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the MTAA-RR

[splash image]

MTAA-RR:

Dec 31, 2006

more 06 cya

posted at 14:57 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

When I was thinking about what to add to this list 06, I sent an email off to artist Rick Silva and collector, curator, photographer and art blogger extraordinaire Barry Hoggard asking what they liked in art in 06. Both sent lists of work I loved as well as shows that I wish I had seen. Enjoy.

One of my favorite works in 06 was Rick’s Recap. Here is a list of some of Rick’s favorites for the year.

cassini - saturn’s rings
spike lee - when the levees broke - a requiem in 4 parts
matmos - the rose has teeth in the mouth of the beast
pleix -birds
john kilduff - let’s paint tv
media archeology: software cinema festival - houston, texas
cai guo qiang at site santa fe
james turrell’s ‘meeting’ at ps1 at around 10 degrees farenheit right before they close for the night
john hodgeman - areas of my expertise
drawing restraint 1-9 at sfmoma
gazira babeli - secondlife code performer
radar at denver art museum

In Dangling Between the Real Thing and the Sign in The Window, James and Barry curated a group of artists who I felt held the mirror to 06. It was funny, dystopic and experimental. I hope, in 07, they will do it again. Here are some of Barry’s highlights for the year.

Susan Dessel’s bodies from our show
videos of Robert Boyd
Jeremy Eilers sculptures
Klara Liden Bodies of Society 2006
New Charles Goldman sculpture
This 9/11 show
Heather Rowe’s sculpture
Jacques Louis Vidal’s videos

Barry adds at the end of his list “I saw a lot of painting I liked too.” permanent link to this post

Dec 30, 2006

06 cya

posted at 22:27 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

Nerdz Rising 06
Cory Archangel at Team
Jessica Ciocci at Foxy Production
Michael Bell-Smith at Foxy Production
Paul Slocum at Vertex List
Tom Moody at Artmoving Projects
Jennifer & Kevin McCoy at Postmasters

Straight up Net Art
UNIVERSAL ACID
punk rock 101
Toni Burlap
With Elements of Web 2.0
Weather Gauge
Tracking Transience
Oil Standard, Greasemonkey conversion of US Dollars to Barrels of Oil
DVblogH4ck
www.pulp.href
<$BlogPageTitle$>
Lambs In Ascension
Tracking Transience
deptofnetworkperformance
Midnight
My Digital Pog Page

Some Other Good Stuff (Lots of MOMA for some reason)
Dada at MOMA
“…But I was Cool”, Jerry Gant, Robert Pruitt and Dread Scott at Aljira
Lee Walton at Conflux
Noah Lyon at 33 Bond Street
Herzog & de Meuron at MOMA
Douglas Gordon at MOMA
8 Bit at MOMA
On and Off at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
Nicole Eisenman at Leo Koenig Inc.
The Downtown Show at The Grey Art Gallery

Update: (aka oh, yeah)
Strange Powers at Creative Time
permanent link to this post

Dec 29, 2006

another leftover 06 AIOTD

posted at 15:58 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

The Long Campaign

A computer driven, dual channel, video of a MTAA rock, scissor, paper game. Software selects chance game play and keeps the accumulated score forever. permanent link to this post

Dec 28, 2006

AIOTD 06 Leftovers

posted at 15:48 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

…a late Merry Christmas or an early Happy New Year to all.

And now, by popular demand (of one MTAA fan), here are a few leftover AIOTD’s from 06 for you to snack on.

Power of Love and Hate - a dual portrait of MTAA listing (off the cuff) all the things they love and hate using overlapping dialogue.

Believing (In the Morning) - a dual portrait of MTAA enthusiastically using morning beauty products.

Clocking In - a computer driven video in which MTAA chimes the hours by beating an alarm clock with bats.

I think we have some more 06 AIOTDs sitting around. We’ll post them if they show up permanent link to this post

Dec 24, 2006

House music making a comeback?

posted at 14:37 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Cory Arcangel is probably the hippest person I know. If he’s linking to Brooklyn Bounce videos from his del.icio.us feed, perhaps BIG house music is ready for a comeback? I have to admit, listening to Get Ready To Bounce really made me want to dance; more than current dance music.

Maybe jungle will come back with it? ;-)

Or maybe I’m just a nostalgic old geezer.

Merry Christmas! permanent link to this post

Dec 23, 2006

Copy-paste (net.)art

posted at 23:36 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

It seems particularly apt that I simply copy and paste this post from We Make Money Not Art…

0galerijasi.jpg
Last May, i blogged about Plagiarismo, an exhibition that tried to demonstrate that the appropriation and re-formulation of other artists’ ideas is an essential component of culture.

Vuk Cosic - who’s having a solo exhibition at the Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana- wrote me then that he was putting together a show called CTRL-C on a similar subject. The show has just opened at the galerija Simulaker in Slovenia. Here’s the gist:

From Duchamp and Benjamin to Beuys the art of the previous century has asked the question of copying and multiplying as a legitimate artistic practice. The advent of the internet has dramatically placed the digital original and digital copy in the very center of artistic but also economic frictions.

