audio levels & all else as-is. I wanted it to be more of a readymade (like a mixtape!) than a remix. I love how midis perfectly mirror that 80s synth sound. In a way, I feel that midis have replaced the mixtape--both are objects made with love (perhaps illegally?) and experienced subjectively. You see, they both play differently on each machine--but no one makes mixtapes anymore! So sad!

Ok, there's the long story about this 13-minute piece. I just have to tell you one more thing. When MTAA's Mriver first heard the piece, he thought Troy was saying "Marisa," not "Melissa" and he wondered how I'd found such a perfect actor to read my script. Funny! Shouts be out to MTAA for inviting me to do this.

All Systems Go! at Scope-NY, March 10-13

2006-03-02T15:41:00.000-05:00

If you're going to be in New York during the frenzy that is art fair week, please stop by the Scope Fair to say hello. I'm curating a big show, on behalf of Rhizome, called All Systems Go! Some details below, and more info, images, bios, etc will be trickling in here, any minute now.

All Systems Go!
At The ~Scope Art Fair
March 10 - 13, 2006
Cinemascope Gallery, 11 am - 8 pm
636 Eleventh Avenue, at 46th Street
New York, NY 10036

Part of the Curator's Choice program at this year's Scope-New York Art Fair, All Systems Go! features high-tech, low-tech, and hybrid work exploring digital, representational, political, and social systems. This exhibition constitutes an expansion of Rhizome's mission to connect art and technology. The artists comment on systems, in their various forms and themes, with works ranging from computer, video, and electronic installations to drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Here, technology is not the sole tool or object at play, but is often an indirect subject -- a backdrop on the social landscape within which all art practice now occurs. The harmony or dischord between these installations pinpoint areas of overlap between the various systems now navigated by each of us living in a technological society. The show is, thus, an update on the established field of 'systems art,' from the perspective of contemporary culture and practice.

Artists include [dNASAb], Brody Condon, Desiree Holman, Shane Hope, Instant Coffee, Xylor Jane, Abe Linkoln, MTAA, RSG, Shirley Shor, Julianne Swartz, JP Villegas, and Lee Walton. All Systems Go! is curated by Marisa Olson, on behalf of Rhizome.

back from boston

2006-02-27T23:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I made it through several days of panel discussions, dinner parties, art parties, and snow. Despite staying in downtown Boston, I managed to spend nearly every night in Cambridge, where my old friends and I held nightly office hours at the MIT hotspot, the Miracle of Science--that is, until I got super sick at the end, after which I was holding office hours under two duvets!

There are so many people who deserve shout outs, at this moment, from friends new & old who came to my panel & artist talk, to the many awesome people who made the above happen--and others. Still sick, I'm a bit weak & cross-eyed, at the moment. This post is a placeholder for a more coherent moment. Meanwhile, above are some bad, dark cameraphone pics of Trevor Paglen, Tad Hirsch, Rich Pell, Marisa Jahn, Ryan Griffis, and Ricardo Miranda Zuniga. All were taken at Miracle of Science, of course... Trevor has promised to send me better pix, which I'll post asap.

CAA Panel & Art Interactive-Upgrade Talk in Boston

2006-02-17T20:49:00.000-05:00

Look out, Boston! I'm there this week, and I'm looking forward to a fun time.

First I'll be moderating a panel, on behalf of the New Media Caucus at the College Art Association's annual conference.

The title of the panel is "From database and place to bio-tech and bots: relationality vs autonomy in media art." It's a mouthful! When I first proposed it, I had in mind looking at current new media practices (including specific works by some of the artists who ended up being on the panel), in order to reconcile what I saw as points of overlap and discrepancy in Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics and Bey's notion of the "Temporary Autonomous Zone"

Yes, it's kind of a nerdy premise, but I thought that we'd all be ready to go there in Boston, while also looking at some very interesting art work.... I'm very pleased that my panelists are all artists, in addition to being theorists, historians, and/or curators of new media. Some of the presentations will register on the more theoretical side of the scale, while some will be much more practice-oriented. We're going to take a more conversational approach, and present a number of work samples, in exploring the semiotic, political, and formal connotations of 'relationality' and 'autonomy' in media art.

