Artfest!

Did you know that there isn't a page for 'hackfest' in Wikipedia? How can I explain this concept without that essential resource?

Quite easily, really. A hackfest is like the technology equivalent of a working bee. People come together in a certain place over a certain period of time and apply their skills and enthusiasm to improving or creating something - usually, in terms of code. See the DigitalNZ hackfests as an example.

The New Museum is running a version of a hackfest, where 7 artists are being paired with technologists for a day to make something.

It's an interesting idea, but there are two things that are a bit of a shame:

1. You can't seem to watch the pairs work (usually, people can wander in and observe these kind of things). Instead, they're presenting their work at an event at the New Museum on 17 April.
2. Tickets to the event start at US$75 for a student/artist* discount, and rise up to - wait for it - US$350. Yowzers.

*When I saw this, I wondered if New York has an artist ID card, and, if so, whether it gives you discounts on the subway.

O for Awesome

The Art Handler Olympics, being held on March 21 in New York, will test the skills and determination of the "unrecognized backbone of the art industry".

AHO includes events like The Static Hold ("Can you just hold that up so I can see what it looks like?") and competitive hanging with extra impediments. This reinforces my feeling that Art Handlers are Oarsome.

Silent listening

This morning I read an article by classical music critic and historian Alex Ross* that got me thinking about my re-visit this weekend to Janet Cardiff's The Forty-Part Motet at City Gallery Wellington.

In the piece, Ross tracks the history of audience interaction/shows of appreciation at classical music performances. In the 18th century shouting your admiration whenever seemed appropriate was quite okay - today, clap at the wrong time and you're likely to get ssssh'd. Ross writes:

Perhaps it is unnatural to expect utter stillness in a public space. We may be imposing habits of home listening on the concert hall. Seated before our stereos, we've grown accustomed to brief bands of silence between movements. This may explain why resistance to the Rule subsided rather quickly. Increasingly, individuals gathered in one place to have solitary, inward experiences. Where listeners were once swept away by music, they now spoke of music sweeping over them, like an impressive weather system over which they had little control.

During the applause debates of the 1920s, the pianist and conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch said, "It is a mistake to think you have done your part when you buy your tickets." There ought to be more give-and-take between performers and audience, he is saying. Passivity is too easily mistaken for boredom. Performers, for their part, overdo the detachment. American orchestral musicians appear to have taken classes in how to show no emotion whatsoever – with the occasional exception of a slight smirk during the composer's bow or a flicker of a smile during the soloist's encore. Music is an art of mind and body; dance rhythms animate many classics of the repertory. But in modern classical music, the body seems repressed.

To recap Cardiff's work for a moment. 40 speakers are strung in a rough circle around the perimeter of the gallery space, broken into small groups. The speakers, supported by black stands, are roughly at head-height. The audience stands, mostly, within the circle, in which there are placed two benches.

From each speaker issues the voice of an individual Salisbury Cathedral Choir chorister. Cardiff recorded the choir performing Thomas Tallis's 1573 composition Spem in alium, pinning a microphone to each singer's front.

As you stand within the circle you first hear the speakers warming up and chuntering amongst themselves. Then the singing starts, and as different parts of the choir sing (the piece is written for eight groups of five voices) the sounds wash over you, advancing and receding depending on where you stand. It is beautiful, and moving. People stay in the room for longer than normal. People start crying.

When I'm in The Forty-Part Motet, my attention tends to be focused less on my own reaction to the music than covertly studying what the other people in the space are doing. The Forty-Part Motet is a strange half-way point between attending a public live performance and listening to a recording privately.

On the one hand, you can do things you normally wouldn't do at a live performance - like stand with your ear right up against the 'mouth' of a performer, shift around the space to track the music, walk in and out halfway through, or listen to the same thing over and over. The conventions of passive listening are broken.

On the other hand, you're a member of an audience that's jointly participating in a time-bound experience of listening to a recording. You can't help but notice each other as you listen to the recording. You share little smiles of complicity, or pretend you didn't actually just make eye contact. You can't help but see how people react, and think about how people might be watching your reaction. This isn't how we normally listen to music either.

What I would love is for - just for one hour, even just one performance - for the speakers to be replaced with live singers, and be able to watch how people behave then.

