My essay for NYFA Current is now up and live. I write a good deal about my project with the Brooklyn Museum's 1stfans Twitter Art Feed and discuss how microblogging and other social media can serve as a medium for art. Be sure to check it out!

Hearkening back to Samuel Morse's original invention for "instant communication," An Xiao's 1stfans Twitter Art Feed project for the Brooklyn Museum uses Morse code tweets to globally telegraph the minutiae of her daily activities. For NYFA Current, she considers the parallels and distinctions between telegrams and present-day microblogging media, as well as its potential for public art collaborations—all the while raising the question of why we tweet in the first place.

An Xiao on Twitter as an Artistic Medium (Requires free registration)

I have to give a big shoutout to editor Suzan Sherman, who worked closely with me throughout the many drafts. As NYFA Current is a publication billing itself as "artists on art", she helps bring artists' voices to the public. Suzan's an absolute joy to work with, and I couldn't be more pleased with the final piece.

Labels: art, internet, personal

For Ada Lovelace Day, I am blogging about the fabulous Shelley Mannion, who was one of the first people I met via Twitter. She is currently a freelance museum technology researcher and is looking into emerging technologies for museums, including mobile devices, multilingual capabilities and alternative interfaces (wow!).

Shelley recently received her Master's from the University of Lugano (Switzerland), where she was among the first graduates of the pioneering TEC-CH Program for communicating cultural heritage. Her art history and computer science background give her the right blend of knowledge, tools and experience to help bring museums into the 21st century and reach a broad audience increasingly composed of digital natives who might be intimidated by the museum atmosphere.


Photo by Wonderlane on Flickr

She's also done some wonderful work for the Tibetan exile community, having created several web sites for a number of groups. One of her contributions in this area that caught my eye was her work with the Rubin Museum, one of my favorites in New York, on social tagging of Himalayan art within native communities. For this project, she worked in conjunction with steve.museum, founded by another wonderful woman in technology, Susan Chun. Here's the abstract of her fascinating presentation at Museums and the Web 2008, "Seeing Tibetan Art Through Social Tags":

Most current efforts in social tagging by museums focus on how to improve public access to on-line collections. Indeed, tags do supplement existing documentation by providing an alternative vocabulary to describe works of art. But what can tags tell us about how images are perceived? Are the same images perceived differently by viewers from diverse cultures? Taking its cue from the steve project’s (http://steve.museum) research agenda, an ongoing study funded by the Rubin Museum of Art explores what tags reveal about the ways native communities respond to their own cultural iconography. Begun in March 2007, the study is collecting tags on Tibetan artworks from Tibetans and Westerners in Switzerland and New York on a customized steve installation (http://www.seeingtibetanart.org).

But most importantly and most relevantly to those of us plugged into the Internet, Shelley tweets, and she's officially my favorite person in the Twittersphere! Everything from fascinating links to live tweets during conferences to finding great books to read her niece will show up on her feed, a striking example of the power of Twitter and microblogging for sharing useful information and tidbits in a dynamic way. Anyone interested in art and technology (and if you're reading this blog, you probably are!) ought to take a gander - she's doing some great work and great research, and I feel like I learn something every time I read her updates.

So, do be sure to visit her online at @smannion, and drop her a quick hello. Happy Ada Lovelace Day, everyone, and three cheers for women in technology.

Labels: AdaLovelaceDay09, art, culture, friends, internet, technology

An ash tray in Chelsea.

Labels: culture, design, health

Immanuel Kant on a subway ad. Kant!

Labels: citylife, humor, philosophy

Move over, McCain and Stephanopoulos: none other than art world Twitteratus Hrag Vartanian will be conducting a live Twitterview with yours truly about the recently-founded @Platea, and @Platea's efforts to bring public art to the digital megacity of online social media.


And when, dear readers, will this occur? Why, one day after McCain-Stephanopoulos tweet it out:


But don't worry, if you're not Twitter-addicted like us a member of the elite Twitterati, Hrag will be posting a recap to his blog afterward, and I will of course link it here. Looking forward to it, and I hope to see you! :)

Labels: art, internet

A Samuel Adams ad atop a table. Hard to see on this photo, but I was struck by the text at the bottom, indicating how to sign up for their e-newsletter. Where once the ad (and the ubiquity of ads elsewhere) may have been the extent of a good marketing campaign, there now exists the opportunity for a continued relationship thanks to the Internet.

Another example, from Starbucks. In this case, one can pick up a physical card to type in a code for a song obtained digitally:



A common critique of the Internet in the 1990's was that it was a sad, lonely place for the socially awkward and even caused depression. Now, as we reach the 10's, there's a new story: "Those who do not connect, share and collaborate will have a hard time in business and in social life."

