Just to let everyone know, Rebecca famous (and infamous, I hear) asked Angela and I to help out with moderation of the Artomatic forums on artdc (probably because we’re -always- there gabbing). That’s cool.

She actually said the funniest thing in her email to me:

What I really like best about what you do on the forums is get people to think and interact instead of flame and run. And you both do so with much humor, but with the all important “go fuck yourself” at the ready. We appreciate that.

That’s a compliment, right? Right?

Anyway, there’s a lot of good information about Artomatic and DC art in general on the board, so if you haven’t visited, you should. Becoming a member is free.

Check it out here:

http://artdc.org/forum/index.php?board=37.0

Two nights ago, Paivi, Angela, and I worked our second Artomatic volunteer shift together.

I got to look at my installation finally that night in a variety of lighting conditions and Im -really- happy with how the plastic helped out. It doesnt prevent the glare completely, but it does fix it from all the important angles.

It was also definitely still satisfying to watch people look at the installation from a distance. They’d look at it from 15 feet away. Walk up to it. Move back. Walk up to it. Interact with it…too cool.

We came in beforehand so Paivi and Angela could talk to Paul (britishink…I didnt have much to say, though, I was zoning out for whatever reason – sorry! ) and we got to roam around for a bit. Waved at Danny and the crew manning the blood drive (sorry I didnt give, lost track of time…I was a bit distracted when I arrived). Saw jennifer, who was fun to talk to as always…

And we saw Tracy‘s piece beforehand as well, which I honestly liked a lot. As I’ve said things about Tom’s partition resonated with me, so did Tracy’s. I think using pieces from one’s life and arranging them into art can be dramatically effective, as hers was. Particularly (and Im not sure this was intentional), but she had a lot of materials there from her childhood….things that smelled like everyone’s childhood does after it’s been sitting in a box or the attic for decades. That made the installation tangible and personal, to me. It enhanced the impact and created a connection to the piece that wouldn’t have been there otherwise (for myself).

On shift, I helped out Barry with lighting (and worked it on my own for most of the shift) and worked as an errand boy in between problems. I -really- enjoyed this shift a lot more than the last one and felt I made some more concrete impact on the event. I enjoy solving problems – mine or others’. I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of which floors had which lighting problems other than to say there is probably a short or something odd on the 6th floor that makes it markedly different from the others.

I took care of issues on 5, 6, and 8 at least. If you had a problem on another floor which wasn’t resolved, I apologize – I didnt hear about it. (Someone told me the THIRD floor had an issue. Uh. Yeah. It would )

Did some trash duty…found out Aaron is in a similar profession to mine ….and did other odds and ends. At some point, a guy who had seen my piece started gushing over how good it was to meet me. I didnt really know how to respond to that.

I also met Angela’s 5th floor volunteer-mate, Ann Saybolt, who was nice, conversational, and has some photos up on 5 that I particularly like.

At the end of the shift, I transitioned lights over to one of the incoming volunteers that indicated he’d had lighting/electrical experience.

We roamed around a few floors for awhile, but I was a bit too gone to remember much of it by then….Paivi pointed out -her- volunteer-mate’s (they were on one of the 1st floor bars) photos on 8. Some of them were from the south pole, where he took a job there for 4 months just to be able to go there and take pictures. The south pole ones were cool, but that guy had THE BEST picture of Burning Man I’ve ever seen. Really, it’s fantastic. First name was Pat…8th floor…can’t remember the rest. Try and check that piece out if you can.

Artomatic Install: My Space DONE!!

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

Ok. So the space is done (minus a guestbook which Ill try and bring in before the Cure show Friday at the Patriot Center).

It’s a little more cleaned up than the last picture, better lighting, straightened drapery, a table, etc.

I ultimately ran out of time to do all the extra stuff I wanted to do. Ill most likely look back on that as a good thing.

It’s still fun to see people realize for the first time why the picture is so pixelated!! Dawning realization…a smile…then “oh wow!”…tough to get tired of that!

The position is really unfortunate the way it faces away from the foot traffic, but Im lucky to have a space at all and even luckier to be across from Angela and Paivi.

I also like the way my space looks next to my neighbor’s.

Here’s a shot of Erin (right) getting holga shots of Paivi (left), Angela (middle), and their spaces:

(As a side note, Paivi has two pictures of me up….that makes 4 portraits of me total up at Artomatic this year. Wtf? Im -not- photogenic)

Artomatic Space – Almost Done

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

Ok I so I got in to Artomatic tonight finally – despite feeling really physically bad all day long and managed to get the bulk of the installation work done.

