Conspiracy as Method at Penn

Today I’m serving as guest critic at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for Robert Gerard Pietrusko ’s “Conspiracy as Method” final review. Past work from this popular Landscape Architecture course has been experimental, fun, and insightful—“serious play” as it were.

Meeting in the Weitzman School of Design, we’ll review each group’s short film; the culmination of their semester’s efforts. Each film is composed of three chapters: An investigation of a chosen “natural” disaster, a resultant conspiracy theory (either existing or fabricated for the purposes of this course), and a speculative design proposal for a future institution arising from the group’s constructed context.

On exhibit in Berlin: Trans_actions

My 2011 collaboration with Bernd Lintermann and Robert Gerard Pietrusko —titled trans_actions: The Accelerated Art World 1989–09 —is currently on display at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in the Nothing to Declare exhibition until May 26th. For more information, video, images, and a complete list of collaborators on the original piece see trans_actions: The Accelerated Art World 1989–09 .

MoMA—Talk to Me roundup

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) ’s Talk to Me exhibition is halfway through its run. If you're in the New York area drop in before the show closes on November 7th. The exhibition includes two Stewdio works. The first is Exit (2008) , an immersive data animation created in collaboration with architecture studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro , Warning Office , et al. (See also Talk to Me: Exit .) The second Stewdio piece included in Talk to Me is Windmaker (2007) , an ambient weather widget that applies local wind conditions to live websites. (See also Talk to Me: Windmaker .)

Premiering today: trans_actions

Our new collaboration with Robert Gerard Piertrusko and Bernd Lintermann premieres today at the opening reception for The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 in Karlsruhe, Germany. trans_actions is a panoramic data visualization that illustrates the dramatic increase in the number of biennales of contemporary art and the rapid expansion of the art market following the end of the cold war. Visitors enter a large panoramic projection room bathed in animated data representing artists, curators, biennales, and market fluctuations. (Panoramic video projection, 8192 × 1024 at 25 fps. Approximate running time twenty-five minutes.) Click here to view the trans_actions project page .

Coming soon: trans_actions

Our latest panoramic data animation—titled trans_actions: The Accelerated Art World 1989–09—premieres next month in a new exhibition titled The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989 at the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe, Germany. The piece is a collaboration with Bernd Lintermann and Robert Gerard Piertrusko , and was made possible by the Global Art and the Museum (GAM) department of ZKM headed by Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg. More details to follow.

MoMA: Talk to Me

Later this month New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will unveil Talk to Me , a new design exhibition curated by Paola Antonelli . We're excited to announce two Stewdio works will be included in the show. The first is Exit (2008) , an immersive data animation created in collaboration with architecture studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro , et al. (Exit will be represented through video documentation as the actual piece is physically far too large to be included in this particular showing.) The second Stewdio piece is Windmaker (2007) , an ambient weather widget that applies local wind conditions to live websites. Talk to Me will run from July 24 through November 7, 2011.

Bis Juni, ZKM

Thanks to everyone at ZKM for a fun and productive two weeks. I will return on Wednesday, first of June along with Bobby for another round in the panorama lab. For now, I'm back in London. Sketching. Coding. Rendering. —Stewart

Bis Dann, Karlsruhe

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.

Time suspended at ZKM

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.

ZKM Karlsruhe

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 .

Under Vine greets 50,000th visitor

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.

Ides of December

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.

Talk to Me, MoMA

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 .

Under Vine data visualization at SFMOMA

Under Vine , the latest collaboration between Robert Gerard Pietrusko of Warning Office and Stewart Smith of Stewdio will premiere this evening at the VIP opening of SFMOMA's autumn 2010 exhibition How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now . Read more about this data visualization piece here .

November and Beyond

Bobby and Stewart are currently revising new data visualization animations of the global wine market for inclusion in SFMOMA's exhibition How Wine Became Modern opening next month in San Francisco. The two are building out the graphics using Bronson--their custom animation framework originally created for the Exit piece in 2008 and now two years evolved. Also next month, Stewart is giving a talk about Stewdio at the Creativity and Technology conference in London on the 10th. Further down the road? More collaboration with ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. A workshop for Sara De Bondt's students at the Royal College of Art by Jürg and Stewart. And perhaps a holiday present for the Internet to follow up last year's Browser Pong . There's always more around the bend.

Karlsruhe Office

Stewart and Robert are currently at ZKM (The Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, Germany developing a new data visualization project.