Comprehensive Web 2.0

So, as the new resident expert on WEB 2.0 for the Textile Museum, in Washington DC I have compiled a little list of all the relevant Web 2.0 websites and services any organization should know about, with a brief description of how it works.

Enjoy:

Terms

• Social Network: A community, typically having profiles, or content sharing, where people communicate through messages, chat, photos and other dynamic content sharing. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Hi5 are examples….sometimes called a “platform” or “container” also where the “mini-applications” or “apps” ‘go to interact and display dynamic content (like quizzes)
• API: The common code shared among platforms and developers of mini-applications
• Mini-application, app, widget: These applications, created by a developer/designer or you/your company, work with or communicate with the above type of communities, either to share different content, content hosted on other sites or servers, or to advertise.

hellotxt.com:  One stop status updating service.  Allows for as many or as few of their affiliates to bulk manage.  Also allows access to other sites Americans normally wouldn’t have considered, opening international possibilities.

“We post your status update from web, mobile, sms, email, 3rd party applications, API to more than 35 social network”. Including the following: Facebook, peoplesound, myspace, linkedin, plaxo, hi5, bebo, Friendster, Ning, Blogger, wordpress, livejournal, twitter, friendfeed, identi.ca, plurk, rejaw, meemi, jisko, gozub, brightkite, mexicodiario, you are.com, yammer, seismic, blip.fm, Eeecle, hictu, numpa, frazr, blip etc…
wefollow.com: Twitter directory.  Allowing people to list themselves in popular tags, search for common users under these tags and find popular topic threads.  A good way to accumulate more followers for your twitter feed, and therefor other things.   (low maintenance, easy to set up)

 

Fernanda Gomes @ 401Contemporary, Berlin

Brunnenstrasse is home to many small galleries and projects such as “Curator’s Without Borders”.  The gallery called “401Contemporary” is located in Berlin-Mitte, North East of the city center just a stone’s throw from Rosenthaler Platz. http://www.401contemporary.com/index.html

And here we are, apparently, back in a white on white world.

Upon entering the gallery you see 2 square “canvases”, which are more likely wood boxes of different thickness.  These are hung directly opposed to the front door and at an uncomfortable, yet welcome, unconventional height, spanning appx 5-6.5 feet from bottom to top.  Once you walk up to it you realize that that is all it is painted wood #1 and #2, but then you immediately notice the tiny  details in all the things around you.  Like the not-so-well-painted pedestal to the left with 2 masonite boards whose tops are also hastily painted white, leaving the sides its bare natural off-white/tan.  Then you realize that the window, which is draped in clear plastic tarp- the self same draping that made you think the space was closed- is actually an art piece composed in layers of opacity displaying white, white on white, off white,  and almost clear.  Strips and blocks of this tarp, possibly window winterizing plastic, makes a decidedly crude window dressing, even if it were only to indicate renovation, but somehow it works even if only from the inside after understanding its context.

After only a few minutes I am aware of a heightened sensitivity to the architecture of the space, which makes me wish that the floors, the one non-white solid coloured surface, had been painted white for this show.  Also irksome are the exposed fluorescent tubes, flickering their hue flattening curse– something which I can almost not blame gallery for, since this is, I have discovered, a universal phenomena in Berlin, galleries and museums alike.

 

Adam Ant Prince Charming at the V & A

The Prince Charming outfit, arguably the most iconic of Adam and the Ants’ New Romantic image is going to be on permanent display at the South Kensington site of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  This comes amidst a peak time for top shelf museums doing cultural costume shows.  Last year was the remarkable Superheroes show at the Met in New York where popculture icons, fashion haute couture, and modern atheltic gear were housed in one of the country’s most respected institutions.  The Victoria and Albert Museum has one of the best costume and applied arts collections in the Western world, and it was certainly a pleasant surprise to hear that they made (the right decision) to continue this collections tradition into the modern age, not just simply with major fashion trends but also iconic pieces themselves.

http://www.adam-ant.net/vanda.html

The Theatre and performance galleries open on Wednesday 18th March 2009.

“These new galleries will display material taken from their old Covent Garden flower market site, which closed in January 2007, along with items from the V&A’s extensive theatre collections. The galleries will hold highlights of what are the largest collection of their type in the world… including the Prince Charming costume, as worn by Adam for the filming of the Prince Charming video in August 1981 and then for the Prince Charming Revue concerts that took place between December 1981 and January 1982. The gigs were the last performances of the band before Adam Ant went solo.

The new Theatre and Performance Galleries, which will be in galleries 103-106, will also have on display costumes from the Phantom of the Opera, the Ossie Clarke designed jumpsuit as worn by Mick Jagger, and costumes from Henry V, as well as set models, stage props, paintings, photographs along with posters, flyers and handbills which focus on the complete process of performance from start to finish.”

