Font Based on Sigmund Freud’s Handwriting Coming Courtesy of Successful Kickstarter Campaign

in Art, Life, Psychology | March 25th, 2013

Doc­tor, what does it mean if you dream of cre­at­ing a font of Freud’s hand­writ­ing?

This is exact­ly what Ger­man typog­ra­ph­er Har­ald Geisler has in mind, and, in the spir­it of self-actu­al­iza­tion, he’s fund­ing the project on Kick­starter. His charis­ma is such that he’s already raised over eight times the orig­i­nal $1500 goal that will allow him to trav­el to Vien­na, where he will cre­ate the type­face in a bor­rowed apart­ment with­in walk­ing dis­tance from Freud’s for­mer home at Berggasse 19. That address is now home to the Sig­mund Freud Muse­um, where the roman­ti­cal­ly-mind­ed Geisler plans to vis­it the hard copies of the eight let­ters from which his alpha­bet will be assem­bled.

Don’t let the pro­jec­t’s ful­ly-in-the-black sta­tus keep you from vis­it­ing its fundrais­ing page. In addi­tion to being an inad­ver­tent tuto­r­i­al on the ele­ments of a top-notch Kick­starter cam­paign, it also pro­vides some inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion with regard to pen­man­ship, font cre­ation, and the dif­fer­ence between Kur­rent, the Ger­man-style script Freud learned as a school­boy, and the Latin-style cur­sive that was stan­dard among his North Amer­i­can patients.

Geisler says it cracks him up to imag­ine some­one jot­ting a note to his or her shrink in Freud’s hand­writ­ing. Per­haps those of us not cur­rent­ly under the care of a psy­chi­a­try pro­fes­sion­al could use it to write our moth­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938

Jean-Paul Sartre Writes a Script for John Huston’s Film on Freud (1958)

Sig­mund Freud’s Home Movies: A Rare Glimpse of His Pri­vate Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has nev­er regret­ted her child­ish deci­sion to ape her moth­er’s high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic hand.

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100 Metropolitan Museum Curators Talk About 100 Works of Art That Changed How They See the World

in Art, History, Museums, Video - Arts & Culture | March 22nd, 2013

Which best describes your muse­um-going expe­ri­ence? Inspi­ra­tion and spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment? Or a soul crush­ing attempt to fight your way past the hoards there for the lat­est block­buster exhib­it, with a too-heavy bag and a whin­ing, foot sore com­pan­ion in tow?

Would­n’t it be won­der­ful to lose your­self in con­tem­pla­tion of a sin­gle work? What about that giant one at the top of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Grand Stair­case? For every vis­i­tor who paus­es to take it in, anoth­er thou­sand stream by with hard­ly a glance.

The above com­men­tary by cura­tor of Ital­ian paint­ings, Xavier Salomon, may well turn Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Tiepolo’s The Tri­umph of Mar­ius into one of the Met’s hottest attrac­tions. It’s often dif­fi­cult for the aver­age muse­um-goer to under­stand what the deal is in one of these dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, 19th cen­tu­ry oils. Salomon sup­plies the need­ed his­tor­i­cal context—general Gaius Mar­ius parad­ing cap­tive Numid­i­an king Jugurtha through the streets upon his tri­umphal return to Rome.

Things get even more inter­est­ing when he trans­lates the Latin inscrip­tion at the top of the can­vas: “The Roman peo­ple behold Jugurtha laden with chains.” In oth­er words, you can for­go the hero wor­ship of the title and con­cen­trate on the bad guy. This, Salomon spec­u­lates, is what the artist had in mind when swathing Jugurtha in that eye-catch­ing red cape. Jugurtha may be the los­er, but his refusal to be hum­bled before the crowd is win­some.

As is 82nd and 5th, an online series that aims to cel­e­brate 100 trans­for­ma­tive works of art from the muse­um’s col­lec­tion before year’s end. In addi­tion to Salomon’s com­pelling thoughts on The Tri­umph of Mar­ius, some plea­sures thus far include Melanie Hol­comb, Asso­ciate Cura­tor of Medieval Art and The Clois­ters, geek­ing out over illus­trat­ed man­u­script pages and fash­ion and cos­tume cura­tor Andrew Bolton recall­ing his first encounter with one of design­er Alexan­der McQueen’s most extreme gar­ments. Each video is sup­ple­ment­ed with a tab for fur­ther explo­ration. You can also find the talks col­lect­ed on YouTube.

