More info at www.garypanter.com
More info at www.garypanter.com
More info at www.garypanter.com
Imagine a comforter that understands it’s own proximity and holds you tighter? Artists at the High-Low Tech Group lead by Leah Buechley, Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT Media Lab are imagining and making objects combining traditional craft and contemporary technologies. Hannah Perner-Wilson quilted 41 potentiometers into a traditional looking quilt allowing the fabric to sense it’s own shape and orientation creating a blanket that hugs you a little or knows how to hang just right over a railing. The focus of the High-Low Tech Group is to bring together tradition, craft, artisans and technology in a thoughtful, good, clean, intentional direction towards a future with a smaller more personal scale and diverse functional objects infused with technology. In a recent lecture at the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Leah Buechley gave a talk titled Artisanal Technology hosted by Hive76 (a community of makers and crafters organized around a shared workspace, finding new ways to empower people to work with technology and materials, blending craft with electronics and computers) that was inspiring, illuminating and engaging.
Leah Buechley made the analogy to the “slow food” movement, the concept that using locally grown, sustainable foods is better than fast factory food, to artisans taking the time to re-use, recycle and hack technology into traditional arts and crafts. Slow technology re-purposes fast, disposable components into innovative, unusual objects, integrating high and low tech materials with diverse processes, values and cultures.
Embedding electronics into fabric with the Lilypad Arduino is inspiring the creation of light-up fashion seen in pop music videos, developing a new aspirational trend that is sure to permeate popular culture. The HLT group is thinking about how, traditionally, millions of people have made their own clothes, or furniture or electronics and how embedding hacked personal electronics in new ways such as Jie Qi’s electronic pop-up book or David Mellis’ teeny wooden speakers for iPods is designing a path to the future for artisanal crafts. Other projects the group is investigating include self-folding origami paper, open source consumer electronics like the Living Wall (touch sensitive wallpaper that activates lights when touched), I/O Stickers electronic construction kit with adhesive sensors and actuators – Obey! – the TeleScrapbook is a remote controlled scrapbook, TearDrop paper-based computing allows people to explore electrical interfaces sketched directly on paper and Textile Sensors let you explore crafting and needlework with conductive thread. Check out the HLT website for more exciting, unusual ideas.
Artisans contribute to society in a positive way, using their mind and body to make a living creating objects people need and desire; incorporating hacked technology into fabric and objects results in new and unique artifacts designed by a literate and engaged society. Clean, less disposable technology made by hand, using recycled components addresses a niche market now but will infuse into the wider marketplace over time. Adafruit Industries lead by Limor Fried aka ladyada is an electronic hobbyist company offering open source hardware and software kits, including the Lilypad, helping crafters to modify existing objects, arose from research from the High/Low Tech Group. The Adafruit website has how-to videos to help you hack.
The High/Low Tech Group at MIT and Hive76 are exploring new paths that imagine a sustainable technological future that is fantastical yet achievable. Saturday, June 4th is Random Hacks of Kindness Day, a hack-a-thon promoted by Hive76 to create solutions to real world problems using technology. Imagine what you might hack to make the world better, more interesting and sustainable?
DoN Brewer
Fine stick figure drawing by Daniel Chow
Remember when you were in kindergarten you were instructed to follow the dotted line of each alphabet, and repeat each until you memorize all of them? Eventually, after much practicing, you can draw each alphabet just like the ones you have traced on the dotted line from memory. With even more practicing, your alphabet drawings eventually evolve into your own handwriting style or signature. Drawing the human figure is quite the same, but where could you find a willing life model for practicing without breaking your budget?
To date, you have three relatively affordable venues to improve your skills in figure drawing: Fleisher Art Memorial, The Plastic Club, and the Sketch Club. All three offer figure drawing workshops and open studios for relatively inexpensive fees. Remember, these are not-for-profit organizations, so money is always needed to maintain a building, keep a staff that help keep the quality art programs running smoothly, and to pay for life models*, and whatnot.
Fleisher Art Memorial has workshops and free classes during the Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall semesters. All workshops and classes depend on availability—instructors, number of students signing up, life models, and fundings. This summer Fleisher is offering one figure drawing open studio and five figure related workshops.
- Figure Drawing Open Studio, Monitor
- Drawing the Clothed Figure, David Berger, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA
- Watercolor and the Figure, Nancy Sophy, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA
- Figure Drawing, David Krevolin, Lyme Academy College of Fine Art, CT
- Anatomy – Week Long Intensive, David Krevolin, Lyme Academy College of Fine Art, CT
- Pastels and the Figure, Bernard Collins, University of Pennsylvania, PA
Summer registration began May 23rd, so you still have time to register. Please visit www.fleisher.org for more information and to register.
Woman Facing, conté on toned paper, David Krevolin
The Sketch Club offers six workshops a week on various days and times. David Krevolin monitors one of the figure drawing open studios at the Sketch Club. Please visit www.sketchclub.org for more information.
The Plastic Club also offers up to six figure painting and drawing workshops with life models. Please visit www.plasticclub.org for more information.
*Be respectful of the life models—do not comment about the model as though he/she is like a piece of meat; do not comment about the model as though he/she is not in your presence; and do not touch the model.
(Daniel Chow is a premium member and Contributing Writer for Side Arts. Daniel majored in Anthropology at San Francisco State University, and then took a detour to try a career in internet technology. He worked as an internet technology administrator for a public relations firm in San Francisco for three years, and later discovered his passion for painting and photography in Asheville, North Carolina. You can view some of his work at www.dchow.co.)
More info at: www.markbode.com
Side Arts is inviting contemporary artists to connect with our community. Our proposal to the selected artists: Tell us about an early experience showing or selling your artwork and what you learned from it. Artists are asked for submissions as well as images of their artwork.
From here, there, and everywhere; another mix of artists for the Artist Uprising:
Marc Burckhardt
Jeff McMillan
Colette Calascione
Yuko Shimizu
Louis Rieth
Ben Newman
Myeongbeom Kim
Tony Orrico
Rune Olsen
Hans van Bentem
Mixed media drawing
I’d like to share my first blog post with you: “Another Way In” at http://www.piadegirolamo.com/blog/ about one way I found of overcoming a recent patch of resistance to getting into the studio. It involves some advice I got from a dream!
More info at www.niagaradetroit.com
More info at www.niagaradetroit.com
