H+ Magazine, Issue 4

I interviewed artist Sophie Kahn for the Fall 2009 issue of H+ Magazine. The new issue is now available to download. This is also the first issue with national print distribution. You should be able to pick it up soon at magazine shops and booksellers nationwide.

Congratulations to Ken Goffman (aka. R.U. Sirius) for the success of this venture. It is the right magazine at the right time and is really taking off.

You can also read additional articles at the online edition, and join the
H+ Community, the H+ Magazine Facebook group, and follow H+ on Twitter.

H+ Magazine, Issue 3

I promised readers here they would be first to know, should anything come of my talks with H+ Magazine. Well, for issue #3 I received my first assignment. I’ve actually been a little tardy with my update— it’s been out for several weeks (I have been very busy).

I was asked to contribute an “Art” article. After considering various artists, and presenting Ken with some options, I eventually interviewed Christopher Conte (whose work some may recall I covered here once before at GigantiCo). We met over dinner at Yaffa, and at a later date I had the unique pleasure of photographing a couple of Mr. Conte’s pieces. A really swell guy too, I might add. I was given four pages to layout to my liking (only some minor font changes were made for the final edition, to better integrate my layout with the rest of the magazine).

Ken Goffman (aka. R.U. Sirius) has pulled together a great team and the whole process was a really good experience. I’m now discussing further assignments from H+ and hope to be an ongoing contributor.

Oh, and did I mention? They used one of my photos of a Christopher Conte sculpture for the cover.

You can download the Summer 2009 issue of H+ Magazine from here.

New Year Endorsements

Putting a wrap on 2008, I set a goal to get my own online efforts organized. I had websites scattered across several different hosting providers. In conjunction with the launch of my new website, this was the right time to review my existing arrangements. Having done so, I’m now making some new year endorsements.

MediaTemple for Hosting
My research on hosting providers eventually led me to MediaTemple. So far I’m very pleased with their entry level Grid-Service package that includes hosting for 100 domains, 100 GB of storage, 1 TB of bandwidth and 1000 email addresses, for $20 a month or $200 a year. Their dashboard has the slickest interface I’ve seen in the business, and they also have a sweet iPhone version to manage your websites on the go. Their customer support has been impeccable. I actually got a recording that told me, “your approximate wait time is… one minute.” The other three times I’ve called a technician has answered on the first ring without even going into a queue!

GoDaddy for Domain Registrar
Several years ago I had a similar issue consolidating my domain registrations. I went with GoDaddy, and I’ve been pleased with the decision. The interface is well organized, and has plenty of automation tools to manage my domains. Though the up-sell e-commerce efforts on their website can sometimes be overbearing, their email and phone support are top notch. Amazingly, they’ve also managed to take a service which has, for all practical purposes, become a commodity and add premium value to their offer. They don’t do this to command a higher price— they do this all-the-while remaining one of the industry’s most price competitive vendors. It is no surprise that they remain the world’s #1 registrar. Their cheesy marketing efforts not withstanding, I chose to stick with GoDaddy.

Clicky for Site Analytics
The next service providers on my list to research were site traffic analytics tools. I was using a very dated stats service I’d been with since the 90s. I knew there were better products on the market, but stayed with them out a familiarity. After checking out many products in a very competitive market, I narrowed it down to two choices— Clicky and Mint. Clicky’s filtering tools and iPhone integration were persuasive, but its built in ability to track Flash events and file downloads was the deciding factor. It also doesn’t hurt their case that their interface is smart and slick and easy to get to the information I need quickly.

Squarespace for Blog Platform
There was no debating my choice to stick with Squarespace for my blog platform. I cannot evangelize their their product enough. My site here is but a tiny glimpse of the platform’s capabilities. If you haven’t yet had a look, take a peak at their homepage video demo. To call Squarespace a blog platform is almost an insult. It is a very robust content management platform with the best user interface and customization tools on the market anywhere at any price.

Viddler for Online Video
Earlier this year I switched to Viddler for all my video content needs. It produces better quality video, and less bug-prone uploading than YouTube, and the uploads are exponentially faster. There are also tools for book-marking the timeline, and other value added features, as well as a slicker interface and more professional looking video controller than YouTube. It also gives users the opportunity to monetize their video content with a commission on ad sales run with their video, and several parameters of control over what ads will be run with their content.