It should be fun! Here are the key details:

"From database and place to bio-tech and bots: relationality vs autonomy in media art"
Moderator: Marisa Olson, Artist; Editor & Curator at Large, Rhizome.org; Rhetoric/ Film, UC Berkeley
Panelists:
Tad Hirsch, Artist, Institute for Applied Autonomy
Warren Sack, Artist; Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz
Brett Stalbaum, Artist, C5; Lecturer, University of California, San Diego
Helen Thorington, Artist; Co-Director, Turbulence.org, New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.

This panel will take place, in room 304 of Boston's Hynes Convention Center, on Thursday (2/23) at 12:30-2:00 pm and is FREE and open to the public at large. Get directions here.

I'm also giving an artist talk at Cambridge's Art Interactive, as part of the Upgrade series, from 7-9pm, on Friday, the 24th. The talk/series is organized by Turbulence.

I'm nervous that no one will show up on a Friday night to hear me yack about my work, but we'll see...

Kisses to You

2006-02-14T18:07:00.000-05:00

Looking back over my blog archives, recently, I noticed that my semi-weekly "what I'm up to" posts have slowed down... The truth is that I'm just kinda tired of talking about myself. In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd send out a little luv lttr to the internet and list all the blogs that I love reading. But then I got lazy. You see, I read a couple hundred blogs a day! That's a lotta href'ing, you know? So here's what I thought I'd do. I'm giving you separate, but preexisting link lists. There are the feeds for the Rhizome reblog, the art blogs I heart, some blogs & blog-related stuff bookmarked on my delish, and the archives of my addictive reblogging at Eyebeam--their feeds are on the left-hand column. Big high calorie truffles to all of you. In the near future I might post individual out-shouts for some of my more favorite faves; right now I'm feeling lazy (sorry, it's hot in California!) and don't wanna leave anyone out...

Net Aesthetics (Post #2) on vers 1 & 2

2006-02-10T22:08:00.000-05:00

My original post on the Net Aesthetics 2.0 panel at EAI was getting long and I thought I should break out with a 2.0 post of sorts... (Along with an image from MRiver's Tinjail blog.)

Some new info: EAI has posted an MP3 of the discussion.

Time Out New York is also publishing a "roundtable" on the panel, in their next issue. Here's the linky link.

There was an amazing turnout at the event and lotsa deep thoughts & giggles. It was incredibly well-managed, and it was cool to be a part of a panel in which the conversation spilled out into the bars, the emails, and the internets, for several days, afterwards...

Shout Out: Jon Rolston

2006-02-09T03:00:00.000-05:00

I recently/finally went to see Walk the Line, in which Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny Cash. It made me lose a lotta sleep. This was partly just because I was up thinking about lyrics and writing songs, but also because the movie made me miss my old band, White Stool. (Yeah, no one liked the name but us!) It really didn't help that Joaquin Phoenix reminds me of my bandmate, Jon Rolston.

Even though we all wear many hats, these days, most people's hats are clearly labelled. Not Jon's. He's his own special breed of writer, anthropologist, musician, and lotsa weird stuff in between. Basically, he rocks in hard-to-describe ways. The movie most made me miss him when June Carter & Johnny Cash sang their duet, Ring of Fire. It reminded me of the time Jon & I turned Hank Williams's Setting the Woods on Fire into a duet, for our last concert, at New Langton Arts, depicted here:

That is probably the most fun I ever had on stage... Anyway, these days Jon & our other bandmate, Marc Horowitz, are down in LA becoming TV stars, and I'm travelling too much. But I miss making music.

I think I'd like to collaborate on some duets and backup singing projects, via the internet. Anyone out there interested?

Mo money, mo money!!

2006-02-09T02:18:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year. Rhizome.org has opened the call for proposals for net art commissions. Check out the guidelines and apply already! You could receive $900-3,000!!

UPDATE: We've extended the deadline to April 7! So get your application in!