john t. unger studio

TypePad Hacks is Live!

 

I've been hinting that I was up to something, and now I'm ready to spill the beans.

I've just launched a new blog called TypePad Hacks and I'd love it if you go check it out. TypePad Hacks will focus on the following issues:

1. User Design: Collect useful hacks for extending the capabilities of TypePad blogs.
2. User Forum: Provide a forum for issues, news and user concerns about SixApart products and service.
3. User Power: Organize users into a unified voice to lobby SixApart for the features, fixes and changes to TypePad most important to us. Call it consumer advocacy.

It's still early days at TypePad Hacks… I'll be posting frequently over the next couple weeks to get caught up. There are a half dozen cool hacks in the queue now. I'll also be posting in more detail about each of the suggested changes to the platform. If you have a blog that's hosted with TypePad or if you're just curious to see whether a whole mess of bloggers can influence change, I recommend subscribing to the RSS feed and following along. I'd also welcome any comments you have about things you'd like to see either from me or from TypePad.

I'm hoping that this experiment will be a success and that we will be able to work together to help bring attention to what TypePad's users really want out of the next revision. You can help by promoting the blog. If you like what you see so far, please link to the blog, discuss it on your own blog, or add it to digg, del.icio.us or technorati favorites (there are easy one-click buttons on the site to help you do that). I'll be getting some banners and buttons together also for those of you who like the blog enough to put it in your sidebars.

Do let me know what you think! Thanks.

Note: My sole connection with TypePad or SixApart is that I use their tools every day as an important part of my business as an artist and designer. I don't work for SixApart or receive compensation from them; this is an unofficial, unaffiliated blog. You should probably know that.

Tags: typepad, , sixapart, blog, movabletype, blogs, blogging, business, livejournal, web2.0, typekey, weblogs, design, collaboration, typelist, hacks, typepadhacks

Whitney Biennial

Here's yet another example of how blogs can make cool stuff happen in the real world, and foster collaboration between people who may not even be in close contact:

It appears that I sort of have a piece of art in this year's Whitney Biennial!

The "sort of" part requires a bit of explanation, I think. A while back, I posted a call for action: an attempt to get people to post Picasso's mural Guernica on billboards across the country as a war protest. It was part of a larger concept of large scale public art using open source techniques of collaboration. Well:

 

Last weekend, members of Visual Resistance installed a mural at the Whitney Museum.  Our friends at Deep Dish TV had been invited to show their Shocking and Awful series at the Whitney Biennial. They were assigned a 20-inch TV mounted on a 20-foot wall, which they wanted to spice up a little bit. They called us about 10 days ago and asked us to come up with a mural based on Picasso’s Guernica.

So the Biennial catalog of the exhibit only lists Deep Dish Television, not even Visual Resistance, but I think that since the Guernica project was designed as open source, in a way I can claim that the installation was an example of my American Guernica Project. And VR was kind enough to mention me in their account of the installation, so I know they were thinking about it:

 

Several months back, John Unger proposed an open-source art project called American Guernica. The idea was to put Picasso’s painting on billboards throught the US as a protest against the current wars being waged by the US. While billboard space is probably out of our range, working on this Whitney installation has gotten VR folks talking about using Guernica images on the street in New York.

The Biennial is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious art shows in the world, so, hey, I'd love to be able to claim some partial credit on this if it's applicable. I'm going to see if I can do some further projects with VR as the anniversary of the war comes up this week. They mention in their post that they're looking for someone to do Guernica stencils in Illustrator and oddly enough, I've been thinking of doing just that for the last few weeks. Funny, that.

So, do I have too much on my plate right now? Uh, yeah. Am I loving it? Oh yeah.

Tags: billboard, Picasso, Guernica, antiwar, war, peace, politics, News and politics, culture jamming, free culture, activism, iraq, art, culture, collaboration, street art, tagging, graffiti, design, opensource

American Guernica Hits The News Stands

Doree Shafrir's kick-ass article on the American Guernica Project went out on the Columbia News Service wire recently. It was picked up by a small handful of papers nationally. These are the ones I've found so far…

The Orlando Sentinel

The Naples Daily News

The Arizona Republic

Note: The Arizona Republic requires users to submit some personal info, including an email address, on their first visit. I used info@azcentral.com. Points to the Republic for making their articles available online for free, but I still don't want them to have my email address. The other papers are willing to let you read it without registering.

It's sort of interesting to see how the story runs… The Sentinel cut the parts about Eric S. Raymond and open source, and wrote their own headline. The News and the Republic carried the full text with the original headline.

