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Robotourguide.

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The Regional Archaeological Museum in Agrigento, Italy, is enlisting a robot to lead visitors on tours of the facility. Outfitted with wheels, a keyboard, a monitor, video camera and sensors, Cicerobot will help visitors navigate the museum and provide information on the exhibits: Harris Dindo, part of the science team at Palermo University that developed [...]

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The Regional Archaeological Museum in Agrigento, Italy, is enlisting a robot to lead visitors on tours of the facility. Outfitted with wheels, a keyboard, a monitor, video camera and sensors, Cicerobot will help visitors navigate the museum and provide information on the exhibits:

Harris Dindo, part of the science team at Palermo University that developed the robot, said: “It uses the technique of latent semantic analysis, which means it can answer many of the questions tourists throw at it and have intelligent interaction with them.”

ZDNet has more. Via SmartMobs.

Cattelan on biennial curating

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“Curating a biennial is like pointing a gun at your head and smiling at the same time, and waiting for someone else to come and pull the trigger.” –Maurizio Cattelan (as paraphrased by Massimilliano Gioni)

Japanese iPod art stars

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Here’s an interesting bit of art technology: Japanese Art Scene Monitor reports that one of Japan’s largest printing companies is releasing a slideshow of art by Yoshitomo Nara, Takashi Homma, Kenji Yanobe, and others for viewing on iPods. The Artstar project comes on CD and includes on music track plus 175 images, from drawings to [...]

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Here’s an interesting bit of art technology: Japanese Art Scene Monitor reports that one of Japan’s largest printing companies is releasing a slideshow of art by Yoshitomo Nara, Takashi Homma, Kenji Yanobe, and others for viewing on iPods. The Artstar project comes on CD and includes on music track plus 175 images, from drawings to photographs. Or in some cases, meta-photographs: “[Takashi] Homma has taken photographs of his photographs, creating 167 deliberately low-fi images, perhaps in a humorous acknowledgement of the iPod’s limitations as a visual media.”

Above: works by Yoshitomo Nara. (Thanks, Lynn.)

Art predictions ‘06

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Artnet invited curators and artists to list their predictions for the new year. The list runs from the cryptically grim (Maurizio Cattelan: “Things can only get better.”) to the absurd (Aura Rosenberg, who references the recent Walker gig Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30: “The producers of Sesame Street will approach Dan Graham about directing a [...]

Artnet invited curators and artists to list their predictions for the new year. The list runs from the cryptically grim (Maurizio Cattelan: “Things can only get better.”) to the absurd (Aura Rosenberg, who references the recent Walker gig Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30: “The producers of Sesame Street will approach Dan Graham about directing a new puppet segment called “Wild on Sesame Street.”). But one item, from frequent Artnet contributor Charlie Finch, stands out.

Glenn Lowry will head the Metropolitan Museum, Kathy Halbreich will head MoMA, and Gary Garrels will head the Walker Art Center.

Does he know something we don’t?

Podcasting updates: SFMOMA and WAC

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According to SmartMobs, SFMOMA is offering a $2 admission discount to museum visitors who present an mp3 player loaded with their Artcast files. They’re also hosting an “Artcast Invitational,” in which artists and wannabe curators can submit their own podcasts. Winning recordings will win a membership and get a slot in SFMOMA’s podcast rotation. Here [...]

According to SmartMobs, SFMOMA is offering a $2 admission discount to museum visitors who present an mp3 player loaded with their Artcast files. They’re also hosting an “Artcast Invitational,” in which artists and wannabe curators can submit their own podcasts. Winning recordings will win a membership and get a slot in SFMOMA’s podcast rotation.

Here at the Walker, Art on Call is going strong. Filmmakers in the Women with Vision festival will be using the system–which is a cellphone-based audio guide that can also be downloaded as a podcast on the Walker site–to share their musings during the 13th annual edition in March. And commentary from architects featured in our exhibition Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses are now available as mp3s, podcasts and via cellphone.

Mobile museum

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Walker on Wheels, a mobile art lab designed by Atelier van Lieshout, brought artmaking activities to local neighborhoods, but the Netherlands’ Pleinmuseum takes the idea to a new level: it’s a transportable art center that can be plopped down in the center of a city. Designed by René van Engelenburg, it was created to open [...]

