The Art of Cooking

Curator Hanne Mugaas dishes on the group exhibition of food-related works
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Our relationship with food knows no end, as we elevate it to divine status, play with it, turn it into nonconventional formats and even demand that it entertains us. This intimacy provides the theme behind The Art of Cooking, a group art exhibition opening 27 April 2012 at Royal T in Los Angeles that features the work of 48 artists—including Olaf Bruenning and Kenny Scharf—alongside a schedule of performances. We spoke with curator Hanne Mugaas about the concept behind the show, which runs through 1 August.

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Where did the concept for the show come from?

I guess that food is something that is very basic; it’s right in front of you several times a day. To me, the endless depictions of food and the explosion of food blogs seem to be about lifestyle. You are what you eat, right? While researching artists and artworks for the show, I realized that most artists have at least one work that has to do with food.

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Can food ever move so far in art realm that it makes us forget what it is?

I don’t think so. At least not if you spend a lot of time with the artwork. This also depends on the intention of the artist, of course. Maybe the intention was to make us forget.

Can you highlight some of the artists and pieces in the show?

One group of artists who work primarily with food is White Zinfandel, which publishes a magazine about art and food. Each issue has a specific theme: TV dinners, food fights—and they organize conceptual dinners for the launch of each one. They invite artists to explore each theme, and the result is included in the magazine. Another artist is Viktor Kopp, who paints chocolate squares; although rather than exploring chocolate, he explores the grid of painting through chocolate.

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Your family is involved in the restaurant business. Did you make a jump from this universe into art?

I didn’t really jump from food to art. My family are all working with, or did work with, food, but I was never interested in learning to cook. My dad owns restaurants, my brother is a chef, and my sister is the manager of a restaurant.

What did you learn from your personal background in restaurants and food that you brought into your work as a curator, and vice versa?

From food to art—I basically grew up in restaurants, so I learned the work ethic and the social aspect, which are both similar to the art world. From art to food—I’ve been consulting on creative aspects of my dad’s business, although he’s very creative himself so he doesn’t need much help.

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What other unique angle to food did you discover while putting together this show that you’d like to explore in another exhibit one day?

I am planning to make a cookbook including the favorite recipes of the artists in the show. I would also like to do an art show in one of my dad’s restaurants in Norway, and bring in artists like Scott and Tyson Reeder to do a series of food-related performances, or White Zinfandel to do a conceptual dinner party.

Royal T

“The Art of Cooking”

Now-1 August 2012

8910 Washington Blvd.

Culver City, CA 90232


TED-Ed

A new initiative for creating and sharing educational lessons reaches the traditional classroom and beyond

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For years TED has fulfilled their mission of spreading ideas and inspiration through conferences, media and research fellowships. Taking this a step further and in the direction of generations to come, today TED launches a new TED-Ed initiative to assist educators and students worldwide. Understanding the evolutionary role of video in the modern classroom (and beyond), the new TED-Ed site offers a structured avenue for repurposing content by allowing teachers to “flip” any video on YouTube—including but not limited to TED-Ed videos—into a sharable lesson ripe with quizzes, informational copy and attention keeping animations.

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Directing the initiative is Logan Smalley, a former TED Fellow with a background in documentary work. After starting in January 2011 and working on the TED Prize, Smalley sparked the TED-Ed program to rethink the traditional notion of teacher and student. To address this the new initiative aims to share educational lessons and inspiration with anyone willing to learn or teach, both inside and outside the physical classroom.

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Open to anyone, the thematically organized lessons can be taken without a login, although one is required to assign or track lessons. This proves valuable for both students and teachers as one can share and subsequently track participation and total student interactions with a specific lesson. With the customization platform teachers can adjust lessons and quizzes to meet their individual needs. This means adding, removing or changing quiz questions and informational copy. Once edited the lesson is given a unique URL to be shared freely.