The timing was good, anyway. I was just in the middle of updating my CV so I could send in an RFQ for the CTA Arts in Transit Program. Amazingly, with all the cash and effort that has gone into developing a great public art program, there does not seem to be a website documenting Arts in Transit. There's a somewhat half-hearted collection of off-site documentation here at chicago-l.org. (I say half-hearted because of a prominent disclaimer which reads "Note: This section has been established on an experimental basis and will be reevaluated after six months. All information in this section will remain on the site, however, even if it is disbanded.") The City of Chicago website has some info on the overall public art program for Chicago, but I'm not going to link to it because they change their URLs all the time. I've never been able to bookmark a page on the city's site and expect to be able to load it later… just do a google search and hope, I guess.

If you are looking for a good resource documenting Chicago public art, I can recommend Chicago Public Art Group. Not only do they have a great deal of photos, there's a wealth of really good advice and info on public art in general.

American Guernica Used as A Class Project

The following entry and comments are excerpted (a little bit) from a post at Oedipa's blog. You can read the whole thing here. I'm reproducing it below because it just totally made my day to read about how American Guernica had been used in the classroom, especially the student's and observer's positive reactions to the idea. Oedipa has also posted her lesson plan for the exercise for those who might want to use or modify it for their own lesson plans.

So today I had another observer come in to take notes and evaluate my skills.  This went really, really well.  After the sting of yesterday's news (that I'm too nice to my students), I went for broke. I crafted a lesson plan around "Reading Images as Text" and brought in several books.  A few of them were Paul Klee, some Giacometti, some photos of New Orleans spiritual communities, and so forth. If anyone of them even so much as whispered out of turn during class, I stopped everything and let my narrow eyes settle on them until they really got the message.  I'm mean.  Cut the shit. Watch the hell out.

Then I had them split up into groups of three and each group had to work with the images in the bookthey had to find one that they would put on a billboard on a highway to send a message about something.  I got this idea from John T. Unger who is proposing a simple open-source street art project, American Guernica. He wants people all over the country to put up billboard-sized reproductions of Picasso's famous painting of the carpet bombing of Guernica. He says, "[I]f the painting is all that's seen, it forces the viewer to make an interpretation instead of being told what to think. Being told what to think is exactly what got Americans in trouble in the first place, no?"

Anyway, I was impressed with this and I hope it catches on.  In the meantime, it made for a GREAT excercise for the class.  Each one got up and gave a presentation on the painting or photo they selected and went into great detail about how they thought it supported a theme or a message in a similar vein to the above project.

The observer approached me after class and told me how impressed he was.  This made me feel much, much better after my slight tailspin yesterday.

Comments from Oedipa's entry:

I totally understand the stress of observation days...I hate them. But this exercise sounds wonderful--I may have to try it myself soon!

Posted by: vague | December 02, 2005 at 02:49 PM

Oedipa,

Wow, this sort of story always makes my day. I *love* teaching, but rarely get to do it in a classroom situation (something to do with not finishing college and refusing to play by the rules. sigh). Anyway, glad to have been of service.

You might be interested in a little write-up I had to do of one of my teaching projects. It discusses some of my basic strategies for getting students involved way over their heads, which I've found to bring good results. Check it out here, if you like: http://www.johntunger.com/nlreport.html

Anyway, thanks for the post. It's been interesting to see how many different interpretations the Guernica idea has brought forth. Keeps me honest. heh.

Posted by: johntunger | December 02, 2005 at 06:58 PM

Hey. So glad this post brought you to my website. One of my students proclaimed about your endeavor, "oh my god! that's brilliant!!!". It takes a lot to get him interested in learning something new. Bringing your project in did it for him. So thanks!!!!

Posted by: Oedipa | December 02, 2005 at 11:11 PM

Actually, if any of you are morbidly curious, my class blog/website is http://writers.typepad.com

By going there, you can actually see or download the class excercise I had the students do around John's project. Also, if any of you have any other interesting suggestions for class projects where it helps them interpret images as text, well, lemme know. I'm open!

Posted by: Oedipa | December 02, 2005 at 11:20 PM

Nice one. i might use that myself, with a little modification.

Posted by: King Of the Hill | December 03, 2005 at 06:25 PM

Stefan Werning on American Guernica

Here is the post from arrey baba! which compared covering the Guernica tapestry at the UN to an act of shock art:

I recently went to see the modern art section of the MFA in Boston with Peter, a friend and fellow MIT visiting scholar and himself an aspiring media artist producing 'art without quotes', i.e. art in contested public spaces where you never know whether it's meant to be provocative or where the potential provocation comes from.