Mere simplicity of making copies is socially not perceived as a liberating tool for artistic creation but is turning out to be the main point of conflict between economic interests and those of societies at large. Traditionalists fighting for Intellectual Property are trying to pull the giants from under our feet.

The CTRL-C show is presenting projects exclusively focused on the artistic relevance of the digital copy. Exhibited works are using the language of the non-original to express a very concrete critique of the circumstances in the world of art and in the society. All works in the show have provided their authors with a measure of scandal and a bigger measure of fame:

In September 1997, Vuk Ćosić made an almost perfect copy of the website of Documenta X before it was taken down by the organisers of the famous contemporary art show. The artist saw his act as an “expression of a rebellion against the art system and the return of art from a gallery into reality.”

0020101t.jpgEpilogue: The copy found its way into relevant “kunst.historisch” literature and is still accessible on the author’s internet server. Being a legitimate and conceptual work it has been exhibited many times, also at the Venice Bienale in 2001.

In 1997, 0100101110101101.ORG made a series of clones of well-known net.art projects (hell.com, art teleportacia, Jodi) as a digital monument to the principles upon which the Internet runs. “The belief that information must be free,” explained at the time Renato, 0100101110101101.ORG spokesman, “is a tribute to the way in which a very good computer or a valid program works: binary numbers move in accordance with the most logic, direct and necessary way to do their complex function. What is a computer if not something that benefits by the free flow of information? Copyright is boring.”

Epilogue: The three copies are still accessible on the authors’ server. Nowadays they are known for their numerous net.art projects, acknowledged by the public and the media.

In 1999, Rtmark – The Yes Men altered the website of the World Trade Organization and made it very similar to the original. They received invitations to symposia (no one’s going to forget their talk and little demo at the Textiles of the Future conference in Tampere), where they presented the identity of GATT as they understood it.

0yesmort.jpg 0yeszizi.jpg
Yes Men stunts in Salzburg and Tampere

Epilogue: The authors belong to the group of the most recognizable names of the New Media scene. A documentary has been made about their work (also available on google video btw.)

0enikmaa.jpgDuring the exhibition of Fluxus in 2005, Gordan Karabogdan and Nikica Klobučar snatched a few of Beuys’ videos, copied them at their home and returned the “originals” without anyone noticing it. They even produced free copies and the media comprehended this deed as a criminal act.

Epilogue: The work, called Enigma of an object, ended with an act of handing over the copied films and entire documentation to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka.

Thanks Vuk for the information and translations! permanent link to this post

Dec 22, 2006

Please address me thusly

posted at 18:03 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid


My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
His Excellency T.Whid the Loquacious of Molton St Anywhere

Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title… permanent link to this post

Dec 17, 2006

Automate QuickTime video on OS X

posted at 20:21 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid/geek

This post may be helpful for artists and other creatives that need to automate the launching of digital video files using QuickTime on the Mac OS.

MTAA is in a group show in January and we’re showing a simple digital video loop. The goal was to automate the launching of the video full screen and looping when the computer starts up. The strategy was to use an AppleScript as a login item to achieve this.

The straightforward way to do this is to create a script that tells QuickTime to open the file, play it full screen and loop by pointing to the explicit path of the file on disk, e.g bootdisk:path:to:foo.mov. The problem with this is that if the file is moved QuickTime can’t open it. To make it more error-proof I wanted to make one application package with the video inside it. This allows there to be one file that can be moved to any Mac and double-clicked to start the video playing with all the properties I need.

After a bit of research and trial-and-error I think I came up with a decent solution.

I should note here that you can set QuickTime movies to play full screen on launch in the Movie Properties/Presentation panel of QuickTime Pro, but I couldn’t find a way to tell it to always loop so I took the approach below. If there is a way to tell a QuickTime movie to loop on launch then I wasted a bunch of time ;-) On the other hand, for a video that QuickTime can play but isn’t wrapped in the QuickTime container (like a straight-up MPEG4) this is probably the only way to do it.

Regardless, this is what I did:

First, in Script Editor (/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor), I created a new script and saved it as an ‘application bundle’ (making sure to uncheck ‘Startup Screen’). This created an application package — basically, a special folder — almost every OS X application is this format. By control-clicking this application in the Finder, I selected ‘Show Package Contents’ in the contextual menu. This opened a new Finder window with a folder called ‘Contents.’ Inside Contents was a folder called ‘Resources’ (and some other files). I copied my video file into the Resources folder.

Back to Script Editor, I typed a script very similar to this: 

--set path to video file
set _f to ((path to me) as string) ¬
	& "Contents:Resources:foo.mov"

-- open and play it
tell application "QuickTime Player"
	launch
	activate
	stop every movie
	close every movie saving no
	try
		my play_movie(_f)
	on error
		(* in case the file has been 
		moved or deleted for some reason *)
		choose file with prompt ¬
			"File not found! Please locate it:"
		set _f to result
		my play_movie(_f)
	end try
end tell

on play_movie(_file)
	tell application "QuickTime Player"
		open _file
		tell movie 1
			(*
			you can put any properties you
			need in here
			*)
			set looping to true
			present scale screen
		end tell
	end tell
end play_movie
Note: this script doesn’t work when run from Script Editor. It needs to be saved and launched by double-clicking the application bundle.

