Google Art Project launched this week, putting the work of art museums around the world online in a consolidated place. Using Google’s Street View technology, you can walk around the galleries and look at the art on the walls. At launch, museums include Tate Britain, MoMA, the National Gallery, the Van Gogh Museum and many more. For me though, the best part of this is the high resolution images of the artwork. You can zoom in on paintings like Van Gogh’s Field with Flowers near Alrles so far that you can see every brush stroke. Seeing images in a text book or in a standard Google search lets you get the layout of a picture. But looking at the work close up lets you see how the art was really made. That’s what I love most when I get to see art in person. Google Art Project recreates that experience when you can’t see the art in person – or when the museum is so crowded you can’t see it once you get there.

A preview of Google Art Project.

Behind the Scenes.

Read more

• Google Art Project
• Tate Britain’s experiences launching their collection in Google Art Project, and why they did it.

Related posts:

1. “Please Don’t Touch the (Touchable) Art.”
2. Learning to Love You More – Miranda July, Harrell Fletcher and The Oliver Family
3. Artist Astronauts, Artist Cosmonauts, Artists in Space

YouTube and the Guggenheim teamed up to create a respected, juried art show of video work from YouTube. Back in July, anyone could enter a single video hosted on YouTube.  A jury of 11 respected artists selected 24 videos, which were unveiled tonight at a Guggenheim event.  Here is a complete list of jurors and selected work, with a few sample videos from the winners.

Jurors

Laurie Anderson
musician, inventor, filmmaker, performer

Animal Collective
band

Darren Aronofsky
filmmaker

Douglas Gordon
installation, video and film artist

Marilyn Minter
painter, video artist & photography

Ryan McGinley
photographer

Takashi Murakami
Painter, sculptor, video artist

Shirin Neshat
artist and filmmaker

Stefan Sagmeister
designer

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
filmmaker

Nancy Spector
Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
jury chair

Work Selected by the Jury

Post Newtonianism (War Footage/Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Footage)
Josh Bricker — sqosh12

Moonwalk
Martin Kohout — lostpostservice

Words
Everynone (Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadan) — dmercadante1

This Aborted Earth: The Quest Begins
Michael Banowetz, Noah Sodano — thisAbortedEarth

deuce
Monica Cook — monicacook

Strindberg and Helium at the Beach
Eun-Ha Paek, Erin Perkins — ErinPerkins

Die Antwoord — Zef Side
Sean Metelerkamp — stewartridgeway

Bathtub IV
Keith Loutit — keithloutit

Seaweed
Remi Weekes, Luke White — tellno1ne

Gardyn
Nick Bertke (Pogo) — Fagottron

Bear untitled — D.O. Edit
Christen Bach — Christenbach

Le Syndrome du Timide
Pierre-Axel Vuillaume-Prezeau — pehaboy

auspice
Bryce Kretschmann — squomb

I Met the Walrus
Jerry Levitan, Josh Raskin — imetthewalrus

Birdy Nam Nam — The Parachute Endings
Steve Scott, Will Sweeney — Nottoscalelondon

Wonderland Mafia
Lindsay Scoggins — waambat

Synesthesia
Terri Timely (Corey Creasey, Ian Kibbey) — territimely1

Ladybirds’ Requiem digest version
Akino Kondoh — akinokondoh

Notebook
Evelien Lohbeck — evelienlohbeck

Man With A Movie Camera: The Global Remake
Perry Bard — perrybard

Scenic Jogging
Jillian Mayer — JillianMayer

Taxi III Stand Up and Cry Like a Man
Lisa Byrne — lisabyrne700

Luis
Joaquin Cocina, Cristobal Leon, Niles Atalla — futureshorts

The Huber Experiments — Vol 1
Erik Huber, Matthew Huber — ErikHuber

Learn more and see all of the jury’s selections at
YouTube Play: Guggenheim Biennial for Creative Video

Related posts:

1. An Experiment – Syndicated Short Films from YouTube
2. Cornelius – Chimes Video

This is easy to answer.

