Artist Ken Butler Turns One Man’s Trash Into Another Man’s Quirky Stringed Instrument

in Art, Music | December 3rd, 2012

Hey, hoard­ers, think you’re the only ones who see poten­tial in a sin­gle crutch, an emp­ty Scotch bot­tle, the jagged remains of a skate­board?  Not so. Musi­cian, artist, and all-around vision­ary Ken But­ler has been turn­ing such trash into trea­sure since 1978, when he fit­ted an ax with a tail piece, fin­ger­board and con­tact mic and snug­gled it inside a 3/4 size vio­lin case. Chop a cher­ry tree with it, or play it just like Bud­dy Guy plays his ax. Like most of the hybrids But­ler cre­ates in his Brook­lyn stu­dio, it’s a func­tion­ing musi­cal instru­ment, though he’s quick to point out that for him, the sound is imma­te­r­i­al. What real­ly counts is the poet­ic cou­pling of unlike­ly mate­ri­als.

Things real­ly get cookin’ at the 4:20 mark, when But­ler plays a few licks on a three-stringed shov­el before mov­ing on to a bow­able, elec­tri­fied ten­nis rack­et. The results are far love­li­er than the mas­ter would lead you to believe.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day can stum­ble her way through the Enter­tain­er if there’s a piano handy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing a Fla­men­co Gui­tar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Expe­ri­enced in 3 Min­utes

Mak­ing Fend­er Gui­tars, Then (1959) and Now (2012)

The Joy of Mak­ing Artis­tic Home­made Gui­tars

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Ira Glass Makes Balloon Animals and Gives NSFW Advice to Teens — At the Same Time!!

in Art, Life | November 30th, 2012

Pri­or to pub­lic radio super­star­dom, Ira Glass enjoyed mod­est suc­cess as an ama­teur teenage magi­cian with a side in bal­loon ani­mals. At the behest of Rook­ie, an online mag­a­zine by and for teen girls, Glass shared some trade secrets gleaned from the 1974 pam­phlet, Roger’s Rub­ber Ark, Vol­ume II. Ignore the dia­bol­i­cal squeak­ing, and you’ll come out of this video know­ing every step that goes into a seat­ed Snoopy and a sur­pris­ing­ly ele­gant French poo­dle.

Even bet­ter than the bal­loon how-tos are Glass’ straight­for­ward respons­es to Rook­ie read­ers’ ques­tions, a chal­lenge pre­vi­ous­ly faced by Jon Hamm and Paul Rudd.

He applauds the courage of “Anony­mous,” who revealed her true feel­ings to a crush via text mes­sage. But, when pre­sent­ed with the facts, Glass con­cludes unequiv­o­cal­ly that her sen­ti­ment is not shared. (It’s not.)

The entire­ty of wom­ankind will embrace him for what he has to say to nerdy girls and those with short hair­dos.

And when the top­ic turns to con­dom eti­quette and fel­la­tio, well, let’s just say that the teenagers of the world could use more sex edu­ca­tors like Ira Glass.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

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Watch as Alberto Giacometti Paints and Pursues the Elusive “Apparition” (1965)

in Art | November 29th, 2012

The Swiss artist Alber­to Gia­comet­ti is most often remem­bered for his famous­ly thin, elon­gat­ed sculp­tures of the human form. But Gia­comet­ti was a sim­i­lar­ly bril­liant and orig­i­nal draughts­man who main­tained that draw­ing was the cen­tral skill of an artist. “One must stick exclu­sive­ly to draw­ing,” he once said. “If one dom­i­nates draw­ing even a lit­tle bit then every­thing else becomes pos­si­ble.”

Gia­comet­ti the draughts­man had a dis­tinc­tive way of rework­ing a line, of going over it again and again as if he were sculpt­ing in plas­ter. “When I make my draw­ings,” Gia­comet­ti said, “the path traced by my pen­cil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, anal­o­gous to the ges­ture of a man grop­ing his way in the dark­ness.” The result­ing tan­gle of lines give his draw­ings a spe­cial vibran­cy, a sense of motion and depth on the two-dimen­sion­al plane.

