On Saturday I went to a presentation by artists Kevin Krivel and David Warne, in collaboration with Greg Hermanovic, at Trinity Square Video. The trio had constructed a pretty cool new-media installation called New Creatures that shoots video portraits, stacking instances into one image so you can scroll through a captured motion in real time. One side captured head shots and the other captured full body movement. It was fun to play with and the images were sometime beautiful and sometimes creepy. Neato! Both Warne and Krivel come from architecture backgrounds, and Hermanovic is a special effects software developer. The collapse of art, architecture, and design opens doors for all kinds of thought and production, but it also seems to generate hyperbole. Here are some choice quotes from the presentation:About a projection in an elevator: "We were exposing the verticalness of the shaft." About funky video footage synched to a musical beat in real time: "It's a synthesis of sound and vision." About an installation in which furniture was wired to trigger video projections when manipulated: "Objects continue to be places where there is a physical engagedness."
Hermanovic's company, Derivative, makes a software product, called "Touch" that is genuinely very cool, allowing you to mix and manipulate video in real time. It's useful for vjs and concerts (Derivative did displays for last summer's Rush tour). But the package comes with a whole palette of ready-to-go clips that as Hermanovic said, are "pre-authored, and the user performs them." The imagery is catchy, fashionable, and vapid.
images available in Derivative's online media kit
During this presentation I started feeling inklings of despair at distopic visions of the art/culture sector meshing inextricably with commodity and product design. I was jolted from my nega-reverie by the phrase, "This one is for you Queen Street types." It was a pre-authored clip called "Toronto Appliances," featuring Queen Street storefronts, and one in particular that had just closed down near the Drake Hotel.
Toronto Appliances, pre-authored video by Derivative.
Back in 2003 the last issue of Lola publised a story about the then-under-construction hipster hot-spot, the Drake Hotel. (For those readers who don't know Toronto, the context is a formerly somewhat run-down area of town, populated by lower income tenants and lots of artists, which started filling up with galleries, which quickly led to condos, bistros, fancy knick-knack stores and tapas bars for people from other neighbourhhoods who drive fancy cars. You all know the story, cause it happens in every town.) Anyhow. In this issue of Lola a gallerist in the area was quoted about the development of the Drake, saying, "If they provide good service and good hospitality, it will attract people to the area and hopefully that will move out some of the used appliance stores." Ouch.
After the magazine came out, these posters appeared, calling the gallerist an "eleetist meanie." (Thanks to Tanya Read, who collected and scanned this copy.) I dunno who Meeky is, but I'm sure glad he/she made some fuss. I know that I tend to be a stick-in-the-mud. I know that urban demographic shifts are inevitable. I know that the institutions of fine art ride on the financial coat-tails of empty-headed culture-tainment. All this makes me crabby, complicit, and confused. I don't drive a fancy car, nor live in a fancy condo, but I do occasionally drink fancy drinks and eat fancy food in fancy bars with my both my fancy and my not-so-fancy friends. And, of course, I have my own art display up on Queen Street West right now. Its at Fly gallery, with whom I am more impressed every day. They remain a tiny bastion of level-headed art sanity, standing firm in the midst of the crazy high-brow/low-brow maelstrom that swirls around their block.
The Toronto Appliances store that closed recently was one of three buildings on the block bought by the Drake (or the Fake as i like to call it). Part of a blockbusting scheme to expand into the Mega-Drake. The only building left to stop this takeover is the Saigon Flower, 30 years and going strong.(ask the owner Rose all about it if you come to the party next week). She has resisted all offers to sell and the Drake can't start the demolition because of potential structural damage to her building. Curses, foiled again Drakesters!
err, oops, Saigon Flower has been open 20 years, not 30. Oh well a little embelishment for dramatic effect never hurt anyone.
Thanks for the update and clarification, Mr. Nobody. Saigon Flower was recently in the Toronto Star for a completely different reason ... because Muoi Vuong's (aka Rose?) late husband took a famous photograph in the Vietname war, that currently hangs in the restaurant. The Star says: "April 1, 1975, the dying days of the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese are surging into the city of Nha Trang. By the end of the month, Saigon, 440 kilometres to the south, will finally fall and America's 20-year engagement in South Vietnam will come to an end.
American planes are airlifting South Vietnamese, mostly government and military employees and those who worked for Americans. But many more refugees are fleeing to the airport, desperately hoping to be taken away to another world, free of war and fear.
South Vietnamese soldiers have guns and are holding the newcomers back. The plane is already perilously overloaded, yet more people keep frantically pushing their way toward the doors.
