June 25, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Lumen 2012: Atlantic Salt, Staten Island

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This past weekend was one of those spectacular New York City summer weekends, with clear blue skies, hot but dry air, and more interesting fun events taking place than time to see them all. We opted for the very colorful Mermaid Parade on Coney Island (30th anniversary, no less), the Renegade Craft Fair in Williamsburg, the Gay Pride Parade in the Village, and the play “Slow Girl” at the lovely new (and quite affordable) Claire Tow Theater with a beautiful terrace offering up some of the nicest views of Lincoln Center. Saturday night was our biggest dilemma: free concert at Bryant Park? Lumen Festival in Staten Island? However, after bopping around multiple subway lines in Brooklyn during the day, we went for the low-key option of the new Woody Allen film in the neighborhood.

BUT, back to the topic of this post: Lumen 2012. Over on the industrial waterfront property of Staten Island, more specifically, the Atlantic Salt Company—the company that supplies road salt to the city during its snowy winters—all sorts of light-related exhibits took place. Due to an almost snowless winter in NY this year, the piles at the New Brighton company are still high with over 150,000 tons of salt, some piles as high as 5 stories. Roughly 50 artists, projected and performed their works on and around the mounds of salt, which (at least in the photos) looks very cool and in some cases Felliniesque. I wasn’t able to match many of the works with their artists, but here are the ones I found, followed by a link to a list of all the participating artists.

Top photo: Brendan Coyle’s piece titled “Mr. Canard”; second photo: Jeanne Verdoux’s “Woman Working” animation; Marco Brambilla’s “Sea of Tranquility,” a recreation of a lunar expedition; Phillip David Stearns neon light installation; and here’s the link to the list of artists (we welcome any additional information, if anyone knows the other works)

Photos: Garret Ziegler; Rocco S. Cetera; Eric Norcross; and Anthony DePrimo.

June 25, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Shakespeare Machine: Ben Rubin

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When I heard designer Paula Scher speak a couple of weeks ago at the Reasons to be Creative conference, she mentioned the current renovation at the Public Theater in NYC and the new graphics that she and her team at Pentagram are working on. She also mentioned a very interesting piece acting as a sort of centerpiece chandelier in the main lobby: a Shakespeare Machine designed by Ben Rubin (previously here and here.) The work is described in the Public Theater’s press release as follows:

A large-scale multimedia sculpture, “Shakespeare Machine,” has been commissioned from Ben Rubin for The Public’s lobby. Suspended from the ceiling and serving as the lobby’s chandelier, the work features 37 display screens on which fragments of Shakespeare’s plays appear and dance, creating an unfolding kaleidoscope of language in motion. The installation is part of New York City’s Percent for Art initiative, which ensures that a portion of construction project budgets are dedicated to site-specific artworks.

Upon further research I came across several Shakespeare Machines that Rubin has worked on in the past few years, as a way of working out concepts and algorithms for the Public Theater sculpture. The top three images are from the latest, and presumably final, renderings for the actual piece due to debut this coming fall. The fourth image is a previous rendering from 2009, while the fifth image is from A Shakespeare Accelerator: Experiments in Kinetic Language, a piece that is currently being exhibited at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at RPI in Troy, NY through the end of July. The final image is an iteration from 2009 included in the group show Textual Landscapes: Real and Imagined at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

The final piece that will hang in the Public Theater’s lobby will cycle continuously through the text of Shakespeare’s plays organized as a repeating series of compositions, recombining the small linguistic molecules to form new poetic visual combinations. The nature of the algorithms ensures that no composition will repeat.

I’m looking forward to checking this out. In the meantime, you can take a peek at the animated rendering here.

Images courtesy of Ben Rubin, EMAC, Bryce Wolkowitz, and The Public Theater.

