[ Theaster Gates ]

I need to get out of my cave more often.

I had a brief chance encounter with Theaster Gates today. I found myself sitting in the University of Chicago Booth Business School cafeteria this morning working on the Graphic for the previous post. While working I overheard pieces of a conversation behind me. I thought I heard the gentleman talk about issues he was grappling with between being an Artist and an Urban Planner. Oh, this caught my attention, and I couldn’t help but interrupt his conversation and introduce myself. It turned out to be Theaster Gates. For some reason I couldn’t remember his name, until later when I realized that I was recently looking at his work at the 2010 Whitney Biennial and did a post about the “Newly Revitalized” Whitney Biennial.

• Audio: Artist Connect Lecture { The Art Institute of Chicago } November, 3, 2007
• August 2, 2009 Interview with Kathryn Born of Bad with Sports

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via [ The National Academies Press ] “Understanding Climate’s Influence on Human Evolution”

I have always been fascinated by a spatial understanding of “who we are” and “what we know.” In my mind there is an innately spatial component to both “Climate” and “Evolution”

[ Correlation Between Genetic and Geographic Structure in Europe ]

Description:

The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The geological record suggests that some of these evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the intriguing possibility that key junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected or controlled by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. However, with both a sparse hominin fossil record and an incomplete understanding of past climates, the particular effect of the environment on hominin evolution remains speculative. This presents an opportunity for exciting and fundamental scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped to shape our species, and thereby to shed light on the evolutionary forces that made us distinctively human

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[ Daniel Heyman ]

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[ THE WHITNEY BIENNIAL ] February 25–May 30, 2010

2010 ARTISTS

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via [ Le Territoire Des Sans ] [ MIT Media Lab ]

TEI 2010 / Relief: a responsive 3D surface from benny on Vimeo.

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Tides and Bodies of Water:

BoingBoing draws attention to Amy Greenfield’s video work and the controversy of Youtube’s censure of her work. The work below comes from Amy Greenfield’s solo exhibition Untitled Nude curated by Lynn del Sol at {CTS} creative thriftshop in conjunction with Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery. Her show just closed this February 12th.

TIDES HD from Amy Greenfield on Vimeo.

Throughout Greenfield’s films she focuses on the innate dignity of the human body. The themes of identity and meaning emerge in our common movements. Walking, falling, embracing, rolling, running, lifting, sliding are what she and her performers do in her films. For Greenfield the body, moving with, and against, the close up camera, can be the concrete image of inner human nature, an instrument for its expression, and a vessel containing images and actions that crystalize the meaning and mysteries of experience: memory and movement, the past and the present moment.1

The French poet, Paul Valery, noted that “The nude is for the artist what love is for the poet”

- PR packet {CTS} creative thriftshop

[ Amy Greenfield's Vimeo profile ]

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In the Production of Space

via [ Next Nature ] “Correlation Between Genetic and Geographic Structure in Europe”

The map on the right is a geo-political map based on capitals as landmarked locators. The map on the left shows the genetic relationship between these 23 populations. The area assigned to each population represents the amount of genetic variation in it.

A team of scientists tested almost 2,500 people to compile a geospatial genetic map. The map was published in the August 2008 issue of the scientific journal Current Biology in the article Correlation between Genetic and Geographic Structure.

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via [ Cool Hunting ] Leo Villareal

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Perhaps the most important lesson from this dialogue is were it is occurring.

Update - Friendship Confirmed (Feb. 18 2:54 pm): I’ve been given entry to this gated community.

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via [ Bonsajo ] “Vanishing Point”

Vanishing Point from Bonsajo on Vimeo.

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“What’s It All Mean” - Retrospect at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

via [ NY Times ] “In Case You Missed the Revolution, Man” by Ken Johnson

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via [ English Russia ]

I identify with these photos. While in High School I often imaged working with my father painting the interiors of old churches in Chicago. What strikes me about these images is the orientation of the Artist to his work as captured and arranged by the photographer.

