http://odeo.com/channels/29834-Smarthistory BethHarrisAndStevenZucker no smarthistory.org is a free multi-media web-book created by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, and designed as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the traditional art history textbook. smarthistory.org is a free multi-media web-book created by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, and designed as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the traditional art history textbook. Alternative museum audio guides by art historians Beth Harris and Stephen Zucker of the Fashion Institute of Technology en 40 Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:01:55 -0700 Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:01:55 -0700 http://odeo.com/episodes/23414128-The-Attention-Economy-and-%E2%80%9CAttractive-Art%E2%80%9D-by-Selavy-Oh This week, the Brooklyn is Watching podcast focused on a number of works, including Selavy Oh’s conceptual “Attractive Art.” smARThistory’s video podcast (see below) took up that work (literally a tractor beam pulling us to an underwater corner of the sim), and expanded the discussion a bit more, tying it to issues Jay raised about attention at Brooklyn is Watching — an un-curated space where all the art left there by its creators vies for our attention both in Second Life, and in an art gallery (Jack the Pelican Presents) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Selavy Oh’s work also seems to comment on the “attention economy.” New questions arise like, what, if any, differences arise in the “attention economy” inside virtual worlds? Oh, and of course Selavy Oh’s name recalls Duchamp’s female alter-ego Rose Selavy. From The Economy of Attention by Georg Franck The economy of attention not only looks back on an ancient pre-hi... This week, the Brooklyn is Watching podcast focused on a number of works, including Selavy Oh’s conceptual “Attractive Art.” smARThistory’s video podcast (see below) took up that work (literally a tractor beam pulling us to an underwater corner of the sim), and expanded the discussion a bit more, tying it to issues Jay raised about attention at Brooklyn is Watching — an un-curated space where all the art left there by its creators vies for our attention both in Second Life, and in an art gallery (Jack the Pelican Presents) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Selavy Oh’s work also seems to comment on the “attention economy.” New questions arise like, what, if any, differences arise in the “attention economy” inside virtual worlds? Oh, and of course Selavy Oh’s name recalls Duchamp’s female alter-ego Rose Selavy. From The Economy of Attention by Georg Franck The economy of attention not only looks back on an ancient pre-history, it also has a long industrial history. It was pre-industrial as long as publication technologies were either of the handicraft type or, respectively, had not yet permeated the entire economy. Attention economy reached its early industrial phase when the first, relatively simple information and communication technologies developed. The technology of printing, radio broadcasting and sound film for the first time assembled critical amounts of anonymously donated attention, turning the star cult into a mass phenomenon. It was then that the business of attraction became professionalised, that deliberate eye-catching became industrial in advertising. We may speak of a phase of full industrialisation since the advent of television. There, the secondary, i.e. the viewers’ aspect of reality specially created to attract attention, is beginning to compete with the primary aspect, directly perceived reality. During this last phase, most of the freely disposable, i.e. consuming attention passes through the various media; popularisation, i.e. mass production of prominence, arises. And during this phase there are also first indications that attention income is beginning to have greater weight than money income. For attentive beings like us, only that which retains our attention is real. This in turn does not mean that everything we imagine or think of is real for us. We are very well able to distinguish between perception, recollection and imagination. But we are not as easily able to stop some recollection acting like a real event, or to prevent an idea from exerting real power. There is nothing more real than images which stick to the mind. Nothing exerts greater power over us than that which forces us to take attentive note. Everything to which we inadvertently pay attention, inadvertently exerts some effect on us. And everything that captures our attention is real to a higher degree than the background. To be sure, there is little in the media which sticks to the mind. Luckily, there is no obligation to pay attention, either. But there is enough which attracts, which caters to laziness, which may be taken in on the side. And everything in which attention gets entangled becomes, first of all, real in a subjective sense. From (Wikipedia) Herbert Simon was perhaps the first person to articulate the concept of attention economics when he wrote: …in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, p. 40-41). Is there also some homage here (in Selavy Oh’s small cube at