Olafur Eliasson showing off one of his first Little Sun products that will provide solar-powered lanterns to the poor. (via DLD blog)

DAVOS, Switzerland — Does art change the world? The World Economic Forum would have you think so. The WEF is meant to bring important people together to create world change, but how can art participate in the cause? We are not doctors, scientists, politicians or deep-pocketed folks who can actually make real improvements for human kind. Art can add context, question norms, retell stories and speak out against political injustice — but change the world?

Claudy Jongstra (image from the artist's website)

At least three artists are trying. Dutch artist and designer Claudy Jongstra has spent the last 15 years raising sheep, tending a garden and employing local women to make her art. She is a textile artist producing large installations for public spaces and is hailed by starchitects and designers worldwide for her work.

Claudy (working alongside her business partner, Marleen Engbersen) developed a system for making felt and pressing it into other wool fibers or silk. She wanted a specific wool that only 17th century Drente Heath sheep, now almost extinct, can provide. Claudy continues to breed these sheep and her art brings attention to their dwindling numbers. They also use no harmful chemicals in the dying process, but grow the dyes naturally in a large garden which provides all the rich colors for the wool. Claudy employs eight women from the local village and teaches them traditional weaving skills and her own process to get the work made. She works with them each day, without modern technology to interrupt their concentration. They have all become master craftspeople.

Once the pieces are finished, they are transported and installed into museums, public spaces (like libraries or court houses) and corporate buildings. Knowing the process of Claudy’s work is half the art; it is truly sustainable. Her work has an impact on the land and her local village — not large, but it’s something.

Vik Muniz taking a photo of Tiao Santos as Marat for his "Pictures of Garbage" project. (via vikmuniz.net)

Using recycled garbage as materials is nothing new for many sculptors or installation artists, but Vik Muniz takes it to another level in his project “Pictures of Garbage” illustrated in the documentary “Wasteland.” Vik worked with the catadores (garbage pickers) and young people from the favelas to create portraits made from the garbage dumps. The project has raised over $250,000 with 100% of the proceeds benefiting the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho (ACAMJG) in Brazil. It has raised money to house the catadores, establish a business training program, a library and learning center.

Vik Muniz was included in a panel with artists JR, José Moreno Valle and Jürgen Griesbeck who have all worked with people on the street in various ways, helping to enrich communities and give them a larger voice.

One of the Little Sun lamps in use. (via olafureliasson.net) (click to enlarge)

Meanwhile, earlier in the week at the Münich conference DLD, Olafur Eliasson announced his new company, Little Sun. The goal is to bring cheap solar powered devices to areas of the world without electricity. His first product is a solar light designed as a yellow circle which can hang or be placed anywhere. This will bring inexpensive light to millions of people so they can lead more productive lives. On his drawing table are a few more solar products; a larger light, a cell phone charger, small battery and a radio. They are created with his own sense of art and design, but will be massively produced and cost a fraction of similar devices so they can be widely distributed. These are his plans, the outcome is yet unknown, but I suggest keeping your eye on Little Sun.

Jongstra, Muniz and Eliasson are financially successful and they have enough robust professional connections to build something real. For the 99% of the artists out there, creating change is a harder climb without an existing infrastructure. You need money, philanthropists, corporate sponsors, venture capitalists and your own strong brand to propel these ideas into motion.

Even though I will remain skeptical of how much good art can achieve in the world, these are three well-known artists playing a role in sustainability. The impact may be great or small, but it’s definitely better than nothing. And I suppose that is a place to start.

Art Hack Day featured a GIF photo booth, the ability to swim the internet, 3D printing, laser cutting and digital pizza. (All photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

“Yaay!” happy as a little girl who just found a great toy, Ashley Zelinskie grabbed my shoulder as soon as I walked into 319 Sholes this past Saturday night. “You have to try my GIF booth!” she said clapping her hands. She handed me a toy moustache on a stick. Ashley proudly pointed to a cardboard booth she had concocted for Art Hack Day. Loud music blasting, crowds of people as excited as Ashley, I walked into the booth where a laptop captures a series of images of me with my toy moustache generating a GIF that was immediately projected simultaneously in the gallery and onto a video billboard in midtown Manhattan.

And this was just the beginning of the most entertaining art event I had been to in months — Art Hack Day at 319 Scholes.

Ashley Zelinskie with a toy mustache in front of her GIF booth.

319 Scholes is an experimental art space dedicated to the frenzy of activity around digital and internet art. Run by Igal Nassima and Lindsay Howard, the space has played host to a number of excellent curated events that have no equal in the area.

Last weekend, 319 Scholes invited 60 artists who work with new media and technology into their space to crack open the process of art making “with a special reverence towards open source technologies.” Last Friday, we gave you a tour of the process and space. Now take a closer look at some of my favorite final products presented on Saturday night.

With the SwimBrowser you can "swim" the web, and it's a good back workout too.

Are you bored of surfing the web? How about trying to swim it?! David Stolarsky created SwimBrowser, a web browser that allows you to swim through websites. Thanks to the movement detector you can either pull yourself forward using the breaststroke or go back with the backstroke. Drowning is not an option.

The creator of the SwimBrowser, David Stolarsky.

The website was projected on the wall.