This picture is the result and should help make the previous comments and pictures make a little more sense.

My big concerns tonight were lighting and hanging. I had no idea how I was going to fit those pieces together evenly AND close together. The normal wire method of hanging simply wasn’t going to work. Instead, I opted for screws with big, flat heads and hung the frames from them directly. I only used one screw per framed section so that I could pivot them to fit any variance in the positions of the adjoining sections. They’re not perfectly even by any means, but close enough for government as they say. I dont think it detracts from the effect.

They are, however, not as stable as I’d like so Im going to work on securing them better somehow. That and clean them – we have 3 cats in a 600 sq foot studio apartment. It shows

Unfortunately, the lighting is going to be a bigger problem. I want to (and still will) light up the area with red lighting, but the lights I have there (1 100 watt and 2 50′s) is simply not strong enough to overcome the ambient light from the window. Because so much of the piece is dark – and because Ritz’s shiotty matte printing forced me to use lustre – up until about 8pm it’s really hard to make out what the large image actually IS due to all the reflections caused by the window light. Im hoping that If I bring in a couple of stronger lights, the edge of the problem will be blunted a bit.

I had also considered using blue and yellow lighting to create a subtle mix of color on the black and white pieces, but Erin (Halo) rightly thought that the interplay would be lost in all but the darkest surrounding conditions. So, Im sticking with red.

There’s also a question of the other mixed media elements I was planning, but if the image remains unclear in the daylight, there’s not much sense in covering it up further, so we’ll see.

I was also really please to run into a number of artdc’rs at the end of the night who stopped by my space! It was good to see Halo, even in her sleep deprived state. These last few days make a lot of people loopy. I thought she held up her end of the convo remarkably well and appreciated her input!

We talked about organizing an artDC dinner after opening weekend, but it seems Barry and Jesse have beaten us to the punch.

Tom Cardarella made an appearance down on 8 as well and we had a great talk about his work, mine, AOM, etc. I really like what he’s doing with his space and that kind of piece resonates with me as an artist.

Lastly, Cynthia & Paul of Britishink did come down as well. Being a bit slow and distracted, I was honest to god surprised to see that Paul didn’t actually have a tophat and was not sepia-colored. Again, I’d walked by him more than a couple of times thinking there was something super familiar about him. It was cool to finally meet both of them. I’m such a big fan of their space that I don’t even know what to say about it. Like everyone else, Im thinking about getting ink…but probably won’t. I wouldn’t dream of getting something done that I didnt draw myself…and I havent sat down yet and created the kind of inspired drawing I’d want for myself. My wife has 3, but personally Im not getting Sisters of Mercy or Cure tats and I’m not a scorpio.

It was a good evening and there was definitely a lot more hustle and bustle going on than the previous evenings and Im really looking forward to seeing everyone’s lights on and the floors packed.

Erf. I just got done saying I wasn’t going to do one of these (Artomatic Experience Posts), but I just saw the base image assembled as a whole for the first time and was excited enough that I wanted to post pics of the image at least. Just getting that out of the way first – this is a blatant excuse to post pics..(yet somehow this is long-winded…I have nights like this).

Artomatic Piece

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

So -

As mentioned earlier, when I first really started thinking about AOM this year, I thought I was going to be in Arkansas for the majority of the show and wanted to put together something “simple” (yeah, right, me? simple?). I was so strapped for time, in fact, that Angela and Paivi had to grab me some space for the second year in a row while I was out of town. ( My space is on the 8th floor at SE D6 btw.)

Ok. Great. Have space. Project? Art? No so much.  Ultimately I decided to do a huge (6′x6′) self portrait installation (covered in earlier blog posts – http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/python-photography-digital-art-artomatic/ )

So, uhm, how do you print a photo that’s 6′x6′??? I ended up deciding to print the picture in 9 sections, 24″x24″ each. I originally wanted to do an 8′x8′ image, but at 24×24″ sections I could go one price category lower at Chrome than 32″x32″. Still, lots of cash. Hrm. Where else will print this? For a much more reasonable sum?

It turns out that -Ritz Camera- of all places will print really large images for less than half the price of Chrome. Supposedly archival. I test printed one 24×24″ section and it came out perfect. Sweet. I had a printing solution.

