It’s no secret New York City is noisy, from subway platforms where readings have been recorded over 100 decibels to the construction zones constantly tearing down and redeveloping all over the five boroughs. Yet when I was walking around and experimenting with artist Dylan Römer’s new iOS app Sonograph, the abundance of noise became even more apparent. The app uses the iPhone or iPad to record video, or just a photograph, that is then distorted based on the sound coming into the microphone, letting you “paint light with noise.”
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LOS ANGELES — Circles are endemic to the art world. Who you place in your circle — and who places you in theirs — is an act of social currency, particularly important in a world often run by social relations. But circles are also beautiful, forming iconic architecture like the Guggenheim in New York, religious imagery like Tibetan mandalas, and, of course, Kandinsky’s famous circles.
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MoMA’s new Art Lab iPad app helps you look beyond simply looking at work, you can learn about it by engaging in creation.
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LOS ANGELES — The iPad catalogue trend continues, this time with a gorgeous new digital catalogue released by the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Celebrating their Paintings of the Americas collection, the catalogue offers a timeline of American history through painting, with chapters like “The Colonies Go for Baroque” and a section on 19th C. painter John Singer Sargent.
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LOS ANGELES — New in the Apple Store this month is the Smithsonian Channel’s iPad app, which lets you play videos from the Channel’s extensive programming. It includes short clips for a quick burst of knowledge during the day, as well as longer documentaries for an extended viewing.
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LOS ANGELES — It comes up in every conversation I have with art-and-technology types. “I have an app idea,” a friend will say. But then comes the inevitable question: “Do you know any developers?”
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LOS ANGELES — Just a day after I reviewed LACMA’s In Wonderland exhibition of surrealist female artists, I came across their new app. Designed by media artist Jody Zellen, Art Swipe starts you off with 16 images from the show. The images are cut in three and arranged with others on the screen, allowing you simply to slide the images until you find a mash-up you like.
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How do you make your iPhone act more like your SLR? Well, Chicago-based Ben Syverson has an app for that.
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This week, the anti-slavery origins of the Christmas tree in the US, iPad art apps, Ai Weiwei documentary, Georgian architecture, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, danger in Pompeii, the state of the New Orleans art scene and Stocking.
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MANILA, Philippines — For years now, artists and designers have had blogs and social media to give the general public access to their studios and lives. But what if you could peek into artists’ very thought processes? What if you could see their sketches evolve day by day, before they’re actualized into stunning installations?
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