• Without clean water artists would die. There would be no one to paint, sing, dance or tell stories.
• Without clean water, audiences would die. There would be no one to look at the art that someone might have already made.
• Maybe you have some water, but it’s scarce or polluted. If so, you survive, but you are too weak or sick to care one bit about art.
• Maybe you can get good water, but you must walk 3 hours to get it, and 3 hours to return. Have you ever carried a fish tank full of water? Think of carrying it for 3 hours. Think of carrying 3-5 times the amount of water, 3-5 times the weight – enough for your family – for 3 hours. After 6 hours, just to get water, you have to get and cook food. By the time you’re done, you’re exhausted. There is no energy left to even consider creating something new.

Art Here and Now has participated in Blog Action Day before, speaking about the Environment and Climate Change. Those are complex issues, with debate surrounding the causes and impacts on the future. But this one is simple.

Without clean water, people can’t live.
If water is available but scarce, a major part of your life is devoted just to getting it and surviving.
There is no time for something more.
This is already happening, right now, throughout the world.

As important as I believe art is to civilization, history and culture, some basic foundations must exist for art and invention to stand on. One part of that foundation is water for drinking, cooking and cleaning.

So that’s depressing.
The good news is, we know how to solve it. We need to get water to people without it.

What can you do?

• Get the facts. The more you know, the more you can help and get others involved. The videos on this page give a great overview. You can learn more from Charity:Water and water.org.
• Give money to get water to people who need it. We have started a campaign for people who love the arts and want to give water, Water from the Arts.
• Communicate. Make art about clean water. If you’re an artist, you are a communicator. Through your work, you can show people the importance of clean water, inspiring people to help. Send links to this story or other pages linked from here. Write your own post.
• Don’t pollute. If you’re an artist, follow our tips from a few years ago and create work in less toxic ways. Don’t use bottled water.
• Use less water. Take quicker showers. Plant plants which match your local climate (so that they can live completely from natural rain water).
• Choose products that take less water to produce. This is called the product’s Water Footprint.

This won’t happen overnight. But our efforts add up to big change.

If you know other ways to connect the arts to providing clean water, let us know and we’ll spread the word.

Related posts:

1. Art, Artists, & Climate Change, Resources and Inspiration – Blog Action Day 2009
2. We are Honored to be part of Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

Today, photographs are taken from devices in our pockets, then beamed to a worldwide audience in a matter of moments. At the dawn of photography, the equipment was large and cumbersome, developing glass plates to reveal images was an intense process, and color, of course, didn’t exist. To take photos required an expedition of many to haul all this equipment, often at great expense. Simple black and white photos involved lots of labor to produce.

So add to this a great invention – shooting in color, before the invention of color film. This was accomplished by shooting three images, one quickly after the other, each with a red, blue and green filter over the lens. After the film was developed, they could be projected using three magic lanterns, also with red, green and blue filters, overlapping to recreate the color image. This is the screen plate color process. Prokudin-Gorskii had studied the technology in Germany, but invented his own camera and projectors for his photographs.

From 1909 to 1915, before the invention of color film, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii won the support of Tsar Nicholas II to set out on an expedition to photograph the Russian Empire. By 1918, the Empire had fallen, and Prokudin-Gorskii was living in Paris. In 1948, after his death, the Library of Congress bought the entire collection from Prokudin-Gorskii’s heirs.

Here are some examples of the collection. To view the entire collection, visit The Library of Congress – The Empire that was Russia, The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated.

⬑ Back to Top

Related posts:

1. Haiti’s Only Film School Keeps Filming

From the moment we began pumping electricity out to homes and businesses, we chose a completely utilitarian path. The designs for cables and towers were great invention and engineering. But what they looked like was solely based on use, not the people who had to live with them. How would a mass of cables look against the sky? How would electrical poles line the streets? How would electrical pylons break across the landscape?

A design competition was held by Landsnet, the national power company of Iceland, in cooperation with the Association of Icelandic Architects. Choi and Shine Architects proposed a new design for Icelandic electrical pylons so beautiful, yet so natural, you wonder why we didn’t build them this way to start with. And they cost no more than what we’ve built before.

These electrical pylons are in human form, the human arms and hands holding the electrical lines they carry. The human figures can be posed in different ways depending on the landscape they live on. Figures on the sides of mountains can appear to be climbing. Scaling down, they may appear to carefully side step, keeping balance. When two figures pass each other, they can look back to each other, even sharing glances. These human forms and poses are created using duplicated components and scaffolds similar to those used in traditional pylons.

“Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these one hundred and fifty foot tall, modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.”

All images and designs © 2010 Choi+Shine Architects, LLC. All rights reserved.

Read more

• Telegraph UK – Chain of human pylons planned for Iceland
• bustler – Choi+Shine wins BSA Unbuilt Architecture Award for Land of Giants
• Wired – Iceland Considers Humanoid Pylon Design to Carry Electricity

In a post several years ago, Artist Astronauts, Artist Cosmonauts, Artists in Space, we covered a lot of history of art and artists in space. Lately this topic has re-entered the news.

History Detectives on PBS covers a story trying to prove the fabled Moon Museum true or false.

Watch the full episode. See more History Detectives.

History Detectives online only interview with astronaut and artist Alan Bean.

Watch the full episode. See more History Detectives.

Alan Bean, astronaut and artist, appears on The Colbert Report.

Buy related work: In the Stream of Stars: The Soviet-American Space Art Book (by Alexey Leonov and others), Apollo : An Eyewitness Account By Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker by Alan Bean, Baghdad Journal: An Artist in Occupied Iraq, by combat artist Steve Mumford, They Drew Fire – a documentary about combat artists in World War II; and work by Laurie Anderson.

Related posts:

1. Artist Astronauts, Artist Cosmonauts, Artists in Space

At this Ted Talk, Ravin Agrawai presents an overview of 10 upcoming contemporary Indian artists. Below is the talk, and more in depth information about each artist.

More about the artists

• Bharti Kher at Hauser & Wirth
• Alwar Balasubramaniam
• Chitra Ganesh
  Excerpt from Rabbithole

• Jitish Kallat
  Perspectives on contemporary art, interview with The Economist
  
• N.S. Harsha
• Dhruvi Acharya
• Raqib Shah
  A group show including the work of Raqib Shah where ornamentation is given voice.
  
• Raqs Media Collective
  
• Subodh Gupta
  Show from the Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
  
• Ranjani Shettar

Indian culture found in the artist’s work

• amar chitra kathas – “Immortal Captivating (or Picture) Stories”, is one of India’s largest selling comic book series, with more than 90 million copies sold in 20 Indian languages. Founded in 1967, the imprint has more than 400 titles that retell stories from the great Indian epics, mythology, history, folklore, and fables in a comic book format. (wikipedia)
• bindi (as used by Bharti Kher) – is a forehead decoration worn in South Asia (particularly India) and Southeast Asia… Traditionally it is a dot of red colour applied in the center of the forehead close to the eyebrows, but it can also consist of a sign or piece of jewelry worn at this location. The bindi has become a decorative item and is no longer restricted in colour or shape. Self-adhesive bindis (also known as sticker bindis) are available, usually made of felt or thin metal and adhesive on the other side. These are simple to apply, disposable substitutes for older tilak bindis. Sticker bindis come in many colors, designs, materials, and sizes. Fancier sticker bindis are decorated with sequins, glass beads, or rhinestones. (wikipedia)

City Hostel, in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, features 54 rooms, each designed and decorated by 47 Seattle artists. The hostel also features a 20 seat movie theatre, with frequent art events, screenings and openings. In 2008, City Hostel was voted the top hostel in the United States by Hostelworld.com.

Artists were asked to volunteer their efforts instead of being paid outright, which caused some controversy in the Seattle art community. As some artists pointed out, when artists work on spec or for free, it devalues all artist’s work, making it likely future jobs to any artist will be for free as well. Hostels are however usually operated less for profit than passion. Hopefully in the future artists will be paid for their work. If the capital isn’t there for up front payment, then give them a royalty – 1% of the proceeds from each room stay goes to the artist who designed it.

Even without payment, the artists are largely excited about the project and the exposure it has actually brought after the hostel opened. The artists were uncensored and allowed free reign to the final outcome of each room, and have formed a community from the experience. Several reported commissions and buyers from the exposure even before the hostel opened.

Like other Art accommodations, this one is a unique, creative place to stay, celebrating local artists.