The creators of the the Aliens That Look Like Skrillex game project have an “interesting” hypothesis. They think that aliens are trying to communicate with us through dubstep, but we measly humans interpret their actions as hostile and go on the offensive. In the line with this theory, their DJ, who was set up on the stage, was controlling the spaceship in their game using turntables. The player had to detroy the DJ’s spaceship using lasers.

Kill the DJ.

Kill the DJ using this cool old skool controller.

DJ behind new media artist James George.

The Pizza Machine allowed the visitors to feed digital people a slice of the good stuff, and this game, needless to say, made everyone very very hungry. As you can guess, the unofficial Art Hack Day afterparties took refuge in all the pizza parlors near 319 Scholes.

Press the button to feed digital people some pizza.

Hungry digital lady waiting for her slice.

One of the creators of The Pizza Machine, Pamela Reed.

Creators of Jello City Earthquake  applied some electronic oscillators to the ground of a mini-city made of Jello. The result was a jiggly earthquake.

Jello City Earthquake.

319 Scholes director Lindsay Howard with Aaron Meyers.

Bartender in the glow of new media.

Guys from 3D printer company Makerbot Industries assembled their largest MarkerBot yet, the Replicator, for the first time at Art Hack Day.

A view of the Makerbot's Replicator.

Marko Manriquez printed the 319 neon sign using a laser cutter.

Entertained crowds at Art Hack Day.

 The Art Hack Day exhibition was open to the public on Saturday, January 28 (7pm-9pm) at 319 Scholes (319 Scholes Street, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

But instead of nodding our heads thoughtfully to demonstrate we were paying attention, we looked down — at our smartphones. We tweeted, Twitpic’d and hashtagged our way through the hallowed halls of the Whitney, all the while relaying our experience and chatting with our followers.

RT @cmonstah: #whibi In front of Pae White's smoke tapestry. Gary says it has cinematic quality. http://tweetphoto.com/15530317

March 23, 2010 2:09 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@artwhirled

Art Whirled

It was a strange idea at the time, but as Miranda wrote, it was certainly a “#success.” Nina Meledandri, an active Twitter user and artist based in Brooklyn, captured her tweets on #Whibi, a tumblelog of images and thoughts. Addressing the unique experience of touring a museum and writing about its art, she posted a few images and wrote:

“hopefully this gives a sense of how people interact with the art from a spatial perspective … though on an average day people would presumably be looking not tweeting”

The #Whibi Twitter Tour group listens and live tweets curator Gary Carrion-Murayari's talk at the Whitney Biennial. Images by Nina Meledandri.

It was different, to be sure, but I loved it. I loved being able to tweet my experience of the art and engage my followers in conversation. This latter was the best part, and it continued for a while afterward. As Miranda wrote:

“A dizzying hour and a half later, our team streamed dozens of #WhiBhi tweets and pics that followers retweeted to their followers, who retweeted to their followers … and wow, we’re still reading through the comments, jokes and questions.”

It was a novel idea then but in the two years since that time I haven’t heard of many other Twitter tours like it. A tour like this gave the broader public a way to interact with an exhibition that they may not be able to visit (if not in New York). But it also gave them a way to interface directly with the curator, a rare and unique experience even for those based in the city.

The guy got really happy and excited and started waving me over. It took a sec for me to realize he thought I was Deitch! (3of3) #nerdinDoha

December 3, 2011 10:50 pm via UberSocial for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@museumnerd

Museum Nerd

#NerdinDoha: A Round Trip Twicket to Qatar

Recently, I noticed that Museum Nerd, the popular anonymous Twitter feed with over 80,000 followers, was flying to Doha, the capital of Qatar. The person behind the feed had been flown out by the Qatar Museums Authority to participate in the events around Saraab, Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang’s entree into the West Asian art world.

Noting that the Qatar Museums Authority wants to be “as progressive as what Al Jazeera has done for news with social media,” Osman Ahmed, who heads up social media for the Authority, noted that he faced little resistance when he suggested the idea of bringing Museum Nerd out from New York for the show.

“For real time engagement I believe Twitter is currently the best way for museums to have dialogue with the public who use Twitter as a source of information, news and point of contact with museums they follow. It strips away the formalities of an email and gets straight to the point with it’s 140 character limit. As with all communications in real time it happens fast and museums have to be reactive to the needs of the Twitter using public.”

Indeed, with the majority of the English-speaking world based in the UK and the US, the move seemed right from a PR perspective.  Museum Nerd, who used the hashtag #NerdinDoha, was able to make an event about a Chinese artist showing in the Middle East come to life outside the region for those who chose to follow.

It’s an interesting idea, and it’s following a larger trend across organizations. The Pulitzer has opened the possibility of awarding journalists for their live coverage by social media. Naturally, the museum world is starting to understand the role of live tweeting as a form of audience engagement, just like any other publicity or, at its best, journalistic activity.

1959 or 2012? “Movin’ on up” is especially hard for children born poor and black, or poor and female.” http://t.co/aThbMAUl #wherewelive

January 27, 2012 1:36 am via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@CTGLA

Center Theatre Group

Group Interaction: Why It Matters

But while Museum Nerd proved to be effective, cases like #Whibi suggest to me that group interaction on Twitter proves to offer more lively conversation. Despite being accessible, tweeting with Museum Nerd is a very different experience from tweeting with a colleague or casual friend whom you follow on Twitter, especially with there are multiple tweeting and conversing from an event.