* I don't know much about music, but I think Alex Ross is awesome. Check out his Unquiet Thoughts blog on The New Yorker site.

iPad opportunities 2

I wrote last week about my first idea about how how the visual arts world could use the iPad, looking at a new publishing model for Art New Zealand. That post has a bunch of introductory stuff about this three*-part series.

2. A mega-magazine for art lovers

Our arts institutions are busily pumping out content, print and digital: Te Papa's blog, City Gallery Wellington's new little room guides, Christchurch Art Gallery's 'Bulletin', Auckland Art Gallery's 'Reading Room' journal, the video produced for the Venice Biennale shows in 2009, not to mention endless catalogue essays, some of which make it online as PDFs, some not.

Then you have all the money and energy being put into digitising our public art collections. There's a better job being done here to aggregate content - to whit Matapihi and Digital New Zealand - but there's room, I think, to take this available stuff, throw it into a grid, whip together a quick intro or hooky narrative, and boom: a photo or art essay is born.

With not-too-much effort, this could be aggregated into one place - preferably, beautifully presented, and with an editor who balanced coverage and maybe commissioned or wrote the odd piece. Sure, it wouldn't be 'objective' or 'critical' coverage - but it's good stuff that's scattered around the web at the moment.




Add to that a regional exhibition guide - I'm rather taken with the work for Art Month Sydney 2010 - and you have an interesting and useful, easily update-able, nation-wide voice for the arts in New Zealand.


*Or more, if I come up with more ideas

Learning from my actions

I'm working on my first project that involves a touchscreen interactive at the moment. It's got me thinking about how a person learns to work a system with their hands.

You know how people stand at street crossing repeatedly hitting the cross button, even though (a) it only needed to be triggered once (b) hitting it more doesn't make the green man show any faster and (c) it's really bloody annoying?

I'm like that with web sites and services that are slow to respond. I click - nothing happens - I click again - and again - and then something happens - and then I'm not sure which click triggered it - and then I'm lost. Image magnifiers are classic for this - the time taken to serve up the image creates too great a lag between action and consequence, and without a loading graphic, you can't be sure anything is happening. So - click - there you go again.

I had an experience like this in a gallery over the weekend with a touchscreen interactive. I turned the sound off (because I don't like intruding on other people in the gallery) and pressed things and moved things. I could successfully 'close' things and move elements round on the screen - but I couldn't tell to what end. Possibly the sound was essential, but there was a prominent 'sound off' option. In the end, I couldn't tell who was at fault - me, or the machine. Most likely it was me.

So what I've been thinking is a very simple thought. To successfully manipulate a system that's new to you, it needs to give you prompt and quite obvious responses.

Today on Pippin Barr's blog I came across the procedural drawing tool Harmony. He'd used it to draw the face of god ....





Harmony is an online drawing tool that uses algorithms and the HTML5 'canvas' attribute to contruct an image that is a bit more than - and a bit more surprising than - what you're doodling with your mouse on the screen. Or, as Barr puts it, "What that means in practice is that you draw, and it kind of fills things in in interesting ways around your drawing."

Playing with Harmony, you learn from your experiments. You learnt that fat movements draw sketchy lines, that often die out, that slow delibrate movements build darker lines, that bringing lines closer together causes them to reach out to each other. You learn (because there is no undo, only clear) not to rgret your mistakes too much. Or perhaps you learnt to be more careful, if you want results like these.

Web muster

When Janet Cardiff's The 40-Part Motet moves out of City Gallery Wellington, I want the zebra finches to move in ....

Brooklyn Museum loads heaps more items to its online collection, includes nifty ways for users to tell how well catalogued an item is

Still have to read the article, but love the lay-out: Books in the Age of the iPad

United States Postal Service does the Abstract Expressionists (HT Walker Art Blog)

animation

Awesome animation of existing wonderful thing

Sadly, not

Beautiful things

In the past week, I've seen a number of beautiful things, so I thought I'd share them here.



In my feedreader this morning I found Duane King writing about Japanese design company Nendo's Fade-Out Chair. The feet of the wooden chair are made of clear acrylic, confusing the distinction between the end of the chair and the beginning of the room it's placed in - look for it in a white cube near you soon.




