The Guestbar!
A tiny, guest-edited blog!
Rudy Rucker
Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel. Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.
Ceci N'est Pas un Pixel: The Neen Art Movement is Born.
Dadaism, Surrealism, Impressionism--in the past, major art movements were constructed out of absinthe, angst, and the side effects of too much lead-based pigments. When NYC/LA bicoastal artist Miltos Manetas decided the time had come for a new, post-digital art movement, he took a different approach: Manetas paid six figures to the branding company Lexicon, creators of terms such as "PowerBook" and "Pentium", to brand his movement. The result: "NEEN."
On the opposite end of the spectrum from NEEN is Telic, which is how Manetas describes all things "related with computer technology, from WIRED Magazine ideas and lifestyles to art generated with computers and theory about machines, software and robots....
Telic is serious. It will explain every little detail. It will submit lots of footnotes and references... Telic is never snob and it is indifferent to style or it will overdo with it similar to a New Jersey boy who comes in Manhattan on Friday nights. San Francisco, is in this sense, the Telic capital of the World."
Telic authors and artists, usually teach in Universities . They survive thanks to the grants that other Telic people are managing and they avoid the artworld, which in return, also ignores them. But Telic shapes the World. Neen is the crazy little brother. What it does, may sound sometimes stupid, but only because its easy and amazing. "
Here's the NEEN manifesto. For more, visit NEEN.org. I'm co-hosting a showing of new NEEN art in NYC tonight (it's totally amazing stuff), and will post photos and links to streaming files soon.--XJ
- - - - - -
"a few things I know about NEEN
NEEN stands for NEENSTERS: a still undefined generation of visual artists. Some of them may belong to the contemporary art world; others are software creators, web designers and videogame directors or animators.
Our official theories about reality -Quantum physics- have proved that the taste of our life is the taste of a simulation. Machines help us feel comfortable with this condition: they simulate the simulation that we call Nature.
You may open the door of your room, or you may click on a folder at the desktop of your computer: both actions will send you to similar destinations: to a version of reality, apparently impeccable and dense, but which will dissolve after you start to analyze it.
While I speak to my mother in the kitchen of my apartment, inside the PC a Sims couple is having an argument. In the television, SuperMario is sleeping under a painting because nobody is playing with him at this time. My mother is convinced that she has her son in front of her. Who she is really talking to though, is a person that doesn't even think in his mother language any more. (I start to think in Italian when I move there from Greece).
Computing is to NEEN what fantasy is to Surrealism and freedom to Communism.
It creates the context but it can also be postponed. NEENSTERS glorify machines but they get easily bored with them and prefer to watch some assistants operate them. They want to have a formal control though: they will buy the newest products and they will watch as (the products) will create momentum. What NEENSTERS mostly do, is teaching stuff to machines. They will install programs to an empty hard drive. They will animate a character and send him sit on a corner. Some NEEN painters, don't even care for computers, they fill figures on canvases which look like large photoshoped jpg. NEENSTERS prefere multiple operating systems: they want to try the same thing again and again on different platforms. "Take the stairs and go back to get the elevator". They find pleasure in the in-between actions. They also love copying, in the same way that the city of Hong Kong multiplies its most successful buildings. The same a little different: clothes style and architecture, are for NEENSTERS significant as well as their machines. They are great tools for "surface navigation".
NEEN is not interested to identity. NEENSTERS may use it ( their identity ) as a password or even as an e-mail address to receive information for free in a system where "analogues" have no access even if they are rich and powerful.
The identity of a NEENSTER is his state of mind. Because he will publish everything on the web, his state of mind reflects on the public taste. NEENSTERS are public personas. If fantasy brought Surrealists to ridiculous and revolution drove Communists to failure, it will be curious to observe where computing will bring NEEN." Link
posted by Xeni Jardin at 8:18:59 AM | permalink
Part Two: Hardcore Kitsch in SoHo--9/11 Street Art.
