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!

Online Drawing Trading

This is the site that I mentioned in class last week. You create a drawing and then swap it with a stranger; it was based off of sketchswap, but I like garyc's version better because unlike sketchswap you are actually trading with another person (in sketchswap your drawing goes into a database and the drawing you get comes from the database) and also garyc's version is unmoderated.

Jess

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).