Archive for the ‘art’ Category

Machines and Souls. Digital Art and New Media

Monday, July 21st, 2008

If I was in Madrid before October 13th 2008 I would definitely check out this exhibit at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

MÁQUINAS & ALMAS. Arte digital y nuevos medios

Dearest congrats to Chico McMurtrie for his inflatable robots and Danny Rozin for his mechanical mirrors, both of them part of my New York memories…

From the website:

A comienzos del siglo XXI, arte y ciencia discurren por caminos paralelos a través del trabajo de un grupo de artistas que aúnan arte, tecnología, creatividad, misterio, emoción y belleza.

La exposición “Máquinas & Almas. Arte digital y nuevos medios”, que explora la convergencia ciencia-arte-tecnología, no es histórica, lineal y totalizadora, sino que refleja la historia de las transformaciones que subyacen bajo las prácticas de los artistas que forman parte de esta muestra.

Incluye el trabajo de 17 artistas que tienen en común una larga y reconocida carrera artística, madurez creativa, y el uso de la tecnología digital como herramienta. Les distingue la edad, su formación, los materiales que utilizan, y los métodos de trabajo.

Sin la creatividad y sensibilidad de los autores, el arte digital no es nada, por lo que esta tecnología es un vehículo, que se usa de forma diversa: como soporte, como elemento desarrollador o como método de investigación en la búsqueda de sensaciones nuevas, ya que los ordenadores por sí mismos no crean.

El resultado final es un recorrido de tremenda diversidad, muy representativo de este tipo de arte. Se puede contemplar los retratos interactivos de Rozin, al robot antropomórfico de McMurtrie, la video instalación de Farocky, las esculturas de luz de Friedlander, la instalación/denuncia de Muntadas, los ferrofluidos de Sachico Kodama, los colectivos marginados en Internet de Abad, el “Software Art” de Maeda, la instalación interactiva de Lozano-Hemmer, las pinturas digitales de Evru, las instalaciones de Daniel Canogar, las “bestias de la playa” de Jansen o el arte inclasificable de Byrne, Rubin, Hansa, Cosic, Hyghe y Jeremijenko.

More details.

@Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

We just came back from the @Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

©2008 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

One of the most internationally well-known contemporary Japanese artists, Takashi Murakami drinks of the popular and otaku culture to create his works of art in various media and non-negligible merchandising.

Murakami goes from the very childish universe of colorful smiling flowers, and the anime world of Kaikai Kiki (in the picture) or three-eyed Tan Tan Bo, to very adult and sexually explicit pieces like Miss Ko2, a long-legged waitress who has become one of the artist’s signature characters, Hiropon, a Japanese girl jumping a rope created by milk spurting from her gargantuan breasts, or her nude male counterpart whipping his sperm spurt. Also noticeable were his female Japanese girl transformers that greet you into the exhibit. Quite impressive.

Aside from his own merchandising, Murakami partnered with Louis Vuitton to create an exclusive line of bags. As part of the exhibit, one walks through a LV store, where one can actually purchase one of those bags or wallets. $2040 for a mid-size bag.
I found his Marcel Duchamp inspired ‘Box in a Valise’ series of miniaturized pieces, like a portable museum, very cute.

Watching his anime cartoons of Kakai Kiki traveling in the outer space and film stints (including a weird alien happy to be alive because he is turned on by a teenage girl) I had flashes of the Japanese series we watched on TV3: Capita Harlock, Dr. Slump, Candy Candy, Dragon Ball

Japanese culture is so fascinating and so bizarre to me at the same time…

Babylove: Bumping Teacups

Saturday, December 2nd, 2006

Last night I attended the opening of the exhibit ‘Babylove ‘ at the Chelsea Art Museum. Sponsored by Taiwanese cultural institutions, artist Shu Lea Cheang and programmer Olaf Matthes explore “our contemporary obsessive immersion in the virtual life of the internet and its impact on cultural practices. It is an installation which mixes nostalgia for a seemingly simpler age with the technically boggling interactive technology of the connections on the net, Cheang seems to be asking where will the ever new frontiers of the web take us? Will it lead to an expanded universe of knowledge or to a frightening scenario of dehumanization, where even the emotions of a baby can be programmed at will?

Baby Love is a wifi mobile installation that consists of 6 large autonomously mobile teacups (67 inches in diameter) with 6 clone babies (each 28 inches tall). The teacups are modeled after spinning carnival rides, except that the soundtrack of love songs can be uploaded by public via the web at http://babylove.biz and directly to the teacups, where they are coded as ME (memory and emotion) data for the clone babies. When the museum visitor takes a teacup ride with the babies, the ME data is retrieved, jumbled and eventually crashes. Baby Love situates human and baby clone riders in a perpetual spin which fuses the familiar fairground iconography with contemporary “remix” pop culture.”

It was actually a lot of fun. The ‘mobile’ part got me confused because I thought cellphones were going to be part of the piece, but it’s actually a ‘mobile’ installation because it literally ‘moves’. It’s been a while since I went to an art exhibit where I actually enjoyed it and the art ‘spoke’ to me.

Babylove at the Chelsea Art Museum
http://www.chelseaartmuseum.org/exhibits/2006/babylove/index.html

This video was shot with a Nokia 7610.