The Stars, Our Destination...
Friday, April 11, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Monday, April 07, 2008
Some Insightful Speculation about GLaDOS... (Warning: Major Portal Spoilers)
...including something strikingly cool which is very easy to miss when playing the game. More here...
Friday, April 04, 2008
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Hypochondria
I am having my first individual exhibition in Berlin. The opening and run of the show will coincide with the Berlin Biennial.
takt kunstprojektraum cordially invites you to our next opening, Hypochondria showing new work by Jason Merrill Benedict.
Hypochondria opens Saturday April 5th, at 8 pm
With music by DJ´s Dexta, Bentastic, and Scale
Exhibition: 6th of April - 17th of May, 2008
takt kunstprojektraum
Wühlischstr. 56
10245 Berlin
www.taktberlin.org
Hypochondria
An exhibition of artwork that explores pathology as a type of alchemical experiment or pseudo-science. The images of bacteria, viruses, and parasites evoke the obsessions of a hypochondriac. Microbes that are responsible for the most dangerous diseases in the modern world and are often touted as a threat of global plague, become brightly colored patterns that fill the gallery. The goal is to investigate the paralyzing power that anxiety has over our lives and to engage a dialogue about the rationalized system of fear that seemingly dominates all forms of public debate, whether scientific, political, or social.
Jason Benedict
www.jasonbenedict.com
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
NYC : March 29th
I left before dawn Saturday morning to get up to Manhattan for art fair weekend.
I was very excited to see the feature exhibition at MoMA, "Design and the Elastic Mind", and was not in the least bit disappointed. It was kind of all-over the place, but was ostensibly about how design mediates between the end-user and all of these disparate scales that we operate in during our day-to-day interactions. It was a grab bag of code art, DNA sculpture, computational origami, 3d printing, information visualization, robots for life support, sensory deprivation enhanced telepresence, visionary architecture, fungible computing, sex toys and body modification. There was a tendency among roughly half of the objects to be presented as part of a science fictional scenario. All of the objects were imaginative and held tremendous visual interest; but with the non-functional artifacts from the future, I got the sense that I was looking at fresh kind of science fictional art.
Link to the exhibition's website. (Flash required.)
Below are some of my pictures of a smart board that drew on the silhouettes of the visitors. (2004, Philip Worthington, Shadow Monsters)
A comparison between the other two places I went, the Whitney Biennial and the Armory Art Fair, is telling. I haven't been to either before, so I really didn't know what to expect.
I may not have been put-off by the pieces that comprised the Whitney Biennial if I was presented with them individually. Together though, the pieces seemed joyless and cynical; many of the pieces were art povera reborn as art school affectation. What was presented as beautiful, seemed pandering and trite. There were three John Baldessari works, though, that were genuinely beautiful and witty; so I guess I was rewarded for going there. Maybe my negativity towards the show can be chalked up to being a curmudgeon.
Waiting in line for the Armory Show, I expected to be disgusted with the huckster-ism and art-by-the-yard attitude inside. After I was inside, I found that I was not; granted that I didn't actually have to actually interact with anyone. The work was of a much greater variety than the Biennial, and I engaged with the work much more.
Below is a drawing I liked very much. The artist was extrapolating from the edges of snapshots; which is a great idea for starting drawings that I will try. (2002, Amelie von Wolfen, Skylobby 2)
Next time I do this, I'll skip the museums and go to the other art fairs.
Links (1 & 2) to the Fallon+Rosof Artblog coverage of the art fairs.
Link to coverage on Artnet.
Link to a chatty video bit on the NYT website.
I was very excited to see the feature exhibition at MoMA, "Design and the Elastic Mind", and was not in the least bit disappointed. It was kind of all-over the place, but was ostensibly about how design mediates between the end-user and all of these disparate scales that we operate in during our day-to-day interactions. It was a grab bag of code art, DNA sculpture, computational origami, 3d printing, information visualization, robots for life support, sensory deprivation enhanced telepresence, visionary architecture, fungible computing, sex toys and body modification. There was a tendency among roughly half of the objects to be presented as part of a science fictional scenario. All of the objects were imaginative and held tremendous visual interest; but with the non-functional artifacts from the future, I got the sense that I was looking at fresh kind of science fictional art.
Link to the exhibition's website. (Flash required.)
Below are some of my pictures of a smart board that drew on the silhouettes of the visitors. (2004, Philip Worthington, Shadow Monsters)
A comparison between the other two places I went, the Whitney Biennial and the Armory Art Fair, is telling. I haven't been to either before, so I really didn't know what to expect.I may not have been put-off by the pieces that comprised the Whitney Biennial if I was presented with them individually. Together though, the pieces seemed joyless and cynical; many of the pieces were art povera reborn as art school affectation. What was presented as beautiful, seemed pandering and trite. There were three John Baldessari works, though, that were genuinely beautiful and witty; so I guess I was rewarded for going there. Maybe my negativity towards the show can be chalked up to being a curmudgeon.
Waiting in line for the Armory Show, I expected to be disgusted with the huckster-ism and art-by-the-yard attitude inside. After I was inside, I found that I was not; granted that I didn't actually have to actually interact with anyone. The work was of a much greater variety than the Biennial, and I engaged with the work much more.
Below is a drawing I liked very much. The artist was extrapolating from the edges of snapshots; which is a great idea for starting drawings that I will try. (2002, Amelie von Wolfen, Skylobby 2)
Next time I do this, I'll skip the museums and go to the other art fairs.Links (1 & 2) to the Fallon+Rosof Artblog coverage of the art fairs.
Link to coverage on Artnet.
Link to a chatty video bit on the NYT website.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)