June 19, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Zach Lieberman: Interactive Artist

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Another of the amazing speakers at Reasons to be Creative last week was Brooklyn-based digital artist and programmer Zach Lieberman. He uses technology in a playful way breaking down the fragile boundary between the visible and invisible. His main goal is to surprise. Lieberman has collaborated on numerous impressive projects, many of which have rightfully won awards and been exhibited at, among other places, MoMA’s Talk to Me exhibit last year.

One of his impressive projects—in conjunction with the Graffiti Research Lab—is a project initially created to allow TEMPT1 — a pioneering artist in the 1980s and 90s California graffiti scene who has since been afflicted with ALS, a degenerative neuromuscular disorder leaving him completely paralyzed except for the use of his eyes and mind — to draw using an eyetracking system. Lieberman was able to keep the cost very low, and with incredible ingenuity created Eyewriter. See the video below to watch it in action and for more details. Truly incredible and so heartwarming.

Another interesting project Lieberman collaborated on with two typographers and a professional stunt driver is IQ font for Toyota. Tracking the car’s movements using custom software designed by Lieberman, they created a font which is unique and can be downloaded for free.

Other projects include voice activated graphics in Messa Di Voce, an audiovisual performance collaboration with Golan Levin, and a music video for BELL using FaceTracker code with fun effects happening on the singer’s face in real-time. (See second video below.)

June 8, 2012 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

Luzinterruptus: Plaza de la Cebada Pool

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The Spanish guerilla art collective Luzinterruptus (previously here) is at it again. Their latest intervention took place on May 15th at Plaza de la Cebada in Madrid. Collecting over 2,000 used plastic cups and containers in the previous month, the artists filled them each with blue water, placed them in a 6 x 4 meter rectangle and lit them. This was to represent the community public swimming pool that had been demolished by the city in 2008 with the promise of building a new and improved pool. Four years later, still no sign of a pool, while plans are now evolving into a high-end entertainment center and gourmet food marketplace which will be too pricey for the people of the neighborhood.

The light installation in the shape of a swimming pool was a reminder of what the space once was and what it should rightfully be once again in the not-too-distant future.

via Luzinterruptus’ facebook

May 18, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

NY Design Week 2012

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Well, it looks like the ever-growing NY Design Week 2012 is off to a great start with exceptionally beautiful weather in store for the next three days. Aside from ICFF at the Jacob Javits Center, the event at the core of Design Week (and we – CollabCubed – will be there as part of the designboom mart, but more on that later) there are special design-related events going on all over the city. Too many to list here, but here are a few I ran across today in my travels through NoHo on my way to the East Village.

Tom Dixon along with Fab, Surface Magazine and Stumptown Coffee have teamed up and transformed the basement of the Bleecker Street Theater into a Pop-up shop and café: London Underground. Filled with lamps designed by Dixon, the space has a cool feel with interesting shadows cast upon the walls. My favorites? His new line of industrial looking ceramic lamps due out in September.

Two blocks north on Great Jones Street, Japanese Premium Beef (a unique butcher shop worth visiting anytime for its singular boutique-like quality) has a display of beef and sausage balloons created by Balloon Factory.

On the same block, The Future Perfect looked like they were setting up a special exhibit and across the street at Partners & Spade, Mondocane has an exhibit of historically relevant children’s chairs. Around the corner, Core77 was setting up their First Annual Core77 Open, a Pop-up exhibit featuring 5 designers from the 5 boroughs. The stacks and stacks of wooden flats(!) that they were loading into the shop look like they’ll make for an interesting installation.

More events include: Roll & Hill’s temporary showroom at 2 Cooper Square; Areaware at 22 Bond St.; and Hotel California at The Standard East Village.

You can see more events on the Noho Design District site, as well as Metropolis Magazine’s list, Core77, and WantedDesign for other events outside of Noho.

Enjoy!

All photos collabcubed except for bottom row of chairs courtesy of Mondocane and Partners & Spade.