All the MFA exhibits, including Zhang Huan covering himself with birdseed and posing nude in a giant bird cage (sic!), didn't do much for me, though...

And then I read this story about Picasso's Guernica being covered at the request of Bush Administration officials for a broadcasted press conference, in which Colin Powell made his case for the invasion of Iraq! I'm not sure if all those explicitly provocative artists like Huang, Bruce Naumann & Co. will have such an impact, even 68 years from now. Maybe that has to do with the fact that those artists are more concerned with themselves than with what they criticize? (try to read over the sarcastic undertone...).

Maybe, instead of asking people to put Guernica replicas on public billboards, Unger should ask people to put it on the front pages of their websites. Well, he has my website for a start... ;-)

I left the following comment at the original post:

Hey, thanks for posting about the Guernica project. A lot of people have picked this up and run with it, and it's very interesting to me how many different thoughts they have about it.

I agree with you about "explicitly provocative" art... it's so very easy to make work that annoys, angers or threatens people. Sure it's a way to get a lot of coverage, and draw a lot of emotion from the audience. But it's also just too easy: we all learned how to piss people off when we were toddlers. The buttons are *so* easy to find. Finding ways to delight people, or better yet, to make them think without trying to control the outcome... that's more interesting to me. A better challenge, if you will.

Anyway, if I read your post right, you were saying that Powell's action was better shock art than what you saw at the MFA. Wow. What an awesome take on that! (or maybe you meant my project, but I like the other idea better).

American Guernica Makes the Rounds

My call for entries, American Guernica, earned me a brief stint in the spotlight at one of my favorite blogs: We Make Money Not Art last week. I wish I'd posted about it earlier, because the moment has passed already, but I still highly recommend checking out Régine's blog. WMMNA is one of the first blogs I subscribed to and is still one of the first I check every morning.

American Guernica also got picked up on Visual Resistance, a very cool blog that "features political art and innovative projects aimed at raising awareness of urgent social issues through visual media." Eliot expanded nicely on the ideas behind the project and provides some great links to other Guernica-inspired protest art, including a picture of his first stencil, based on a portion of the painting.

 

 

Tags: billboard, Picasso, Guernica, antiwar, war, peace, politics, News and politics, culture jamming, free culture, activism, iraq, art, culture, collaboration, street art, tagging, graffiti, design, opensource

American Guernica: A Call for Guerilla Public Art

Update: American Guernica has been picking up steam. I'll be posting regular updates on the project under it's own category.

I've written here before about the idea of open-sourcing art projects to involve as many participants as possible. American Guernica is a perfect test case for that notion.

In a nutshell, I'd like to invite any interested groups or individuals to help plaster the USA with billboard size reproductions of Picasso's Guernica. Ideally, the work would stand without any text or headlines or additional commentary: if the painting is all that's seen, it forces the viewer to make an interpretation instead of being told what to think. Being told what to think is exactly what got Americans in trouble in the first place, no?

The following paragraph is not what inspired the idea, but I think it explains relatively well what one might hope to accomplish in this project:

A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room. It was placed there as a reminder of the horrors of war. Commissioned and donated by Nelson Rockefeller, it is not quite as monochromatic as the original, using several shades of brown. On February 5, 2003, a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Diplomats, however, told journalists that the Bush Administration leaned on UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq.  -- quoted from wikipedia

If the painting intimidates warmongers into covering it, then why not make sure that it goes up in as many public spaces as possible?

In terms of how the project is carried out, I don't really think it matters whether billboards are rented, plastered over in dark of night (see: BLF, the Billboard Liberation Front) or created just for this purpose. Obviously not everyone has the budget to actually rent billboard space, though it seems like this might be an option for funded activist groups. Now that most billboards are made to hold printed tarps rather than pasted up sheets of paper, it would certainly be easier and faster for guerrilla Guernicas to be painted on canvas and installed at whim. For those who do take the guerrilla approach, it might help to read this basic primer on how to appropriate billboards. Also check out the Wooster Collective for ideas and techniques.

I don't think it matters whether the images are photos, stencils, handpainted, collaged or what. If the project really took off, part of the excitement would be seeing the results of many different people interpreting a well know work in their own way. I will happily publish any photos sent in by participants of the project.

This is what I'm envisioning:

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I did these in photoshop, not the real world. Part of my motivation for open-sourcing the idea is that in the last year, I haven't managed to act on it myself. I'm hoping that people with stronger motivation or resources will be able to make it happen if I plant the seed here.

