Last year I did a super-sized meta self portrait exploring identity and the relationship between technology and art. The year before, I did a Second Life virtual reality installation dealing with similar concepts in a different way and how our concepts of location and identity are gradually becoming more fuzzy.

Originally, I was going to put up my webcam based audio visualizer written with Quartz Composer. I’m still going to be using Quartz, but the content will be completely different.

This year, take a look and you tell me what it’s about. Or not. Or who. I think this year, the name might make the rose. I have some specific points of view I’m coming from, but responsibility for defining other specific parts of the meaning are intentionally being passed on to the viewer.

Look for the video being projected onto a wall near the elevators on the 7th floor:

Floor-7
Area-12
Type-C
Space-1

Artomatic: http://artomatic.org

Also, remember, you can also visit ArtDC.org for current unofficial discussions and updates on Artomatic news, events, participants, etc:

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

Paivi and I have a number of pictures up at DC9 from November 15 – November 22 as part of PixTour, which is part of Fotoweek. I wasn’t sure what or how many pictures to put up, but when I was talking to the Bill (the owner/manager?) I noticed that the 7 big mirrors provided the only really clear space, so I put 2-3 up per mirror. There are 3 “sets” of mine up – “Picture of a Picture” (suggested by Heather), “Doll Angst” (a set of suicidal blondes), and “Misc” (just a few that seemed to fit together) in the back.

These were my final selections:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sintixerr/sets/72157608876695189/

Paivi put up some of her BritishInk pics from Artomatic (hers was more last minute than mine since her original venue, Bar Pilar, fell through. Too bad!)

ABOUT:
—
PixTour: a project of FotoWeek DC 2008
Travel the city to check out PIX TOUR.

PixTour, a project of FotoWeek DC 2008, is showing the work of
area photographers at 40 bars, clubs, restaurants, theaters, and
shops around DC. Artist and Place meet and invite you.

PixTour brings art to the people who are out and about.
Take a walk, have a drink and a meal, and see the art of photography in Dupont, Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, 14th Street, Anacostia and More. PixTour is an informal showing of photography on local walls and windows.

Curators: Molly Ruppert, Heather Goss, Beth Baldwin

PixTour was created as a project for Fotoweek DC 2008 by Molly Ruppert molly@warehousetheater.com and Warehouse.

VENUES:
—

DC9                                            1940 9th St NW
Nellie’s Sports Bar                  900 U St NW
Vegetate                                    1414 9th St NW
Velvet Lounge                           915 U St NW
Dos Gringos                            3116 Mt Pleasant St NW
Gala Theatre                            3333 14th St NW
Red Rocks Pizza                     1036 Park Rd NW
Room 11                                   3234 11th St NW
Sticky Fingers Bakery             1370 Park Rd NW
Wonderland                             1101 Kenyon St NW
Asylum                                       2471 18th St NW
Bedrock Billiards                     1841 Columbia Rd NW
Bossa Bistro Lounge              2463 18th St NW
Chief Ike’s Mambo Room      1725 Columbia Rd NW
Idle Times Book Store            2467 18th St NW
Tryst                                           2459 18th St NW
Caramel                                    1603 U St NW
Lee’s Flowers and Cards      1026 U St NW
Mocha Hut                                 1301 U St NW
Polly’s Cafe                               1342 U St NW
Solly’s u street tavern              1942 11th St NW
Vinoteca                                    1940 11th St NW
Cafe Tropé                                2100 P St NW
DC Café                                     2035 P St NW
Soho Tea and Coffee              2150 P St NW
Stars Bistro                               2120 P St NW
Tangysweet Yougurt  Bar      2029 P St NW
Garden District                         1801 14th St NW
Playbill Café                             1409 14th St NW
Timothy Paul Bedding            1529A 14th St NW
Universal Gear                        1529B  14th St NW
ARCH Training Center            1231 & 1227 Good Hope Rd SE
Baked and Wired                     1052 Thomas Jefferson St NW
Big Bear Café                           1700 First St NW
Mocha Ground                          4706 14th St NW
Warehouse                               1021 7th Street NW