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As the initiative is in its beta stage the majority of lessons offered at this point have been originally created by TED, but as it grows lessons created and adjusted by outside educators will eventually be uploaded for sharing. One can “flip” a TED-Ed video to customize the quiz questions and copy, or “flip” any video from YouTube to create an all new lesson. All lessons uploaded will first be cleared by a TED review board to ensure only the most effective, informational lessons reach the final audience.

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As participation grows TED-Ed online will as well, adding subcategories to their subjects and expanding upon the traditional taxonomies presented. And in keeping with the spirit of TED, signing up is free, allowing anyone and everyone to be a part of the evolution and education process. For more information or to experience the beautifully designed site yourself head over to TED-Ed online.


Dallas Art

The serious scene with a down-home spirit

A recent invitation to the Dallas Art Fair piqued our interest initially by the range of 78 participating galleries and artists like Erwin Wurm bringing his “Beauty Business” from the Bass Museum in Miami, and Zoe Crosher creating a site-specific installation of her Michelle DuBois project as part of the simultaneous Dallas Biennale.

While we didn’t expect to encounter a domestic event in the scope of Art Basel Miami or New York’s Armory Show, Art Fair co-founder Chris Byrne clarified that wasn’t the point. “The hope is that by presenting the local, national, and international galleries on an even playing field that the viewer has an important role in evaluating the art on its own terms,” he says. After experiencing the fair among a swirl of strong sales, serious parties filled with decked-out Texas-style socialites, football stadium art tours and a glimpse at some serious private collections, we’ve discovered a Dallas that is, indeed, all its own when it comes to an art scene.

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Dallas Art Fair

With galleries representing cities from Berlin to Milwaukee, New York, LA, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Marfa and Waxahachie, TX, the digestible smaller Dallas Art Fair, held in the Fashion Industry Gallery (or simply the f.i.g. “if you want anyone to know what you’re talking about”, a cab driver told us), presented a truly eclectic blend of big-ticket classics and new work by unknown artists. We were pleased to see a thread installation by Gabriel Dawe, as well as the 2009 graphite drawings of another thread artist gaining traction, Anne Lindberg, at Chicago’s Carrie Secrist gallery. Local Fort Worth Artist Helen Altman had her torch-drawn animal prints on display at Talley Dunn gallery out of Dallas, while New York galleries like Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld Gallery featured Richard DuPont‘s polyurethane heads and newer work by Ouattara Watts, and Josee Bienvenue featured cut-paper grids by Marco Maggi.

In the three years since its inception the fair has grown with quality, not quantity in mind, boasting this year’s solid headliners in and around the fair like Wurm and Crosher, as well as Jacob Kassay, Adam McEwen and Dallas-based Erick Swenson. “There’s no grand plan with a push pin map of the art world. The fair starts to generate an organic life of its own with a visual coherence and cohesion as a byproduct of that independent life,” says Byrne.

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Goss-Michael Foundation

The long-term relationship of ’80s pop legend George Michael with his former partner Kenny Goss, who happens to be a Dallas-based arts patron and former cheerleading coach, gave the city another of its idiosyncratic art contributions. The non-profit Goss-Michael Foundation was founded in 2007 to support British contemporary art and expose a larger community beyond collectors to the works of the so-called YBA movement. Adam McEwen opened his show during DAF, on the heels of an impressive roster that in the Foundation’s tenure has included the likes of Marc Quinn, Nigel Cooke, Tracey Ermin, Damien Hirst and others.

