file types

I've been thinking about these new file types that are being released, massive database files that contain a range of media, data content. The manner of their production and the means of their distribution interest me greatly, that they might contain dynamic & static data, raster and vector operate as a meta file, database etc. My thought might be to develop a file type. '.kev' files for example, this file type might provide for a complete public art meta file dealing with some of the issues highlighted by the ReallyGoodBad public art project. Need to find more about file formats and how they gain interoperability.

Public Art DB

Just came across this old posting - kinda relevant:

http://blog.okfn.org/2011/02/01/art-open-data/

Dirty vehicle writing

I was sitting behind a van the other day, from memory it has some lame message written in the dirt on the back "This model also available in white" the van was white..... but the word 'model' got me thinking, more examples of low quality can be here. But there is perhaps a possibility here to create an interesting temporary public art work ?

See the work of Ben Long here:























Richard Prince set to one side - i am thinking country and western lyrics, pertinent websites links and plain old provocation.

mmmm

Geo-Spatial and stolen goods

Continuing this idea of establishing narrative communities around desirable objects i came across the work on Savage, as artist based in Bristol. His work 'Stolen White Goods' performs little interventions with the space of the consumer transaction. He cites this book 'Lifting' and there is an interesting essay on his work here.

geo data communities

Just noticing the hype around the goverments publishing of publicly accessible website which features geo specific crime data. The generic nature of the data, the level of abstraction it all kinda make you wonder what its for ? is it really just for people to work out if they should move to an area or not, and how much there house prices might be effected. See here for a good rant about metrics and the important stuff.

More interesting to me is the manner of crime engagement that Dutch police have used, by actually using bait bikes that have tracking sensors in them.

This correlates with an idea I had to compile a list of ten top stolen consumer item. I would aqure these ten items, tag them and allow them to be stolen, the resulting narrative would be recorded using the breadth of social media, communities might be formed around the objects unraveling narratives. This idea is further extended by the thought that there a quite a few desirable objects that have geo spatial facilities built in, i-phones, sat-nav's, computers etc, the fact that the i-phone is the most nickable and desirable phone and those that nick them, as happened to my collegue, might potentially own them seems pertinent.

Now to think to make an app, install it and see what going on with it -

ReallygoodBad

#15 Frosty Weavers
Originally uploaded by eclectictrains

Been thinking alot now about the idea of an online archive detailing public art projects. The original idea was quite damning: http://www.flickr.com/groups/698722@N20/ - and only wanted to portray bad public art, now i think something more along the lines of "reallygoodbad" - public art might be in order. I've contacted a few of the people I met at the public interface conference in Aarhus, for example Brett @ http://www.temporaryservices.org and Zoran, lets see how we go from there. But if we are talking bad, this beauty never fails to hit the spot. A joyous melding of utility and artifice - see it in weaver field, east london

Public Interfaces, Aarhus, 2011

Just returning from the 'Public Interface' conference @ Aarhus, Denmark. The conference quite small but really interesting. We arrived early to geometric fields of snow, rather than the pouring rain in London. I met Magda Tyzlik-Carver on the plane, who is doing her PHD @ Plymouth and teaching @ Falmouth University, it was really good to hear how my old arts school has changed to an unimaginable size, missed her talk though, which was a shame.

My presentation went ok, i didn't read from scripts but merely talked about the idea's and the work, Landscape-Portrait, afterward Geoff Cox, one of the joint organisers and my second supervisor, mentioned that the talk was more articulate than the draft text I had submitted for the conference, which made me laugh.

Anthony Iles from Mute presented a book that he and Josephine Berry Slater have just completed 'No Room to Move' about the situation in regard to culture led generation in this moment of economic collapse. Really interesting and relevant to my research as well as my experience in Burnley, where I and civc architects produced a series of public art proposals,

The following mornings presentation by Robert Jackson, a really interesting investigation of speculative realism, a subject that i have tried many times to grasp, Rob showed some good example artworks


Florian Slotawa, Hotel Europa, Prag, Zimmer 402, Nacht zum 8. Juni 1998, Gelatin silver print, Courtesy Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf

which helped the audience into an appreciation of the issues at play, his blog can be found here

There was also a presentation by Nina Gram concerning the use of i-phones as a staging device for our experiences of the city. I found this, with the example of Rider Spoke by Bast Theory really frustrating, a case of form over content, especially when considering Blast Theories co-option by the makers of the digital devices they used in the work, as I understand Nina she was also troubled by the work, which kinda begs the question, why use it ?

This theme of using the tools and materials in a non critical way extended to Brett Blooms work as 'Temporary Services'. Whilst being completely on board in terms of the avowed aims of the project, which related to lots of ideas i've been having about an archive of really good bad public art, including briefs, artist statements, budget etc, ;Temporary Services' means of research seem to replicate the same quality of justification that work critiqued, just from a ideologically diverse view point.

What I did appreciate though was the level of critique being located at a bureaucratic level, not just at the level of the artists, - who apparently came to hate 'temp services' this in contrast to Malcolm Miles presentation where his jouclar critique of Anthony Gormleys work, One & Other, in Trafalgar square seemed at times like a personal vendetta, surely this critique should usefully be at the level of the system that underpins Gormley, there are lots of mini Gormleys lining up to replace him, he is very much a tool in the ideological rhetoric of currently political thinking, which I guess was Miles' point, that this notion of universal nationhood is no longer possible.