In the end, I have a little app that contains my video, is easily copied from computer to computer and can be set as a login item so it launches automatically when the computer starts. For a bonus, it’s easy to replace the icon by replacing the file applet.icns in the Resources folder in the application bundle. I used CocoThumbX to create a new icns file.

Another tip: if you need to edit the script a bit, you should go into the bundle and open the main.scpt file in the [app bundle]:Contents:Resources:Scripts folder instead of editing the actual app bundle file. If your video file is large, it takes a long time to save the script when you’re editing the bundle as opposed to the script on it’s own. permanent link to this post

Dec 14, 2006

iPhil can be yours

posted at 13:57 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

$250 to the Rhizome benefit gets you a MTAA print of iPhil
Yup. That’s right. For supporting a new media not for profit, you can own an MTAA work that does not need to be plugged in. Wild. permanent link to this post

Dec 11, 2006

We meet Rick Silva in person

posted at 02:23 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

The other night M.River and I attended Dorkbot with presentations by (among others) Rick Silva and Marisa Olson.

M.River snapped this pic of me, Marisa, Tom Moody and Rick Silva:

IMGP8282.JPG

Special bonus, more studio tests:
IMGP8338.JPG permanent link to this post

Dec 05, 2006

land of the ice and snow..

posted at 14:49 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

Saw fellow camp Creative Capital 06 alum Jane Marsching last night. Her project is up. Check it.

Climate Commons - a networked conversation about climate change, sustainability, and the Arctic developed by Jane D. Marsching with Matthew Shanley from November 27 2006 - February 28, 2007.

climate-commons.net

Also, if you’re in Boston, Jane’s show “Arctic Listening Post” is at the ICA from December 10, 2006 - March 11, 2007.

Update: Here is Holland Cotter’s NTY review of the shows up at the ICA with a mention of Jane’s project. permanent link to this post

Dec 04, 2006

MTAA in Miami

posted at 15:29 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Not!

For some reason or another we never find our way to Miami Beach for the December art fairs. This is probably a good thing for those that might otherwise catch a startlingly bright glimpse of our NTSC-illegal-white bodies burning like phosphorous on the beach.

Hoping everyone has fun. permanent link to this post

Nov 30, 2006

Detroit Rock City

posted at 13:26 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

NYT on the new MOCAD permanent link to this post

Nov 28, 2006

CC v Zune

posted at 14:52 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid/geek

Wired.com’s Listening Post blog touches on the back-asswards Zune player and its non-compatibility with Creative Commons licenses. The crux of the issue is that the Zune will apply DRM to any song that is shared (or, um, ‘squirted’) between Zunes via the wifi feature regardless of what license is applied to the song. Creative Commons is adding language to their licenses that will explicitly make it a violation of the license to do this.

Read the story (with comments) here.

It will be interesting to see if any lawsuits result because of this. Have there been any CC-related lawsuits yet? permanent link to this post

Whitney at the High Line

posted at 01:28 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

I’m sure everyone that reads this web site probably already knew…

[via NYT]
A month after the Dia Art Foundation scrapped its plans to open a museum at the entrance to the High Line, the abandoned elevated railway line that the city is transforming into a public park, the Whitney Museum of American Art has signed on to take its place and build a satellite institution of its own downtown.

The Whitney recently reached a conditional agreement on Wednesday night with the city’s Economic Development Corporation to buy the city-owned site, at Washington and West Streets in the meatpacking district, officials at the museum said yesterday. Plans call for the new museum to be at least twice the size of the Whitney’s home on Madison Avenue at 75th Street, they said, and to be finished within the next five years.
permanent link to this post

Nov 26, 2006

MTAA art at home in NJ

posted at 14:20 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

When it came time to remove our installation 3’ High and Rising, Newark from the E7 show at Aljira, we received an email asking if MTAA would be interested in donating the work. We, of course, said “Yes. It’s for you.” So, like Cats on Broadway, MTAA is “now and forever” raising the desk at Aljira in Newark, NJ by 3 feet. permanent link to this post

Nov 22, 2006

Parachute fails

posted at 17:11 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

image.jpg

The Canadian contemporary art magazine PARACHUTE ceases publication. This sucks.

From the press release (available in PDF: english | french):
Montreal, 20 November 2006 — The contemporary art magazine PARACHUTE, founded in 1974, has taken the difficult decision to suspend its activities. Despite the success of its new format, introduced in 2000, and its international recognition, funding levels no longer make it possible to ensure a reasonable level of quality and stability.

Despite its determination and efforts to maintain the journal’s presence on the contemporary art scene and to continue operations, PARACHUTE’s board of directors was obliged to take this last-resort decision after examining all the economic and social factors which would have enabled the journal to extract itself from the impasse facing it. The journal had recently succeeded in increasing its sales by more than 200% while at the same time cutting expenses and trimming budgets. Major fundraising efforts over the last years have produced significant but insufficient results. As well, the repeated demands on government agencies have been unproductive. An overall drop in subsidies, in tandem with the current funding structure of the journal and the media environment today make the task that much more complex. Despite PARACHUTE’s exceptional longevity in a highly competitive milieu — a longevity owing to the enthusiasm of its contributors and readers and to the unflagging determination of its director — its suspension of activities at this time highlights the precariousness of cultural organizations in Quebec and the rest of Canada.
permanent link to this post

Baste every 10 minutes

posted at 14:16 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

For my brother Doug and all who will attempt to roast a turkey for the first time this year:

McSweeney’s
BUTTERBALL HELP-LINE HELP-LINE

twhid adds…
…my humble turkey related links. permanent link to this post

Nov 21, 2006

MartinLutherKing[dot]org run by racists

posted at 15:35 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

MartinLutherKing[dot]org is run by racists. If you go to the site (don’t go there) there is a link at the bottom of the page that says it’s hosted by Stormfront, a racist group. A quick Google search for “Martin Luther King” provides a link to martinlutherking[dot]org in the first slot.