No, they're not reading tweets, but the audience was. Clockwise from the left: Brandon David Brown, Deidrie Henry and Kim Staunton in the Ebony Repertory Theatre production of “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry at Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre. Image courtesy the Center Theatre Group.

Recently, I was invited to attend a staging of Clybourne Park and A Raisin in the Sun, two plays that examine issues around race, class and mobility.  Performed by LA’s Center Theatre Group, the themes and stories of the two different plays intersect in thrilling ways. It made a perfect venue for Tweet Seats, the Group’s Twitter-cum-theater productions.

“For me, what’s more important is the notion that theater is a communal experience,” noted Jim Halloran, who concoted the Tweet Seats idea for the Group. “It’s great to have experts, but we also want people who are experimenting with technology on a cursory level. It’s all about personal communication with friends and neighbors.”

Other organizations have used tweet seats as a feature for members, but the recent event was the first time Twitter was used to unite geographically separate audiences watching different plays.  Using the hashtag #Wherewelive, audiences at a simultaneous staging of the two plays (Clybourne in the Mark Taper Forum downtown and Raising in the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City) were able to tweet with each other and organizational feeds like @ctgla and @MusicLA.

Seated so our glowing screens wouldn’t distract the non-Twitterati amongst us, we live tweeted the show and chatted during intermission. Some even tweeted with understudies and an actor who were engaging off stage. While I wondered about the possibility of being distracted, someone not at the show began tweeting with me. That’s when I realized why it mattered.

“In compiling the transcript of tweets,” Halloran explained, “we had more people that were tweeting in from home. We’ve never had that before.”  Indeed, the #Wherewelive hashtag was filled with interesting historical facts about the plays, comments from the audience and comments from others not in attendance. It was truly a community, as #Whibi had been.

#wherewelive @anxiaostudio - More than promotion: it can be like having an insider commentary. You can dissect the play beat by beat.

January 27, 2012 12:43 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@corwinevans

Corwin Evans

The use of live tweeting in the arts has been surprisingly slow to come to life, but I think these three organizations have hit on something right. In addition to simply providing a hashtag and a marquee to collect tweets, it helps to create a built-in community and invite a few art-minded Twitterati to stir things up. Then the conversation flows, both in the moment and later on.

“At what point does technology enhance the experience rather than become a barrier?” asked Halloran. “Just like tech in the 21st century is a way to form community, we’re realizing that community is a part of how we want to interact with art.”

Erik den Breejen walking in front one of the paintings in question, "Smile II" (2011), at his Freight + Volume opening last month. (photos by Kees den Breejen, courtesy the artist)

It’s a cruel world that makes a thief out of an adoring fan. Artist Erik den Breejen is a keen Beach Boys fan and one who knows, now, what the back of a beloved hand feels like.

Eager to greet the release of the long-buried 1966 album, Smile, Erik produced a series of word collages which incorporate blocks of the lyrics into wave and beach-themed constructions. His paintings made a tiny splash back in December when they debuted at Freight + Volume.

Reviewed by Charlie Finch for artnet.com, they were deemed “pretty darn cute” (take that as you will) and the proud artist enlisted Finch’s and Freight + Volume’s help in contacting Beach Boy lyricist Van Dyke Parks. His hero responded swiftly with a cease and desist letter.

“They seemed prepared to fight,” Freight + Volume owner, Nick Lawrence is quoted as telling artnet. “Van Dyke was personally offended … he seemed upset that he wasn’t consulted ahead of time about the show, which is a valid point. But in terms of fair use, I think it’s a bit of a stretch.”

Sadly it’s not. Sure it’s mean. But copyright law is ruthless and does not suffer homage gladly.

Look at it this way, according to Charlie Finch F+V gallery manager Philip Dmochowski, “said that the most expensive and largest den Breejen goes for $12,500 and that Brian Wilson devotees have already bought a few for their rec rooms.” Most of us will notice two things: 1) den Breejen is selling at emerging artist prices, and 2) people are buying these because they are “Brian Wilson devotees.”

Number one is why this story is sad. den Breejen is just breaking into the market; his enthusiastic pastels are not likely to usurp the Beach Boy’s market for their lyric sheets. But then there’s number 2.

Number 2 is why Parks or his lawyers felt they had to sue: they don’t want any one selling anything under the Beach Boys umbrella (pardon, please, the pun).

Lawrence estimates that Parks’ lyrics are in a little over half of the series. They are in snippets and not straight text. Says den Breejen:

“I don’t even know if people read the words in my paintings that much, since they function on a visual level. However, it is important to me that they are there, both as an initial inspiration and a cultural reference point. But it is just that — a reference point.”

It is perhaps telling that den Breejen is not ignorant of copyright law, and has, in fact, given his case some thought.

“I feel like I am very clearly in the transformative fair use area, however, the people who protect copyrighted music are fierce. The author claims piracy and exploitation, which is kind of a stretch. Most of the appropriation art cases I know of involve the (re)use of copyrighted images. I’m not aware of any precedents for turning copyrighted words into images, which makes it potentially interesting from a legal point of view … ”

I must say, the very fact that den Breejen speaks so clearly about “turning copyrighted words into images,” says a lot about how he could conquer with a fair use defense if it came to that. Distinguishing the “purpose and use” of your derivative work from that of the original is key.

