1. Remove your laptop from the briefcase;
2. Open the laptop slowly and carefully:
3. Turn it on, as well as the sound;
4. Make sure that the passenger next to you is looking;
5. Access the Internet;
6. Close your eyes for a few moments, open again and look up to heaven;
7. Take a deep breath and open the site: http://www.myit-media.de/the_end…
8. Observe the facial expression of the passenger seating next to you.
Have a good trip.

via http://www.qbn.com/topics/601209/

In response to Jackie’s earlier post.

More than 70,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this Great Recession. Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives.

http://www.lemonademovie.com/

Sputnik Observatory is a New York not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the study of contemporary culture. We fulfill this mission by documenting, archiving, and disseminating ideas that are shaping modern thought by interviewing leading thinkers in the arts, sciences and technology from around the world. Our philosophy is that ideas are NOT selfish, ideas are NOT viruses. Ideas survive because they fit in with the rest of life. Our position is that ideas are energy, and should interconnect and re-connect continuously because by linking ideas together we learn, and new ideas emerge.Our goal is to encourage life-long learning, and we have created this website as a portal of possibilities. A democratic space where people can listen and engage with ideas that inform contemporary history. Ideas that we believe will empower everyone to be a part of today’s cultural conversation.

Sputnik Observatory was established in 2003 by the principals of Sputnik Inc. who dedicated their own resources to self-fund the launch of this website. We hope your experience ignites discussion and you join us in the effort to collectively imagine and re-imagine our world. Please visit often, discover new avenues of exploration, and share what you want, when you want.

The word “Sputnik” means fellow traveler. We look forward to venturing on this voyage together.

Ideas are energy.
Your brain is a satellite.
Out there is your mind.

http://sptnk.org/

Title of this work is inspired by a wellknown essay by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron. In a convincing way they explain how modern creative info-capitalism coming out of Silicon Valley was built by former Californian hippies.
Slow hypnotic animations are put together out of transnational companies logos. Thus, the piece symbolizes the unity of capital and psychedelia, as well as that of consumerism and creativity.

http://www.electroboutique.com/elec/16/?p=3

“Stadtstaat” explores the interlocked, equivocal relations between contemporary models of governance and their visual identity, by taking an imaginary city-state as a case study. This city-state is the result of the unlikely merger of two distant cities in different countries: Stuttgart and Utrecht. The scenario for such a fictional state is considered amidst the setting of contemporary geopolitical conditions-the
economic downturn, the increasing prominence of “networking,” “partnership,” and “alliance” as replacements of sovereignty, and the growing demand for cities to globally compete for visibility.

The project proposes branding and other representational models for the “Stadtstaat” that unfold in an actual policy experiment. The design is applied as an act of constructing a visual horizon, imagining the impossible to seek the possible. This “reversal” process of forming a political, governing entity creates a speculative space of reflection. Various levels of perception and understanding of the operation of a city and nation, in relation to the space-structuring effects of new information technologies, are played out. The graphic “surface” becomes visible as a platform that turns communication into political interaction.

http://www.kuenstlerhaus.de/en/current

(linked again here for your convenience)

Life-size posters of Google Street View images removed from the internet and pasted in same location in the physical world. Monuments to spaces and moments that no longer exist.

Typeface created out of Jalebis in Bangalore, India. Jalebis are a pretzel-like dessert commonly sold in India. Letterforms based on Helvetica Bold.

Digression. Here various digital processes have removed significant areas of a photograph.
The interest lies in the fact that the digital process does not remove the person’s features, but with layers of computer information, merely conceals them. The face, and thus the identity, is still present, but hidden behind a camouflage. This removal of beauty and identity questions how much of an image we need to see in order to be able to identify with the subject, it pushes the viewer to extrapolate the image he sees to give himself a view of what the complete picture would be. 

A plaster saint is defined as someone without human failings. How hypocritical this is: people who claim to be infallible themselves are prone to disparage others. Artists often lend credence to their own work by citing other artists as a source of inspiration or influence; epigones all. They set themselves up on a pedestal by standing on the shoulders of others and thus another plaster saint is created. The work in this publication draws upon that idea. To blatantly appropriate another artist’s work and make it my own and, what is more, to have the temerity to choose the iconic work of Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo said that “the noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding”. By opening a dialogue between subject and observer, they have been given a voice of their own.

Interview with creators.

Read more »

INVISIBLE CITY is an online magazine dedicated to showcasing contemporary art and writing by emerging artists from Australia and around the world. Each issue will explore a contemporary theoretical idea through images, creative and critical writing.

Issue 04 DANGEROUS BODIES (PDF 7.4 MB)

http://www.invisiblecity.org/

555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

“How it would be, if a house was dreaming”

The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture - the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers “Galerie der Gegenwart”. Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves - describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself.

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that’s strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably “controversial.” One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its “Fuck the Man” symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.

March 2009

http://justinelai.com/

D&AD Presidents Lecture / Matt Pyke from Universal Everything on Vimeo.