Your Daily Awesome

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Tip of the Tongue is a new online photo mag, and features a great article by Charlotte Cotton from Art + Commerce in New York. In The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White she deftly and smartly delves into a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about recently.

I had doubts, of course, about photography’s moment in art’s spotlight. For instance, it was obvious that photography was undergoing a physical face-lift to meet the demands of sitting alongside painting and sculpture in vast art centers and at international fairs; the predominance of big digital C-prints, laminated behind plexi, in small editions, was establishing itself. The hyperbolic, carefully controlled, museum- and gallery-specific versions of photography, in which every prop and gesture can be attributed to the artist’s direction, have been the most pronounced arrivals in the art world. If you are, like me, schooled in the magic of photography’s willful embrace of luck, mistakes, and happenstance, you view the art world’s partial endorsement of this bastard form with some suspicion. I don’t mean to deride the awe-inspiring creativity of a handful of artists who showed us that photography was a supremely capable and elastic art medium and were honored with monolithic, monographic exhibitions. I mean to indicate that their ascendance into the center of art practice does not necessarily herald the acceptance or understanding of photography’s broad creative terrain as a whole.

I’m not suggesting that these artists [who work in black and white] are primarily undertaking a acts of re-thinking history; these are not merely descriptions of how to reinterpret the language of black-and-white photography just when the moment in photography’s journey seems to be paved with color LightJet prints. Their practice offers creative, in-process solutions to the potential quagmire in photography-as-contemporary-art’s current color manifestations, and also to our dislocation from the pertinence that photography’s history brings to bear on our current situation. Herein lies a timely, central issue for those of us who obsess about the future of photographic thinking. These projects are key propositions for what photography carries forward into the 21st century, as a bid for us to remember that photography is an act of making choices. This includes choices regarding methods and style of vision, which need not be defined by the fashionable, marketable production values of an era.

photograph by Anders Petersen

A few of my favorites from the whole story:

(It cracks me up that people would host SNL then spend the whole show “mugging for the camera.” It’s so simultaneously funny and unfunny, and I just picture Lorne Michaels fuming every time an actor breaks scene, only to turn to the camera and make a big “Who, ME?” face.)

•Frank Zappa was banned from the show after his hosting stint on October 21, 1978. His distinct sense of humor made him unpopular with the cast and crew. During his performance, he made a habit of reading cue-cards and mugging for the camera, and many cast members (save for John Belushi) deliberately stood far from him during the goodnights.

•The April 14, 1979 episode of the show hosted by Milton Berle resulted in him being banned due to his habit of upstaging other performers, overacting, mugging for the camera, insertion of “classic” comedy bits and his maudlin performance of “September Song.”

•A proposed banning of a frequent guest was left in the hands of viewers on November 20, 1982. Andy Kaufman, who had appeared in the very first episode in 1975 and periodically thereafter, was the subject of a viewer poll to decide if Kaufman should be allowed to stay or be banned for life from the show. Viewers had to call a 900 number to cast their vote. They decided to kick him off, and Kaufman never returned to the show.
Note: It was actually Kaufman who pitched the idea to Dick Ebersol weeks before, and Ebersol used the idea after he had a fight with Kaufman.

•Cypress Hill were banned from appearing on SNL again after their performance as the musical guest on the October 2, 1993 episode, where DJ Muggs lit up a marijuana joint on-air and the band trashed their instruments after playing their second single “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That.”

(thx Erik)

A fascinating new interactive murder mystery art project that uses NYC’s pay phones as its medium:

WMMNA has a thorough overview of Canal Street Station and an interview with artist Ryan Holsopple.

Holsopple launched a public pay phone who-dunnit that invites people to make a toll-free call from any public pay phone in Canal Street Station and solve a murder mystery.

Set in the maze of tiles that make up the station, the Canal Street Station game puts participants in the shoes of a private investigator, as he searches the depths of Canal Street Station for a young French woman that may have committed a murder, or may be a figment of his own imagination.

Players are asked one simple riddle that can be solved by refrencing a subway map on the platform, the answer has to be entered into the keypad when they hear Niki (alias Tajna Tanovic) say the words, “Canal Street Station.”

“If you answer the clue correctly you hear her say, ‘Great Work Detective!’ Niki then tells you a more difficult riddle that takes you to another platform in the station. The riddles become increasingly difficult as you walk the creepy corridors of the Canal Street Subway station finding the answers,” explains Ryan Holsopple. “You can start on any payphone, but no matter where you begin you will eventually end up on the same platform in the end of the mystery, when you answer the final question, you are told which train to exit the station on to take you to the last stage of the mystery.”

The Animaris Rhinoceros Transport is a type of animal with a steel skeleton and a polyester skin. It looks as if there is a thick layer of sand coating the animal. It weighes 2 tons and it stands 4.70 meters tall. Because of its height it catches enough wind to start moving.

Theo Jansen (1948) studied physics at the University of Delft (The Netherlands). He left University to become an artist. He has been working on creating a new life-form. Beach Animals. These creatures consist of walking skeletons. They are wind powered. Eventually he wants to put these animals on the beach where they will lead their own lives.

You must watch this incredible video of the Rinoceros in motion.

