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gela babluani
Gela Babluani has been called this year's big film-festival discovery. His film 13 (Tzameti) has been......read more

bas van koolwijk
Living and working in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, artist Bas van Koolwijk began his career as a painter.......read more

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[random inspiration]

the white noise - "an electric storm"
One of the only advantages of obscurity granted by the world to any experimental artist, for a lover of music or literature or any art form, is to know that this very same world still hides amazing records and books and photographs, and that one day, all of a sudden, one comes across such hidden treasures, and may reshuffle the shelves in one's mind and rearrange historical lineage. For example, in poetry, Mina Loy was such a discovery to me, and I had not imagined the modernist lyric in English had produced such an exuberant body of work. And it was not long ago that I found information on a band called The White Noise, whose debut album had been released in 1969 by Island Records. The album is called "An Electric Storm", and last night I finally got a hold of the album itself in an old record store. Formed in London, The White Noise were David Vorhaus, Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson. All three had unlikely backgrounds, Vorhaus studied classical music and electronics and Derbyshire had studied mathmatics and music, and had gone on to work for the UN and later become a trainee studio manager for the BBC, after trying to get a position at Decca and hearing from them that "they did not employ women in their recording studios." At the BBC, she began to work in the radiophonic workshop where she met Brian Hodgson, and they worked together as a group called Unit Delta Plus, with the objective of creating and promoting the use of electronic music in film, TV and advertising. With no computers at hand (this is 1966), the group (also joined by Peter Zinovieff), worked with tape, homemade instruments, and the manipulation, splicing, looping of sound. David Vorhaus attended a lecture given by Unit Delta Plus, and approached Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson with the desire to work with them. This was the beginning of The White Noise. Working with collage, the first prototypes of synthesizers, and experimentations with the vocals (singers invited were John Whitman, Annie Bird and Val Shaw), The White Noise produced, realised and released "An Electric Storm", a groundbreaking record which would remain a secret tip among the lucky ones to find it (the album made no money for Island and it is hard to get a hold of the rare record), coming to hit waves of influence up to our days, in groups such as Broadcast or Stereolab. Experimental and disturbing work which manages to remain pop and beautiful, this dreamlike artifact of electronic music has some of the loveliest tracks in the history of electronic music, with beautiful short pop-pearls of 3 minutes, like "Love Without Sound" or "My Game of Loving" (with its sound outtakes from an electronic and flesh orgy) or "Here Come The Fleas", and yet, on its B side, carry such dark poems as "The Visitation", with its 11 minutes of emotional landscaping, substituting the gasping for breath and sexual moaning on the A side for crying; and the 7 minutes of "Black Mass: Electric Storm in Hell (The White Noise)", a rather scary song. The White Noise would break up after this first record, and the work would be carried on by David Vorhaus alone, releasing albums called simply "White Noise" and numbered I, II, III, IV and V. Derbyshire and Hodgson would return to their work in electronics and music. Listening to an album like "An Electric Storm" can show us how far some artists are able to take their experimentations without breaking the communication with the viewer/reader/listener. With the Moog becoming more widely available, the work with synthesizers became more common and the radiophonic workshop experiments of The White Noise turned obsolete very fast, but "An Electric Storm" remains as a groundbreaking dark pop artifact. Get a hold of it. And lose some sleep. - Ricardo Domeneck

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NEWS

12-08-06 Aboriginal Film wins top AFI award "Australia's first ever indigenous language feature film has been awarded the country's top movie honour. Billed as an Aboriginal comedy, Ten Canoes tonight won the best film category at the 48th annual Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards in Melbourne." Reports 'The Age'.
12-07-06 Farewell to the book? Has the day of the electronic book finally arrived? Sony is hoping so with the release of their latest product, the 'Sony Reader'. Although aesthetically non descript and bearing a striking resemblence to current PDA's, the Sony Reader boasts what Sony is calling an 'E-Ink' display that apparently outperforms any other display current available, reports the New York Sun.
