Shepard Fairey Talks

The thing that is interesting about Fairey is the mechanism of his career's success. How he integrates his commercial and personal art practice, his influences and his history are the topics of this talk at the Art Center. In the following question and answer session he also comments on his actions in the Hope case.  From March 2012.


"Should art be profitable? Shepard Fairey says yes. The famed L.A. street artists reveals his success and failures -- including the Obama Hope poster -- at Art Center Graphic Design Department's 3x3 lecture series featuring creative entrepreneurs."

People Staring at Computers

"

"People Staring at Computers by Kyle McDonald “People Staring at Computers” is a photographic intervention. I wrote a simple application that took one picture every minute. If it found a face, it uploaded the photo to my server. I installed the app around NYC over three days, collecting more than a thousand photos. Before sharing the photos online, I decided to exhibit them in the same places they were originally captured. So I wrote another app that could be remotely triggered after being installed on all the computers in one location. When the app starts up, it takes a picture and slowly fades in that photo. A moment later, it starts cycling through older photos. Most people instinctively quit the app less than 10 seconds after recognizing their own face, so the exhibition was relegated to the unused machines.

http://fffff.at/people-staring-at-computers/ 

==========

"Artist Kyle McDonald installed a program on computers in two New York Apple Store locations that automatically takes a photo every minute. Now his personal computers have been confiscated by the U.S. Secret Service.  ...

Over the course of the project, McDonald set up roughly 100 Apple store computers to call his servers every minute. That’s a lot of network traffic, and he learned that Apple monitors traffic in its stores when he received a photo from a Cupertino computer of what appeared to be an Apple technician. The technician had apparently traced the traffic to the site McDonald used to upload the program to Apple Store computers — and installed it himself.

McDonald figured that Apple had decided the program wasn’t a big deal. That was until four Secret Service men in suits woke him up on Thursday morning with a search warrant for computer fraud. ...

Before he began, he got permission from Apple’s security guards to take photos in the store, then asked customers if he could take their photos (with a camera). Had they all said no, he says, he wouldn’t have proceeded. He also refrained from putting the code for the photo-taking program online, as he does with most of his projects, because he recognized that the technology behind his art project could be used for less benign purposes. "

 http://mashable.com/2011/07/07/secret-service-apple-store-art-2/

Using Apple Store computers to accomplish the photography is a separate issue, and given that the Secret Service’s search warrant was for computer fraud, the use of them is likely the issue in question.

On Thursday, McDonald tweeted that the search warrant said he was in violation of 18 USC section 1030.

Eric Goldman, the director of the High Tech Law Institute and associate professor at Santa Clara Law, says that the law “restricts accessing someone else’s computer and obtaining information from that computer” and that “capturing images from Apple’s computers could trigger that standard.” Some other provisions of the same law could also apply, he says.

 http://mashable.com/2011/07/11/is-taking-secret-photos-in-an-apple-store-legal/

Pictoplasma - NY

Pictoplasma NYC
CONFERENCE: 4 + 5 NOVEMBER 2011

PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL FOR DESIGN

TISHMAN AUDITORIUM

66 WEST 12TH STREET, NEW YORK

EXHIBITIONS: 3 - 6 NOVEMBER 2011

The PICTOPLASMA NYC FESTIVAL once more stages ... a ... celebration of contemporary character culture, with a dense, extended weekend program of inspiring artist presentations, conference lectures, animation festival, character walk exhibitions and performances!
http://nyc.pictoplasma.com/

Abner Preis - Superheroes

Abner Preis Kickstarter from Harlan Levey Projects on Vimeo.

I picked Abner Preis as an upcoming talent to watch back in 2007, and his name keeps cropping up throughout Amsterdam events blogged here on Blakkbyrd.
Abner on Blakkbyrd

Now he's off to the States with his Superhero Project.

=======================

“Trained as a painter, Abner Preis has been making waves over the past several years. In a three year period, he has been invited as a featured artist to prominent art fairs such as Art Rotterdam, Art Brussels and the Scope Art Fair (Art Basel Miami Beach) as well as to exhibit works in respected cultural institutions and museums like the MU in The Netherlands, the Marta Hereford Museum in Germany and Austria’s Kunsthalle amongst others. The Superhero Project has featured at Brussels Fashion Week, Istanbul Design Week and the Rotterdam International Film Festival, providing a body of work that successfully walks the tightrope between art as activism, fine art, fashion, design and entertainment. Compared to artists as diverse as Joseph Beuys or Charlie Chaplin, Preis builds on the history of art to challenge it, using optimism, joy and imagination as the tools of his tender assault.