When this photo, taken by combat photographer Chuong Khac Thai, was printed in the United Press International offices in Saigon, everyone knew it was a "money-maker." Classically composed, drawing the eye up through the frame, it made Thai's reputation.
At the centre, a crewman for Air America — the CIA-sponsored airline — punches the face of a man who is clawing his way onto the plane. The man had come out of nowhere and rushed the open door. They feared he was Viet Cong, carrying an explosive.
The blow is effective — the man's left hand flies away. His right, however, holds fast to the frame. A young Vietnamese frantically tries to pry open his fingers. Our eyes follow the curve of the outstretched arms up to the face of the little boy on one side, then to the shouting soldier, his helmet slipping comically over his eyes. Below the helmet, there's a hat, soft and made of straw, slipping down a young woman's back."
|
On Saturday I went to a presentation by artists Kevin Krivel and David Warne, in collaboration with Greg Hermanovic, at Trinity Square Video. The trio had constructed a pretty cool new-media installation called New Creatures that shoots video portraits, stacking instances into one image so you can scroll through a captured motion in real time. One side captured head shots and the other captured full body movement. It was fun to play with and the images were sometime beautiful and sometimes creepy. Neato! Both Warne and Krivel come from architecture backgrounds, and Hermanovic is a special effects software developer. The collapse of art, architecture, and design opens doors for all kinds of thought and production, but it also seems to generate hyperbole. Here are some choice quotes from the presentation: Hermanovic's company, Derivative, makes a software product, called "Touch" that is genuinely very cool, allowing you to mix and manipulate video in real time. It's useful for vjs and concerts (Derivative did displays for last summer's Rush tour). But the package comes with a whole palette of ready-to-go clips that as Hermanovic said, are "pre-authored, and the user performs them." The imagery is catchy, fashionable, and vapid.
images available in Derivative's online media kit
During this presentation I started feeling inklings of despair at distopic visions of the art/culture sector meshing inextricably with commodity and product design. I was jolted from my nega-reverie by the phrase, "This one is for you Queen Street types." It was a pre-authored clip called "Toronto Appliances," featuring Queen Street storefronts, and one in particular that had just closed down near the Drake Hotel.
Toronto Appliances, pre-authored video by Derivative.
Back in 2003 the last issue of Lola publised a story about the then-under-construction hipster hot-spot, the Drake Hotel. (For those readers who don't know Toronto, the context is a formerly somewhat run-down area of town, populated by lower income tenants and lots of artists, which started filling up with galleries, which quickly led to condos, bistros, fancy knick-knack stores and tapas bars for people from other neighbourhhoods who drive fancy cars. You all know the story, cause it happens in every town.) Anyhow. In this issue of Lola a gallerist in the area was quoted about the development of the Drake, saying, "If they provide good service and good hospitality, it will attract people to the area and hopefully that will move out some of the used appliance stores." Ouch.
After the magazine came out, these posters appeared, calling the gallerist an "eleetist meanie." (Thanks to Tanya Read, who collected and scanned this copy.) I dunno who Meeky is, but I'm sure glad he/she made some fuss. I know that I tend to be a stick-in-the-mud. I know that urban demographic shifts are inevitable. I know that the institutions of fine art ride on the financial coat-tails of empty-headed culture-tainment. All this makes me crabby, complicit, and confused. I don't drive a fancy car, nor live in a fancy condo, but I do occasionally drink fancy drinks and eat fancy food in fancy bars with my both my fancy and my not-so-fancy friends. And, of course, I have my own art display up on Queen Street West right now. Its at Fly gallery, with whom I am more impressed every day. They remain a tiny bastion of level-headed art sanity, standing firm in the midst of the crazy high-brow/low-brow maelstrom that swirls around their block.
- sally mckay 4-20-2005 6:50 pm
The Toronto Appliances store that closed recently was one of three buildings on the block bought by the Drake (or the Fake as i like to call it). Part of a blockbusting scheme to expand into the Mega-Drake. The only building left to stop this takeover is the Saigon Flower, 30 years and going strong.(ask the owner Rose all about it if you come to the party next week). She has resisted all offers to sell and the Drake can't start the demolition because of potential structural damage to her building. Curses, foiled again Drakesters!
- mnobody (guest) 4-21-2005 2:57 am
err, oops, Saigon Flower has been open 20 years, not 30. Oh well a little embelishment for dramatic effect never hurt anyone.
- rusty_k 4-21-2005 6:52 pm
Thanks for the update and clarification, Mr. Nobody. Saigon Flower was recently in the Toronto Star for a completely different reason ... because Muoi Vuong's (aka Rose?) late husband took a famous photograph in the Vietname war, that currently hangs in the restaurant. The Star says:
- sally mckay 4-21-2005 9:02 pm