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Dallas Cowboys Stadium

When team owner Jerry Jones opened the roughly 3 million-square-foot Dallas Cowboys Stadium in 2009, it didn’t come as a surprise that the team’s new stomping grounds would become the largest domed stadium on the planet, house the largest HD JumboTron and hold a maximum capacity crowd of 110,000—this is Texas, after all. More surprising was the breadth and depth of its contemporary art collection, and the freedom with which the artists were able to create. The artists were selected by a committee led by Jones and his wife, Gene, the interior decorator for the VIP areas of the stadium, but were given minimal limitations beyond the inspiration of the team’s legacy to create their work. The resulting 19-piece collection spans the entire arena, from massive 2D pieces by Ricci Albenda, Terry Hagerty and Dave Muller over main concourse concession stands; to Olafur Eliasson’s “Moving Stars takes Time” mobile over a VIP entrance and the aptly titled “Fat Superstar” in the Owner’s Club. Lawrence Weiner’s “Brought up to Speed” graces a 38-foot staircase wall, while perhaps most on-brand for the Cowboys, coincidentally, are two acquisitions from Doug Aitken that play to the team’s star logo.

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Dallas Contemporary

Running simultaneously with the Dallas Art Fair was the Dallas Biennale—a tongue-in-cheek, one-time presentation of works by Crosher, Sylvie Fleury, Claude Levecque, Gabriel Martinez and more at various venues across the city. While we were curious to see Fleury’s windows at the flagship Neiman Marcus store downtown, the Dallas Contemporary, where Crosher and Levecque presented alongside Wurm, offered an interestingly offbeat, and physically off-the-beaten-track experience in our art wanderings. Located across some sort of freeway network in what’s known as the Design District, nestled on a remote dead-end among gems like the seemingly abandoned Cowboy Bail Bonds and various strip joints, the Contemporary looks like a commercial space that might have a loading dock around the side like its neighbors. Such a spot makes for the perfect intersection of fresh ways of thinking away from the rest of the city’s stereotypically oversized or Southwestern-style neighborhoods, uncovering yet another intriguing aspect of Dallas.


Transmission LA: AV Club

A massive collaborative exhibition showcases audio-visual delights

by Naheed Simjee

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A resurrected rapper by way of a hologram wasn’t the only technological breakthrough that had people talking last week. Returnees from Coachella Part I flocked downtown on Thursday night for the opening of Transmission LA: AV Club sponsored by Mercedes-Benz and The Avant/Garde Diaries at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. The visionary and creative mastermind of the festival, Beastie Boy Mike D, invited 17 multi-disciplinary artists—including Family Bookstore and Roy Choi’s Kogi Korean BBQ food truck—to create extraordinary site-specific installations that demonstrate the influence and inspiration that audio and visual art forms have on one another. The exhibition runs through 6 May 2012 with a full schedule of live performances.

“It’s the new art, a new audience, new music and new technologies all together, and it’s a wonderful fit with the fabulous new Mercedes that is being unveiled tonight,” explains Jeffrey Deitch, director of the MOCA, who has been actively involved with the project since LA was selected for this edition of the festival’s destination. The first Transmission festival was held in Berlin and curated by Dior’s new head designer, Raf Simons.

The exhibition is an immersive experience in sensory stimulation. Upon entering the massive space, seductive lights and vibrant colors tempt patrons to freely explore in every direction. Immediately, Takeshi Murata‘s zany audio loop of a game show host’s voice enthusiastically announces a series of prizes: “It’s a new car! It’s a new boat! It’s a piano!” Exhibition-goers are lured to a projection of sequentially stacked images of The Price Is Right Showcase models revealing game prizes, and a totally unexpected surprise.

Another showstopper is Ben Jones‘ stellar creation of a triangular tunnel—paneled with Tron-like neon grids and sound bites of racecars zooming by—leading to an enormous room in which computer-animated projections take over the floors and walls, as if you’re suddenly transported into a life-size version of Pole Position.

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Ara Peterson and Jim Drain have created a series of hypnotic spinning fan-activated pinwheels mounted at different heights and depths. This segment of the exhibition pleasantly seems to slow things down and makes you feel as if you’ve stumbled into the control room at the Wonka Factory.

