The WhetherMan

Whetherman1
03.07.06 (2006, 5.3MB, 1:54 min.)

Whetherman2
03.12.06 (2006, 3.7MB, 1:08 min.)

Whetherman3
03.17.06 (2006, 3.8MB, 1:13 min.)

Back in 2006, when video blogging just started, Andrew Schneider
was the funniest person on the internet.
From Astoria, Queens, it’s the whether|man.

Some Very Sad News

November
November (2006, 80.1MB, 9:41 min)

Last week we heard the shocking & terrible news
of the untimely death of Patrick Simons, half, with
Kate Southworth, of the artistic (and life) partnership,
Glorious Ninth.
He was a smart, imaginative, funny and warm person.
As a memorial we’re re-posting here a performance piece
they made a few years back with Ruth Catlow and
Marc Garrett of Furtherfield.
Appropriately you can read a tribute to Patrick from Ruth
and Marc here.
We’d like to express our deepest condolences to Kate, Bella and Aphra.

Here’s the copy from the original post in June 2007:

An enchanting piece of networked performance from
Kate Southworth & Patrick Simons a.k.a Glorious Ninth
with Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett from the indispensable
Furtherfield.org

I’ve admired Kate & Patrick’s work for a long time,
partly for its sheer visceral beauty, but there’s
an integrity, too, to what they do, a doggedness &
a willingness, recently in particular, to take risks -to
follow their instincts.
I think it pays off richly here.
Here’s a technical, blow by blow description.
Read it then forget it & just go with the strange &
compelling rhythms of the piece:

NOVEMBER
is a performance that utilises peer-to-peer instant messaging
technology, and the participants were able to see and hear each other on their
computers throughout. Working with their own pre-chosen texts, each
participant alternated between reading aloud and listening, amending and
improvising their performances in response to each other. At times a
cacophony of competing voices, the performance was a spontaneous and
unrehearsed encounter, exposing moments of vulnerability, intimacy, connection
and rhythm.

Celebrating Halloween and the changing of the season, four
participants met online to exchange collected data whilst eating prepared
garlic.
NOVEMBER is a networked performative encounter, recorded simultaneously
from Cornwall and London, UK.

Cory Arcangel – Phasing Dancing Stand Sculptures

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Phasing Dancing Stand Sculptures (2010, 30 MB, 3:09 min)

“Sculpture made from 2 over the counter “Dancing Stands” (the tacky kinetic product
display stands you can often see in down market stores) which have been modified to
spin at slightly different speeds. When these modified stands are placed next to each
other they go in and out of phase about every 4 minutes. I first showed a version of
these sculptures in my show “Creative Pursuits” at the University of Michigan Museum
of Art. This is a video of a version of these sculptures in action at my show The Sharper
Image
at the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami (the music is Dj Icey, a nod to Miami)”
By Cory Arcangel.

Wikipedia Art in London

intro.jpg
Wikipedia Art Intro (2011, 114MB, 2:29 min)

And, appropriately following on from yesterday’s post, a little intro
to the splendid Kildall/Stern Wikipedia Art project which is showing, as part
of a two person show at London’s Furtherfield gallery (formerly HTTP)
from this Friday.
(One individual piece by each artist too – promises to be a real treat)

Private view tonight 6:30 (Thurs.) – all welcome, maybe see you there.

This piece narrated in Stern’s breathless-puppy-dog-with-an-off-the-dial-IQ
trademark delivery with reassuringly measured interventions by the
no less smart & talented Kildall.

Edit by Foster Stilp, plus suitably keyed up and excited music by Stilp and
Kevin McGillivray, who together trade as Felixsofia

Drake Music Commission – Distant Interiors

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Distant Interiors (2011, 87MB, 2:16 min)

Drake Music is an organisation initiating and enabling a whole spectrum
of activity around disability and the arts (particularly music
but other artforms too).
This could be worthy, condescending and dull. It is none of these.
In recent years, under the inspired leadership of Carien Meijer,
DM has ensured it is situated primarily as a very forward looking
arts organisation which happens to work closely with disabled artists
to enable new and fresh work to emerge.
It has encouraged collaborations between disabled and non-disabled artists
and, in a sense, works towards its own future disappearance not only
by using technology to level the playing field but also by aspiring not
to pity or the sideshow but to serious, top level, work.

This is their first online commission, a remote collaboration between
video artist Melanie Clifford, composer Ailís Ní Ríain and artist Rebecca Key.

I like the fact that it is so confident in its austere and beautiful
language and aims, not to charm us, but to engage us.
The spiky and beautiful music is particularly exhilarating.

Steven Hoskins – 15 Years

15years
15 Years (2011, 60 MB, 3:08 min)

Reverse aging transformation of a 15 year self-portrait sequence
of Dan Hanna, forming the basis for the movie “StartStop” (2009).
Edited in HD. Used is 32 channel split screen asynchrony to create the illusion of flow.
By Steven Hoskins.

Heath Bunting – Memorial Stone

memorial_stone
Memorial Stone (2011, 92 MB, 38:31 min)

“As technology moves forward.. all my work is falling apart.. I’d like to move
forward as well, into a more outside adventurous practice, so this video is an
attempt to document the ruins and the remains of my internet work”
– by Heath Bunting

Estella Cumberford – Friendsource14

Friendsource14.jpg
Friendsource14 (2011, 21MB, 1:18 min)

This piece, by Estella Cumberford, is great on a whole number of fronts.
Firstly it’s really nicely made.
The images walk that difficult line between
telling us too much and too little, and the audio
(processed, apparently, in GarageBand) is well judged,
well executed and more than a little engaging.
You wouldn’t guess from the piece’s surface simplicity
(first impressions only of course, anyway. Examine it closely
and see how hand-made and un-algorithmic it is)
the layers of structuring and processing that went into
it but I can’t help feeling these do manifest in the sense of
its coherence, richness and general success as a work of art.
The text was sourced & assembled from status updates on F******* of
14 of the artist’s friends. This then read by her & processed as noted.
The images were then grown (organic metaphors seem somehow
particularly apposite) out of this text and rendered by a kind of
shadow screen technique.
It’s an exquisite piece of work.
Transparency dictates I tell you that I teach Estella
at Writtle. (I use the word teach loosely -as with most of
the students we have an absorbing and on-going dialogue.)
It’s work like this that makes that part of my life so rewarding.

Ruth Catlow – Landscape

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Landscape (2011, 114MB, 3:12 min)

Ravishing piece of work from my friend and colleague Ruth Catlow
who is also co-director of the indispensible Furtherfield.org

We’ve been talking a lot amongst ourselves and with our students about
continuities across art history and about hybrid techniques which
meld both the ancient and the newest.
Filmed in the New Forest, this piece (apart from its great beauty)
is an exemplar of this approach and pathbreaking in its way.
(More so than much which, dull-eyed, shouts and waves the latest thing
from the rooftops.)
The oldest kind of mark making, delicately but robustly realised,
captured on a tiny portable video camera in a semi-performative
way and then networked…
Beautiful and nourishing both.

Cory Arcangel – UMMA Projects: Creative Pursuits

creative_pursuits
Creative Pursuits (2010, 12 MB, 1:03 min)

Images from Cory Arcangel show – Creative Pursuits at
the University of Michigan Museum of Art.