Real or Fake?

Powerful machine-learning techniques (see “The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI”) are making it increasingly easy to manipulate or generate realistic video and audio, and to impersonate anyone you want with amazing accuracy.

[via Technology Review]

Live Fashion Meme

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This is the last Chanel runway at the Grand Palais in Paris. Models are dressed like stormtroopers and walk through the corridors of a data centre. Cultural remix is reaching vertiginous heights. This is a new genre: this is a live fashion meme.

Virtual Intelligence Mask

Vito Acconci, Virtual Intelligence Mask

Vito Acconci, Virtual Intelligence Mask, 1993

“A conventional fencing mask is used as a support-structure-for electronics; the electronics are used as contact with the world outside.
On the front of the mask are three televisions: one larger television facing out, and two miniature televisions facing in. The miniature televisions, facing in, cover the eyes of the person wearing the mask; from an outsider’s point of view, the person inside the mask is blindfolded by the two televisions. At one side of the mask is a small portable radio, positioned at the ear of the person wearing the mask; the radio’s speaker is directed out.
On top of the mask are two surveillance cameras, one on top of the other, one directed toward the front and one directed toward the rear. The cameras mechanically rotate, side to side.
The person wearing the mask sees his/her environment on the two television screens in front of his/her eyes: one—screen shows what’s going on in front of the person, the other shows what’s going on behind.
In the meantime, the larger television, and the radio, are available for use by passers-by: a passer-by can switch TV channels, a passer-by can change from one radio station to another. A passer-by can, literally, ‹dial› the person wearing the mask; a passer-by can, literally, ‹turn the person on.›”

Material Want

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MATERIAL WANT is the first collaboration of Matthew Plummer-Fernandez and JODI. Bringing together their respective practices, they explore hybridisations of algorithms, errors, Internet found objects and digital fabrication. The result of this joint effort? A series of 3D-printed sculptures, uncanny, yet familiar objects, between incongruous assemblages and distorted reality.

Salt Crystal Bride Gown

Sigalit Landau, Salt Crystal Bride Gown III, 2014. Image courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Contemporary, London. Photo by Studio Sigalit Landau.

Sigalit Landau, Salt Crystal Bride Gown III, 2014. Image courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Contemporary, London. Photo by Studio Sigalit Landau. On view at Marlborough Contemporary, London.

“Photographed underwater, working in collaboration with Yotam From, the images document the transformation of a dress submerged in the salt-rich waters of the Dead Sea.”

(via)

The Internet Baboons

Photographers G.K. and Vikki Hart have something to teach about copyright and remix in the Internet age: “Yes, it would be nice if they made more money, but to make people laugh and for people to take it and use it their own way… you just can’t buy that“

Red

Red is an Audio Visual art object by vtol is a homemade projector with a robotic controlled flexible lens which cam produce abstract light visuals…

red

 

Cher, Chair, Share

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Ole Ukena, Cher, Chair, Share (Hello, Joseph), Poster of the singer Cher, a chair, a printed definition of the word share / 220 x 175 cm / 2011

The power of language can both separate us and bring us together. This piece, which is based on Joseph Kosuth‘s masterpiece Three and One chairs from 1965, playfully capitalizes on linguistic similarities while highlighting cultural absurdities bringing about the question: could a pop icon, place to rest and a single noun have anything in common/share common ground? In this work the intended act of misinterpretation becomes the actual act of artistic creation.

Disappear with me

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“Renowned American photographer Alec Soth invites you to disappear with him, and spend a few days conversing with him through Snapchat. Over the course of the conversation, Alec will send the buyer a series of twenty-five original photos, which may vary from beautifully composed landscapes to simple shower selfies depending on how the conversation develops and the nature of the narrative that emerges. Each photo will only ever be seen by Soth and the buyer, and will disappear immediately. The buyer may choose to send Soth photos in return as part of the conversation.”

Art is a meaningless word

“Art may soon become a meaningless word. In its place, ‘communications programming’ would be a more imaginative label, attesting to our new jargon, our technological and managerial fantasies, and our pervasive electronic contact with one another.”

— Allan Kaprow, Manifesto, 1966

American Standard

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Reece Terris, American Standard, 2004

“American Standard is an installation that featured fifteen functional urinals arranged in a pyramid formation on the wall of the men’s washroom in the Alexander Centre studio at Simon Fraser University.  Transforming the facility into a public indoor fountain, water overflowed from the uppermost urinal and splashed its way down through the formation creating a deluge of water flooding the sunken floor. Visitors enter the space via tiled stepping stones, providing access directly to the sink and preexisting toilet, leaving the facility fully functional and open to both sexes.
American Standard draws upon the ‘readymade’ and confronts its art-historical underpinnings (recalling Marcel Duchamp’s iconic Fountain), while imparting more than pure reference, as it extends beyond the object-oriented readymade into an architectural space. Rather than demonstrating how context produces meaning within objects, American Standard presents an environment in which objects re-contextualize their space, revealing architecture’s dependence on standardized form and socially assumed function within even the most private of public spaces.”

Cut-up as a magical process

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“What Bill [William S. Burroughs] explained to me then was pivotal to the unfolding of my life and art: Everything is recorded. If it is recorded, then it can be edited. If it can be edited then the order, sense, meaning and direction are as arbitrary and personal as the agenda and/or person editing. This is magick. For if we have the ability and/or choice of how things unfold—regardless of the original order and/or intention that they are recorded in—then we have control over the eventual unfolding. If reality consists of a series of parallel recordings that usually go unchallenged, then reality only remains stable and predictable until it is challenged and/or the recordings are altered, or their order challenged. These concepts led us to the realization of cut-ups as a magical process.”

– Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Thee Psychick Bible)

[via]

Nonfunctional Satellites

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Nonfunctional Satellites, by Trevor Paglen

“Developed in collaboration with aerospace engineers, the nonfunctional satellites are space-worthy sculptures designed as small, lightweight satellites that expand to become large, highly reflective structures. Placing one of these objects into low-earth orbit would create a visible “sculpture” in the night sky, visible from the earth below after sunset and before dawn as a bright, slowly moving, flickering star. The sculpture would remain in orbit for several weeks before burning up upon reentry through the atmosphere.
These designs are responses to the question of what aerospace engineering would look like if its methods were decoupled from the corporate and military interests underlying the industry. The nonfunctional satellite recasts the old question of “art for art’s sake” within a different context, asking whether we can imagine something like “aerospace engineering for aerospace engineering’s sake.”

Cyanotypes

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Thomas Mailaender is showcasing a new series of his cyanotypes at Ditto Gallery in London.
The cyanotype process (characterised by its cyan-blue hue) was developed as a means for blueprinting. Mailender utilises this technique to print images taken from his Fun Archive, a personal collection of absurd and anonymous pictures intuitively pulled from the Internet. Using this archaic and outmoded process to reproduce images from the modern digital age creates a dialogue about the validity and authenticity of images, and their place as artworks.

Exhibition Kickstarter

Krystal South organized an exhibition on Kickstarter:

“I’ve created this Kickstarter campaign to experiment with new form of art exhibition and approach to selling work. I’ve asked 11 artists to create new works that fit into the Kickstarter format. In response, they have each designed a custom artwork through online retailers in editions of 10, and assigned a value for these mediated works. ”