My reservation request for the portrait of MuseumNerd, as painted by Nic Rad. More context about the show here, and about MuseumNerd here. I unfortunately have to be in DC on business during the great giveaway this week, but I'd still like to have the portrait. We'll see if Nic's okay with that, esp. given my competition.
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I fall in love at least once each day. I fall in love with the kitten that lives in my neighborhood. I fall in love with good sandwiches at the delicatessen. I fall in love with those close to me, even if they don't understand. I fall in love with gadgets and gizmos and books and everyone and everything else that makes me happy.
The glaring exception is art.
I realize this is ironic. I have dedicated so much of my life to art. I grew up writing poems on scraps of paper and drawing my own paper dolls. Before I ever laid hands on InDesign, I scribbled out comics and Xerox'ed hand-drawn magazines. Armed with floppy disks and stamps, I was a social media artist long before AOL made the computers accessible.
But some time between then and now, art became a business, and artists became entrepreneurs. Artists now must map out goals, measure metrics, strategize and analyze with nearly-Machiavellian discipline and find the words for nonverbal work that will resonate with the reporters and the curators. The work of art is entwined in the work of art, and, without making or demanding judgment, PeopleMatter lays that process bare for all to see and make their own conclusions.
This weekend, I did a very nerdy thing and went to a museum by myself. I spent three hours with the exhibition, absorbed fully by the work, without any pressure to be anything but present. It took me a while to realize that I was seeing the way @MuseumNerd sees. The feed has opened my eyes again: museums large and small are once again mysterious, the art is spiritual, the stories bring tears.
In so much as love is possible when it comes to art, I have @MuseumNerd to thank, and that's why, Nic Rad, I'd like to own this portrait.
I'm in a Roman state of mind right now, perhaps (been watching HBO/BBC's Rome and reading the terrific Pagan Holiday). This news raises a number of very important questions about intellectual property and the ownership of tweets. But once those issues are sorted out (and we quickly delete all our most embarrassing tweets), I think future historians will find this archive invaluable.
Yes, trending topics like #ihatequotes and #nowplaying may seem inane to us now. But they'll be just like the "tweets" from Pompeii preserved forever on walls and doors, shedding light on the colloquial language and plebeian values that never made it into Plutarch's Lives:
On April 19th, I made bread
What a lot of tricks you use to deceive, innkeeper. You sell water but drink unmixed wine
Back in New York after a week in Los Angeles. As I watched one city fade away from view and another city emerge a few hours later, I realized that the next time I'm in Los Angeles, I'll be a resident once again.
But another thought:
Strolling through LAX and JFK with crisp efficiency (I always travel carry-on, even on month-long trips), I also got to thinking about Up in the Air, which I watched last week. It surprised me by how much it captured this moment in time--the anxieties of the recession, our culture of false intimacy--, and for the non-megastar vulnerability George Clooney brought to his character.
As technology is always on my mind, I couldn't help but see the story as a critique of the technologies that are meant to bring us closer. Commercial airlines, frequent flyer cards, hotel amenities, mobile phones, video chats. I've been traveling regularly almost literally since I was born, and I started to see my life in Clooney's life, lived in airports and flying over blurry cities, everything I need in a rolling suitcase. All the little things I do to keep grounded and sane as I've crisscrossed the country.
All the little things. They bring us the comforts of home without actually being home. As we march forward with all these new technologies (and I love watching every new development), it's important to remember to look back and critique them too. Which technologies bring us closer together and which only seem to? When we do use technology as a shield against intimacy, and when is it a bridge?
I recently met artist and YouTuber Alan Lupiani during the opening night of #class, when he interviewed me about my performance piece, Photoglam. I've since seen him at a number of openings, and he's quickly become a regular face in the New York art world, both offline and on.
I chatted with Alan briefly over email about his creative process:
So I love your YouTube show. It's quirky, fun and interesting, and it looks like you really only got going recently. Where did this idea come from?
I started with the video work back in 2006 with the advent of YouTube. I wanted to get out of the studio and do something more interactive. I read an article in USA Today about these young bloggers making videos in their bedrooms getting like 100,000 views in a day, and said "wow, I have to give this a try."
I especially got into a video blogger named "Brookers" who now attends NYU I believe. I remember watching her video, "The United States of..WHATEVA" and thinking I had never seen anything like that. I made a few videos about a character named "aluminaman" and one of actor/comedian Tom Green's fans saw my work and suggested I contact Tom about helping Tom promote his online night time show, "Tom Green Live."
It was all very exciting as Tom was at the forefront of the online streaming video thing and I was happy to be a part of something new and different. Tom would give us video "Deputies" different assignments to help promote his night time internet show and we would carry them out. One assignment had us going out into the streets with a chicken tied around our waists with a piece of rope and asking people in the street why the chicken was following us. It was the first time I felt really vulnerable in a public environment and in retrospect, the experience qualified as my first fluxus style art performance. It gave me confidence to do performance work in public and motivated me to go on my own.
That's amazing.
From there, I started my own online LIVE! streaming show in 2007 called, "Dear Immaculately Groomed Italian Guy" which received a lot of positive response and viewers, but as with all new trends, there was a small window of opportunity to succeed before new players and corporate America caught on, making it difficult to stay relevant and on top of the online LIVE streaming craze. After my brief moment of internet popularity, I decided in 2008 to get back to the studio to make paintings again.
Now, I am back again and taking my performances to the art world. I have been surprised and humbled by the positive response and am looking to do my show again in the context of a gallery/museum environment.
What are your production tools like? Hardware and software?
My production tools now are a Logitech webcam, Toshiba PC, Adobe Premier, Kodak hand held Zi8 HD camera, Radio Shack lavalier microphone, small mixing board, studio microphone.