12-07-06 The Art of Stripping A Norwegian court has concluded that stripping constitutes an art form and as such is exempt from valued-added tax. The decision came about following the refusal of a strip club to pay the tax and a subsequent court summons. The jusification for the decision is based upon the fact that stripping combines a "form of dance" with acting. More can be found at the BBC.
12-07-06 Aromatic ad backfires The California Milk Processor Board, who were behind the ad "Got Milk?" recently created a series of fragrant billboards that emitted the scent of baked cookies. Although this most creative of efforts seemed theoretically sound their removal was ordered shortly after due to a series of complaints regarding the possible danger to health they posed, reports Yahoo news.
12-06-06 The Renaissance Age of Animated Shorts Due partially to the boom of online video watching the more creative work of independent animators is being appreciated more than ever before. The internet has provided a platform for their work to reach new audiences the world over. As the Animation World Magazine reports, " it's hard to see your creative output watered down by marketing decisions", but as animators more creative output is now being seen and understood so has its popularity increased, seen in the rise of Oscar nominated shorts.
12-06-06 2000 yr old computer Although discovered over 100 years ago, scientists are now unlocking many more of the the Antikythera Mechanism's secrets. Believed to have been constructed around 100 - 150 BC the mechanism was most probably used in charting the postion of planets. The most remarkable element of the story is that it issssss "technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards" reports the BBC.
12-04-06 Turner Prize Winner Yoko Ono presented this years Turner Prize yesterday to German-Born Tomma Absts. It is the first time in the history of the prize that a woman painter has been the recipient. Abts who works with acrylic and oil paint is reported to begin work with no source material nor idea of the final result. Her work always measures 48 x 38 cm (19 x 15 in)
12-04-06 idffa shake-up The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) announced a number of significant changes to be undertaken for the 2007 festival which marks their 20th anniversary. The festival organizers promise a bigger and better festival accomplished by moving location and digitizing the entire event. A number of special events are being planned including screenings of the best work shown in the past two decades. more
12-04-06 louvre vs. guggenheim on the isle of happiness Negotiations are underway to lure major players in the museum world to Abu Dhabi's cultural quarter an island named Saadiyat, Arabic for "isle of happiness". The Guradian reports that "the Guggenheim Foundation, has signed up to build a museum in Abu Dhabi designed by the architect Frank Gehry that will open in 2012." As depictions of nudity and religion will naturally be supressed, questions are being asked whether these moves are much more politically than artistically/cultrually motivated.
12-04-06 displaced artists capote benefit A re-enactment of Truman Capote's 1966 extravaganza, the Black and White Ball was recently held in New Orleans to raise money for writers and poets displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The event was held only a block away from the birthplace of Capote and celebrity was provided in the guise of 88 year old Verita Thompson, Humphrey Bogart's lover of 15 years. reports Yahoo news
12-04-06 art basel - miami In 2 days thousands will descend upon Miami Beach for this year's Art Basel Miami. An exclusive selection of 200 leading art galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia will exhibit 20th and 21st century art works by over 1500 artists. They will be showing exceptional works by both renowned established artists and cutting-edge newcomers, with special exhibitions featuring young galleries and video art.
12-04-06 a google view Google Earth has not only spawned a whole host of online earth watching communities but is providing a base for great discussion after offering us an alternate perspective of our planet. The free program is prompting questions of how we could and should use our rooftops as well as throwing up a number of oddities, such as the "widely circulated image of a U.S. Navy building in California that turns out to be shaped like a swastika" reports the Toronto Star
12-02-06 sublime creativity: a world dictionary, at last The intricacies of different languages have always been a bit much for computers to handle, and computerized translation programs have never been as reliable as users would like. Translation "is a tricky problem, not only for a piece of software but also for the human mind. A single word in one language, for example, may map into three or more in another... But a New York firm with an ingenious algorithm and a really big dictionary is finally cracking the code, reports Wired Magazine.
