SOFTlab was invited by curators Christina Vasallo and Adam Henry to the show System:System, opening this coming Friday at 21 Monitor Street in Brooklyn. The show, in the words of the curators:
A failing economy has decided the recent fate of 21 Monitor Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Formerly a nun’s convent, the grand three-story house now stands uninhabited due to the declining membership of St. Cecilia parish and its sister school. Rather than let the building fall into disrepair the parish has found ways to breathe new life into it through a rotating schedule of film shoots, screenings, dance performances, and art exhibitions.

So many thanks to Brandt Graves and Carrie McKnelly for the invaluable help putting the show together.

Read more info on the show here.

A few more images, courtesy of Alan Tansey, after the jump below.

Today was the first of MoMA’s P.S.1 warm-up sessions for the summer. Work A.C’s winning entry, P.F.1 has, in a way, restored my faith in the competition. After a few years of The installation is in my view, one of the smartest and best ever to be assembled in the museum’s garden. Not only is it very current as an idea (urban farms), it is simple, utilizes common materials in a different way, it is cheaply made and absolutely cool. It was definitely refreshing to see.

More images after the jump below.

[flv:pf1_1.flv pf1.jpg 500 375]

The show at The Brooklyn Museum is absolutely amazing. The exhibit, which is separated in two floors, is very extensive and the quality of the paintings/sculptures/videos etc is just incredible.

As usual, I’ll rant about the museum’s ‘tight-assness’ about taking pictures inside -does Murukami care?…- these guys were truly gestapo style, yelling and running towards people with cameras to get them to stop. That’s what they’re being paid for I guess, but it’s an idiotic policy nonetheless. Makes me wonder if Gagosian has anything to do with it.

Don’t miss the transformer girl in the first level (hard to miss, it takes the main central space) , the short clips in the lower level (anyone knows the name of the little fella?) and the large canvas-tiny DOB blue painting.

View some lousy pics after the jump

Also, don’t miss this circus video of the opening from the NYT…

Read the CBC article here.

I’m working on some initial thoughts after the jump, I’ll finalize that posting later on.

Having worked with a few artists for the past couple of years, I have to admit that this strikes me as a fairly idiotic thing. Not the fact that someone would die for art or the idea of the project itself (displays of death to make us think, etc etc). What is idiotic is thinking – as a volunteer- that dying for art itself will in some way bring a new layer of meaning or debate into the art world. Art, in my mind, has to be understood mainly in economical terms. I think very few people would still believe in art as a means for changing the world. I’m not trying to be cynic at all, nor do I have an immeasurable faith in capitalism (I don’t), but pretending to think that there is a higher purpose in this type of endeavors seems to me both naive and irresponsible at the same time. Here is where my experience with artists comes into play. I have seen their discourses or ideas for a specific project shift almost as quickly as stock does. I’m not saying either that ideas are unmovable and that they should remain static. They’re not, they elastic things that shrink, change and grow with time and events, but when the conceptual basis for projects or a body of work. And when the change happens, it is steered towards one single target: more $$.
And for the record, I’m not talking of “boulevard artists”, I’m talking based on my experience with fairly established artists which, from the outside, were indeed artists, with actual careers and, had I never collaborated with them, might still be naive enough to respect them or the art.

I’ll continue to clean up this rant later on, but I’m just going to post it

via [archinect]

Just recently I came across Troika’s ‘Cloud’, an installation for British Airlines’ Terminal 5 in London’s Heathrow Airport . It uses a combination of digital input and analog double-sided disks (flip dots) to animate the skin of the sculpture. Absolutely fantastic.

Visit Troika’s website here.

According to their news section, they will have an exhibition at MoMA starting March 12. Not to be missed.

View the YouTube video after the jump below.

via [interactive architecture]

We got back last night from the Van Alen Institute after the opening of The Living City, The Living’s installation. It was pretty interesting seeing the ‘full’ prototype of their wall system up and running. The system is controlled by sensors placed in an office off site which measures air quality and then transmits data through the web to their prototype at the Van Alen. The data is then parsed there and it affects activates their system, which adjusts the opening of its ‘gills’ in real-time to the oscillations in air quality.

More pics after the jump below.

The night before…

David Benjamin

It is alive!

Soo-In Yang and Natalie Jeremijenko

Soo-In Yang and Natalie Jeremijenko

We finally made it to PS.1 for the last Warm-up session of the summer. I had not been very gung-ho about visiting the installation this time around but figured it was necessary to see it after all.

The installation Liquid Sky by Ball-Nogues is a bit better that the art inside, and that is uhmm.

The small-town-circus-like structure provides plenty of shade and hammock like seating, but just because it has parametric modeling (to generate each one of the mass-customized pieces) doesn’t necessarily make it new or more interesting. The minimum should be for it to work – which it does – but that doesn’t make it any different than just using standard exterior canopies or a circus tent for that matter.

The one gimmick, which although interesting in its unpredictable -predictability, but still not enough was the two water ‘buckets’ that drop cascades of water. It sets the stage up for county-fair super heroes (see below)…a few laughs, two claps and back to your beers.

This is a cool idea and would’ve been so much more interesting if the randomness was not only temporary but also spatial.

Inside the museum, the most interesting (or even ‘contemporary’ for that matter) of the art was Peter Young’s exhibit Peter Young 1963-1977. Yes, that is 30 years…

The music was alla par with the art, so I’m not even gonna mention it.

My good friend and uber talented architect Frank Gesualdi, and his lovely wife Amanda

So tonight the opening for Illumination (v2.0) has happened. The show was at the Bravin Lee gallery in Chelsea. We (SOFTlab) produced all the video work and animations together with artist Michael Somoroff and his team. The installation includes a 270-degree video projection which, I have to admit, looked pretty amazing.

If you’re in the city, go check it out. We will soon be posting stuff on our site .

More images from the opening after the jump.

We’ve finalized the project we (SOFTlab) worked on for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We worked very closely with the Met’s Costume Institute to develop 2 animations for their:
“Paul Poiret: King of Fashion” exhibit which will open May 9th through August 5th.

Check out the press release at artknowledgenews.
SOFTlab got some press in the IHT in this article by Susy Menkes.
View stills of the animation in our studio site here.

The press preview was today and I have to say, this exhibition is FANTASTIC! It is quite an interesting survey of the work of one of the most influential fashion designers of the early twentieth century. His dresses are (and I’m by no means a fashion expert) very minimal and astonishingly complex. As I learned, from working with the curators (Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton) from the Costume Institute, the structural complexity of his garments is achieved with an economy of means that seems way too contemporary.

The whole experience was just great, and all the people we worked with at the Museum were amazing. Kudos and thanks to Christopher Noey, Harold Koda, Andrew Bolton, Paul Caro, Jessica Glass and Jessica Regan.

Yup, thats us.

Tonight is the big gala night, hence the tent outside of the museum. My suit is at the dry-cleaners so I unfortunately won’t be able to make it…oh well..