She Wanted Something Big

LoVid at CAM/Raleigh’s Born Digital exhibition

Turning 90 in 5 photos

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I Could Do That Animated GIF

Glitters

Collaging Italy

Pretty, Pretty Pictures

Proof of something or nothing

Miranda July is just as “infused with wonder at the things of the world” as her artwork is, to quote author George Saunders. She and her work are concerned with truths, aliveness, and the idiosyncrasies of the human condition. Which is what makes her art so beautiful, surprising, peculiar and engaging. In her Pretty Cool People Interviews segment, she marvels at being able to capture and archive human truths, particularly in Learning To Love You More but which is something I think she does across her work. Using her words, it is “the mutual recognition of truths between strangers” that gives us “proof of something”, something of meaning or possibly no meaning. She blurs meaningfulness and meaninglessness, the real and the surreal, turning everything she touches into an art form. Her work takes something simple and everyday and makes it profound, like The Hallway, causing the audience to be conscious of how we see and think about ourselves and our relationships with others and to the world around us. You can see and feel this through the artistic freedom she bares in the scope of her work.

Review of her book No One Belongs Here More Than You to come. Its interactive website is here.

Poster:Ideal Bookshelf

Interactive still life?

Just spotted: Digital artist Scott Garner turns a “still life” into an interactive piece of art with a game development program called Unity 3D and a motion sensing frame. Check out his work here. Traditionally, a still life is a painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects, which are inanimate and everyday. I hadn’t ever thought of a still life as anything more than static. But like we’ve pointed out numerous times, technology is pushing our ideas and the norms we’ve held about art. Interestingly, Wikipedia’s definition recognizes the expansion of its definition/genre in the 21st century with the rise of computer, digital, and mixed media art. The article shows a nice progression of the still life genre through the centuries. The Getty Museum’s past exhibtion The Still Life in Photography also explores the redefinition of the genre through photographs.