For framing I went with Angela’s suggestion of American Framing and picked the smallest frame borders I could – with no matting. The ultimate effect would hopefully look like the face was peering in through…something (window-esque?). That was an easy process and everything showed up toot-sweet.

I went with overnightprints.com for the business cards. They did a good job but, in hindsight, I didnt. I think my cards are a little bit juvenile and cheesy, but, we all make mistakes sometimes I mean, who puts “Artist” on their cards? I guess I do. Meh.

While I was still playing with my final image, I met Angela and Paivi at our spaces last Sunday to help them paint, do lights, and take a look at my space.

I got there first and spent an hour or so mocking up what I wanted things to look like with rope and gorilla tape (it made sense then). The final result was looking pretty good and I was feeling very satisfied. Until Ang and Paivi showed up.

“Thats not your space, Jack”

“Whu?”

“Thats. Not. Your. Space. Its the one next to it.”

–Insert vulgar words here–

Luckily I hadn’t done anything permanent and I sheepishly took down all my stuff. At any rate, I knew what it was going to look like and everything was good.

Angela and Paivi that day managed to paint their space, buy lights, put up lights. I managed to…put down duct tape and put up one wall of the shadowbox (seen in pics later). Really, I hate this part. Im slow as HELL at painting walls and usually a mess. People always regret asking me to help them paint their house/interior. I suck at it.

I came in the next Thursday after work by myself to try my luck alone and got a lot further. I managed to put up the second shadowbox wall, put down a layer of paint, and not end up with blood or paint all over my clothes. It was a good day in that regard. Still, I had forgotten paint rollers and had to use a brush. Those partitions, even with primer, suck. up. the paint. I was despairing a little bit about how things were looking, but put that aside knowing how much was left to do.

So far, I’d run into a couple of people here and there that I knew, but the AOM space is -so- large this year that unless youre actively wandering around looking for people or just outright lucky, it’s entirely possible to work with a dozen people you know there at the same time and miss them completely. (Except for Melissa, whom I run into every single time Im in the elevator.)

This past Saturday night I had my first volunteer shift with Angela and Paivi, so I came in ahead of time to get some work done. I met my “partition-mate”, who’s name I can’t recall at the moment, but who’s work I had been familiar with and am really psyched to be next to. If I had space in my apartment, Id buy some of it honestly. More painting ensued and things were good.

Queue the volunteer shift.

I have a gripe here. We were given a 3 minute introduction to our responsibilities by the GM on duty. The instructions did not mention two big things that we were asked about -all- night:

1. Lights. Anything about them. Where to get them? What to do if any were broken? Etc. I know this was a GM responsibility, but by Saturday you’d have figured that there were enough questions being asked that the volunteers should be given some sort of heads-up.

2. Brightest Young Things:

Anyone who was at AOM that night figured out very quickly that there was some shindig on the first floor. The only instructions of info we were given by anyone about the first floor party was “oh yeah, tell people bathrooms are on the 10th and 12th floors if they start bitching about the first floor bathrooms”.

What about the first floor bathrooms? Huh? And who’s making all that racket next door? Apparently Philipa Hughs’ Pinkline and Artomatic collaborated to help throw a relaunch party for a website called BrightestYoungThings.com ( http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/events/byt-relaunch-party-1200-1st-street-ne/ )

So, in addition to AOM people, there were tons of the trendiest, coolest, hippest, artsiest, brightest young things wandering in and out of the front door. Nothing against them (and it was cool something else was going on there), but it was really a pain in the ass to do “lobby” duty while there were bands playing, a plastic fence between us and them, etc.

I was asked to “keep people from there going up to AOM”…but really…how was anyone supposed to tell the difference? There were also a lot of people bringing in artist materials through the lobby that I didnt catch because I couldn’t always pick them out from the crowd milling about in the lobby.

This all would’ve been cool if we had been given heads-up….but we weren’t. We were left to piece it together ourselves…

I also wish I’d NOT worn the -skankiest- shirt I own to paint in. Felt like I was bringin the place down just sitting next to the party Wink

The monotony was broken up a bit by a trip to Sketchies (aka Wendy’s) to bring us back some much-needed diet cokes (Angela and Paivi were covering Loading Dock duty that night) and also by Jim, who gestured for another volunteer and myself (I think he meant me too) to come out front where he proudly showed us the new lighting for the Artomatic signage in the windows. The “ART” in “ARTOMATIC” was glowing red! Cool!