In this excerpt from the 1966 film Alber­to Gia­comet­ti by the Swiss pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ernst Schei­deg­ger, we watch as Gia­comet­ti paints the foun­da­tion­al lines of a por­trait at his stu­dio in Mont­par­nasse. The footage was prob­a­bly shot in 1965, the last year of Gia­comet­ti’s life. The artist report­ed­ly saw the film not long before his death on Jan­u­ary 11, 1966. Watch­ing the film, we get a sense of Gia­comet­ti’s care for geom­e­try as he draws orga­ni­za­tion­al lines to work out the pro­por­tions. Gia­comet­ti would often leave these inter­sect­ing ver­ti­cal, hor­i­zon­tal and diag­o­nal lines–which would emerge organ­i­cal­ly as he went along–in his fin­ished works.

In the Ger­man nar­ra­tion, the speak­er describes Gia­comet­ti’s almost mys­ti­cal sense of the process: A face appears on the can­vas which is his own face but also that of anoth­er, dis­tant per­son who will appear out of the depth if only you reach out for him. But as you do reach out the per­son recedes, remain­ing just beyond your grasp. “The appari­tion,” Gia­comet­ti once said: “Some­times I think I can trap it, but then I lose it again and must begin once more.”

Spe­cial thanks to Matthias Rasch­er for his lin­guis­tic help.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

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Existential Moments with Theo Jansen and His Amazing Kinetic Sculptures, the Strandbeests

in Art, Life | November 26th, 2012

One gets the impres­sion that Theo Jansen sub­scribes to Dan­ish Philoso­pher Soren Kierkegaard’s max­im : Once you label me, you negate me.

(Aw hell, just acci­den­tal­ly negat­ed Kierkegaard again…)

In any event, no sin­gle label can suf­fice where Jansen is con­cerned. A mak­er of kinet­ic sculp­tures who resists defin­ing him­self as an artist. A trained physi­cist who cel­e­brates evo­lu­tion as a ‘mir­a­cle.’ An ear­ly morn­ing opti­mist. An evening depres­sive. An engi­neer of life, pre­oc­cu­pied by death.

All this is to say, Theo Jansen is an orig­i­nal, as com­pelling as the awe­some, lum­ber­ing crea­tures he con­jures from plas­tic tub­ing and wind. Hear him speak for him­self, above. Watch his Strand­beests in action below. And don’t feel bad if the labels you’ve spent a life­time amass­ing begin to feel a bit nar­row com­pared.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day built a Rube Gold­berg Device under duress.

 

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Salvador Dalí Reveals the Secrets of His Trademark Moustache (1954)

in Art, Random | November 19th, 2012

In a 2010 poll, Sal­vador Dalí’s facial hair was vot­ed the most famous mous­tache of all time. The flam­boy­ant mous­tache was part of his schtick, there’s no deny­ing that. But some have assigned a deep­er mean­ing to it. The Wike­pe­dia entry for Dalí attrib­uted the facial hair to 17th-cen­tu­ry Span­ish mas­ter painter Diego Velázquez (see image). And yet per­haps the influ­ence was more lit­er­ary than painter­ly. Appear­ing on the game show The Name’s the Same in Jan­u­ary, 1954, Dalí was asked (at the 4:00 mark) whether the stache was a joke. To which the Span­ish painter respond­ed, “It’s the most seri­ous part of my per­son­al­i­ty. It’s a very sim­ple Hun­gar­i­an mous­tache. Mr. Mar­cel Proust used the same kind of pomade for this mous­tache.” And there you have it, the artis­tic influ­ence of the world’s most famous facial hair.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

Sal­vador Dali Gets Sur­re­al with Mike Wal­lace (1958)

Q: Sal­vador Dalí, Are You a Crack­pot? A: No, I’m Just Almost Crazy (1969)

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

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Harry Taylor Brings 150-Year-Old Craft of Tintype Photography into the Modern Day

in Art, Photography | November 14th, 2012

Award-win­ning film­mak­er Matt Mor­ris appre­ci­ates craft, hard work and peo­ple who just show up for each oth­er.

