digitaldust

Not every tag cloud has a silver lining. The worlds first performance tag cloud will be digitally bodged live next Tuesday (28/08) at the Cube, Bristol’s own indie microplex. It’s time for the Grumpyman.tv night,a miserable mashup between the cube.tv events and the Grumpy Man DJs.

Ed and I will be doing miserable and annoying video surfing, supported by a real world participative tag cloud. It’s Grumpyman 2.0. And if that doesn’t get on your tits then we’ve got more that’s guaranteed to make you morose, tetchy and downright angry.

The rest of the night promises to hold melancholy music videos and angst film whilst we do the sad web weirdness. There’s a bar and music as well as pictures. So come along and drown your sorrows. We will be.

I went to the Weather Exhibition at the Tate Modern just after new year. Took the ubiquitous pictures, everyone seemed to be doing it and I just couldn’t help myself. I wonder where it ranks amongst the most photographed things at the moment. This one sort of sums up the balmy atmosphere that the huge sun and the smoke machines create, even though the temperature in the turbine hall was only just hovering above zero.

And some more shots here.

Stelarc is going to stick an ear on his arm. In the process becoming a cross between Kevin Warwick and a transgenic mouse.

A few of his quotes mesh nicely with the way I’ve always seen technology as an extension of the body and the future blurring the line between technological devices and the body/mind. There’s also a degree of synchronicity with reading similar things in McLuhan.

I see the body as an evolutionary architecture for operation and awareness in the world. Alter the architecture and you adjust the body’s operation and awareness.

And on a seemingly related note a robot arm in Australia creates art from Rat brain neurons in Atlanta.

I went to Banksy’s Turfwar exhibition over the weekend. Like everyone else I took a few pictures. Literally everyone there was doing it, I was quite surprised by all the camera action going on. It’s interesting, his work must be photographed continuously. It’s all around you, it deals with meaningful issues that you can relate to and it’s funny. I suppose that’s why he came up with his “this is not a photo opportunity” stencil.

Very spiffy looking cantauroid spiderlike exoskeleton by Stelarc. Reminds me of drow striders, complete with big pincer like things on his arms.

The art of Lee Bul, a Korean artist, turns me on. There is the promise of the future seductively enclosed in slinky near human forms.

German artist is trying to set up a whorehouse for dogs.

Apparently though it’s nothing new a New York conceptual artist did it in the 70s. He staged the whole thing but was hounded afterwards for alledged mistreatment of the animals.

Is conceptual art these days merely humor under the guise of art? Is the Turner prize a joke? Many would say so. Mostly the high concept stuff is either mildly humorous or highly tragic. Are these the two defining elements of the human condition?

/pr0nt1n65

This java art I like a lot… in the aesthetic sense of course, don’t get me started on the nature of good art. Would look very good in some kind of VJ set. It’s called dakadaka, and its from the website of Golan Levin.

I’m not sure what is exactly going on but I like it. Feral Robotics: Dog Report