12-01-06 pulitzer web prize The Pulitzer Prize Board has recently established a new set of rules that permit the submission of a whole host of online materials for its journalism awards. The list includes interactive graphics, databases, as well as streaming video. Truly a move to embrace the massive shift in recent years to digital media. More about this story can be found at journalism.co.uk
12-01-06 usa travelers to be rated for 'risk assessment' An invasive and unprecedented data-mining system is set to be deployed on U.S. travelers Monday, despite substantial questions about Americans' privacy. In comments sent to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the agency to delay the program's rollout until it makes more details available to the public and addresses critical privacy and due process concerns. The Automated Targeting System (ATS) will create and assign "risk assessments" to tens of millions of citizens as they enter and leave the country. Individuals will have no way to access information about their "risk assessment" scores or to correct any false information about them. But once the assessment is made, the government will retain the information for 40 years -- as well as make it available to untold numbers of federal, state, local, and foreign agencies in addition to contractors, grantees, consultants, and others.
12-01-06 art auction price madness continues "A beloved Norman Rockwell painting that was discovered behind a false wall in a Vermont home last spring sold at Sotheby�s for $15.4 million, a record price for the artist at auction... It was not the only record of the day. 'Hotel Window,' a 1955 painting by Edward Hopper owned by the actor Steve Martin, which depicts a woman sitting in an empty hotel lobby, brought $26.8 million." A full report is in The New York Times.
11-30-06 is photography being reinvented by the internet? "It is difficult to know these days whether the internet is re-inventing photography or vice versa. The convergence of cheap digital cameras, affordable computers and low-cost access to the internet has made photography vastly more popular than it has ever been and transformed it from a personal to a community experience. People can now post snaps on the internet so that any web-enabled person in the world can share the experience and often build a new relationship around a shared interest." Full article in The Guarian.
11-30-06 microsoft zune sales slow down microsofts move against Apple's ipod appears to be making few dents in their hold on the market despite an initial strong launch. Perhaps owing to the ipod imitation look and feel to the device as well as remaining relatively high priced. ��source
11-29-06 uk artists favor brightly colored paintings A UK Art Fair recently polled 500 artists, asking them who their ten favorite artists of all time might be. The result was an eclectic list that left at least one critic distinctly unimpressed. "The artists� artist Top Ten consists entirely of painters, and errs towards the splodgy and the splashy type much beloved by those who revel in the craft of oil painting... This is the Top Ten of an artist who thinks conceptual art is a con and that the ability to balance illusion with a love for gooey paint is paramount... It is the taste of an art student stuck in 1962." So reports The Times of London.
11-29-06 the golden age of museum-going? With U.S. museums logging more than 600 million visits annually it seems that the golden age of museum going has arrived. But why? MoMA's director Glenn Lowry comments that the reasons for this are relatively simply:One: Museums are inherently interesting -- they stimulate your imagination and your mind. Two: It's a safe environment. Three: You're likely to meet like-minded people. ��source
11-27-06 netselektor recommends flasher.com For our viewers who can read German, there's a cool review and high recommendation of Flasher.com at netselektor.de. Netselektor offers the news plus tips on everything from web sites like Flasher.com to education and health.
11-27-06 bruce marden: journey from 'nebraska' Brice Marden established his reputation in the mid-1960s as a painter of severe monochromatic rectangles in a medium composed of beeswax, turpentine, and oil paint applied with a brush and then smoothed with a spatula and knife. Human in scale and irradiated by his ultrarefined color sense, his earliest paintings rejected illusion, line, volume, space, and depth while at the same time minimizing texture, brushwork, and tonal range. The flat surface of these paintings is closed, the picture plane as impenetrable as a locked door. How an artist who restricted his canvases to the basic elements of shape, light, and color developed over the next forty years into the one who painted The Muses is one of the great stories of American art in our time, and it is being told in a full-scale retrospective with fifty-six paintings and more than fifty drawings at the Museum of Modern of Art. Read the article in The New York Review of Books.
