To New Horizons

apexart
291 Church Street
New York, New York

Wednesday, October 28, 6:30 pm
Public Talk:
To New Horizons

Emre Huner, current apexart resident, and Lauren Cornell, Executive Director Rhizome, will discuss utopian constructs, speculative fiction, and the juggernaut of modernism. In their conversation they will touch upon the inspirations for Huner's latest work from the New York World's Fair, to the NASA Space Program, and Walt Disney.

Born in Istanbul in 1977, Emre Huner is an artist producing drawing, video and spatial works following different techniques. He now lives and works in Istanbul after being in Milan for eight years. Central to his oeuvre are over technological, industrial progressions and the concept of society of risk in this respect and the themes such as the affinities of the modern man with architecture and nature. Huner creates a common language in his works through using an archive he formed out of various sources such as internet, found out pictures and books.

Lauren Cornell, Executive Director, Rhizome, oversees and develops Rhizome's programs, all of which serve to promote and contextualize art engaged with technology. Previously, Cornell worked as a curator and writer in London and New York.

Part of apexart's international resident lecture series.

[text and graphic from apex art website. Caption:
"Trylon, Perisphere and Helicline. Photo by Sam Gottscho." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Erratic Anthropologies

Art in General
79 Walker Street
New York NY 10013

Opening Oct 29 6–8pm
Erratic Anthropologies

"Art in General presents three performance installations by Guy Benfield, Shana Moulton, and Rancourt/Yatsuk that mine the visual culture of flawed but influential community structures: the hippie commune and the American suburb. Using narrative strategies the artists act as quasi-anthropologists, investigating domestic objects and architectures to pick apart the promises identified with these cultures — wealth, power, happiness, and transcendence. With a dose of the fantastic, these artists highlight the psychological, economic, and environmental fallout from the failure of idealistic attempts at redefining western social dynamics."

Presented by Art in General for Performa 09

[text and graphic from Art in General website. Graphic: "Rancourt/Yatsuk, Phase IV.**"

** See correction below in the comments section, identifying the image above as one from "Shana Moulton's The Undiscovered Antique." Click here for a graphic for "Phase IV."

In Phase IV artists Rancourt/Yatsuk enact the story of fictitious star realtor Don Donavucci and his desperate attempts to construct the model home for his idyllic community during the height of the housing market crash. Donavucci’s fantastic architectural vision (a mixture of elegant suburban excess and raw construction materials) will house a series of “OPEN HOUSE” days, where Don will be on-site to show his creation and attempt to make the sale. Drawing inspiration from failed suburban housing developments of the past century, Phase IV will investigate issues of sustainability, urbanization, and limitations of natural resources. Phase IV seeks out the dramatic extremes of the housing crash to reveal the grim human ecology that has spread throughout United States and the world." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter

The Museum of Jurassic Technology
9341 Venice Boulevard
Culver City, California 90232

The Delani/Sonnabend Halls
Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter

The Delani/Sonnabend Halls which occupy the entire rear quarters of the Museum's original building house a sequential array of exhibits which, when taken together, detail the lives and work of Madelena Delani, a singer of art songs and operatic material and Geoffery Sonnabend, a neurophysiologist and memory researcher who's three volume work "Obliscence: Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter" stands a milestone in the field.

In the work Mr. Sonnabend departed from all previous memory research with the premise that memory is an illusion. Forgetting, he believed, not remembering is the inevitable outcome of all experience. From this perspective, he states, "We, amnesiacs all, condemned to live in an eternally fleeting present, have created the most elaborate of human constructions, memory, to buffer ourselves against the intolerable knowledge of the irreversible passage of time and the irretrieveability of its moments and events."

more:
"'Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter' by Geoffrey Sonnabend
An Encapsulation by Valentine Worth"

New York Times review of Lawrence Weschler's "Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology."

[text and graphic from museum website.]

Windows 7 Whopper

Getting an early start on weekend amusements, meat eaters and PC users rejoice: Microsoft teams up with Burger King to have it your way!

From an October 22 post on a Computer World blog dubbed, Microsoft's Windows 7 'Whopper' campaign: The worst promotion ever?

"Microsoft is celebrating the release of Windows 7 in Japan with a Burger King promotion for the Windows 7 Whopper: Seven patties stacked on top of one another in one sandwich. Given that Microsoft has been criticized for releasing top-heavy, bloated operating systems, this could be one of its worst promotional ideas ever."

Mac Daily News cleverly, viciously, self-servingly and succinctly put it:
"One bloated puke-inducing heart attack-in-a-box deserves another."

[click on image for full-blown impact. NB: this post in no way endorses the Apple Computer Corportation.]

Shelter

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street)
New York, NY 10128-0173

Sackler Center for Arts Education
Design It: Shelter Competition

On the occasion of the exhibitions Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and Learning By Doing, the Guggenheim and Google SketchUp invited amateur and professional designers from around the world to submit a 3-D shelter for any location in the world using Google SketchUp and Google Earth. Over the course of the summer, nearly 600 contestants from 68 different countries submitted designs that met the competition requirements. Current Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture students then selected ten finalists for the People's Prize award.

view the winning designs

[text and graphic from Guggenheim website. Thanks to CB in NYC for the tip on FB.]

Copyright Criminals

Bijou Theater
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

October 25 - 7 pm
COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS
Directed by Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McCleod

Produced by University of Iowa professor Kembrew McCleod, Copyright Criminals is a documentary that poses the question: Can you own a sound? The film traces the history of sampling in the music industry and the increasing government regulation on the practice, featuring interviews from music legends like Chuck D, George Clinton, and Clyde Stubblefield.

Q&A session with producer Kembrew McCleod following the free screening.

[text from Bijou mailing. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Vic Mizzy

[Vic Mizzy, perhaps best remembered as the composer of the theme songs for The Adams Family and Green Acres*, died on Saturday. Below is a link to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times.]

Vic Mizzy dies at 93; film and TV composer

* On a related note, highly recommended: David Marc's remarkable 1984 book Demographic Vistas: Television in American Culture that includes a relevant chapter, "The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning." Mr. Marc writes: "Green Acres is as utterly self-reflexive as any program ever aired on network TV."

[Thanks to Norman M. for the FB posting.]