Influx Insights Weblog

the art world's number one star-banksy

Influx Insights — 2008-03-15T15:47:30Z

Has Banksy taken over from the "Master of Light" Thomas Kinkade , as the number one artist in the world? Interesting film showing 1 hour in the life of one of his pieces.
(Via Wooster Collective).

Posted by Ed Cotton

creativity + assignment + crowds + prizes = published work

Influx Insights — 2008-02-13T18:33:33Z

Pixish is a new site from the mind of Derek Powazek that's all about helping creative people get their work published.

The role of the site is to help "clients" connect to a creative community and source the precise images they are looking for.

It's an alternative to the time consuming and expensive process of working with artists and the challenge of using a micro-stock agency.

Pixish also incorporates a voting feature that gets the community to vote on the images that best fit the assignment. The reward for artists is the opportunity to get their work published and there are also some prizes up for grabs.

Clearly this idea flies in the face of the established creative process and its unlikely that professionals are going to want any part of this.

The idea here is to level the playing field and let amateurs and young artists have a shot at the big time and build their portfolios. There are thousands of people out there willing to do this and its likely that the quality of their work is pretty good.

It's another example of the combination of the internet and the crowd weakening the power of the expert. We are just going to see more and more of this in the coming months and years.

Posted by Ed Cotton

data as art

Influx Insights — 2008-01-12T15:46:42Z

The visualization of data is fast becoming the next art form.

This is a nice example that comes from JK Keller

Here's how he creates the visuals.

"This is a program I wrote that reads a source text and looks for words that are used repeatedly. The more the word is used, the larger its cube gets. Red cubes are words that are not unique, blue cubes are. The size of the rings is determined by the size of the paragraphs."

Found by This is That

Posted by Ed Cotton

there might be blood- defining what shapes america

Influx Insights — 2008-01-07T23:20:12Z

Everyone is saying There Might Be Blood is a great movie, but it's particularly important if you are trying to understand America, like most of us are on a daily basis.

It does a great job focusing in on the seductive powers of capitalism and religion and isolating them as the twin forces that help shape the country.

Interestingly, the movie's conclusion, is that in the end, there's very little to choose between them, they are identical twins.

Here's the first spoken scene where Daniel Planview's (Daniel Day Lewis) evolved character is introduced to us.

Posted by Ed Cotton

always read instructions- a trip to the new museum

Influx Insights — 2008-01-10T20:12:55Z

A couple of weeks back, I took a trip to the New Museum in New York.

It’s the latest and greatest designer museum complete with amazingly radical architecture and a gift shop.

The museum was full of hip “global” twentysomethings looking to grab their latest art fix.

I began to feel like the whole museum thing was turning into a giant clich� of itself. A cultural formula that we feel obliged to consume like any other brand, but hopefully one that comes with some rich, intellectual stimulation.

My problem with the main exhibition, Unmonumental, was that I didn’t get it or understand any of the meaning of the works, to me it just looked like a random collection of art from the fringes of the scene.

I became somewhat cynical about the idea of how quickly art gets discovered and placed in museums. To me, the works seemed embryonic and not fully realized, but clearly I am no expert and I was missing the point.

A few days ago, I was looking at a pile of old papers and found a leaflet describing the exhibit. One of its paragraphs immediately stuck a chord, seemed massively insightful, made perfect sense and, of course, helped me see the work in a completely new light.

“The opening of the new century seems defined by the disappearance of monuments and erasure of symbols, marked by the indelible images of destruction and ruin, from the fall of the Twin Towers to the obliteration of the Bamayan Budddhas, and the toppling of the statute of Saddam Hussein. It comes as no surprise that this first decade of the 21st century has produced an artistic language of fragments and of debased, precarious trembling forms, sounds and pictures. This millennium appears more concerned with iconoclasm than with creating new, empty and shiny icons. Like the time we live in “Unmonumental” marks the passage from clarity to complexity. It presents artworks that are violent and delinquent, but also expresses the urgent need to start picking up the pieces and rebuilding this world from scratch.”