Read more

• City Hostel site
• Hostel Art Collective, a blog by the hostel’s artists
• A list of all City Hostel artists
• Hostel Art Collective Flickr Photostream
• Lynn Shirmer’s Blog, thoughts on her experience working on her room
• It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times, The Stranger Slog. Includes comments by many artists who argue the benefits they received from working on the project, even though for free
• City Hostel Seattle – Some Actual Information, from Belltown People
• Hostel in Seattle Voted Best in US from ABC News

Related posts:

1. Artist Astronauts, Artist Cosmonauts, Artists in Space
2. David Byrne’s Perfect City

Here is a timelapse video of cheesy art posted by Eclectic Asylum Art. The portrait is made from 4 varieties of Cheetos (much like this more traditional agriculture art is made from 4 varieties of rice), using 2,000 individual Cheeto.

Related posts:

1. An elephant paints a self portrait
2. Paintings from Living Rice – Inakadate, Japan

Artist Charles Clary creates organic sculptures from deep layers of cut colored paper.

From Wired:

Artist Charles Clary says he wants his constructions to appear ever-expanding — overwhelming exhibition spaces like replicating viruses or reverberating sound waves. Inspired by microorganisms, anthills, and auditory phenomena, he layers colored paper to build up the variegated textures and sinewy shapes of his room-sized installations.

Read more

• Charles Clary’s Massive Paper Cuts, image gallery from Wired
• Charles Clary’s blog Percusive Art
• Interview with Charles Clary from Design Milk

Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five as his own science fiction take on his experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II. Letters of Note prints his letters home after being released from his German camp, Schlachthof Fünf – Slaughterhouse Five.

In December of 1944, whilst behind enemy lines during the Rhineland Campaign, Private Kurt Vonnegut was captured by Wehrmacht troops and subsequently became a prisoner of war. A month later, Vonnegut and his fellow POWs reached a Dresden work camp where they were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse known by German soldiers as Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five). The next month – February – the subterranean nature of the prison saved their lives during the highly controversial and devastating bombing of Dresden, the aftermath of which Vonnegut and the remaining survivors helped to clear up.

Now interviews Kurt Vonnegut about his experience in World War II. “People always fail to recognize when they are happy.”

HowardFair goes to Germany and visits the site of Slaughterhouse Five.

I had no idea what Vonnegut had gone through. The letters are amazing and touching.

Read scans of Kurt Vonnegut’s original letters at Letters of Note.

Get the books of Kurt Vonnegut.

Related posts:

1. Medici Bank Minister Pleads “No More Art, Please” in Newly Discovered Letters

Musicians, filmmakers and performing artists all invest a lot of time and money into writing, rehearsal, design, and sometimes character development and technology innovation. This investment can include hard costs and the time of dozens, or even hundreds, of people. For musicians and filmmakers, the fruits of their investment live on. The films and music can be copied and distributed, allowing their work to spread and even earn them a living. If the work is innovative or challenging, the places an audience can find it grow even narrower.

For performing artists, whose investments in time and money are similar, the art only lasts until the end of the show. You have to physically be there with the artists to experience it, and it’s not easily copied. This severely limits who can see the art – usually to sizable cities with performance venues. It also limits the artists ability to earn a living, or even recoup the investment they’ve made in creating the work.

On the Boards in Seattle has presented contemporary performance artists from around the world for over 30 years. Last week, it launched OnTheBoards.tv to present contemporary performances to wherever the audience might be. This is the first site of it’s kind to present complete, sometimes challenging, contemporary performances.

A trailer for Transition by Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith

Several years ago, On the Boards began documenting work in HD using five cameras. The final edit is performed with the cooperation of the artists. These HD videos are available for $5 rental (for 48 hours), or $15 to buy. There are also several subscription packages for the site, starting at $50 for a year of unlimited streaming, up to the educational subscription, allowing an entire institution unlimited streaming for $250. The earnings are split 50/50 with the artists. This is not as generous as other online splits (Apple’s is 30/70 in favor of artists), but On the Boards has been footing the $10,000 bill required to film and edit each performance. Having their shows professionally documented is also a huge benefit to artists. They can provide the online video as worksamples to other venues and funders, without the expense of filming, editing and producing DVDs.

So far there are eight artists represented at OnTheBoards.tv. Seven artists have full performances available, and one artist, Michelle Ellsworth, is delivering video directly online during a one year residency. On the Boards hopes to add 7-8 artists per year, and also hopes to partner with other organizations. PS-122 in New York is already a partner.

Alaska by Diana Szeinblums, shot at PS-122 in New York.

