wax paper thingstag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2008:/blog/12006-10-15T00:25:29Zart, tech and fragments of urban life
Movable Type 3.32wifi magictag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.272006-10-15T00:24:18Z2006-10-15T00:25:29ZThis makes me smile...Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/]]>
Smells of the citytag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.142006-09-27T15:52:11Z2006-10-15T00:26:08ZGawker has created an interactive map of the New York subway system showing all the different (and nasty) smells you can find in the underground. Food, sewage and urine indications, among others, show the daily commuter what to encounter at...Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/
Gawker has created an interactive map of the New York subway system showing all the different (and nasty) smells you can find in the underground. Food, sewage and urine indications, among others, show the daily commuter what to encounter at every stop.
The map is based on the Google Maps API and onNYturfs' subway info, and is updated from user input. So next time you smell something fishy on your way to work... (ha!). I guess mobile phone integration would be a good thing to add.
[link] [via Boing Boing]]]>
stop-motiontag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.92006-09-25T18:40:21Z2006-09-26T17:32:24ZI guess everyone likes starting the week off with some cute internetness, and these stop motion photos seem to be getting a lot of attention today. "Kinda makes you smile, if nothing else", says Ann P. over at the Fabrica...Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/
stop motion photos seem to be getting a lot of attention today. "Kinda makes you smile, if nothing else", says Ann P. over at the Fabrica blog.
Gisele Kerozene
Jan Kounen
France / 1989 / Animation/Fiction / 04'18 / 35 mm
If one thing, all that floating around with knees bent reminded me of this short film by Dutch director Jan Kounen. Gisele Kerozene, from 1989, shows a bizarre chase scene between witches on motorized broomsticks. It's not clear to me whether it was filmed in stop motion or if the actors just jumped around and Kounen later chopped off the unecessary frames, but the result is quite interesting.
A funny and unusual movie that was presented at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. Check it out on YouTube.
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Jesús Rafael Sototag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.82006-09-25T06:18:24Z2006-09-26T17:27:04ZI came across the work of venezuelan op-artist Jesús Rafael Soto while in Buenos Aires last month. The Fundación Proa, a nice gallery in the Boca neighborhood, was hosting Visión en Movimiento, an exhibit containing some of Soto's most important pieces organized by the Tamayo museum.
Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/“Sphère Concorde”, 1996 Nylon and wood 257 x 184 x 184 cm Private collection
I came across the work of venezuelan op-artist Jesús Rafael Soto while in Buenos Aires last month. The Fundación Proa, a nice gallery in the Boca neighborhood, was hosting Visión en Movimiento, an exhibit containing some of Soto's most important pieces organized by the Tamayo museum.
Considered a pioneer in kinetic art during the 50s, Soto aims at generating movement within virtual spaces and was largely influenced by artists such as Mondrian, Malevich and the Bauhaus school. By overlaying Plexiglas, nylon or wood over geometric paintings, he creates a third dimension where displacement occurs.
Movement does not exist intrinsically in his pieces, but is emergent from the relations between color, forms and space, and in that manner deeply connected with the spectator and one's point of view. For Soto there should be no separation between observer and work of art.
That notion is evident in his Penetrables, where the spectator can walk within the hanging wires and thus become part of the work itself. In his own words: "With these Penetrables I have come to materialize the profound feeling of this situation of man submerged in a "filled up" universe, where matter, space and time are one continuum of infinite vibrations."
Soto died in 2005, in Paris, at the age of 82.
These pieces can hardly be shown through photographs, but i've posted some more on my flickr page. For those wanting to see them live, the Visión en Movimiento exhibit will open at the GAMeC in Bergamo, Italy, on October 12th.]]>
urban mash-uptag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.72006-09-19T15:07:50Z2006-09-25T19:03:22ZYou Are Not Here proposes a persistent game of urban tourism through the streets of New York. Or is it Baghdad? Or even both? Offering the participants a map with NYC printed on one side, and the Iraqi capital on...Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/You Are Not Here proposes a persistent game of urban tourism through the streets of New York. Or is it Baghdad? Or even both?
Offering the participants a map with NYC printed on one side, and the Iraqi capital on the other, the result is a mashed-up version of both cities when looking through the light (the image on the right shows a sample of the resulting paths).
This new map indicates specific placemarks of Baghdad tourist destinations in New York. Sites such as the Republican Palace or the Shaheed Monument can be visited locally, where the contemporary tourists will find You Are Not Here signs indicating a telephone number that provides site-specific audio tours.
According to YANH's creators, by providing a fragmented tourist experience they provoke a critical view of urban space and it's subjection to media and politics. A project much like the urban games developed by the Situationists in the 60s, who attempted to breach the "functional city" in order to escape The Spectacle.
YANH was presented at Conflux this past weekend, a festival for contemporary psychogeography, and is also scheduled to happen during the Come Out & Play festival, September 22-24.
