A screenshot of The Listening Machine's landing page.

LOS ANGELES — What on earth is Twitter talking about? It’s easy to find out: check your stream, scan some words and ta-da, you know what your friends are saying and doing. If you want to know what your city or country are up to, just check the trending topics.

The flow diagram for how The Listening Machine turns tweets into visualizations and auralizations. (image via thelisteningmachine.org)

The Listening Machine, created by Daniel Jones and Peter Gregson for the BBC’s digital arts channel, is trying a different tack. With a simple triangle for sentiment and turning gears for topics and rate of t.weets, the site lets you see at a glance what people are talking about online.

There are lots of sentiment analyzers out there, but The Listening Machine’s simple infographics make it charming and somehow more manageable. It’s also just a small sample of people — 500 Twitter users were selected to represent the entirety of the UK Twittersphere.  And there’s sound, too:

This diagram shows how a sequence of words can be transformed into musical notes by mapping their syllables to pitches of a scale. Consonants are dropped, leaving only the vowel sounds. These are ordered based on their typical fundamental frequency for an English speaker.

By preserving the rhythms and dynamics introduced by punctuation and stress, we can produce surprisingly structured-sounding motifs from simple sentences.

That sound element is perhaps the most hypnotic part: just turn on the site and let it run, and you get a sense of Twitter streaming by, of words and rhythms, and you can only guess what they have to say.

Fuck Yeah Menswear's infographic reveals the stunning growth of the Fuck Yeah Tumblr meme. Click to enlarge.

LOS ANGELES — Got a brilliant Tumblr idea? Would it fit the Fuck Yeah mold just right? Your blog would be just one of 100 new Fuck Yeah tumblelogs created each day since the meme began picking up in 2009.

WTF? A new article in Co.Design pointed me to two incredible infographics from Fuck Yeah Menswear, one of which shows that the Fuck Yeah tumblelogs hit 100,000 this past March, and there’s no sign that that number is going down any time soon.  It sounds like we need a Tumblr version of the infamous Rule 34: if it exists, there is a fuckyeah tumblelog of it.

What do you think, dear readers?  What are your favorite Fuck Yeah sites?  Here are a few of ours, art-related of course:

• fuckyeahmuseums.tumblr.com
• fuckyeahpicasso.tumblr.com
• fuckyeahconceptart.tumblr.com
• fuckyeahwarhol.tumblr.com
• effyeaharthistory.tumblr.com
• fuckyeahpostmodernism.tumblr.com

But we’d love to see more. Art-related fuck yeah sites seem to be lacking. Why, for instance, is there no Fuck Yeah New Aesthetic or Fuck Yeah Art Fairs? Get on it, people.

LOS ANGELES — Spring is upon us, and cherry blossoms are blooming around the world. It’s hard to take a bad picture of a cherry blossom, known as sakura in Japan, so how do you take a better one?

A recent post at The Fox Is Black turned me on to the work of Takeshi Suga, a UK-based photographer who recently completed a dreamlike series on the famous sakura of his native Japan. As Suga writes in his artist statement, “Components of my photography are nostalgia, sentimentality, euphoria and loneliness. I seek comfort and tranquility in my subjects.”

I emailed Suga and asked him a bit more about his process. He replied:

Two years ago, I discovered the technique through an accidental double exposure shot I took with a Lomography camera. Since then, it has become an integral part of my photography. By overlaying two images, one descriptive (in focus) and one suggestive (out of focus), I aim to present simultaneously the descriptive clarity of photography with the haze of memory, creating a rich and imaginative glimpse of the world around us.

The series, appropriately titled Sakuramadelica 2012, takes the classic sakura trope and turns it into a more expressive series, reflecting, in many ways, the high of seeing fields full of pink blossoms. The blossoms have been depicted by Japanese artists since the days of Hiroshige and, even further back, Lady Murasaki, so Suga has a long tradition of Old Aesthetic to live up to. I’m no expert on sakura art, but these new shots are wonderfully psychedelic.

LOS ANGELES — In kindergarten, we learned that sharing is caring, 1+1 is 2, and napping after lunch is a good thing. Most of those lessons from our youthful years still apply, except for that latter one. For some reason, despite our protests, we were forced to take a nap. And now that we need a nap, it’s difficult to find the opportunity.

Nap4Change is a new tumblelog I stumbled across that features pictures of none other than nappers going about the business of napping. It reminds me a bit of the Sleeping Chinese web site and Asians Sleeping in the Library Tumblr that made the rounds. It follows up on the success of Asleep On The Subway in demonstrating that sleeping anywhere is a universal trait.