Digging into Nendo a little I found Switch - a simple lamp, with a beautiful feature - to adjust the brightness of the light, you swivel the lampshade. I find this simple idea entrancing, and I think if I had one in my home I would never stop playing with it.

Over the weekend, I dropped into Te Papa to see the installations of Judy Millar's and Francis Upritchard's Venice Biennale works. Millar's work was a little cramped, but still physically affecting, and the huge shapes certainly make you look at painting in a different, more sculptural, way.




It was Upritchard's work that really surprised me though. I hadn't really cottoned on to it via the installation photos from Venice - too ornate, too hard to make out amidst all the flounces and peeling paint. Put into a neutral space however, the work seemed dense and heavy, in a good way - distilled. And maybe I've been reading far far too much fantasy recently, but these little dancing outcasts gripped me in a way I didn't expect. Also, the tables are beautiful. Just saying.

Next, flavors.me. This is a very simple tool that lets you build a splash page to pull together your activity across the web - I've experimented with pages for myself and for work, using the basic templates.


Unlike me, some people have done some stunning work with the available options, showing how constraints can be very productive. The beautiful thing here for me is the interface you use to create and update your page, one of the simplest and most convenient I've come across. I particularly like the way you can drag the design panel around the screen as you're working, watching the page update with each change you make.

Finally, I read Rebecca Stead's When you reach me in one gulp yesterday. It's a book about love, death, time travel, being 12, and Madeleine L'Engle's A wrinkle in time. It's a slim book, and a taut story - every action, every word counts towards the reveal at the end. Hugely recommended.

Image of Francis Upritchard's Save Yourself from the Te Papa blog, photograph by Michael Hall.

iPad opportunities 1: A new life for Art New Zealand

Over the next week or so I'm hoping to get out a series of three or more* posts on possibilities I can see for the visual arts world to use Apple's iPad in their in-gallery and publishing work.

Apple describes the iPad as a 'magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price'. Smart people who I've heard talking about it suggest that it's the killer product that will bring your dad and grandpop into the world of mobile devices, and will potentially tip us into a whole new phase of online publishing. There's screeds and screeds of commentary on the device; the Guardian has a good round-up. So let's run with the idea that the ipAd is going to skae things up for a couple of posts.

Magazine publishing is a place where I can see the iPad fitting into my life. The argument for magazine publishing on the iPad is that it's likely to hit the sweet spot between an enjoyable reading experience (beautiful design, large, well-lit screen, improved interface for browsing and page turning) with portability and enhanced opportunities for advertising (an ad that plays a movie, or that links you straight to the relevant offer on the company's website) and bonus lower cost.

Here's my current magazine reading situation:

I have a subscription to the print version of the New Yorker that I am unlikely to give up. This subscription has great value to me. I read nearly every article. It fits into every bag I have. Looking at a ratio of weight to interest factor, a print copy of New Yorker is the best thing I could take with me on a one-day trip to another city.

On the other hand, I have a subscription to the print version of Idealog. Although I only really enjoy a couple of the articles, and find the advertorial annoying, I have it because it was offered at half price on Twitter, and $20 a year is apparently what I'm happy to pay for this content.

Everything else I either read online (if I want the information right now) or rent from the Library at 50 cents a copy (if it's for recreational reading). Wired is one of these cases - and they've already announced that they'll be publishing to the iPad in the northern summer.

Would I change my habits if I had an iPad? Would this take the place of the haphazard online and borrowed reading? Possibly, especially if, as some predict, the iPad triggers a new wave of niche or limited-life serials.

1. A new life for Art New Zealand

Art New Zealand, to my mind, is the kind of niche publication that should be eyeing up the iPad.

I might once have had a subscription to ANZ. We certainly have a huge back-run at home, but once you hit number 100 it starts to get a little sketchy. Either ANZ gets more valuable in hindsight, or my interests are largely historical (I was a heavy user of back issues while studying), or the content doesn't ring my bells any more. I think this last is most likely. There are various blogs and websites I can follow to get more timely reviews or updates as to what's on show, and the longer format writing is only occasionally of interest to me.

But I still think I'm part of the target market for intelligent (but not theory-laden) art writing. I was, for example, an avid reader of Art World Magazine, the Australian art publication that unfortunately went under last year, and never protested at the cover price.