Bril­liant­ly con­ceived and exe­cut­ed, these com­men­taries pro­vide vir­tu­al muse­um-goers with a high­ly per­son­al tour, and can only but enrich the expe­ri­ence of any­one lucky enough to vis­it in the flesh.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

 

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day  has her fin­gers crossed for some com­men­tary on the Met’s hunky Stand­ing Hanu­man.

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LA County Museum (LACMA) Makes 20,000 Artistic Images Available for Free Download

in Art, Museums, Web/Tech | March 19th, 2013

Lincoln Cathedral

The Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art hous­es the largest Amer­i­can col­lec­tion of art west of Chica­go. Devel­oped as an “ency­clo­pe­dic” museum—its col­lec­tions rep­re­sent near­ly every human civ­i­liza­tion since record­ed time—LACMA’s eclec­tic hold­ings span from art of the ancient world to video instal­la­tions. Like all great pub­lic col­lec­tions, LACMA sees its mis­sion as pro­vid­ing the great­est pos­si­ble access to the widest range of art.

Two years ago LACMA made a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of its image hold­ings avail­able for free down­load in an online library. From that begin­ning of 2,000 images, the muse­um recent­ly expand­ed its down­load­able col­lec­tion by ten-fold, mak­ing 20,000 images of art­work avail­able for free.

This rep­re­sents about a quar­ter of all the art rep­re­sent­ed on LACMA’s site. They’ve cho­sen images of art­works the muse­um believes to be in the pub­lic domain and devel­oped a robust dig­i­tal archive with a rich­er search func­tion than most muse­ums.

LACMA’s online col­lec­tion (80,000 images alto­geth­er, includ­ing restrict­ed use and unre­strict­ed) is sort­ed by the usu­al cura­to­r­i­al terms (“Amer­i­can Art,” “Art of the Pacif­ic” and so on) but that’s just one of many fil­ter­ing options.

A search for works relat­ed to the word “ros­es” can be done as a gen­er­al search of all objects, turn­ing up, among 268 oth­er items, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Mlle Mar­celle Lender. This item hap­pens to be avail­able for free down­load. (Note the bloom in the Madamoiselle’s cleav­age to see why the image turned up in this search.)

But the col­lec­tion can be searched more nar­row­ly by object type and cura­to­r­i­al area. There’s also a cool option to search by what’s on view now right now. This choice allows users to zero in on a spe­cif­ic build­ing or floor of the museum’s eight build­ings. The col­lec­tion can also be entered accord­ing to chrono­log­i­cal era, from 10,000 BCE to the present day.

america

This is impor­tant for the pub­lic, but even more so for stu­dents and edu­ca­tors. Nine years ago East­man Kodak stopped pro­duc­ing slide pro­jec­tors. Since then the task of assem­bling qual­i­ty images for the study of art his­to­ry has become hope­less­ly daunt­ing, with teach­ers and stu­dents search­ing a myr­i­ad web­sites to cre­ate dig­i­tal “carousels” for class or study.

For what­ev­er rea­son, in an age over-abun­dant with high res­o­lu­tion images of near­ly every­thing, pic­tures of art itself are scat­tered and expen­sive.

Insti­tu­tions like Google Art Projects, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and LACMA are among a few that offer exten­sive, free art images online.

Of course there are still copy­right issues that all insti­tu­tions must con­tend with. But it is to LACMA’s cred­it that they take their mis­sion of pub­lic access seri­ous­ly and put resources into mak­ing their won­der­ful col­lec­tion avail­able to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site, , to see more work.

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Watch Brian Eno’s “Video Paintings,” Where 1980s TV Technology Meets Visual Art

in Art, Music | March 19th, 2013

Bri­an Eno, the well-known music pro­duc­er, res­i­dent intel­lec­tu­al of rock, “non-musi­cian” musi­cian, “drift­ing clar­i­fi­er,” and pop­u­lar­iz­er of ambi­ent records, went to art school. (The Colch­ester Insti­tute in Essex, specif­i­cal­ly.) Any­one famil­iar with Eno’s career knows that Eng­lish art school of the six­ties must have per­fect­ly suit­ed his inter­ests and incli­na­tions. But read up on his gen­er­a­tion of U.K. pop­u­lar musi­cians, and you’ll find art school not a whol­ly unusu­al rite of pas­sage. That back­ground unit­ed sev­er­al of the mem­bers of Roxy Music, the band in which Eno would hone his son­ic craft (and build his noto­ri­ety) in the ear­ly sev­en­ties. Though music would offer him his high­est peaks of fame and for­tune, Eno nev­er quite for­got that he’d orig­i­nal­ly entered art school with the inten­tion of paint­ing. Attend­ing an exhi­bi­tion of his 77 Mil­lion Paint­ings a few years back, I delight­ed in see­ing his inter­est in tech­nol­o­gy and com­po­si­tion inter­sect with his pen­chant for the visu­al arts.