May 15, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Realities United: 2 X 5 (Brothers)

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It’s true that we have a soft spot for all things Brown, with Em being up there almost 9 months of the year, but we’ve also been fans of the year-old Granoff Center on campus, designed by DillerScofidio+Renfro, since its opening. And now, I came across the permanent kinetic light installation titled 2×5 (Brothers) by, ironically enough, the two brothers at Berlin-based firm Realities United, which hangs at the entrance of the building as of last month. This colorful installation just adds an extra ‘like’ to all of the above; a little Rothko meets Albers meets Turrell rolled into one that has been beautifully integrated with the window panes and doors of the main ingress.

2×5 is a time-based work with two identical casings containing poster scrollers with full-surface monochromatic colored prints on stretched fabric illuminated from behind.

At the beginning of the academic year, the machines tend to both show the same color equally intensely backlit, and the changes are usually fundamental, i.e., from one color entirely to another. In the course of the year, the probability increases that the two machines will show behavior independent of each other. Then the spatial experience is shaped by up to four different colors of differing intensities at once. With two to four changes per day the frequency of the change is so low that visitors initially experience the installation mostly as static in the respective configuration.

You can see more of Realities United’s work, such as the very cool Bix/Kunsthaus Graz and the more recent mirror installation Transreflex, at their website.

May 10, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Daniel Buren: Excentrique(s)

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French artist Daniel Buren has unveiled his monumental installation Excentrique(s), Travail in situ, for this year’s Monumenta, the annual art project that’s in its fifth year and challenges an internationally known artist to ‘own’ the 145,000 square foot space of Paris’s Grand Palais.

Buren, a minimalist, has filled the space with primary colored discs horizontally eight feet off the ground, except for the area underneath the nave which has 9 circular mirrors on the floor facing up. Utilizing the sunlight that shines through the space, Buren fills the Grand Palais with color and light that, apparently, is rather breathtaking.

This would be so much fun to see in person…because of the installation and because it’s in Paris!

Photos: Courtesy of Monumenta, Benoit Tessier/Reuters, Francois Guillot/AFP/GettyImages and Francois Mori/AP.

via voanews and the telegraph

May 7, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

And That’s the Way it Is: Ben Rubin

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A few weeks ago, The University of Texas dedicated one of their plazas to the legacy of Walter Cronkite. The newly named plaza was debuted along with media artist Ben Rubin’s (previously here) art installation titled And That’s The Way It Is; a digital interface that intertwines transcripts of Cronkite’s legendary broadcasts with contemporary journalism, projected in a beautifully choreographed manner (reminiscent of Jenny Holzer’s work) as compositions of moving text, onto the façade of the CMA building, overlooking the Walter Cronkite Plaza.

From austinist:
The profound differences between Cronkite’s world and ours are felt as the projection evolves, both in their content and manifestation within Rubin’s piece. For the Cronkite transcripts, Rubin slows the pace and allows the text to move slowly up and down the CMA with fully legible quotes. When projection segues to live news feeds, the text flies across the building, occasionally as just snippets of stories and other times with full news coverage. The words overlap and eventually become so dense that the overwhelming presence of media becomes the dominant character in Rubin’s piece. Rubin accurately portrays this amassing of information and reinforces the oversaturation of current journalism.

The permanent installation is on display nightly from dusk to midnight on the southern façade of the College of Communication A Building on the UT Austin Campus.

You can see the installation in action below:

Photos courtesy of the Ben Rubin and Paul Bardagjy.

via frame and austinist

May 2, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Stuart Bird: Promise Land

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South African artist Stuart Bird creates sculptures, videos, and installations, often utilizing type, that speak to the socioeconomic situation of his present day country; South Africa’s potential for greatness existing side-by-side with empty government promises, hence the title of his recent solo exhibit: Promise Land. The show included the pieces shown here, the top three images being stills from Bird’s video Calling shot on a cellphone. The video documents the act of inscribing the words ‘Revolution’ and ‘Counter’ onto the roof of a building with an acetylene torch. From the artist:

It struck me, that the ideological lines between a counter-revolutionary and a revolutionary could be blurred and confusing. And I wondered about the recurring nature of revolutions, implied even in the alternative meaning of the word itself… The work ties into “Promise Land” in various ways, not least because socially and politically we are in the midst of a revolution, albeit a slowly unfolding one.

