When I stepped in the 303 Gallery, I thought to myself : “why there’s dirty water drilling from the ceiling? The gallery doesn’t have money to fix it?”
That’s why this exhibition is so attractive and special. In the exhibition of Doug Aitken’s “100 YRS”, water drips from 5 rods suspended from the ceiling, falling into a concrete crater dug out of the gallery floor. The flow of water is controlled in a will morph, when it’s falling, specific rhythmic sounds were created, with different frequency and speed of dropping water, it forms into a special beautiful song, The amplified sound of dropletsresound in the empty space over and over.
Doug Aitken, born in California in 1968. He lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. Widely known for his innovative fine art installations, Doug Aitken is at the forefront of 21st century communication. Utilizing a wide array of media and artistic approaches, his eye leads us into a world where time, space, and memory are fluid concepts.
“There was a time when I collected the five-day forecast from a daily newspaper. I did this odd and on for about six months. I wanted to collect something that lost its value very quickly. Monday’s Tuesday turning into Tuesday’s Wednesday.” I laminated each forecast and taped them together into long strip and coiled the strip and placed it in a film container labeled “Anthony Campuzano Forecast, 1998.” Recently, a film was produced from the strip.
Local Color is an exhibition by Anthony Campuzano of ten new drawings and the artist’s first film. It is his second solo exhibition with the gallery.
The exhibition takes its titles from Truman Capote’s Local color, an early collection of travel essays written in the 1950s and first published in Harper’s bazaar and Vogue.
In each of the works for this exhibition, Campuzano considers questions of doubling and distance, not only by repeating the act of drawing the same image, but also by remarking several key words from his past.
Ragnar Kjartansson The Visitors, 2012 Nine channel HD video projection From an edition of 6 and 2 artist’s proofs Duration: 64 minutes
One piece of music+ Eight instruments + Nine screen videos= The Visitors
This solo exhibition “The Visitors” is a nine-channel video installation based on a musical performance staged in upstate New York at Rokeby Farm, done by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, this is his second solo exhibition, which was first shown at the Luhring Augustine gallery in Chelsea, from Feb. 1 to Mar.31.
“Once again, I fall into my feminine ways”
Nine performers gathered together, but separately, each of them played different instruments and sang the same piece of music again and again, for 60 minutes. The beautiful, run-down mansion turned each screen looks like a portrait.
Ragnar Kjartansson, the Icelandic artist at 36, has been conducting art work with repetitive performance to yield unexpected meanings. In 2009 he was the youngest artist ever to represent Iceland at the Venice Biennale.
One thing I love this exhibition is because it’s hard to define it’s performance art or film or music, but it doesn’t matter, since the goal and the essence of art is to make people feel something in a positive way (or negative way, for some purpose) , intrigue and share people’s common memory. And I also, this Icelandic song reminds me on eof my favorite Icelandic band, Sigur Ros 🙂
As more and more stores are using location base service to promote or to drive people to real stores, how can this new fancy technology be used in the filed of art? To be honest, I couldn’t find many good examples….however, more and more artists and museums are applying the augmented reality technique to create new forms of art or service (but that’s another long story! Let’s talk about it next time….)
Here’s an example of how British Museum combines the usage of augmented reality and location base to provide new guide service for people.
So the rooms of the museum are augment, and when tapped, the virtual objects would open a HTTP connection, introducing the art exhibition.
Here’s another example of using the GPS concept into the museum, so rather than outdoors, this app provide GPS function inside the museum.
Besides these two above, there’re many mobile apps guiding art and museums, these apps are mainly used in two different ways – one is focus on finding street art around the city, and the other is more like a map, helping people to find museums and galleries.
As street art is located in every corner of the city, for the public, location base is a great function to used in order to find art work; for the artists, it’s a great and convenient tool to promote your work, it’s like an online brochure, and it’s free!
I found these apps are pretty much like Instagram – which allows you to upload photos, follow people, shows the location….most of these apps have these function –
Photos uploaded – it encourages people to upload the street art they’ve found around the city.
Location – When uploading the photos, it would indicate your location as well, so that people could know where is this art wrok. And when you see some interest art work, the app would tell you how far is it.
Follow & Like – You can follow and like photos, people and artist, which I think it’s a good way for street artists to promote themselves and gain more fame.
Artist introduction – Some photos, if they are uploaded by the artists, then there’ll be some simple introduction on them; most apps would have some simple introduction of the most famous local artists as well.
The functions are pretty similar, and I would say these apps are pretty much like Yelp, but only feature in museums. The main functions are –
Types of museum : You can choose which kinds of museums that you are interested in, for example, modern art or craft, then it would list all the related museums.
Map : The main function is the map, which would shows where are the nearest museums and galleries around you. and galleries.
However….I want more!
I want more location base reminders
When I checked many apps, i haven’t found any of them use the location base reminders, as many chain stores, like Starbucks, Target, Walgreen, or some fashion app like Snapette, they all apply the location base reminder functions quit well, they would send out some promotion messages when you’re near the stores. So I think it would be cool to apply it on art industry as well, for example, when I’m walking in the Chelsea district, if I’m 200 meter away from a gallery, a notice would pop up on my iphone and tells me that there’s a gallery near by, and shows some simple introduction about the exhibition. I think would be a great and convenient function to promote small galleries, since some of them are really hard to find or notice, and it would work perfectly in certain district,like Chelsea.
Also it reminds me when I went to the Brooklyn Open Art Studio, I’ve faced a problem – even though I have a physical map in my hand, it’s so inconvenient to use both map and iphone to find the right location. Even though Dumbo Art Festival provides the app with map, it’s kind of pity that it’s only for the festival instead of the whole region.
I want more small galleries information!
Another thing needed to be improved is that there’re little information about private or small galleries, most of the app only introduce famous national museums. Even though there’re way too many galleries in NYC, but it would be cool to focus on the niche market, and focus on the private ones. For example, there’re couple websites like Map of Chelsea art galleries and exhibits or www.chelseaartgalleries.com, which provides a good overview of the area as well. But so far I haven’t found any mobile apps like that.
Doug Aitken, born in California in 1968. He lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. Widely known for his innovative fine art installations, Doug Aitken is at the forefront of 21st century communication. Utilizing a wide array of media and artistic approaches, his eye leads us into a world where time, space, and memory are fluid concepts.
Joyce Kung = Pin-Ru Kung 