Tucked away unassumingly in a room further down is another work central to Mercedes’ vision for the project. Visitors are invited to take one of the pairs of headphones hanging from the ceiling to listen to drum and bass tracks created by Adam Horowitz (Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys), that perfectly sync up to a light performance surrounding the new Mercedes Concept Style Coupe. “The car itself is a sculpture and the original model was made out of hand clay,” says Mark Fetherston, exterior designer for Mercedes. “There’s a lot of shape and it’s an expressive design statement. We’ve taken a more artistic approach and here, we’re mixing with different people, so it’s not just a typical motor show approach. We’re trying to really attract new customers.”

The robust aroma of Miscela d’Oro Espresso beans emanates from Robert McKinley‘s coffee bar installation, based on a concept that Mike D introduced to Deitch when discussing ideas for the exhibition. Mike D and McKinley—who also served as the co-designer of the entire exhibition—are self-proclaimed coffee obsessives and consume a lot of it. “There’s been so many times where I’ve been at an exhibit and I feel like I’ve burned out at a certain point and if I could just get a cup of coffee, I could stay in the game a bit longer,” says Mike D. “I wanted to give all the people here that opportunity. We didn’t want to do it with just a cart, we wanted it to be an impressive cup of coffee, so we took it one step further and actually made it one of the installations in the space. Rob kind of went crazy, in a good way. The beans are from Naples. The coffee has a very classic Italian profile.”

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The exhibition also includes works by filmmaker Mike Mills, paintings by Sage Vaughn and Will Fowler, Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman‘s environmental installation combining fictional narrative with artifacts, Tom Sachs‘ Jamaican sound system-inspired sculpture comprised of several speakers, an axe, a chained iPod and tape deck, video art by Cory Arcangel and Sanford Biggers and a complete build out of a social space in which Public Fiction addresses the topic of the nightclub, that will also host several nights of live performances.

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So what are the challenges of putting on a show of this magnitude? Mike D explains, “What ultimately prepared me for being able to do an exhibition like this was that, on multiple occasions, the Beastie Boys had to mount fairly decent size concert tours. Really it’s this quandary of figuring out what’s the visual presentation we’re going to give our music while making it fun and exciting and new. Hopefully, it’s something that people haven’t seen or experienced before, so that’s somewhat analogous to this project. What I’ve taken away from this and have been most inspired by is really just getting to work with the individual artists here.”

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“I feel like they really work in the realm of translating the idea and making it into a reality and experience that everybody shares,” says Mike D. “It’s inspiring for me, coming from a world where we have all these parameters, where you want to build something, but someone says, ‘Oh, that will never work!’ or you want to do a record cover, but the artwork isn’t going to be the right size. These artists are really in the job of just being translators of creation. We’ve managed to do this by living here for the past two weeks and working 14 hours a day.”

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Mercedes is using the creative platform to redefine itself by associating with the art of tomorrow; as Deitch confirms, “This is exactly what we want to be doing at the MOCA.” Transmission LA: AV Club will run through 6 May 2012 at the Geffen Contemporary.

Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

152 North Central Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90012


Urban Farming Tools

Tools to help you build, maintain and manage growing in the city

by Kelly O’Reilly and Greg Stefano

With the emergence of a flourishing urban farming movement in recent years, the need for certain tools to maximize more limited natural resources has also arisen. As they lead the charge to shorten the distance from the farm to the table, commercial groups and individuals alike have demonstrated the possibility for fully functioning city-based farming and growing operations across the world, providing inspiration for other intrepid growers both professional and amateur. Whether you want to grow food indoors or outside, run a massive outfit or are just interested in becoming more sustainable, we found just a few essential tools to help you grow.

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Urban Farming Tools

Design students Mirko Ihirg and Olli Hirvonen devised a starter kit concept of five hand tools for urban farming and a backpack to transport them. Combining the efficiency, compactness and mobility crucial to a city-dweller, the two larger tools—a shovel and a pitchfork—share one detachable handle that can strap onto the exterior of the stylish bag, and every piece will find its proper place inside. The simplicity of the set makes it a good place to begin an urban growing adventure, so we’d be keen to see the project become a reality.