You can see more of Stuart Bird’s work at the Goodman Gallery’s website.

via Goodman Gallery and artthrob

April 24, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Roman Tyc: Semafory

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Czech artist Roman Tyc (née David Hons), member of the guerilla art group Ztohoven, replaced 48 traffic lights in Prague by amending the standard red and green figures to show them in situations such as drinking, urinating and being hanged, as well as more benign ones such as a man walking his dog. The act was embraced by the public as great fun (as well as awarded top prize at Austria’s Sidewalk Cinema Festival in Vienna that year) but, naturally, not so much by the authorities. Tyc had to pay for repairs in addition to a large fine. Tyc paid for the repairs but, refusing to pay the fine, was sentenced to 30 days in prison this past February. In protest, his supporters signed petitions and ‘decapitated’ – by blacking out the heads – traffic light figures throughout the Czech Republic. Despite their efforts, Roman Tyc served the 30 days and was released in March.

Here’s a video of the installation:

via gestalten

April 23, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Anthony McCall: 5 Minutes of Pure Sculpture

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New York based artist Anthony McCall has been creating unique light installations since the 1970s with a 20-year break in between. Currently, McCall has a solo exhibit in Berlin at the Hamburger Bahnhof, titled Five Minutes of Pure Sculpture – his largest to date – showing light installations created since 2003. His works are a combination of film, sculpture and drawing, though his more recent works are digital with complex forms created with the aid of computers. These light sculptures are ephemeral, yet seem tangible and physical. The projected beams of light — some vertical to the floor, others horizontal onto the walls — engulf the viewer in the slow-moving cones while animated lines, drawn in black and white, are projected into a haze-filled room, creating the sculptural forms.

The choice of space sounds and looks perfect, too; the spacious former railway station has been converted into a black box filled with haze and light. I vote for this coming back to NYC at the Park Avenue Armory!

Five Minutes of Pure Sculpture will be on view at the Hamburger Bahnhof through August 12, 2012.

Photos: Markus Schreiber (AP); David Levene (the Guardian); Hugo Glendinning; luyu2’s flickr; College des Bernardins’ flickr; Sean Gallup, Getty Images; AnatR’s flickr, and courtesy of the artist.

April 11, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Nuovo Teatro dell’Opera Firenze: ABDR

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Well, if Michelangelo’s David, Botticelli’s Venus or Tuscan cuisine wasn’t enough of a lure to get you to Florence, as of this past December there’s a new opera house, as well. Designed by the Italian architecture firm ABDR, il Nuovo Teatro dell’Opera di Firenze is only one of the projects included in a new music and cultural district linking the city with Cascine Park referred to as Parco della Musica.

The 1800-seat opera house also includes a smaller hall that seats 1100 and will be used for concerts and recitals. The design intertwines many outdoor terraces and spaces with the interior ones, using pathways to connect these areas. There is a 2000- seat open air facility as well. The large complex is decidedly modern with dramatic angles and curves, with a nocturnal glow caused by the dramatic lighting that shines through the woven exterior. The interior includes smooth geometric lines and warm wood panels.

via floornature

April 3, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Key Frames: Groupe LAPS

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Key Frames is a light installation created by the French design/artist studio Groupe LAPS — six artists and designers with combined expertise and technical know-how who work in film development, light installations, and multimedia applications. Using LED light tubes, Key Frames consists of multiple static stick figures that, when paired with a dance soundtrack, flash on and off in a choreographed display that evokes movement. Totally fun.

Originally designed for the Fête des Lumieres 2011 in Lyon, France, Key Frames was just included as part of the iLight festival at Marina Bay in Singapore.

