Roadtrip

Laser TV From Mitsubishi End Of Year

Mitsubishi's new TV is the first to use laser light, which produces exceptionally vivid color. Like some existing TVs, Mitsubishi's uses an array of tiny, movable mirrors; red, blue, and green light beams strike the mirrors and are reflected onto the screen in different combinations. But because laser light is so pure--all its photons have exactly the same wavelength--the color combinations can be much more precise. The TV will be on the market by the end of the year."

[Source: Technology Review]

Parentheses

One of our last events in Berlin was a visit to the the Philharmonie, the city's legendary concert hall. Although Berlin boasts around 15 orchestras, our tickets took us to the visiting Czech Philharmonic and their Verdi Bel Canto evening. By general agreement, at least from our crew, the soprano conceded the evening to the baritone shortly after the interval.

Then the next day we headed out to the Berlin Olympic Stadium on a just for fun outing to watch a soccer game in which third-ranked Hertha – Berlin's professional soccer squad – took on their fourth-placed rival, Bochum. Lots of thumping action; ended 3 to 3. We sat at the end of this massive stadium not far from Berlin's rabid young soccer fans, savoring the best of the wurst, chilly fingers locked to the beverages traditionally associated with such events.

How could this trip conjure a better set of parentheses?

Kickin' it with Visomat

On Thursday night the Roadtrip crew hiked down to Alexanderplatz for a lecture by a group of local new media artists and VJ's. Upon entering a large room, complete with a large styrofoam sculpture, numerous screens and projectors, as well as a fluorescent light art installation, we were greeted by Torsten Oetken and Michael Weinhol, founders of Visomat. Visomat is their two-man company which works with many facets of new media art, ranging from video-art pieces which focus largely on architecture, the creation of an automated bar, to the creation of open spaces for artists and the public to jump into the mix. Their latest endeavor was actually the room where we meeting them. They fully realized the space, called M12, last February as a club for all sorts of new media works to take place, from VJ and DJ shows to new media workshops and art installations (such as the styrofoam sculpture and the fluorescent lights).

We chatted it up with them for a while, and they showed us videos of a lot of the work that they've done over the last few years. The most interesting videos, in my opinion, were their video-art works exploring the architecture of Berlin. You can see a quick sample of one of their architecture video-art pieces by navigating to DIN AV and navigating down the "video" list until you reach "Visomat Inc". Also, they had a piece called "Raw Data" (Page number 290 on their site, although I can't link to it because of their flash-based site) which I found quite compelling. The basic idea is that there is a screen displayed from a large window facing the sidewalk of a busy street, and passers-by can use their mobile phones to interact with the screens and use them to display "raw data" about the city as well as the building which houses the screens. We finished off with a very interesting talk about psychogeography, (which you may remember was a hot topic at Conflux) especially about its implications within Berlin. After the lecture we were invited to stick around for the main event of the night, in which a DJ show is combined with a live graphic artist creating the flyers for the next month's happenings during a three hour block, with his progress being displayed to the club attendees via projectors.

These were our final scheduled guest speakers of the trip, as we're due back home in a matter of days. However, I'm sure that there will be a fair share of adventures over our last few days, with a public showing of our final projects at Tesla, as well as a performance by the Czech Philharmonie Orchestra, a soccer game on Saturday, and I suspect much more. Keep tuned!

.:August Brown

Susanne Jaschko

Independent new media curator Dr. Susanne Jaschko joined us in class this week for a lecture on what she provocatively called "adhseive media," that is, media that adheres to the surfaces of the new digital city as building skins, projected works, or media screens.

It's clear by now that the entire genre of new media on public spaces is very much at the forefront of the European avant-garde. To the extent that the avant-garde can be thought of as a conversation among artists, curators, critics and viewers, the media forms and esthetics of urban screens are what the buzz is about.

Susanne presented an abridged version of a paper on urban screens that she will be presenting next week at a conference in Scandanavia. She is just back from participating in "Don't Misbehave!," a biennial of art in public places held in Christchurch, New Zealand, and is totally up on the subject.

Although Susanne is enthusiastic about new media's emerging urban canvas, she also expressed concerns about potential limitations of this work. Because the urban viewer is typically ambulatory, rushing, glancing, and eager for amusement, many of the projects can't [or don't] develop the depth of content and experience offered by other venues. She noted, as well, a concern that the impulse to mobilize urban screens may result in a mis-match between content and venue, as when, for example, the BBC seeks to re-purpose its long-form programming for a location populated by the madding crowd.

As part of her talk she referenced Wildlife by Karolina Sobecka, which we all loved and are confident you will too.

Tesla, Transmediale & Andreas Broeckmann

Tesla is the epicenter of new media activities in Berlin. Roadtrippers enjoyed a visit to Tesla and a discussion about their work with Tesla honcho Andreas Broekmann.

Our tour included a visit with artist Thom Kubli who showed and discussed his mobile media work-in-progress, Global Contentifier.

We also visited the major exhibition now at Tesla, The Messenger, by Paul de Marinis. This large-scale installation won the highest award at Ars Electronica this. It can be seen in this short movie, although not shot at Tesla.

In addition to a look-round, Andreas showed our group a new British film entitled Cabinet. The film referred directly, if elliptically, to Ted Kaczynski and the Unibomber Manifesto, and more broadly to American values. Andreas led us through a provocative conversation about the meaning of the film, and ultimately to reflections on the differences between American and European cultures. "In Europe we can never forget our history, since its layers are piled one atop the other, all about us. In American, sometimes you seem to forget that you have a history as well."

Andreas is also the Director of Transmediale, the leading German festival of new media. We discussed the Festival at length and viewed a twenty- film about this year's edition.

All in all, a stimulating evening at the heart of new media in Berlin.

ART+COM

New Media to the max!  At least that’s the experience that we had on Monday evening after attending a lecture with Prof. Joachim Sauter of the New Media design firm called Art+com.  Prof. Sauter has been working in the field of New Media for the past 20 years, is a professor at Berlin’s prestigious Universität der Künste, was a co-founder of Art+com in 1988, and is the firm’s current design director.  Art+com and its 60 employees undertake commissions from various clients, usually in the cultural sector, to create New Media projects that push the boundaries of art, technology, and design, and how these mediums interact with the public. 

Prof. Sauter showed us 6 projects that Art+com has created or on which it is currently working in order to illustrate the firm’s creative impulses.  Although all of the projects we saw were incredibly innovative, for the sake of being concise, I’ll simply describe two.  The first project was one of the firm’s earlier endeavors, and focused on creating a more tangible link between a painting and its spectator through a technological interaction in which the composition of the painting was altered by the spectator’s gaze upon it.  This was achieved through positioning a camera behind the painting, which was actually displayed on a screen, and tracking the reflections of light in the spectator’s eyes.  This light feed was then sent to a PC, which in turn sent the data stream to some sort of numeric device that used the light pattern to scramble the image of the painting.

The second project that Prof. Sauter showed us is currently under development by Art+com, and features an interactive design for a walkway in a train station.  The walkway consists of a board with a screen that covers a combination of  LED lights, water, and sand, which, through a program that Art+com created, projects the illusion of ripples in water as someone walks along the board.  As if that weren’t inventive enough, the pattern of the electronic ripples then creates real ripples in a pool located next to the walkway.  Prof. Sauter also showed us several projects created by students at the Universität der Künste, including one of a fairly “simple” design for a robotic arm.  The arm moves in response to human touch, and the motions it creates suggest that it does or does not like the touch, thus making the robotic arm appear to be a living creature.  As such, once people notice that the arm is "animated," they usually become very gentle with it, as one would with a pet.

The evening’s conversation took an interesting turn when Prof. Sauter was asked to comment upon the increasingly popular trend of displaying or installing media art on buildings.  Prof. Sauter marked the difference between the media façades that Art+com produces and the media screens that other companies produce (and that we’ve also learned about) by saying that he prefers façades to screens because they are more dynamic; they have the potential to interact with an environment and the people in it (e.g. ripple walkway) than a screen that simply projects a static image whether someone is near it or not.  After hearing both sides of the façade/screen debate, I can see the merits of both.  Media screens allow art to be seen in public places, and as such they have the potential to draw a new audience to the medium of media art.  However, the emphasis that Prof. Sauter places on the interactive nature of his firm’s media façades is also very appealing because the façades are actually influenced by the presence of people in the environment.

-Stacy Lawrence

General Consensus: Awesome.

On October 27th, after a morning of working on our projects, we met upstairs in the IES building to talk with Thijs de Wit from PIPS Lab, a group of artists who do everything from media performances to interactive art installations, and mainly focus on photography, theater, interaction, and music.

However, none of us knew this at the time. All we knew was that we were once again meeting in our classroom to listen to some guy talk about something. We didn’t know his name, we didn’t know what he was going to talk about, we didn’t know where he was from. We were expecting nothing.

The presentation started off very confusing. Both John and Thijs seemed to think we had some idea what the presentation was going to be about, and kept referring to these “performances” that we had just missed or that were going to happen soon. We managed to get by with lots of head nodding, and then the presentation really began.

Thijs started by telling us about the Luma2solator, an interactive “painting with light” system which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. PIPS created a software that reads the light in an image and records it, so that just by moving a flashlight across the screen, you can paint a line. To see it in action, check this out.

After showing us the videos about the Luma2solator, Thijs asked if we had any questions. Everyone sat in awe for a moment, until finally someone spoke up and said what was on everyone’s mind: “How did you do that????”

This general fascination with how incredibly awesome PIPS Labs is stuck through the rest of the presentation. We listened attentively as Thijs told us about the 360* lens that PIPS created using a glass ball mounted on a camera (regular 360* camera lenses generally cost around E500 per day to rent), and were inspired by the music video editor which can remix a music video with the push of a button.

But the real excitement came when we saw a video of PIPS Lab’s Washing Powder Conspiracy performance. The year and a half that it took to create, practice, and finalize was well worth it, because even though it was shown to us on a pixilated quicktime video projected onto the wall, I don’t think I’ve ever seen our class so whole-heartedly interested in anything before.

The Washing Powder Conspiracy is a semi-interactive performance complete with great songs in Dutch and English about washing powder, dances, Luma2solator images, and videos. My personal favorite was the pre-edited (but not pre-shot!) video. PIPS created software that can be “told” where to put clips and how long to play them, so that a whole movie can be made before it’s even shot. PIPS creates short videos using this program at performances, and usually uses an audience member to remind people that it was created live.

The performance was not only fun songs and video. Towards the end, most of the footage taken of the audience, performers, and music, was used again to make a statement about politics and corporations. Then, just to end the show on a less serious note, they played another fun, happy song about washing powder.

After the video, all I wanted to ask was “when can I start working for you?” But I didn’t. I also wimped out when I walked up to him to ask him a question, which I never actually asked. We talked to Thijs a bit more, and ended by applauding what was definitely one of the best presentations we’ve experienced on this trip.

- Julia Felix

STEIM

On October 30th , we visited STEIM, considered by many art-savvy Europeans as the center for new and experimental music. Artistic Director Jan St. Werner describes the organization as “an artistic community and exhibition space.” Their objectives are untraditional, compared to much of what we’ve seen, as they work from project to project with no master plan, just an initiative to provide their resident artists/musicians with the tools and engineering know-how to create whatever far-out instruments their little hearts desire. The trajectory of STEIM’s work is fluid and responsive to the goals of their artists, rather than a tired, overarching mission.

This is The Reactable, one of STEIM’s many ongoing projects:

Using small translucent cubes adorned with black and white stickers (of sorts), this man manipulates sonic waveforms like delicate air-hockey pucks. Video cameras underneath the table’s surface read the patterns of the cubes, and alter the frequencies according to a pre-programmed response system. The sound was diverse in pitch as well as volume, ranging anywhere from oscillating squeals to low, room-shaking drones.  As remarkable as the machine was, I couldn’t imagine a band performing with such a thing, and the aural result wasn’t unlike what many avant-garde noise bands are creating, and have been creating for some time with now readily available tools.

I was initially tempted to dismiss the instrument as something inaccessible and trite--technology for technology’s sake. Why spend incredible money and time developing “neat stuff” that is irreplaceable and unapproachable to any musician working outside of a techno-centric community? Jan touched on this point, if only briefly, explaining, “Acoustic musicians have so much control over their instruments that we try to capture with electronics… Music has to come from somewhere, we think.” STEIM attempts to push a certain sort of composition back from the realm of post-production or the computer interface, into the hands of musicians to perform in real-time.

-Sarah Nienaber

 

Urban Screens & Mirjam Struppek

In case you had not noticed, media projects aren’t just for theaters and tellies any more. One of our central Roadtrip themes in Berlin is the emerging phenomenon of urban screens – the whole range of new public media practices ranging from massive commercial advertisements to more modest artists’ projects mounted in public spaces. One of the central international scholar-commentators on this topic is Mirjam Struppek, who gave Roadtrippers an illustrated talk and discussion about her work.

During her studies in urban planning, Mirjam developed an interest in how urban screens are articulating and transforming public space. She fired up a web site, Interactionfield, where she began to collect links to projects, and she wrote a major paper on the topic as part of her graduate studies.