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Indoor Growing Tools

Whether you are just getting started or already have a thriving indoor farm, our friends at CityGrow offer a wide selection of great products for indoor growing using hydro and aeroponics. From the super simple to the extremely high-tech, the possibilities for indoor gardening can appeal to gardeners at all levels who lack space or just want to try something new. The Apollo 3 system is engineered to provide rapid plant growth with a small learning curve. The system has a double channel root chamber to give the plant roots space and uses atomized nutrients, letting the roots absorb them quickly. For something a little simpler there is the Aerojet Hydrogarden from Botanicare. This true aeroponic system sprays the roots directly, delivering high levels of nutrients and oxygen, allowing for rapid plant growth. The system is also modular so it can be expanded or shrunk to adjust to your space. For the more casual enthusiast there is the Turbo Garden, a compact growing machine that promises higher yields and speedy results. It provides seedlings with a multitude of nutrients and is great for propagating plants or just keeping a little garden around the house.

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Build it Green!

Established in 2005 in partnership with the Community Environmental Center, Build it Green! is a non-profit that provides the New York City area with salvaged and surplus building materials. With everything from reclaimed bathroom stalls to salvaged lumber, Build it Green! has a surprising selection of eco-friendly building materials. This makes them the perfect jumping off point for anyone looking to build out a DIY urban farming platform, they provide almost all the materials you would need to build planters, beds, greenhouses and just about any other essential farming structure. You can view parts of their inventory on their online shop but you have to visit to see the full, ever-changing selection. Those outside the New York area can check out their list of similar organizations throughout the Northeast U.S., or contact them to see if they have advice for anyone in your locale.

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Kitchen Composter

Those interested in committing to the farm-to-table movement would be wise to continue the cycle by composting what’s left on the table back into the ground—especially if they live in cities where garbage disposals aren’t allowed. Though it may seem like a daunting task to hold onto waste in small living quarters, the five-gallon, air-tight All Seasons Indoor Composter fits compactly under the sink and uses the Japanese method of Bokashi, an all-natural, odorless mixture packed with microorganisms to ferment waste in just 10 days, nearly half the time than traditional composting. Once planted, compost produces a rich topsoil in about a month, enriching the fertility of the soil, detoxifying chemicals in the soil and attracting helpful insects. The composter kit sells from Uncommon Goods for $48, with refills available for $12 a bag.


Urban Farming Resources

Three ways to stay informed about the progressive aspects of city-based agriculture

Nearly 12,000 years ago the Neolithic Revolution altered the course of our survival from hunting and gathering to established agriculture. As the world’s population concentrates into cities and realization dawns that our resources are limited, we’re faced with a new and potentially as significant shift in how we feed ourselves. We are now transitioning from hunting and gathering—sending trains, planes and trucks to destinations around the world for our food—to an emphasis on growing local through urban farming. The global movement toward this approach affects more than just the food we eat—the focus on community gardens and DIY techniques leads to conversations about our culture, how we treat our environment and the progression of mankind. It also encourages experimentation and leads to developments in science and technology. Perhaps best of all, urban farming and its pioneering ways inspires everyone to get out there and spend a little time with Mother Nature.

Whether you’re a casual farmer, a serious harvester or just someone who wants to know more about the science of agriculture (and perhaps doesn’t know where to begin), here are four resources for keeping tabs on the evolution of urban farming today—from the latest news to cultivation tips—that are useful no matter where you live.

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Brooklyn Homesteader

Spending time raising animals and tilling the earth can have therapeutic benefits on the human psyche, Meg Paska points out in one of her first posts, “In Becoming a Backyard Bumpkin“, on Brooklyn Homesteader, a blog she runs with Brooklyn Grange farm manager Michael Meier. The self-proclaimed go-getter embodies the DIY spirit, and her adventures in farming lead to a site filled with really solid advice on beekeeping, home-brewing, gardening, mycology, composting, backyard livestock husbandry and more. Guest bloggers provide insights on subjects like making your own beef jerky or homemade laundry soap. In addition to guiding readers through projects online with detailed instructions and explanatory images, Paska and Meier also lead monthly classes and workshops on the subjects they’ve come to master.