the end of the tractor beam which says “Look at This”) to the famous imperative “Drink Me” in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? And should we be worried, as Alice was?: There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (`which certainly was not here before,’ said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME’ beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say `Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I’ll look first,’ she said, `and see whether it’s marked “poison” or not’; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. This week, the Brooklyn is Watching podcast focused on a number of works, including Selavy Oh’s conceptual “Attractive Art.” smARThistory’s video podcast (see below) took up that work (literally a tractor beam pulling us to an underwater corner of the sim), and expanded the discussion a bit more, tying it to issues Jay raised about attention at Brooklyn is Watching — an un-curated space where all the art left there by its creators vies for our attention both in Second Life, and in an art gallery (Jack the Pelican Presents) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Selavy Oh’s work also seems to comment on the “attention economy.” New questions arise like, what, if any, differences arise in the “attention economy” inside virtual worlds? Oh, and of course Selavy Oh’s name recalls Duchamp’s female alter-ego Rose Selavy. From The Economy of Attention by Georg Franck The economy of attention not only looks back on an ancient pre-history, it also has a long industrial history. It was pre-industrial as long as publication technologies were either of the handicraft type or, respectively, had not yet permeated the entire economy. Attention economy reached its early industrial phase when the first, relatively simple information and communication technologies developed. The technology of printing, radio broadcasting and sound film for the first time assembled critical amounts of anonymously donated attention, turning the star cult into a mass phenomenon. It was then that the business of attraction became professionalised, that deliberate eye-catching became industrial in advertising. We may speak of a phase of full industrialisation since the advent of television. There, the secondary, i.e. the viewers’ aspect of reality specially created to attract attention, is beginning to compete with the primary aspect, directly perceived reality. During this last phase, most of the freely disposable, i.e. consuming attention passes through the various media; popularisation, i.e. mass production of prominence, arises. And during this phase there are also first indications that attention income is beginning to have greater weight than money income. For attentive beings like us, only that which retains our attention is real. This in turn does not mean that everything we imagine or think of is real for us. We are very well able to distinguish between perception, recollection and imagination. But we are not as easily able to stop some recollection acting like a real event, or to prevent an idea from exerting real power. There is nothing more real than images which stick to the mind. Nothing exerts greater power over us than that which forces us to take attentive note. Everything to which we inadvertently pay attention, inadvertently exerts some effect on us. And everything that captures our attention is real to a higher degree than the background. To be sure, there is little in the media which sticks to the mind. Luckily, there is no obligation to pay attention, either. But there is enough which attracts, which caters to laziness, which may be taken in on the side. And everything in which attention gets entangled becomes, first of all, real in a subjective sense. From (Wikipedia) Herbert Simon was perhaps the first person to articulate the concept of attention economics when he wrote: …in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, p. 40-41). Is there also some homage here (in Selavy Oh’s small cube at the end of the tractor beam which says “Look at This”) to the famous imperative “Drink Me” in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? And should we be worried, as Alice was?: There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (`which certainly was not here before,’ said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME’ beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say `Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I’ll look first,’ she said, `and see whether it’s marked “poison” or not’; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. tag:odeo.com,2008-09-28,23414128 Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:01:55 -0700 no Smarthistory attention, second life, duchamp, Brooklyn is Watching, selavy oh, jack the pelican presents, rose selavy http://odeo.com/episodes/23530367-The-Attention-Economy-and-%E2%80%9CAttractive-Art%E2%80%9D-by-Selavy-Oh Cross-posted at Brooklyn is Watching. This week, the Brooklyn is Watching podcast focused on a number of works, including Selavy Oh’s conceptual “Attractive Art.” smARThistory’s video podcast (see below) took up that work (literally a tractor beam pulling us to an underwater corner of the sim), and expanded the discussion