Tramsmit for FTP & AASync to Archive
These last two products I’m going to endorse are not web services, but I don’t want to neglect mentioning a couple of the support applications that I depend on to get work done. A hosting provider is useless without file transfer capabilities. For this I use Transmit. It was not a recent decision, I made the move a couple of years ago, but I did audit my options as part of my overhaul. Much like my recent step up the ladder with my stats platform, I had been using a legacy FTP app out of mere familiarity, and finally got around to upgrading to a top flight product. More recently I began using a very minimal backup application called AAsync to archive my files, including my websites, to an external drive. It isn’t a solution that I would expect to scale, but for a small operation like myself, it is very efficient for my needs. It has an intuitive interface that is super easy to use— I tell it what I want to back up (down to the level of individual folders), from which drive, to which drive. I set it on a timer, and don’t have to think about it again. If I’m not here and the computer is off, it will start up the computer itself, and run its backup routines completed automated.

So that wraps up my web service endorsements for the new year. I’ve never felt like I had my online efforts so buttoned up as I do today. Pretty much across the board, competition has driven improvements in quality. If you have not recently audited the offerings of your current providers against the competition, the new year could be the time to do so.

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SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION™
At that, I will segue back into the launch of my new website, the original impetus for this overhaul. There are still several more projects I need to load into the portfolio, and like every site, it will always be a work in progress. My next step is promoting the site, which I can start by inviting you to have a visit at: ChrisGrayson.com.

Applications used in the making of the new website include: PhotoShop, Illustrator, Flash, Swift 3D and BB Edit; as well as Pages, InDesign and Word for the downloadable PDFs and DOC file.

I owe a special thanks to my friends on Facebook who helped me bug test the new site. I’m on a Mac, and don’t have access to a PC in my home office. So I did a little experiment— I called on my Facebook friends to assist me in cross-browser/cross-platform bug testing, and a dozen or so jumped right in to lend a hand. A few glitches, that could have been embarrassing oversights, were found and addressed. Chalk another one up for crowd-sourcing.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Chris Conte: Biomechanist

Some give their right arm for a piece of Mr. Conte’s work.

Shown above, Black Widow 1; inset, Lethal Injection Attack Droid Prototype; below, Biomechanical Arm.

Artist Christopher Conte has a joint show titled Cyberdine at the Last Rites Gallery, located at 511, West 33rd Street (btw. 10th & 11th Avenues, on the 3rd floor) in New York City. His work is being shown together with the work of Fred Harper.

By day, Mr. Conte makes artificial limbs for amputees. He also considers himself a “hobbyist” in robotic engineering. The Last Rites gallery bills itself as a venue for artists who “explore the darker side of their imagination”. Appropriately, they are a New York exhibitor for the work of world renowned Swiss artist, H.R. Giger (also known for the creature, Alien). Giger and Conte are both represented by Les Barany.

This exhibit of Christopher Conte’s work came to my attention reading the current print edition of WIRED Magazine, issue 16.06. Chris’ work has also been featured in Dark Matter, Boing Boing, beinArt (The Surreal Art Collective), Everyone Forever and Layer Upon Layers.

The current show runs through June 29th

The Last Rites Gallery is open:
Tuesday-Friday: 2:00pm to 9:00pm
Saturday: 1:00pm to 9:00pm
Sunday: 2:00pm to 6:00pm
Monday: Closed

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Have I mentioned, WIRED somehow still manages to be the most consistently great magazine published? When I pick it up, I can barely put it down. Issue 16.06 is particularly great.