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via [ acegallery ]

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I am not a fan of many 3-D renderings especially those aimed at representing the “REAL” world. This is one reason why I haven’t like many Hollywood films laden with special effects. In this piece music effectively aids in focusing the space. Enjoy.

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via [ Trash | Track ]

Researchers at the MIT, with funding and support from Waste Management and other organizations, have been using custom-made sensors planted on hundreds of pieces of trash in New York City, Seattle, and London to track the circuitous route that trash take…

The goals of the project are to make trash collection, recycling, and disposal more efficient, and to raise awareness of the resources and energy needed to manage the trash in our throwaway societies.

The project includes wonderful visualization and Information graphics as a way to bring clarity to the “removal-chain”. The project is part of the exhibit Toward the Sentient City

The information design is the work of a team of designers headed by E Roon Kang.

Imagine a future where immense amounts of trash didn’t pile up on the peripheries of our cities: a future where we understand the ‘removal-chain’ as we do the ‘supply-chain’, and where we can use this knowledge to not only build more efficient and sustainable infrastructures but to promote behavioral change. In this future city, the invisible infrastructures of trash removal will become visible and the final journey of our trash will no longer be “out of sight, out of mind”.

Elaborated by the SENSEable City Lab and inspired by the NYC Green Initiative, TrashTrack focuses on how pervasive technologies can expose the challenges of waste management and sustainability. Can these same pervasive technologies make 100% recycling a reality?

Team members include:

Carlo Ratti: Director, Assaf Biderman: Associate Director, Rex Britter: Advisor, Stephen Miles: Advisor, Kristian Kloeckl Project Leader, Musstanser Tinauli, E Roon Kang, Alan Anderson, Avid Boustani, Natalia Duque Ciceri, Lorenzo Davolli, Samantha Earl, Lewis Girod, Sarabjit Kaur, Armin Linke, Eugenio Morello, Sarah Neilson, Giovanni de Niederhausern, Jill Passano, Renato Rinaldi, Francisca Rojas, Louis Sirota, Malima Wolf

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[ Manufactured Landscapes ] by documentary film maker Jennifer Baichwal

[ Trailer ]

A 2006 documentary by Jennifer Baichwal on the world and work of photographer Edward Burtynsky. Acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, such as the opening tracking shot through an almost endless factory, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste.

[ Clips ]

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Mythological - - - - Dystopic - - - - Anarchic - - - - Leviathan - - - - Criminal Underworld

Kowloon Walled City has received a significant amount of attention in recent years on the internet, perhaps more than before it was demolished in 1993. It is the kind of place that provokes the shock and the imagination of organized society.

Kowloon Walled City was a tiny Chinese enclave located in the middle of British Hong Kong for decades occuping 6.5 acres with a population reaching as high as 50,000. At some point it evolved into a living, growing, and decaying organism, known for attracting unlicensed Dentists, Doctors, Surgeons, Restaurants, Brothels, Illegal trade, manufacturing, etc. The only physical limits to growth were its 6.5 acre footprint, its fourteen stories due to an adjacent Airport, and perhaps its quality of life. 

[ Greg Girard ]

Greg Girard’s book “City of Darkness - Life in Kowloon Walled City” probably gives us the best insight into what life was like. I think we are bound to learn more about this remarkable place in the coming years.

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[ www.Lorenmunk.com ]

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[ Website: www.joyceowens.com ]  [ Blog: Artist on Art ]

I first came to know Joyce’s work about a decade ago and then again recently when she sat on a panel discussion about southside artists - [ The Invisible Artist - Creators from Chicago's Southside ] 

For me these paintings make plain the strength of the Human Spirit - in there ambition and worry. I have always loved the portrait. 

Out of the Box Series

(Click images to enlarge)

“These paintings are dramatic renditions of the black middle class men and women shown in photographs during the Paris Exposition in 1900… There is a depth to our African American ancestry that we need to be able to build on; the wooden box is a symbol that can both hold the truth and tell the truth.”

 - Joyce Owens

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