 

The WALTERS!?!?!?!

Ok guys I SWEAR I am not on their payroll, and no one is prompting me to do their promotion but I just discovered this:

http://www.thewalters.org/store/purchase5.aspx?p=790

RAJA YOGA in the Asian Art room.

At first the idea struck me as somewhat tacky, the idea of such a  lofty old world sort of museum and a bunch of new agey middle aged artsy women in spandex sweatin to the tunes of monks sighing….and then I realized: THIS IS DONE IN SMALL GRASSROOTS ARTSPACES EVERYWHERE.

This is an extremely awesome thing.  How unpretentious, and thats saying a lot for something subtitles the Royal Path.  Im really digging the new direction of the Walters, with experimental fashion shows and now YOGA!!?!  its kind of awesome, and definitely a powerful statement about trying to engage your audience, and pull people into an institution who may not have otherwise ventured into it.

Bravo!

 

Walters Art Museum-hold on to your hat!

Ok, its true I have an unequivocal bias for the Walters.  Ill admit it upfront, I lived two blocks away from them in Baltimore, one of their curators is writing my grad school recommendations, and I have the inside skinny on a few different things which makes me feel *special*.

But this:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=28307

WAS FANTASTIC news!

Ina  nutshell, they are going to literally, visually feature the Elven workshop that is their conservation department, so that it will be on view, a sort of live art workshop.  GENIUS.  This is so brilliant.  No I havent sat around doing research to see which other spaces are doing the same thing if any, but I *have* been travelign recently and I can tell you definitively that the Met, SFMOMA, MOMA, MOCA, and the BMA are not.  And that is Sufficient to ME.  And Ill tell you why, this is a truly contemporary step, a process bare, object-unecessary nod to expanded format performance.  Not only that but its COOL, and afterall thats what really counts.

 

Review: Douglas Blau

Douglas Blau- at the Institute of Contemporary Art of the University of Pennsylvania

Suzannah Gerber

In the front gallery of the ICA is a collection of images:

photocopies, collages, and commercial postcards assembled in a hodgepodge, like an under-decorated scrapbook.  The gallery walls here are more reminiscent of the walls of an artist’s studio and operate more like an archive of images that relate to the mind of one person rather than an exhibition of resolved works of art.  A clear aesthetic sensibility emerges,

as we ca

n see what the artist self-selects, and what parts he chooses to magnify, repeat or collage.  Images from the Italian Renaissance such as the College of Athens by Leonardo Da Vinci begin in color, as with a small postcard reproduction, and then shift to black and white in a photocopy that is blown up in scale, and in turn juxtaposed with a smiling Indian girl in native dress.  The overall presentation is of a cabinet of wonders, a “my life in pictures”, and serves as a para-historical autobiographical survey of art.  The wall-text alludes to this by suggesting that the images are meant simply “to be enjoyable to look at”, while the curatorial handout states that the artist creates “an essential cast of characters and repertoire of plots, periods, styles, locations, and genres… the details and degrees of abstraction vary over time and through reproduction.”

 

Installation

Today was my Senior thesis critique, and it went very well.  Aside from Piper Shephard and Annet Couwenberg, Jed Dodds, Artistic Director of the Creative Alliance was also there as a guest critic, and he gave my work the highest praise possible: complete understanding and accolades!

This is really refreshing, since after working on this for over a year, I began to hate the hell out of it, and I didnt even want to install it for my show.

Close up upin entering of film

View from front of Installation

Fibers Seniors Group Shot

This is by far my most subtle of works, using allegory instead of overt imagery.  Enjoy and leave comments!

 

MICA Commencement 2008

Bevan Dunbar in the Spinster Saga by Suzannah Gerber

YAY Graduation!

I have a multi media installation, of video, sculpture and spinning wheel complete with flax!

December 11th- December 19th come to MICA, 1301 Mount Royal Avenue for my commencement exhibition!

Come check it out and everyone else’s work too!

 

Rotterdam Biennial

I have just been offered an internship with the Interboro Partners to work on their latest project: 4th Annual Rotterdam Biennial, in 2009!

I am very excited and honoured to be offered this position, working with a curatorial team for a great international exhibition!

We are researching ideas about community, and the concepts of city architecture all over the world.  Baltimore is actually a sister-city of Rotterdam, and I have begun conversations with Annet Couwenberg, who is chair of the Baltimore-Rotterdam organization that oversees the sister-ship.

This is definitely a change of pace for me and a very different arena as far as is typical for my art interests, and I cant wait to get started!