a bit more, tying it to issues Jay raised about attention at Brooklyn is Watching — an un-curated space where all the art left there by its creators vies for our attention both in Second Life, and in an art gallery (Jack the Pelican Presents) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Selavy Oh’s work also seems to comment on the “attention economy.” New questions arise like, what, if any, differences arise in the “attention economy” inside virtual worlds? Oh, and of course Selavy Oh’s name recalls Duchamp’s female alter-ego, Rose Selavy. From “The Economy of Attention” by Georg Franck: The economy... Cross-posted at Brooklyn is Watching. This week, the Brooklyn is Watching podcast focused on a number of works, including Selavy Oh’s conceptual “Attractive Art.” smARThistory’s video podcast (see below) took up that work (literally a tractor beam pulling us to an underwater corner of the sim), and expanded the discussion a bit more, tying it to issues Jay raised about attention at Brooklyn is Watching — an un-curated space where all the art left there by its creators vies for our attention both in Second Life, and in an art gallery (Jack the Pelican Presents) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Selavy Oh’s work also seems to comment on the “attention economy.” New questions arise like, what, if any, differences arise in the “attention economy” inside virtual worlds? Oh, and of course Selavy Oh’s name recalls Duchamp’s female alter-ego, Rose Selavy. From “The Economy of Attention” by Georg Franck: The economy of attention not only looks back on an ancient pre-history, it also has a long industrial history. It was pre-industrial as long as publication technologies were either of the handicraft type or, respectively, had not yet permeated the entire economy. Attention economy reached its early industrial phase when the first, relatively simple information and communication technologies developed. The technology of printing, radio broadcasting and sound film for the first time assembled critical amounts of anonymously donated attention, turning the star cult into a mass phenomenon. It was then that the business of attraction became professionalised, that deliberate eye-catching became industrial in advertising. We may speak of a phase of full industrialisation since the advent of television. There, the secondary, i.e. the viewers’ aspect of reality specially created to attract attention, is beginning to compete with the primary aspect, directly perceived reality. During this last phase, most of the freely disposable, i.e. consuming attention passes through the various media; popularisation, i.e. mass production of prominence, arises. And during this phase there are also first indications that attention income is beginning to have greater weight than money income. For attentive beings like us, only that which retains our attention is real. This in turn does not mean that everything we imagine or think of is real for us. We are very well able to distinguish between perception, recollection and imagination. But we are not as easily able to stop some recollection acting like a real event, or to prevent an idea from exerting real power. There is nothing more real than images which stick to the mind. Nothing exerts greater power over us than that which forces us to take attentive note. Everything to which we inadvertently pay attention, inadvertently exerts some effect on us. And everything that captures our attention is real to a higher degree than the background. To be sure, there is little in the media which sticks to the mind. Luckily, there is no obligation to pay attention, either. But there is enough which attracts, which caters to laziness, which may be taken in on the side. And everything in which attention gets entangled becomes, first of all, real in a subjective sense. From Wikipedia: Herbert Simon was perhaps the first person to articulate the concept of attention economics when he wrote: …in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, p. 40-41). Is there also some homage here (in Selavy Oh’s small cube at the end of the tractor beam which says “Look at This”) to the famous imperative “Drink Me” in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? And should we be worried, as Alice was?: There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (`which certainly was not here before,’ said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME’ beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say `Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I’ll look first,’ she said, `and see whether it’s marked “poison” or not’; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. Cross-posted at Brooklyn is Watching. This week, the Brooklyn is Watching podcast focused on a number of works, including Selavy Oh’s conceptual “Attractive Art.” smARThistory’s video podcast (see below) took up that work (literally a tractor beam pulling us to an underwater corner of the sim), and expanded the discussion a bit more, tying it to issues Jay raised about attention at Brooklyn is Watching — an un-curated space where all the art left there by its creators vies for our attention both in Second Life, and in an art gallery (Jack the Pelican