Rewind, now, to the eight­ies, where we find anoth­er, equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of Eno con­tin­u­ing to “paint,” but in a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rethought man­ner. You can now watch his “video paint­ings” of that era on Youtube. Here you can see Thurs­day After­noon, his series on the female form (some of which, despite approach­ing abstrac­tion, could poten­tial­ly be con­sid­ered NSFW, though any main­stream gallery today would show them open­ly). Just above, you’ll find an excerpt from his series Mis­tak­en Mem­o­ries of Medieval Man­hat­tan. It may not look like much, and indeed, Eno’s ini­tial process involved lit­tle more than acci­den­tal­ly leav­ing his cam­corder record­ing on the win­dowsill. But bear in mind that the actu­al instal­la­tion involved screen­ing the piece right-side-up on a tele­vi­sion itself turned on its side — a sim­ple recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, but as those who saw the orig­i­nal have assured me, a strik­ing one. Rainy-day project: try repli­cat­ing that set­up at home. I think Eno would approve.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Day of Light: A Crowd­sourced Film by Mul­ti­me­dia Genius Bri­an Eno

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Rise of Webcomics: PBS’ Off Book Series Explores the Emergence of New Popular Art Form

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | March 18th, 2013

I’m a paper loy­al­ist by age and incli­na­tion. I don’t begrudge those who do the bulk of their read­ing dig­i­tal­ly, I just pre­fer the famil­iar­i­ty and object-ness of the print­ed page. As a lover of comics and graph­ic nov­els, my brick and mor­tar needs are more than met by the com­par­a­tive wealth of indie shops and fes­ti­vals here in New York City, as well as its belea­guered pub­lic library sys­tem.

I could­n’t help notic­ing, though, that many of the new­er titles I favor got their start online. The pro­po­nents of the form who dis­cuss the Rise of Web­comics for PBS’ Off Book series make a com­pelling case for explor­ing that realm a bit more ful­some­ly.

Many artists who put their stuff up on the web ben­e­fit from the imme­di­a­cy of the act and the—theoretically—larger audi­ence. But pub­lish­ing in this for­mat also opens it up for Sam Brown and Andrew Hussie to cre­ate a large body of work based on read­er sug­ges­tions. Hussie takes full advan­tage of the mul­ti plat­form pos­si­bil­i­ties. Lucy Knis­ley, no stranger to edi­to­r­i­al refine­ment in a more tra­di­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion mod­el, gives her mon­sters of the id free rein online. And Nick Gure­witch’s Per­ry Bible Fel­low­ship (though he yanked a cou­ple of them offline to “make the book more spe­cial”) is the ves­sel into which his tor­rent of hilar­i­ous, dis­so­cia­tive ideas flows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Gold­en Age Comics

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

The Art of Illus­tra­tion: Four Illus­tra­tors Intro­duce You to the Awe-Inspir­ing State of Their Art

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s favorite web­com­ic (until now the only one she read) remains Hyper­bole and a Half.

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Artist Robbie Cooper’s Video Project Immersion Stares Back at Gamers and YouTubers

in Art, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | March 8th, 2013

What if that screen you’re peer­ing at was some­thing akin to a one-way mir­ror? There’s a def­i­nite aspect of dress­ing room hor­ror, view­ing artist Rob­bie Coop­er’s Immer­sion project, a video col­lec­tion of the alter­nate­ly grotesque and dull expres­sions appear­ing on peo­ple’s faces as they play video games and watch YouTube. (The view­er is nev­er privy to what’s show­ing on the sub­jects’ screens, but one sus­pects it’s like­ly less rar­i­fied than a short ani­ma­tion inspired by physi­cist Richard Feyn­man’s remarks on a flower or film­mak­er Miran­da July’s lyri­cal advice to the pro­cras­ti­na­tion-prone). But before we denounce the most­ly under­aged par­tic­i­pants’ dead eyes and slack jaws—an effect made more dis­turb­ing by the sound­track­’s high inci­dence of gunfire—perhaps we should turn the web cam on our­selves.

