Illustration for Russian design magazine Interni. The article is on the architecture of a Shaolin Temple, and all the different levels the monks must go through until they can gain entrance to the most holy shrine.
via Andy Council
Four Pinball Machines (Study)
Wayne Thiebaud, 1962
11 1/8 x 12 1/4 inches, oil on canvas
On Monday, May 9, this piece sold for $3,442,500 at Sotheby’s New York, exceeding estimates by ~4x.
Thiebaud was among the earliest to be considered a pop artist, and was included as part of the exhibition “New Painting of Common Objects” at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1962, the first museum survey of American pop art. The eight artists showing work were: Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, Phillip Hefferton, Robert Dowd, Edward Ruscha, Joe Goode, and one Wayne Thiebaud. The collection was curated by Walter Hopps, who had given Andy Warhol his first solo show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles the previous year. “New Painting of Common Objects” is widely considered to be the moment pop art as a movement gained critical acceptance, and the rest, as they say, is history, happening 15minutes at a time.
Four Pinball Machines was part of gallerist Allan Stone’s personal collection, an estate which has recently begun showing up at auction in the wake of his 2006 death. The Allan Stone Gallery is the only art dealer through which Thiebaud’s work has ever been offered prior to it’s availability on the secondary market.
Particles is the latest installation by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi currently on exhibit at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]. The installation centers around a spiral-shaped rail construction on which a number of balls with built-in LEDs and XBee transmitters are rolling while blinking in different time intervals, resulting in spatial drawings of light particles.
The position of each ball is determined via total of 17 control points on the rail. Every time a ball passes through one of them, the respective ball’s positional information is transmitted via a built-in infrared sensor. During the time the ball travels between one control points to the next, this position is calculated based on its average speed. The data for regulating the balls’ luminescence are divided by the control point segments and are switched every time a ball passes on a control point.
What looks like an Elvira & the Party Monsters conversion from the same crew who brought us the Hellacopters pin and that Earthshaker turned Metallica machine.
More pics and some video from Dirty Donny here.
The Kinetic Sculpture is a metaphorical translation of the process of form-finding in art and design. 714 metal spheres, hanging from thin steel wires attached to individually-controlled stepper motors and covering the area of six square meters, animate a seven minute long mechatronic narrative. In the beginning, moving chaotically, then evolving to several competing forms that eventually resolve to the finished object, the Kinetic Sculpture creates an artistic visualisation of the process of form-finding in different variations.
The Installation
One of my favorite quotes, written by a man named Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and Its Double
illustration via
Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.
Plato, via Aristotle, believed art should be defined as the imitation of nature. Seneca and Cicero essentially agreed. Wikipedia believes “Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more concerned with the expression of ideas…Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction.”
But we could play all day with definitions, and find exceptions to every one. For example, I tend to think of art as usually the creation of one artist. Yet a cathedral is the work of many, and is it not art? One could think of it as countless individual works of art unified by a common purpose. Is not a tribal dance an artwork, yet the collaboration of a community? Yes, but it reflects the work of individual choreographers. Everybody didn’t start dancing all at once.
One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Some might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.
Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?
Read more on Ebert’s Journal, home to surprisingly robust conversation in its comments section.
by design and concept guy George Gomez
Couple of events happening this week that we’re happy to make you aware of:
West
Opening Friday, February 5th, and running through March 2, at the Pacific Pinball Museum in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an exhibition defining pinball as art.
From one of the PPM’s associated websites,
Written by, Melissa Harmon, Curator, Pacific Pinball Museum:
A Short History of Pinball, Fine Art and Good Taste
Pinball, for the enthusiast, means the spirit of freedom and possibility, erotic fun without responsibility. Most pinball games in America were found in bars and arcades, which contributed to pinball’s image as lowbrow art, kitsch, and in bad taste. Because of this, pinball art has had little critical analysis. It’s ironic that the origin of pinball came in the midst of a cultural struggle to define “good taste”.
The western idea of “taste” began in France in the 1600 – 1700’s, coincidentally when the first bagatelles appeared. The French invented bagatelles which were the earliest pinball machines, made of score holes in a board. Players with cue sticks vied to push balls into the highest scoring holes. Later, pins or small nails were hammered in to the board as guides for the ball, hence the name pinball.
The French aristocrats tried to turn every aspect of their lives into art, and were in severe competition with each other as to what made good art and design. In 1777 as part of this competitive mania, the Comte d’Artois, grandson of King Louis XV, built a mansion called Chateau d’ Bagatelle dedicated to the play of bagatelle.
In Europe and America, the outcome of the struggle to define taste, and by extension what constitutes good art was temporarily settled in the 1800’s with the sweeping term “fine art”, which generally meant refined and tasteful art made by accepted artists. Forms such as advertising art, cartoons, posters and decorative art were not included.
Marcel Duchamp, the French/American surrealist shattered those fine art definitions by exhibiting a commercially produced urinal and calling it Fountain (1917).
In the sixties, led by Andy Warhol, fine art came to include many things that were once excluded. Consumer goods could become art, and a pinball machine could be seen as a cultural icon.
Recently, artists such as Budai, Dirty Donnie, Brian Holderman, Mike Schiess and William Wiley have re-themed pinball machines, making old machines into something completely new.
The Pacific Pinball Museum is dedicated to preserving the history of pinball, and encouraging cultural analysis and art about pinball.
Pinball Art: Fine Art is a study of pinball imagery and original artwork as shown in selected galleries from the 70’s through 2010.
As the folks from the PPM were the inspiration for PAPA’s own custom pinball machine project, we’re proud to have Michael Budai’s Freak Out and Brian Holderman’s Luther’s Vendetta backglass art on display as part of this first exhibit in the Pacific Pinball Museum’s new space.
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MidWest
On Saturday, February 6th, at PAPA HQ just outside Pittsburgh, PA, we’ll be hosting the 3rd annual Cupids & Canines charity event, benefiting the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society and a proprietary charity operated by Camp Bow Wow International, Inc. called Bow Wow Buddies.
Detailed information regarding the event, including times and ticket pricing, written up by PAPA President Kevin Martin, can be found on the Cupids & Canines portion of the PAPA web site.
Running the tournament at this event will be 2005′s PAPA 8 World Pinball Champion Bowen Kerins. Trent Augenstein will be on hand defending his C&C 2009 title.
As this is one of only two times annually PAPA is open to the public, and considering the fact that the #1 question we’re asked about PAPA is “Why open only once a year?” Pinball player’s and hobby enthusiasts alike ought to seize the opportunity to access the PAPA collection for the only time we’ll open our doors before PAPA 13 – the World Pinball Championships, August 12-15, 2010.
Dave Kinsey’s Red Barren, 2009
via OMG Posters!
Almond milk’s where it’s at.