But a wise lawyer would tell him to steer clear of any statement that would suggest his work is advertising the original work. Copyright owners HATE it when you take on their advertising for them: that would be proof of market confusion.

In any case, den Breejen and Freight + Volume are looking to settle the matter in out-of-court discussions with Parks.

“I’m pretty wary of a legal battle, especially with one of my heroes,” says den Breejen.

"Going Down With the Building" literally, Michael Alan's Living Installation at ABC No Rio (photo by Worm Carnevale)

Sitting in a cold performance space in the gritty, graffiti-ed punk art institution, ABC No Rio, for possibly the final time before the building is demolished for renovations in March, watching the last Michael Alan’s Living Installation performance, I became profoundly worried that I was witnessing the last gasps of a long history of free-wheeling, punk, D-I-Y art.

After the performance with Alan’s mom coming onstage proclaiming the show should win a grant and Alan interacting with every audience member with a megaphone, which turned the performance into a celebration, I left feeling more optimistic about the strength and the direction of both Alan’s public performances and the future of ABC No Rio.

ABC No Rio entrance (via papermag.com) (click to enlarge)

Even though the city has threatened to close them down about a year now, ABC No Rio will be tearing down their building at 156 Rivington Street, which has stood nearly untouched for 30 plus years. ABC No Rio plans to construct a new $3.4 million arts center, partially financed by the city. Taking a look at ABC No Rio’s plans, its hard to imagine the punk art institution inhabiting a clean, white-walled gallery space with a “planted facade.” While there is no denying that the building which has no hot water and is collapsing, needs repair, the building has a Downtown punk feel that has been lost in the Starbucks and Duane Reade-ification of New York.

Similarly, the Living Installation performance “Going Down With the Building” was its final show both at ABC No Rio and in general. A staple in my art viewership for almost two years and on the New York art scene for about 7 years, the Living Installation, a performance in which artist Michael Alan turns performers into living, moving sculptures, has been plagued by difficulties.

The problems range from unreliable performers, which lead Alan to hilariously and deftly replace a performer who didn’t show up to rehearsal with a sculpture, to unforgiving venues, that won’t  provide the paint, clay, collage-encrusted performers with a bathroom, to the loss of ABC No Rio, the space that has been the most receptive to their messy performances.  In addition, there are bigger issues at work such as the lack of public funding for artists, unlike the era of ABC No Rio’s founding, when the show costs about $2000 and up to make, no gallery representation or well-deserved invitations from Performa, and no permanent space to hold the shows (artist Kenny Scharf has been the only real major backer).  With only help from his friends and doing most of the work himself, Alan decided to end this incarnation of the project and switch gears.

In the show on Friday night, Michael Alan’s Living Installation merged both its own personal history and the history of ABC No Rio, giving me room to think about their legacies and what the future holds.

Passerby at 125 Delancey Street, site of the Real Estate Show (photo by Anne Messner; via 98bowery.com)

Born out of artist collaborations, accessibility, irreverence and anti-commercialism, ABC No Rio’s founding was completely unexpected. Organized by the artist group Collaborative Projects, or Colab, a group of artists who incorporated in the late 1970s to take advantage of the public funds that were available to artists, the Real Estate Show, which opened in 123 Delancey Street in a city-owned but vacant storefront on January 1, 1980. Taken over “guerilla style” by the artists after struggling to find a space for their show, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development padlocked the doors on January 2 and the city was eventually forced to give the Colab artists a permanent building at 156 Rivington Street, where ABC No Rio stands today.

Since then, and like many alternative spaces of that era, including Exit Art (which announced recently that it will also be closing) and Group Material, ABC No Rio held many theme exhibitions such as Animals Living In Cities to The Murder, Suicide and Junk Show.

In addition to art shows, ABC No Rio has hosted punk bands such as Japanther, Yuppicide, the Krays and others.

The sculpture/performer in "Going Down With the Building," (photo by Worm Carnevale)

With a splash of paint, sculpture and a soundtrack, Michael Alan’s Living Installation‘s “Going Down With The Building” gave ABC No Rio and its own show an appropriately loud and visually stunning goodbye. I understand its theatrical, messy nature, which admittedly isn’t for everyone, but I’ve always seen the Living Installation to be the inheritor of the Downtown punk art scene, which is why their stint at ABC No Rio has made so much sense. With a sculpture standing in the center of the room that became unquestionably the main and most captivating performer, the show literally was a celebration and a performance of art-making whether Alan, moving quickly, constructed on a sculpture or a living person.

The most interesting part of the performance was the three-hour soundtrack of Alan’s own music that ranged from  a unique mix of punk and rap to all out The Germs-like punk to songs that featured his mom. In addition to his own solo music, Alan collaborated with bands that had either played at ABC No Rio in the past or felt enough of a connection to the space or the show to give Alan a track, such as Renaldo from Renaldo and the Loaf, Williamsburg’s own Japanther, WLWL, Geneva Jacuzzi (Ariel Pink’s girlfriend/collaborator), The Krays, Yuppicide and Tim “Love” Lee. Digitally exchanging songs between the musicians and the artist reminded me of the collaborative spirit from which ABC No Rio was born.