11-27-06 uk galleries: not keeping pace? London may be one of the world's global art centers, but new evidence suggests that UK galleries are falling far behind the rest of the world in the acquisition of new works of art. "Our major museums are sliding at a terrifying rate down the international league table while the incentives to encourage private giving are insufficient." More in The Guardian.
11-24-06 saigon open city exhibition A huge, two-year-long art exhibition, "Saigon Open City," starts with an exhibition called "Liberation," Nov. 26, 2006-Jan. 31, 2007. Organized by Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija and Thai curator Gridthiya Gaweewong, the show features works by 40 artists dating from 1946 to the present. Westerners in the show include Liam Gillick, John Giorno, Martha Rosler, Nancy Spero and Mary Stevenson, while the host of Vietnamese and other Asian artists in the show includes Dinh Q. Le and Montien Boonma. The exhibition takes place at four locations throughout Saigon: the War Remnants Museum, the Southern Women Museum, the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum and the Ton Duc Thang Museum. Future shows in the three-part exhibition focus on themes of "Unification" and "(Re)construction." Artists involved include both locals and international figures such as. A special show of works by Yoko Ono is guest curated by David Ross. More information is available at www.saigonopencity.
11-24-06 italy decries getty museum talks breakdown "Saying it was blindsided by the decision of the J. Paul Getty Museum to end talks over disputed antiquities, Italy on Thursday lashed out at the Los Angeles institution and reiterated demands for the return of precious artworks. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli stopped short, however, of imposing unilateral sanctions against the Getty, such as a previously threatened embargo that would in effect end all cultural cooperation." A full report in the Los Angeles Times.
11-24-06 russian artist-writer challenges the avant-garde Maxim Kantor is an artist and writer with a clear message. He is convinced that Russians are choosing for cash instead of creation; for copying the west's banality instead of sparking a new avant-garde. In his art and writings, Kantor bemoans the current path that Russia is taking, basically joining in doing things the way they are done in the west. His thoughts are worthy of being read, and his art is interesting. Kantor's latest novel is receiving considerable acclaim. More at www.maximkantor.com, in English and Russian.
11-23-06 big brother is really listening now Officials in a Dutch town have set up a system of street microphones set to pick up on aggressive sounding voices. The system "helped police make three arrests in a trial run earlier in the year. According to New Scientist Tech, the secret sauce is software that detects 'high frequency vowel sounds [that] span a broader frequency range'." More in this article from Wired Blogs.
11-23-06 nyc museum schedule It's a good month for art in NYC. Here's a rundown on what's on from The New Yorker magazine.
11-22-06 less shakespeare at royal shakespeare company "The Royal Shakespeare Company, keeper of the flame of the greatest playwright ever, plans to 'knock Shakespeare off his podium', according to artistic director Michael Boyd, by increasing the proportion of new plays it stages to half of its total work." In addition to commissioning plays, "writers will be 'embedded' within the company. The first of these, Adriano Shaplin, will be working with the actors who are preparing Shakespeare's history plays, all eight of which will be in the repertoire by spring 2008. The idea is for authors to write plays with a specific ensemble in mind, just as Shakespeare did," according to The Guardian.
11-22-06 will older people control the hits? Older people are now the biggest market for music. "The graying of the music market crept up on America. Now they control too much disposable income � and live too long � to be ignored. And nowhere is the shift in attitudes more pronounced than in the beleaguered pop music business, which desperately needs their money (who do you think is buying all those $750 Barbra Streisand tickets?) and shares their aversion to illicit music downloads." Here's a report from The New York Times.
11-22-06 getty museum cuts off talks with italy "In an abrupt change of course, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced yesterday that it had broken off negotiations with the Italian government and made a �unilateral� decision to cede only some of the antiquities that Italy says were looted from its soil," The New York Times reports.
