The bash is back

Artbash seems, after a few months of summertime languishing, to have sprung back to life. Well, 'sprung' might not be the right word, but some of the regular contributors, including John Hurrell and 'Jean' (Emily Cormack) are posting again.

Artbash describes itself as:

... an online community of New Zealanders who love art and love to talk about art. Sometimes things get a bit scrappy, but generally there are a bunch of intelligent and educated (well, we've been to art-school anyway) people to interact with.

Run out of Christchurch, it can be a bit Christchurch-centric, although Hurrell does his best to broaden the discussion. On the other (even) hand, it can be interesting to follow a community that's largely talking to and about itself - for example, the Christchurch Art Gallery review, restructure and re-staffing.

So - welcome back Artbash. Looking forward to seeing some sparks fly: Prospect 2007 would be a good launch pad.

Watching the clock

As part of its site design, the Statistics New Zealand site has a population clock in its banner design - which currently reads 4,168,445 people.

Stats New Zealand site

It's a nifty little thing, but what I really like about is the figuring-out that underpins it:

New Zealand's population is estimated to increase by one person every 10 minutes and 29 seconds.

This is based on the estimated resident population at 30 September 2006 and the following component settings.

• one birth every 9 minutes and 13 seconds
  
• one death every 19 minutes and 23 seconds
  
• a net migration gain of one New Zealand resident every 25 minutes and 59 seconds.

Blog buzz

I've been playing around a little with blog search engines, and I think I've settled on IceRocket. It's got a nice lay-out (strongly reminiscent of Google), not too many paid ads, you can search MySpace separately, and clicking the search results takes you directly to the blog, not to another page of advertising.

And remember Google Fight? On IceRocket you can measure and graph 'blog buzz', and generate results like the one at the top of this blog: Painting (in blue) takes on Relational Aesthetics over the past month. Stats don't lie.

Digital do-gooder

My new-New Year's resolution / proof I'm really committed to my job: I'm going to become a volunteer proof-reader with Distributed Proofreaders, on online organisation set up to assist with the digitisation of books for Project Gutenberg.

One of the reasons I'm doing this - apart from the goodness of my heart - is that the digitisation of the books is being done using OCR (optical character recognition). We're running a project here at work using OCR to convert millions (well, million) of TIF files of pages of historical newspapers into fully text-searchable pages. I think/hope this will provide an interesting insight.

Up close

One of the challenges we're facing with our website redevelopment at work is how to maximise the presentation of images of works in our collections - from maps to miniatures to panorama photos to pots.

Someone recommended the FAMSF's (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's) ImageBase to me last night, for its zoom functionality.

FAMSF ImageBase

ImageBase uses Zoomify, a Flash-based application, to display high-resolution images online. The image quality is fantastic. Zoomify is also being used by the Library of Congress and the Getty.

One of the other interesting things about ImageBase is that they've employed descriptive keywords in their search functionality. So in addition to searching by typical cataloguing terms, like artist name, or date, or medium, you can search by the kind of words that you might use to describe the work less formally - the work at the top of the post, for example, has key words including stylish, leggy, young, clad and loosely - all good words for John Buckland Wright.

Image: John Buckland Wright, Jeune Fille Accroupie, 1929. Wood Engraving. Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts. See more details here.

I would like to stress that I strongly believe in the efficacy of art as a means for social change through a process of democratic questioning.

Dan du Bern - what he wanted to do for Prospect 2007

The long and the short of it

In a post on Monday, Tim O'Reilly wrote about the way that web publishing - and particularly the growth of blogging - is changing the way we create and deliver information.

In particular, O'Reilly notes the prevalence of short-form content, which suits the way we scan and skip through web content, and also lends itself to social production, or the collaborative creation of content.

The connection between short, modular and open - O'Reilly Radar

On Rough Type, Nicholas Carr responds to O'Reilly's piece, noting the danger posed by the short-form to the long-form (movies compared to Youtube clips):

"The new medium doesn't just promote the proliferation of small pieces; it devalues the long form. In fact, it doesn't even make room for big, extended works. It's actively biased against them, technologically and economically. More than that, though, it both reflects and reinforces our own increasing bias against anything that requires sustained attention or contemplation."

Honey, I shrunk the culture - Rough Type

Going to market

Visiting Edward Winkleman's blog this morning, his current post about pricing the work of emerging artists seemed to follow on nicely from what I was reading earlier on the Auckland Art Fair site

What they're willing to pay - Edward Winkleman

Winkleman's advice to emerging artists is to keep prices enticingly low, until a steady demand is established, and you can start to move the prices up in response. He's looking at the issue in light of recent, stupidly high, prices on the secondary market - notably Ron Lauder purchase of Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. He asks - and answers - some interesting questions:

"What if an artist knows that one particular piece is the best work they've ever done...should they insist its price be higher than their other work? And, conversely, just because the market goes nuts for one particular piece by an emerging artist, does that mean that the price of all subsequent work should be higher? What if that one piece is the one true gem and the later work not quite so?"