Here are some better links, that should really make up the first page of results on Google:

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King

[via] | [digg it] permanent link to this post

Nov 17, 2006

BuzzFeed

posted at 22:47 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Jonah Peretti’s new venture, BuzzFeed is live. Sure, there are other people involved (John Johnson and Kenneth Lerer of The Huffington Post) but this thing has Peretti’s fingerprints all over it.

I don’t want to be a buzz kill, but I’m unsure how this is going to be different from Technorati or Digg. They’ve added editorial oversight and commentary it seems, but is that a just throwback to pre-crowdsourcing techniques?

They’re in the early stages of this thing and I’m sure Jonah and the gang have a lot up their sleeves.

Congrats!

update
Looking over BuzzFeed a tad more I’d like to amend my first response. BuzzFeed is doing something different than Technorati and Digg. Where Technorati will tell you there are n number of links to story x, BuzzFeed is focused on larger trends. It gives you relevant links to the larger meme. Also, the archives are great.

I’d like to know more about it though. Are they only analyzing the sites under ‘sites making buzz’? Oops, I guess I should have read the about page, it says they track 50,000 sites. That doesn’t answer what the ‘sites making buzz’ list is however. permanent link to this post

Nov 16, 2006

Last minute reminder: 3x3 was last night!

posted at 17:31 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

Just in case you don’t look at dates and just do what the MTAA-RR tells you, the show was last night.

Blind following of the MTAA-RR is fine, in most cases, but we would not want you showing up at EFI, find a locked door and then wonder why we would go the empty gallery as art route again.

Oh, yeah. The 3x3 show was fun. permanent link to this post

Nov 15, 2006

Last minute reminder: 3x3 tonight!

posted at 22:47 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

The world premier of The Un-scary Movie! A very, very short video by MTAA at:

3 Minutes : 3 Hours
Wednesday November 15 – 7pm
EFA Gallery | EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor, NYC

More info here.

Be there or be a rhombus. permanent link to this post

Artist billboards of gay Poles banned

posted at 16:14 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Billboards of portraits of gay Poles by Polish artist Karolina Bregula were censored by Lamar Outdoor Advertising.

Edward Winkleman has the lowdown (along with a call to action). There’s info on Newsgrist as well.

Institutionalized bigotry against gays, lesbians and transgender people really needs to end. Now. How long can we continue to treat a good portion of our population like second-class citizens? permanent link to this post

Nov 14, 2006

Wiley Wiggins comments on Cory

posted at 18:23 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Wiley Wiggins, star of Dazed and Confused has commented on Cory Arcangel’s Untitled Translation Exercise (scroll down). Read Wiggins’ blog post.

Note: “Untitled Translation Exercise” is Cory’s video that re-dubs Dazed and Confused using Indian outsourcing workers.

Also, Cory would, presumably, be publicly executed under the Realtime Art Manifesto. permanent link to this post

Realtime Art Manifesto

posted at 18:08 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

It’s safe to say that I disagree with the majority a whole bunch of this (including the idea of writing a manifesto at all…).

An interesting read none-the-less.

+++

Realtime Art Manifesto by Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn

1. Realtime 3D is a medium for artistic expression.
2. Be an author.
3. Create a total experience.
4. Embed the user in the environment.
5. Reject dehumanisation: tell stories.
6. Interactivity wants to be free.
7. Don’t make modern art.
8. Reject conceptualism.
9. Embrace technology.
10. Develop a punk economy.


[via]

m.river adds:
“including the idea of writing a manifesto at all…”

We did write one.

[Artainment]

twhid responds:
Yeah, but ours was ironic.

Irony, under the Realtime Art Manifesto, is punished by having kneecaps shattered. permanent link to this post

Nov 13, 2006

computerfinearts.com @ [DAM] Berlin

posted at 18:07 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

This is a tad late, but the show runs through December 5th.
COMPUTER FINE ARTS COLLECTION OF DORON GOLAN

Internet Art / Software Art

www.computerfinearts.com

Exhibition 06:
10th November 2006 – 5th December 2006

Doron Golan collects artwork, which have been developed for the internet. He concentrated on an aspect of contemporary art, which was consindered as not marketable. The different pieces, which were developed specifically for the Web are free available for everybody. In many cases the internet, with its specific possibilities, is an integral part of the artwork. By aquiring these pieces he enables the persistence of these artworks online. The collection is internationally and you´ll find some important artists, which were already known for internet-art in the 1990s. We present his collection as a projection in the gallery.