Meanwhile, I think I'll look into what it costs to rent a billboard in my area and set up a contribution fund on Fundable.org to cover the cost. Fundable is great for this kind of thing because they automatically refund everyone's money if the fundraising for a project is not completed within the specified deadline.

Tags: billboard, Picasso, Guernica, antiwar, war, peace, politics, News and politics, culture jamming, free culture, activism, iraq, art, culture, collaboration, street art, tagging, graffiti, design, opensource

Open Source Public Art: A Proposed Model

Public art projects have the potential to unite or divide communities. Public artworks have proven to have a highly beneficial impact when community residents feel they have been consulted, informed, involved and invited to participate. When a community feels a large scale project has been conducted without their involvement, complaints and ill will are likely to arise. Accordingly, most contemporary public art programs involve some level of community engagement, generally through consulting with community leaders and organizations, as well as through community participation in the design or fabrication of projects which can be adapted to group efforts, such as murals or mosaics.

Even in the best circumstances, however, participation in public art projects is typically limited to existing groups and organizations which can be easily reached. Until recently, there has been no feasible way to reach out to entire communities or neighborhoods except through the proxy of community leaders and selected participation in the work. While this model has produced a great many successful projects, I believe the level of participation could be made much broader by utilizing online tools for collaboration and social networking. This new approach to community participation in public art was initially inspired by the open source movement.

Open Source, Collaboration and Community

Over the last few years, the web has been transformed from a read-only medium to a read/write space. This shift puts an emphasis on feedback, participation, community and collaboration. The best example of this is probably Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers, but there are many other examples. Collaboration and community play a huge role in contemporary artwork as well. Music, design, film, visual art, performance and installations have found the open source model to be of great benefit. Most of the work produced in this fashion remains in a digital format, but the communication tools used to facilitate these works could offer just as much value in the design and creation of large physical works.

In most public art projects, there are at least four specific entities which must come together and achieve some degree of consensus in order to realize a successful project:

• Community: the people who live, work or visit the area where the art is to be placed. In many cases, the community will also be involved in the creation and/or design of the artwork.
• Public Space: The place where the art will go, representatived by the owners or managers of the space.
• Artist(s): The person or persons responsible for the design and creation of the work or for overseeing and guiding participants in the creation of the work.
• Funding Body: The persons or organization responsible for buying materials, paying non-volunteer workers on the project, as well as associated costs such as documentation, community outreach, etc.

What I would like to build is an online center for the creation of public art. The goals of such a site would be as follows:

• Allow anyone to initiate a potential project, whether they are
  
  • an artist,
  • an individual or representative of a community,
  • the owner or manager of a potential site for art
    
  • a funding body.
• To help artists, communities, spaces and funders find each other and choose the best partners for their specific goals.
• Facilitate communication and organization for a project, through:
  
  • discussion on bulletin boards, blogs or wikis
  • community review, discussion and revision of posted images
  • allowing community members to vote on proposed designs, and submit their own ideas in a visual format.
  • tracking funding and spending in public, making the accounting accountable
  • sharing research materials (links, photos, text, etc)
  • scheduling work and events using an online calendar
  • a channel for grassroots funding of a project
  • templates for flyers and letters available to help mobilize support offline.

• A permanent archive of projects, with documentation of the entire process from start to finish. This would include archives of discussions, design revisions, photos or video of work in progress and of the completed work.
• A collection of resources, techniques and accumulated wisdom based on past experience.

This idea is a work in progress, and like the open source movement on which it is based, I welcome suggestions, revisions, and especially collaboration on building or collecting the tools to make it work.

The Vista Project, Open Source Public Art Sculpture

Vistas is a series of identical sculptures designed for installion in a site-specific context in multiple locations. The iconic steel window sculptures are intended to frame unconventionally beautiful scenery—views specific to the character of a place but unlikely to show up on a postcard. Examples of such sites might include a panarama of historically significant buildings, parks or gardens, a naturally occuring landmark or even an interesting shadow visible once a day. Vista windows call attention to unexpected beauty in the same way that a landscape photographer chooses where to stand and shoot.

The windows are finished in brightly colored powder coat enamels to increase visibility and give them a friendly and inviting appearance. Powder coat enamels are environmentally friendly and are among the most durable finishes available for outdoor work. For safety, no glass is used.