By the end of the shift, we were all -done-. Id gone running that morning for the first time since the Cherry Blossom 10 miler and between that, working on the space, and the volunteer shift, I was no longer human. Paivi wanted to take some pics of the graffiti kids up on our floor (Cool doing their thing (didnt work out), but we did run into Halo and Arty4ever putting down some finishing touches on Michael’s space (which looks great!).

I also met a couple of cool volunteers, but unfortunately was too brain-fried to ask for the business card of one of them and now forget her name. Ill need to check the volunteer list later if I can…

That brings me to today. Lights are up, painting is finished, etc. I just need to get some fabric to frame the shadowbox, hang the piece, and add some other artistic touches to the installation (and it will be an installation) that I dont want to describe here. I managed to frame all 9 sections (woohoo – Im really slow at that, so Im proud of myself here) today as well!

Ok, whew. Finally, this behemoth of a post is at it’s end.

(As a side note, the lighting in the first pic is provided by a couple of White Lighting 10,000 strobe, which we’ve now started using as generic apartment lamps lately. Heh.)

I have a couple of friends that have been juried into this show who’s work I like quite a bit. If you’re in the area, it’s worth checking out:

Press Release

“black and white and… all over”
A group exhibition of Washington, DC-based black and white photographers
Curated by J.T. Kirkland
February 27 – March 29
Opening reception: Saturday, March 1 from 5–8pm

H&F Fine Arts is pleased to announce a group exhibition of Washington, D.C.-based photographers. Taking its name from the old standby about newspapers (“What’s black and white and read all over?”), the show presents a survey of black and white photography from the D.C. metropolitan area.

The exhibition features dozens of photographs hung salon style throughout the gallery. The artists themselves will assist the curator in hanging the show, collectively attempting to author a visual narrative that explores the voices and concerns of today’s Washington photographers by constructing a mosaic of styles and perspectives. To highlight the joint articulation of the various works, the identities of individual artists will be subordinated; the price of each piece and the initials of its creator will be presented on a brightly colored sticker meant to contrast with the dominant black and white palette. With the names and reputations of the artists subtracted from the exhibition, the work of seasoned veterans will hang alongside that of newcomers just finding their footing in the art world. The curator challenges viewers to try and tell the difference while posing the question of whether the distinction is even significant.

Artists included in the exhibition are Erin Antognoli, James W. Bailey, Danny Conant, Max Cook, Stephen Crowley, Justin Hoffmann, Michael Dax Iacovone, Nick Jbara, Jane Jeffers, J.T. Kirkland, Angela Kleis, Prescott Lassman, Thomas Paradis, Aleksei Pechnikov, Susana Raab, Alexandra Silverthorne, Jim Tetro, Bryan Whitson, and Lloyd Wolf.

3311 Rhode Island Avenue, Mount Rainier, MD 20712

In a stylized world where taste is often found below deck, bound and gagged, you sometimes wonder “why bother?”. In a place where social pornography is the breakfast of champions, you don’t often run into anything of consequence. What’s below the surface, after all, except more surface? Certainly nothing special.

Tonight, however, I had the good fortune to be given a tour of something particularly special in a place just like that.

This evening, during one of my brief visits to Second Life (opening an island takes a lot of planning – not much time to socialize), I asked my good friend Eshi Otawara how the opening of her collaborative project, Parsec, had gone Saturday night. Apparently it had gone quite well and she almost immediately offered to teleport me over to the installation area. After briefly tweaking my headphones and mic (which I had been warned were required!) and a couple of other technical difficulties, I was whisked over to a dark room with a couple of other individuals.

This, apparently, was a waiting area of sorts while everyone got themselves in order for the experience. Eshi handed me some animations and told me to activate them. Seven people were normally required to “operate” Parsec, I was told, but we were going to make do with 3-4 and the animations were a critical component of the piece.

Finally, we eventually all touched the grey teleport sphere and were taken up to the feature presentation. At this point I still wasn’t sure what it was about, other than there was some interactive tie in between voice, music, and visual imagery.

We found ourselves standing on a transparent floor inside of a giant white sphere, the inside of which was textured in a way that reminded me of hundreds of CD’s. Around us were seven black balls, each with a unique pattern of dots on them. Eshi essentially then turned us loose and just told us to…talk. So we did. Not sure, at first, of what was expected of us (what DO you say when someone asks you to just ‘talk’?) we wandered around vocalizing somewhat arbitrarily. What we found was that, as we spoke the balls moved. As the balls moved, we heard the sounds of instruments.