You can see it in action below:

Photo credits: Reuters; flometal’s flickr; bernardoh’s flickr; and Groupe LAPS.

via voanews

March 28, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Charles Atlas: The Illusion of Democracy

This is an exhibit that we will definitely be checking out this week. I mean, numbers, projected on multiple screens in different variations, sizes and colors…totally our kind of thing! For their inaugural exhibition in the newly opened Bushwick gallery, Luhring Augustine is featuring works by video artist Charles Atlas. The exhibition is titled The Illusion of Democracy and includes three installations by Atlas never before exhibited in New York: Painting by Numbers (2011), Plato’s Alley (2008), and a new site-specific, large-scale video work 143652 (2012).

Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Atlas has lived and worked in NYC since the ’70s and is considered a pioneering figure in film and video.

If you’re in NYC and thinking of visiting the Bushwick gallery, it’s important to note that it is only open Fridays through Sundays. The Illusion of Democracy will be on exhibit through May 20, 2012.

via artinfo via notcot

March 23, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Freude auf Morgen: Chezweitz & Roseapple

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Last month in Freiburg, Germany, in commemoration of 111 years of electrical engineering at Alexander Bürkle, a technological company, a room was turned into an art installation combining video, paint, and beams of light creating a surreal and futuristic interactive environment. The installation by Chezweitz & Roseapple in collaboration with kubix and Stefan Hurtig was titled Freude auf Morgen and invited visitors to walk through the red fluorescent tunnels of light and ponder time and technology. Cool.

via luminous mushroom

March 22, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Alan Rath: Digital Video Sculptures

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Last Saturday, while half the world was at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the other half was walking on the High Line (myself included), I meandered around Chelsea checking out some exhibits on a list supplied by my art-savvy friend Eric. One of these was the delightful Alan Rath show at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery titled Skinetics. It’s impossible not to smile at these ultra-expressive digital media sculptures. Whether it be the large eyes looking in all directions, or mouths with tongues sticking out at you, these are just a lot of fun. Greeting you in the window is the electronic pheasant-feathered piece titled Yes, Yes, Yes! doing a little dance; reminded me of a more elegant version of a venus flytrap. Leaving the gallery, I witnessed a cab driver sitting in his cab, captivated by the robotic performance, while the passengers in the back were laughing and smiling at the same spectacle. You can see it in action in the video below.

Alan Rath is based in San Francisco and originally received a BS in Electrical Engineering from MIT. He has been playfully exploring new media – as well as expression and gesture without the inclusion of speech – with his distinctive sculptural works using moving and interactive digital media since 1990. His show Skinetics includes his most recent work, mostly from 2012, and will be on exhibit through April 7th.

Aristarkh Chernyshev: New Media Sculptures

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Moscow-based contemporary new media artist Aristarkh Chernyshev creates sculptures that integrate today’s technology while commenting on our obsession with it in a humorous fashion. His LED sculptures play with the idea of information overload, in some instances grabbing real-time news feeds from the internet, winding them around the LED lightboard strips through the trash as in his work Urgently! (top two photos), or winding around endlessly in a knot as in Knode (third from top), as well as taking poetic texts and breaking them apart then reuniting them as stock exchange rates in Lyric Economy (second from bottom).

In addition to his LED sculptures, Chernyshev has collaborated with other artists on some fun and interesting interactive pieces. With Alexei Shulgin —the co-founder of their art collective/gallery/creative electronics production company Electroboutique — they created the eyeglasses piece titled The Way I See It! as well as the wowPod, an oversized distorted iPod.

There’s lots more interesting work that can be seen on the XL Gallery’s site and the Electroboutique site.

Here’s The Way I See It! in action…with a very catchy poppy tune that I, unfortunately, don’t know what it is.

via XL Gallery

February 28, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Claude Lévêque: Dreamy Light Installations

French artist Claude Lévêque has been creating light sculptures and installations since the ’80s. There’s a surreal quality to much of his work — upside down blacklit beds, abandoned trailers with chandeliers, or an elevated one with stringed lights inside, precariously balanced on cement blocks — as well as wit. I also like the way many of his neon signs are integrated with chairs or paintings, resulting in a strange juxtaposition.