When Mirjam started, her first posts on urban screens were like the first explosions of pop corn on the bottom of the pan: sharp reports, loosely spaced. In the last two or three years, however, projects like these have exploded, pushing the lid off the pot: “I can’t keep with up with it all any more!,” she says.

For anyone interested in this phenomenon, Mirjam has written an excellent, brief overview paper, which you can find here in PDF. She has also published an “image loop” with pictures from urban screen projects.

Many academics and media critics are alerted to this topic, and a regular yearly conference now tracks the phenomenon of turning the city into a fabric of images. In England, for example, the BBC is now working with local communities to borrow commercial sign spaces for the public projection of artists’ and other cultural works.

One of the most interesting areas in urban screen studies is the public policy debate that surrounds such projects: how does a community come to agreement about what images are appropriate in what contexts at what times and for what purposes?

Mirjam is particularly enthusiastic about the possibilities of projecting images into non-traditional spaces. Projection is temporary, and generally bypasses the massive public policy issues that accompany permanent displays.

The New Electric City: Jan Elder of Architectural Firm Realities:United

We were favored by a visit from Jan Elder, who, along with brother Tim, founded the architecture firm Realities:United. Their work in recent years has focused on incorporating new media and information technologies into architecture. If anyone could be said to reflect edgy thinking about the visual landscape of the “new digital city,” it’s these guys.

The first “electric cities” emerged in the 19th century when gas lamps were replaced by electric lighting. The architect-artist-designers at Realities:United are at the forefront of inventing the next iteration of the electric city for the 21st century.

Jan discussed at length several of their most projects, including a “communicative skin” for the Kunsthaus [Art Museum] Graz in Austria. Using standard industrial fluorescent light tubes they transformed the outer biomorphic skin of the building, which is constructed out of translucent blue acrylic glass panels, into a low-resolution grey-scale computer display. The effect is to dematerialize the building's exterior surface, turning it into a continually transforming visual display with imagery programmed by a succession of artists.

This high-concept design is actually comprised of low-tech components, which is part of its genius: the individual light pixels are actually the same circular fluorescent lights you might “find in anyone’s kitchen,” says Tim. Realities:United thinks of this project as an “experimental laboratory” that is just beginning to be understood, since the graphic language for its dynamic communication between building and surroundings is only beginning to be understood.

We also discussed at length SPOTS [above], a massive electronic building facade at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. The installation is a light matrix of 1,800 ordinary fluorescent lamps that are integrated into the ventilated glass facade of the building. A central computer linked to a bus system can control all of the lamps individually, adjusting their brightness or switching them on and off. As a result, designs, graphics and animation sequences can be recreated on the facade as moving luminous images. The external shell of the building is transformed into a communicative membrane, which is used primarily for displaying artistic material.

What's the biggest challenge for you in projects like this? "It's 98% communication and 2% design," Tim answered.

Psychogeography in Amsterdam: Missteps

In 1958 French philosopher and provocateur Guy Debord published Theory of the Dérive in Internationale Situationniste, #2. It was an invitation and blueprint to experience and chart the emerging post-war urban metropolis in new, potentially radical ways. In his essay Debord articulated his theory of the dréive [in English, something like “drift”], a discovery process in the form of systematically “illogical” walks through the city. The point of embracing the illogical was to create a process-structure that opened one’s eyes to new urban rhythms, micro-climates and categories. The object was to set the city askew in order to see it afresh.

Walking as a mode of discovery is very much in the flâneur tradition of Beaudelaire in the late 19th centry, and Walter Benjamin in the early 20th. The flâneur walked the city in search of modernist urban experience: a bipedal, ambent, critically distant, modern urbanist.

Today Debord’s call to map an alternative urban topos seems particularly urgent. There are many reasons for this, but the two that concern us here are the rise of a new digital city that is imbricated with and transforming the modernist city of glass, steel and greens, and the explosion of interest in mapping as both a key cultural metaphor and – thanks to new digital tools – as a rapidly changing material practice.

As a way of opening our eyes to Amsterdam, Roadtrippers were given an assignment to develop their own dérive or walk across the city. The goal of these creative walks was to develop a personal psychogeography that deliberately contrasted with the geography of streets, subway lines, museums and cathedrals that are so much a part of the experience of contemporary travelers.

Additionallly, students were asked to make photographs at salient points along their walk. Each picture was actually comprised of six pictures – one taken in all four directions, plus directly above and below – which were combined in a virtual reality program so that the viewer seems to experience them from the center of an image cube.

As you might expect, this theoretically-rich project produced some wild and wolley walks.

Julian Laurant and Jeremy Sarsingh created a website for their walk: "While originally we had planned to walk Rotterdam only, our idea eventually evolved to one where in which we would reassess and walk three different cities in order to reassess the Netherlands as something that is not an area at all: our New Media Seminar.Our goal was to travel backward in time from the present moment, at 9:00 AM on Emmastraat in Amsterdam (where we are staying) to our first day in New York City on September 11th. To accomplish this, we travelled (first class) to three major cities in the Netherlands - Den Haag, Rotterdam and Haarlem, essentially seeing each as Amsterdam, London and New York respectively. Our day began in Den Haag (Amsterdam), then went through Rotterdam (London) and finally brought us to Haarlem (New York) at night.

Paul Caine and Terin Meyer "holed up in classmate Emma Cohen’s house in the Oud West section of the city and started recording audio. Emma is spending a semester in Amsterdam – a semester in Amsterdam, to repeat – and has quite a bit to say about the city. So does her host mother, the wonderful and perceptive Stella. We stayed in Emma’s bedroom with some coffee, a large map of Amsterdam, and a digital recorder, and talked about sixteen places on the map. We discussed the Red Light District’s curious combination of vice and history, the fractious debate surrounding an unbuilt mosque nearby, and many other places, heralded or unheralded, in Amsterdam."

Susan Carlson and Rachel Teagle: we "threw ourselves on the mercy of iPod Shuffle. I’ve been fascinated by the “shuffle” feature since I became too lazy to choose my own music. It’s been a source of inspiration, frustration, and confusion. On occasion, Shuffle seems to be anything but random, choosing songs that are either perfect or perfectly inappropriate for the moment. We could only hope that Shuffle would be up to the challenge of guiding us through Amsterdam.

Ollie Moltaji, Sarah Nienaber and Gracie Young took their Riot Box on across Amsterdam: "we based the concept on our experiences in London. While in London, we made the box, took a walk and listened to music. People saw us coming and they would ask questions, dance, try to buy it and walk with us a while. Initially, we thought Amsterdam would be quite receptive to the Riot Box Movement, so we planned a walk directed by the people. We planned to walk through Vondel Park and Leidseplein. When we came across people who engaged the Box we would accompany them on their way for a while, providing the music. Our original concept really got to the heart of the Riot Box Movement. The Riot Box Walk challenged the traditional private culture of the ipod, but still retains music portability."

Tom Schmidt and Andy Lauer "walked Amsterdam following the "XXX" symbols that dot the city. Because this project is about coming to understand the city personally and from a new perspective, Tom and I saw the "XXX" emblems as perfect markers because of their potent national symbolism and because of their prevalence. Additionally, seeking out X’s as guides allowed us to play with the old mapmaking notion that "X marks the spot."

Aaron Colussi and Boris Sherbakov developed a narrative of life and death. "The eight cubes show the journey of a person entering heaven, recounting its life, and then fades away in its grave. I located on an Amsterdam map a large park a couple of blocks away from a graveyard: the park simulating the dream of heaven, and the graveyard being reality," says Aaron.

Joe Gamello and Kristin Miller: "decided to follow some people who were passing through the area, and in doing so, not only find out where they were going, but experience the city as other Amsterdammers and tourists do."

Andrea Warren and Karina Hill's walk was about "the consumer culture that transcends nationalities. While mapping the Euro, Andrea and Karina explore the misdirected impulse to feel connection to place through consumerism. [...] The Desire Walk is a project that explores our capitalist impulses to connect to a new environment through consumption. Most people who have traveled to a foreign land are familiar with the common social practice of “trinket-buying,” commonly known as “buying junk to prove you went somewhere.” “Trinket-buying”, purposes are tri-fold: 1. Proof of travel; 2. Remembering memories; 3. Connection or ownership.

Stacy Lawrence's walk "consisted of traveling across the city in a diagonal line of sorts. The pattern that I created alternated between walking one block north and one block west. While this pattern was pretty fun to follow, it was sometimes not very exacting; I was thrown off course several times by canals, dead ends, and the event of walking in squares (this occurred when the block on which I walked curved too far back in the direction from which I had just come)."

August Brown: "Amsterdam is a city of canals. Nearly every street corner you stop at in central Amsterdam has a canal visible in at least one direction, as you can see by this map.. I was trying to get into the mindset of someone who was completely hydrophobic (afraid of water) and what it'd be like to take a walk through Amsterdam. After further thought, I realized that if I just walked while being afraid of water, I'd just end up far from the center eventually and there'd be no water to be afraid of. To combat this problem, I then put myself into the shoes of a person suffering from multi-personality disorder, wit one personality that is extremely afraid of bodies of water, and the other that is very fond of water and stays near it at all costs."

Caitlin Magnusson and Jenny Oyallon-Kolowski created a graffiti walk, of sorts: "Supplies—A map of Amsterdam, preferably of the center city, and a pen to mark your way! In GraffitiLand, graffiti triggers dictate your path. Your team will have two hours to find as many graffiti triggers as they can. In this game, there are eleven kinds of graffiti that serve as triggers. Each trigger provides different directions (see below). These triggers are divided into four categories, pervasive, common, barely common, and rare."

Yellow Bike Tour of Amsterdam

In most cities, the scale of the place necessitates a bus tour to get the big picture. We don't remember much about the London one, since we had been up all night and were jet lagged zombies who seemed to be able to pass from wake to sleep with every jog of the bus. In Berlin, we had a wonderful guide who gave us basically a history of the Cold War, including a stop at the famous Checkpoint Charlie which was flash-point of the Berlin Wall.

In Amsterdam, however, the preferred way to see the city is the same way that most residents traverse it, on bicycle. The old central city of Amsterdam – never bombed during World War II, and charming beyond belief – is small enough that you can cover most of easily in two hours, including the mandatory stop at one of the city's famous "brown bars."

Netherlands Media Art Institute

Monday saw the roadtrip gang head down to the Netherlands Media Art Institute, an organization that comprises the Montevideo institute and TBA (Time Based Art).  While we were there we got an informative lecture on Dutch video art from author and curator Jennifer Steetskamp, saw a handful of new media pieces, and received a tour of their facilities.

We got a special treat when Institute director, Heiner Holtappels, gave us us a rundown of what the Institute does, and then guided us around the place.  Since 1978, the Institute has collected about 1800 titles which can all be viewed on their online database, and every year they add around 30 new titles, half of which are by Dutch artists.  In addition to collecting pieces, they also preserve, exhibit and distribute these works all over the globe.

Before the presentation though, the visit began with a talk by Jennifer Steetskamp, a collections manager that's been with the institute for a year now.  She showed us ten or so of the best works by (mostly) Dutch video artists in the past 25 years.  To spare you the reader, and my poor fingers the work of all that typing, I'll just highlight a few of my personal favorites.

"Papillon d'Amour" by Nicolas Provost 2003 This work took shots from the Akira Kurosawa classic, "Rashomon," and mirrored the images across a vertical axis.  The pamphelt the institute provided us with described the piece as "the maker's vision on the narrative possibilites of film and the role and position of the experiencing, observer viewer."  This either makes for a new interpretation of a movie some have already seen, or a completely new and visually-stimulating story for others.

"Building" by Anouk de Clercq 2003 What begins as a piece featuring clearly defined, geometric, animated white shapes slowly taking form over a black background, ends as an atmospheric, 3-D blueprint "being documented as in an architect's dream."  What I found most interesting was the role reversal that the white forms made with the dark spaces through the course of the video, as the white shapes that were the centerpiece in the beginning became vital in highlighting the shadows, non-spaces and background in this virtual structure by the end.

"Diamond Lane" by Barbara Bloom 1981 Even though this trailer-for-a-movie-that-was-never-intended-to-be-made was filmed in 35mm, this piece still made its way into the institute's video art collection.  The work offers a satirical and rather comical look into the art of audience manipulation by Hollywood execs.  The dialogue is filled with suspense but no real content, the camera shots are edgy and fast, like the editing, and the work is possibly best described by Steetskamp herself as "totally nonsense."

-Tom Schmidt

Kicking It With The Dutch

On Friday we met with Jacob Vossestein, a senior consultant with the Royal Tropical Institue and the author of Understanding The Dutch. Vossestein leads an “Understanding the Dutch” seminar for international employees working in The Netherlands. He met up with us and gave us an introduction to Dutch culture, history and behavior. We also discussed differences between American and Dutch culture and identity.