ARTISTS
—

Giamoco Abrusci
Ken Ashton
James Calder
Daniel Cima
Jason Colston
Brett Davis
Thomas Drymon
Elsie Dwyer
Josh Gibson
Steve Goldenberg
Jason Gottlieb
Kyle Gustafson
Justin Harris
Linda Hesh
Justin Hoffmann
Seth  Kaplan
Angela Kayklers
Angela Kleis
Brian Knights
Marie Kwak
Bridget Sue Lambert
Pamela Leahigh
Jeffrey Lear
Martin Locraft
Dale Lowery
Cesar Lujan
Pat Padua
Linda Plaisted
Mark Planisek
Michael Platt
Drew Porterfield
Katy Ray
Bruce Robey
Lisa Rosenstein
Julie Seiwell
Kerri Sheehan
Myrna Smernoff
Matthew Smith
Parikha Solanki Mehta
Paivi Solonan
Michael Starghill
Linda Strating
Sanjay Suchak
Ira Tattelman
Raul Valda
John Thurman
Jack Whitsitt
Pete Van Vleet
Amber Wiley
Ken Wyner

I’ve spammed this particular link everwhere else I can think of, but still neglected to post it here on my blog.

Basically, I was approached a few months ago by a senior editor of Symantec’s online magazine “Norton Today” because they were interested in doing a piece on Art and Security. I was approached because of my old work in security data visualization and the fact that’d I’d started to rework and hang the pieces in art shows like Artomatic and My Space on 7th.

Anyway, the interview went really well (in addition to being a lot of fun) and it’s now online at:

http://nortontoday.symantec.com/features/articles/art_of_security.php

(Edit: This link now appears down after a few months. Symantec has republished the article here: http://www.thegeekweekly.com/feature/turning_computer_vis_into_art/index.html )

They used a few older images in their Flash slideshow (My fault – I didnt get them newer images in time).  These were the originals we used at NetSec to do analysis and which have been in a number of presentations (and were in the batch I sent to ArcSight as examples when they were still developing Interactive Discovery, iirc).

You can find the “art” versions that I’ve hung up in galleries at the following link:

http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/art-versions-of-data-visualizations/

I’m still interested in working more of these, but have been moving from graphing – which was a necessity of the business at the time – into a broader field of ontological information/concept representation in art.

(This is in addition to my media experimentation with / interest in projection. I think Id like to merge these two tracks together in the future, but havent gotten there yet.)

Hey all!

I’m going to be showing some data visualizations at the My Space on 7th art show in Washington, DC starting Friday, July 11 at the Touchstone Gallery! Everyone should come out. I took a look at the space and there’s some interesting work hanging already. (And I have to thank Paige, here, who unintentionally helped me decide what to show…but more on that in a later post.)

Oh. And there will be wine tasting opening night.

There will be three old, but reworked images and one new one created just for this show.  Only one has ever been printed before and they all look pretty fantastic.

The new one consists of two superimposed graphs (a paraplot and a scatterplot) of illegitimate traffic going to/from “jackwhitsitt.com” (that would be, uh, most of it).

The three older ones are:

Destination Port Traffic Volume (global sample)

(Test Data from custom developed SEM correlation  modules)

(Pcap data from 10,000 spam emails)

Last night was the opening of J. Coleman’s exhibit at Art Whino entitled “A Dream Remembered, An Endless Pause”. While I enjoyed his style and some individual pieces of his (and the overall Art Whino space is fabulous), I found that I couldn’t connect with most of it. After some consideration, I’ve come to realize it’ s the “football eyes” he uses to depict human faces and that I have the same feeling of “meh” about other artworks that do the same thing.

What is a human face without eyes? So much of who we are exists in them that to abstract them to the level of “footballs” is, to use a bad pun, a bit of a punt. I’ve been told:

“Well, everyone isn’t into realism.” Fine – that’s a perfectly valid perspective. But what’s the point of depicting a face at all then? Some animals have “spots” on them that are supposed to make others think they’re “looking” at them. Do these spots depict the nose? No. The mouth? No. Ears? No. Simply giving the impression of “eyes” is sufficient, even in nature, for instinct to recognize “face”.

So, unless you’re intentionally removing the humanity from a piece of art (which I don’t believe is usually the case), why not use allegorical imagery instead? I’m honestly much more likely to feel a connection to an expressionist rendering of a monkey in a clown suit than I am a human face with football eyes. And, with the pieces where Coleman did use monkeys/apes, I thought he was much more successful.

Looking at the pictures in this post, just imagine how much more impact they’d have if even the faintest attempt was made to bring humanity into the eyes.

More on the Art Whino space later, just wanted to get these thoughts out first.