[DAM] Berlin
Digital Art Museum
Tucholskystr. 37
D-10117 Berlin

Tue- Fri 12-6 pm | Sat 12-4 pm


There’s a lot of great stuff in Doron’s collection. It’s a very valuable resource, so check it out! permanent link to this post

Nov 08, 2006

Rumsfeld: force quit

posted at 20:42 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid/politics

Too funny not to republish! (via boingboing)  

Rumsfeldresignation.jpg permanent link to this post

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 9]

posted at 16:37 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid



Part 9 is ready for download. (MP3, 10.2MB, 16’00)

In which M.River and T.Whid blather on about inane stuff as they count down to the end of this torturous exercise. Lauren Cornell pops in at the end to provide some much needed relief.

This is the final installment in this series. permanent link to this post

FUCKING FINALLY!

posted at 04:45 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid/politics

Dems win House!!!

CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and even FOX news call the house for the Dems.

The beginning of the end of the nightmare called the Bush Administration is at hand.

update
It’s the morning of the 8th now and it looks like a great win! As I’m writing this the Democrats have picked up at least 27 seats in the House (as reported by the NYT and the WaPo) and it’s looking good for the Senate too. Webb (D) is up by only .3% (7847 votes)! and the Democrat Tester in Montana is up by .4% (1735 votes)! If the dems can hold on there (and that’s a big ‘if’ because we all know how good the repubs are at cheating and lying) then the members of the reality-based community get a win (almost) beyond our wildest dreams :-)

I’m from Ohio and the map below (from NYT) illustrates just how far the Democrats have come in just two years. Look at all that blue :-)

ohio_map_2006_election.gif
For more maps like this go here, select ‘state by state’ then select a state on the left.

update 2
Holy shit! Rumsfeld is out! Almost better news than the Congressional revolution. permanent link to this post

Nov 07, 2006

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 8]

posted at 02:49 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid



Part 8 is ready for download. (MP3, 11.2MB, 16’36)

In which T.Whid chats with Marisa Olson.

And in case you’re wondering, there’s only one more after this. I suppose that’s either good news or bad news depending on your point-of-view. permanent link to this post

Nov 06, 2006

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 7]

posted at 01:36 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid



Part 7 is ready for download. (MP3, 10.1MB, 15’28)

In which M.River talks to some guy that seems to really hate art, artists and anything to do with art and artists except for the free drinks at openings (which he can’t drink because he’s training for a marathon). Helen chimes in now and then with wisecracks. permanent link to this post

Nov 04, 2006

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 6]

posted at 18:50 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid



Part 6 is ready for download. (MP3, 5.5MB, 8’07)

In which T.Whid talks to Tinydiva (AKA Margaret Jameson). Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch, a good portion of the interview was lost :(

Make sure to listen to Tinydiva’s submission (entitled Running — direct link; MP3, 35MB, 15’16) to To Be Listened To… permanent link to this post

The world premier of The Unscary Movie - Nov 15

posted at 16:33 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

The world premier of The Unscary Movie - a very, very short video by MTAA

In the spring Marina Zurkow asked us if we could make a 3 minute film in 3 hours. We said, “Yup. ”

In the early summer, we filmed Coney Island’s Dante’s Inferno ride. It took a bit more than 3 minutes but not much more. In the early fall, we edited the film. It took a bit more than 3 hours but not much more.

The Unscary Movie is, for the most part, black video. It is, for the most part, loud. It is, for the most part, 3 minutes of sitting in the dark while someone screams and groans. Sometimes a monster pops up. Sometimes you see daylight. It’s not very scary. It’s not action packed. If you come to see it, you should just pass the 3 minutes thinking of the summer past. Feel free to scream along.

3 Minutes : 3 Hours
Wednesday November 15 – 7pm
EFA Gallery | EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor, NYC

premiering 3 x 3 works by artists:

Chris Doyle, Margarida Garcia, Josh Greene, Oliver Kellhammer, Erin Lee, Zachary Mortensen, MTAA, Ruth Ozeki, Michael Portnoy, Robert Ransick, Marcia Scott, Abigail Simon, Elaine Tin Nyo, Lance Wakeling, Josh Weinstein, Marina Zurkow,(+ organized by Marina Zurkow) permanent link to this post

Pickle passion

posted at 15:09 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid/geek

si.jpg
If you love, or even like, pickles. Then run, don’t walk, ah… somewhere to pick up some of Rick’s Picks. Be warned though, they ain’t cheap (11 bucks a jar on the web site).

The newly (re-)opened Cobblestone Foods in my neighborhood in Brooklyn started carrying them and I picked up a jar of the Spears of Influence last night. It was a really fucking good pickle. It was, perhaps, even better than Guss’ Pickles. But I think I should treat my wife and myself to a taste test to decide.

Mmmmmmmm, test taste… I mean mmmmmmm taste test… permanent link to this post

Nov 03, 2006

just another cool show alert…

posted at 18:57 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

One of the best parts of our residency at Aljira and our retreat with Creative Capital was the chance to meet and be mentored by the artist Dread Scott. Dread has been making politically strong and conceptually sharp work for years. I believe his advice and encouragement has helped focus our studio practice over the last few months. When you make work that does not always mesh well with what you believe the art world is, it’s good to hear from an artist who has navigated his work within the artworld while maintaining his work’s heart.