Vossestein noted that many of the differences between American and Dutch culture stem from the different relationships we each have with our government. While Americans celebrate the birth of our country; many European nations, including the Dutch, can’t place the birthdates of their countries. Vossestein characterized the relationship between the Dutch and the government as long established and trusting. The Dutch place a high premium on the Dutch National identity, with a focus on being local not global. The government sponsors Dutch-citizenship classes for immigrants to encourage assimilation. The idea of American identity is constantly being questioned and redefined by Americans themselves, while tradition and government with a “top down” approach dictate the Dutch identity.

While America is composed mainly of immigrants and our national character, attitudes and identity are affected by the diversity of our population, Vossestein explains that The Netherlands never wanted to be a nation people immigrated to. Vossestein characterizes the Dutch as mostly tolerant, except when it comes to Muslims. Around the time Muslim immigrants from Northern Africa and the Middle East started arriving with their families to work menial jobs in The Netherlands, the country was experiencing a waning of religious faith. The devout Muslims clashed with the more secular Dutch society. The very recognizable Muslim presence seems to threaten Dutch identity. Vossestein noted that Dutch see Islam as backwards almost and as standing against women’s rights. How can someone become thoroughly Dutch, incorporating the values of the culture when Islam comes with its own set of values?

-C. Grace Young

And Now For Some Decidedly Old Media…

On Monday the Roadtrippers dealt with trying to learn a strange foreign language. And no, I’m not talking about Dutch.  I’m talking about the symbols in 17th Century Dutch painting. The group attended a lecture with Marietta de Bruine entitled, “Dutch Painting of the Golden Age. De Bruine took us through Dutch painting, decoding the symbols and the hidden meanings behind subtle gestures. These symbols ranged from the seemingly bizarre (such as cats symbolizing fickleness) to the somber (such as lit candles reminding the viewer that all of life will come to an end).

She explained that the 17th Century in particular had many important cultural factors which greatly influenced Dutch painters of the time. For example, the Protestant Reformation meant that Dutch artists would no longer have large commissions from the Church because of the Protestants’ beliefs against “idol worship” and the immodesty of ornate decorations. The rising merchant shipping class created a new market for paintings as wall decorations in middle class homes. Consequently, art dealers came into existence and painters began to specialize in certain genres, such as landscape or still life, and they would create paintings without being commissioned to do so. A book was even published in the Netherlands as a “How To” guide to painting landscapes, causing many Dutch landscapes to have similar characteristics.

De Bruine also explained how many of the paintings carried messages about the character of the Dutch people. For example, a painting of a marine landscape with large ships would be a way of showing off Dutch naval capabilities and the grandness of Dutch boats, thereby celebrating Dutch merchants and merchandise. In addition, paintings   including windmills were seen as a way of celebrating the ingenuity of the Dutch people.

While the trip back through the centuries might seem to be a digression from New Media work, it would be difficult to understand contemporary art in any meaningful way without knowing what came before. The seminar also served as a way to remind us to take a very close look at contemporary cultural influences on the aesthetics of art pieces. And, as de Bruine said, “Great works of art can still have a meaning for us, which, although it might not have been the intended message, is still important.”

-Susan Carlson

[Thanks to Andrea Warren for the photos]

Mosaic Mapping

As part of the program, all students were charged with designing large-scale projects to carry out during our travels. In an attempt to explore different ways of representing maps to reflect personal experience in specific locations, I will be creating maps of each city which are composed of pictures from those cities. My hopes are that these collection of images will tell more about the city, and more specifically, about the experiences of our trip while in those cities, than a normal map can. Admittidly, these maps also lose functionality as practical maps at the same time, without any legible street names, clear lines of streets, or landmarks. The maps are constructed using a mosaic-producing program, a map of the given city created from several other maps in an attempt to produce a mosaic-friendly source image, and thousands of pictures taken by myself and other students on the trip. Given the lack of printing facilities while on our trip, I'm just using computer monitors as the means of presentation. However, when I get back to Carleton, I would like to print them out, create a map-esque cover for the back, and fold them into little pocket maps as their final means of presentation. The following image is the first finished map, with three more following within the next few weeks. The map displays lower Manhattan and northern and middle areas of Brooklyn, New York. For ease of loading, the image below is rather low quality, although a much, much larger version of the image can be found here.

You can check my individual blog for more details on the progression of this project. -August Brown

Virtueel Platform

We enjoyed a conversation with a representative from Amsterdam’s Virtueel Platform. This organization is an internationally-oriented, independent center whose goal is to foster new media projects in the Netherlands. They are underwriters of projects from many organizations across the country that further what they call “e-culture.”

After conversations with several groups and individuals in Amsterdam, we are understanding better the depth in the Netherlands of government support for the arts. This commitment seems driven by two key factors: first, a conviction that fostering technology-oriented projects is good for the general economy; and second, a recognition that native artistic production is a key feature in maintaining national identity in an era of what some here call “American media colonialism.”

Respected artists in the Netherlands can be confident of modest grants from the government through most years of their artistic production. The grants themselves are made through a series of panels – not unlike those at our own National Endowment for the Arts – comprised of artists, curators and experts.

On Understanding Art: Tjebbe van Tijen

The director of the Netherlands Institute for New Media tells a story about Tjebbe van Tijen.  “I asked him, ‘Are you an artist?’, and he said, ‘No, I am an archivist.’  So I asked him, ‘Are you an archivist?’ and he says, “No, I’m an artist.”

Such is the contradiction that lies apparent in the work of van Tijen, an artist whose multimedia projects – sometimes reprinted into long scrolls for gallery exhibition – deal with the political, economical, and cultural impacts to art throughout history, and make use of a great number of primary sources. On 23 October, the members of the New Media Roadtrip visited Mediamatic, a New Media consultancy/gallery space, and spoke with the artist about his most New Media work.

The design of the long scrolls, hanging delicately from the ceiling at eye level, demands the viewer to do more than simply glance. The depth of historical references is astounding, and to manage all of the content the artist has devised his own database system that allows him to “look for new ideas in old things and relate old principles to the latest discoveries.” This system is documented in this work, an example of the long, eye-level aesthetic. For Tijen, it is not enough to study art without considering the time period and the various cultural developments that surrounded the art's conception; the multimedia approach is his solution.

The works provide an important lens through which to view art, particularly newer forms of art. Tijen’s pieces help to situate art in a proper context that moves beyond the insularity of “art history” as a discipline, and becomes more enlightening for the less-informed viewer. It's a new media approach - to apply technology toward the reinvestigation of past cultural objects and events - and Tijen's work is among the best to utilize this.

-Paul Caine

A Modern Carmen

The city of Amsterdam hosts the world-famous Dutch National Ballet (Het Nationale Ballet) whose repertoire, while remaining strongly classical, also includes more contemporary works. Our group observed their talents in both genres last Thursday night as they danced three dramatically different pieces—William Forsythe’s The Second Detail, Krzysztof Pastor’s Crossing Paths, and Ted Brandsen’s Carmen—performed in Amsterdam’s beautiful Mukieztheater.

Brandsen’s choreography for Carmen stayed within the classical style, though he approached the ballet in a fresh and delightful way. Instead of the conventional Spanish setting, the stage was bare, with a sharply angled background and simple costumes. Brandsen took an abstract approach in his storytelling, which allowed the audience to focus more on the beauty and emotion of the movement. Carmen was the centerpiece of the evening’s show, and while it used Georges Bizet’s music, originally scored for the opera, the ballet was short, lasting only about forty-five minutes.

The dancing was marvelous, and of the three pieces we saw, The Second Detail captivated me the most, in part because it strayed more from classical ballet than the others. The ballerinas still wore pointe shoes, but the movement of the dance was more angular and abstract. Forsythe created a juxtaposition of the beautiful and the ugly, calling upon the dancers to hunch and awkwardly rotate their knees inwards one moment, then to turn out their perfect legs into a spectacular arabesque the next. The Second Detail remained rooted in classical technique and, at the same time, challenged the conventions as “a showcase of the academic ballet technique in its most virtuoso and extreme form.”

Similarly to Carmen, The Second Detail had an austere setting so to keep all focus on the beauty of the dancing. Three grey scrims framed the stage, and a row of stripes lined the stage’s floor, as if the dancers were notes running across an empty music score. The dancers were dressed in monotone, grey costumes, and the music, scored by Thom Willems, provided a strong, yet simple rhythm. The piece seemed to straddle the classical and contemporary dance worlds, for though the movement was looser than traditional ballet, there was not the feeling of freedom that I associate with and experience in modern dance. The presence of pointe shoes rooted the dance in ballet, reiterating the confinement of the genre. Still, the shoes seemed out of place to me. When the lighting of the piece created silhouettes out of the dancers, their feet presented the only gender difference. I have seen a male dancer perform gracefully in pointe shoes, so I wonder why the distinction is still made in more contemporary ballet pieces. I have yet to see a mixed gender group perform all in pointe, but I think the results could be splendid.

After the show we were able to observe the gorgeous view from the Mukieztheater. The theater opened in 1986, and is the central hub for the De Nederlandse Opera and Het Nationale Ballet. The front of the building is a curved glass façade, providing the breathtaking sight of Amsterdam’s river Amstel at night. I left the performance in elation, my mind full of movement and my eyes taking in the splendor, while the little voice in my head whispered, “you need more practice.”

[Pictures and quotes courtesy of http://www.het-nationale-ballet.nl]

-Jenny Oyallon-Koloski

Simon Davies: Director of Privacy International

Last Monday we had the privilege of meeting with Simon Davies, visiting fellow in the department of information systems at the London School of Economics, and more relevantly for our interests, the director of Privacy International. Founded in 1990, Privacy International is a London-based global alliance that monitors “surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations.” With more than 250 global affiliates, including the ACLU, P.I. is the world’s largest privacy watchdog.

Upon hearing of our recent visit to the CCTV Center in Newham, Simon snickered a little, and decided to engage in a brief discussion of CCTV, if only to “offload any doubts [we had] that it might actually be an effective technology.” The only type of crime that Simon views as being preventable through CCTV is opportunistic crime; crimes of passion, premeditated violence, and professional burglary are all beyond what CCTV can deter.

Simon considers the relationship between CCTV, economics, and politics to be inseparable. Using the example of the Newham station, he facetiously pointed out that the surveillance control room that we visited had hosted “more journalists than 10 Downing Street” (Tony Blair’s official residence).  The free publicity resulting from welcoming visitors allows Newham to promote itself as a safe area for business and residents, and helps the politicians who get their pictures taken there appear to be tech savvy and at the cutting edge of crime-fighting. “There were moments there when there were a queue of media booked up for a month in advance, and running one-hour slots in the control room. This is good for Newham.”

Although CCTV is the most visible form of surveillance in England, P.I.’s everyday dealings encompass methods ranging from RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips and security of personal financial information, to online privacy, iris scans and the collection of biometric data. A particular field of concern for P.I., both in the UK and abroad, is government collection of personal data, resulting in the government’s ability to have extremely detailed files on every member of society. As different surveillance technologies are integrated, Simon argued, it will become more and more difficult to live “at the fringes” of society. He pointed to the examples of the film Gattaca, and Orwell’s 1984. In Gattaca, the hero was able to overcome the injustices of a eugenic society by cheating the system and exploiting vulnerabilities resulting from inefficiencies. Simon expressed the fear that if the government’s ability to gather data on its citizens is not curbed, we will end up with a society resembling the world of 1984, where, in the end, there were no inefficiencies. While in Gattaca it was possible to live on the fringes of society, slightly off the map, Big Brother made an unmonitored existence impossible. If a government is able to place cameras in enough places, have comprehensive personal biomedical information, have complete access to our financial data, track us through identity numbers, read and listen to our private communications, know our whereabouts through RFID -  the list goes on- living a life that diverges in some way from what is expected or officially permitted would become impossible. Simon readily challenged the argument of “if you have nothing to hide, why oppose surveillance?” After all, these measures are for your safety, aren’t they? He suggested that, at some level, everyone has something to hide, whether it be past relationships, how one acquires music or software, or  even some hideous infection.

Simon recognized the huge challenge facing him and his organization. “It’s one of those areas where it seems like we are pissing against the wind. There is no end in sight to the enormity of privacy invasion and the enormity of surveillance.” Despite the gargantuan nature of this undertaking, Simon and his organization persevere, stirring up trouble, even with relatively small resources. Just recently P.I. took on one of the most visited websites, ebay.com,  coercing them into allowing users to delete their own accounts, which had previously only been possible through a complicated process of contacting customer service.

The notion of ubiquitous surveillance and monitoring in the near future seems somewhat paranoid. Is it really possibly that governments want to move in that direction? During our visit to the CCTV center in Newham, John asked one of our guides about what would happen if people not wanting to be constantly watched learned to game the system, understanding how the cameras work and avoiding them. Our guide responded by saying that they would just keep placing cameras until it was no longer possible for “criminals” to hide.
Hmmmm…………………………..