His Emmy-nom­i­nat­ed film Pickin’ and Trim­min’ fol­lows the men who cut hair and play blue­grass music togeth­er at Drexel’s bar­ber­shop in North Car­oli­na. In Mr. Hap­py Man, an 88-year-old man talks about the hours he spends every morn­ing greet­ing Bermuda’s com­muters as they endure traf­fic.

The sub­ject of his most recent work came to him in a round-about way, but fea­tures the same care­ful, affec­tion­ate film­mak­ing of his oth­er films. Amer­i­can Tin­type chron­i­cles the process of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Har­ry Tay­lor, who dis­cov­ered a pas­sion for the Civ­il War-era “wet plate” pho­tog­ra­phy.

Tay­lor, based in Wilm­ing­ton, North Car­oli­na, spe­cial­izes in tin­types and ambrotypes. He makes them with the same big cam­eras and messy chem­i­cals used dur­ing the late 1800s. At that time, the process pro­duced a whole new lay­er of detail than ear­li­er tech­niques had done, and allowed for an infi­nite num­ber of prints to be made.

Time con­sum­ing, labo­ri­ous and unpre­dictable, the process requires the pho­tog­ra­ph­er to use a portable dark room when shoot­ing out­side of the stu­dio. Tin pho­to­graph­ic plates are coat­ed with col­lo­di­on emul­sion. (The tech­nique is also called col­lo­di­on process. There’s a nice tuto­r­i­al here.) The plate must be coat­ed, exposed and devel­oped with­in fif­teen min­utes, before the col­lo­di­on los­es its sen­si­tiv­i­ty. It’s an incon­ve­nient sys­tem, espe­cial­ly by today’s stan­dards, but it pleas­es Tay­lor immense­ly as it forces both him and his sub­jects to slow down. You can view some of Tay­lor’s images here.

Mor­ris allows Tay­lor to speak for him­self in the four-minute doc­u­men­tary, let­ting the cam­era linger on Taylor’s wood and met­al equip­ment, the dreami­ness of his images and on Taylor’s own obser­va­tions about how long-expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy reveals more of the subject’s thoughts. Even the flaws are inter­est­ing.

Make a point to notice the music. Mor­ris approached com­pos­er Hanan Town­shend, known for the scores he com­posed for direc­tor Ter­rence Mal­ick. Mor­ris blogs about the process of record­ing Amer­i­can Tin­type’s sound­track at Marin County’s Sky­walk­er Sound—a fun lit­tle peek behind the scenes.

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

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

in Art, Design | November 13th, 2012

The Cre­ators Project, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Intel and Vice Mag­a­zine, pro­duces behind-the-scenes short films with con­tem­po­rary artists, musi­cians, and film­mak­ers. Call­ing itself “a glob­al cel­e­bra­tion of art and tech­nol­o­gy,” the three-year-old project offers per­haps the best way to keep up with incred­i­ble advances in visu­al and audio tech­nol­o­gy in the arts. The project also spon­sors new work (from, for exam­ple, visu­al artists Mick Rock and Bar­ney Clay and musi­cians J. Space­man and Karen O) and hosts glob­al events and meet-ups.

