Make Beautiful Music RIGHT NOW

This is the coolest thing I've seen in awhile . . . have fun figuring out the timing, scales, and patterns, then unclick your way out of your composition . . .   It's pretty cool.


LINK HERE -- Make some MUSIC!

What Teachers Make - VIDEO

Old Subway Cars Become Studios for London Artists

Ok so this is neat.  Erez, could I live here?  :)  Two more pics after the jump . . .

Take the Z,E,N Trains to Tunestown.

Here's a little rainy-day brilliance plucked (literally) from the geometry of the NYC subway system. The artist/musician Alexander Chen has made an "interactive string instrument" out of the MTA's actual schedule, operating in "realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute."

For those of you who are sticklers, or can't quite follow your line, the visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli's 1972 diagram (as above) which is fun and arty and easy to read, but does not represent the geography of the actual city as faithfully.


Conductor: www.mta.me from Alexander Chen on Vimeo.

I likey.

Me, Tony Kushner and Belarus

I lend my big mouth to the movement

Stopped in at today's demonstration in solidarity with the artists, activists, and actors of Belarus.

Following arrests last month of many outspoken artists in the ex-Soviet republic, The Public Theater and Amnesty International held a peaceful protest and Tony Kushner and I decided to go. . . . more after the jump  . . .

Earth Art Memorialized in sad but true exhibit in NYC

January 8, 2011 is the 25th anniversary of the destruction of Adam Purple's monumental "earthwork" The Garden of Eden.  Photos of the artwork and the artist by acclaimed photographer Harvey Wang (also director of The Last New Yorker) will be displayed for the first time at the FusionArts Museum on Stanton Street, from February 1 - 20.

Christmas Cheer from Hyperbole and a Half

 

Click HERE for another delightful post from my personal hero and comic blogger at Hyperbole and a half.

Protesters banned from the Smithsonian for life

An update to my earlier post on the art that was censored by the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery under pressure from the Catholic League.  Two brave protesters (one wearing the removed video art on an ipad around his neck) were forcibly removed from the institution, and banned for life.  The 1987 video -- a piece made by the artist while he was dying of AIDS, about the ostracized sufferers of the 1980's is hard to watch and intentionally so.  See it HERE.

National Portrait Gallery removes video as Christians threaten to fight funding

SHAME on Martin Sullivan, the director of the gallery at the Smithsonian in Washington for bowing to senseless empty threats from the Catholic League. 

To ask for censorship of a piece in the NATIONAL GALLERY based on personal religious preference is boring, but allowed.  TO FACILITATE that censorship from within the organization, based on a "choose our battles" methodology, is an offense deserving of termination.  Shame on you, dude.

From the NYTimes:

"Mr. Wojnarowicz (the artist), who died of AIDS in 1992, made the video in the 1980s. Among the imagery that he uses to depict the suffering of an AIDS patient is a scene of ants crawling on a crucifix. In a telephone interview, Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, said “A Fire in My Belly” was a form of hate speech."

Really, Donohue?  HATE SPEECH?  he also mentioned that if the ants were crawling on Mohammud, we would be having a very different conversation . . . or none at all.  Well, at least he recongizes the similarities between radical Islam and his own warped Christianity.

Out.

Walking man exhibit brightens construction fence in Lower Manhattan

Wandering around the Financial District the other day, I stumbled across these happy little numbers.  Three, four, ninety-nine.  Construction fences along three sides of the future site of the Four Seasons Hotel at 99 Church St., are boasting 99 images assembled by artist Maya Barkai.  More after the jump:

Detroit: Rising from Ashes

I recently took a day to tour Detroit, Michigan by bicycle -- armed with my point-and-shoot and a desire to find out if what we've heard was true.  Was Detroit a wasteland?  Was it beyond help?  Was it artistic, scrappy, rising? (UPDATE: HERE is an artistic duo that seeks to re-invent Detroit ruins) What's the feeling on the ground in the Motor City?  I biked for about 5 hours, and was only really able to get a glimpse, but what I saw was:

this picture probably sums it up best . . . next to a completely bombed out crack den of an apartment complex -- Spaulding Court (slated, I understand, for renewal itself), a newly renovated house with a great backyard and cute little fence. . . a few blocks from downtown.  This kind of defiant reclamation, a sort of guerrilla gentrification, is what is exciting and inspiring about this Detroit renaissance.   (UPDATE:  Here's that complex's kickstarter PAGE and home PAGE.)

I started in the vicinity of Wayne State University (Michigan's only urban public research University) located in the Cultural District.  Here's the University's first building, Old Main, behind some massive new de/construction project. 

 

Demolition and construction seem to be not quite as prevalent as apathy and general decay, but change is happening.  

Still near the Cultural District, I passed the Masonic Temple, which is the largest Masonic Temple in the world, and boasts some pretty sharp neo-Gothic architecture . . . some of which was fashioned with George Washington's own tools (famously a Mason himself) brought in from VA for the job.  It opened in 1926, and houses the second-largest stage in the country (in the Main Theatre), a Scottish Rite Cathedral, a Ritual Tower and about 5 million other amazing nooks and crannies.  Those Templars are sneaky.  You know, our founding fathers were predominantly NOT Christians, but WERE Masons . . . Way cooler.  More after the jump . . .

It Gets Better Project -- Youth Pride Chorus sings truth

This deserves your time . . . as do many of the It Gets Better Project videos, but this one is not to be missed.  General Hope for the Future starts 0:01, Singing at 1:00, Dancing at 3:50.  If this doesn't get ya, you're steel.

Brilliant photo-journalism book WHAT MATTERS available free online

HERE is the index of an amazing world-view changing compendium of WHAT MATTERS.  The book, published in 2008 pairs photo essays with amazing incisive work from experts in each field.  From Darfur to the polar ice cap, from poverty to war, the images are unforgettable and evocative, and the written materials are smart but accessible.  A must read, it is available free online.  Spend some time with just one chapter if you can.  Go to www.whatmattersonline.com for more.
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No grime, no crime. Durban students scrub-tag their world

A group of students in Durban, South Africa have taken to removing grime from buildings and retaining walls, in what could be seen as pro-community graffitti or positive negativity.  Less is certainly more :) 

Gallery HERE from inhabitat
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Senator McCain thinks my job is silly and wants me fired.

Last Wednesday, Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn released a "Stimulus Checkup" report on 100 different "silly or shortsighted" projects throughout the country.  Philadelphia's acclaimed Pig Iron Theatre Company (the very company keeping me off the dole right now) found itself at number 26 in the report for stimulus funding they received through the National Endowment for the Arts that helped to retain one staff position and seven actors' salaries.

"Describing itself as a dance-clown-theatre ensemble, the Pig Iron Theatre in Philadelphia is home to a successful and growing production company that recently landed a $25,000 stimulus grant."

How horrible.  Can you imagine?  The National Endowment for the Arts giving money to a theatre company?  This is unheard of.

I read the report.

$150,000 went to develop the next "generation of football gloves", and 1.2 MILLION was given to turn a barn into the "Museum of man's relationship with the horse."

Nice.

Of course, Fox News jumped on the opportunity to fairly spit the words PIG IRON out of it's snide mouth about four times.  VIDEO HERE.

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Karma karma karma karma

How cool is this? Chameleon/Artist's Gallery from Hi-fructose HERE.

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