Replaced Mona Lisa

Replaced Mona Lisa is a work by Mike Ruiz:

“The Mona Lisa with the lady selected then put through Content-Aware Fill (a Photoshop CS5 tool that automatically generates content based on the existing surrounding content of the image and fills in selected area). The resulting image is a potential landscape as interpreted by the software. The image was sent to an painting manufacturer in China where an oil painting was produced.”

David Foster Wallaces self-help library

Postcard

 

A portion of David Foster Wallace’s personal library now resides at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Maria Bustillos visited the Center and discovered clues to Wallace’s depression scribbled in the margins of several self-help books the writer owned and very carefully read

One surprise was the number of popular self-help books in the collection, and the care and attention with which he read and reread them. I mean stuff of the best-sellingest, Oprah-level cheesiness and la-la reputation was to be found in Wallace’s library. Along with all the Wittgenstein, Husserl and Borges, he read John Bradshaw, Willard Beecher, Neil Fiore, Andrew Weil, M. Scott Peck and Alice Miller. Carefully.

Much of Wallace’s work has to do with cutting himself back down to size, and in a larger sense, with the idea that cutting oneself back down to size is a good one, for anyone (q.v., the Kenyon College commencement speech, later published as This is Water). I left the Ransom Center wondering whether one of the most valuable parts of Wallace’s legacy might not be in persuading us to put John Bradshaw on the same level with Wittgenstein. And why not; both authors are human beings who set out to be of some use to their fellows. It can be argued, in fact, that getting rid of the whole idea of special gifts, of the exceptional, and of genius, is the most powerful current running through all of Wallace’s work.

(Via kottke.org)

Be Your Own Souvenir

Be Your Own Souvenir project by Blablabla:

“This proposal aims to connect street users, arts and science, linking them to under-laying spaces and their own realities. The installation was enjoyed during two weekends in January 2011 by the tourists, neighbours of La Rambla and citizens of Barcelona, a city that faces a trade-off between identity and gentrification, economic sustainability and economic growth.

This shapes through a technological ritual where the audience is released from established roles in a perspective exchange: spectator-performer, artist-tourist, observer-object. 

The user becomes the producer as well as the consumer through a system that invites him/her to perform as a human statue, with a free personal souvenir as a reward: a small figure of him/herself printed three-dimensionally from a volumetric reconstruction of the person generated by the use of three structured light scanners (kinect).

The project mimics the informal artistic context of this popular street, human sculptures and craftsmen, bringing diverse realities and enabling greater empathy between the agents that cohabit in the public space.”

(Via iGNANT)

Souvenir 06

Souvenir 07

Augmented Photography

Augmented Photography is a project by Varvara Guljajeva:

“When it is spoken about interactive or augmented photography then immediately one has in mind the representation of photos in digital format (on computer or phone screen, projection, etc) that are manipulated through software or any other code. Yes, the interactive pictures can react on our touch, voice, weather, or whatever. But those interactive photos are still just pixels.

My artwork – Augmented Photography – is not about pixels. It is about re-thinking printed photography. Current artwork is more than a framed picture – it has its behavior and it is able to react on observers.

I am adding liveliness to a doll on the picture through eye movements. If none is looking at the picture the doll’s eyes are closed. Only time-to-time, she is waking up and asking for attention. When the photograph is approached, the doll on the picture opens her eyes and starts to blink to a viewer or just stare on him/her for a while. Hence, the artwork has different behaviors that could be explored by observing the picture for a while.”