Presents) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Selavy Oh’s work also seems to comment on the “attention economy.” New questions arise like, what, if any, differences arise in the “attention economy” inside virtual worlds? Oh, and of course Selavy Oh’s name recalls Duchamp’s female alter-ego, Rose Selavy. From “The Economy of Attention” by Georg Franck: The economy of attention not only looks back on an ancient pre-history, it also has a long industrial history. It was pre-industrial as long as publication technologies were either of the handicraft type or, respectively, had not yet permeated the entire economy. Attention economy reached its early industrial phase when the first, relatively simple information and communication technologies developed. The technology of printing, radio broadcasting and sound film for the first time assembled critical amounts of anonymously donated attention, turning the star cult into a mass phenomenon. It was then that the business of attraction became professionalised, that deliberate eye-catching became industrial in advertising. We may speak of a phase of full industrialisation since the advent of television. There, the secondary, i.e. the viewers’ aspect of reality specially created to attract attention, is beginning to compete with the primary aspect, directly perceived reality. During this last phase, most of the freely disposable, i.e. consuming attention passes through the various media; popularisation, i.e. mass production of prominence, arises. And during this phase there are also first indications that attention income is beginning to have greater weight than money income. For attentive beings like us, only that which retains our attention is real. This in turn does not mean that everything we imagine or think of is real for us. We are very well able to distinguish between perception, recollection and imagination. But we are not as easily able to stop some recollection acting like a real event, or to prevent an idea from exerting real power. There is nothing more real than images which stick to the mind. Nothing exerts greater power over us than that which forces us to take attentive note. Everything to which we inadvertently pay attention, inadvertently exerts some effect on us. And everything that captures our attention is real to a higher degree than the background. To be sure, there is little in the media which sticks to the mind. Luckily, there is no obligation to pay attention, either. But there is enough which attracts, which caters to laziness, which may be taken in on the side. And everything in which attention gets entangled becomes, first of all, real in a subjective sense. From Wikipedia: Herbert Simon was perhaps the first person to articulate the concept of attention economics when he wrote: …in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, p. 40-41). Is there also some homage here (in Selavy Oh’s small cube at the end of the tractor beam which says “Look at This”) to the famous imperative “Drink Me” in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? And should we be worried, as Alice was?: There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (`which certainly was not here before,’ said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME’ beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say `Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I’ll look first,’ she said, `and see whether it’s marked “poison” or not’; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. tag:odeo.com,2008-09-28,23530367 Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:01:55 -0700 no Smarthistory attention, second life, duchamp, Brooklyn is Watching, selavy oh, jack the pelican presents, rose selavy http://odeo.com/episodes/23530368-smARThistory-podcasts-with-Brooklyn-is-Watching We had been following Brooklyn is Watching with great interest for some time now. So, we were thrilled when Jay van Buren left us a comment here, and then graciously invited us to guest podcast with some Brooklyn is Watching regulars. We had a GREAT time talking about SL art with Boris Kizelshteyn, Shirley Marquez and Jay. We found their differing perspectives created a tremendously exciting prism of ideas. We also realized that by bringing together this group to grapple with the art that is brought to Brooklyn is Watching, Jay has, in effect, created a post-modern salon. Salons have historically been most successful when culture is at a point of radical disjunction when traditional modes of meaning formation are strained. Salons provide an ongoing discussion where new and radical ideas can be viewed, assessed, and eventually understood. Is it possible that Jay has undertaken just such a effort? While we have only spent a short time with Jay and his group, it was clear to us that th... We had been following Brooklyn is Watching with great interest for some time now. So, we were thrilled when Jay van Buren left us a comment here, and then graciously invited us to guest podcast with some Brooklyn is Watching regulars. We had a GREAT time talking about SL art with Boris Kizelshteyn, Shirley Marquez and Jay. We found their differing perspectives created a tremendously exciting prism of ideas. We also realized that by bringing together this group to grapple