A young artist transplanted to SoHo from Barcelona transforms matchbooks from upscale NYC restaurants into tiny models of the pre-9/11 Manhattan skyline. The sticks are tediously carved into tiny skyscraper sillhouettes, and the only matches with flammable heads intact are the two which represent the WTC twin towers. Prices range from $5 to $20. The eccentric but charming matchstick man has a vendor stand on Prince Street about a block off West Broadway, and his e-mail address is desalojo@hotmail.com. detail view
posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:00:39 PM | permalink
Keystroke: Collaborative Telecommunications Art.
Saw this very cool application called Keystroke in action last night at Location One Gallery on Greene Street in NYC.
"KeyStroke is a Multi-User Cross Media Synthesizer - a distributed application that allows multiple players to generate, synthesize and process images, sounds and text within a shared realtime environment. As an instrument it allows communities of players to dynamically control and modify all aspects of digitized media in a collaborative performance.
The premise of the KeyStroke Project is to contribute to the emerging genre of telecommunications art. It is an instrument and a communications tool - a vehicle for sending and receiving commands, pushing and blocking choices, negotiating and dictating experiments, improvising and rehearsing the realization of a sensory display - a simultaneous realtime interchange with live and formatted media."
Link to the Keystroke Project web site.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:56:46 PM | permalink
Part Two: Tom Shannon--Art in Engineering, Engineering in Art.
I visited artist Tom Shannon's studio in lower Manhattan this week with Coco Conn and Dr. M. Here are a few more snapshots of this innovative artist's work. Above, Tom explains to Coco how he created this work on canvas with a remote-controlled painting device (device snapshot).
Below, Coco interacts with one of Tom's kinetic sculptures, which was modeled on the relationships between planets in the solar system.
Here's a larger sculpture following this same theme; the size and motion capabilities of each component in this piece are analagous to that of planets in our solar system.
Below, a recent kinetic sculpture that features a long horizontal pole, terminated in a blue globe, that "floats" above a plane--hovering in space by magnetic force and tethered by a thin metal wire.
In the 1970s, Tom created a very cool, very early telehaptic device called the "TouchPhone," which he demonstrates below. A user in one location holds a touch-sensitive device while he speaks to a user in another location, who is holding a corresponding device. While one user speaks to another on the phone, they can push in a red button on their device; the other user feels pressure from the corresponding button on their device. It feels kind of like poking someone's finger, then feeling them poke you back.
This early interface model allowed users to experience physical, person-to-person contact across a telecommunications network. Teleporn applications immediately come to mind when you use the TouchPhone, but he insists his engineering aims were purely G-rated.
More information on Tom Shannon is here. UPDATE: Here are more photos from our visit to Shannon's studio.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 9:45:13 PM | permalink
Nightline Covers Warm-n-Fuzzy Robotics Tonight
From nightline's Executive Producer, Leroy Sievers:
"TONIGHT'S SUBJECT: Robots that look like people. Long a staple of science
fiction, it's getting much closer to becoming science fact. But some see a
danger in making our machines too much like ourselves. We'll look at
adorable robots tonight....the growing trend towards
making [robots] "cute." Little fuzzy robot animals that your kids just have to
have. Robot dogs for people who can't have the real thing. Robert starts
tonight by exploring what types of appearances appeal to us. Who can
resist a baby? So who could resist a robot that looks like a baby? To get
from that starting point, to the end, which raises the question of whether
our own creations could, at some point in the future, actually pose a
danger to us, is a wild, but provocative, ride. And it's also a lot of
fun. I hope you'll join us."
More details, and transcript/video after the show airs, are here.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:50:35 AM | permalink
Spotted on a New York Rooftop: Mercury Men.
The Mercury Men dress up in head-to-toe silver and do agitprop art on the subways and online. Usually they're underground, but I ran into them at a rooftop party on Saturday.