Dread will be showing at Aljira this fall with Jerry Gant, and Robert Pruitt. Sounds like it will be a great show. So, check it out.

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
Aljira: a Center for Contemporary Art
³…But I was Cool²
November 9, 2006-January 27, 2007
Opening reception Nov. 9, 2006 5:30 PM ­ 7:30 PM

Exhibition with Jerry Gant, Robert Pruitt and Dread Scott
Panel Discussion with the artists Sunday Nov 12, Noon
Artists Talk Nov. 12, 2006 12 noon ­ 2:00 PM

permanent link to this post

Nov 02, 2006

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 5]

posted at 16:50 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid



Part 5 is ready for download. (MP3, 5.3MB, 8’26)

In which M.River talks with the one and only Mark Napier as T.Whid goes AWOL in order to smoke. permanent link to this post

Nov 01, 2006

Olia Lialina in NYC

posted at 15:59 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

A Conversation with Olia Lialina
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
601 W 26th Street, Suite 1240
New York, NY 10001
212-243-8830

November 2, 2006 6:30PM

In conjunction with the exhibition On and Off at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, celebrated artist and net.art pioneer Olia Lialina will discuss her work with curator Caitlin Jones. Using her iconic work “My Boyfriend Came Back from the War” as a springboard, Lialina will address issues such as the changing aesthetic and thematic landscape of the web, new models of authorship and participation; and the outward expansion of network based ideas and practice into off-line spaces and contexts.


Lialina is one of the original net.artists. All the true heads will be in attendance I’m sure ;-) And note, this is also in conjunction with Rhizome’s Tenth Anniversay Festival. permanent link to this post

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 4]

posted at 14:28 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid



Part 4 is ready for download. (MP3, 11.6MB, 17’23)

This one features MTAA babbling about the opening and a short interview with Patrick May, artist and Rhizome’s Director of Technology.

Also, some files were uploaded to 2bl2 that we think are in arabic (and look to have been uploaded from an ISP in the United Arab Emirates). The uploader neglected to add them to a feed so I added them to the ‘…in a park in Europe as you wait for the sun to rise and the snow to stop’ feed. If anyone knows arabic, please enlighten us as to the content. We’re curious. permanent link to this post

Oct 30, 2006

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 3]

posted at 21:42 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid


Go there now! Get your iTunes on.

Part 3 is ready for download. (MP3, 4.4MB, 06’52)

This one features GH busting some Dan Graham moves.

We have a few more parts to go. So settle in… permanent link to this post

NEW MEDIA ART

posted at 21:06 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

NEWMED~1.png

THE LAST AVANT-GARDE

Rough version of an interview with Mark Tribe & Reena Jana, authors of NEW MEDIA ART (Taschen, 2006). A shorter version has been published in Flash Art Italia, Issue 260, October - November 2006, p. 73.

Domenico Quaranta: Even from an editorial point of view, your book describes new media art as a movement (such as Surrealism or Conceptualism) rather than a mere possibility of the medium. This is a very interesting point. Do you believe in it or is this a marketing strategy? Is new media art the last avant-garde, and why?

Mark Tribe: Before we discuss New Media art as a movement, we describe it more generically in terms of “projects that make use of emerging media technologies and are concerned with the cultural, political, and aesthetic possibilities of these tools.” I think this is more-or-less what you mean by “a possibility of the medium.” […]

keep reading… NEW MEDIA ART permanent link to this post

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 2]

posted at 01:46 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid


Get up on it!

Part 2 is ready for download. (MP3, 15MB, 13’11)

Go to To Be Listened To… and upload your own stuff for crying out loud! permanent link to this post

Oct 28, 2006

MTAA At The Art Opening [part 1]

posted at 16:26 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid


The title of a series of audio files we’re releasing has been sort of up-in-the-air so I decided (unilaterally btw (sorry M)) that I’m going to call it “MTAA At The Art Opening.” It’s a series of audio recordings that we’ll be releasing via our podcast website “To Be Listened To…”. (See this for more info.)

You can download part 1 of “MTAA At The Art Opening” now! (MP3, 14.4MB, 12’39)

Please stare at this image of MTAA as you listen to part 1. Also, subscribe to the podcast feed in iTunes (iTunes link) or other podcast client (RSS link) to get future parts as they’re released.

Note: alternately, we’ve been calling this piece “2BL2 Rhizome Reception” and “A Live Demonstration of MTAA Art Practice At Rhizome’s Reception For The 2005 - 2006 Net Art Commissions” and having no title at all. It’s all very confusing. permanent link to this post

Oct 25, 2006

Dangling Between The Real Thing And The Sign In The Window

posted at 21:21 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Barry Hoggard and James Wagner have released a very thorough and extensive web site documenting their curatorial effort, “Dangling Between The Real Thing And The Sign In The Window” at Dam, Stuhltrager in Brooklyn.

It’s a shame that most art exhibitions don’t have such a great resource accompanying them. permanent link to this post

MTAA @ NuMu last night

posted at 13:42 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

imgp7843.jpg

More at: M.River’s Tinjail/tintype photoblog. Start here and work your way back.