“No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap,” as the site’s slogan goes. Those are big words, but how can you refute them? Indeed, if you’re struggling in the studio, trying to find inspiration, sometimes all you need is a nap. According to a study discussed in The New York Times:

“Sleep makes a unique contribution,” explains Mark Jung-Beeman, a psychologist at Northwestern University who studies the neural bases of insight and creative cognition.

Some sort of incubation period, in which a person leaves an idea for a while, is crucial to creativity. During the incubation period, sleep may help the brain process a problem.

What Nap4Change shows is that napping is possible everywhere, whether at one’s desk, waiting for the plane, even at a TEDxSummit. Those precious few minutes of shut-eye could be a great thing.

Of course, this might be seen to contradict an earlier post of mine, where I pointed at studies showing that getting drunk and losing sleep are good for creativity, but hey, creativity is still a mysterious field. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to stretch out and take a rest.

Top, An artist's rendering of the "light box" of the Barnes Museum, and left to right on bottom row, Giorgio de Chirico's "Dr. Albert C. Barnes" (1926), Henri Matisse's "Red Madras Headdress " (1907) and Picasso's "Head of a Woman" (1907) (images via barnesfoundation.org)

This week, critics weigh in on the new Barnes Foundation museum in central Philadelphia … and in other non-Barnes-related links … discotecture, the impact of progressive architectural ideas on urbanism and the voice of Rene Magritte.

 This week, the art world is chattering about the Barnes Foundation and its controversial move to Logan Square in central Philadelphia.

Here’s the low down …

 First the AP story via The Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York:

It may look like a museum but officials are quick to point out that the Barnes will remain true to — and expand upon — the educational mission that its creator intended. Opponents say removing the collection from its original context has created a “McBarnes,” despite the efforts to replicate the dizzying floor-to-ceiling arrangements of paintings, furniture and metalwork that underscored Barnes’ eccentric philosophy of art appreciation.

 Travel and Leisure magazine give us the mind-numbing statistics:

Numbers may mean little but there is an astounding embarrassment of riches: 181 works by Renoir (the largest group of the artist’s paintings anywhere), 69 by Cézanne, 59 by Matisse, 46 by Picasso…, 7 by van Gogh; early twentieth-century American paintings (William Glackens and Maurice Prendergast); Old Masters, including El Greco, Paolo Veronese, Frans Hal; 125 African sculptures and masks, Native American ceramics, and more, a lot more …

 New York Times critic Roberta Smith, who appears to be a fan of everything nowadays, likes it:

Others, myself included, did not object to the move per se, but felt that faithfully reproducing the old Barnes in the new space, as promised by the trustees, was a terrible idea. To us it seemed time to at least loosen up Barnes’s straitjacketed displays, wonderful as they often were. And why go to the trouble of moving the collection to a more accessible location when the galleries were not going to be any bigger?

And yet the new Barnes proves all of us wrong. Against all odds, the museum that opens to the public on Saturday is still very much the old Barnes, only better.

 Christopher Knight, of the LA Times, predictably doesn’t like the new museum, which he writes:

The result is one part Colonial Williamsburg, where authentic and ersatz mingle; one part Lehman Wing, where an excellent New York collector’s expensive period taste is enshrined in a Metropolitan Museum of Art replica of his apartment; and one partDisneyland’s Main Street U.S.A., where a spiffed-up version of what time has torn asunder offers commercial entertainment.

 Writing for Vanity Fair, Paul Goldberger thinks the building is great:

This building won’t please the absolutists, the people we should probably call Barnes fundamentalists, because nothing would please them short of a return to the way things were. But it really ought to please everybody else, because — to cut to the chase — the new Barnes is absolutely wonderful.

 Joel Rose of NPR thinks other than the location there is little else different about the new Barnes:

Barnes Foundation officials promised a Pennsylvania judge they would preserve the dimensions of the original galleries; in return, he gave them permission to move the collection to a new $200 million building in Philadelphia. They also pledged to re-create the idiosyncratic “ensembles” of paintings, furniture and metalwork conceived and arranged by founder Albert Barnes in the first half of the 20th century. Even the burlap color of the walls looks the same. But that didn’t stop the architects from making a few … tweaks.

 Blake Gopnik of The Daily Beast opines:

So the collection fell into the hands of the Philadelphia establishment Barnes hated … and mostly that’s been a good thing. More people can see the art, in better conditions than ever before. Numbers will be limited to avoid overcrowding, but that still leaves one major caveat: although the move from the suburbs has put the collection much nearer to the disempowered masses and minorities that Barnes had cared about, an $18 ticket charge will help keep them away. Some part of the hundreds of millions raised for the move should have been set aside to keep admission free.

