Scott Kildall + Wikipedia Art!

Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern invite you to participate in an intervention on Wikipedia!

Wikipedia Art is art that anyone can edit.

We've posted a new entry on Wikipedia called "Wikipedia Art." This page is the manifestation of the work of art; alter its composition, and you become a collaborator in the art's formation. The catch is that Wikipedia, the world's free and editable encyclopedia, has enforced standards of quality and verifiability. All Wikipedia articles, and each fact written in them, must cite “credible” external sources: interviews, blogs, or articles in “trustworthy” media institutions.

Wikipedia Art is birthed, survives and transforms itself through public performance and communal intervention. It is continuously reconstituted and redefined in a participant-driven write+cite+edit process that we call "performative citation."

Wikipedia Art MUST BE written about extensively both on- and off-line, and these writings will in turn be included as part of the work, on its Wikipedia page. This serves the dual purpose of verifying the piece - which is considered controversial by those in the Wikipedia community, and may occasionally be removed from the site - as well as transforming it over time.

Here are three ways you can join the collaboration:

1. Write a text, blog entry, essay or any other form of thoughts about the project;
2. Edit the Wikipedia page itself, citing a published text (even your own!);
3. Pass along this call for participation to others

The link to the project page is http://www.wikipediaart.org

Initial interviews and essays: Wikipedia Art — a virtual fireside chat: http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2009/02/wikipedia-art-virtual-fireside-chat.html

WikiPedia art? -- by Patrick Lichty http://blog.furtherfield.org/?q=node/267

Gerald Cannon

Gerald Cannon writes about his concern with methods of communication in his latest statement, "Essentially, this translates into issues of how all forms of code are constructed and manipulated. Utilizing digital coding presents a thoroughly new medium with which to reexamine all codes."

"Confusion and questions seem to proliferate in encoding and decoding. Even digital coding exposes questions of how one might accurately distinguish discrete (digital) systems from analog systems. My sense is that all perceptual systems are sampling systems (i.e. discrete in fundamental structure). Further, I feel that these coding systems are prone to “sampling” errors. Hence, our perception of motion, sound, color, even reality itself are not analog, as we conceive, but often even less accurate “discrete” systems than computer technology provides. All codes then are little more than algorithms in form and fact and, hence, like art itself, only mimic reality and feign truth via reductivist methods."

"At this point in time these codes can be digitally woven into meta-codes where sound creates image and words create motion, etc., etc. This almost magical misdirection of intent leads to questions about how we perceive along with what we perceive. My work weaves this misdirection into art that often reveals its own flaws and the flaws of the codes connecting it to other systems. It can lead to two simultaneous, though mutually exclusive, conclusions, hence questioning even its own viability as art or communication."

"My work premise has been that any thoroughly developed, internally consistent system, followed intently, will lead to a form that is beautiful, valid expression - in other words, art. What we have regularly accepted as truth and/or reality often has little to bring to bear on the truth and reality of this literally unfounded outcome. As I construct such systems, they tend to fail as simple aesthetic expression and/or self-aware ironically bound expression. In existing on both levels, they tend to fail on one level or the other. The end product is a kind of phantom expression of any thoroughly coded communication as art and vice versa. Little actually validates its value as either."

Cannon's work will be on exhibition at the 2009 invitational show of alumni from University of New Orleans MFA grads, along with works by Peter Halley, among others.

Lorraine Peltz

Lorraine Peltz' exhibition, Pleasure Paintings, along with works by Phyllis Bramson and Keer Tanchak, opened at the Elmhurst Art Museum this Sunday. Lorraine's paintings are complex ruminations on the nature of private identity and public persona. Using imagery culled from both personal history and the contemporary moment, they reference the past and the present. Chandeliers conjure a remembered culture, patterned stylized flowers, starbursts and decorative flourishes represent fantasy and desire, hidden but visually constant as socially acceptable feminine icons of sheer pleasure. Lorraine is also a newly awarded Illinois Arts Council International Travel Grant recipient, and will use the award to travel to Italy thissummer for a small show at at art space in Verona.

San Francisco Arts Commission: News

2009 Bay Area Artists Registry:
Introducing the 2009 Bay Area Artists Registry, a project of the Arts Commission’s Public Art Program.

The San Francisco Arts Commission invites artists to apply for the 2009 Bay Area Artists Registry. This registry will be used to select artists for a range of new public art opportunities associated with the construction of new civic buildings, parks and playgrounds as well as transportation and streetscape improvement projects. Given the great diversity of public art project opportunities, the Arts Commission seeks to include in the 2009 Bay Area Artists Registry artists working in a variety of media and artistic approaches, and especially those artists who are interested in having their design concepts translated into durable and easily maintained materials.

Application deadline: Monday, March 23, 2009, 5:00 PM (PST) For more information on the registry and the applicant workshops, go to: www.sfartscommission.org/pubartcollection.

Eligibility: Artists residing in the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties
Budgets: approximately $30,000 to $200,000
All application materials must be submitted online via CaFÉ at www.callforentry.org

Also there are 2 applicant workshops open to Bay Area artists:
Interested artists may attend an applicant workshop to find out more about the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Public Art Program and the project opportunities associated with the 2009 Bay Area Artists Registry, and to receive instructions on submitting a registry application through CaFÉ. While attendance at an applicant workshop is not required, applicants to the registry are encouraged to attend. The same information will be presented at both workshops, and applicants need only attend one. The workshops are free and open to the public.

WORKSHOP DATES
WHEN: Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 6 – 7:30 PM
WHERE: 25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 70 (Lower Level), San Francisco, CA 94102

WHEN: Saturday, March 7, 2009, from 10 – 11:30 AM
WHERE: 25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 70 (Lower Level), San Francisco, CA 94102

CANNON::NORTH::YUN Opening Reception

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