See this and this for more info. permanent link to this post

Oct 24, 2006

McCoy lite™ ?

posted at 19:18 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

friday13.jpg

Friday the 13th: In 7 Minutes is a video on YouTube that…

[…] features every on-screen death in the film series FRIDAY THE 13th, displayed back to back and in chronological order.


See Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s Every Anvil for context. permanent link to this post

Oct 23, 2006

2BL2 live demo

posted at 15:51 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Cutting-edge cute!

Making fun… for everyone!

Back from decrepitude!

YES! The long-awaited live demonstration of “To Be Listened To…”!!!

>>> Listen to the exciting announcement in MP3 format <<<

When? Tomorrow Oct 24, 2006, 6:30PM - 8:30PM
Where? New Museum bookstore (google map)
Why? ask Rhizome
How: 1 mic, 1 MTAA, 1 laptop, 1 crowd of new media swells and their hangers-on

>>> Listen to the exciting announcement in MP3 format <<<

As part of the reception for the 2005-2006 Rhizome Commissions.

Be there or be a parallelogram! permanent link to this post

Oct 21, 2006

boo

posted at 13:57 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

2 Halloween links I found this morning that you might enjoy…

a haunted house made out of balloons
ghost in the Tate permanent link to this post

Oct 20, 2006

to give back

posted at 18:20 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

Infinitive Phil
Digital Print by MTAA
11 x 17 edition of 20
$250

Made exclusively for Rhizome, this print captures the still frames from the artists’ video contribution to Cory Arcangel’s legendary ‘Infinite Fill’ exhibition, in which Phil Hartman plays Phil Donahue

Rhizome Community Campaign

DC 911 - The Evildoers’ Remix
DVD with unique cover collage
1 hour 10 minutes.
$100

DC 911 is a guerilla edit of the pro-Bush propaganda film DC 9/11 - A Time of Crisis. First shown during the 2004 RNC at Postmasters Galley in New York. The video is a collaboration between new media art duo MTAA, video artist bodyatomic and musician/DJ tinydiva

Turbulence Fundraiser
permanent link to this post

Oct 19, 2006

2bl2 live in store.

posted at 02:19 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

A live demonstration of MTAA art practice in which a recording will be made of the event celebrating the artwork made. In other words, at the opening celebrating the public release of the MTAA’s artwork 2bl2, commissioned by the good folks of rhizome.org, MTAA will create a new 2bl2 sound artwork using the sound of the opening. I’m thinking about it as a big information loop. Get it?…No? Ummmm…Ok - I understand. T.Whid’s not sure about this one as well. How about: please come to the opening and see MTAA do some stuff that we like to call art? It might be interesting. Ok, Please. How’s that? Please. Please. I’ve gone to so many openings and events this past month that my eyes are tearing shut. I keep having that same sad conversations at openings that I kick myself about later. “Oh No, yeah. We’re working on stuff in the studio. Yeah. You should stop in. That would be cool.”. I never really know what to say. I end up all panicked. This time will be different. I’ll have you by my side while I go through it. Just come over and sit down. Say “Hello.” Help me stay calm and focused. Please. Thanks.

RHIZOME COMMISSIONS 2005-2006
New Museum Store
556 West 22nd Street
NYC
October 24, 2006 6:30pm

Participants: Hans Bernhard and Alessandro Ludovico, Peter Horvath, Jason Corace and Vicky Fang, Andy Deck, Jason Freeman, Sean Kerr, Ethan Ham and Tony Muilenberg, MTAA, Thomas Laureyssens, Adriaan Stellingwerff

Admission: FREE

“The Rhizome Commissions Program makes financial support available to artists for the creation of original works of Internet-based art. In 2005, Rhizome awarded eleven grants to an international group of artists. All the works took the Internet as their primary vehicle for exhibition; several also extended off the web as sculpture, video or installation. This evening will celebrate the works with a one-night installation and presentations by several of the commissioned artists. Cocktails will be served.”

update: note to self - never blog with a fever permanent link to this post

Oct 18, 2006

another tinjail shot.

posted at 13:33 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

rhizome at 1071

Yeah, I know it’s kinda hard to tell what’s going on but it might sum up the energy of the night. permanent link to this post

Oct 16, 2006

P-UNIT

posted at 17:59 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

This week from 11am to 11pm, Noah Lyon (aka retardroit) presents “The Living Installation: Part Deuxxx Tracying Eminem” at the soon to open 33 Bond Gallery. Stop on in and check out the work in progress. Closing party Sat Oct 21.

Tinjail pic from the first night.
permanent link to this post

last one out, hit the lights.

posted at 12:28 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

We are about to loose one of the great music and art venues in New York City. No, not CBGB’s. They shut down last night. I’m talking about Monkeytown. Looks like the doors shut in early November. Go see what you’ll wish you had while it’s still here.

Hmmm…Monkeytown Las Vegas anyone? permanent link to this post

Oct 13, 2006

MTAA’s studio on a top block in NYC?

posted at 14:48 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

According to TimeOut NY, MTAA’s studio (at 60 N.6th St. btw Wythe & Kent) is on the 40th best block in NYC. It’s true, they said that (scroll down)!