What I am taking out of this experience is two-fold; it’s always good to read the instructions and there’s always time to take a second look and to revise your first impressions.

Here are some shots of the exhibits and museum.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Posted by Ed Cotton

news content re-constituted as art

Influx Insights — 2007-12-21T07:12:57Z

Cool story about the Movable Type art piece in the new New York Times building in New York.

The concept is all about breaking the original content down into small elements and finding connections between the pieces.

Posted by Ed Cotton

louis vuitton pushes the boundaries between art and commerce

Influx Insights — 2007-10-11T14:13:44Z

There once was a time when art sponsorship was a subtle thing; brands used to discretely put their logos onto the promotional materials and leave it at that.

Those were the days when art and commerce were kind of separate, in the last few years we’ve seen much more of coming together of the two worlds and perhaps the best example is the partnership between Japanese uber-artist Takasji Murakami and Louis Vuitton.

Murakami’s designs turned the Louis Vuitton brand into a pop sensation.

In 2006, he was interviewed by CNN and asked about the collaboration.

"TS: How did your collaboration with Louis Vuitton come about?

TM: If you look at Louis Vuitton's history, they've always been influenced by Japanese designs, such as the flowers on the kimono, ever since the 19th century. In a very natural way Louis Vuitton is in touch with Japanese culture. It's a very big turning point for me. Now I understand the fashion world a little bit. It's important because the European creative situation is very influenced by fashion and art and fashion are very closely linked."

The partnership between the two continues today and is celebrated at the artist’s upcoming exhibition at the LA MOCA.

For the event, Vuitton has created a “fleeting” store for the where luxury lovers will be able to get purchase and of course, just state at, the range of products from the Vuitton/Murakami collaboration.

It’s a very different kind of museum store and not without controversy.

Via Dezeen

Posted by Ed Cotton

proflle of banksy- video

Influx Insights — 2007-09-01T23:02:49Z

Posted by Ed Cotton

re-imagining the material

Influx Insights — 2007-11-15T22:36:38Z

At the Max Lang Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. Several designers are re-imagining America's material culture through the creation of some interesting art objects and motifs, in an exhibition curated by Edgar Harden.

Emilie Baltz is one of the designers featured at the show. Emilie re-interprets culture by playing with familiar objects and reconstructing them in new ways to re-shape meaning.

Here are a couple of pieces from her collection.

The Amish Picnic Table is a collaboration with artist Pippo Lionni that examines the deconstruction of the American Dream.

The Porcelein Face Mask turns the disposable into something permanent and forces us to take a new look at the ideas of fear and protection.

The show runs until August 31st.

Posted by Ed Cotton

in a data-driven world- infographics are the new art

Influx Insights — 2007-08-17T13:19:21Z

Intro from the movie Stanger than Fiction.

Developed by MK12

Original pitch video here

Via Information Aesethetics

Posted by Ed Cotton

see china through manufactured landscapes

Influx Insights — 2007-08-19T18:55:38Z

The great Core 77 has a chat with photographer Edward Burtynsky and the film maker Jennifer Baichwal who made Manufactured Landscapes, the film about Burynsky's work and his recent trip to China.

There is no film that quite captures the contemporary scale of China like Manufactured Landscapes.

The challenge of capturing a photographer known for his large scale works and blending it into a film narrative is difficult, but in this case, it's really nicely put together.

If you want to see what's happening in China, Manufactured Landscapes takes you inside one of the biggest human transformations in history. The film shows Burtynsky pushing himself and his Chinese handlers to get the shots that tell the story and it's a story of Old China being pushed aside for New China.

What's also remarkable is quite how low-tech everything is; this is a human powered revolution. The film shows China's labor advantage, so much so, that mundane tasks done by machines in the West, are done by people in China.

One amazing and scary example of this is the recycling of components found in circuit boards which is perfomed by 1000s of "mom & pop" operators doing it.

This film is quite remarkable and well worth capturing on the big screen if you can.