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To make getting started or maintaining crops even easier, Paska and the Brooklyn Grange team recently opened a pop-up shop in the Greenpoint neighborhood. Hayseeds, open through the end of June 2012, not only stocks essential urban farming supplies, but it also serves as a place to stop by and discuss endeavors with a host of knowledgeable green thumbs. Keep an eye out for Paska‘s forthcoming book on rooftop beekeeping for more information on raising the ecosystem’s most essential species.

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Heritage Radio Network

The non-profit station, Heritage Radio Network was created in 2009 by Patrick Martins, founder of Slow Food USA and of Heritage Foods USA. Reporting live from two converted shipping containers out back behind the sustainable Brooklyn pizzeria Roberta’s, HRN “chronicles and celebrates the growing movement to change American foodways”. HRN offers an abundance of thoughtful ways to get involved in the local food movement that extend beyond farming and well beyond Brooklyn. From their online programming you can glean information on everything from landscaping to agricultural policy.

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The station’s extensive coverage is presented by an array of leading chefs, scientists and cultural thinkers. Former director of culinary technology at the French Culinary Institute, Dave Arnold hosts a weekly call-in cooking show covering molecular gastronomy and new culinary tools. Notable photographer Michael Harlan Turkell covers the marriage of food and art in his show “The Food Seen” and notable author Dr. Jessica B. Harris offers listeners a global perspective on food geography, culinary history and cultural trends in her segment “My Welcome Table“, to name a few.

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Soiled and Seeded Magazine

Intent on moving garden culture beyond what they call a “hi-gloss scenario” and into a domain that instead “restores our connection to the natural world and redefines our relationship to plants”, the quarterly Soiled and Seeded Magazine showcases the positive effects of unconventional horticulture. The Ontario-based non-profit keeps a fresh, global perspective on gardening and its sociological impact through stories on topics like ancient Croatian botanical manuscripts, urban seed bombing dispensers or turning waste into soil in troubled countries like Haiti.

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Edited by botanist Barbara Ozimec, Soiled and Seeded lends an expert understanding to urban gardening topics while keeping the inspirational themes highly entertaining. The magazine’s impressive masthead of international contributors have equally authoritative backgrounds, with all of the writers working professionally as anthropologists, horticulturists or program managers for organizations focused on environmental sustainability.


Instagram NYC

Simple phone snaps comprise a compelling photo show dedicated to the Big Apple

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Like Twitter without the pressure of pithy writing, Instagram allows you to share your current status to friends and followers by simply uploading a photo from your iPhone or Android. Created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the free photo-sharing app—which recently sold to Facebook for $1 billion—comes with 11 filters, blurring effects, borders and a brightening tool for users to play with. These enhancement features allow nearly anyone to post a great photo, but to gain a huge following from Instagram’s 25 million users it usually boils down to how you view the world. Six photographers that continuously capture New York City with fresh eyes will soon debut their work away from the very-small screen in an upcoming group show.

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The two-month exhibition opens 1 May 2012, and will feature photos by Brian Difeo (@bridif), Angeliki Jackson (@astrodub), John de Guzman (@johndeguzman), Liz Eswein (@newyorkcity), Chrixtian Xavier Chantemargue (@cxcart), and a man known simply as Theo (@uptowneastnyc).

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Whether focused on architecture, street art, people or food, each photographer demonstrates that a compelling photo isn’t always the product of an amazing camera set-up. Brian Difeo, one of the founding members of NYC Instagram Community and curator of the group show, hopes that the exhibition will elevate the social media application’s status as a legitimate creative medium, and not just a tool that makes cameraphone photos look vintage.

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Instagram-inspired exhibitions in London, Singapore and Ireland have already added to its place as a new photography format. The show is sure to be an interesting display of works, whether you’re a fan of digital media or the city itself.