“Basically this project is about me going out in the streets dressed up like a Superhero, meeting strangers and asking them; If you had three super powers what would they be? Then I turn them into Superheroes like me.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/977354012/the-hero-in-all-of-us-portrait-of-america-2011

=======================
Interview on Warholean

Warholian had the pleasure of meeting Abner Preis and his Superhero Project at the 2010 Scope fair during Art Basel Week in Miami Florida. At Scope, Abner was asking everyday fair goers to imagine themselves as superheros. His goal: “to surprise, transform and empower people he meets as he travels the world.”

We sat down with Abner to discuss how this project came to be…

1. Tell us the history of “The Superhero Project”, how did you come to start this project?

“I was invited to do a video presentation at a class for severely handicapped people. The teacher invited me to give a talk about my work and discuss ideas about a video project that they had planned to do.

Every child was really handicapped… a class full of Stephen Hawkings, but all were super cool. Their idea for a movie was to make one of the kids a super hero who could fly… a slow motion smile settled on my face… “Fuck it! Why not? Yes, we can all be heroes!”

That’s when I realized my magical equation of “I equals S”.

I = imagination
S=superheroes

If you have Imagination, then you can be an Superhero.

(Incidentally, we still visit the Handicapp class every year, it is still a very special project)”

more
http://warholian.com/2011/06/13/abner-preis/

==========

If you would like to donate to “The Superhero Project” through Kickstarter.com, you may do so here:

To stay updated with Superhero Project, “Like” them on Facebook here.

Blakkbyrd & MoMA Modern Art

I recently set up a Blakkbyrd Twitter account and started using it to follow arts news. I trawled through several friends' following lists to quickly find the feeds that interested me including @MomaModernArt from the USA which I assumed was associated with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Approx 2 weeks after I opened the account I received a direct message to my email account.

It was from MomaModernArt asking me about my blog traffic, what was my monthly audience?

I thought this was a strange way to contact me so I replied out of curiosity. Note that the account is called MOMA MODERN ART from the USA. I sent a tweet to @MomaModernArt.

I received another direct message.  This time it was from New York City.

Again I thought this was very strange. I visited the website to check it out and it was called  http://www.ahh.com.br/presite/ and there was no mention of MOMA. So I sent a noncommittal tweet asking for more information.

I then received an email to advise that @MomaModernArt was following me.

The name has changed from MOMA MODERN ART to MoMA ART LOVERS and its now located in Rio.  It appears that I may have found this account through the Gemeente Museum in the Hague.  Note that the account has been operating long enough to gain 5000 followers. 

I did not receive any further messages from them, or answer to my request for more info.

I continued to receive tweets from @MomaModernArt for a couple of weeks and then noted that the account had been suspended.

====================


I  also follow @MuseumModernArt Museum of Modern Art from New York New York. The genuine MoMA.

And MoMaPS1

and SFMoMA

LAB ART Opening - LA

On May 12th, the Los Angeles’s street art community saw the opening of LAB ART Gallery. This gallery is curated by Iskander Lemesffer and his partner/sister Rachel Joelson.

The gallery roster included works from over 30 artists, consisting of more than 300 works. The 6,500 square feet of space included work from Smear, Destroy All Design, Kai Aspire, Thank You X, Mar, Army of One/J2, Dog Byte, Alec Monopoly, Desire Obtain Cherish, Army of One, Chad Muska and Haculla, just to name a few.

The opening of LAB ART had the traffic on La Brea backed up for a good quarter mile.

Entering the gallery, it was filled with pop culture art, mixed media, photography and even sculptures- artistic eye candy. Each installation added a nice touch to the gallery and the entire gallery was utilized. The bar was decorated with stencils, stickers, and paintings from local artists, while the back alley of LAB ART was painted by known Los Angees artists Gregory Siff, Mar, and Thank You X.

-Birdman for Warholian

LAB Art Los Angeles is located at:
217 South La Brea
Los Angeles, California 90036

on facebook

website
http://www.labartgallery.com/

More MOCA LA II

"
... "Art in the Streets," a controversial exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The show has been drawing the ire of social critics, alarmed by what they perceive as an institutional celebration of vandalism, all while drawing curious crowds (often young) to the museum's Little Tokyo

urban graffiti doesn't drag down neighborhoods, but instead erupts in areas already largely abandoned by civic forces. Graffiti scrawls a name on hitherto faceless social realities, instantly becoming a convenient target for blame.

Yes, graffiti is vandalism ... But what has that to do with MOCA? As critic William Poundstone pointedly asked, how many museum shows of El Greco are required to take a position on the Spanish Inquisition?