11-21-06 robert altman, director, dies Robert Altman, acclaimed director of MASH, Nashville and The Player, has died at the age of 81, his production company has announced. A Hollywood maverick renowned for his improvisational style, he passed away in a Los Angeles hospital on Monday. A five-time best director nominee at the Academy Awards, he never won the movie industry's top honour. But he was given an honorary Oscar this year for "a career that has repeatedly reinvented the art form". "No other film-maker has gotten a better shake than I have," he said while accepting the award. "I'm very fortunate in my career. "I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for film-making has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition." Altman's other films included the "revisionist" Western movie McCabe and Mrs Miller, period murder mystery Gosford Park and comic strip adaptation Popeye.
11-21-06 murdoch kills o.j. simpson tv special and book Rupert Murdoch decided Monday that we -- and News Corp. -- are better off not knowing how O.J. would have done it. Pummeled by days of acid criticism on the planned publication of Simpson's book "If I Did It" and an eponymous Fox broadcast special next week, the mogul abruptly canceled both book and show. "I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson," Murdoch said in a statement. A company spokesman declined to comment further, as did Murdoch and chief operating officer Peter Chernin.
11-21-06 that connection between life and art "Whatever's happened, Robert Rauschenberg's famous 'gap between art and life' has turned into a new vividly dissonant gap between inner and outer life. Despite what's happening in the outside world, in our studios or in front of artworks we experience moments of genuine stillness, intensity, and meaningfulness�places on the edge of language that the world can't strip away." So reports Jerry Saltz in the Village Voice.
11-21-06 french criticize google 'universal knowledge' plans Jean-No�l Jeanneney is president of France's Biblioth�que Nationale. And he has some big-picture concerns about Google's project to digitize the world's books. "Jeanneney, in short, looked at Google's 'boast' on its Corporate Information page - 'Google's mission is to organize the world's information' - and thought, 'Mais non. Not your job.' And too important a task to be run by a company whose "dominant philosophy is still that of short-term profit." More in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
11-19-06 french literary prizes to foreigners: what it might mean This fall, four out of six of France's top novel prizes went to non-French writers. So what does this mean about the state of French literature? A view from the US, which has its own prejudices, is found in nThe New York Times.
11-19-06 whitney anniversary show gets bad reviews The Whitney's big celebratory 75th birthday show is a dud, writes Christopher Knight. "Fittingly, apathy is pretty much what the show deserves. Why? Call it an eye for an eye. The myopia is breathtaking. We might be living in a new millennium, but this exhibition still thinks the only 20th century American artists of note are New Yorkers. This boring, repetitious lack of discernment might also help explain a rising tide of inchoate critical restlessness with Manhattan's art museum culture." The L.A.Times report is here.
11-14-06 stefani, fray, mary j. added to billboard awards This year's Billboard Magazine awards was already a pop blockbuster, with Janet Jackson and Fergive & the Killers on the bill. Now, Gew Stefani, Ludacris, The Fray and Marry J. Blige are being added to the list of artists at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Finalists for the Billboard awards, to be announced November 27, will be based on the magazine's charts of recorded and downloaded music.
11-14-06 montreal's art crisis: museum director quits Montreal is a major city that lacks a major art museum. There is a contemporary art museum that seems to specialize in Inuit art and the Museum of Fine Arts that does likewise. Now, Guy Cogeval, who headed the Fine Arts museum since 1998, has announced his resignation, effective at the end of next year's contract period. Montreal's vitality, most present in electronic music (MUTEK festival) and jazz (Jazz festival), suffers greatly though the lack of a world class art museum. Dramatic moves should be made to correct this sad lack of a top quality arts venue.
11-14-06 goya painting stolen on way to guggenheim A 1778 painting by Goya, Children With A Cart, was stolen while being transported by professional art movers. The painting was on its way to the Guggenheim Museum in New York from Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Police and the FBI are investigating.
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