“The Raft of George W. Bush” is a contemporary “Ship of Fools” which has as its pictorial basis, the “Medusa” by Gericault. Bush sits lost in his grand ideas, shown as small electric lights. His left hand rests on the large, perfect breast of “Condi” Rice. Who, the most powerful woman on earth, is merely a mouthpiece, a token blackie who dresses in haute couture. Above Bush is his mother, Barbara, basking in the light, the myth of neo-conservatism. At her feet is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld crushed by the disaster of Iraq. Colin Powell wears the wreath of militarism and the dollar sign vision he now lives for, after lying to the world at the United Nations. Powell taps Bush on the shoulder to make him aware of the rescue. Vice President Cheney and his wife express joyful rapture in their perceived deliverance. Dick Cheney, a “whatever it takes to succeed” type, is dressed in a gown and bra reminiscent of the cowardly men on the sinking Titanic who dressed as women in order to save themselves. Below the mast is a religious figure representing Theocracy and Priest-pederasts. Has the young man below him received spiritual comfort or oral sex? The angry angel, wearing a bra of tea cups, holds a large bone signifying cannibalistic capitalism, that charnel house of our dismal social progress. All the other models in this tableaux are posed as characters in the Gericault painting. With the exception of the black African immigre named Cyril, who waves to the ship, all other men are examples of under educated, fast food prodigals, a result of this misdirected country.—Joel-Peter Witkin

gallery of recent work by Witkin
debate on the merits of this photograph

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In this essay, excellent author Arthur Bradford recalls the night he spent at Zendik Farm. Anybody who has spent time in Austin during the ’90s should be familiar with the Zendik mythos: Was it really a sex cult? Do you know anybody who has actually been out there? Are they always out on the street corners trying to peddle their crappy music?

The problem for Xed was that he was kind of young for this place, and the older guys got all the women. If you wanted to have a date with someone, and by that he meant have sex, you had to bring it up with the group first and they would discuss it. He liked this one girl, Sierra, but he didn’t think the group would approve of the union. Later on, at dinner, I met Sierra. She was very pretty and probably the woman closest to Xed’s age. She was nice to Xed, but in the way an older sister would be. I sensed, also, that she had other options available.

I had wanted to sit next to Heather during dinner, but again we were separated. I wished that I hadn’t shaved that morning, or even better, that I had managed to grow a beard before coming, because that was clearly the favored look. I felt like I was being regarded warily, and when I told people I was living in Austin they gave me looks of sympathy.

Read the whole essay here.

Several months ago, David Byrne blogged about Anytown, USA, “a fake ‘town’ in California where cops practice shoot-‘em-ups.”

I saw a lecture by a Candaian curator many years ago in which he showed work by a young artist making photos of a similar place, but for the life of me, I can’t find any more information on Anytown. Any expert Googlers out there?

Watch out, because as DB points out: “if you lived here, this could be you — two of the targets:”

This video is one of the smartest and funniest I’ve seen online in quite a while. 50 50 is made from video clips of 50 people rapping 50 Cent songs on YouTube. Laric has made several memorable videos that I never realized were his, including 787 Cliparts and Channeling Artists, in which psychics were hired to contact dead artists like Donald Judd and Marcel Duchamp.

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Downtown Houston Mandala

He is sly, this rebel cartographer. He makes maps that look like quilts, masks, feathers, acid trips. You can find America in these maps — you can probably find your house in these maps — if you can find the maps at all, since their creator has posted them to an online underground.

Nikolas Schiller, 26, is the god of this alternative reality. Making maps at a frenzied pace of one every two days for the past 1,000 days, he has done everything he could to keep himself off the map of the World Wide Web…

His map quest is for more than just art, let alone directions from here to there. In a way, it’s a pixelated riff that hyperlinks to ancient times, when maps implied a worldview — flat or round? — and cartography was existential.

Since Google Earth appeared a few years ago — and countless office hours were wasted as people mouse-clicked to their own back yards (”Lookee, there’s the deck!”) — the starting point of Schiller’s creations has been familiar. But he doesn’t use Google. He goes to the source, the bird’s-eye rendering of America placed in the public domain by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Then it gets complicated. On his computer he will take a swatch of a neighborhood, then he will tessellate it by creating mirrored repetitions, then he may impose radial geometry on the repetitions. The result is elaborate abstraction assembled from realistic detail, ready for framing at 5 by 3 1/2 feet.

“It’s just a cool idea,” says Dave Roberts, a USGS cartographer. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”—from the Washington Post

website

JoAnn Verburg

Heres’ me later pretending to type my blog at Mike’s place.

Olive Riley, 107 of Australia, recently started a blog with the help of her friend Mike. According to Mike, Olive calls it her “blob,” which is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. I like the pictures and the titles of the posts (Lettuces, Teeth, and War) as much as the text itself.

The Life of Riley—All About Olive
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The text of the Amnesty ads reads, “It’s not happening here, but it’s happening now.”

And the Red Cross’ version:

The Amnesty ads
The Red Cross ads
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Yes, I’ve posted about El Perro Del Mar once before, but I just saw her perform Saturday night, and her concert blew me away. I had previously been so focused on the quality of her voice that I failed to fully recognize how great her songs are. They’re catchy, melancholy, crystalline, timeless, and a tiny bit spooky. Seeing her in concert made me think of the Ronettes, the first Velvet Undergound album, and a little bit of David Lynch. If she’s coming to your town, I highly reccomend catching her. This was one of my favorite songs from the show.

We all know the story of Kerouac’s On the Road—three straight weeks of Benzedrine-fueled typing on a 120-foot scroll of paper that resulted in one of the defining novels of the last century. Unsurprisingly, when you look at the story more closely, it’s not so simple. NPR’s Morning Edition took just such a look a few years ago, and their report is still downloadable online.

“Anybody can make Paris holy, but I can make Topeka holy.”—Jack Kerouac