What we were experiencing was the first installation in Second Life where the environment responded to the sound of a voice. Each person in the sphere was linked to one of the black spheres around them. As an individual spoke, a certain behavior by the sphere – and thus a certain set of sounds – was triggered depending on how your voice sounded at the time. There were 10 (or 16? I dont remember the exact number) of “ranges” that each person could trigger from his or her sphere.

The sum effect is that, as 7 or more people have a conversation in the installation, the environment reacts visually and audibly and creates a multi-sensory symphony written just for those people in those moments in time. The visuals were minimalistic, at that point, but effective. (And they got better, I found out later!)

Another particularly interesting facet of Parsec is that there is a piece of it (pictured below in an image from their Flickr pool) which can only be unlocked through the unguided collaboration of the participants! As you “play” the Parsec instrument/exhibit with others, you apparently might find that there are patterns or connections embedded and that, if you speak in cooperation, this new visual component is revealed and you find yourself immersed in something akin to a starbursting eye of horace.

As an artist, I’m intrigued by this cooperation required to complete the artwork. People have to figure out the problem and then work together to solve it. Rather than just being something built with the mathematics of music and aesthetics in mind, a human element and the human mind if required to make it “work” completely. For all of the traditional art out there with NO connection to the human condition, it’s cool to see a virtual one that manages instead to stay true to (what I think is) one of the primary roles of art in society – exploring ourselves.

For those naysayers who get visibly -angry- when they found out people spend time in Second Life and that there’s nothing there “to do”, this kind of art not only unequivocally proves that not only are there things “to do” that you don’t find anywhere else, but also that the it has been and is continuing to evolve as an art medium in its own right.

Congrats to the creators of Parsec for creating such a cool contribution to art and technology:

Concept, Music and Sound by Dizzy Banjo
Virtual Architecture by Eshi Otawara
Scripting by Chase Marellan

More info and a video can be found here: http://eshiotawara.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/41/

Eshi, thank you so much for the on-the-spot tour. It was fun to hear your voice for the first time and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to you in the role of a tour guide! I also am still smiling at the thought of you, alone, standing in Parsec singing to the machine.

Image Artists (top left to bottom right):
Video Installation by Angela Kleis, Paivi Salonen and Jack Whitsitt,
Mixed Media Sculpture by Gabriel Kulka,
Gelatin Silver Print by Vickie Fruehauf.

Come party Day of the Dead style, with art, workshops, altars, music, spoken word, dancing, marigolds and the souls of the departed when the Art Outlet presents “Ofrenda: Art for the Dead” from 3 p.m. to midnight on Saturday, October 13.

Bring an offering to our two artist-designed altars. Come dressed Day of the Dead style, design a sugar skull, and enjoy the art and music.

Artists:
Zulma Aguiar, Michael Auger, Joshua Barlow, Jennifer Beinhacker, Alison Christ, Andrea Collins, Rosemary Feit Covey, Jared Davis, Roni Freeman, Jenny Freestone, Vickie Fruehauf, Susan Gardiner, Angela Kleis, Gabriel Kulka, Emily Liddle, Rob Lindsay, Bono Mitchell, Thomas Paradis, Marina Reiter, Paivi Salonen, Marina Starkova, Henrik Sundqvist, Jack Whitsitt

Schedule:
Day of the Dead Workshop: Sugar Skulls 3 – 5 p.m.
Mariachi Band 5 – 6 p.m.
Film Screening by Zulma Aguiar 6:15 – 6:30 p.m.
(Humanitarian Water – a short film about US/Mexican border issues.)
Mud Pie 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Flo Anito 8 – 9 p.m.
Special Guest Appearance by Inspyra 10:30 pm
(Founder of Capital Fire Arts)
Yoko K. 10 p.m. – Midnight
Location:
2925 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22201
(Right next Mexicali Blues Restaurant & Bar)

Directions:
By Metro: Take the orange line and exit at the Clarendon Metro stop. Walk down 1 1/2
blocks on Wilson Boulevard. “Ofrenda – Art for the Dead” will be on your left.
By Car: Park in the garage at the corner of Highland Street and Wilson Boulevard. It’s free on weekends.