Recently I've become re-obsessed with The X-Files. (My last bout of this ended around 1998 or so.) I strongly believe a second movie should be made—there's just so much potential there. (Yes, I realize there have already been two movies, but let's just pretend that absolute rubbish sequel was never made.) I've been watching the series in order, taking notes on arc themes and character introductions, cinematography, etc. It's like homework. But fun homework. These X-Files triptychs are a scatterbrained byproduct of my obsession. Have a look here: http://stewd.io/xfiles —Stewart
One week down and one to go here at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. To recap, I'm here working with Bernd Lintermann, head of the Institute for Visual Media, and the Global Art and the Museum team lead by Andrea Buddensieg on a data visualization exhibition piece for The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 exhibition opening this September. Storyboarding. Coding. Bumping along to an odd mix of the instrumentals-only version of Dr. Dre's 2001 and the first three records from Squirrel Nut Zippers. Not to mention the two minute trailer for the Beastie Boys' Fight for your Right—Revisited which seems to have the most incredible cast list ever, including what appears to be a DeLorean time machine. ("Sense is something you can't even make sense of until you've been to the future and spent time there.") So much more coding and sketching to do. Back at it now. —Stewart
It's that time again. Stewart is currently at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany working with Bernd Lintermann, head of the Institute for Visual Media, and the ever-sharp Global Art and the Museum team. (Bobby will return to ZKM in June.) The result of this collaboration will be an immersive data animation of the art market—a strange and sometimes illogical economy of artists, curators, biennales, fairs, auction houses, and collectors—on display as part of the The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 exhibition opening this September. But for now, it's springtime. Trees. Leaves. Rain. Breezes. Sunshine. Bunnies. Storyboards. SQL. OpenGL. And so on. Unrelated: Seventeen years ago today there was an unhappy kid in Seattle. And then there wasn't. How time passes.
Yesterday Stewart gave a little talk about Stewdio at Rapier London. Because Rapier's website is a live webcam online visitors were able to peek in and comment via Twitter. You can follow Rapier's tweets at @RapierUK.
This evening Stewart will be showing some slides at Nexus Interactive Arts along with Rumpus Room and Quayola. A fun night of interactive exchange. Check in on the Nexus Twitter feed at @NexusLondon.
David Reinfurt, Stuart Bailey, and Angie Keefer are creating a new model of library: The Serving Library. You are encouraged to read their collective Statement of Intent PDF, help with kickstart funding and of course keep an eye on the Serving Library website which will soon flower from its current form of minimalist five-point manifesto into something much, much larger. See also Dexter / Sinister, O R G, and Dot Dot Dot.
Jürg Lehni has been featured in the relaunch issue of Grafik Magazine (issue #188, pp.28–41). The profile includes photos and descriptions of Jürg's work and interview snippets from Jürg, his collaborators, and his brother Urs Lehni. Some projects highlighted in the profile include Scriptographer, Empty Words, Hektor, Rita, Flood Fill, and the Lineto type foundry website. You can read more about Jürg's work on his website, http://lehni.org and watch more video at http://vimeo.com/lehni/videos. Also check out the brand new Things to Say website, a curatorial collaboration between Jürg and Alex Rich, at http://thingstosay.org.
Last September TED announced their Ads Worth Spreading challenge. Now that the deadline for entry—February 7th—is upon us the judging begins. Stewart has been selected to participate in the twenty-four member judging panel for this competition. Stewdio wishes good luck to all the entrants. Stay tuned to TED for the Ads Worth Spreading results: http://partners.ted.com/adsworthspreading/.
Jürg Lehni and Stewart have been invited as tutors to a one month workshop at the Royal College of Art organized by the Helen Hamlyn Centre and sponsored by Research in Motion. As part of the workshop proceedings Stewart will be speaking about his work at the RCA tomorrow afternoon at 13:30 in the Performing Arts Lab (on the first floor of the Stevens Building). Jürg will do likewise the following Wednesday.
Time's up and our visit to ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, Germany has ended. So many faces made this three week working-visit feel more like a home away from home. Big smiles to Andrea, Annie, Bernd, Daria, Derek, Dirk, Hans, Heike, Iris, Jacob, Jan, Jens, Julia, Margit, Martin, Matthias, Moritz, Niko, Sarah, Silke, Urs, and Xiaowen.
Following a ten day design charrette at the ZKM (Center for Art and Media) Robert Gerard Pietrusko of Warning Office has returned to Harvard while Stewart continues to construct test animations for the panorama room. At the close of January Stewart will return to London to rejoin Nazerno Crea and Jürg Lehni in Shacklewell Studios.
Stewart and Bobby have returned to ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, Germany to continue their collaboration with the Global Art and the Museum on a new data animation piece. The work will exist as a panoramic projection--opening this September at the museum. The two are constructing the animation in their own Bronson framework, initially developed for their work on the Exit (Terre Natale) collaboration in 2008 and incrementally enhanced and refined for later works such as Under Vine.
According to SFMOMA curator Harry Urbeck, our new data piece—titled Under Vine—has greeted over 50,000 museum visitors since the new exhibition How Wine Became Modern opened a month ago. Physical visitor numbers can seem strange in our cultural bubble dominated by web visitors. (For example, Browser Pong reached 50,000 unique visitors within just twelve hours of posting the URL.) We are very pleased with the physical foot traffic and wish everyone the happiest of holidays.
A rather good day to pause and review. In November Robert Gerard Pietrusko and Stewart unveiled their latest collaboration, Under Vine, for the SFMOMA's new exhibition How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now. Under Vine is a data animation describing a modernized view of wine production and export.
Last week Jürg Lehni and Stewart visited Sara De Bondt's Design Without Labels class at the Royal College of Art to conduct a workshop. The two gave a "subjective and fragmented" history of programming (beginning with punch card looms and largely avoiding actual computer languages all together) and then delivered an assignment brief challenging the students to create their own language and example applications for the following week.
New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is planning a new exhibition for summer 2011 titled Talk to Me which promises to be nerdtastic. The exhibition team, lead by senior curator, Paola Antonelli, is sifting through an ever-mutating list of potential pieces for the show. This queue of artworks currently includes two Stewdio pieces: the collaborative Exit (Terre Natale) data animation and our Jed's Other Poem music video for the band Grandaddy. Some friendly faces appear in the queue as well: studio mate Jürg Lehni and recent studio guest Jaakko Tuomivaara.