My article Sensation for Sensation’s Sake: Affect and the Temptation of “Wow!”, originally published in the beautiful art magazine Sjonauki, has been republished in the Nordic online magazine Alba.nu.
This was a fun piece to research. I wrote it in response to the Psycho Buildings exhibit at the Hayward Gallery in summer 2008. The show brought together a remarkable set of artworks that helped me think differently about aesthetics and representation. Like Carsten Höller’s slides at the Tate Modern and Anthony Gormley’s Blind Light, the works by Gelitin and Saraceno, among others at Psycho Buildings, were primarily about the user’s experience – touching, floating, falling…
Perhaps these works are part of a trend, but the recent recreation of Robert Morris’ Bodyspacemotionthings (1971) should remind us that art has emulated the playground for quite some time.
Bodyspacemotionthings has just closed at the Tate Modern, but I’m looking forward to Walking in My Mind, opening next week at the Hayward.
Wheeee!
Filed under: Academic, Local/London, Media Theory
September 3, 2008 • 11:02 am
If your idea of a short film is a 25-minute yakfest, think again.
Filminute 2008 is a film festival uniquely appropriate to the online environment – none of the entries is longer than one minute.
And my very own brother has a film in it! Go take a look, and please use your vote wisely.
We Londoners can enjoy these shorts on a big screen in the Selfridge’s basement. Well, if they sort out their tech problems we can…
Filed under: Local/London , Events, film
I went to the Serpentine Gallery on Friday to do an interview, and noticed this fetchingly posed stepladder in the bare gallery.
The article is for the Icelandic newspaper Morgunbladid about the artist Hreinn Fridfinsson and his upcoming show at the Serpentine Gallery. I’ve admired Hreinn’s work for years, so it was a pleasure to get to meet him.
When I arrived at the Serpentine, he was in the main gallery, surrounded by packing crates and assistants, busy setting up the show. He sat down with me for tea and a quick chat in a room off the main gallery. Hreinn was surprisingly relaxed for someone 3 days away from opening his first ever show in London, but the demands on his time were quite obvious.
I can never get quite used to the time constraints of interviews. It’s a strange trade-off. You get to meet someone fascinating, but just as your conversation is hitting its stride the time is up.
Accidentally, I left my recorder on when we were taking photos for the interview, so I know that it took me just under 4 mins. to get 8 shots of him, 2 of which were pretty good.
We’ll see what the editor in Iceland thinks. They haven’t made it into publication yet.
Filed under: Local/London
One of those accidental artworks, although I wonder how random some of this collage really is.
Filed under: Local/London
For anyone interested in information visualization, and the relationship of media to space and place, here’s a fantastic project, the Greenwich Emotion Map. It’s a visual representation of a bio-mapping exercise conducted around the Greenwich Peninsula, using small handheld devices to record the user’s experience and upload it for analysis.
This project is part of Node.London, a collective presentation of media arts activity across
London. If you’re looking for more fun, the artist, Christian Nold, has a cool website of his own documenting other projects.
Filed under: Local/London, Social media
My article Sensation for Sensation’s Sake: Affect and the Temptation of “Wow!”, originally published in the beautiful art magazine Sjonauki, has been republished in the Nordic online magazine Alba.nu.