"The Mercury Men are Masters of Nothing, Practitioners of the Art of Not Doing. The NEW YORK TIMES calls them 'victims of their own success'. The NEW YORK OBSERVER calls them 'maybe Saturday Night Live's most recent comedic find'. ABC NEWS says 'they look like mummies or something.' "
posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:52:24 PM | permalink
Flotation Devices: Artist Tom Shannon.
Tom Shannon is an amazing sculptural and kinetic artist based in New York. He'll be featured at the next TED conference, and his work involves magnetic fields, flight, gravitational forces, and creative automation, among other things. Above, poster from one of his shows in which a reclining female form hovers in space. Below: in his studio, a more recent work in which a flat wooden plane hovers above a table form--suspended entirely by magnetic field. The wooden plane appears to be flying; viewed in person, the effect can only be described as magical.
He's developing a truly mindblowing project called Air Genie, in which a large airborne sphere outfitted with cameras and LED displays floats high above the city. Projected on its surface is a virtual mirror-image of the environment in which the sphere travels. Amazing stuff. Check out his airgenie.com site for details.
Below: the artist at work in his studio. In the foreground is a working model for another suspension work, in which an Earth globe hovers and rotates in free space. The globe in this picture is not suspended by wires, it is floating freely in space, tethered only by a magnetic field.
Tom has developed a number of innovative technical devices, such as this machine that automates a specialized painting process. A remote control device manages the flow rate, stream quality, and movement of a suspended device that pours carefully measured streams of paint onto a canvas below.
UPDATE: Here are more photos from our visit to Shannon's studio.
Photos: Xeni Jardin.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:03:48 PM | permalink
Hardcore Kitsch in SoHo: 9/11 Street Art.
Walking along West Broadway on a Sunday afternoon, you're accosted by canvas after canvas of really bad art. Much of it serves as homage to September 11 in one way or another. Some vendors play really bad music from their cars, to accompany the really bad art. But keep walking, and you'll find some authentic gems, too. Anthony Martinez (above) calls himself "The Ground Zero Artist." One of his paintings, "The Question," is shown above. Anothony's painting-and-poem tribute to September 11 casualties, which he says was signed at Ground Zero by both Clintons and other political luminaries, is below. Click on thumbnail for full-size image.
Also spotted: this car, topped by a sculptural homage to New York City ironworkers or police or firemen or something.
Photos: Xeni Jardin
posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:44:39 PM | permalink
Mai Ueda, Oh My: TechnoTrashLustArt.
Mai Ueda is a young, New York-based digital and performance artist whose work explores sexuality, digital pop culture, and the kitschier side of porn. Coco Conn and I are hosting a performance of her work, along with her colleague Milos Manetas from Electronic Orphanage, on a secret Manhattan rooftop location later this week. Above: snapshot from one of her online artworks, www.romanticus.com. Below, image of Ms. Ueda.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:21:17 PM | permalink
Newsweek's Steven Levy on Weblogs.
There's a great article on blogging in this week's Newsweek by the inimitable Steven Levy (Link):
"Blogging is a social phenomenon, and the Blog-osphere self-organizes into clusters of the like-minded. Within one of those clusters, the small-scale drama of a life, the incisiveness of one’s film criticism or the knowledge one imparts about esoteric telcom regulations can foment a weird kind of microcelebrity. 'In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people on the Web,' says David Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, an incisive book about the Net."
posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:07:39 PM | permalink
Que Viva Nueva York.
It's good to be back in NYC, even though it's so crazyhot my fingers are sticking to my notebook's keypad while I type. Beloved boingboingistas, there's so much to blog, so little time. Since I landed here Friday, I've been scouring parties, artist's studios, and streets for new geek art and funky cultcha. Found some. I'll be sharing the best of it here with you over the coming days. I'll even post an FTP address where you can download a genuine street-vendor pretzel for 75 cents. Below: walking home after a studio visit, my friend Coco Conn beats the Manhattan heat with a spontaneous spritz in the street. (photos: XJ)
posted by Xeni Jardin at 9:45:37 PM | permalink
Guestbar Archives