Richard Serra

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Returning from a meeting yesterday, I dropped by MoMA to take in the new Richard Serra exhibit. My only past experience with Richard’s work is from his installation at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis. For me, the most initially striking thing about this exhibition was the fact that most of it is indoor. If you are not familiar with Serra’s work in recent decades, he creates large scale minimalist sculptures, meant to be experienced as much as viewed. These works are constructed from large warped slabs of rusted steel, approximately two inches thick, and about ten or twelve feet in height. They often take on the appearance of a rusted out hull of some half buried object. The approximate weight of these sculptures is between 100 to 200 tons each (by comparison, an Abrams Tank weighs about 65 tons). May I now reflect back on my prior comment- these are “indoor” (and not even on the ground floor level). From my past knowledge, I believe that Serra’s work is most often viewed outdoors (for the record, his 2005 show at the Bilbao Guggenheim was also indoor). When you walk into the center of his piece at the Pulitzer gallery, you can look up and see sky. It gives the feeling that you could perhaps be anywhere, or in the middle of nowhere- a sensation of meditative solitude. Because most of the pieces at the MoMA exhibit are indoors (two are outside in the sculpture garden), and the museum is teaming with people, my experience conjured the feeling of being in a crowded industrial maze. I found myself loitering about in the sculptures’ interiors with my iPod pumping until a lull in the crowd left me alone in the space for a moment or two, in order to bask in the scale and the solitude. It was staggering to contemplate how much structural reinforcement the actual MoMA building must have, not to collapse under the weight of these objects. The way they lean and bow, you are often standing under the overhang of a slab, a slab that would crush you to death instantly, should it slip and fall from balance. Yet their appearance is quite tranquil and serene. By their manner of construction, they are in multiple parts, usually simply leaning against one another, balanced in place. If you look closely, in some places you can seen through the small gaps at the seams. It is an impressive exhibit. I went in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday. I’d like to return when there is not such a crowd, but I’d have thought, well, that would be a Wednesday. I’m sure I’ll go back and see it again. I should spend more time in the sculpture garden.

Tim Kaiser's gonkulations

Tim Kaiser makes custom audio components, of a sort, crafted with a vintage look. In a deliberate act of over-engineering, Tim crafts elaborate devices, usually musical effects modules, and righteously gonkulated noisemakers. Go to his website to learn more.

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik has long been recognized as a master and pioneer of video and electronic/technology based art. He was also a close associate of composer, John Cage, whom he was known to collaborate with. I’d seen one piece of his in the James Cohan Gallery collection on a prior visit, and have always had an appreciation for his work. The literature provided by the gallery describes Paik’s work as critiquing “culture consumed by technology.” In this way, Paik’s work is very self referential. His technology is not just a critique of, but also an example of “culture consumed by technology.” Often working with the housing cabinets from mid-century TV sets, in the case of all but one of the pieces in this exhibit, with their picture tubes removed and contemporary TVs set into their cabinets. Paik built sculptures- houses, figures, totems, walls, and environments from these cabinets and screens. Later he created work using only contemporary TVs. Television screens were the staple of his work. Of the pieces in this show, his humanoid primitive sculpture, Karen Blixen Robot (shown above), caught my interest most. Though I enjoyed the show, and had built up much anticipation in attending, there was something off that I could not at first put my finger on. Perhaps I went in with my expectations too high. But I think perhaps a combination of factors worked against the exhibit for me. For one, the idea of a wall of TV sets is so reminiscent of any consumer electronic store’s TV department, that nothing about the presentation is particularly riveting, losing some of the impact the approach may have had during the time of some of his earlier work. Although the picture tubes in the TVs had been removed, and “modern” TV sets had been placed within the vintage cabinets, these so-called “new” picture tube TVs have themselves become obsolete, in these days of HD flat-panels. Pioneering as it was in its day, I think Paik’s work suffers the fate of a lot of technology based conceptual art: As technology moves forward, if the work’s impact, no matter how conceptual, is most dependent on presentation rather than interaction, the work itself becomes “dated”. Some of Paik’s work qualifies as immersive, but in this exhibit W3 would be the only example, and by my estimation, the least inspired piece of the show. Tower is certainly monolithic. Perhaps it is the curse of being recently old. Once Paik’s body of work is as old as the mid-century cabinets he used, the perspective will be different and the timeliness issue will not be as it is now. I am glad to have had the opportunity to attend, and I appreciate the James Cohan Gallery for supporting such art.

Velvet Underground– Booked

Ok, so I missed the opportunity to write about this opening beforehand, as to announce it. Then, after attending, I missed the opportunity to write about it the following day to review it. The week prior, my friend Paddy Johnson invited me to John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, for an exhibition of vintage Velvet Underground posters and memorabilia, commemorating the 40th anniversary of their hugely influential, The Velvet Underground & Nico, an event he helped organize. I was not aware, however, until the day before the show’s opening when my friend James Massenburg followed up with me to see if I would be attending. I hinge my excuse for finally writing about it at this late date on the fact that Paddy’s email finally arrived, about two weeks after he sent it.