 Inga Saffron, the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s architecture critic, thinks the building is great but it’s not an example of exemplary urbanism:

But while there are many moments of breathtaking refinement, and the galleries themselves are a revelation, the result is sadly – no, tragically – a long way from being a successful addition to the city.

 The music critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer also wades into the discussion and thinks the new Barnes Museum removes some of the institution’s quirkiness:

Gone forever, of course, is any claim to authenticity. Whatever the Barnes of 2012 and beyond becomes, visitors will never again have the same fully prescribed experience, the powerful feeling of being led around the museum by the hand of its founder.

 And he goes further to tie these changes to the city’s changing face:

Paradoxically, though, the repackaging of the Barnes may also be seen as the latest in a string of changes to Philadelphia that dilute its special character — advancements that bring Philadelphia into conformity with what visitors from other places may expect, but that also render the city more generic.

 The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that anti-poverty protesters aren’t happy with the city of Philadelphia’s value system, which they say favors tourism over the needs of its citizens:

Inside the Barnes, guests were served lamb chops and smoked salmon cannolis with a lemon aioli sauce along with champagne and red and white wine at the $1,500-a-plate opening-reception dinner.

Outside, at 20th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the menu was drastically different.

A coalition of homeless-advocacy groups and others protesting the Barnes’ move from Merion dined on doughnut holes, salmon dip, bread, apples, bagels, rice, and string beans served on paper plates with plastic utensils.

They said they hoped to send Mayor Nutter a message.

“A city that prioritizes tourism over feeding starving, homeless people is a city without a soul,” said Laura Evangelisto, 31, a member of Food Not Bombs, which organized the protest.

 And for those interested in who was at the opening night gala, there’s this.

 And Forces has compiled a series of video tours of the new museum.

Now in non-Barnes related links:

 Vice Magazine has been taking a look at “the future of nightlife” and this episode focuses on discotecture, particularly the New York clubs of Limelight, Studio 54, Mudd Club, Area and Palladium.

 Speaking of architecture, writing for the New York Times Michael Kimmelman takes a look at the progression architectural vision of Medellin, Columbia, which (some seem to suggest) helped reduce crime:

I arrived in Medellín to see the ambitious and photogenic buildings that have gone up, but also to find what remains undone. The murder rate, while hardly low, is now under 60 per 100,000. Architecture alone obviously doesn’t account for the drop in homicides, but the two aren’t unrelated, either. Around the world, followers of architecture with a capital A have focused so much of their attention on formal experiments, as if aesthetics and social activism, twin Modernist concerns, were mutually exclusive. But Medellín is proof that they’re not, and shouldn’t be. Architecture, here and elsewhere, acts as part of a larger social and economic ecology, or else it elects to be a luxury, meaningless except to itself.

 And the voice of René Magritte, recorded in 1926, discussing “Le surréalisme et les questions” [MP3 link] has been uploaded to UbuWeb.

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning EST, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.

The new DPRK web site features Kim Il Sung, the (late) Eternal President of the Republic and his admirers.

LOS ANGELES — North Korea has a new website. And as far as I can tell, it’s not a parody. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has officially launched their new English-language site, and what a sight it is.

Here’s what Charlie Custer at Tech in Asia had to say:

“It’s not clear where the site was designed, and a WHOIS lookup returns the true owner of the domain has been concealed, though it appears the site is currently hosted in Denmark. Although it is apparently the official English-language website of the North Korean government, it is connected with and seemingly operated by the Korean Friendship Association, a sort of international fan club for North Korea that anyone can join.”

Nothing says North Korean power like a flower show that showcases missiles and handguns in the floral arrangements. (via korea-dpr.com)

The site is a treasure trove of traditional Communist propaganda in the 21st century. Behold the music section, with enough mp3′s to create an iTunes playlist with hits like “I Love My Motherland” and “Raise Your Weapons to Wave the Supreme Commander” (I’m waiting for the remix). The visually inclined will enjoy the architecture and photo galleries, offering a glimpse at the Arch of Triumph and Juche Tower.  Learn more about the national flower, the magnolia (and its offshoot, the Kimjongilia) and order traditional propaganda from the online store. The site is detailed and descriptive, with enough photos, text and music to paint a rosy picture of the infamously secretive nation.

Nothing says grand like sculptures at the Korean People's Study House (via korea-dpr.com)

Convinced you’ve found your next summer break destination? The tourism section offers packaged tours in anticipation of the Arirang mass games. But before you go, just be sure to brush up on an alternative perspective of life inside.

Lolcats stopped by the office today and asked the staff if they could write a review of a show. Wanting to get the non-hypoallergenic felines out of the office, we decided to take the Lolcats to the closest exhibition, seven @ SEVEN at the Boiler.