Vista Project Details/Design Specs:

• Vista Sculptures are inexpensive
  
  • Opens participation in the project to arts or community groups with limited budgets.
  • Makes private or individual sponsorship practical.
  • Makes Vistas a good project for underserved areas deeply in need of public art.
• The Vista Sculpture Project is scalable.
  Communities decide how many sculptures make sense for their project based on budget, population, and size of neighborhood.
• Each Vista Sculpture is a site-specific work
  interaction with the specific, existing landscape is a critical component of the success of the Vista Project, and yet the project functions successfully in any geographic location.
• Vista is designed to involve the community on a grassroots level.
  Purchase of the sculptures will include a website which enables members of the community to submit photos of suggested locations, vote on proposed locations and discuss the project*. The website will also support grassroots funding of the project using PayPal. Sponsors will be able to choose whether they wish to remain anonymous or make their donation public. The website will inlcude sample posters, letters and press release materials which can be used to increase local awareness and participation in the project.
• Installation of Vista Sculptures is simple and requires no specialized skill or tools.
  Sculptures require only 4 bolts set into existing concrete and takes about 15 minutes.
• Vista Sculptures require no maintenance budget.
  The powder coat finish is capable of withstanding extreme weather conditions for many years and is resistant to spray paint. The heavy steel construction of the sculptures discourages vandalism. If no plans exist to relocate the sculptures within the community, the installation bolts can be stripped or epoxied to insure against theft.
• Vista Sculptures can easily be relocated.
  
  • This allows a small number of sculptures to be rotated to various sites or to be installed in temporary locations.
  • By rotating the sculptures to different sites, communities can make use of all suggested locations over time, insuring that no one who participates in the project feels left out.
  • Rotating the sculptures to new locations increases project visibility, keeps the project fresh and fun, creates a sense of discovery, and allows for "scavenger hunt" or "art trail" promotion of the community.
• Vista Sculptures promote neighborhood pride.
  By increasing awareness of what is special and unique to the spaces in which they are installed and by involving the community in the selection of installation sites, Vista Sculptures increase feelings of ownership and investment in the community.
• Vista Sculptures promote a sense of extended community and belonging
  Like Sister Cities, areas which participate in the Vista Project will have something in common. The sculptures may, in a way, foster community between distant locations. The website used to organize each project on a local level will also allow communities to see how Vista has been implented elsewhere, creating a network of local, regional and global camaraderie.
• Vista Sculptures can be produced quickly and to exact specs
  Your community can be sure the project is accomplished on time and on budget. No unforeseen costs or complications!
• The powdercoat enamel finish is available in 100's of colors
  Communities can choose from a huge selection of colors, enabling Vista Windows to incorporate local team colors, meet zoning or council regulations, etc.

Vistas is designed to interact specifically with neglected, prosaic or ordinary urban spaces rather than the plazas or parks more commonly targeted for public art installation. Ideal Vista sites will increase public awareness of  the built and natural environment and how these interact. Hopefully the project will also reveal something about how “nature” functions in an urban environment in general—I feel that the most successful installation sites are likely to be places where urban planning and entropic reclamation of spaces overlap. The sculptures foster a deeper, renewed appreciation of place by pointing out less obvious ideas of beauty dependant on the character and use of a particular site.

The audience for a piece like Vistas is really “everybody” in the broadest and most intentional sense. Because Vista Sculptures are intended to be installed in everyday spaces...along sidewalks, near public transportation hubs or any urban  area which has substantial foot traffic but is not itself a “destination,” I expect to reach a wide and diverse  cross-section of the urban populace. By stripping the piece down to its simplest form, it functions at an iconic level, inviting the audience to “make it their own.” The work of Keith Haring and Scott McCloud (author of “Understanding Comics”) convinces me that art that can function on a high critical level and still be completely accessible to the general public.

Vistas was originally conceived as a guerilla installation at a time when I faced losing my studio. I sought large-scale projects I could complete without studio space, using common found materials and portable tools. Working on set building at Redmoon Theatre made me aware of how much could be accomplished with simple, everyday objects such as windows, doors, ladders, chairs—things which show up routinely in alleys and which carry deep associations precisely because they are so common in daily life. In refining the concept, I became convinced of Vistas’ viability as a conventional public art project.

*I am currently seeking interested parties who would like to help develop the online tools necessary for the Open Source Public Art website used to manage public participation in projects like Vista. Most of the features can be created using existing, off-the-shelf technology (like PayPal for donations and sponsorship). A design brief will be posted on the blog soon. I'd also like to hear suggestions from anyone involved in public art regarding what features they would like to see incorporated. To get involved, email me.