February 2012
1 post
Yonville Ladies
“He was dressed with that incongruous mixture of casualness and refinement which the common people regard as evidence of an eccentric life, tumultuous passions, artistic aspirations, and always a certain contempt for social convention, which either fascinates or exasperates them.”
Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
December 2011
2 posts
Pace of Conversation
The surreal Bradley Manning transcript published on Wired.com in 2011. The time stamping of the chat messages is interesting, as it shows the pace of the conversation. Fluid, relaxed - yet the content is paramount, and betrays personal conflicts.
Recently, Facebook launched their Suicide intervention chat tool. Statistics point to people being able to express things online, that they...
We meet again, old friend
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October 2011
2 posts
The Problem We All Live With
“I really believed… that the war against Hitler would bring the Four Freedoms to everyone. But I couldn’t paint this today. I just don’t believe it. I was doing this best-possible-world, Santa-down-the-chimney, lovely-kids-adoring-their-kindly-grandpa sort of thing. And I liked it, but now I’m sick of it.”
Norman Rockwell (c/o Jerry Saltz)
Interspecies communication
“Lying has evolutionary value to us as a species. Researchers have long known that the more intelligent the species, the larger the neocortex, the more likely it is to be deceptive. … Does anybody here remember Koko the guerilla (…) who was taught to communicate via sign language? Here’s Koko with her kitten, her cute little fluffy pet kitten… Koko once blamed her...
September 2011
1 post
Co-Evolution
“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It’s a compelling argument against factory farming of domesticated animals.
This conversation on domestication lead to Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker article ‘Dog Story’ - an essay on the ‘co-evolution’ of dogs and man. Before the dawn of agriculture, the...
August 2011
6 posts
New York City Waterways
Earlier today, storm surge from the Hudson River found it’s way into low-lying areas of manhattan. The city administration had circulated maps showing areas of New York that are most at-risk of flooding.
These evacuation areas bear a striking resemblance to the Viele map, a “Sanitary and Topographical Atlas of the City and Island of New York,” first published in 1865, which...
Biennial
There are presently about 14 biennials from around the world listed on the front page of e-Flux. It’s a format widely used to focus foot traffic and increase visibility. But that visibility, from an increasing number of biennials, decreases the likelihood that any biennial will act as draw - like consumers losing interest in a product that can be found in year round fire-sales. What would...
The Young and the Restless
During an Art Basel talk about the Istanbul Biennial, Jens Hoffmann quoted an article about the rising popularity of the curator, and how it is eclipsing the actor or athlete as the most desirable profession. He directed me to this article in Die Zeit - which prominently features a beaming photo of Hans-Ulrich Obrist, before stating that curators have the same function as a DJ (the dream-job of...
Timeless
Another new building is unveiled on Houston Street with a familiar value engineered aesthetic that has graced neighborhoods across the city for half a century. I was informed that the brick facade was indeed pre-fab panelling, which is sterile in comparison to traditional masonry work but saves on construction costs. The textile block was used in the same manner, by Frank Lloyd Wright on the Ennis...
Preservation Practices
Ben Fino-Radin, a conservator at Rhizome, part of The New Museum, released an outstanding paper on the preservation of digital art. Digital Preservation Practices and the Rhizome ArtBase discusses hazards for aging net art like broken links and outdated scripts. Creating works that make use of rapidly changing internet standards is a bit like building a house on a shifting sandbar. This paper...
House Guests
While we are working on development, we will be opening this space up to submissions by independent curators who work with us on various projects - whether that means news or info about current works, or something of interest to them personally.
July 2011
2 posts
CSS is a Harsh Mistress
It’s learning a new language, but I am at a disadvantage: I can’t aid communication through hand gestures. Some industrious interactive engineer needs to figure out how to translate frustration through a trackpad swipe.
Web Log
Collective Arts is a non-profit project that works with artists and art institutions to document transient artforms: performance, site-specific installation, and digital arts.
Our main site is currently being developed, but this web log will be updated with our status, news, and thoughts of people involved in or simply around the project.