For Rirkrit Tiravanija’s 2004 retrospective at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, writer Bruce Sterling contributed an essay. He wrote, in part:
Imagine living in an art gallery. No, don’t try, that’s unimaginable. In the world of ideal form, there can be no consumption, no digestion, no excretion. No metabolism, no growth, and no decline. In galleries, there is no food. You would starve to death.
Tiravanija, of course, broke that rule, doing now-infamous art projects whereby he’d cook up and serve everything from pad Thai to green curry to (as I was once delighted to receive) free Singha beer. Likened to Beuys’ “social sculpture” or Bourriaud’s notion of “relational aesthetics,” Tiravanija’s work often creates structures or situations that are activated by those who encounter them. Visiting the Walker this month to participate in the exhibition OPEN-ENDED (the art of engagement), Tiravanija will be joined by Sterling for a discussion on March 23. Where their conversation will go is anyone’s guess as Tiravanija’s projects have revolved around ideas as disparate (or similar?) as modernist architecture, peace activism, media consolidation, and ecological sustainability. And Sterling’s interests are perhaps even wider ranging: one of the first cyberpunk authors, he’s chronicled “dead media,” blogged for Wired, spearheaded a green-design movement, wrote countless books of fiction and nonfiction, and much more.
So much more, in fact, that I’m not sure I can write about it all. That’s why I asked Sterling to join us at Off-Center to share his thinking firsthand. Over the next weeks, Sterling will drop in to do one post or several, depending on his time and interest. Also guest-blogging will be Sterling’s Wired colleague, Xeni Jardin. One of the most sought-after voices on technology and culture, she writes for BoingBoing, Wired, NPR, and others.
Look for both their names to appear here soon. And thanks, Bruce and Xeni, for dropping by.
I’m at a tech conference in San Diego.
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etech/
Jefferson Y. Hahn, whom I saw earlier at Ars Electronica in Linz,
just did a tech-artsy demo that had these alpha geeks salivating. It was
like throwing chum to the sharks.
Here’s a video demonstration of the “multi-touch” gizmo Jeff Hahn just demoed live.
And it crashed. That’s how you know it’s a real technology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-y3ZNaCqs
Comment by Bruce Sterling — 3/7/2006 @ 2:38 pm
I have now left San Diego and reached Austin, where the South by SouthWest
festival is about to commence.
http://www.sxsw.com
Want to see some seriously wack architecture coverage?
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/
BLDGBLOG is particularly high in the WTHDHFTS factor, or
“Where The Hell Does He Find This Stuff?”, without which blogging
can swiftly become a gruelling ordeal for the reader, like, say,
watching your host’s wedding snapshots.
Comment by Bruce Sterling — 3/9/2006 @ 4:31 pm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/sxsw/
South by SouthWest is unfolding here in Austin, just in time for spring break.
Here comes a photographic calamity.
Comment by Bruce Sterling — 3/10/2006 @ 11:40 pm
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001163.php
You’ll believe in “Web 2.0″ once you get a load of these
“consensus web filters.”
It won’t be long before there’s a consensus web filter
to filter the ever-growing host of consensus web filters.
Comment by Bruce Sterling — 3/11/2006 @ 3:23 pm
The art of consensus video filtering hasn’t advanced much beyond
obligatory, geek-pleasing clips of wacky tree-climbing robots.
http://www.videosift.com/topstories.php
Comment by Bruce Sterling — 3/13/2006 @ 9:46 am
First and foremost it is humbling to even be on your mind Mr. Sterling. However, I would like to direct you to the top video page at VideoSift.
http://www.videosift.com/topstories.php
With the exception of the home made light saber battle our top videos are almost devoid of “geek-pleasing” clips. I would certainly be remiss though if I were to claim for even an instant that our site did not have a decidedly geeky slant. I think this will probably change over time, but at the moment that has to do with our venues of launch.
At the time your comment was posted we had largely only been linked off of digg, metafilter, and a brief del.icio.us boom, none of which are great places to attract less nerdy members to the fold. In May we are launching a user competition, to help with this we have been contacting film schools about the chance their students have for free promotion. Hopefully this will be one of the first major steps in widening our audience.
At any rate hope you check the site out again, it’s still rapidly evolving and has yet to hit upon anything resembling a final shape.
Comment by James Roe — 4/2/2006 @ 3:10 am
Yeah, man, it’s astounding that your outfit has already worked
its way up from tree-climbing robots to awesome ukelele players!
Time is on your side and the sky is the limit….
Comment by Bruce Sterling — 4/6/2006 @ 11:39 am