royal mail

A former student sent this link to me, about Harriet Russell's 130 letters to herself. The article is accompanied by a half-dozen great images/examples.

a fourth and final semester of AFE

I am way behind on updating this blog. A new (and final) semester of this class began about a month ago! I've concluded that my attempts to use this blog as a teaching tool in the past have been mostly unsuccessful, so I'm not at all requiring my current students to regularly update it. But I wanted to post a quick update in order to call your attention to a new batch of potential contributors who will hopefully, at a minimum, use this space to post links to their ongoing projects, which include "handmade" elements displayed or distributed via the Web.

bite size

The third group of AFEers is getting ready to install an exhibition of work that addresses the emerging art form of Artist Trading Cards. Here are the details:

Bite Size: an exhibition of Artist Trading Cards made by students in SMFA's Text & Image Arts class Art from Ephemera: Mail Art and the Internet.

Students in this intermediate level multi-media studio class investigate the emerging art form of Artist Trading Cards, one example of the many ways Mail Artists exchange ephemera using the postal system and the Internet. Artist Trading Cards are individual art miniatures that are traditionally traded, not sold, and are created as unique works or small limited editions. The only restriction is that they measure 2 ½ by 3 ½ inches.

Artists whose work will be on display include: Alexis Avedisian, Keina Davis Elswick, Omer Elad, Eric Erdman, Max Falkowitz, Maryn Leigh Kaplan, Jessica Scott-Dutcher, and Roxy Sperber.

Bite Size will be on display in the Mission Hill Foyer Gallery at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, November 11 to 23, 2008.

Workshop & Swap!
A reception for the artists will be held on Monday, November 17th from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. There will also be a workshop and swap held at this time where you can make and trade your own Artist Trading Cards. Cardstock and other materials will be provided; bring your own materials and supplies to share.

SMFA's Mission Hill Gallery is located at 160 St. Alphonsus Street in Boston.

Spread the word!

Henrik Drescher @ UMass Dartmouth

One of the artists we looked at in class, thanks to Jess's presentation, Henrik Drescher, has a show up at the University Art Gallery at UMass Dartmouth. The show is open until October 26th. New Bedford is probably a bit of a commute for most of you, I'm guessing, car-less college students, so maybe we can discuss an optional field trip in class on Monday. Here's a link with more info.

By the way, the discussion threads so far have been great - keep it coming and I'll share my bit as well over the next couple of days...

3191 ~ a year of mornings

This project, originally in blog format, has now been published in book format. I think it's a great idea (and who wouldn't want their web-based communication art project to be published?), but doing the same thing with photos taken in the evening (here's the blog for that project, currently in progress) borders on gimmicky. Still an interesting idea, though, and the few photos I've seen look lovely.

gettin' crafty

We've talked a bit about how a lot of mail art genres have flirted with the fringes of the more mainstream art world but recently, at least, have seemed to find their audience among folks who would be more likely to identify as crafters, not necessarily artists. I think this is particularly true of the short history of Artist Trading Cards. What is the role of craft in the niche genre of ATCs in particular? How do you feel about working with (or on) ATCs in art school, where you're expected to have something of a conceptual framework for just about everything you do?

Discuss!

recycling some links from previous semesters

I believe I promised to post links to some of the web-based projects we looked at in class last week. Sorry to be doing this so late...What can I say? Teachers procrastinate too!

Here's a post with links to projects that were listed on the Java Museum's website in response to their call/question, "art + blog = blogart?".

And here's another post with some other web-based projects that I showed at various times during both semesters last year.

There are a few other random posts that probably repeat some of the links in the two posts above, if you want to dig a little deeper. Peruse the posts with this tag to find everything I've posted to this blog over the past year.

blog discussion experiment no. 1 - fall 08 edition

For next week, I've asked you to read John Held Jr.'s essay "The Mail Art Exhibition: Personal Worlds to Cultural Strategies" from the book At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet. He writes about various "Mail Art Considerations" that were outlined by a couple of California Mail Artists in particular as a result of "the proliferation of Mail Art shows." These "considerations" included: no fee, no jury, no returns, and so on. As we discussed briefly in class yesterday, what's interesting (and perhaps problematic at times) about Mail Art are precisely these conventions that developed around a genre of cultural production that itself developed along the fringes of the more mainstream art world. When we produce our mass-printed editions of Artist Trading Cards later in the semester, we'll be breaking one of the cardinal rules of ATCs: that they be hand-made and unique. How do you reconcile the unconventional spirit of Mail Art with the various "rules" that have accumulated over the decades?

