You may have seen it on your friend’s Facebook pages or the screen of a mobile phone, on a Twitter image service or a Tumblr blog. An aesthetic rash has been plaguing popular photography as of late, but it’s not a new one. A slew of iPhone ‘Polaroid’ applications are turning people’s visual diaries into retro, oversaturated documents of social lives, friends and lovers. But what makes these applications so popular
Posted inNews
Marina Abramović’s Chair Now Tweets
This is a great day for the Internet: twitter.com/marinaschair
Posted inArt
Evolving Rules: When Bloggers Battle (Paddy Johnson vs. Marc Schiller)
At times, the blogosphere can feel like a miniaturized version of academia. With so many voices competing over authority and pulling readers this way and that, fights are bound to break out. Just like any serious punditry, bloggers have healthy disagreements over what they cover as well as how they cover it — the etiquette of the developing world of online media. The recent spat between online art world figures Marc Schiller and Paddy Johnson is a perfect case study.
Posted inNews
“All Your Tweet Are Belong to Us” — @librarycongress
First MoMA acquires “@” and now the Library of Congress (aka @librarycongress) is acquiring every tweet since March 2006. It’s always great to see institutions look past the monetary value of things and elevate the bonds we all share. So, next time someone luddite asks you “Who do you think is interested in what you had for breakfast?” You can confidently respond, “The Library of Congress, asshole!”
Posted inOpinion
Footnotes on Ai Weiwei & China’s Great Firewall
Chances are if you’ve been following art news in the past few weeks, you’ve seen the name Ai Weiwei. Ai’s been all over the place lately, having a public conversation with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, getting interviewed on CNN about the role of social media in Chinese politics, and documenting recent artist protests in Beijing. The artist was even announced as the eleventh commission for the London Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall installation series, a run of exhibitions featuring such luminaries as Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread and Olafur Eliasson.
Posted inArt
#BestNonBuy: When Shopping, Not Buying, Becomes Art
Performance artist Man Bartlett is tired, has blood shot eyes and he’s doing something very American, shopping. His mission is to spend 24 hours in Union Square’s Best Buy megastore without buying anything. His biggest obstacles are sleep, security and the urge to buy shit. Will he make it?