Here is what they came up with:

René Magritte, "(Shell in the form of an ear)" (1956) (via wahooart.com)

Every Friday, we post things in “Overheard in the Art World.” #OHAW Honestly, art world, don’t take yourself so seriously.

This week, summer officially began for the art world with the opening of Tomas Sarceno’s “Cloud City” on the roof of the Met. And you know what happens when summer begins for the art world? People start talking of weekends in the Hamptons, whats “hot” and “what’s not,” and NO ONE wants to be seen eating a “pig in a blanket.”

“Pigs in a blanket? Really, Performa?”
— overheard at Performa Benefit

“Pigs in a blanket? Really?”
— overheard at Tom Sachs’s Space Programs: Mars opening at Park Avenue Armory

“Uh … [with sigh of city disgust] I can’t wait to get to the Hamptons this weekend.”
— overheard on the sun-filled roof of the Metropolitan Museum during the Tomas Sarceno Cloud City opening

“Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn is bidding on EVERYTHING.”
— overheard at Performa Benefit

“Um, is there a VIP line?”
— overheard at entrance of Storefront’s Secret Sounds of the City party at The McKittrick Hotel

Man: “I need to take some clients to some openings tonight, any suggestions?”
Woman: “Are they hot?”
Man: “If you were in finance you would realize there was no one hot at this bank. One of them is married, fat, has a horrid greased haircut and lives with his ugly wife and four kids in North Carolina, which just voted to ban people like me.”
— overheard in a zingrecsNY newsletter-forwarded email chain sent to #OHAW

Guy #1: “Who is that guy Tom Sachs is talking to?”
Guy #2: “He looks like Kanye West but fatter.”
— overheard at Tom Sachs’s Space Programs: Mars opening at Park Avenue Armory in front of the artist talking to Kanye West

“Hey, people in the back of the room! Are you bidding or just drinking?”
— auctioneer overheard at Performa Benefit

Girl #1: “How’s MoMA boy?”
Girl #2: “He called me the ‘worst person ever’”
Girl #1: “Ha! Dramatic, much?”
Girl #2: “I know! I was like, worse than the father you never met? Worse than the mom who had 8 husbands before you turned 15? Man, I’m sorry!”
— overheard at Anton Kern Gallery Opening

Heard something too? Send your quotes with where you heard it to overheardintheartworld [at] hyperallergic [dot] com

"Ruined Polaroid #45" (all images courtesy William Miller and used with permission)

LOS ANGELES — This past weekend, I stopped by MacArthur Park in Los Angeles and had my portrait taken by one of the famous Polaroid photographers who line the lake. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a proper Polaroid photo taken of me — so much of my experience of photography is now online, experienced primarily through social networks.

Ruined Polaroid #51

Which is why William Miller’s new Polaroid project caught my eye. It happened by accident, as he told me:

I think think that this project was more of a realization than an idea. I bought this old Polaroid SX-70 camera at a yard sale two summers ago. Right away I realized the camera wasn’t functioning properly. It sometimes spilled out 2 pictures at a time and the film would often get stuck in the gears, exposing and mangling it in unpredictable ways.

It turned out the camera just couldn’t produce good photos, but that’s when Miller had an idea to work with that. “Before long I was participating in its process, collaborating with it,” he says.

Ruined Polaroids is the series that emerges, a series of, well, ruined Polaroids that have lovely abstract colors and textures that paint a subtle aesthetic. The results are unpredictable, but Miller harnesses that into foreign landscapes and abstractions. It’s a great way to remix an a nonfunctioning analogue tool and to find a new function: art.

“What I find most appealing with the Ruined Polaroids project,” he said, “is that in this age of digital photography I’m taking this technology from the 70s and through a process making it look like paintings from the 40s.”

"Ruined Polaroid #40"

For more images by William Miller, visit williammillerphoto.com.

Image via tokyo-hotaru.com

LOS ANGELES — Paris earned the moniker of “City of Light,” but many other cities are worthy of the title these days. From Hong Kong to Manhattan, most cities glow and sparkle at night; places like Los Angeles and Beijing, with their long, winding highways, glow white and red in the evening as traffic piles up like a river of lights.

Photo via flickr.com/eviljeremy

Actual rivers, by contrast, are usually dark spots at night, recognizable only as absences between well-lit buildings and highways. That’s what makes the image of 100,000 LED lights floating on Tokyo’s Sumida River so evocative. Installed during the Tokyo Hotaru festival, these “prayer stars” are powered by solar energy and light up when touching water.

I wish I could have seen the installation in person.  What’s even more poginant about this installation is that it references the original fireflies that once populated the Sumida River. According to Spoon & Tamago, it’s no longer possible to see fireflies there, so all we have left are these glowing balls, a reminder of what once was.