The group exhibit runs from 1 May through 30 June 2012 at the W Hotel Times Square.


Notable Fiction

Award winners and near-winners to read this Spring

While the Huffington Post blazed the way for new media winning a Pulitzer Prize on Monday, the literary world was stunned by the board’s refusal to name a Fiction winner for the first time since 1977. They did, however, reveal the three finalists—a posthumously completed novel by David Foster Wallace, 29-year-old Karen Russell’s debut novel and a hardcover re-release of Denis Johnson’s 2002 novella. In the spirit of fostering a rich community of conflicting ideas, we’re taking advantage of their indecision to stockpile our spring reads. Here, Pulitzer’s uncrowned picks along with three titles that did snag some prestigious awards in 2011 to get you through the season.

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The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

The Fiction Pulitzer is designated “for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life”, and the committee notes Foster Wallace’s last work as a story “animated by grand ambition, that explores boredom and bureaucracy in the American workplace.” Published more than two years after the author’s suicide in 2008, “The Pale King“—which is actually a compilation of unfinished pages and notes pulled together by his editor Michael Pietsch—tells a deeply sad story of stagnant mundanity in a Midwest I.R.S. office, jumping to the other end of the spectrum from the pleasure bender of “Infinite Jest”. Those un-annointed in Foster Wallace’s singular prose will benefit from diving into his repertoire from here.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Unfolding the wild Florida Everglades world behind the short story Zoetrope published in 2006, “Ava Wrestles the Alligator”, “Swamplandia!” marks Russell’s enchanting first go at a full-fledged novel. Between her masterful grip on protagonist Ava’s teenage narration of her life on her family’s swamp-set theme park and a commanding knack for presenting environmental, economic and societal issues against a lovably dysfunctional family dynamic, Russell is off to a resoundingly strong start.

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Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

In just 116 pages—the expanse of one quiet afternoon, perhaps—Johnson shares the life of Robert Grainier, whom the Pulitzer committee describes as “a day laborer in the old American West, bearing witness to terrors and glories with compassionate, heartbreaking calm.” As we chart today’s uncertain path of everyday life on the brink of another kind of new frontier, it’s comforting to follow Grainier through “Train Dreams” as he faces Johnson’s beautifully drawn world with courage and vulnerability.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

With the 2011 National Book Award emblazoned on its cover, Ward’s second novel represents literature’s most respected contribution for the year. The story, chosen from 315 nominees and five finalists, spans the 12 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina as seen by a pregnant 14-year-old girl, Esch Batiste. Zeroing in on the tiny moments threading through mostly tragic lives, Ward has established the lyrical, powerful voice of a master storyteller in “Salvage the Bones“.

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The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

Beyond the popular buzz it garnered, “The Tiger’s Wife” established credibility with Obreht’s selection as one of the National Book Awards’ 5 Under 35 in 2010 and NBA Finalist in 2011—the first author to earn such a distinction. Written primarily during her college years, the book follows a Balkan family (their exact country is never specified) through the region’s conflicts from the present day and stretching back to WWII. Conveying wisdom in her rich narrative, Obreht’s first novel promises a bright future from the prodigal writer.

Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman

The well-established author of various story collections drove her point home with the success of her latest collection, which continues with her expert ability to weave significant feeling and cultural statements into a series of beautifully captured narratives about being Jewish after WWII. Score one for independent publishers, too—”Binocular Vision” was the first volume published by Lookout Books, christening the house by going on to earn NBA Finalist status and then winning the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Contributions by Ami Kealoha and Kelly O’Reilly


Cultural Differences

An artist and a technologist pair up to find the cultural meaning of words through pictures
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Recently presented at Rhizome’s annual Seven on Seven conference, Aaron Swartz and Taryn Simon‘s “Cultural Differences” application culls the top six photos from a Google image search for a specific word in 15 countries, displaying a visual comparison of its meaning among an array of different nations.