Discuss!

cleaning the slate

Another semester is almost upon us. I'll be teaching this class for the third time this fall and I'm mixing things up a bit, planning to focus on Artist Trading Cards, a small subset of the Mail Art genre, over the course of the 12 weeks and three projects, including another Museum School gallery exhibition which will also be an ATC workshop/swap (more details on that later). Spring 2008 contributors have been taken off to make room for the fall group and the syllabus can be downloaded by following the link to the right. As usual, it's subject to change between now and the start of class on September 8th.

Mapping Correspondence Panel Discussion

As an addendum to what I thought would be my final blog posting of the spring semester, note that there will be a panel discussion in connection with the Mail Art show I went to recently and blogged about right here. If you plan to see the show before it closes next month, this would be a great time to go and listen to the discussion as well. Here's a link with more info (scroll down to June 13th).

when mail art, Fluxus, and media art converge in NY

Last Monday's class concluded round two of SMFA's TIA class, AFE. I had a great time this semester with a truly fantastic group of students and plan to spend the summer applying everything I learned from them to my syllabus and plans for Fall 2008 and beyond. In the meantime, Spring 2008 students will remain contributors to this blog until mid-August or so, when I'll make room for the Fall group. Students, feel free to blog if you find something of interest to the rest of the group (and any random readers we might have out there) or updates to your projects, work, etc.

On that note, this past weekend I made it to New York to see two shows directly related to our class. First stop was Mapping Correspondence: Mail Art in the 21st Century, at The Center for Book Arts. I like how their gallery space is right in the middle of what appears to be a working letterpress shop. Not surprisingly, this being a space dedicated to book arts, there were lots of book-like objects on display. More interesting to me, however, especially in light of our recent exhibition in SMFA's BAG Gallery, were their various strategies to document and display materials not originally intended for the gallery. I particularly liked the plastic frames that stuck out from the wall, allowing visitors to view both the front and back of the mail art on display, mostly postcards in this particular area.


Similar to this strategy were these hanging plexiglas displays that you could walk around to view, again, both the fronts and backs of the materials on display.


This area resembled the more tangible part of Genevieve's project, including postcards cut from recycled boxes that you could purchase for a quarter each.


Several projects and works on display were interactive in some way, like this area of rubber stamps and scraps of paper.


The show is on display through June 28th, so I definitely recommend it if you plan to be in NY between now and then and have an interest in this stuff beyond this class! Also, while I was there perusing their table of information at the entrance to the space, I picked up a postcard for an open call for a mail art exhibition, which will be displayed in both a gallery (in Canada) and blog format. Their blog has photos of the CBA show as well as some nifty examples of mail art. Check out these little mailboxes! Snappy, indeed. The deadline for submitting work is September 4th, so you have all summer to perhaps put the final touches on your projects from this semester!

After that I walked to Chelsea to check out the exhibition at Maya Stendhal Gallery, From Fluxus to Media Art. For such a broad topic it was a pretty sparse show, including work by just eight artists/groups, among them Fluxus and some artists also known in the mail art world including George Maciunas and Nam June Paik. The handout claims that the exhibition attempts to provide visitors with a broad history of media art, tracing some of its characteristics to the practices of artists in the 1960s. But the exhibition mostly failed at that connection, for me at least. About half of the show was film and video work, but I was annoyed that Andy Warhol's film Empire from 1964 was shown as an obvious video transfer on a flat screen television. That seems to be a more and more common gallery and museum practice, displayed as if film to video were that seamless of a transition, with little thought given to the different characteristics of the two media.

I'll be back later this summer with an updated syllabus for a brand new semester! Happy summer to you all!

the show

Here are some pics I took at our show's reception last night. This is what you see as you enter the BAG Gallery:


Looking to the left, at Marcel's area:


And to the right, at Aziza's area:


Here is Tiffanie's Junk Mail installation:


Looking back down the length of the gallery space:


Here is Sam's piece:


And John's Mailbird:


Here are Carmina's Monsters:


A detail from Haley's Text Messages:


And Brian's IceCreamPeople.org:


Here are some visitors interacting with Erin's Coloring Book Series 1 (and not stealing the crayons!):


Some submissions to Missie's Draw On Me, which some visitors took a little too literally (but at least they interacted with the piece!):


Here is a section of Sheri's I Have Dreams Of Orca Whales But I Wake Up In The Fields:


And last but not least, here is a detail from Stefanie's collaged postcard series The Library:

Post!