Walker on Wheels, a mobile art lab designed by Atelier van Lieshout, brought artmaking activities to local neighborhoods, but the Netherlands’ Pleinmuseum takes the idea to a new level: it’s a transportable art center that can be plopped down in the center of a city. Designed by René van Engelenburg, it was created to open up to the life of the city–literally:

During daytime, the pavilion remains closed and as such symbolically refers to the ‘white cube’, the paradigmatic model of the modernist museum. After sunset, the cube opens itself hydraulically and forms a dynamic architectural installation that embraces space. The white walls become projection screens that continually take on new appearances, like the skin of a chameleon. In this manner, Pleinmuseum becomes a temporary stage for visual communication; a platform through which artists and designers can communicate with a broad audience.

As We-Make-Money-Not-Art reports, the museum toured to cities in the Netherlands and Belgium last summer, and a European tour is in the works.

Warhol’s Brokeback Mountain?

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With Ang Lee discussing Brokeback Mountain here tonight and a Warhol show in the galleries, this seems particularly apropos: The Smoking Gun posts FBI documents from 1968 in which they were investigating whether Andy Warhol was involved with the interstate transportation of obscene material. The offending film, scoped out by two agents at a San [...]

With Ang Lee discussing Brokeback Mountain here tonight and a Warhol show in the galleries, this seems particularly apropos: The Smoking Gun posts FBI documents from 1968 in which they were investigating whether Andy Warhol was involved with the interstate transportation of obscene material. The offending film, scoped out by two agents at a San Francisco festival, was a gay cowboy saga called Lonesome Cowboy. As TSG writes, “Though not as polished as Pauline Kael or Roger Ebert, the agents still get two thumbs up for delivering this marvelously entertaining report.”

From January 19 through 26, the Walker hosts “Factory Films,” a series of Warhol’s early films. Alas, Lonesome Cowboy won’t be screened.

Artblogging at Eye Level

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As Modern Art Notes‘ Tyler Green told us long ago, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art is launching a blog. At last it’s online, and it’s manned by the able Grammar.police helmsman Kriston Capps. Check out Eye Level, a site that that’ll investigate “American art–its history, evolution, and currents.” Speaking of Tyler: Green’s Los Angeles [...]

As Modern Art Notes‘ Tyler Green told us long ago, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art is launching a blog. At last it’s online, and it’s manned by the able Grammar.police helmsman Kriston Capps. Check out Eye Level, a site that that’ll investigate “American art–its history, evolution, and currents.”

Speaking of Tyler: Green’s Los Angeles Times editorial on LACMA’s planned demolition–in three days–of a parking structure that’s home to murals by Barry McGee and the late Margaret Kilgallen is now online.

McGee TV

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My post that mentioned Barry McGee’s mural at LACMA reminded me of a TV spot we made to promote our 1998 exhibition Regards, Barry McGee, curated by visual arts intern Eungie Joo (now director of REDCAT). Created pro bono with a shoestring production budget, the spot was the work of Planet Propaganda of Madison, Wis. [...]

My post that mentioned Barry McGee’s mural at LACMA reminded me of a TV spot we made to promote our 1998 exhibition Regards, Barry McGee, curated by visual arts intern Eungie Joo (now director of REDCAT). Created pro bono with a shoestring production budget, the spot was the work of Planet Propaganda of Madison, Wis. So simple, it’s a montage of details from a mural McGee created for our show set to music by one of Planet’s founders and ambient street sounds. Since our web archive doesn’t include much documentation of the show (only this piece, a wall assemblage of drawings in thrift-store frames, that we purchased from it) here’s your chance to see this amazing mural. Click and enjoy.

Shake your Tut.

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During its run at LACMA, the exhibition Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs will likely be the second most popular show in the museum’s history, drawing nearly a million people over four months (the most popular show, in 1978, also featured the gold-gilded pharoah). Its four-city tour continues to the Museum of Art [...]

During its run at LACMA, the exhibition Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs will likely be the second most popular show in the museum’s history, drawing nearly a million people over four months (the most popular show, in 1978, also featured the gold-gilded pharoah). Its four-city tour continues to the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, where it’ll be marketed with a hip-hop slogan and this flash animation featuring a jiggy Tut bouncing to a techno/hip-hop loop. The tagline, a testament to Tut’s wealth that’s equivalent to $200 million today: “The Original King of Bling.”

(Via MAN.)

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