While “Going Down With the Building” was billed as the last Living Installation, the next morning Alan discovered that he won a Brooklyn Arts Council Regrant for a performance, which means that some incarnation of his public performances will continue. As he told me, he is planning on focusing much more on sculptures and other inanimate objects, his music and his own sometimes humorous role in the performances, glimmers of this evolution could be seen in “Going Down With The Building.” “It could be anything, which is relaxing for me. I’m eliminating the format. That to me is freedom,” he explains.

Michael Alan, "History Pushes Through" (2011), ink on paper

Entitled “History Pushes Through” (2011), one of the many prints of Alan’s work covering the walls at ABC No Rio made me reconsider my sadness for the end of grimy ABC No Rio and the Living Installation. With the history of punk art spaces and performances behind them, both ABC and Alan’s public performances will push forward even if they change forms. At the heart of it, the strength of the Living Installation has always been about change from watching the performers change into sculptures to the changing materials to the changing themes of the shows. ABC No Rio has also changed during its 30 years even if it was just another layer of graffiti tags. Thinking back, I always thought there were too many performers in the Living Installation and was afraid to ever use the bathroom at ABC No Rio.

The real question I should have asked last Friday night is: if everything “goes down with the building,” what can be raised?

If you haven’t went to ABC No Rio, go check out the building before it closes at 156 Rivington Street. To learn more about its history read ABC No Rio Dinero on 98 Bowery.

Satellite photo of the Costa Concordia capsized off the coast of Isola del Giglio (image via telegraph.co.uk)

Somehow I missed the 16,400 internet posts reporting that the ill-fated luxury liner, Costa Concordia — presumably still on its side in the waters off Tuscany’s Isola del Giglio — was the setting for the first act of Jean-Luc Godard’s latest feature, Film Socialisme (2010).

The DVD of Film Socialisme was released on January 10th, and the Costa Concordia crashed on the 13th, so how weird is that? If you look upon the appearance of a festival film’s DVD as being akin to its general release, then the gap between metaphor and reality has now collapsed to a mere three days.

Ignorance, in this case, was a peculiar kind of bliss, as some of the most gorgeous footage ever captured on HD rolled past my eyes, initially unclouded by the cruelties of irony and fate.

It was just as the camera was descending in a glass elevator through the ship’s atrium to its inlaid hardwood floor — a sequence evocative (and probably deliberately so) of the famous rooftop-to-underwater tracking shot in Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964) — that my mind drifted to the wreck of the Costa Concordia.

Gazing at Godard’s lush montage of the cruise’s cheap thrills (eating, drinking, gambling) and social atomization (exacerbated by his use of radically elliptical subtitles, which have been analyzed elsewhere), I began to picture everything suddenly going sideways, an escapist fantasy unraveling in waves of incomprehension and horror.

Moments later, there was a shot of the gangplank with “Costa Concordia” emblazoned on its side.

Jean-Luc Godard, Film Socialisme (2010) (image via wildbunch.biz)

This encroachment of future catastrophe upon a Marxist morality tale, as unnerving and grimly absurd as it was, somehow seemed altogether, and immediately, appropriate — a secret confirmation of a deep-seated, atavistic belief in the shaman’s power over the elements. It was as if Godard had aimed a laser at the Costa Concordia from afar, and it was only a matter of time before it lay on its side, half-submerged in the surf like an abandoned beach toy.

Godard’s gnomic persona, cultivated over his six-decade-long career, first as a critic and then an auteur, reaches a kind of apotheosis in this film. His view of his characters is entirely exterior; they squabble among themselves and pursue their paltry pleasures, but they remain distant and opaque. He surveys their folly but casts no judgment, a disinterested god leaving a lost race to its own devices.

He may send Patti Smith wandering through the ship like an avenging proletarian angel (pity the poor fan who watches this movie just to see her — what, 40 seconds? — of screen time) and he may invoke evils past and present through well-worn (okay, worn-out) political dichotomies (Stalin, Hitler and even the Odessa Steps), but the movie plays like a half-remembered reverie, a lament over the shallowness of a new century that is no match, in dynamism and danger, to the last.

The capsizing of the Costa Concordia (James Cameron’s Titanic as remade by Jacques Tati) all too neatly falls into the line of fate preordained by Godard, just as I Am Cuba, a distant piece of art-cum-agitprop by a Soviet filmmaker about the genesis of the Cuban Revolution, all too neatly foreshadows the recent rebellions that continue to ripple across the globe.

In the scene I mentioned — so magically mimicked in the “Spill the Wine” sequence of Paul Thomas Anderson’s homage-besotted Boogie Nights (1997) — the bikini-and-sunhat-clad bourgeoisie frolic in nonstop party mode while, elsewhere in the film, a virginal peasant woman is reduced to turning tricks in her shanty, and a sugar cane grower, kicked off his land, burns down his crop in an act of desperate self-immolation.

Godard’s seafaring gamblers are the nickel-slot descendants of Kalatozov’s deliciously decadent leisure class, and perhaps that comedown in villainy is one of the things Godard is mourning, and why his references to Hitler and Stalin seem so jarringly out of place.