Posted by Ed Cotton

schama's power of art

Influx Insights — 2007-08-01T12:44:59Z

PBS has grapped another great series from the BBC with Simon Schama's Power of Art.

The show has is blessed with some great writing.

Here's Schama talking about Rothko.

"One morning in the spring of 1970, I went into the Tate Gallery and took a wrong, right turn and there they were, lying in wait. No it wasn't love at first site. Rothko had insisted that the lighting be kept almost pretentiously low. It was like going into the cinema, expectation in the dimness.

Something in there was throbbing steadily, pulsing like the inside of a body part, all crimson and purple. I felt I was being pulled through those black lines to some mysterious place in the universe.

Rothko said his paintings begin an unknown adventure into an unknown space. I wasn't sure where that was and whether I wanted to go. I only know I had no choice and that the destination might not exactly be a picnic, but I got it all wrong that morning in 1970. I thought a visit to the Seagram Paintings would be like a trip to the cemetary of abstraction - all dutiful reverence, a dead end.

Everything Rothko did to these paintings - the column-like forms suggested rather than drawn and the loose stainings - were all meant to make the surface ambiguous, porous, perhaps softly penetrable. A space that might be where we came from or where we will end up."

They're not meant to keep us out, but to embrace us; from an artist whose highest compliment was to call you a human being."

I watched the Turner and Rothko shows and a couple of facts caught my attention.

1. When Turner's painting, "Hannibal Crossing the Alps" was first shown in public, tens of thousands of people stood in line to see the poltical statement being made about Napoleon and France. What art form has that kind of political power today?

2. Mark Rothko toiled for 20 years before he devised a radical new way to move people with art.

"The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point."

Rothko

Posted by Ed Cotton

brian eno and music for airports- the inspiration

Influx Insights — 2007-07-28T04:13:16Z

Brian Eno talks about what inspired him to create Music for Airports, the album that gave birth to the ambient movement

Posted by Ed Cotton

creativity as a spectator sport

Influx Insights — 2007-07-25T15:32:17Z

A few years ago, the creative career path was characterized by a rigorous process that defined the creative journey; years spent at art school and toiling in a low paying job that could only be gained through access to the right people. Although its become something of a clich�, but the internet has leveled the playing field and spread creative talent far and wide with many of the protagonists being discovered through the well honed process of meritocracy that now rules the web.

What’s interesting is that the same people now want to take the battle onto a different stage, they aren’t content with the satisfaction of YouTube hits of winning Threadless designs, instead they seek the adulation of the crowd. No matter how many YouTube hits you get or t-shirts you sell, you might never here the ripple of applause that comes from your peers recognizing you.

The new movement is all about creativity as a spectator sport; events designed for creatives to battle each other and for legitimate winners to emerge from the process. It’s living proof that you can’t be anonymous and those real life peer connections are all important.

There are probably dozens of examples of these new contests, but I have a couple for starters.

Cut and Paste is a digital design tournament with DJs spinning sounds and graphic designer battles. It started in NYC in 2005 and this year it will host 17 different tournaments around the world.

Sketch 120 a live architectural sketch competition set up by the Architectual League of NYC. This event will take place this Saturday, July 28th at the Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn.

For photographers and other artists, there’s the Slideluckpotshow, an event that’s been running since 2004. It’s not a contest and more of a get together with food, five minute slide shows and conversation.

This is a manifestation of the desire for “real” in a world where you have thousands of virtual friends that you may have never met, there’s nothing can replace the potency of real human interaction and competition.

If anyone is doing anything like this with advertising or has plans to do so, please let Influx know. The live spectacle of teams wrestling real time over a tricky Tide brief would be something to behold.

Posted by Ed Cotton

england's national gallery brings its art to the people

Influx Insights — 2007-06-15T13:11:34Z

As a promotion to drive increased visits, England's National Gallery created reproductions of its most famous works and hung them up around the streets of London.

The result is striking.

Created with Paul's flickrSLiDR.

Photos by Fergus Jackson

Posted by Ed Cotton