What they said:
40. North 6th Street between Kent and Wythe Avenues, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Near the waterfront, this block affords unobstructed views of Manhattan in a quintessential Williamsburg setting, near cutting-edge restaurants, cooler-than-thou bars and trendy boutiques.


Are they insane? (OK, yes, this is N.6th between Berry & Wythe, but you get the idea.)

We do have some Bansky on our building… perhaps that makes it a top block?

And, of course, the inevitable question: does this mean our rent is going up? permanent link to this post

Oct 10, 2006

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

posted at 16:49 GMT by M.River in /news/mriver

General note: It’s Friday, October the 13th this week.

More info on Paraskevidekatriaphobia

twhid adds:
the inevitable Wikipedia link… permanent link to this post

Oct 09, 2006

McCoys in WaPo

posted at 15:50 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

mccoy_wapo2.jpg

Our favorites, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, are profiled in the Washington Post today.

The article bounces back and forth from bio piece:
Kevin, who is 39, is in torn jeans, a plain black T-shirt and scuffed black running shoes. He has long, unruly locks and a mustache that crawls, sluglike, down the sides of his chin. He could pass for a stoner selling used guitars.

His wife, 38, is notably more tidy. She sits near him wearing fresh khakis, a flowery green vest over a clean white shirt (untucked, because she’s pregnant with their second child ) and sparkly little flats. Her straight hair is cut at girlish shoulder length.

To discussions of the art:
[Their recent show in LA] is typical McCoy. It’s built around the cultural theories they were both schooled in in France — structuralism and its descendant, deconstruction — which emphasize the constructedness of all experience. The theories insist, that is, that culture, including silly children’s books, conditions everything we think we know about our world, such as what counts as “special” and “scary,” and maybe also how girls and boys will “naturally” think. (The installations, say the McCoys, were partly inspired by watching Ginger, their 2-year-old daughter.)

But instead of mouthing off about such things, the McCoys’ art tries to flesh them out and test them: If our mental and cultural world is supposed to be constructed, then they’ll craft building blocks of sense and a machine that lets us watch them being put together into an edifice of meaning.


There’s a video accompanying the article that shows snippets of their work. It was a bit strange having to watch an ad for AT&T before seeing a clip of “Horror Chase,” but that’s what comes with main stream press I guess ;-)

Congrats guys!

Artists Who Dissect ‘Starsky & Hutch’ in the Washington Post. permanent link to this post

Oct 07, 2006

The MAMP is phat

posted at 20:30 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid/geek

If you need a quick and not-so-dirty way to set-up a MySQL, Apache and PHP system on your Mac, then MAMP (Macintosh, Apache, MySQL and PHP) can’t be beat for speed of set-up and ease-of-use.

There’s universal, powerpc and intel disk images available. The current (1.3.1) version installs MySQL 5.0.19 (with phpMyAdmin 2.7.0-pl2), PHP 4.4.2 and 5.1.4 (you can choose which to use in a simple preference panel) and Apache 2.0.55. It installs itself on non-standard ports so you can use OSX’s default web config alongside it if you like or, you can set Apache and MySQL to use their default ports (80 & 3306 respectively) and leave the OS X version of Apache off.

The developers recommend their product for local development only. You don’t want to use it as a production web server (especially with the out-of-the-box settings).

It looks like this nice piece of software has been around for about 2 years (Oct 2004 was their initial release). Not sure why I hadn’t caught wind of it until now. Rock on MAMP! permanent link to this post

Oct 05, 2006

Join the foie gras rebellion!

posted at 17:38 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

More on the haters trying to tell you what to eat in Salon today (must click through the ad to read the article).

The money quote:

[…] these ducks aren’t doing anything that a porn star doesn’t do on a regular basis.


And making my point:

Billions of chickens, hogs and beef are being harmed — that’s carnage on a far vaster scale — but big agribusiness is a difficult and powerful target. They don’t get much bang for their buck, from a political standpoint. It’s much easier to go for the small artisanal farmer with little resources and no lobbying group in D.C.


As I’ve said before, regardless of what you think of ‘gavage,’ do you really want politicians and the government enforcing prohibitions on food? permanent link to this post

Google’s not punk

posted at 13:36 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

Cory Arcangel’s “punk rock 101” (recently talked up here) has been shut down by Google. I don’t know the details, just received this brief email from Cory:

google shut off the cobain thing :(

If you visit now, instead of real ads you see the public service stuff. If I learn more I’ll post it here. permanent link to this post

And of course

posted at 13:34 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

The show that we’re not in is opening tonight :-) permanent link to this post

Oct 04, 2006

GH reports from Split

posted at 14:04 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

check it out… Split Festival Quick Report

G.H. Hovagimyan reports on the Split Festival of New Film in which MTAA’s “1 year performance video” was shown. There’s a text review as well as an MP3 interview (direct link) with Branko Karabatic, the head of the festival. permanent link to this post

1ypv reviewed (hebrew)

posted at 13:49 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

If you know hebrew you can read an article about our “1 year performance video” written by Avi Rosen.

Here’s the link. According to Avi this is a “a major Israeli computer & culture site”.

Avi was the first person to view 1ypv for an entire year. Thanks for the ink dude! permanent link to this post

Oct 03, 2006

AFC reviews 8 BIT

<