Eyebeam is holding a “How To Apply” Forum on April 16 at 7 PM featuring past Eyebeam Resident and recent Residency Curatorial Panelist Robert Ransick (Bennington College, Vermont) and current Eyebeam Senior Fellow Steve Lambert (Parsons/The New School and Hunter College). The forum is a chance for those interetsed in applying to our current cycle of Eyebeam Residencies, open April 1 — May 15, to ask questions and have dicussions with those who have gone through it and seen both sides of the application process, both as an artist and a selection panelist.
Yearly Archives: 2009
It’s Not Us, It’s You – at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art
Go and see work I prepared special for this show entitled, Steve Lambert refused to participate in this exhibition because the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art does not budget for artists fees, mixed media, 2009.
Exhibition: April 4 — June 20, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday April 3, 6-8 PM
It’s Not Us, It’s You is an exhibition that explores the inevitability of rejection in our lives — a timely topic in today’s woeful economic climate. Through a tragic and sometimes heartbreaking lens, the artists in this exhibition respond to the reality of rejection with subversion, self-reflection, humor and brutal honesty. The show is guest curated by artist Ray Beldner and includes paintings, sculpture, video, and multi-media work from artists Anthony Discenza, Stephanie Syjuco, Michael Arcega, Kara Maria, Steve Lambert, Jonn Herschend, Dee Hibbert-Jones, Nomi Talisman, Desiree Holman, Orly Cogan, Kate Gilmore, Robert Eads and Arthur Gonzalez.
As part of It’s Not Us, It’s You, Beldner is compiling a book of artist rejection letters. Artists are invited to send their rejection letters via email to info@sjica.org with “FOR REJECTION SHOW” in the subject by March 28. The ICA promises that no entries will be rejected for this project.
It’s Not Us, It’s You is presented in the ICA’s Focus Gallery, Cardinale Project Room and Night Moves windows (after-dark programming in the ICA’s front windows) from April 4 through June 20. An opening reception on Friday, April 3 from 6-8pm will feature an open-mic session for rejection confessions.
SelfControl
Is email a distraction? SelfControl is an OS X application which blocks access to incoming and/or outgoing mail servers and websites for a predetermined period of time.
For example, you could block access to your email, facebook, and twitter for 90 minutes, but still have access to the rest of the web. Once started, it can not be undone by the application, by deleting the application, or by restarting the computer — you must wait for the timer to run out.
Created while at Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology. Thanks to Charlie Stigler for developing the application.
Self Control is Free Software
SelfControl is Free Software under the GPL. Feel free to make improvements, linux ports, etc. The sourcecode and wiki are on Github, and there is a ticket system too.
Free Software means you are free to use, modify, and redistribute the application and the source code.
Free Software and volunteers have made a Linux version and a Windows version possible.
Why did you make this?
Because I needed it, same as you. I was partly inspired by Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero talk (worth watching). Charlie Stigler was kind enough to code it based on my sketches for the handsome fee of $125 (I think he charges more now). And now we’re giving it away (and the code too) because we want it to be useful. You can read a little article about Charlie and SelfControl here.
I am an artist, and as anyone who creates things knows; the time you can block out to get focused work done is invaluable. Hopefully this will help you focus on whatever you need to do, from creating that project, writing your novel, studying for your exams, or whatever you want to do. Good luck.
P.S. Before you eliminate procrastination from your life, maybe have a look around my site first?
Help out
Has SelfControl been helpful to you? Would you like to see a certain feature implemented? If you met us in person, would you buy us a drink? If you can’t help code, we wont turn down your money.
Download SelfControl
Download SelfControl at SelfControlApp.com
Bomb Magazine Interview
The Spring 2009 (#107) issue of Bomb Magazine includes an interview I did with Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonano of the Yes Men. You can read the whole interview on Bomb Magazine‘s website, but it looks nicer in the magazine.
Here’s an excerpt:
SL So, when you two are doing these speaking gigs, do you basically play the same character each time? I know for each one you have to use different names, but as “actors” do you imagine them to be the same people? What goes into creating these businessmen characters?
MB If you look at someone like Jack Nicholson, he always seems like he is sort of the same even when he is playing different characters. I think we must be something like that.
AB Except that we can’t act.
MB Right. What I meant was that if we were actors, it might be like that. The fact is that we have no clue what we are doing when we are up there. Luckily, the audiences think we really are who we say we are, so there is no need to act at all. And our character development has no particular method. It’s there in some intuitive way, but we don’t think too much about it.
SL Are the projects that have been big in the media–Dow Chemical and New Orleans, most obviously–are those working against a secondary message you are trying to communicate to activists? Which is that this strategy might be worth considering, and that it’s totally within reach? Neither of you have any real formal training as “imposters” and from what I have gathered hanging around y’all for the past year is that this is very much a seat-of-the-pants operation.
MB Yeah, we barely have pants at all, really. Anyone could do stuff like this, and in our movies that comes through, I think.
AB Which encourages a lot of activists, not necessarily because they want to use the same methods, but because they see how the world of big business is not a fortress . . . it’s a house of cards.