Still, MOCA's claim for the magnitude of graffiti's post-Pop influence on art is overblown. "Art in the Streets" cites global reach ... Since the 1970s, however, the deepest impact on art culture has come from Conceptual art, not graffiti.

One could even say that graffiti owes its 1980s emergence into art world consciousness to the success of Conceptual art's frontal assault on formalist Modernism, with its crabbed notion that, say, a painting's highest purpose is to define what a painting is. With an emphasis on words, some Conceptual art even opened the door to thinking of tagging as an artistic strategy.

So the biggest disappointment of "Art in the Streets" is its misunderstanding of history. ... Consider what doesn't appear in the show — not even in the catalog chronology or the gallery's information timeline.

Mostly MOCA tells a mythic tale in which graffiti, an Expressionist art form, is largely born in Manhattan, spreads across the country and finally envelopes the world. If the story sounds familiar, that's because it replays New York School legend, long since discredited, about Abstract Expressionist painting in the 1940s.

MOCA's stylish exhibition mostly extends a legacy of commercial influence, which is the wrong way for an art museum to frame a show."

full article LA Times

Porno Leaks

Now the ability of those pornographic film performers to hide their identity
behind sometimes bizarre stage monikers has been shot to pieces after a website published a leaked database containing the real names, dates of birth, and official nicknames of more than 15,000 of the adult industry's hard-working performers, past and present.

Most of the information revealed by the Porn Wikileaks site is likely to have
come from computer files that originally belonged to the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation [AIM], an STD-testing facility based in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles, which caters to the 1,500 working erotic film actors based in the region at any one time.

...

No one knows what motivated the creator of Porn Wikileaks, which is amateurish
and yesterday struggled to cope with a sudden surge in traffic. The site is
registered in the Netherlands, apparently by a disgruntled member of the "porn
press", and describes the purpose of its existence as being a "media
organisation" devoted to making the industry more transparent.

full story

IPad - Interactive Books

"Software developer Mike Matas demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad -- with clever, swipeable video and graphics and some very cool data visualizations to play with. "

source

Reverse Graffiti - Moose

http://www.reversegraffitiproject.com/



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lX-2sP0JFw




http://fora.tv/2010/04/28/Paul_Moose_Curtis_The_Art_of_Reverse_Graffiti#fullprogram


=======



The street artist Moose visited Aarhus on 27 February to demonstrate his technique of using stencils to clean dirty surfaces.

Not seeing Ninjas

http://youtu.be/WtR2m20C2YM

Guernica Graffiti

Saber paints over the American Flag

Saber was a finalist in President Obama's Health Care Reform Video Challenge with his controversial entry.



http://youtu.be/PJdbIALsMYQ



January 25, 2010. Artist and Outspoken Health Care Reform Activist, Saber, is interviewed on The Dylan Ratigan Show. In this video, Dylan Ratigan allows the artist to express his motivations and influences in exploring the flag artistically for this project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRa4A8WIj6s&feature=player_embedded

more on google

====================


"Mr. Fairey invited me to paint this wall on Melrose right across from Fairfax High. Of course I was exited about the challenge. It seemed perfect considering we both have been playing with the image of Old Glory. Next Flag will be ten times bigger. The American Flag as an abstract image has endless possibilities…………….."

Saber

http://saberone.com/blog/2010/11/02/shots-of-completed-melrose-flag-wall-saber-shepard-fairey/


===================

Using the American Flag in art clearly attracts media attention. Ed

Amplify the Message

Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GetGlue, Foursquare. Social media has changed the way we interact with the world around us. These days, filmmakers don't just need a press kit and a Web site; they need a social media presence. How should producers and directors engage with this new interactive audience and how much of an impact does this audience have on a movie's success or failure on multiple platforms?

Join us for a candid discussion on the importance of this growing medium. Moderated by Marc Schiller, CEO and Founder of Electric Artists. Panelists include Rider Strong, director/screenwriter The Dungeon Master, Howard Tullman, President & CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, and others.


watch video here
http://mediasuite.multicastmedia.com/HDVODPlayer.php?doResize=false&v=g30k1h3v


website
http://www.tribecafilm.com/tribecaonline/live-from/Live_From_Amplify_the_Message.html

More MOCA LA

from
http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=20330

"Eddie Colla says his billboard takeover is a response to a Huffington Post article last week where a finger wagging tone was on display toward current street artists, “MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch pegs it on the ‘young’ and ‘anarchic,’ and is quoted giving this message to illegal taggers: ‘If you harness your talent you can be in a museum some day, make a contribution and a living from it.’ ”"

The Indoor Mural Project

Presented by 941 Geary Gallery and Montana Colors The Indoor Mural Project: A Living Survey of Street Art, is “a series of works by both local and international street artists. Since March 1st, 941 Geary has been playing host to a series of site-specific works by an impressive lineup of graffiti and street artists in the heart of San Francisco. The Indoor Mural Project is a living, multi-layered exhibition where street art enthusiasts are invited to observe the progression and transformation of a contemporary gallery space by some of the most exciting artists working today.”