-Jeremy Sairsingh

"A Day at the Frieze": Our Hour-long Radio Documentary For London's Resonance FM

"How would you like to produce an hour-long documentary in 24 hours for a hot London art radio station?," says John. It's about three weeks ago and I'm trying to dangle a greasy slice of New York pizza into my mouth. I don't have great aim with these slices and this doesn't really help. Last time I tried to produce an hour-long documentary it took 3 weeks.

Undaunted, we pressed onward. Like John says, it's what we do. Karina and I worked on getting equipment together and, more importantly, giving our 22 student journalists a little crash course in audio production. To deal with the logistics, we had people sign up for different jobs: some made music for the production, others made personal profiles or first person narratives, and some made vox pops. Here's an example of the last one, a quick-paced mashup of responses I made for our training session.

As ready as we could be, we had to roll with the punches. Our contact at Resonance FM thought he could get us in on press day. As we waited we saw a very knock-kneed Claudia Schiffer walk past, but celebrity spotting would only hold us for so long. Resonance contact nowhere to be found, John tried to elbow us into the festival. Six rungs up the bureaucratic ladder, though, the gates crashed shut on us "amateurs." We'd have to wait for public admission.

As it turns out, take two offered us many more opportunities. We managed to get some reporters in to review the film screenings that we would've missed the day before, for example. And, with fewer VIP buyers, chances are the gallery owners were a little less focused on making sales.

Not that the day was easy. Aside from an equipment handoff and an editing deadline at 9pm that night, we had to fight for people's attention. Frieze, it turns out, really is a commercial venture. Galleries have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a booth and their patience for non-buying American college students was predictably slim.

Long story short, though, I think we ended up with a great show. Many of our producers had never worked with audio before but ended up with really interesting work. Often the most "naive" questions, like, "what is art?" provoked the most interesting answers. And while editing took a little longer than 24 hours, we've ended up with a rich hour-long collage of music, reviews, critiques, and reflections. Not bad for a throng of yanks, eh?

Without further ado, please listen below.  -Terin Mayer

[Above: Strategy session in Regent's Park. L to R: Julian Laurent, Jenny Oyallon-Koloski, Paul Caine, Rachel Teagle, Terin Mayer, Gracie Young, Susan Carlson]

How To Improve The World: 60 Years of British Art

On Monday, the New Media Squad got a first-class guide through the Haywood Gallery’s retrospective on British art titled, How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art. I’ll be honest when I say that I had a hard time picturing British art in the past half century. I could only picture a collage of artists with different personalities and styles. Therefore, the tour was an absolute joy.

The show consisted of a smorgasbord of video installations, photography, painting, installation, and sculpture. I asked the guide why there was such a vast array of works, and was told that it was due to the gigantic collection the Haywood had amassed over the past century. The exhibit was the brainchild of two curators who selected 120 works out of 10,000. In order to include to most engaging pieces, the show became a random assortment of works: hence the vague title.

The exhibit showcased works by Lucien Freud, Bridget Riley, Patrick Caulfield, Gilbert and George, and Rasheed Araeen. If the last artist’s name doesn’t sound familiar, that’s because Araeen is from Pakistan. His piece Green Painting I was included due to its relationship to Britain. The piece consists of nine squares. The corners are plain green. The other five panels are brutal photographs of the blood drainage after a cow is slaughtered. Under the photos is a newspaper headline from Pakistan. What the piece does is play on stereotypes. The blood at first looks like human blood, which instantly makes the view assume it comes from suicide bombers. The newspaper headlines, unless you read Arabic, can be seen as statements that the blood is indeed human. Lastly, the read cross that is created with the panels mimics that of the England flag. The piece was conceived in the 80’s in the midst of civil unrest in the area. Therefore the work is a masterstroke of perspective. I instantly fell for the stereotypes utilized in the piece.

A similar Rasheed Araeen

Two video pieces by Gilbert and George is one of the more interesting works at the show. Two television screens are put side by side. What is shown on one screen is a portrait of Gilbert and George. The stand perfectly still and over the period of nine minutes, stare slightly left of the camera and smoke cigarettes. On the second screen, they sit in an empty apartment drinking Gordon’s Gin. Both television screens come with their own soundtrack, that of royal and imperial British orchestral arrangements. At first, the piece was a bit of a mystery to me, then after a couple of minutes, I figured out what they were doing. Gilbert and George live their life as if it were a constant string of art. Therefore, they are playing on the difference between life and art. On the screen where they stand perfectly still, Gilbert and George are stating that they are in fact no different than a painting, or a sculpture (save you cannot walk around them). On the second screen, they turn more to an anti establishment approach. The repeated saying of “Gordon’s gets us very drunk” is a play on the aristocracy of the sixties (when the pieces were completed). They portray a simple twentieth century portrait, sitting in from of the window drinking expensive alcohol, yet they are a looped video. Their life becomes the art because they say it does, and they make it happen.

A typical Gilbert and George Piece

How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art is absolutely the most successful show I’ve been to that maintained a vague approach to it’s conceptual theme. Perhaps chaos is the only way to Improve the World: perhaps not. But the works in the exhibit certainly helped to improve my knowledge of British Art.

- Aaron Colussi [for more info check out www.vicecoulter.com]

Surveillance and CCTV in London

The other day the giant mob of Roadtrippers got on the tube and headed out to East Ham. We hadn’t journeyed all the way out there simply to attempt to navigate the bus system. Our purpose was to attend a scheduled tour at the CCTV (closed circuit television) station for the borough of Newham, the largest in London. Most of us previously had been aware that the average Londoner is caught on camera about 300 times a day, and several Roadtrip students were horrified by the idea. Unsure of what to expect from such a surveillance organization we crept into the building and waited in a boardroom until our tour began.

Two gentlemen, Jason Carey and Larry Burham, led us around to the various rooms. The main control room, of sorts, was filled with television monitors. At little tables a real person would be watching a few screens up close, keeping an eye on more suspicious activity. In particular, they were watching a woman eat fried chicken on a bench. At first this seemed sort of ridiculous, but then it was explained that the woman had hidden a bottle of alcohol in her bag, and while public drinking is acceptable in London, she was in an area known for a lot of alcoholics and crime resulting from such activity.

The rules of CCTV are pretty straightforward. They’re required to have signs alerting the public of the cameras. These signs, however, do not have to be next to the camera, but simply in the area. In fact, while some cameras are pretty obvious, many are the size of pinholes and can be hidden between bricks or inside walls. The cameras are not allowed to film inside private homes and no sound may be recorded. However, one might wonder if these rules are actually enforced, but Burham ensured us that the system is not corrupt. When asked if they ever caught cops misbehaving he explained that they will often be with cops watching a suspicious person and other cops will arrive at the scene. At this point, the cops in the studio will call the others and let them know they are being watched. Does this mean that the cops would normally misbehave? It is unclear, but I imagine it’s possible. However, that doesn’t reflect poorly on CCTV, it only reflects poorly on potentially corrupt cops. The goals of CCTV are to protect the public through the elimination of violence. It apparently has been working.

While it might not seem too scary that there are people watching over us in order to prevent violence, they did admit that the cameras don’t really stop the violence, but instead it only displaces the violence. However, Larry Burham was confident that “[camera surveillance] will spread.” And if that is the case, the violence will no longer have room to displace.

Feelings remain mixed about the camera system in the UK. They’ve been around for 12 years, and it can’t be denied that crime has decreased. While it may be easy to come from the United States and be horrified, we have the same privacy concerns about restricting freedoms in order to protect the people, Maybe we’re caught on camera 300 times a day and we just don’t know it yet.

For a closer look at what it's really like inside, check out this video courtesy of Jeremy Sairsingh. -Andrea Warren

COMiCA

Greetings from the heart of London! I'm about to embark on a topic both near and new to my heart; Western and Japanese comics, as inspired by a recent event. This past Sunday the ICA, (Institute of Contemporary Art) hosted Comica, a one day expo that brought together speakers, demos, and various workshops on Sequential Artwork, or comics. I've never been able to resist events that cater to my peculiar interests (see 9th grade, when I attended a seminar on the roaming patterns of Lutra canadensis), so I forked out the 8 bucks and trotted over to Lord Nelson.

The event was held on the top floor of the ICA, and I was somewhat disappointed at the small turnout. The first talk, entitled "Manga: not Made in Japan," had a panel of seven individuals, including world-renowed comic artist Ilya, who was promoting his new book, Mammoth Book of Best New Manga. Ilya spent months perusing manga from all over the world, even from the Middle and Far East. If he found qualities rooted in the style of Japanese manga, a comic was considered for the compilation (see Michiru Morikawa, Asia Alfasi, Andi Watson, and Craig Conlan).

Four of the panel members had their work included in this compliation. One young Japanese woman, who looked for all the world like an anime character herself, contributed a story about a hedgehog and rabbit living in the forest, while a burly Brit was responsible for a humor comic featuring a panda. Selina Dean published "Snails Don't Have Friends".

Ms. Dean is a member of Sweatdrop Studios, a coalition of twenty or so UK artists that create manga and manga-styled comics. They had the most visible presence at the event (which sadly isn't saying much), and after the panel I found two two tables covered in their different publications. They weren't free, otherwise I would have taken some. British manga-ka Sonia Leong is also a member of Sweatdrop, and she talked about her involvement in a project creating manga based on Shakespearian plays. This Shakespeare Manga retells the stories of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in a futuristic setting.

Now you have the background; let's get to the actual talk. I'll try to cover the points that they discussed, because their roles as the producers of comics made their thoughts particularly valid. As you may be aware, the stylistic and stylistic divide between manga and Western comics has been closing at an astonishing rate. The unique Japanese style of drawing; large watery eyes, colorful hair, extreme cuteness, (we all know the characteristics) has been distributed worldwide thanks largely in part to the popularity of anime (think Speedracer). But more than simply being exported, the style has soaked into the comic art of other cultures.

Ilya's editorial monstrosity is the epitome of that. The title says manga, but the manga-ka are not necessarily Japanese, and instead of being stylistic mimics, they incorporate many different comic traditions. Ilya talked quite a bit about the invisible line between manga and comics. In popular terms, manga are japanese-made comics, while manga written in english are OEL manga (Original English-languge Manga, new version of "Animanga"). However, because manga is now being produced all over the world, this criteria is becoming inadequate. People have even tried to claim that only comics drawn from right to left can be classified as manga, but Ilya argued against this, pointing out that the native language of the artist has little bearing on the artistic value of a work. Exhibiting the same vein of cultural adoption, Selina Dean's new Shakespeare manga shows that Britain is now using "Japanese" manga to express its own history.

Before I continue, I think I need to define several terms for non-geeks. I heard most of these words used at least once at COMiCA.

**Japanese Phrases**

#Manga: japanese style comic

#OEL Manga: original english language comic

#Manga-ka: a comic artist

#La nouvelle manga: artistic comic movement that combines French and Japanese styles

#Doujinshi: self published Japanese works (original or fan-based)

#Shonen: manga written for young males

#Shoujo: manga written for young females

**English Phrases**

#Scanlation: manga translated into a different language by fans

#Fandom: subculture of aficionados (think "Trekdom", Star Trek fan universe)

#Canon: official literature/material of a series

We are at an interesting point in the development of comics; the melding of the American and Japanese traditions, and....the web. The web is having a HUGE affect, for the following reasons;

1) Any comic can now be distributed as data

2) Color: expensive to print on paper, cheap, brilliant, and free on the computer

3) Self-publishing and web-comics

Comics published exclusively to the internet have existed for some years, such as Megatokyo, a webcomic prodcued by Fred Gallagher in 2000. The history of "womics" is pretty interesting stuff, and along with the more professional comics, doujinshi and "amateur" works are being created and posted on the web at a ridiculous pace. Visit Witty Comics to see just how easy it is to share comics.

After the panel, two quick (free) demos took place in the same room, and both clarified just how large the web-revolution is. The developer of ComicBookLover gave an overview of his program and defended the new trend of online distribution. ComicBookLover is essentially a comic-viewing program that imitates iTunes. You can form playlists, etc., and database your comic collection as you see fit. It isn't free, but I downloaded the demo, and it is a pretty amazing program. Of the three audience members at the demo, one fellow mentioned that since the program is essentially iTunes, it wouldn't be hard to make it into a plugin upgrade. I expect we may be seeing this in due time.

This program is to comics as iTunes is to music. It allows for massive collections to be contained in a tiny space (the demo program contained over 500 graphic novels), and it opens the door for legal comic downloading sites. The iTunes store works because enough people have iPods and the iTunes program. I can't imagine that it will be long before this program spreads out among comic lovers, and an iComic store can open shop, complete with podcasts and free specials. And look at the other things iTunes has allowed; amateur artists can bypass the production companies and sell straight off the website, and rare out-of-print songs are once again accesible.

"iComic" stores will do the same, and the developer of ComicBookLover made a good point. In the collector world, the value of an old comic is its rarity, and all of these "rare" comics are shrinkwrapped in the garages of Idahoan packrack nerds. But now, the spread of a good comic isn't restricted to the 700 copies printed in 1986. "control c" "control v" is pretty instant, and our developer argued that in the near future, the value of a comic will be based on quality, not rarity, and forgotten works will be able to recirculate. In short, Big Comics (DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics) will still rule the world of printing, they will no longer have a monopoly on overall distribution.

