Posts filed under 'virtual'
Saatchi looks east
Zhang Hongtu
Emily Pitts writes:
As the leaves start to turn, so the cashmere and champagne crew turns out for the start of London’s art fair season. Amid the annual Zoo, Frieze and Scope art fairs, a particular attraction this year is the opening of the new Saatchi Gallery at the Duke of York’s HQ on the King’s Road. Its position just off Sloane Square, together with the elegance of the 1804 Soane-esque architecture and the sophisticated interior, belie the thoroughly modern approach of the new gallery.
The Saatchi Gallery has long been famous for its position at the forefront of the contemporary art movement and for providing a space for work by artists who are regarded as promising rather than established. There are, however, two particularly interesting aspects to the new gallery. Firstly, it is providing a ‘real-world’ space for artists who have submitted work online. When we talk about trends, we often talk about the blur between the real and the virtual world, and here is a great example of an art institution embracing that trend and bringing the virtual into the tangible surroundings of a world-class gallery.
Secondly, the subject matter that has been chosen for the inaugural exhibition; new Chinese artists. The recent return of China as an economic and political power after after two hundred years is being mirrored in the art world (and in culture more generally), as it takes its place at the cutting edge. So it’s in with the new, out with the old, as we witness Damian Hirst consigned (if £95m richer) to the auction halls of Sotheby’s, as China and its young artists become our new ‘sensation’.
The picture shown is Zhang Hongtu’s “Long Live Chairman Mao Series #29″. The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art is at the Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London SW1, until 18th January 2009.
Add comment 10 October 2008
7 million litres of water
Jo Phillips writes:
Our More London office reopens today after two days of closure following the Great Flood of Tooley Street. Some took the fact that the nearby Greater London Assembly building was out out of action in the week of the mayoral elections as a bad omen for Ken Livingstone. The events have demonstrated rather vividly the vulnerability of all city infrastructure; you might have thought a fifth floor office would be immune (I did), but servers and electricity supply in the basement are - unsurprisingly - vulnerable to street level flooding. Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital was similarly affected.
In this instance, 7 million litres of water poured out of a burst water main. But it gives us a glimpse of a possible future London — as we see more climate-change related extreme weather events, what will change? What I learnt was that crises in the real world push us further into the virtual world. With email and phone systems down, our company used text messages and a blog to disseminate important information. Local residents similarly used the SE1 community forum to communicate with each other. One possible outcome is an increase in mobile working (or more exactly, ‘extended working’, in which the workplace is extended in space and time), but this leads to interesting questions about infrastructure. Maybe not that sensible to leave it below street level when the local flood risk map looks like this:
So maybe there’s likely to be less emphasis on managing your own infrastructure, and more on getting it delivered to you as a service by a supplier - already a strong developing trend, as Nicholas Carr blogged this week. Having servers down in the basement may provide an illusion of control, but would not prove very resilient in a world of increasing environmental risk.
Add comment 30 April 2008
Reborn in a strange world
Jo Phillips writes:
A reborn doll is a vinyl doll that has been customised by a process of repainting and enhancement to resemble, as closely as possible, a real human baby. The process of doing this is called “reborning” – interesting in itself given the Christian connotations of the word.
Etymological interest aside, it is also, culturally, a fascinating phenomenon. Take a look at Oak Tree Nursery where you can see pictures of “available babies” and “adopt” your own. Clips from Channel 4’s recent My Fake Baby documentary inform us that for some “mothers” reborns are the perfect child because they “never grow out of their clothes or soil them”. For others they provide a child substitute once their own children have grown up and left home. Fake babies, fake mothers: with Mother’s Day still a fresh memory in this country I have to admit I find this blurring of virtual and real rather disturbing.
Image from Little Angels Nursery
4 comments 12 March 2008