But still. No matter how kneejerk his politics, how cavalier his aesthetic or exasperating his techniques, throughout the malign half-century since the Cuban Revolution, Godard has never failed to retrieve his lance and turn to face his foe. If we could all be so irascible.

Today, Hyperallergic got a guided tour by Nahana Schelling and Olaf Mathé of the behind the scene action that the invited team of hackers are producing as they realize their digital projects.

319 Scholes is a hotspot for the tech/art nexus that has a natural home in New York. Art Hack Day aims to bring ”together hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is technology.” The space is rich with technological resources and Marko Manriquez of Fabricator’s Guild showed us their Trotec Speed 300 laser printer, which is hooked up to cut into almost any surface you can image. His work on the outside of the 319 space, using moss and an adhesive, was pretty lovely. I liked the idea that a sign can grow and change, transforming a brick wall into a home for a living organism, though they’ll have to replace that soon enough, no?

Here is a small and incomplete visual tour of some of the evolving projects that should whet you appetite and encourage you to visit their big party tomorrow night, Saturday, January 28 (7-9pm), which will be followed by a DJ event.

For those outside Brooklyn, there will also be a virtual tour of the show tomorrow (Saturday) that you can watch online. Follow @319scholes or @arthackday for information on when that will occur.

The mossy "graffiti" is part of a project called "Ecology Without Nature" (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

These two programmers were working on "One Hole Punch" which will punch holes in your environment (aka collects circle forms using your iPhone camera).

The teams in the front room hard at work at the halfway point in their 48-hour marathon.

F.A.T. Labs is creating a notation language for turntabling. Just think, their invention will ensure that turntablers will be able to share information about new scratches and tricks or transform their art into a new level of abstraction.

A view of the busy programmers in the backroom area.

For their contribution to Art Hack Day, Reed and Rader are cooking up "Pizza Machine" which will allow visitors to digitally feed pizza to trippy looking models by pressing a pizza-like button.

Keith from Makerbot showed us a half skull he printed using the newest MakerBot, known as Replicator.

Some of the hackers in the basement were gold foiling sculptures and making video games using mirrors and LED lights.

Marko Manriquez showed us a few detailed pieces that the Trotec Speedy 300 laser printer can produce.

The Art Hack Day exhibition is open to the public Sat Jan 28 7pm-9pm at 319 Scholes (319 Scholes Street, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

Liza Eliano on her last day at Hyperallergic. (Click thru for a pic of her first day)

Dear Hyperallergic peeps,

Today is my last day at Hyperallergic, and as much as I hate saying goodbyes, I can’t leave without reflecting on the amazing journey this has been. Next week I will start as a publicity assistant at Random House, but Hyperallergic will always remain on my mind and close to my heart.

During my seven months at Hyperallergic, I have been challenged and inspired every day. As the editorial assistant I found my stride writing news and opinion posts on some of the stories, big and small, to break this year in art. I had the great opportunity to cover the art that sprang out of Occupy Wall Street and immerse myself in the movement, for better and for worse. I also covered the ongoing labor dispute between Sotheby’s and their art handlers, as well as issues in arts funding and education, which sparked some heated debates on the blog. These issues often get put on the back burner in the art world, but Hyperallergic always thinks outside the box, providing a space where voices from every corner of life can be heard. I feel so honored and proud to have been a part of that mission.

What I will also miss most about my time here is getting to work closely with our group of immensely talented writers. You are what make this blog so diverse and interesting to read. It was such a pleasure to help develop your posts and I look forward to reading more of your fantastic work.

Finally, I want to thank Hrag and Veken for this incredible opportunity and for teaching me more than I ever thought possible. Hyperallergic is very much about serious discontent, but I’ve learned from Hrag to also have fun, love what you are doing and seek out jello shots when necessary. I so admire the passion and commitment that Hrag and Veken have for this labor of love.

I hope to continue to contribute when I can and keep the conversation going (you can follow me on Twitter). This has been a big year for Hyperallergic in many ways, with more readers coming in every day and the launch of the Weekend Edition. I know the blog has no where to go but up and I am so excited to watch it grow. Please continue to support the critical dialogue at Hyperallergic and never stop being discontent.

Much Love,

Liza

Editor’s note: This is the final in a three-part series on the impact of the Patrick Cariou v Richard Prince case. The first post was published on Friday, January 13, 2012 and the second on January 17, 2012.

‘Transformative use’ is just mucking things up. That’s what I think.

Providing a pivot for the Cariou v Prince case and the only real point of interest no matter what the pundits say, transformative use, instead of the fog-clearing test that it was supposed to be, has become the main particulate in a legal fog of war that has lasted three years now.

Thus far, the dueling Cariou v Prince briefs have added new certainty to my theory that transformative use is a singularly unhelpful notion.

What is Transformative Use?

Set out in a 1990 Harvard Law Review article by judge Pierre N. Leval, the test for transformative use was supposed to add clarity to evaluations of fair use defense claims with a set of simple questions:

“Is the work transformative? Does it add value to the original? Does it use the quoted work as raw material, and transform it in the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings?”

I asked Virginia Rutledge, who co-authored the Andy Warhol Foundation’s amicus brief, what she thought.

“I think you’re probably right about transformation,” she said, “It’s obviously been the basis of a lot of internal debate and scholarship about what exactly it means.”