I tried to coax my friend Al Risi into joining, but he had a “hot date” (I’m trying to embarrass him… and learn whether he ever reads this). When I joined James and Paddy, I was informed that I had just missed John Waters, which marks the second time in as many months (prior was a book signing with aforementioned, Al).

A musician billed as “Dutch orchestral pop legend, Bauer,” accompanied only by his own keyboard playing, was doing lounge act renditions of Velvet Underground covers in a small room on the second floor. It was kitsch, and tacky, and Andy would have approved. The highlight for me was an original copy of Jim Franklin’s 1969 poster for the V.U. at Vulcan Gas Company, in Austin, TX. A poster I’ve admired since my youth, it was nice to see the actual artifact. Misc photographs, posters and other V.U. and Andy Warhol related ephemera filled the two story establishment- part rare bookstore/part art-space.

Pretty people mingled with musician/artist-types, many of whom I’m sure I was suppose to recognize, due to the flashbulbs snapping… but I’m just not that hip. Paddy was too busy to do much socializing, but he looked very dapper, so I forgive him… he was, after all, at work. When James and I made our way back downstairs, Mo Tucker was standing alone, nearby, looking like she was waiting for a late date. Shortly thereafter, Lou Reed showed up, walked straight over to Mo, and gave her a big hug. She was glowing. They chatted it up privately for a few moments, but it wasn’t long before the “it” crowd realized that the man of the moment had arrived. Suddenly the room was packed with gawkers and flashbulbs. We decided that was our cue to depart (we left somewhat abruptly, and I forgot to get a catalog, so now I have an excuse to go back).

The Velvet Underground exhibit at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller runs until May 12. The bookstore gallery is located at 50 1/2 East 64th Street, in Manhattan, New York City.

Wessel Westerveld

I’ve been meaning to give Mr. Westerveld some ink (so to speak) for some time. Going by the pseudonym WEXEL, he makes spectacular devices, ingenious contraptions: A chorus from the clicks of mechanical projection devices, a music box that plays horns (shown at left). Then there is the SDSystem (Surroundings Defend System shown above)- a helmet with a very long visor, and built in headphones, the SDSystem allows the wearer to completely shut out all visual and auditory input from wherever they happen to find themselves. And you thought your iPod and dark sunglasses were enough to do the trick.

Though the link to his CV is currently a broken link, I don’t believe he has yet exhibited in the states. Lyons Wier • Ortt, Lehmann Maupin, anyone?

jing

Yesterday I attended a small opening titled Asian Delights!! by a Singaporean photographer who only goes by the name Jing, in the lobby at DraftFCB (where I consult for the Hewlett-Packard account).

The opening showcased two recent photo series !!!FOOD PORN & SINGAPORE IDOLS!!!. With gratuitous use of exclamation points. The first, Food Porn, is a series of close-up shots of food, especially wet food, meats and vegetables in heavy sauces, reproduced as large format prints. While predominantly asian cuisine, the obligatory McDonald’s hamburger is present as well. The second series, Singapore Idols, showcased a mix of “stars” from the everyday culture that is contemporary Singapore- cyclist teams, construction workers, armed forces, fashion models and dance troupes, a broad swath of present day Singaporeans are represented, mostly in the form of large staged group portraits.

In spite of the stale crackers, cheap wine, 70s disco music and florescent lighting, the show still carried it’s own. The work is fresh and entertaining.

Though photographed through a lens that is more kitsch than propaganda, the photographs, especially from the second series, aspire to the lofty role of Singaporean cultural ministery, documenting a freeze frame of actors in the drama that is modern Singapore. Indeed, Jing’s photography was recently featured in a limited edition book printed for a 2006 IMF meeting in Singapore.

Jing’s work can also be viewed as part of a group show at The Exchange (640 West 28th St., 9th floor) titled Tiger Translate. A show of “emerging Asian artist and designers.” The opening will be this Saturday, March 31st. You can view the invite here.