It's important to bear in mind that ANZ is hardly a large corporate endeavour. Rumours of its demise or sale circulate regularly. I have absolutely no inside or official information, but I just wonder how long it will be able to continue on the way it does.

So - why switch to online publishing? First, there are cost savings. Obviously, no more print or distribution costs. No more storage costs. On the iPad, the number of colour pages required won't matter, because they won't cost more - so your mag looks better (loads of big, juicy, zoomable hi-res images of artworks). Design and layout costs may be reduced; I reckon companies are likely to spring up who will do what Wordpress themes do for blogs and Newspaper Club does for newspapers.

But where will the money come from? Almost all the advertising in ANZ currently is by galleries - many of whom have websites, and who would presumably benefit from being able to link through (especially those whose exhibition programmes aren't locked in in time for print deadlines).

Some content could be offered free; deeper content (maybe introduce quarterly auction reports?) could be offered at a subscription cost. Or - don't charge any reader. Offer benefits alongside the content, but working with advertisers to do cool stuff. Brighter minds than mine will be at work on this.

Of course, Art New Zealand is only an example of an existing publication that could turn iPad. John Hurrell's CNZ-funded reviewing blog (currently being redeveloped on a different platform) is another. And then there's the publications that don't exist yet - the most exciting contenders of all.



*Three being how many ideas I have right now. You never know, I may find some extra ones along the way.

The participatory museum

Links to Nina Simon's Museum 2.0 blog are pretty frequent on Best of 3, and many people working in museums and galleries got a first-hand opportunity to soak in Nina's enthusiasm and knowledge last November when she visited New Zealand to speak at the National Digital Forum.

Now you can really sink yourself into what Nina advocates with the publication of her book The Participatory Museum: "a practical guide to working with community members and visitors to make cultural institutions more dynamic, relevant, essential places."

Appropriately, Nina offers loads of options for accessing, buying, and discussing the book - see them all on The Participatory Museum website.

Of nymphs and nereids

On Saturday I dropped into Hamish McKay's to see Seraphine Pick's latest show, 'Pocket Full of Rainbows'.

As Over the Net have already observed, Pick's major survey show (created by Christchurch Art Gallery, now on show at City Gallery Wellington) doesn't seem to have thrown the painter into a state of existential crisis (as can happen when an artist sees their career tidied up into chronological slices and didactic wall panels). Instead, 'Pocket Full of Rainbows' suggests that Pick has sailed through the experience, and burst out the other side.

Musical themes and tropes - from heaving crowds to Elvis leaving the building - flow through the show. A trip to America in the past two years - which, if I recall correctly, included a long roadtrip - appears to have informed the imagery*. In this sense the work at Hamish McKay's develop the subject matter that emerged in the most recent paintings included in Pick's survey show (see the right-most image on this page), but with a different lightness and beauty.

I've always been most attracted to Pick's less intricate, less heavily built-up paintings, and to her delicate and suggestive watercolours. The paintings in 'Pocket Full of Rainbows', each accompanied by a large watercolour sketch displayed in the gallery's wood-panelled 'den', are in this style, full developed but still full of light and air.

The title work of the show (above) captured me in particular. A pale-skinned, bare-breasted woman is held up, triumphant, by a blurred crowd at an outdoor concert - it's an utterly contemporary work which, seen from a distance, melts into waves of Lalique-like blues and greens.


It might be shades of A.S. Byatt's 'The Children's Book' coming over me, but Pick's joyous nude had me thinking of Pre-Raphelite paintings of girlish nymphs - until you get up close and see the smeared faces of the crowd.

The painting has a green pin on it. I hope it's there while one of our public institutions is getting the acquisition papers signed off. Pick's show is on until 11 March - don't miss it.

*The pink nudie suits are the odd ones out here. I don't know how to stretch my metaphor to include them.

Images

Seraphine Pick, Pocket Full of Rainbows, 2010. Image from the Hamish McKay Gallery website.

J.W. Waterhouse, Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896. Manchester Art Gallery.

Herb and Dorothy

Megumi Sasaki's documentary about New York art collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel is included in this year's World Cinema Showcase. It's showing in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin between late March and early May.