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Archive for the ‘What I am Looking at’ Category

{ART & POLITICS} Emily Henochowicz

August 6th, 2010

Emily Henochowicz [ previous post ]

Thomas What I am Looking at

What I Am Looking At: Emily Henochowicz

June 2nd, 2010

Emily Henochowicz’s blog [ Thirsty Pixels ]

Obstruction:

Ingredients; One layer of determined activist over a layer of obediently angry army men, and a layer of camera people (to give it that worldly flavor) with a bulldozer on-top!

Emily Henochowicz is the American artist/activist, who lost her eye during clashes with Israeli troops at the Kalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem yesterday, Monday, May 31, 2010.

“Activism as a Genre of Art” is a nice idea but difficult to follow to its logical end when the opposition is willing to exert it’s interests with overwhelming violent means.

Are you willing to give your eye, your hand, your hearing, or your voice to your cause?

AP Story

- My prayers are with Emily

Thomas What I am Looking at

What I am Looking At: Masaccio

May 31st, 2010

{ What’s The Right Thing To Do? } A Comparative Statement

May 31st, 2010

via [ Harvard Ethics Course ] By Michael Sandel

About Justice:

Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history.  Nearly one thousand students pack Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre to hear Professor Sandel talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.

This course aims to help viewers become more critically minded thinkers about the moral decisions we all face in our everyday lives.

In this 12-part series, Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing to do.

He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios.  The result is often surprising, revealing that important moral questions are never black and white.

Sorting out these contradictions sharpens our own moral convictions and gives us the moral clarity to better understand the opposing views we confront in a democracy.

Thomas Misc, Politics, What I am Looking at

What I Am Looking At: Fra Angelico

May 30th, 2010

What I Am Looking At: On Teeny Tiny Tuesday

April 1st, 2010

On Tuesdays, the kids get out of school early. This week we checked out the new exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry - Science Storm.

<Just saying>
It is a brilliantly organized patterned space of light, color, and waves. As an activist space of semi-permanent large scaled “interactive information installations” it draws upon the full rhythmic and sensual engagement culture of rock concert and night club stage design - A kind of refined Wonka / Rube Goldbery space of gestured science.
</Just saying>

Forgive my indulgences.

Thomas Information Graphics, What I am Looking at

What I Am Looking At: Vinton County Ohio

April 1st, 2010

Last weekend I visited Vinton County to help my brother in-law run for county commissioner. The trip gave me a little education into this region of the country. - Phone Photos

Information on Vinton County via [ Wikipedia ]

Thomas Case Studies, What I am Looking at

View of Lake Erie: Road Trip to Buffalo

March 24th, 2010

Spring break and the opening reception for the show “Precious Cargo” just happen to coincide, so we took a road trip along the southern shores of Lake Erie. All photos from my phone.

Armed with market analysis’ and statistics, it is rare for an Urban Planner to reveal how they or their family’s approach and use different spaces. They never appear in the analysis. Is that possible? Just asking.

.

Thomas What I am Looking at

What I Am Looking At: Stephen Addiss

March 16th, 2010

Vietnamese Folk Song (Pham Duy/Stephen Addiss)

In the early 1980’s, I took an Asian Art survey course offered by Stephen Addiss at the University of Kansas, called “Art and the Human Spirit.” It was one of the most amazing and influential courses I’d taken. Since then I’ve used the idea of “Art and the Human Spirit” as a kind of binding agent for the seemly different activities I have engaged.

Stephen Addiss is an exemplar artist. He is a composer, musician, poet, painter, and Japanese art historian. he studied with John Cage while attending the New School for Social Research in New York, from 1958 to 1960.

Addiss’ work has been shown in numerous one-person and group exhibitions, including the Queens Museum, St. Louis Museum of Art, the University of Virginia Art Museum, and museums in Korea, China, and Taiwan. Additionally, he is the author of thirty-five books, including How to Look at Japanese Art, The Art of Zen, The Art of Chinese Calligraphy, and 77 DancesJapanese Calligraphy by Poets, Monks, and Scholars, 1568 - 1868.

[ Smithsonian Folkways: Stephen Addiss and Bill Crofut ]

You can find limited preview of several of his books at Google Books

[ Tao te ching ]

Thomas What I am Looking at

What I am Looking At: Mark Lombardi

March 15th, 2010

Wikipedia [ Mark Lombardi ]

NPR: The ‘Conspiracy’ Art of Mark Lombardi - Late Artist’s Swirling Diagrams Chart Scandalous Relationships

I was introduced to Mark Lombardi’s work while I lived in Brooklyn in 1999. During this time I was designing content management systems and user cases for the online Medical Education market. Anyhow, the visio user case scenarios that I was designing were similar in structure to the work of Mark Lombardi and because of this I became instantly fascinated with his work. Unfortunately, he committed suicide in 2000.

Thomas What I am Looking at

What I Am Looking At: Theaster Gates

March 10th, 2010

[ 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

Thomas What I am Looking at

What It Means To Be Human: Drawing Correlations

March 8th, 2010

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

Thomas Case Studies, The Biodiversity I Live, What I am Looking at

What I Am Looking At & What It Means To Be Human: Daniel Heyman

March 6th, 2010

What I Am Looking At: The Whitney Biennial {Newly-Revitalized}

February 26th, 2010

What I Am Looking At: MIT Media Lab - Relief

February 26th, 2010

What I Am Looking At: Amy Greenfield

February 24th, 2010

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 ]

Thomas What I am Looking at

What It Means To Be Human: By Our Genetic “Nature”

February 22nd, 2010

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.

Thomas Case Studies, What I am Looking at

What I’m Looking At: Leo Villareal

February 21st, 2010

fb: Jerry Saltz: Awaiting Friend Confirmation: His Geographical Move

February 19th, 2010

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.

Thomas Art, General Arts, Visual Culture, What I am Looking at

Motion/Infographic Expression

February 13th, 2010

via [ Bonsajo ] “Vanishing Point”

Vanishing Point from Bonsajo on Vimeo.

Thomas What I am Looking at