I per­son­al­ly check in with the project’s YouTube chan­nel on a semi-dai­ly basis, and I nev­er fail to find some­thing cap­ti­vat­ing, whether an intro­duc­tion to a new artist or new work from an old favorite (if you pre­fer Vimeo, they’ve got you cov­ered there too). Most recent­ly I’ve dis­cov­ered the aston­ish­ing work of a per­for­mance artist/photographer from Bei­jing, Li Wei, whose work involves Buster Keaton-style stunts—or, more pre­cise­ly, Kung Fu-film high-wire action—captured on cam­era in ver­ti­go-induc­ing images of impos­si­bil­i­ty. In the short film above, Li Wei walks us through his process and his phi­los­o­phy, which begins with the unset­tling notion, “We are all con­trolled by some­one else. Our thoughts and actions are con­trolled by unseen forces.” His work is a high-tech attempt to out­wit one of those forces for brief moments, ren­dered time­less by pho­tog­ra­phy and the mag­ic of Pho­to­shop.

In the video below, a for­mer aero­space engi­neer for NASA, James Pow­der­ly, now occu­pies strange ter­ri­to­ry between design and engi­neer­ing. Inspired by anoth­er cor­po­rate engi­neer­ing dropout, Pow­der­ley left aero­space engi­neer­ing for a res­i­den­cy at New York art and tech­nol­o­gy cen­ter Eye­beam to refine his visu­al aes­thet­ic, which he’s tak­en all over the world.

Final­ly, in the short video below, The Cre­ators Project vis­it­ed Min­Suk Cho, founder of futur­is­tic Seoul archi­tec­ture firm Mass Stud­ies. Cho describes the vision and pur­pose of Mass Stud­ies over a mind-blow­ing series of images of archi­tec­tur­al designs from worlds you’ve nev­er seen before but (if you’re like me) always hoped exist­ed some­where.

http://vimeo.com/44749711

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Rijksmuseum Puts 125,000 Dutch Masterpieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

in Art, Design, Museums, Technology | November 2nd, 2012

The Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam is one of the grand Euro­pean muse­ums. Home to many of the Dutch mas­ters (Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which seems to glow from its cen­ter, and Vermeer’s Milk­maid, to name just a few), the muse­um is locat­ed on the city’s Muse­umplein, sur­round­ed by the small­er Vin­cent Van Gogh muse­um and mod­ern Stedelijk.

All those mas­ter­pieces are now avail­able for close-up view online at the Rijksmu­se­um’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tion. Users can explore the entire col­lec­tion, which is hand­i­ly sort­ed by artist, sub­ject, style and even by events in Dutch his­to­ry. The new dig­i­tal archive has all the same great learn­ing poten­tial as any oth­er online col­lec­tion. It’s search­able, as is the muse­um’s library.

But the Dutch are a whim­si­cal peo­ple, so it seems right that, in dig­i­tiz­ing its col­lec­tion, the muse­um went a step fur­ther than fur­ther. Not only can users cre­ate their own online gal­leries from select­ed works in the museum’s col­lec­tion, they can down­load Rijksmu­se­um art­work for free to dec­o­rate new prod­ucts. (Note: users will need to cre­ate a free account to get start­ed.)

By vis­it­ing the muse­um’s Rijksstu­dio, art lovers can cre­ate their own “sets” of Rijksmu­se­um works. Sets can include images of just flow­ers (think of the lus­cious ros­es and tulips in Dutch still life paint­ings of the 1600s), faces appear­ing in por­traits, or paint­ings of Ams­ter­dam itself through the ages. Just select a work of art and drop it into your own image col­lec­tion. Then use these select­ed images to cre­ate your own per­son­al­ized prod­ucts. From tat­toos to wall­pa­per to scoot­ers (yes, scoot­ers) to smart phone skins. Unusu­al yet every­day items of all shapes and sizes can now bear the image of gor­geous art. The art is free and the object could be as sim­ple as a T‑shirt.

All of this can be done with the bless­ings and sup­port of the muse­um, which pro­vides links to sites that offer var­i­ous forms of print­ing on demand.

What bet­ter way to make the col­lec­tion acces­si­ble to the pub­lic? Some might say it is sac­ri­lege to put Rembrandt’s face on the side of a van; the Rijksmu­se­um encour­ages it. None of the artists are alive any­way to claim copy­right infringe­ment, now are they?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

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

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