The class is getting ready to install a showcase of projects from this semester and last. Here's the low-down:

Post: A Collection of Mail and Web Projects
Including work by students in the Text & Image Arts class Art from Ephemera: Mail Art and the Internet, 2007-08

Do snails dream of electronic mail?

Students in this intermediate level multi-media studio class investigate the definition and nature of ephemeral materials while appropriating the strategies of and making connections between Mail Art and the Internet. All of the projects presented in this exhibition utilize the network distribution of the postal system or the Internet (or in some cases, both) in order to explore communication from both aesthetic and conceptual perspectives. Many of the projects are interactive, inviting you to participate in the process in some way.

Participating Artists include Haley Bishop, Brian Butler, Sheri Demchak, Erin Fili, Genevieve Johnson, Aziza Klingensmith, Tiffanie Laverty, Carmina Novoa, John Pearson, Marcel Reyes, Stefanie Vermillion, Samara Watkiss, and Melissa Yasko.

Post will be on display in the BAG Gallery at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Show Dates: March 28 through April 6
Opening Reception: Monday, March 31st, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Image: Brian Butler

About the students and their projects:

Haley Bishop has been recording the details of every single text message she receives in a notebook. Her installation explores both her physical location and emotional reaction at the time of receipt of each message.

Brian Butler is collecting artist renditions on the blank cone postcards provided in the space as evidence of the Ice Cream People. The postcards will be archived online at IceCreamPeople.org.

Sheri Demchak's text/blog game began when she mis-heard a song lyric and preferred the version in her mind. She text messaged this song lyric to friends, her friends responded, she forwarded their responses to other friends, and so on. Her installation attempts to map the network created by this game while rendering the ephemeral material temporarily tangible.

Erin Fili believes that at any age or time in your life you can take a few minutes of your day to stop everything and have some creative fun. She has invited friends, family, and with this installation she invites you to color a blank page from her collection of books. Colored pages will be archived in book and web form.

Genevieve Johnson presents postcards created from recycled cereal boxes and other documentation of interventions she has staged at locations frequented by environmental canvassers. The installation and postcards direct visitors to a website that will them with information about this practice and alternatives.

Aziza Klingensmith was inspired by Yoko Ono's instructional paintings when she created these hand-made, star-punched postcards for distant friends she has remained in contact with primarily through websites like Facebook. Recipients were invited to look through the star and respond with what they saw at that moment.

Tiffanie Laverty explores disposable materials related to pop culture. By designing a fake tabloid magazine subscription letter she both mimics and satirizes the language of tabloid advertising while providing a refreshing break to the monotony of opening junk mail. Gallery visitors are invited to read the letters deposited in the trash bin.

Carmina Novoa has been collecting individual interpretations of monsters. The range of responses she has received is on display and the installation provides a space for interactivity, where you can create your own rendering of a monster to add to her collection.

John Pearson's Mailbird addresses the concepts of distance and social connection. Traveling the world, an owl figurine will be photographed in a new location each time he is sent through the postal system. Photographs of Mailbird in his temporary location are archived on a weblog, before continuing on to his next destination.

Marcel Reyes presents a primarily web-based creative writing project which is conceptualized around participants providing an interpretation of visual material and semiotics. Evocative photographs are paired with mysterious text, provoking viewers to creatively respond to something difficult to understand literally.

Stefanie Vermillion presents a series of collaged postcards that investigate the space and atmosphere of the library from her perspective as a student librarian.

Samara Watkiss poses the question "What do you read when you can't read this?" with a continuation of her ongoing Arabic T-Shirt Project. The project, which includes printed t-shirts, postcards, and a website, explores the political and linguistic ramifications of non-Arabic speakers reacting to seeing written Arabic.

Melissa Yasko is interested in how people will respond to the hundreds of postcards she has distributed around Boston, with the simple instructions to "draw on me." Gallery visitors are invited to participate in this investigation and responses will be archived on a weblog and within a Flickr group.

2 pr0j3kZ 8y t3H k453Y...

Spam Headings into Art

Combining contemporary net art styles with contemporary JUNKMAIL.