The second demonstrator showed off his new publication; a book that helps you create your own comics on the web. the book comes with a disk of hundreds of duty-free sketches. The cartoons/images can be uploaded onto Adobe Photoshop and then manipulated and colored to crete simple comics. I actually found the product rather simplistic; someone with the savvy to navigate photoshop is a little more advanced than the book is written for. But the author did make a good point, that people without the ability to tell Picasso from Pollock can now put together nice looking strips. There are dozens of programs and websites out there, as well.

Just as the music and literary worlds are changing, so is the comic world. I don't think it will be long before you will be downloading all of your new comics from an iComic store, and sharing your own with the world.

-Posted by Sloggerbum, Caitlin Magnusson

Anthology Film Archives: John Mhiripiri

Back when the New Media Seminar was studying in New York City, the Roadtrippers visited John Mhiripiri, a Carleton alum, at his job at the Anthology Film Archives. Mhiripiri was a student in John Schott's avante-garde cinema class and now he is the administrative director and exhibitions coordinator for Anthology. He is leading the way in preserving and exhibiting independent, avante-garde cinema. Watch this video to learn more about Mhiripiri and Anthology Film Archives.

For more info on our visit to Anthology, click here.
For a quicktime/ipod version of the movie, click here.

Video by Karina Hill

Tea for Two, and Two for Tea

Jenny: I do say, Rachel, that was quite the delightful afternoon we had last Tuesday. I’m so glad we had afternoon tea with Stacy, Caitlin, Tom, and Susan!

Rachel: But of course, my dear! I’m thrilled we were able to see Fortnum and Mason. Did you know it was founded by two footmen in the service of Queen Anne?

Jenny: Yes—I was on the bus tour too.

Rachel: Oh. (pause) Well, it really is a marvelous store, and their tea room is quite exquisite, with the traditional décor and live piano music.

Jenny: Though I must say their musical selection was lacking.

Rachel: Yes, the jazzy interpretations of television theme songs were not up to my expectations of high tea music. Though he played a mean “Happy Days.”

Jenny: Indeed! But the food! I would never have imaged high tea to be so satisfying.

Rachel: Quite right! Those were the best tiny sandwiches I’ve ever had! The amount of food is surprisingly deceptive…you think “why, fancy that! Four little sandwiches, two miniature scones and two small desserts will never cut my appetite,” but I was pleasantly full.

Jenny: Ah, and the tea! I’ve never had finer. I’ve always loved Earl Grey, but the flavour in my cup vastly surpassed anything I could have imagined. No wonder the British relish the stuff.

Rachel: Did you just spell flavor with an “ou?”

Jenny: Yes. . .

Rachel: Dork.

Jenny: . . .

Rachel: The tea was excellent though. I agree wholeheartedly with that. But I should add that the champagne—my goodness, I can’t mention it without swooning—was divine. We had the rosé, you recall?

Jenny: Oh yes! The waiter recommended it highly, and right he was. And he poured it ever so carefully . . . so not to spill a single drop. “Every drop is expensive,” he said.

Rachel:—as he spilled all over the side of my glass. Other than that he was quite a fine waiter, and extremely tolerant of silly American students wanting to pay with separate checks and spilling clotted cream all over the exquisite table linens.

Jenny: That was you, not me.

Rachel: Please, Jenny, not in front of the scones.

Jenny: At any rate, it was a marvelously British afternoon.

Rachel: Quite right, quite right. We highly recommend high tea for those after a highly cultured experience.

-Rachel Teagle and Jenny Oyallon-Koloski

Massaging the Machine: Circuit Bending with Ben Goldstone

Often thought of as complicated and coldly precise, electronics can be manipulated to one’s advantage with less technical skill and more creativity. Such is the philosophy of our class’ guest speaker on circuit bending, Benjamin Goldstone. To Ben we can explore electronics by “massaging circuit boards” through touching the connections and “destroying the mind of the machine.”

A relatively new phenomenon, circuit bending is essentially shorting portable electronic audio devices at will to create new and often noisy sounds. Ben kicked off the first hour of class by demonstrating a handful of bent gear. They were usually gutted and mangled toys beyond their original conditions. In one case, Ben tore open a Furby, licked his fingers, and began shorting the back of the circuit board with the voltage potential of his body. This produced bizarre and creepy sounds out of a once cute electronic pet. More interestingly, Ben hacked into cheap instrument effects pedals to give breadth to their limited palettes. In one case, he opened an old Roland drum machine and added an RCA patch board, which twisted, reversed, and distorted its rhythms. Click below for a short video by Jeremy demonstrating this.

Next, all the students chose toys that were acquired at trunk sales outside of London. According to Ben, these were weekend sales in which desperate Britts sold belongings out of their trunks. We weren’t quite sure what to do, but that was the point. It was imperative that we produced wildly new sounds, and it only made sense that there was no general, methodological way to do it. As Ben said, “[we] might give it a little tickle here and there.” Eventually, Ben taught us how to solder, how to read schematics and best of all, how to build a ghetto speaker to make our mutated toys scream.

For the most part, the circuit bending projects were successful, and we made sure to keep track of our time so that we could move on—though hours could have easily been spent “tickling” the toys. Now that’s music to my ears.

-Ollie Moltaji

Frieze Art Fair: John Schott & E.J. Vaughn's "America's Pop Collector"

We all went to the Frieze Art Fair yesterday, with three goals in mind: to check out this extraordinary snapshot of contemporary art, to make a radio documentary about the Fair for broadcast here in London, and to view a film from 1973 by John Schott & E.J. Vaughn that had been programmed – purely by chance – for screening at the Fair. You can expect a post about our radio documentary – and of course an MP3 version – for London's Resoance FM in the next days. Rather a tall order for a single day, but that's now what we do.

London's Frieze Art Fair has become England's leading art event of the year. Focusing on the most interesting galleries working today, from Beirut to Glasgow and Sao Paolo to Tokyo, the fair introduces new artists and established favorites such as Olafur Elusson, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Rachel Whiteread to visitors from around the world who pile into London for the event.

In addition to being able to see and buy art by over 1000 of the world's leading artists, visitors may participate in Frieze Projects, a cureatorial program of talks, screenings and related events. It's housed in a wonderfully diaphanous white tent located in Regent's Part.

As for my film, America's Pop Collector: Contemporary Art at Auction, it's a feature documentary made in 1973 with collaborator and producer E. J. Vaughn. It was programmed by Stuart Comer from Tate Modern in a wonderful schedule of artists' films and films about art that are both playing at Frieze and traveling after through Britain.

The film was an experiment in "writing art history with a camera": where films about art at the time were typically portraits of individual artists, America's Pop Collector was a study in the sociology of the art world. It took as its immediate subject the watershed auction of contemporary art by taxi cab magnate and art collector Robert Scull. It's made in a style known as "direct cinema" or cinéma vérité where events are narrated by the camera rather than interpreted through voice-over narration.

America's Pop Collector has emerged as a unique visual document of American contemporary art history. In addition to picturing a Soho art scene that has now disappeared, the film's themes include the nexus of money and art, the role collectors and dealers play in the art market, and the inner workings of an auction house, among others. Because the film looks at '70's art in its larger sociological context, and because it pictures now legendary characters like Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Castelli, Ivan Karp and Robert Scull, it is being widely shown in museums and festivals like the Frieze. Now that the 70's have been digested and historicized many are interested in a film whose subject is less about art than about the art world. I introduced the film at its two Frieze screenings, and thoroughly enjoyed my VIP pass to the Fair.

- John Schott

Zidane: un portrait de 21e siecle

"Zidane" opened in London this week, and it was the hardest film of the year for me to watch. I'm a big fan of Zidane and have been ever since the '98 world cup. But I'm a fan of Zinedine Zidane in the same way I love to watch lions lounge in the savannah and when hungry attack cattle unawares.

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is a film about Zidane – how he thinks, moves, walks, talks, spits, smiles, and stares. The approach of directors Douglas Gordon and Phillipe Parreno was to place seventeen cameras in the Burnabau Stadium on April 23, 2005 to film nothing but Zidane as Real Madrid faced opponent Villareal. What emerged was the most complete portrait of man of whom we know very little.

From the first kick of the ball, to the final whistle, Zidane walks around the pictch saying very little, and only moving when the ball aproaches. Most coaches would be outraged by a player who smokes twenty cigarettes a day and takes a languid approach to the match, if it wasn't for the haunting touch and razor-like precision to Zidane's game. All of which in this film unroll over a spectoral Mogwai soundtrack and raucaus crowd noise.

Most will remember Zidane for his famous headbut, but for others he'll be remembered as a man of few words, acerbic temper, and graceful movements. For me, I most remember his mesmerizing volley against Bayern Leverkusen in the 2002 UEFA Champions' League Final. I was always told to mimic his game. My club coaches would say, "Aaron, can't you see how patient he is? You should watch more Zidane games and focus soley on what he does." So now I can say I have, and the truth be told, Zidane doesn't do a whole lot during the match. He grunts and spits more than he touches the ball. And given the circumstances of the film, he gets involved in needless fights and often gets ejected for even more needless behaviour. Yet he is the epitome of football genius.

No other sports figure in the history of the game has been worshipped for his greatness, and jeered at for his nonchalant maner. Portrait captures this perfectly with a brief series of quotes. "When things go bad... I can focus on anything in the crowd": Zidane understands the circumstances to his behavior, and the repercussions of violent actions. But as he states, "It's as if the game has already been decided before the first kick-off." He takes the game with the philosophy that whatever happens, happens for a reason. If that ball comes to him, then it comes to him, and there is no other person it should have come to. And if he gets into a skirmish, then there was a reason that his emotions told him to do so.

With that in mind, I can finally understand the reasoning behind his headbut in this year's World Cup Final versus Italy. It may be hard to swallow, and more difficult to understand, but to Zinedine Zidane, there was no other way. Call him Morpheus, knowing that Matterazzi was destined to jeer him, and he destined to get ejected, and France...destined to go down in defeat.

This may be the greatest film about football ever, but it's not the type of film I'd take a junior league team to in order to get them pumped up for a match. It's more of the type of movie I'd venture to in order to contemplate the human mind and the mysteries that even the great ones hold.

I've also included some of my favorite Zidane moments, and for those of you who haven't seen it...the headbut.

-Aaron Colussi

The Headbut. Committed in this year's World Cup Final as France lost to Italy in penalty kicks.

The famous full-volley against Bayern Leverkusen. [for more info, check out www.vicecoulter.com]

WIRED Magazine's NextFest

I write this post from the massive WIRED NextFest that took place on our last weekend in New York. The Fest is a technological orgy and covers developments in fields like healthcare, energy, transportation, entertainment, and of course, robotics. Droves of gawking onlookers, eyes glazed with childlike fascination, flock between exhibits and demonstrations in the massive Javits Convention Center. In the foyer, about a dozen people strum the invisible laser beams that serve as chords of a "lunar harpsichord" to make an eerie collective sound. Past that, videos documenting medical breakthroughs in molecular probes that identify diseases directly from genealogical makeup preemptively remind me of Gattaca. Next to that, a man runs his hands across a table, which is in fact an interactive desktop, to easily and seamlessly manipulate a birds eye view of Manhattan, as shown in Google Earth. On the other side of a curtain, a video simulation shows a man in his virtual kitchen in the year 2037, with a completely integrated interface that renders manually frying eggs a thing of thepast.

These first few examples were among the more logical and impressive applications of technology to our daily lives as shown at NextFest. As I continued, though, I was somewhat disillusioned to find that the future of design lies in gratuitously interactive vending machines on which, if compelled, one can solve puzzles that upon completion play a congratulatory video. NEAT! The representative was quick to point out that the machine had two vending bays when one gentleman asked, ?Isn?t this just going to piss off the guy behind me that wants to buy asoda? Good thing, that.

Immediately adjacent to this technological wonder was the ?Hug Shirt,? a futuristic, skin-tight, Bluetooth enabled garment with a network of sensors that, theoretically, simulate a personalized hug for the wearer. Designed for long distance relationships, distanced lovers adorned with their own Hug Shirts will soon be able to hug themselves to record and send eachother virtual embraces via cell phone. The implications are staggering.

One thing that cheered me up was seeing the designers of a future doorway scramble frantically to remedy a series of malfunctions that made their contraption utterly useless.

After spending an hour or two on the floor, I was filled with mixed reactions from all of these indications of our technological trajectory. On the one hand, advances in medicine, from three dimensional CT Scans to prosthetic augmentations designed to aid the sick and disabled as well as greener energy solutions that better utilize natural resources like wind, hydrogen and solar energy. On the other, completely useless novelties thinly disguised as progressive and beneficial that fed off of the wide-eyed enthusiasm of technophiles wooed by shiny gadgetry. Another disturbing element to the show was the corporate presence: young, entrepreneurial companies trying to stake their space in the financial markets of the future as well as the central General Motors exhibition advertising genuine interest in greener, cleaner vehicles for the benefit of the globe. I couldn?t quite shake the feeling that they were operating off of a different motive generally associated with the color green.