How will the next few years see a greater seamlessness between online/offline life? How will this seamlessness affect senses of self, of privacy? How will marketing leverage this ubiquity of access?

Labels: culture, internet, marketing, psychology, technology

A blank sign in front of elevator doors. What extra meaning would be derived from an "Out of Service" message?

And now the big announcement you've all been waiting for - how to join @Platea! We're organizing a large scale online happening, a "statusing", so to speak, to occur at some point this March, and all it will take from you is a single tweet with super secret instructions.


Photo by Pete Ashton on Flickr

To become truly massively multiperformer, we'll need your help! Here's how:

1. Join the group! Follow @platea on Twitter. You'll get updates on the statusing and a head's up on when it might occur (some time in the next few weeks!). The actual act will be a single tweet with super secret instructions.

2. Tell your friends! Tweet and retweet. We're trying to amass a massively multiperformer team of 500 to 1,000 (or more!) super secret sweet ninjas together to make this pop!

3. Help out! If you want to help organize or have other ideas for the group, send a DM to @platea.

4. Stay tuned! Be sure to keep your eyes and ears out for updates from the @Platea feed. The statusing will go down some time in the next few weeks, but in the mean time, be sure to check out our snazzy new blog and Facebook group.


Photo by TwOsE on Flickr

Labels: art, platea

Different methods and purposes for height enhancement. Metal geta by artist Miya Ando.

Labels: art, culture, design, fashionbeautystyle

Methods of compartmentalization at the post office.

Labels: design, gettingthingsdone

The problem with script juxtapositioning. On the right side is a very bold, somewhat elegant "Shangai" in Roman script. On the left is a staccato, almost frenetic "Shanghai Shanghai Shanghai Shanghai, etc." in Chinese script. As the latter sees greater and greater prominence as a lingua franca competing with English, I suspect designers will be the first to navigate some of the trickier problems in the transition.

And for those hanging off the edge of your seats re: @Platea - next update to come after all this art fair business :) If you're in New York, be sure to check them out.

Labels: chinese, citylife, culture, design, language

Part of a three-part intro around my thinking for stweet public art. I know it's wordy, but I was a philosophy major, and I tend to think in big paragraphs like this. Hope you enjoy it, in any case! :) Be sure to check out part 1, where I set up the concept of the digital megacity.

A juggler along the Venice Beach boardwalk

Remain Tweeted During the Performance
During my work with the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed, I was so taken by the fact that the project, initially designed as a conceptual one, quickly became a collaborative performance piece. As I was directly managing the feed in January, I expected a few @replies, but I underestimated the enormous creativity that 1stfans members would send back. In fact, I retweeted almost all of them, so their responses would become a permanent part of the @1stfans feed for other members to enjoy.

The feed, part of a new Brooklyn Museum membership program, was private to members, but I soon started to wonder if social media like Twitter and Facebook might serve as a venue for public art, particularly (but not limited to) performance art. A microblogging-based performance art project could displace and activate this online space in a fashion not unlike street performance art. To borrow from the parlance of the Twittersphere, it would be art on the "stweets", taken outside the confines of the white box and even physical geography and embedded within the daily routines of digital citizens' lives.



Ya! - Spotted in midtown Manhattan

@Platea: A Stweet Art Collective
That said, I'm putting together @Platea, a stweet art collective consisting of artists and non-artists who share an interest in the power of public art carried out in the digital megacity. "Platea," from the Latin for "street", came to signify in medieval theatre a neutral space on stage. It morphed and changed as necessary, depending on the actors' actions and the assumed setting. I find it a fitting analogy for the swiftly-evolving, redefining nature of social media, whose tenors change with the tide of user activity but whose effect--discussion and connection--remains overall the same.

I'm excited by the potential of stweet art. The timing here is key: in this difficult economic time, the business world has turned its eyes toward alternative, low-cost methods of marketing, the art world is calling for a new dialogue around the role of art, and people in general are looking for leisure activities that cost very little. Much of us, then, have turned to social media for answers, and, in the past year, Twitter has emerged as a rising star. Its deceptively-simple concept--bursts of text limited to 14o-characters answering the question "What are you doing?"--makes it a highly malleable and engaging form, useful for everything from business to socializing to information sharing. As more people join and embed it into their lives, more potential exists for public art projects.


Performers during Deitch Art Projects' Art Parade 2006

@Platea Projects
So what would @Platea look like? What would public art carried out in the digital megacity do exactly, and how would they parallel and differ from physical public art pieces? To be honest, I'm not sure! I'm excited by the opportunity to explore this with you all and to invite other artists to head up @Platea projects. Online social media are ripe for artistic experimentation. I suspect that some of the projects can be subversive, tucked away in hidden locales in online space for only the most dedicated to find. Others can be overt (but not obvious), causing most daily users to pause and take notice. Some can be playful. Some can be serious. Some "local", some "city-wide". Almost all, I hope, will challenge members of the digital city in the same way the best public art does.