Site: http://spamheadingsinotart.blogspot.com
Send spam headlines to: krobinson@student.smfa.edu

Gimmie Chinese Goodies Now Now Now

Yesterday as usual, I was wasting my life on Craigslist.com. Finally it proved useful, because in the "free" section I came across a delightful asian woman giving away HUNDREDS of little red chinese new year envelopes. We met at an intersection and she threw the box at me as cars honked violently. I am going to send 3 envelopes to each person. 1 will enclose a gift. 1 they must send a gift in back to me. 1 for just in case. After collecting gifts I will showcase them.
Envelopes to go to:
-SMFA inboxes
-family
-distant friends
-street corners
-Wu-Tang Clan

Submission to DigitalMailArt

I made this postcard for Mike at http://digitalmailart.blogspot.com/
He asks for ANY medium, ANY topic. Very general. Then he posts what he likes.
For an extra special bonus, check out Mike's profile page, and you will find a .wav file of bird noises.

Postcrossing - Postcards Traveling the World

I just came across this site today. Postcrossing is a project that allows anyone to exchange postcards (paper ones, not electronic) from random places in the world. As usual, I like this because it's playing with the intersection between the tangible and the truly ephemeral, using the website to connect people from all over the world who in turn receive paper postcards from other members. The project also, although perhaps not intentionally, echoes the Mail Art mantra of "senders receive."

art + blog = blogart?

Rhizome posted a call for submissions of art projects that use blogging technologies last summer and I finally found a list of their resulting selections. The call was initiated by Java Museum. I find their website and various blog-like pages incredibly confusing and frankly, very poorly designed, at least from a user's perspective. It took some serious digging to actually get to a list - with links (what a concept for a website?!) - of the blogs that were selected. I even left a comment on this page as to how nice it'd be to have their list of artists' names link to their projects, but it looks like my comment either disappeared into the digital ether or was deleted.

At any rate, lucky for you, I managed to find a list of all the projects, with descriptions and links, and I've picked out a dozen or so I find interesting.

Urban Squares
A collection of photos, panoramas, and text that "explores visual and artistic aspects of public urban squares (plazas) as a nucleus of any neighborhood. We are interpreting/translating their language about the urban morphology and fundamental values in the overall social integration and sustainability of the urban life."

Whose Body
This blog is a site where narratives about identity are played out. You are invited to join in.

Lapsus Linguae/Slip of the Tongue
Lapsus Linguae is Latin, meaning a 'slip of the tongue'. I have a lot of those. Some of my favourite works starts with that spark that happens when saying the wrong thing comes out just the right way. Lapsus Linguae began as writing exercise of sorts, an attempt to note these slips of the tongue. Then, as I began thinking of the bolg as place to publish, I would force myself to act on these seemingly small ideas while they were still fresh in my mind. Generally I work very slowly. Lapsus Linguae has helped me generate a massive amount of new writing on a wide variety of topics, and to get it into a state finished enough to post in a short amount of time. I have become more alert to the stories lurking in the every day. I used to use Lapsus Linguae to post information about my publications and events, but increasingly I find other people so much more interesting to write about. On occasion I also post responses to things happening in the news. The blog is turning me into a social archivist. See, it looks like I mean to say social activist, but really I mean social archivist. A slip of the tongue indeed.

Little Blue Book
Little Blue Book is a collection of short writings I made whilst traveling in London from 1994-1999. It is both a diary, a fictional account and a place for fantastical tales. The project is ongoing and has another 30 pages or so to go. As the cover says "These are my stories may they fall on deaf ears and be percolated in the coffee bars on nowhere."

Camera Toss
A showcase photo-blog for the "best of" camera tossing and general musings on this form of kinetic photography.

Tea Blog
Tea Blog is an ongoing project by British artist Ellie Harrison, which launched on 1 January 2006. Every time Ellie has a cup of tea (or a different type of hot drink) she notes down the thought which is most on her mind during the first few sips. These thoughts are then uploaded to the Tea Blog at regular intervals. Tea Blog aims to expand indefinitely over the next few years, developing over-time into a vast database of thoughts – a diary of day-to-day life via the ritual of tea-drinking.

Error (Image)
The project is a blog that is composed of broken links, error messages, broken and open guts html code and images made with error messages in new media art. It is a commentary on the danger of new media being lost in archiving as it and its technology ages, the folly of the fetish of the new in new media and a look at errors and error messages as text and image art and commentary.

Complexity
This is an ongoing open call for net based art regarding the topic of complexity. This blog will showcase the ongoing submissions continually on first come first serve basis. Three entries already posted are given as examples. Participants are asked to submit writing through email and visuals as either jpeg, gif, wmv, or mov files. The subject is complexity. In November 2006 I gave a keynote lecture "Managing Complexity" at an annual meeting of financial controllers in Vienna. While I was asked to speak about the topic from a historical, philosophical, and scientific background, I promised to showcase some of my art work in so far as it relates to the theme. The blog site comprises of three examples which portray some of my thoughts on it. The participants are invited to offer their views to continue and enrich the dialogue.