Germany has it’s own utopic future newspaper
I’m honored and tickled that a group in Germany has used our utopic future newspaper concept! I believe Andy and I talked briefly with some people in Germany who were planning something…
From Deutche Welle
Anti-Globalization Group Circulates Faked German Newspaper from 2010
What will the world be like a year from now? Left-wing activist group Attac publicized their ideas by printing realistic-looking copies of a prominent German newspaper — dated May 1, 2010.
Attac activists distributed 150,000 copies of their faked, eight-page version of the German weekly Die Zeit in over 90 cities across the country.
With the top headline “At the end of the tunnel,” the paper presented reports the group said it thinks can become reality within 13 months.
Today’s news about the global finance crisis, world hunger and climate change leave a lot of people feeling helpless, said Attac member Jutta Sundermann.
“We fast forwarded time and wrote about the news we want to read about tomorrow — not about some distant paradise, but about concrete changes that are conceivable and attainable,” she added.
Articles describe the beginning of a “new era,” where banks have been nationalized, the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging countries see eye to eye, and polluters are taken to task.
Detailed print and online imitations
Attac mimicked the weekly newspaper’s format down to the last detail, though the final version was a bit smaller. They also recreated an equally detailed online version.
Die Zeit said it would not take legal action against the group.
“Naturally, we can never endorse an imitation of Die Zeit in print or online, particularly not in quality as good as this,” said the paper’s editor-in-chief, Giovanni di Lorenzo. “But it’s not surprising that Attac chose Die Zeit for this campaign, as it’s the largest national newspaper of quality.”
The paper has a circulation of over half a million.
In a similar campaign, the American activist group Yes-Men published a false version of The New York Times.
The Attac version’s website is die-zeit.net. (actually it looks like the site has been taken down)
Climate for Change at Liverpool’s FACT
I’ll be at this for the first week for the first week of the exhibition.
Climate for Change
13 March – 31 May
In 2009, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) is exploring how humans can be invested in the change needed to sustain civilization and examining the multiple crises affecting the world: ecological, financial, food, housing. Is society itself becoming unsustainable?
The 21st century has finally hit and there is an energy in the air – how do you respond? Forget the eco-art and bring on local, national and international debates, actions, contexts, struggles and solutions.
With residents from Eyebeam’s Sustainability Research Group, Stefan Szczelkun, Melanie Gilligan and more, Climate for Change is an experiment in local activism and engagement.
FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L14DQ
RISD | Public Engagement – Tricks of the Eye exhibition
Opening Night, Thursday March 5th , 6-8pm
On view at RISD|Public Engagement, 2nd Floor, CIT Buildling, 169 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI from March 5 thru April 3, 2009.
RISD|Public Engagement is pleased to sponsor the upcoming exhibit Tricks of the Eye: History and Memory in a Shifting Social Landscape. The exhibition highlights the ways that local and national artists respond to the shifting landscapes that backdrop and underline our society’s actions and intentions. Viewed together, the documentation of these at projects foster a vibrant learning environment for the RISD and Providence communities to develop an expanded horizon of what it means to make socially- and publicly-engaged artwork.
Tricks of the Eye incorporates documentation of past and current projects that invite multiple methods of engagement from the viewer. Documentation strategies include web presentations, printed material, models, as well as ephemera from the original artwork.
(more…)
CAA – Artist as Startup: Web Application as Cultural Intervention
Friday, February 27, 2:30 PM—5:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 402AB, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Chair: Michael Mandiberg, College of Staten Island, City University of New York
MyFrienemies.com: Anti-Social Networking
Angie Waller, Parsons the New School for Design
Mechanical Olympics
xtine burrough, California State University, Fullerton
Beyond Friend Collecting and the Gossip Mill: Social Networking for Change
Brooke Singer, Purchase College, State University of New York
Add-Art.org: Why Reinvent the Wheel When One Gear Can Make the Whole System Run Backward
Steve Lambert, Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology
“But Does it Work?” discussion at Elizabeth Foundation
But Does it Work?
Art, Activism and the Interventionist’s Gesture
Tuesday, February 24, 6:30 pm
A Conversation between Joseph DeLappe, Stephen Duncombe, and Steve Lambert
Artists/activists Joseph DeLappe and Steve Lambert join writer/activist/media scholar Stephen Duncombe to discuss what happens when artists interfere with existing structures of media in order to manipulate and use them as vehicles for political and social commentary. How do these forms of intervention compare to straight-forward art activism, and what are these artists hoping to achieve? How does one even measure success when utopia is the goal? The talk will focus on the artists’ works “dead-in-iraq”, “iraqimemorial.org” and the recent faux New York Times “Special Edition” announcing the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
EFA Project Space presents this event in conjunction with the exhibition Post Memory: A Collection of Makeshift Monuments, on view February 21- March 28.
Talking at Red76 Flying University
The Flying University is a Red76 project.
Red76 is going to be doing a project called Pop-Up Book Academy in Sam Gould’s hotel room on Tuesday the 10th. If you are free it would be great to see you there. Also, we are looking for books for people to sell for the project. Do you have any that you would be interested in getting rid of? You would get the majority of the profits, while a percentage of all sales would go to a fund to produce future projects in print form by Red76 and like-minded associates.
Contact me and I will get you info on the hotel and room number. It starts at 6pm.