with the art that is brought to Brooklyn is Watching, Jay has, in effect, created a post-modern salon. Salons have historically been most successful when culture is at a point of radical disjunction when traditional modes of meaning formation are strained. Salons provide an ongoing discussion where new and radical ideas can be viewed, assessed, and eventually understood. Is it possible that Jay has undertaken just such a effort? While we have only spent a short time with Jay and his group, it was clear to us that the underlying impulse the other night was not one of familiar ideas being comfortably rehashed, rather there was a subtle sense of urgency, that we were all seeking each others assistance as we, together, sought to understand what art in Second Life could be and what makes it important. What we have done here is to create another podcast–with video–using snippets of our podcast with the BiW folks. It seems to us that BiW is approaching the art of Second Life very much the way we have looked at art here on smARThistory, by exploring it through conversation. To listen to Jay’s entire unedited hour-long podcast, go to Brooklyn is Watching. To listen to our podcast, click below: We had been following Brooklyn is Watching with great interest for some time now. So, we were thrilled when Jay van Buren left us a comment here, and then graciously invited us to guest podcast with some Brooklyn is Watching regulars. We had a GREAT time talking about SL art with Boris Kizelshteyn, Shirley Marquez and Jay. We found their differing perspectives created a tremendously exciting prism of ideas. We also realized that by bringing together this group to grapple with the art that is brought to Brooklyn is Watching, Jay has, in effect, created a post-modern salon. Salons have historically been most successful when culture is at a point of radical disjunction when traditional modes of meaning formation are strained. Salons provide an ongoing discussion where new and radical ideas can be viewed, assessed, and eventually understood. Is it possible that Jay has undertaken just such a effort? While we have only spent a short time with Jay and his group, it was clear to us that the underlying impulse the other night was not one of familiar ideas being comfortably rehashed, rather there was a subtle sense of urgency, that we were all seeking each others assistance as we, together, sought to understand what art in Second Life could be and what makes it important. What we have done here is to create another podcast–with video–using snippets of our podcast with the BiW folks. It seems to us that BiW is approaching the art of Second Life very much the way we have looked at art here on smARThistory, by exploring it through conversation. To listen to Jay’s entire unedited hour-long podcast, go to Brooklyn is Watching. To listen to our podcast, click below: tag:odeo.com,2008-09-21,23530368 Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:11:20 -0700 no Smarthistory second life, Brooklyn is Watching http://odeo.com/episodes/23378608-smARThistory-podcasts-with-Brooklyn-is-Watching We had been following Brooklyn is Watching with great interest for some time now. So, we were thrilled when Jay Jay van Buren left us a comment here, and then graciously invited us to guest podcast with some Brooklyn is Watching regulars. We had a GREAT time talking about SL art with Boris Kizelshteyn, Shirley Marquez and Jay. We found their differing perspectives created a tremendously exciting prism of ideas. We also realized that by bringing together this group to grapple with the art that is brought to Brooklyn is Watching, Jay has, in effect, created a post-modern salon. Salons have historically been most successful when culture is at a point of radical disjunction when traditional modes of meaning formation are strained. Salons provide an ongoing discussion where new and radical ideas can be viewed, assessed, and eventually understood. Is it possible that Jay has undertaken just such a effort? While we have only spent a short time with Jay and his group, it was clear to us tha... We had been following Brooklyn is Watching with great interest for some time now. So, we were thrilled when Jay Jay van Buren left us a comment here, and then graciously invited us to guest podcast with some Brooklyn is Watching regulars. We had a GREAT time talking about SL art with Boris Kizelshteyn, Shirley Marquez and Jay. We found their differing perspectives created a tremendously exciting prism of ideas. We also realized that by bringing together this group to grapple with the art that is brought to Brooklyn is Watching, Jay has, in effect, created a post-modern salon. Salons have historically been most successful when culture is at a point of radical disjunction when traditional modes of meaning formation are strained. Salons provide an ongoing discussion where new and radical ideas can be viewed, assessed, and eventually understood. Is it possible that Jay has undertaken just such a effort? While we have only spent a short time with Jay and his group, it was clear to us that the underlying impulse the other night was not one of familiar ideas being comfortably rehashed, rather there was a subtle sense of urgency, that we were all seeking each others