The Social Web Burn Out Blog
The social web burn out blog is a documentary installation and a parody of a blog. Its subject is the social web and networked experience.

Clockwork Protest Films
his is a series of films in which a small clockwork protest is made in a variety of locations around the world. A kit containing a clockwork protester and placards is despatched to various locations and then passed from person to person. No limits are set on how or where the protesters are used or what they are protesting against. The resulting films are sent back to me for editing and screening, on their own blog. People making the films include artists and non-artists mainly (but not exclusively) from the video blogging community. There are currently ten kits in the field but I am not sure exactly where they are.

Peculiaris.net
Peculiaris.net is a collaborative moblog that questions identity and self-representation. It is based on concepts of an identity that is mutant, fluid, liquid, and open… And this mutant identity is here characterized by self-portrait. The project intention is to collect a huge number of these ephemeras photos taken by mobile camera.

Scenes of Provincial Life
A couple of years ago, I started making tiny QuickTime movies, as a kind of moving image dream diary. They quickly became a major focus of my work & I have made at least two or three every month since. I guess I was a vlogger avant la lettre so it seems appropriate to present them now as a vlog…I suppose, to be explicit, I should add, that I consider & have always done, even before blogging it, the movie *sequence* to be the artwork - rather like a thematically linked collection of poems where one can read an individual poem with pleasure & profit but the greater insight is to found in the collection as a whole.

rubber stamps

This is the same list - of online companies that make customized rubber stamps - that I sent you all via e-mail:

Rubber Stamp Champ
The Stampmaker
123 Print
Rubber Stamps
Addicted to Rubber Stamps (sells "art stamps," not sure if they customize)
Simon Stamps
Rubber Stamps of America (seems more image based)

some items and events of interest to AFE

Junk Jet: a DIY 'zine in the age of electronic reproduction (not that copiers aren't electronic, but that's another blog post). Check out their website for more info.

Since so many of your projects aim to be interactive or participatory in some way (and acknowledging that that can be a tricky goal to achieve), I thought this event might be perfect timing, right after our first critique but before we dive in to the final portion of the semester. The Failure Support Group will take place on Friday evening, February 29th, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Democracy Center in Cambridge.

From their e-mail announcement:

Art projects fail a lot, particularly those that are participatory, public and/or social. They fail for different reasons and cause myriad revelations. Nevertheless, the structures that we use to talk about these works and contexts where they are presented often don't leave room for discussing the failures plainly and objectively.

We're interested in failure – in its relationship to creative production, artistic rhetoric and public presentation. So interested, in fact, that we want to share ours and hear about yours.

We invite you to join us for a Failure Support Group, an evening survey of failed processes and failed projects (yours and ours). Is there, actually, a recipe for failure? Are certain methodologies more prone to failure than others? How? What is at stake in acknowledging failure – in one's process, one's community, or one's career?

Bad coffee, 'nilla wafers, and accordion accompaniment provided.

I was tempted to RSVP with a presentation about one of my own, mostly unsuccessful projects but I think I'll just attend and share instead. Hope to see some of you there!

spring links for web-based mail art-inspired projects

By the end of the weekend, each of you should share with the blog a brief blurb about the project you presented in class last Monday. Include a link to the project's website!

Here are some additional links to a few projects that aren't necessarily interactive but instead use their websites to facilitate their project's network and/or document the work itself:

BOOK: Collaborative exhibition of a sketchbook shared by four artists from both sides of the Atlantic. I like the simplicity of the site, which really just documents the project, but the project definitely depended upon the international postal system to create a small network and communication system between the four artists. It's a great example to think about the transition from art practice (the sketchbook) to the mailbox and back to the white box (check out the exhibition page).

Croatian mail art project - a PDF presentation of a poster/mail art project

Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour


Jesse Aaron Cohen's email exhibits; this is the index but you can also request to be added to his distribution list if you want to receive the exhibits by email.

Mail Interviews by Rudd Janssen, in blog format.

Veronica Millon's cross-stiched envelopes: These make me so happy...I'm not even completely sure why. I applaud her for taking advantage of a pre-existing format like PictureTrail but I think the project deserves a site re-design! This is a great example of creating envelopes or postcards from unusual materials.

For more resources about Mail Art more generally, check out this post from last semester.