Nextfest was the violent collision of man?s ceaseless pursuits towards progress, self-preservation, efficiency, elimination of boredom, and absolute power. What I question is the deep conviction in our societal progress through what struck me as technological masturbation.

In a brief conversation with John Schott, he explained to me his vision of the future of the art world in conjunction with all of the wondrous breakthroughs on display. I wasn?t sure how to respond to his statement, perhaps out of a current sense of contentment or a lack of foresight or I don?t know?but the more I think about it, the more it strikes me that he is probably dead on in his assertion. It will take time to warm up to the idea after being a little overwhelmed today, but at the same time, part of me belives in the vast spectrum of possibilities using the tools of the future. My apprehension lies with the intention of the engineers, artists, and visionaries who will harness the power of our collective imagination and lead us onward - hopefully into a future that focuses on the well being of the planet and its inhabitants instead of the wanton elimination of minor burdens and advancement of consumer novelties. Time will tell..

Shakespeare's Globe: Old Media Roadtrip

I think it would be positively blasphemous to go to London and not see a Shakespeare play in the big wooden O across the Thames. Fortunately our New Media Roadtrip made a brief excursion into Very Old Media for a performance of A Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare’s Globe.

The Globe is an authentic reconstruction of the open-air theatre where Shakespeare worked and wrote in the sixteen hundreds. The original Globe, where plays like Hamlet, and Macbeth debuted,burned to the ground in 1613 when a prop cannon ignited the thatched roof during a production of Henry VIII. Needless to say, the roof of the second Globe was tiled, but less than thirty years after it re-opened, it was closed down by Puritans. The modern Globe, now dubbed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, was built in 1997 and is the first thatched roof building permitted to be built in London since the Great Fire, but wisely includes a sprinkler system.

The play itself was marvelous. A Comedy of Errors is quite possibly one of Shakespeare’s silliest plays with not one, but two set of identical twins and lots of monologues that ended with people rolling on the floor. The show was accompanied by a live band in the upper level of the set who underscored the scenes and provided sound effects for the numerous servant beatings and pratfalls. The play is based on a comedy by the ancient playwright Plautus; and this performance paid homage to its Roman roots with colorful tunics and its use of the horizontal space of the stage. The final confrontation in front of the house of one of the Antipholi and the abbey recalls the multiple entrances of the typical ancient Roman theatre.

My only complaint is that the authentic architecture of the space placed a large column in the middle of my field of view. Oh well. If I had really wanted to be gung-ho I should have gone “Groundling” and stood in the middle of the open square, where all the rude, filthy plague-ridden peasants used to stand. We did have a rather amazing groundling moment during this performance while Dromio of Syracuse was comparing the fat maid to a globe and finding countries in her.

ANTIPHOLUS: Where France?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: In her forehead; armed and reverted, making war against her heir.
ANTIPHOLUS:Where England?
DROMIO:I looked for the chalky cliffs, but I could find no whiteness in them; but I guess it stood in her chin, by the salt rheum that ran between France and it.

At this point in time, an audience member beat Antipholus to the punch and yelled out “Spain!” There was a brief moment of silence, then 1500 people burst out laughing, and stared down at the actors, who were trying hard not to join them. Eventually, Antipholus chimed in with, “Well? Where’s Spain” and Dromio faithfully delivered his next line with mostly a straight face, and managed to convince at least me that he was making it up on the spot.

DROMIO: Faith, I saw it not; (an extended pause, audience exhales.) But I felt it! (audience laughs and bursts into applause)

Now, a few of us have been debating whether the vocal groundling was a plant, but in my heart of hearts, I believe it was just a smart-ass Shakespeare fan thrilled to be in “this wooden O.”

-Rachel Teagle

Graffiti Research Lab

The Graffiti Research Lab toured the Roadtrip participants around their facilities and discussed some of their current projects. Watch this video filmed by John Schott and edited by Alissa Pajer to see what the Graffiti Research Lab is up to!

For and Ipod/Quicktime version click here.

Short Bits

>> While in New York, Carleton trustee David Diamond and wife Karen Zukowski hosted a cocktail party for our crew, along with about 75 Carleton almuni from the area. We met many old CAMS students, some from as many as 20 years ago. David and Karen have an ultra-cool sorta-pomo apartment brimming with art, a perfect urban setting for the Roadtrip in Manhattan. Honestly, we'd rather be here than at the International Student House at Columbia University. But we know that's a lot to ask, since it would mean not just 24 of us, but our luggage as well. [The turned-out Susan Carlson and Andrea Warren are pictured here.]

>> CBS News did a report with video on the Come Out and Play urban games festival that our gang supported while in New York. If you're interested, check it out. You'll notice the the start frame features our crew's Rachel Teagle and Jenny Oyallon-Koloski.

>> Speaking of Andrea Warren, a post on her blog was recently cited by the leading global blog reporting on emerging new media projects, We Make Money Not Art. Anyone on the planet interested in new media checks We Make Money Not Art regularly for the latest news. [Our August Brown did an interview with the site's author, Regine Debatty, that will appear shortly as part of our Conflux magazine.] We Make Money Not Art's post references Andrea's report from Conflux. This is a great example of how the web is changing everything: Andrea publishes her report online...and suddenly she's part of a global conversation. It's also why student blogs need to be well designed and well written: they're not just for a handful of friends any more.

Illuminations & John Wyver

On one of those typical English days where damp, ragged, lead-colored clouds extend right down to slick pavement stones, we tubed out to visit Illuminations, the London media production company that’s been at the forefront of making arts programming for the last quarter century. We met Illuminations’ bright light, founder John Wyver. John was an early television critic for London’s Time Out, he has published a volume on film history, and is about to publish a new book the history of arts programming on the BBC. For the last twenty-five hears, however, John and colleagues have turned Illuminations into a hallmark for intelligent, creative and beautifully produced programs on the arts.

Our conversation was a short course on the history of British television and the dramatic changes it is undergoing in response to many of the same forces that challenge our own PBS: vigorous competition from multiplying commercial channels, and the rise of alternative eyeball-glue like videogames and the internet. John described his company as having had three acts, each a response to a particular historical model of the media market. The first act was work with which Illuminations made its mark: handsomely produced arts series and one-offs for BBC 1 and 2, ranging from elaborate, imaginative television versions of everything from Shakespeare to Benjamin Brittan operas ["heritage programming," as John calls them], to ultra contemporary series on the rise of the internet [John claims to have been the first person to use the word “internet” in a television program, and the first to have included an email address in the credits], to a series on artists’ experimental television.

The second act is unfolding in the present where declining audiences and new competition has made public broadcasters less prone to arts content that isn't mass audience friendly. Illuminations’ response has been to produce projects out of their own pocket rather than wait for declining commissiions. They then sell them to their traditional international markets, but also to new ones like personal DVDs’, direct sales to museums, and, in the future, iPods and the like. Plus, they’re converting production to hi def, since most venues think of the arts as prestige programming, and hi def is the new currency of prestige.

The third act, in its R&D phase at Illuminations now and being readied for the near future, is something John calls “configurable media.” He showed us a test clip of an art history series in which individual segments exist in a database, allowing viewers to move through the program choosing themes they find intersting. The program unrolls without pause as the segments assemble themselves in advance. John imagines such future programs viewed in an online context where, for example, a teacher could send students a “playlist” on architecture as one path through a massive program on Renaissance art.

It was great fun to visit their production offices and to understand better the challenges media makers face given the dizzying pace of evolving media markets and formats. We could not have been welcomed by a more generous and intelligent host than John Wyver.

The Making of "Milkshake": Ollie Moltaji & Sarah Nienaber

Less than one month before heading off to New York City for the CAMS New Media Roadtrip, the band Sarah and I are in, Gospel Gossip, started taking off in Northfield and Minneapolis. We started playing in basements, next The Contented Cow pub, and eventually we were invited to play gigs at the Fineline and the Turf Club in the Twin Cities. Although we occasionally recorded earlier this year, we decided to settle down and focus on recording songs we played live at the end of August.

We were fortunate because recording equipment is cheap – especially if you have a good computer. We used a decent Pro Tools setup, which included Pro Tools 7.1, a 14/18 M-Audio firewire interface, and mid-range microphones. Also, because we had more experience in engineering than producing, the process was as much about discovery as about fun. The sessions were recorded in a large basement room at Carleton’s Concert Hall. It took a little more than a day to set the mics and levels, and then a couple more days to record the songs.

We’re currently mixing down a 4-song EP here on the Roadtrip. Because our set-up is highly portable, we’re going to take the master tracks to London and finish printing there. We produced a few demo EP’s to give to Bob George at the ARChive for Contemporary Music [image above] and to friends and family until the project is complete.

The cover art is of a poster paint-printed milkshake with typewritten information on the back. Because each CD will be unique-but-similar in the same vein as Warhol’s printed work, our plan is to fashion a CD realease party in which we will display a handful of finished discs on a wall to be taken down by the audience.

Here's our first cut on the record: Shadows Are Bent

-Ollie Moltaji & Sarah Nienaber

Whitney Museum of American Art: "Picasso and American Art"

Last Thursday many of us recieved a guided tour of "Picasso and American Art." a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It was about Picasso's influence on American artists in the early 20th century. Until this show, I had not realized that Picasso had never came to America, not even to present his large-scale retrospectives, so to see the many artists he influenced was is a testament to the magnitude of Picasso’s legacy and genius. His career spanned more than 70 years and contained countless styles and movements. The exhibit showcased the works of Pollack, De Kooning, Johns, Lichtenstein, Gorky, Weber, and even Warhol, to name a few.

To base the exhibit on comparisons, the curator first located an American painting that had been influenced by a Picasso, or cubism, and then tracked down the Picasso that influenced it. Rooms were devoted to specific movements and styles of Picasso's work, as well as to other Amerian artists. For example, one room was devoted Picasso's abstract cubism and its influence on Max Weber and Stuart Davis. Although this was a provocative way of presenting the works, without the aid of a guide, I would have missed many of the incredible comparisions.

The exhibit showcased more than three-hundred works, the most interesting of which, for me at least, were those of Jasper Johns. Johns avoided Picasso’s shadow for most of his career, staying true to his American roots. It wasn’t until he was asked to do a piece for Picasso’s 90th birthday that Johns turned to Picasso. After originally declining to do a dedication piece for the Picasso's birthday, Johns finally accepted. Johns' piece incorporated Picasso's wit and humour to the fullest. He found a silhouette of Picasso's face in a newpaper, and simply by making a mirror image of the profile formed a chalice. As seen above, Johns titled the piece, "A Cup To Picasso, A Cup For Picasso."

Other Johns' works in the show include his "Summer and Fall" panels. In these two extrodinary works, Johns utilizes Picasso's most depressing works and turns them into a melancholy self-reflective meditation on the seasons.

Pollock's "27" was the surpise inclusion in the exhibit. Apparently Pollock had drawn in Picassoesque elements with black before he completly covered them up with an array of colors. Pollock used to form tangiable images as the first layer of paintings, only to progressively destroy all recognition of them. He and Picassoused to share numerous letters and were good friends despite never meeting.

The best Picasso included in the exhibit is his, "The Three Musicians." Less abstract than his other cubist works in the show, this piece influenced many works by Gorky, Davis, De Kooning, and Max Weber. The use of blues and whites in the piece reflects the simplicity and clairity later cubist painters took from this work. Although cubists often represented their subject from different vantage points, the colors in "Muskateers" suggests otherwise. Picasso plays on the over-complexity of his other works, and in this piece shows the simpler side of synthetic cubism.

Rarely do I get an opportunity to see such an array of masterpieces in one room, let alone receive a an outstanding tour from a real scholar. "Picasso and American Art" was stunningly impressive. This was my first time to the museum, which holds roughly 12,000 works, including 2,500 Edward Hoppers. I look forward to returning in the future.

Here is an absolutely fantasic short commercial Apple did about 5 years ago.

- Aaron Colussi
for more information check out www.vicecoulter.com

ARChive for Contemporary Music & B. George

The ARChive for Contemporary Music is located in a Tribeca storefront next to a legal bookstore and mere blocks from the cacophony of Chinatown. This unlikely location is where B. George and a small coterie of like-minded music lovers convene daily to do their sisyphean work: collecting and cataloguing two copies of every musical recording made after the era of 78 rpm’s. Every one.

The ARChive is not open to the public, so our extended visit was for all of us a great occasion.

George first decided to initiate the ARChive after he tried to donate his hefty record collection to various libraries, only to be turned down. “I had a collection of 50,000 recordings, and I tried to give them away to the Library of Congress or Lincoln Center.” Those august institutions turned him down, though, due to the content of the collection. “Mostly what I had was punk, reggae, hip-hop, and experimental art music,” says George. People said, “Well, that’s not music.” In response, George began the ARChive, with its heroic – and some would say quixotic – mission.

George is himself an interesting character. After attending the University of Michigan for a spell, he came to New York and served stints as an artist, producer, and editor before founding the ARChive. His experiences, combined with his unparalleled depth of musical knowledge, make him a singular figure in the world of popular music.

