Commanding is a group of artists/educators/students at NYU who hope to create a dialogue about the changing environments in which they live.
They post signs based on simple computer commands that relate directly to the gentrification, development and hopefully preservation of the neighborhoods that we interact with everyday.
A really basic idea, but quite effective to comment and critique, again another quiet project.
[via Make]
Day 2 of our trek to New York was filled with excellent adventures, some more great lectures, and lots of discussion. It was amazing to get to see some of the artists we’ve talked about before right here on the blog, and it continued to inform what we were continuing to try to define as our collective practice.
It’s already been five days since these pictures were taken, so I hope you’ll excuse my poor memory for some of what we saw.
We’re in New York for Conflux 2009 and we’re participating as part of Conflux City! We spent the first day catching up on some sleep, then venturing out into the city and touching base at Conflux HQ. There were a number of presentations we wanted to see, all of which helped us to start articulating some bigger questions we’ve been having about our own practice lately.
We’re scrambling right now to finish up our prep for our Algorithmic Subway Adventure at noon today (Sunday), so more details in the next posts later.
Kind of strangely, I read about this project in the New Yorker and momentarily confused it with Canada’s Tree Museum, but ultimately thought it was worth noting given a recent conversation we had with Edwin who came by our Office Hours last week about a potential audio-based community project.
The video above describing the Holten’s project is kind of brutal (especially the soundtrack), but it gives a good idea of the way it works—acting as a kind of series of stops on a museum tour, with a variety of trees being the markers in each neighbourhood.
100 trees give voice to 100 perspectives featured in the Grand Concourse’s TREE MUSEUM. Irish artist Katie Holten created this public art project to celebrate the communities and ecosystems along this 100 year-old boulevard. Visitors can listen in on local stories and the intimate lives of trees offered by current and former residents: from beekeepers to rappers, historians to gardeners, school kids to scientists.
You can call 718-408-2501to access the audio guide.
From Green Museum:
One of the early pioneers of both the environmental art movement and Conceptual art, Agnes Denes brings her wide ranging interests in the physical and social sciences, mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, poetry and music to her delicate drawings, books and monumental artworks around the globe.
In 1982, she carried out what has become one of the best-known environmental art projects when she planted a two-acre field of wheat in a vacant lot in downtown Manhattan. Titled,Wheatfield — A Confrontation, the artwork yielded 1,000 lbs. of wheat in the middle of New York City to comment on “human values and misplaced priorities”. The harvested grain then traveled to 28 cities worldwide in “The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger” and was symbolically planted around the globe.
Imagine turning some the vast wasteland areas in the city (read any vacant big box store parking lot, Brighton Beach, EC Row Expressway) into a wheat field, or a meadow, or maybe more importantly, imagine having a year to make a project at this scale.
[via we make money not art]
As part of the Eyebeam OpenLab residency program, Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley have been working on a project called, Window Farms. Fashioned out of recycled and/or low-cost materials, the project calls for vertical gardens that use hydroponics to grow beans, tomatoes, and lettuce.
Designed with crowdsourcing and R&DIY (Research & Do-It-Yourself) in mind, the project is not meant to create a one-size fits all product, but rather a framework to further develop and refine the process. If urban agriculture is one the many necessary steps we’ll have to take to create sustainable cities, this is one way in which food production can be managed at a household or neighbourhood scale.
For New Yorkers (and Windsorites—unless there is a mini golf course I am unaware of that isn’t on the outskirts, punctuated with a pink elephant) who don’t usually get to experience the glory that is miniature golf, this project provides them (and potentially us) with the oppurtunity.
In Bushwick Brooklyn artists are taking over empty parking lots and transforming them into 9 hole mini golf games, each hole designed by a different artist.
The Putting Lot seeks to transform vacant space into community spaces. The group’s intention is to inspire imagination and provoke conversations about community sustainability.
This project makes me think of the median astroturf along Dougall and how BCL et al. can “redistrubute” the turf to make a Windsor version of the putting lot.
Late last week, over 120 illegal billboards were taken over by Jordan Seiler’s incrediblely ambitious “New York Street Advertising Takeover.”
Organized as a reaction to the hundreds of billboards that are not registered with the city, and therefore are illegal (and yet not prosecuted by New York city), the NYSAT whitewashed and then over 80 artists went and repainted the spaces. Above is just one of the many treatments artists gave the former advertising space.
Conversation about looking into getting a small portion of the huge number of billboards going up in Windsor for artists was brought up at last night’s Artcite. Oh, the things we could do with billboard space.
[via Wooster Collective]
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