So why, I asked, do we keep wrestling with transformation? Why not just ask one question, “Does this usurp the original artist’s market?” and be done with it?

“Exactly,” she says. “To me, with appropriation art — even the purest appropriation art — the question answers itself.”

I point out that many of these cases wouldn’t even go to court, then, if we focused solely on the market, and she seems willing to consider that too:

“A lot of people who work between fine arts and copyright think exactly that. They think it’s absurd to say, ‘I’m buying it because it’s Sherry Levine and not Walker Evans.’ I hate to say it’s a no brainer, but it is a no brainer.There’s no art collector in the world that would buy one over the other because it’s a substitute.”

And yet, it is the deeply ironic case that both the legal teams of Richard Prince & Gagosian and Patrick Cariou, see the big T as a key player on their own side. In fact, everyone is eager to quote Campbell v Acuff-Rose, hoping that the 1994 Supreme Court’s understanding and application of the tests of transformative use will provide final word.

The Artist’s Intent

Quick Review: The case is named for Luther Campbell, of 2 Live Crew who’s rap parody of Roy Orbison’s rock ballad “Oh, Pretty Woman” caused Acuff-Rose Music (owners of copyright) to sue them for infringement. Campbell, et al pled fair use, stating the song was a parody. Acuff-Rose stated that the commercial nature of the record precluded the fair use defense.

When the Supreme Court wrote its decision on the Campbell v Acuff-Rose case, it held that, “The more transformative the new work, the less will be the significance of other factors, like commercialism, that may weigh against a finding of fair use.” Thus a commercial parody could qualify as fair use.

Though the case was remanded and settled in appeal, the Supreme Court’s guidelines offered much optimism to fair use advocates. It also put transformative use front and center as a balance against commercial use. In a way, these two factors, transformative use and commercial use are now pitted against each other.

And that provides a good grid to examine the Prince v Cariou case.

The Prince side claims that the Canal Zone works are clearly transformative of the original Yes, Rasta portraiture. What is more, since Campbell states that “The threshold question when fair use is raised in defense of parody is whether a parodic character may reasonably be perceived,” fair use advocates are now holding that Prince’s transformative use of Carious‘ photos as “raw material” is so head-wackingly obvious, that surely it can be reasonably perceived by any viewer. 

And this, they contend, is the only relevant test.

Judge Deborah A. Batts didn’t think so. She ruled against Richard Prince because he stated outright that he meant nothing by using the specific Cariou photos that went into the Canal Zone series. Batts took that statement to be a clear-cut confession that he’d intended to add no meaning at all to the images he’d lifted from Cariou.

How, I asked Rutledge, will the appeal overcome that?

“Very easily,” came the quick reply, “Because the test is not the intent of the artist; the test is the reasonable perception of the viewer.”

On the other hand, Dan Brooks thinks it’s pretty clear that the Richard Prince team is trying to leverage this one sound bite, “reasonably perceived” into a full fledged claim to transformative use. And he’s not buying it. In the brief filed yesterday by the Cariou team, Brooks lays out this argument:

“In every case relied upon by appellants, the defendant claimed — sometimes pre-litigation, but always in the trial court — that he or she subjectively intended to create a satire or parody; only then do courts analyze whether the claimed parody or satire is reasonably perceivable. In none of those cases did a court examine whether a comment was reasonably perceivable when the defendant expressly disavowed any intent to comment, as Prince did here.”

Brooks also pushes from the other end; he thinks it’s pretty clear that the commercial nature of Prince’s Canal Series far outweighs any hint of transformation in the relevant legal sense. I quote again from the Cariou brief:

“It would be difficult to imagine a starker example of ‘commercial exploitation’ than the marketing of Prince’s Paintings through advertisements in seven different newspapers, five depicting Cariou’s Rastafarian images; the prominent use of Cariou’s images on 7,500 announcement cards and the Gagosian Gallery website; and an exhibition catalogue, claiming copyright ownership of Cariou’s images and containing James Frey’s name on its title page in order to elicit Google hits, all targeted at an audience of celebrities and billionaires having ‘proof’ that they would ‘BUY’ works of art hastily thrown together by Prince without much thought, resulting in proceeds of over $11 million plus additional bartered art and the sale of the leftover announcement cards to a poster company, likely inducing further infringement of Cariou’s copyright.”

Next?

An image of Richard Prince by Patrick McMullen remixed a la Prince with one of Patrick Cariou's "Yes Rasta" series.

As my readers know, I have had my doubts about how truly pivotal or even interesting this case is. To me there is only one truly colorful issue in this case, Prince’s statement that he meant nothing by using Cariou’s particular images — which I agree with Dan Brooks, really threw a wrench into his fair use defense.

It has also caused the Prince legal team to draw up some very avant guard arguments, one of which is that the artist’s intention doesn’t matter when assessing the “use and purpose” of a work; what matters is the added meaning that can be reasonably perceived.

As stated in the Richard Prince brief:

“There is no sound policy reason why fair use should be limited solely to comment or criticism. In Campbell, the Supreme Court emphasized that what makes a work transformative is that it ‘adds something new, with a different purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message.’”

But, because Prince claimed he meant nothing, the argument made here seems to boil down to a claim that intent or not, there IS a new message in the Canal Zone works just and solely because we perceive one.