Some of the participating artists include: HUSH, Hugh Leeman, Blek le Rat, Casey Gray, Eddie Colla, D Young V, Skinner, EINE, ROA, Brett Amory, APEX, Chor Boogie, Alex Eremian, Kofie One, Eric Otto, Skinner and more.

from warholian
http://warholian.com/2011/04/21/the-indoor-mural-project/


much much more from
http://www.941geary.com/blog/

YouTube Play

YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video aims to discover and showcase the most exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of online video. Developed by YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum in collaboration with HP, YouTube Play hopes to attract innovative, original, and surprising videos from around the world, regardless of genre, technique, background, or budget. This global online initiative is not a search for what’s “now,” but a search for what’s next.

Visit youtube.com/play to watch this year's top videos and learn more about the project.

On view at the Guggenheim Museums in New York, Bilbao, Berlin, and Venice from October 22 to 24, 2010, the top 25 videos comprise the ultimate YouTube playlist: a selection of the most unique, innovative, groundbreaking video work being created and distributed online during the past two years. The videos and artists were celebrated at an event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, which was streamed live to a worldwide audience at youtube.com/play.

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/interact/participate/youtube-play

top videos
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/interact/participate/youtube-play/top-videos

Street Art & Advertising Conference

"Next Saturday (April 9th), I’ll be hosting an event at my school, Haverford College, which I hope you will be able to attend. I’ll be moderating Street Discussions, a panel with Gaia, Jordan Seiler, Marc Schiller and Sara Schiller. We’ll be looking at what roles and responsibilities there are on the street for both artists and advertisers. Gaia is a street artist and blogger for Vandalog. Jordan is the artist/activist behind PublicAdCampaign. Marc and Sara started Wooster Collective and their book Trespass was published last year. The event is open to the public, and, contingent on me getting organized, there might be a video uploaded afterward for anyone who can’t make it."

from Vandalog
http://blog.vandalog.com/2011/03/street-communications-flyer/

(Hoping to see the video, ed)

MOCA - Art in the Streets

The Museum of Contemporary Art presents Art in the Streets





The press release says "the first major U.S. museum exhibition of the history of graffiti and street art" but looking at the line-up what they mean is that this is a survey of U.S. artists with a few foriegners thrown in.

How can you have a survey of the 'history of street art' and leave out all the Europeans? And leave out Wooster and Blek le Rat? Two of the most significant players.

more info from MOCA's blog
http://www.moca.org/audio/blog/?p=1522#more-1522

============
"Just five years ago, street art was an underground thing, very renegade," says one of the show's curators, Aaron Rose. But now, he says, "it's an established art movement." And, speaking like an established art historian, Rose divides the movement into three phases, starting with New York and L.A. tagging in the '70s and culminating with Banksy setting an auction record in 2007 of more than $1.8 million for a single painting.

"This is not just a big street-art free-for-all," adds the museum's director, Jeffrey Deitch. "We are trying to see its history through a critical framework and identify where the innovations occur: the invention of Wild Style [graffiti] in New York, its adaptation in L.A. and the innovations in cholo graffiti and skateboard culture in L.A."

full article
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-street-art-pioneers-chaz-bojorquez-20110410,0,6070396.story

(or perhaps they mean this is a history of Street Art in LA?)

=========================
there's 56 comments like this
http://www.moca.org/audio/blog/?p=1522&cpage=1#comments

"Although the description is wrong, it is not the “first major US museum exhibition of graffiti and street art”. San Diego’s MCASD just had it’s “VIVA LA REVOLUCION” last summer."
http://www.mcasd.org/exhibitions/616/viva-la-revolucion

I recognize that this is a great effort – althought a little premature and despite of the false propaganda (the Tate had a similar show about 5-6 years ago).

"This show pretty much just dissed the LA graffiti artist community. Big Ups and Respect to Risk, Saber, Retna, Revok, Chaz and Robbie Conal for representing LA, but this show is a joke. This show barley skims the surface. Dietch bite off a subject that he can;t due justice and is trying to claim to be the first and the most comprehensive."

or this criptic statement lol

"looks like Banksy dropped out of the show…"

The writing on the wall

City Without Walls gallery: Newark, New Jersey 1984.
Featuring: 2 Sweet Hakim (Hak) and Keo.

The Writing on the wall from Dave Chino on Vimeo.