That’s exact­ly what Coop­er is hop­ing will hap­pen, as he pre­pares to expand the pro­jec­t’s scope to include peo­ple of all ages and nation­al­i­ties. “Babies being born right now arrive in a land­scape where com­put­ers, smart­phones, the inter­net, and social media already exist,” he explains, “While the old­est gen­er­a­tion alive today can remem­ber a time before TV was a fix­ture of our liv­ing room.”

To widen the net, Coop­er is turn­ing to crowd sourc­ing. Whether some­one who know­ing­ly trains the cam­era on him or her­self can achieve the pre­vi­ous par­tic­i­pants zoo-like lack of inhi­bi­tion remains to be seen, but the Kick­starter cam­paign to fund this next phase lays things out on a grand scale. The plan is for the pub­lic to con­tribute via uploads and a social media aggre­ga­tor. More excit­ing­ly, they’re encour­aged to seize the reins by cre­at­ing a series of instruc­tions and prompts for those com­ing lat­er to fol­low.

Let us hope this will lead to a more heart­en­ing vari­ety of expres­sions, as well as the book, doc­u­men­tary, and  inter­ac­tive exhibits Coop­er envi­sions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is Your Kid on Tele­vi­sion

Art in the Era of the Inter­net (and Why Open Edu­ca­tion Mat­ters)

The Cre­ators Project Presents the Future of Art and Design, Brought to You by Intel and Vice Mag­a­zine

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s lap­top is direct­ly respon­si­ble for two ver­ti­cal creas­es between her brows.

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“The Bay Lights,” The World’s Largest LED Light Sculpture, Debuts in San Francisco

in Art, Technology | March 7th, 2013

On Tues­day night, the San Fran­cis­co-Oak­land Bay Bridge out­shined The Gold­en Gate Bridge for the first time in 75 years. That hap­pened when artist Leo Vil­lare­al flipped a switch and illu­mi­nat­ed 25,000 lights, turn­ing the 1.8‑mile expanse into the world’s largest L.E.D. light sculp­ture. Accord­ing to The New York Times, the pri­vate­ly-fund­ed project, esti­mat­ed to cost $8 mil­lion, “has become a dar­ling of mon­eyed Sil­i­con Val­ley types.” And, it’s not hard to see why. As Vil­lare­al explains in the video above, “The Bay Lights” instal­la­tion runs on cus­tom-designed soft­ware (writ­ten in C) that cap­tures the kinet­ic activ­i­ty around the bridge and then uses the data to sequence the lights, cre­at­ing pat­terns that nev­er occur twice. You can vis­it the instal­la­tion through 2015. Learn more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pi in the Sky: The World’s Largest Ephemer­al Art Instal­la­tion over Beau­ti­ful San Fran­cis­co

Cap­ti­vat­ing Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Artist Hubert Duprat Uses Insects to Cre­ate Gold­en Sculp­tures

MIT LED Heli­copters: The Ear­ly Smart Pix­els

Build­ing the Gold­en Gate Bridge: A Retro Film Fea­tur­ing Orig­i­nal Archival Footage

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Google Launches a New “Art Talks” Series: Tune in Tonight

in Art, Education, Google | March 6th, 2013

google art project

Today at 8 p.m. EST Google Art Project will launch a new series, Art Talks. Like Google’s oth­er Hang­outs on Air, Art Talks will con­vene some of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple of our time.

Each month Art Talks will fea­ture a con­ver­sa­tion with cura­tors, muse­um direc­tors, his­to­ri­ans, or edu­ca­tors from world-renowned cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, who “will reveal the hid­den sto­ries behind par­tic­u­lar works, exam­ine the cura­tion process and pro­vide insights into par­tic­u­lar mas­ter­pieces or artists.”

For today’s talk Deb­o­rah Howes, direc­tor of dig­i­tal learn­ing at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, will mod­er­ate a pan­el of artists and stu­dents for a dis­cus­sion about how to teach art online. To post a ques­tion for the group, vis­it the Google event page.

The talk will be broad­cast live at 8 p.m. EST. After­wards it’ll be avail­able on Google Art Project’s YouTube chan­nel.

Lat­er this month Car­o­line Camp­bell and Arni­ka Schmidt from the Nation­al Gallery will dis­cuss depic­tions of the female nude. In April, a pan­el will exam­ine the gigapex­il project based on Bruegel’s “Tow­er of Babel.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Vis­it the Pra­do Art Col­lec­tion with Google Earth

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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