It’s the “anyone can see” argument, and it’s not pure hogwash: in a footnote to Campbell, the supreme court added, “We note in passing that 2 Live Crew need not label their whole album, or even this song, a parody in order to claim fair use protection, nor should 2 Live Crew be penalized for this being its first parodic essay. Parody serves its goals whether labeled or not, and there is no reason to require parody to state the obvious (or even the reasonably perceived).” Hmm … take out the word “parody” and replace with “added meaning.”

If the Prince team manages to convince the court that Prince’s sworn testimony means little or nothing, but that, rather, the “reasonable perception” of meaning — as measured in their brief largely (and with oblivious irony ) by the works’ commercial results, THEN things really will get interesting.

Maybe the court will, finally, throw up it’s hands and say, “Right, who bloody NEEDS to blather on about meaning? Let’s just talk money.” That’s what I’m rooting for. Meaning? Meaning either comes with the baby or gets tossed out with the bathwater. It’s there or it isn’t.

The only other interesting factor in this case is the draconian remedies which Judge Batts rained down on Prince and Gagosian — and those, surely, will be revised in the continuing court process.

Barbara Rosenthal, Manhattan, New York (bio)

This photo of a corner of my studio was taken on May 16, 2011, when I was setting up for a studio visit. I’m halfway between testing out projections and cleaning up the pile of workbooks, scrapbooks and references that accompany production.

You can see a part of one of the many neons here, and part of my 7,000 book library, and the door to my darkroom. In the center is my main electronic media pod, constructed from mismatched file cabinets and hollow-core-door counter tops all found on the street or bought cheap. There’s my old MOOG synthesizer and a natural light lamp and a video projector.

On the short wall is a pull-down screen running the DVD “Push Me.” On the long wall are five prints from the suite Conceptual Photographs, 2011. Out of camera range, but visible to me, are six more filing cabinets, a 10-drawer print file, two clear white work counters, one small desk and chair, six 20″x30″ framed photo-print collages and large windows overlooking the Hudson River at the point the sun and moon set every day.

This live/work space is eMediaLoft in the Westbeth Artists Complex, so I occasionally develop projects with or for other artists, but mostly I’m by myself working on several things simultaneously in an unusual time-pattern. I almost always watch the dawn and sunset, and a 24-hr period does not divide into “day” and “night,” but usually has two wake-sleep cycles. Work-times and sleep-times alternate without regard to hour. And I assign all “out-of-studio” things to the same day (and as infrequently as possible). This pattern allows me long, unbroken periods of many days or even weeks without leaving here, just a zen-like work-sleep-work-sleep-work routine, usually silent.

Michelle Muldrow, Cleveland, Ohio (site)

My studio is in an old Elevator Factory building in Cleveland. I love it. It has enormous windows, one facing the elevated train tracks that run through town, the other facing the many red brick buildings surrounding the area. Oddly,I am just a few blocks from Lake Erie, but you would never know, since it is mostly industrial along the lakefront.

I always bring my little Chihuahua mutt Little Bit to my studio. She is 12 years old and sits with me while I paint. My floors are always trashed because I paint on the floor, usually only using my easel to prop up nearly finished works for decision making.

Because Cleveland can be very grey in the winter, you can see my heater and my lights that I paint by: a big tungsten light for warmth of lighting, which works as a nice heater, and a large fluorescent bulb. My antique architect table is from an estate sale. I bought it very cheaply and the large cabinet in the corner is from another estate sale. It was found in the garage and it’s perfect for storing paints. The vibe of this studio is amazing.

John Tomlinson, New York State (site)

My studio is 100 miles northwest of New York City in the Upper Delaware River Valley of New York State. I share the studio with my wife Daria Dorosh. It’s adjacent to our stone house and is on five acres of beautiful hilly land. I have spent half my week there for the last 14 years. It’s a huge contrast to our city life and work where I am director of the New York Studio Residency Program, but I can’t imagine a more perfect place to make my art. I get a lot done here. My materials — graphite powder, 9B graphite sticks, pencil, mineral spirits, Bristol paper or polyester drafting film — are the focal point of my studio and my work: drawings, always drawings.

Julia Schwartz, Santa Monica, California (site)

Several years ago, we converted our garage into a studio. On painting days, after the house clears out and I’ve checked email, I’ll head outside and see what is awaiting me from the previous session.

The radio is usually tuned to NPR or an iPod is queued to my mood or the series I’m working on. I usually work on several paintings at a time, moving from one to the next, maybe experimenting with works on paper in between. I have a large glass palette (which I had cut to size locally) which I clean only rarely, so the history of many weeks and months of paintings is a constant companion on the palette, in the dirty oil and dirty brushes (just out of sight in this photo).

Meghann Snow, New York City (video channel)

My studio is only 8 feet by 24 feett. So it’s kinda narrow and long. This is what the studio looks like when I am working on a Dance Drawing. I don’t work on an easel, but I consider my floor my easel.

My daily routine is: come to my studio and make ballet shoes out of bubble wrap and tape; work on some dance drawings, or other drawings, or on video of documentation. Lately, I have been traveling with my work, and creating dance drawings in Paris and in Stockholm. I am currently getting ready for a couple of shows which I will perform in their spaces.