Documentation of many contemporary performances exists only in arts org archives and libraries with very restricted access. Even professional researchers and scholars have trouble accessing these videos and recordings. Especially for well-known and historically significant artists (e.g., Meridith Monk, John Cage, Laurie Anderson), opening this material up to a much wider audience is another goal of OnTheBoards.tv.

The site is new, so currently has a small sampling of work. Hopefully On the Boards will attract funding and partners to add more than 8 artists a year. Music rights remain a tricky obstacle to adding more work, as they are for many online video projects. Artists may clear rights for performances, but don’t have rights for online distribution. On the Boards has to clear music for each production, or the work can’t be included on the site. The bios, performance credits and other artist information is provided in PDF, which is helpful but would be better as a fully integrated part of the site.

Hi There by Melissa Ellsworth, a piece made available directly through the site, part of an OnTheBoards.tv artist in residence.

The basics behind this idea aren’t new. Similar projects have been tried, using DVD and VHS as distribution, and for other types of performance. The cheaper costs of internet delivery and it’s easier access for audiences now makes the idea much more feasible.

Many performing artists believe their art should only exist in the moment, that it’s somehow cheapened or made worse by capturing it, and creating the definitive performance of record. But audiences of the world will get more and more of their art on demand. TV, film and music all move this direction, and audiences will likely not go back. Expanding their audiences, and being able to earn a living so they can continue making work, is a new, amazing opportunity for artists. It doesn’t diminish the power of seeing the artist and the work in person. It just exponentially expands the possibility that someone will be able to see an artist’s work at all. Cumulatively, efforts like this will also give us a historical memory of contemporary performances, that all to often fade away completely.

The site was created with funding from the Wallace Foundation and Dance USA, to test new successful models for sustainably expanding audiences.

Artists on the Site

• Troubleyn | Jan Fabre
• Tanja Liedtke
• Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company
• Temporary Distortion
• Diana Szeinblum
• Reggie Watts | Tommy Smith
• Allen Johnson
• Michelle Ellsworth

Learn more

• OnTheBoards.tv
• Recording Staged Works for All the World to See – The New York Times
• PS-122
• Digital Theatre
• Metropolitan Opera, Live in HD

Back in 1993, people of Inakadate in northern Japan began planting four types of rice in patterns, which when mature, would form huge images when viewed from above.

Here’s a timelapse of several of the paintings growing into place.

Farmers use computer-aided plotting to design images and determine where the different varieties of rice should be planted.

A close up view

In the years since, other regions of Japan (and people in other countries) have joined in the practice. Meanwhile, Inakadate’s creations have become much more complex and sophisticated. Agreements between farmers have also allowed the artworks to span multiple farms.

View from a paraglider:

More from the ground:

Learn more

• Homegrown Art – The Japan Times
• Inakadate, Aomori, Japan – Wikipedia
• How to Farm a Great Work of Art – Salon
• Inakadate, official site (english translation)

Related posts:

1. Conan O’Brien’s Portrait Made From Cheetos
2. Japan Ink – Inside the Manga-Industrial Complex
3. Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) – A Model for Artists?

The PBS Newshour Art Beat reports that students of Haiti’s only film school, Ciné Institute, have kept filming after the earthquake, shooting and editing despite their own personal circumstances.

Ciné Institute Students Effort from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

Learn more

• Ciné Institute
• Ciné Institute online videos at Vimeo
• Conversation: Students from Haiti’s Only Film School Keep Their Cameras Rolling from PBS Newshour, Art Beat
• Haiti’s Film Students Find a New Mission by Salon

Related posts:

1. Short film for the day

San Francisco Bay Area photographer Lane Hartwell gathered photographers to publish a special magazine titled Onè Respe to benefit Haiti. The images celebrate life in Haiti, all taken before the earthquake. Other participating photographers include Mary Ellen Mark, Chet Gordon and Peter Pereira. The magazine was printed through HP’s MagCloud service. HP has decided to donate printing costs to the effort. All proceeds will be donated to the Red Cross.

Order Onè Respe.

Learn more

• Photographers Unite for Haiti Fundraising from Wired
• Lane Hartwell Photography
• Mary Ellen Mark photography
• Chet Gordon, photographer
• Peter Pereira, photojournalist
• MagCloud, print on demand by HP