I plan to more formally announce details in the coming weeks, but first, I'm eager to gather "performers". For the first project, I want to focus solely on Twitter. I think it will be important to bring together a critical mass, both as an exciting first act but also as a large-scale online performance, gathered for effect. I suspect 300 would be sufficient, but I want to shoot for 1,000 (why not, right? :), if not more. As with many performance art groups, the group itself will be private but not anonymous, though I suspect it doesn't even have to be private (I'll write more on that later).

For the first project, I'm thinking in particular about two apparently-conflicting stereotypes of Twitter: (1) That it's a place for sharing mindless minutiae about one's life, such as lunch habits and the weather and (2) That it's a place for talking about issues of great importance in a viral and rapid manner. In many ways, Twitter as a whole is a mega-conversation, a public space of millions of users talking at one time, sometimes about diverse topics, sometimes about singular topics. I want to explore this phenomenon further and how it intersects with concepts of ambient awareness and the practice of sharing inane life details.

In my next post, I plan to step away from the conceptual mumbo jumbo and onto the more fun part: how you can get involved. So stay tuned :) In the mean time, I welcome your thoughts and dialogue here - this is very much an evolving project!

Labels: 21st, art, citylife, culture, internet, platea

The fabulous Maryann Devine of smArts & Culture has interviewed me about my project with the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed. Be sure to check it out, and to check out the rest of her blog, which focuses on marketing and PR for arts organizations.

I met An Xiao on twitter.

I don’t remember if I followed An or if she followed me, but I’m sure it had something to do with the Brooklyn Museum.

And I was excited to find out that she was to be the first artist featured on the Brooklyn Museum’s 1stfans Twitter Art Feed. I was excited because I had gotten to know An’s work a little, through her witty tweets, and her blog, thatwaszen.

Interview Part 1
Interview Part 2

A big big thanks to Maryann for inviting me to interview with her :)

Labels: art, personal

I lost my phone this weekend, which led me to dig up my old Nokia candy bar phone, which feels like an ancient artifact. According to my records, I last used it in October of 2007, which would put its last usage to about a year and a half ago. I'm still hoping my other phone will show up at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's so interesting to flip through the address book, the messages, even the call log. Mindless chit chat between me and a former lover. Calls between friends I've not spoken with recently; chats with friendships only just forming. Snippets of news that seems quaint today but that elicited several exclamation marks back then. One friend even passed away since I last used this phone, but there's her name, staring at me in the recent calls list like a digital ghost.

We often don't think about this, but everything we do with our phones is recorded somewhere, at least until it gets cleared from the phone's memory (and from our phone company's billing records). As phones have become ubiquitous in use and ownership, they often capture the ephemera of daily life, micro-stories with little meaning out of context but filled with associations and emotions that develop into an aggregate meaning.

Labels: culture, technology

So I know, dear readers, that you were on the edges of your seats eagerly anticipating Part 2 of my stweet art posts, but I've unfortunately hit a little road bump in my personal life that I need to take care of. Thus, posting will be a tad slow, till I can catch up on a few things on my end. Apologies for the delay!! Darn personal life has to jump in like this.

In the mean time, I leave you with three things:

1. A new self-portrait in progress from my art:elite series, which I haven't discussed much but will talk more about at some point. Suffice to say it's about marketing and branding, but a little more than that. This one's called "Art Is Defiant". I need a good photo editor, though, to do a few touch-ups here before I can call this final final. Or I need to get better at photo editing.



2. The video for "Heartbeats" by Swedish electronic band The Knife. A friend recently turned me onto them, and I've just fallen in love with their slow groovy beats and Karin Dreijer Andersson's hypnotic voice.



3. My dear friend, Chicago-based filmmaker and film teacher Jennifer Peepas, has started Short and Beautiful, a blog about films that are, you guessed it, short and beautiful:

This blog is a place for me to organize my thoughts about making shorts and for collecting beautiful, inspiring, and entertaining short film and video work from around the Web. I will be looking for music videos, comedy, dramatic pieces, animation, cause-oriented work, documentaries, experimental films....

There is so much content being made and posted every day, but it is hard to weed through it all for the things I want to watch over and over again. If this works like I want it to, it will be like curating an ongoing film festival...in my brain.

Be sure to check it out and to follow her on Twitter. I'm excited to watch it grow.

Labels: art, link, marketing, music, personal