That's a great array of tools--flexible but totally affordable for a small production team. What do you hope to accomplish with your video series?
I would like to turn galleries and museums into broadcasting studios where I perform my show.
I know you paint and are an artist yourself. How does this YouTube channel tie in with your broader art work?
YouTube and other video sites are tools to get my work out to a broader audience. Currently, YouTube acts as a vehicle for dissemination, nothing more, nothing less. Ultimately, the video clips may serve as a revenue stream.
Had to have my wisdom teeth pulled yesterday. This would have been an unremarkable experience until I realized I needed to send my doctor an email with some notes from my previous dentist, and I couldn't get online w/ my Blackberry. "No problem," he told me, and he came back with an iPad. He slid and adjusted the images, poked around digitally and set it aside.
"Do you like it?" I asked, knowing this was literally the first business day he'd begun using it.
"It's good," he said, "for what it is."
And as I looked around, I saw the usual high-definition TVs, but I also noticed a Canon hooked up directly to his microscope. "It takes great video," he told me.
I started to imagine the new digital clinic, all these gadgets applied in interesting ways to modern medicine. It's the iPad in particular that showed me the potential of tablets--as office tools for a more face-to-face office. Neither of us had to hunch over a screen or walk to another room. He simply brought the iPad over, I typed a few things, and he looked at a few images.
I'm imagining the future clinic, the future office, where the iPad is integrated seamlessly w/ desktop computers. The iPad becomes a second monitor most of the time, but when you want to edit an image with precision, you place it on your lap and doodle away. And when you want to show someone something, you can get up and show it to them at their desk, tablet in tow.
Sort of like this new Wacom Cintiq 21UX (tell me - why are non Apple products named so unappealingly?):
So I'm leaving New York and moving back to Los Angeles. For three years at least.
If you've been following my blog, you'll know that design and design thinking have been on my mind lately. This year, I quietly applied for Art Center College of Design's Media Design Program, out in Pasadena, CA (just north of Los Angeles). It's more or less communications and new technology design, though so much more than that. Here's how the program describes itself on the web site:
Art Center’s graduate program in Media Design offers a two- or three-year Master of Fine Arts curriculum that helps ambitious designers from a variety of backgrounds become design leaders and researchers in emerging fields.
We are looking for risk-takers with hybrid interests who can integrate innovative design with intellectual investigation, who can synthesize theory and practice, and who can pursue their research and making with depth, intelligence and passion. http://www.artcenter.edu/mdp
What's also great and personally exciting for me is that Art Center has a program called DesignMatters, which I'm interested in getting involved in. I'll also describe it using their exact language:
Through research, advocacy and action, Designmatters engages, empowers and leads an ongoing exploration of design as a positive force in society.
The common goal of all Designmatters projects is simple: take art and design education as a catalyst and change agent. And imagine and build a better and more humane future for all. http://www.designmatters.artcenter.edu/
Obviously, I'm interested in new technologies that have become embedded in our lives, and as an artist, I've been privileged to engage with and critique their emergence with some amazing people. But I've come to realize that I want to play a much more agential role in the changes coming to the fore. I want to actually help create new and wonderful things that will change lives, in both rich and poor countries.
What this doesn't mean is that I'm abandoning my work as an artist or an arts writer. I still very much plan to continue my artistic practice, and thanks to social media, I'll continue to be super active in this area. I'm starting to realize that all these things--design, art, writing, technology--intermix and interplay in important ways. I explore this issue a bit in my write-up on the Connections show at MIT Museum for Art21, and I'm sure I'll be writing more about this interplay soon.
Anyway, the loose plan is to pack my bags and head west in August before the program begins in September. It's bittersweet--I moved to New York five years ago knowing nobody, and I consider so many New Yorkers family now. But after nearly a decade away from the west coast, I guess it's time to move back. I can't wait to start.
In the digital economy, if you build it with Wifi, they will come. In an always-on culture, where are we ever off? Far below (subways) and far above (airplanes) and far away (rural areas). Soon, the global telecommunications network will reach even these places, starting first and with the greatest fanfare on airplanes.
I suspect the battle will be around charging. In Philadelphia and on the Bolt Bus, the cost is "free"--it's just part of the package of being there. On Delta and in Starbucks, they ask for a pretty penny for connectivity. In most terminals in JFK airport, you have to pay. In hubs like Memphis, Detroit and Salt Lake City, it's free after viewing a quick ad.
Who will win? I suspect the rise of 3G and 4G and 500G on mobile phones and the reliable Culture of Free will force wifi carriers' hands. I can remember the days when in-seat entertainment on the plane cost money. Now it's expected.
Hi there. I'm An Xiao. I'm an artist, designer and writer An Xiao looking at the intersection of the digital and analog in the 21st century. I photograph, install, perform and tweet and have shown my work in publications and galleries internationally, including the Brooklyn Museum, Yale/Haskins Laboratories, The New York Times and Art in America. I founded and direct @Platea, a global online public art collective, and serve as a contributing columnist for PBS-affiliate Art21 and a contributing writer for the New York Foundation of the Arts and Hyperallergic.
That Was Zen, This Is Tao is my journey in haiblog -- brief, crisp prose about everything and anything that crosses my mind (which is a lot!), as I try to make some sense of the 21st century and bring a little Zen into it. In no particular order, I enjoy writing about the contemporary art world, Web 2.0 and the Internet, Zen and poetry, modern marketing, fashion and style, GTD (Getting Things Done), American politics and anything else of interest. I lead a hectic life, and I often use my iPhone to make updates in subways and parking lots. I also regularly post my most recent photography. I do hope you enjoy your stay! Below are some news updates from my web site.
