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Augmented reality

Thursday Links: Let’s Talk About Butter Sculptures

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on July 27, 2017

Photographer Paul Raftery has documented the bizarre architecture of Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet capital Astana. The city looks like a weird low budget sci-fi show’s CGI landscapes brought to life. [Dezeen]
BienalSur, a new biennial organized by the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero of Argentina, launches this Fall with 379 projects scattered across different continents. This biennial format is sort of uncharted waters—Buenos Aires is the hub, but the focus is on South America in general, and projects will take place as far away as Paris and Tokyo. [The Art Newspaper]
The American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors have both come out against the Berkshire Museum’s plan to sell 40 artworks to line its endowment and renovate its building. “One of the most fundamental and longstanding principles of the museum field is that a collection is held in the public trust and must not be treated as a disposable financial asset.” [The New York Times]
Ralph Steadman and Ceri Levy got a profile of their collaborations over at VICE. They make cheesy activist drawings of endangered animals, which are relevant because Steadman used to collaborate with Hunter S. Thompson, a well-known journalist and founder of the Gonzo journalism movement. (Thompson’s significance is never explained.) Anyway the drawings look exactly as you’d imagine—contrived splatter, extreme poses, compositions that all sit in the middle of the page. They’re no Walton Ford, that’s for sure. But the author seems to believe that if Steadman played into artist stereotypes more, and was “weirder, hermetic, less astonishingly prolific, and more pretentiously grandiose”, he’d be recognized as one of the truly great artists of our time. Sure. [VICE]
Why is today such a slow art news day? (Yes, we saw the Dana Schutz controversy. Lay off her, already.) I literally just found myself reading this blurb about butter sculptures at the Ohio State Fair, fascinated: “The American Dairy Association Mideast says the sculpture unveiled Tuesday salutes chocolate milk as the official drink of the Ohio High School Athletic Association. It’s the first time the butter sculpture has included color. Cocoa was added for the bottle.” [Seattle Times]
Thank fucking God. The MTA board has pushed back against the authority’s ambitious new rescue plan that would include more fare hikes. The authority’s chief financial officer, Robert E. Foran, pushed for those hikes, but the board thinks the money needs to come from other sources. Andrew Cuomo, the state governor has promised half the funds for the rescue plan, but New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has resisted giving the authority the rest. The mayor needs to man up. [The New York Times]
TRIXI studios has used new ARKit software to develop an augmented reality version of A-Ha’s “Take on Me” video. Is this the future of music videos? [The Verge]

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Friday Links: Augmented Reality Bites

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on May 20, 2016

Keiichi Matsuda [h/t Gizmodo]

In order to get their AI to speak less like a robot, Google force-fed it thousands of romance novels and created a new language game to teach the bot to create paragraphs out of two statements. What resulted is some weird, lonely poetry. Someone get this thing a drink. [Android Authority]

In other “why would humanity even want this technology?” news, Keiichi Matsuda follows the burgeoning field of “augmented reality” to its logical conclusion: an annoying world full of pop-up ads and invasive game-like marketing. [Gizmodo]

The British Museum closed yesterday after Greenpeace activists climbed the columns on the museum’s facade and unfurled banners advertising a fake “Sunken Cities” exhibition about the effects of climate change, listing locations such as New Orleans. The demonstration was in protest of oil company BP’s funding of the museum, which many claim has impacted the way museums discuss climate change and other environmental issues. [artnet News]

Joan Miró’s grandson, Joan Punyet Miró, auctioned off 28 works by the artist to raise nearly $70,000 for refugees yesterday. The elder Miró, like many Spanish artists of the era, was himself a refugee during the Spanish Civil war. [Hyperallergic]

Be still our hearts: Betty Tompkins and Marilyn Minter discuss being a woman in art school in the 70’s, dive bars, and how damn long it took to achieve “success” in the art world. [Blouin Artinfo]

Whoa. Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a process to turn wood transparent. The article discusses the obvious implications for architecture, but this could be the next big material for sculptors. [The New York Times]

Here’s an article arguing that cities should stop investing in museums and champion music festivals instead. According to writer Jonathan Wynn, they are preferable because they are cheaper, adaptable and require less public funding. [The Conversation]

People love to talk about how the CIA boosted the careers of abstract expressionists, but the CIA’s own art collection is ironically a tad closer to Soviet Realism, in that it depicts the glorious (and often secretive) fruits of its own workforce’s labors. Lots of historical representation here, as well as a cryptic still-life. Is the next big conspiracy theory that the CIA launched the wave of photorealism in 1970’s painting? [NPR]

Novelist Helen DeWitt does Frieze Magazine’s Questionnaire. This isn’t our cup of tea—it’s too self-promote-y and pompous—but we’ve seen it get a few high fives over twitter regardless. You be the judge. [Frieze]

Art collector Jho Low is being investigated by the FBI for shady dealings with Malaysian financial corruption. This has led to Low liquidating assets such as shares in a Manhattan hotel and his Basquiat painting, which he sold at a nearly $14 million loss to another finance douchebag. Does anyone else have news fatigue from trying to figure out exactly what the illegal/unethical, convoluted thing crooked investment people did when reading about the art market? [The Wall Street Journal]

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GIF of the Day: Revolution is My Boyfriend by Luis Nava

by Michael Anthony Farley on March 28, 2016

revolution in my boyfriend

There are more apps out there to swap your face with other faces than one could possibly fit on any single device. As such, it’s no surprise that our social media feeds have been extremely creepy lately. But of all the uncanny face-offs out there, this one from Luis Nava (co-founder of Janet40, which publishes limited-editions from digital artists) is probably my favorite because it’s creepy AND sexy. And it gets weirder the longer you look at it.

He’s switched faces with an iconic Google image search result for Che Guevara—a grid which sort of reads like the contemporary equivalent/thematic opposite of Warhol’s glorious photobooth portraits of heiress Ethel Scull. The software’s awkward attempt to graft a moving face onto a still photograph at an angle is truly terrifying. But Jesus, wearing Che’s face on your own face is such a better look than those damn t-shirts I’m almost looking forward to the coming wave of ubiquitous augmented reality devices.

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Google Glass Is Kind of Like “The Clock”

by Whitney Kimball on February 20, 2013

Google Glass releases a new video, poaches artists.

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Augmented reality

Google Glass Is Kind of Like “The Clock”

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