The ARChive's board of directors is a crucial part of George’s insistence on not becoming dependent on grants to maintain the collection. “We don’t apply for any city, state, or federal grants,” he says. Instead, the Archive receives independent funding through its board of directors – stars like Keith Richards and David Bowie donate time, money, and resources – and by donations from recording companies and record collectors. “Almost everything is donated; there’s practically no acquisition budget. And as for what we'll collect, we never make quality decisions whatsoever.” The goal is quantity; the expectation is that quality will follow.

It’s a goal that requires a lot of space. The ARChive's location on White Street is filled to the brim with records, stacked on shelves that reach to the ceiling, imposing their visual heft on the awed visitor. One can imagine a disastrous scenario: being crushed by the weight tons of pressed plastic. George is working with Columbia University to move the collection to a new institutionalized home. "Our goal in the first twenty years was to build the collection; and in the next twenty years to get it out to the public."

But even as the collection overflows its space, the mission remains the same. “We work mostly for the industry, but are entirely against it,” says George. And in this independence – being part of the rich American popular music tradition, but standing outside the business side – has made the ARChive the preeminent repository of contemporary music.

-Paul Caine

Sound Art & Alexis Bhagat

We're in Times Square, but we've got our ears to the ground. There's traffic growling around us, a flock of tourists are snapping pictures of a photographer and her model, six-story billboards pawn jeans and cellphones. But our attention is trained on a single solid tone emanating from the subway grate. It's a secret piece of public art, a sound installation by Max Neuhaus.

Another sound artist is leading this expedition, a man named Alexis Bhagat. We met him at the Conflux Festival a couple of weeks ago and he's graciously taking us around for the afternoon. He's a jaunty man with a predominant earnestness and he prods us for our observations on the Neuhaus piece. In a couple of months he'll be publishing Sound Generation, his new book of interviews with sound artists.

"Who found it comforting? Who found it unsettling?" The group's about split, and we can barely hear with the busses passing by. "See, I always found it really comforting here. There's an urban legend that the sound comes out of some electrical current. It's not, its art. But its calming. Everything's crazy except this one tone, which is constant."

As we're leaving Times Square, I ask Alexis about our next destination. The "Dream House," he tells me, "is a piece of eternal music." He flashes a quick smile before I lose him as we descend into the subway.

When we arrive the place is inconspicuous from the outside. The artists – Influential minimalist composer La Monte Young and his wife, light artist Marian Zazeela – live on the floor above the apartment-sized installation. There is no sign or advertisement aside from lettering on the apartment door.

But inside the place, its otherworldly. Barefoot, we're led into a white room with springy carpet. Pink and purple lights bathe the room in a syrupy glow while geometric cutouts cast shadows on the wall. The air is thick with incense. And then there's the sound.

Its an overwhelming and dissonent drone. You can hear it with your body. Composed of sine waves vibrating on precise prime numbers, the sound fills the room from a fridge-sized speaker in each corner. I'm not sure about eternal, but its certainly not stopping while we're there. We begin to move around, exploring the texture of the sound. We cup each other's ears rhytmicaly. We imagine swimming in the noise. And before we know it, its an hour later and time to go.

We'll go to dinner with Alexis and chat more in a while. He'll tell us about his work, a kind of sound-art extension of poetry. But as I'm coming down the stairs out of the Dream House I'm lingering in the visceral experience of the sound and thinking of what Alexis said earlier about calm. As I look north I glance without thinking at the construction cranes at the World Trade Center site. The cacophony of the street floods back and I catch myself humming, soft, constant.

-Terin Mayer

Museum of the Moving Image & Carl Baldwin

Carl Baldwin is the Curator of Digital Media at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, and he is also among the leading strategists for the Museum. We were treated to an hour conversation with Carl following our tour, and when it found its finish we could not imagine a smarter or more thoughtful talk on the philosophy of museology. Carl began by introducing us to the museum, and in short order he segued into discoursing wisely and passionately about how museums think about themselves, their mission, and their audiences.

It's clear that the strategic plan at the Museum of the Moving Image is pegged at the highest level of aspiration, and the execution of the place shows it. We were all delighted with the wealth of interactive learning environments that were ingenious enough to satisify college media majors as well as younger audiences. We made and printed flip books as a way of understanding the persistence of vision. We recorded animations. We voice-dubbed [ADR, or automated dialogue replacement] ourselves into "Babe." At the end, we spilled into a huge bank of vintage video game consoles that included some killer Japanese interactive games none of us had seen before.

Our tour leader had been a film major in college and is currently active in the industry, so she was sharp and privy to the lingo of cinema studies. The tour was over 90 minutes, so we really saw a lot. We could easily have stayed for hours longer, and we're unanimous in recommending the museum to anyone visiting Manhattan. While it may look a long way on the map, it's just an additional 15 minutes on the subway, and easy to find.

The illustration above doesn't really capture the museum, but it's a sentimental favorite. The camera is the same model [not the exact same camera] used by Dziga Vertov to shoot "Man With A Movie Camera," one of the God-films for cinema history and nonfiction students. We could easily imagine climbing to the top of a building in Leningrad in the mid-1920's and cranking away with this beauty.

After that, it was off for an afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art, which is resplendent in is new building.

Video: Cody Brown's "Pervasive Minesweaper" Urban Game

As noted in an earlier post, Dakota "Cody" Brown, a Carleton CAMS grad who is now doing post-graduate work at Georgia Tech, mounted a game, "Pervasive Minesweeper," at the Come Out & Play Festival last Sunday.

This short video captures the preparations just before launching the game. As you'll see, there's a lot of  tense, last-minute technical calibrating in games like this. Here Cody is registering everyone's phone and explaining how to use their camphone to shoot ShotCodes – graphic elements that once photographed automatically open a URL in your phone's browser – that Cody has placed around the area.

Basically this is the old Minesweeper of your adolescent years, but now played with mobile phones in the city. Once the game is launched, the game-master watches it unfold on his laptop.

Quicktim/Ipod format here

Come Out & Play

Interested in what 22 students, armed with cameras and a bucketload of a creativity (for real, we brought along a bucket of it), and set loose for 10 weeks in some of the world’s coolest cities are thinking? Get the scoop on last weekend’s Come Out & Play Festival, a showcase for urban games that challenges participants to rethink their city as a sort of giant playground, from six of these young participants and volunteers.

August Brown: “Most notable for me was the snake woman.”
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Susan Carlson: “It's kind of the lighter-hearted flipside of a lot of new media ‘high art.’”
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Boris Scherbakov: “I felt like a summer camp counselor leading children through tasks that were almost as time-consuming as they were menial.”
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Tom Schmidt: “To the credit of the festival organizers, though, these people aren’t technically taking back the ‘streets,’ but I’ve never really found the city to have lost it’s sense of community or fun.”
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Rachel Teagle: “I need to stop hurting myself.”
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Andrea Warren: “In fact, each time I watched a little yellow donut flower drift upwards a little piece of me died.”
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Totally!

-Andy Lauer

Dan Selz, Now of Rocketboom

Dan Selz visited us today. In addition to catching us up, he used some of our equipment to jam on a video project that has only a six-day shoot and edit schedule. [Ugly surprise: deadlines in the real world are even worse than at college.] Dan is one of ten artists asked to produce a video that will be featured in the launch of a new online site. So congrats to Dan for getting the nod to be among them.

Dan took the Personal Media Revolution class last year at Carleton, where we viewed and discussed the ground-breaking online news site, Rocketboom. Now – lo and behold – Dan is in New York working as a media producer for Rocketboom. So there is professional life for liberal arts undergrads, after all.

A philosophy major at Carleton, Dan took a media production course in his senior year, and he never seems to have looked back. In less than a year he has found a promising career working in New York's white-hot online movie scene.

"Four Eyed Monsters" with Directors Crumley & Buice

On Thursday, September 21st, a cohort of the Roadtrippers went to see the new indie film, "Four Eyed Monsters," by Arin Crumley and Susan Buice. Like most indies, Arin and Susan face the difficult task of distributing their film. However, unlike most, Arin and Susan have used the internet and podcasting to build  their audience and gain notoriety.

"Four Eyed Monsters" is a mostly autobiographical film about Arin and Susan’s meeting and subsequent relationship. After finding each other online, they come to know one another through writing and artistic endeavors—never through speech. The film traces their relationship as it develops.

The "Four Eyed Monsters" video podcast (video delivered via the internet, generally distributed through an RSS feed) began as a behind-the-scenes look at their efforts to make and distribute the film. Yet this simplistic description really doesn't capture the film. Their podcast, which I had been watching since last December, was a movie unto itself, filled with happiness and heartache, failure and success. I was eager to see the film that followed the podcast.

"Four Eyed Monsters" was funny and beautiful, but we were all blown away by the inter-textuality between the film and its earlier video podcast. After the movie, during the Q&A session with the directors, I asked Susan and Arin how the two projects were related. Was Four Eyed Monsters just the film and the podcast just a separate “Behind-the-scenes” story? Or is it all Four Eyed Monsters? They explained that though the movie works by itself, it is more encompassing than that. It is the movie and the evolving podcast together that create the very dynamic Four Eyed Monsters.

What makes this indie flick different is that it uses two contrasting mediums: film and the internet. Sure, the movie succeeds as a stand-alone piece for those who had not followed the podcast. But for those of us who did, the whole experience seemed revolutionary. Terin Mayer, fellow Roadtripper, explained that it was as if the film was constantly referencing and alluding to the podcast, and vice versa. This made the film extremely engaging and thought provoking. The entire subway ride home was was filled with discussion.

Four Eyed Monsters is a living, evolving project, and it is paving the way for rising generation of digital filmmakers who move easily between the net and the big screen.

Checkout foureyedmonters.com for more information on screenings in your area. If it is not playing locally, be sure to request it. And of course, don’t forget to catch their podcast.

-Karina Hill

Come Out And Play Festival & Cody Brown

The Come Out & Play Festival ran this weekend, and we participated by playing and by serving as the core support group for the Festival. Support meant manning sign-in tables, wrangling players, plugging stuff in – pretty much like you'd imagine. If you knew who we were, then you knew we were everywhere.

Urban games have become popular in the last few years as game designers have come to think of the city itself as a game board. New mobile technologies and locative media [cellphones, SMS, and the like] now make it possible for players to spread out with coordinated competitions that turn the metropolis into a digital pitch. As the organizers put it, "In the last few years, there has been an explosion of street play, from mixed-reality games that combine the virtual and real to big games that transform cities into gameboards to the time-honored traditions of stickball and scavenger hunts. Collectively, we call these big games or street games, games that transform public spaces, games that you play in the real-world. Too often, street games are only discovered after they've finished. Come Out & Play is an opportunity for you to experience these games for yourselves."

Come Out & Play turned New York into what "Time Out New York" called New Dork City: "Just as that crazy Christo transformed Central Park into a work of art, the three-day Come Out & Play Festival will turn the city into a giant board for large-as-life street games. Approximately 20 events, varying from camera-phone-enabled scavenger hunts to a Wi-Fi location-based competition from the guys behind the meta–video game Pacmanhattan, will take place throughout the city."

MTV was there for the opening night, and Wired magazine picked it up, so you know the urban game thing is hot. And the games were fun, for the most part: Paul Caine was involved in a stock market game that took him to Wall Street in the wee hours; stock prices were bid competitively via SMS messages. "It was really intense."

We were delighted that one of the games selected for the Festival was by Carleton Cinema & Media Studies graduate Cody Brown. Cody is finishing his masters in Georgia Tech's outstanding Digital Media program, where his advisor is no less than the esteemed Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cody did his comprehensive project at Carleton on videogame theory, and has carried that work on at Georgia, among other things. His site, Avant Gaming, today is among the leading sites for game theorizing.

Cody's game, Pervasive Minesweeper, "takes the classic videogame Minesweeper to the streets. Teams of four individuals race against each other to complete traditional Minesweeper puzzles played out across a 4-square block urban area.

As with traditional Minesweeper, the goal of Pervasive Minesweeper is to uncover all tiles in the game space that do not have a mine under them. In Pervasive Minesweeper each tile is a city block within a 4-square block area. The tiles ares manipulated by a ShotCode control panel hidden within each city block. Each player’s ShotCode compatible mobile device is paired with their team’s puzzle to prevent cross-puzzle tampering.

Each team is given a clue sheet as to the location of their sixteen control panels. At this point, a timer for the team is started. Once a control panel is located, players may open a tile or flag it as a potential mine. If a tile is opened and it is a mine, that team’s game is over. If there is no mine under the tile, a number is revealed on the team’s xhtml display. The number will tell the team how many mines are touching that tile (left, right, above, and below). When a team has opened all tiles on their game-board that do not contain mines, the team has solved their puzzle and their timer stops. The team that completes their puzzle in the least overall time is named the champion and awarded accordingly."

Three Roadtrippers joined the game, Cody's brother and new media special major August Brown, Rachel Teagle, and Jenny Oyallon-Kollowsky. We shot a nice little video which will appear on Roadtrip in a few days.