The concept was born to follow the conference’s purpose of pairing a technologist with an artist to see what they can make in a mere 24-hour time frame. “Cultural Differences” highlights the incredibly talented and informed pair’s individual interests while showing where they connect. Swartz, a brilliant programmer and activist played to Simon’s background as a photographer concerned with exposing truths.

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While they’d like to expand the app to cover every country, the duo began with the randomly organized selection of 15 currently shown on the site. The user simply types a word into the search field and hits enter to get a pictorial portrayal of how each culture sees the word. Swartz and Simon pointed out in the presentation that Obama yields a variety of results—while most are classic presidential images, in Syria Obama is linked to Beyonce and North Korea obviously prohibits any images of the American president. For the word “Jew” a variety of images pops up in various countries, but in Germany, the word for “Jew” is “Jude”, bringing up nothing but images of Jude Law with that search.

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All politics aside, the app is a valuable tool for designers, who can immediately see that, for example, in Saudi Arabia, a search for an Eames chair generates few relevant results. By gleaning results from each nation’s local search engine, Swartz and Simon’s app refines results, thus usurping the limited scope of a Google image search.

Conceived and developed in less than a day, “Cultural Differences” marks an impressive concept sure to entertain, enlighten and inspire new ways of visually contrasting cultural conversations through simple technology.


Mark Soo

Fusing photograms and cell phone snaps in an exhibition exploring the evolution of photography
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In his current exhibition, “Neither Camera Nor Companion” at Blanket Gallery in Vancouver, Berlin-based artist Mark Soo has created a series of photographs which thoughtfully and cleverly take the viewer on a journey through photographic history. By drawing on his fascination with how culture and technology have continuously influenced photography, Soo manages to combine magnified digital noise, darkroom processing, and crisp photogram silhouettes with striking results.

Your recent photos are so visually complex it’s challenging to understand what’s going on. Can you explain how they’re made?

Very broadly, my work often begins by looking at the relationship between culture, technology and the ways they have influenced each other. So this series of works, originally titled “Madame Guillotine“, started with wanting to find a different way to juxtapose digital and analog photography in a way that blends both, rather than keeps them separate.

What I did was to make a photograph that literally fuses a technique dating from the earliest days of photography, the photogram, with something emblematic of the direction of photography today, which are digital photos taken with a cellphone. In the end, all these things ended up coming together in a traditional analog darkroom.

I started by taking a bunch of digital images of prints of the French Revolution with my low-res cellphone, and transferred them to a negative. I then took the negatives into the darkroom and printed them as traditional color photographs. In the printing process, I placed various objects on the photographic paper in order to produce a photogram on top of the printed image. In some sense you could say these works function as a condensed history of photographic technique. Partly what I liked was how the detailed organic shapes of the photograms contrasted with the grid of digital pixels in a way that I hadn’t experienced before.

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You used images of the French Revolution as the foundation for these pictures. Why was that your starting point?

I traveled to France a few times over the last year and while there, I got interested in the guillotine and its history—gruesome stuff for sure, but definitely fascinating. I ended up taking photos with my phone of anything related to the guillotine, without thinking much about what exactly I was doing. So they were snaps of images in books mostly—pictures of pictures. Anyhow, I started to think about the guillotine blade, and how it resembled the shutter of a camera; this got me thinking about photography in relation to the French Revolution.

Then I started to see parallels between what was occurring on a political level during the French Revolution, with this tremendous shift in photography happening today—the digital revolution: in both instances people are moving from the perceived traditions and hierarchies of the old world toward something they feel is more democratic. As traditional photolabs are closing, places like Flickr and Instagram, or Google Images, are becoming more indispensable to how we consider image-making in general. I thought it was particularly interesting, on an abstract level at least, to draw comparisons between these two points in history.

Neither Camera Nor Companion” is showing at Vancouver’s Blanket Gallery through 21 April 2012.