[via We Make Money Not Art]]]>
Watch out for the thought policetag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.62006-09-18T13:32:28Z2006-09-18T13:34:41ZThe UK has started installing CCTV cameras that not only observe your every move but also speak back to you when They sense you are doing something wrong. Seven of the 158 cameras in the town of Middlesbrough, in North...Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/
The Daily Mail reports observing one incident where a cyclist was ordered off his bike in a pedestrian-only area:
'Would the young man on the bike please get off and walk as he is riding in a pedestrian area,' came the command.
The surprised youth stopped, and looked about. A look of horror spread across his face as he realized the voice was referring to him.
The experiment is already being considered a great success. After all, it's one thing to know you're being watched, it's another to realize You are being watched. Don't the Orwellian slogans War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength start buzzing in your ears?
[via Slashdot]]]>
wi-not?tag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.52006-09-18T05:00:38Z2006-09-18T05:25:31ZThe Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), a collaborative research group in Canada, has just published the first issue of Wi, an online journal focussed on mobilities research. Founded a year ago among universities in Alberta, Toronto and Montreal, the MDCN...Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/
The Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), a collaborative research group in Canada, has just published the first issue of Wi, an online journal focussed on mobilities research.
Founded a year ago among universities in Alberta, Toronto and Montreal, the MDCN aims to explore the connections between urban/wilderness spaces, mobile technologies and human beings. According to their opening letter, the new journal will encompass disciplines such as design, engineering, computer science, communications and media studies.
This first issue of Wi features articles on p2P (private to public), pervasive mobile games, locative media, the comercial applications of cellphone games and the use of wikis in social science research. Sounds promising, and we'll definitely be following its developments around here.]]>
6 minutestag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.42006-09-17T01:31:57Z2006-09-17T03:25:20ZThe video entitled Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years has already become one of the most viewed on YouTube this month. With a relatively self-explanatory title, we are greeted with 6 minutes of a melancholic piano...Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/
The video entitled Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years has already become one of the most viewed on YouTube this month. With a relatively self-explanatory title, we are greeted with 6 minutes of a melancholic piano tune that seems to match Noah's weary eyes in the sequence of pictures taken over a span of 6 years.
Many viewers have pointed out that this was actually based on another video, also available on YouTube, of an asian girl who took a picture of herself everyday for 3 years. But neither are a novel thing, and the first reference that struck me when I saw both these videos was Tehching Hsieh, a Taiwanese NYC-based artist known for his One Year Performances during the 80s.
In one performance nicknamed "The Time Piece", Tehching punched a time clock every hour of the day, 24 hours a day, between April 11th 1980 and April 11th 1981. Wearing the same factory uniform, he would take a picture of himself at every hour, what later resulted in a 6 minute-long stop-motion film. Tehching had also shaved his head to better represent the passing of time through the growing hair, which ended up at shoulder's length.
This video is not available online, but there's a short sample at one-year-performance.com. The result is mesmerizing, and the image of the artist through the passing hours, becoming ever more tired of the repetitive labour, strikes the viewer with the imprisonments of time and life.
Interestingly enough, in one occasion Tehching identifies in Sisyphus his main model, who in Greek Mythology had been punished to eternally roll a giant rock up to the peak of a mountain, where it would inevitably roll back down again. Camus, in an essay entitled The Myth of Sisyphus, will eventually regard him as the great existential hero - a hero of the absurd, and a fitting metaphor to modern life futile jobs at the factory or the office.
Asked wether his work was about loneliness and the difficulty of survival, Tehching told The Brooklyn Rail back in 2003 that he was trying to touch the truth in someway:
We pretend to smile. We are all taught to say everything is OK, we are in control, even if we are not. There is a need to be positive in public. But art is not doing that. We try to tell the truth in someway, to touch a part of it, to not be so typical. This kind of work is not about suffering, it is about existence.
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Here's to a brand new blogtag:www.waxpaperthings.org,2006:/blog//1.32006-09-16T06:42:28Z2006-09-17T03:12:16ZI've created wax paper things as a side project (*) from my insanus.org blog: a place to jot down ideas and gather links related to my current research on mobile technologies and the city. Art, tech and fragments of urban...Gabriel Pillarhttp://www.waxpaperthings.org/blog/
wax paper things as a side project (*) from my insanus.org blog: a place to jot down ideas and gather links related to my current research on mobile technologies and the city. Art, tech and fragments of urban life is what you'll find around here, but feel free to leave your thoughts and comments too.
As for myself, i'm a journalism student at FABICO/UFRGS in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A nice region in the southern pampas, so don't expect to see any coconut trees or tropical weather anytime soon. I also work as a freelance writer, photographer, webdesigner and all those other media-related things.
Waxpaperthings.org will eventualy host some other projects of mine, so be sure to check it out once in a while. Other than that, pictures on flickr; more info and interesting south-brazilian-based blogs at insanus.org.
Enjoy the ride.
(*) errr, ok, so maybe this will eventually become the project itself, since i've been neglecting that one for over a month now.]]>
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