Eyebeam, Graffiti Reserach Lab & Postmasters

Big day yesterday. We sent our first flight of Roadtrippers to provide support for the Come Out and Play Festival, a two-day celebration of big urban games, about which we'll write shortly.

But our first group stop was at the Graffiti Research Lab, a fabled group of digi-tech graffiti writers working at Eyebeam. They're just back from the huge Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, where Mike Waggoner, an artist-friend of John Schott had "told them that we were OK." That, plus the video we did of their graffiti tour of Williamsburg, not only got us in the door, but produced a long, interesting discussion of their work and graffiti in general. Among other things, they showed us their rapid prototype 3D machine, a way to manufacture objects based on software descriptions. At the end, one of our participants, Ollie Moltaji, said: "In two years this is where I want to be!" And no doubt he will.

Amanda Crowley [above], Eyebeam's Executive Director, gave us a full tour of the facilities. Their mission is to engage cultural dialogue at the intersection of the arts and sciences, and to to forge an understanding of the relatedness of these practices, which are becoming increasingly significant engines of cultural production. Eyebeam amplifies the flux and hybridity of the art/science intersection by openly fostering the parallel strands of education, research, production, and exhibition with its public and peers.

Next we visited Postmasters Gallery, a leader in exhibiting new media work. Magdalena Sawon [below], one of the owner/directors, gave a wonderful talk on the history of the gallery, and the esthetic and market issues involved in exhibiting new media work. Although Postmasters regularly shows new media artists, Magdalena insists that they be integrated with all forms of speculative new art in order that it not become isolated as "technological art." Her talk alerted us to the formative, visionary role that gallery owners can play in the art world: Postmasters is exhibiting work that few – if any – other galleries will. Interestingly, their sales primarily are to museums rather than collectors. When asked how many individuals collect new media, Magdalena raised fifteen fingers.

The show at Postmasters was a new project [above] by Natalie Jeremijenko, a highly respected new media artist whose themes relate broadly to issues of science and the environment. Her project is a strange, wonderful garden for birds built atop the gallery. Although it is still under construction, we saw the garden projected by video onto one wall of the gallery. The show included several conceptual birdhouses that had been built as playful prototypes at Jeremijenko's invitation. On the left above is Jeremijenko's own bird perch: when a bird lands on it the motion triggers a spoken message with an ecological theme.

So our day started with supporting the Festival [above: Aaron Colussi and Boris Scherbakov chalk a greeting logo for the Fest outside Eyebeam], and ended with a video game projected on the wall in which musicians "played" the characters through the gamespace.

Interning at the ARChive

While the rest of our classmates slept in on their day off and enjoyed the first day of fall in the city, three of us – Sarah Nienaber, Ollie Moltagi, and Tom Schmidt – went down to the ARChive of Contemporary Music to help catalogue and organize their collection of two copies of every single record ever made. The ARChive has been around since 1986, and it seems unlikely that our single day of services could make a noticeable dent in all of the records they have, but we did our best nonetheless.

Almost as interesting as the 1.6 million records the ARChive has collected, is the man behind them. Receiving donations from rock legends Keith Richards, David Byrne, and David Bowie, living with Fela Kuti in early 80’s Nigeria for weeks at a time, and having a Prince song named after him, Bob George appears to be living a dream. One would have to imagine that he’s either violently passionate or dangerously obsessive about record collecting (and maybe he is), but he’s also aspiring for something greater – a searchable database encompassing all contemporary music, completely accessible to the public.

When we learned we were going to spend the day at the ARChive, we imagined shelves and shelves of every record by acts like The Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and The Beatles, but it wasn’t until we started working that we truly understood what it meant to collect all the records in the world. Ollie and Sarah spent the day sorting out 11 or 12 boxes of soundtracks, while Tom sifted through multiple copies of of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, Tammy Faye Baker’s gospel teachings, and even a disturbing batch of “stag” records. By the end of the day, though, we got what we wanted (especially Ollie) as Bob George showed us a rare copy of Talking Head’s “Speaking In Toungues” that features artwork by Rauchemburgh. To top it all off, that particular copy was signed by Byrne himself. The ARChive is hoping that Rauchemburgh will sign the other.

All and all, we had a great experience volunteering.

[Above: Tom Schmidt filing stag records. Below: Album covers on the wall at the ARChive.]

Anthology Film Archives & John Mhiripiri

Our visit to Anthology Film Archives today introduced Roadtrippers to an old friend, John Mhiripiri, Administrative Director and Exhibitions Coordinator at the Archives. John is a Carleton graduate, and it was gratifying to hear him describe how his love of experiment cinema began in my Avant-garde Cinema class. I recall John being knocked out by Bruce Baillie’s “Mass for the Dakota Sioux,” and I've imagined that John climbed on the back of the chopper ridden by Baillie’s beat existential hero and rode it all the way to Manhattan, and the Archives. You only have listen to John for five minutes to realize that he has found his life’s calling.

There's another wrinkle to this story, which increasingly seems to be about lineage. Last year John gave me a book about Jonas Mekas' work. Jonas is one of the founding fathers of the avant-garde and he's certainly the founding father of Anthology. Opening the book I found a "thank you" inside – scrawled in gold ink – that said: "To John Schott who gave to cinema John Mhiripiri. Jonas Mekas." And so the circle closes: Jonas early inspires me with his films; John is inspired in my class and finds his way to Jonas and the Archives; and in turn Jonas is inspired to pen a thanks...for John.

John arranged a special screening for our group in the Maya Deren Theater. It included several avant-garde classics – Brakhage, Connor, Clarke, Sharits – several of which he had seen in his Carleton days. Did he choose these because they're classics, or was there some nostalgic agenda at work? It was a thrill to see such pristine prints. In some cases the work seems entirely new, and fearsomely contemporary, even though it's now some forty years old.

Anthology's staff are a group of cinema zealots with absolutely uncompromising standards. They described with evident pride their new projection screen, imported from France, and the sumptuous black velour surround that makes the image seem to float in space. Many projection prints at the Archives are made from the camera originals. Archivists are on constant prowl to acquire the very best materials for preservation, and they are able to give the full preservation treatment – an process much more elaborate and expensive than simply making a DVD – to about 25 films a year. Marty Scorsese’s name floated several times in the conversation, since he’s a big supporter of the Archives.

Anthology is the largest repository of avant-garde film in the world, with something close to 20,000 films residing in its vaults. According to their own history it “evolved from roots and visions that go back to the early Sixties, when Jonas Mekas, the director of the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, a showcase for avant-garde films, dreamed of establishing a permanent home where the growing number of new independent/avant-garde films could be shown on a regular basis.This dream became a reality in 1969 when Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas drew up plans to create a museum dedicated to the vision of the art of cinema as guided by the avant-garde sensibility.

At its current home in a converted courthouse, Anthology has found an ideal home as a chamber museum, dedicated to the preservation, study and exhibition of independent and avant-garde film. It is the first museum devoted to film as an art form, committed to the guiding principle that a great film must be seen many times, that the film print must be the best possible, and that the viewing conditions must be optimal.”

Keep an eye on this space. We shot a lot of material which we'll shape into a film and post in a few days. [JS]

Graffiti Tour Video

On Saturday, September 16, many Roadtrip participants took the Graffiti Tour, an event in the Conflux Festival. Enjoy this glimpse of Williamsburg graffiti. If you would like to download the original rap tracks that played from the back of the bike, Graffiti Research Lab has posted them on their site. [Caution: Some may find rap lyrics offensive.] Video created by Karina Hill, Program Assistant. Click here for a Quicktime/Ipod format.

Patrick Kelley Commission

In the 19th century, English families of standing typically sent young adults for several months on a Grand Tour of the continent. The goal was to experience first hand the art, culture, history, and customs of Europe. Parents understood the grand tour as a cultural and social coming of age for their children, and they were not unaware that the knowledge and experiences thus gained would establish them in the select club of those who could share such references. For their part, young people welcomed several months away from the family home, and their pulses quickened at the prospect of thrilling encounter in the chilly night air of Tuscany. [Of course, young people were always accompanied by chaperones; but as we know, these dotty fools can easily be set to looking in the wrong direction.]

In addition to trunks of too-wintery British attire, Grand Tourists traveled with their writing desk – a folio of writing materials, journals and the like, if not actually a lap-desk. And, of course, their sketchbook. In the era before photography, drawing was the only means to record and remember what the eye encountered. Sketching ancient ruins, for example, required sitting at length before a picturesque view to study it, a necessary part of drawing. Sketching extended contemplation in time, and articulated it. Because one was nearly always accompanied by friends or a guide, drawing was bathed in conversation: visual highlights were remarked upon, technical terms exchanged, history interrogated. Sketching was a form of social thinking and shared remembering.

What then should constitute the journal of a Roadtrip [the name itself a morph of Grand Tour, but now edgier and with a hint of the neo-gonzo] on a journey in these first fresh years of the 21st century? For our Roadtrip, the Department of Cinema & Media Studies at Carleton College commissioned a project from digital artist Patrick Kelley. The challenge was to create a digital arts work in which students would participate while tripping.

Although we will hear more of this in later posts, the key elements of Patrick's project include:

1. A final online display format, which rather than a 19th century sketchbook will now be Google Earth, one of the cartographic marvels of recent years. Anyone who would like to follow this project should download this free program. It only requires a click or two, and it's extraordinary.

2. Eight to ten images – our digital equivalent of sketches – created by each participant for each of the four cities of our journey, New York, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin.

3. Each image will take the form of a cube with six sides, each side of while will be a separate image. The cube will be digitally stitched together so that it can be rotated, as if from within, by a visitor. The cube may be constructed by making six pictures in a single location [typically up and down, and in the four directions], or they may be an amalgam of pictorial and perhaps auditory impressions.

4. Each of these images will reflect a particular cultural understanding of our sense of place Participants will interrogate each city as place, creating eight or ten image-cubes that reflect contrasting responses to and definitions of place. The categories are:

a. Place as social process.
b. Place as personal psychology.
c. Place as a locus of one's sense of safety or danger.
d. Place as myth or legend.
e. Place registered as movement.
f. Place perceived by a sense other than vision.
g. Place as micro-culture.
h. Place as the built environment.

5. Because each of the images will have associated geographic coordinates, each image cube will be mapped to its exact geographic location in Google Earth. The final project will be a grand map of a grand tour with roughly 250 image cubes for each city of our tour, coded by maker and coded by typology of place.

You can explore Patrick Kelley's work further at Patrick Kelley. [Bottom: Patrick Kelley visiting the Roadtrip crew in New York to implement his project.]

Graffiti Walk

Many of us went on a two-hour walking tour of graffiti in Williamsburg, NY yesterday. We followed a bike pumping out rap music from a sound system powered by two car batteries, turning our excursion at times into something closer to a pedestrian dance shuffle. The tour was guided by members of the Graffiti Research Lab and the Wooster Collective, two of the smartest groups making and following graffiti these days. We'll be visiting Graffiti Research at the home base in a week or so.

Since Manhattan's Soho was taken over by well-healed trend-seekers in the '80's who bid up the prices for artists' lofts until they bailed out, Williamsburg – which starts at the first train stop in Brooklyn – has become the place to head if you're a young artist. It's original housing stock is modest and industrial, and the feel is neighborhoody. Rumor has it that there are more artists per capita here than in any city in the world, so it shoudn'tt be surprising that Williamsburg is ground zero for some of the best graffiti and street art in the city.

As a term, street art includes graffiti's customary gestures of spray-can tagging, but it also includes new forms of stencil art, stickers, sculptural interventions in everyday objects, and other new tweeks. Where graffiti was generally about black and Latino kids putting their name up, street art typically has more to say, although not always. Because it's a legally forbidden intervention into the fabric of the city – penalties are proportionate to the damage and can mean months in jail – street art often carries a stinging social critique or anti-corporate message. The term also seems to have a legitimating function, emphasizing its art status, reflecting, in part, defensiveness about being categorized as vandalism. The best of this work reflects prodigious invention. Although it coexists with graffiti, and sometimes still is graffiti, street art is really a vital new genre.

A highlight of our trip was a stop at a new work by the British graffiti virtuoso Banksey. [There's a Los Angeles gallery show of his work on at the time of his post where Brad Pitt is said to have paid $100k for a Banksey.] But this story is about our stop just before Williamsburg's Banksey, at the wall where Banksey first tried to put up his work, but where he was chased off by bottle tossing residents of the building. Just as our guide was telling this story, the window in the apartment above opened and two heads came out, asking whaz up? It was as though the camera panned at the perfect moment to reveal the bad guys in the story. When they discovered they were the proud owners of an aborted, buffed ["written over" in tagging lingo] Banksey – and Williamsburg seems to be the kind of place where everyone would have heard of a famous British garffiti artist – they bellowed: "Oh man, we shoulda kept that!" Such are the conundrums of gentrification and changing neighborhoods.

[Bottom: August Brown snapping.] [Williamsburg graffiti on Flickr]