Collecting art - it's, like, so hot right now

This May the second Auckland Art Fair is being held in the Viaduct Harbour. Overthenet has posted a list of dealer galleries who have joined the event, after apparently sitting back and watching the inaugural event, have signed up for this one.

On the AAF's website, Jennifer Buckley and Deborah White describe the event's objective: "to secure Auckland a place on an International Art Fair circuit which includes Melbourne, Basel, Miami and London and we expect it to produce significant long term economic benefits for artists, galleries and Auckland City.".

The aim of the AAF is to "provide the opportunity for existing and aspiring art collectors and aficionados to meet and discuss their art interests with the people who have an extensive knowledge of – and dedication to – their profession."

The best bit though is the inclusion of this quote, from Elaine W. Ng, Editor-in-Chief, Art Asia Pacific:

“Art fairs are the new Biennales. Even the New York Times coverage of Art Basel Miami describes it as an event where 'young, hip hedge-fund managers, Fortune 500 executives and A-list actors are shopping side by side in a spree fuelled by new wealth, a hot art market and the headlong pursuit of membership in a glamorous , elite club'.”

Auckland - the new Miami.

If an installation fell in the woods ...

On Tyler Green, a post about a particularly daft division between 'installation' and 'sculpture', on the basis that installation 'needs' you. Who knew it was so easy to draw the line?

Art BS - Tyler Green

Image:Michael Parekowhai, Parliament of Fools, 2006. Automotive paint on fibreglass. From the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery website

My first widget

Following a tip from Tyler Green on Modern Art Notes, I've just downloaded my first widget - from the Rijksmuseum.

The Rijkswidget is, according to the Rijksmuseum, the first widget ever to emanate from a museum. The widget delivers a work from the Rijksmuseum's collection to your desktop every day; you can enlarge the image, and flip it to read the 'reverse', which gives you info about the work and a link to a collection page on the Rijksmuseum site that features the work.

The widget runs through Yahoo Widgets, and can be downloaded from their widget gallery or via the Rijksmuseum site.

**Some background on widgets from Wikipedia**

What I find really interesting is the feedback the Rijksmuseum have received. As well as people commenting on the beauty of the art (the work at the top of the post is today's example, and I'm picking there's a lot of easy-on-the-eye representational painting loaded up) and the way it improves their lives ("Outstanding! Rijksmuseum provides me with a gift I cherish every morning. My day is truly better") there's a lot of feedback on the widget itself:

• world-class . . . world-wide-web enhansement, I have sent on to every web designer I know who is working in this environment, well done. The high-res downlaod is welcome.
• Very beautiful widget, wonderful lay-out. Just right. I love it a lot.Absolutely perfect widget. I use it every day. You can bet when I visit Amsterdam next summer I will be visit your museum. I am on a Mac OSX.4 and it installed and works so well.
• I am running Mac 10.4.6 and the new version of your widget works very well. I am pleased that your museum is so familiar with the Mac platform and makes use of its superior capabilities, in this case in the form of the widget.
• If you have a large bit of open desktop real estate, you may wish to consider activating the "widget developer mode" which allows you to place the widget above the desktop but not in the dashboard. This is a bit confusing until you see it, but it means that whether dashboard is activated or not, this beautiful and stunningly effective educational device is always visable and just as interactive as it's dashboard incarnation. It's also possible to put it back in the dashboard in the unlikely event that you ever lose interest in one of the world's great collections of art.

I'm now thinking about ways that we could incorporate this into my organisation .. as a way to access the collections, but also as a promotional tool.

UPDATE: The past two mornings I've got to work, turned on my PC and waited - in vain - for the widget to appear. It seems to disappear over night, and not be replaced by the next day's image. Today I'm going to try to find out why.

Image: Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of a Girl Dressed in Blue, 1641. Collection of the Rijksmuseum.

Skylighting

In Monday's Guardian, a lengthy article by Steve Rose about the new MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art), part of mayor Ray Mallon's desire to turn the city into a 'designer label town'.

Steve Rose on the new MIMA - Guardian website
MIMA entry - Wikipedia

The article features a lot of commentary by the MIMA architect, Erick van Egeraat, who by the sounds of it has created a good box for looking at art in - and inviting people in. My attention was attracted by this statement though:

"The gallery spaces are artificially lit, which might be a taboo in major international galleries, but is a practical consideration here, says van Egeraat, as artists can control the lighting conditions. Besides, most thefts from art galleries are through the skylights."

Crikey.

There's an interesting discussion on Edward Winkleman's blog at the moment about gallery lighting - the general consensus in the comments seems to be that natural lighting is best, and thus artist-run and dealer spaces often look the best, as galleries and museums are restrained by preservation policies (and use spot lights, which people seem to abhor). I was at the Govett-Brewster in the weekend, looking at the Break: Construct exhibition, and the combination of too-small lighting and expanses of grey carpet lighting absolutely killed Yvonne Todd's work, displayed on the first mezzanine floor - which was a shame, because the photos themselves are extraordinary.

Edward Winkleman's blog
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery


Image from the Middlesbrough Council site.