assistance as we, together, sought to understand what art in Second Life could be and what makes it important. What we have done here is to create another podcast–with video–using snippets of our podcast with the BiW folks. It seems to us that BiW is approaching the art of Second Life very much the way we have looked at art here on smARThistory, by exploring it through conversation. To listen to the entire unedited hourlong podcast, go to Brooklyn is Watching. We had been following Brooklyn is Watching with great interest for some time now. So, we were thrilled when Jay Jay van Buren left us a comment here, and then graciously invited us to guest podcast with some Brooklyn is Watching regulars. We had a GREAT time talking about SL art with Boris Kizelshteyn, Shirley Marquez and Jay. We found their differing perspectives created a tremendously exciting prism of ideas. We also realized that by bringing together this group to grapple with the art that is brought to Brooklyn is Watching, Jay has, in effect, created a post-modern salon. Salons have historically been most successful when culture is at a point of radical disjunction when traditional modes of meaning formation are strained. Salons provide an ongoing discussion where new and radical ideas can be viewed, assessed, and eventually understood. Is it possible that Jay has undertaken just such a effort? While we have only spent a short time with Jay and his group, it was clear to us that the underlying impulse the other night was not one of familiar ideas being comfortably rehashed, rather there was a subtle sense of urgency, that we were all seeking each others assistance as we, together, sought to understand what art in Second Life could be and what makes it important. What we have done here is to create another podcast–with video–using snippets of our podcast with the BiW folks. It seems to us that BiW is approaching the art of Second Life very much the way we have looked at art here on smARThistory, by exploring it through conversation. To listen to the entire unedited hourlong podcast, go to Brooklyn is Watching. tag:odeo.com,2008-09-21,23378608 Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:11:20 -0700 no Smarthistory second life, Brooklyn is Watching http://odeo.com/episodes/23245570-Eva-Hesse-Untitled-1966-MoMA An enhanced podcast about Eva Hesse’s Untitled, 1966 (MoMA) An enhanced podcast about Eva Hesse’s Untitled, 1966 (MoMA) An enhanced podcast about Eva Hesse’s Untitled, 1966 (MoMA) tag:odeo.com,2008-09-03,23245570 Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:46:46 -0700 no Smarthistory Uncategorized http://odeo.com/episodes/23245571-Arp%E2%80%99s-Untitled-Collage-with-Squares-Arranged-According-to-the-Laws-of-Chance An enhanced podcast about Jean (Hans) Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), 1916-17 (MoMA) An enhanced podcast about Jean (Hans) Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), 1916-17 (MoMA) An enhanced podcast about Jean (Hans) Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), 1916-17 (MoMA) tag:odeo.com,2008-09-03,23245571 Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:14:19 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530369-Arp%E2%80%99s-Untitled-Collage-with-Squares-Arranged-According-to-the-Laws-of-Chance An enhanced podcast about Jean (Hans) Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), 1916-17 (MoMA) An enhanced podcast about Jean (Hans) Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), 1916-17 (MoMA) An enhanced podcast about Jean (Hans) Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), 1916-17 (MoMA) tag:odeo.com,2008-09-03,23530369 Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:14:19 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530370-Alberto-Giacometti-The-Palace-at-4-a-m-1932 An enhanced podcast about Giacometti’s The Palace at 4am, 1932 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Giacometti’s The Palace at 4am, 1932 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Giacometti’s The Palace at 4am, 1932 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-09-01,23530370 Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:56:58 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23238037-Alberto-Giacometti-The-Palace-at-4-a-m-1932 An enhanced podcast about Giacometti’s The Palace at 4am, 1932 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Giacometti’s The Palace at 4am, 1932 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Giacometti’s The Palace at 4am, 1932 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-09-01,23238037 Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:56:58 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530371-Brancusi-Bird-in-Space-1932-40 An enhanced podcast about Brancusi’s Bird in Space, 1932-40 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Brancusi’s Bird in Space, 1932-40 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Brancusi’s Bird in Space, 1932-40 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-09-01,23530371 Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:53:27 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23238038-Brancusi-Bird-in-Space-1932-40 An enhanced podcast about Brancusi’s Bird in Space, 1932-40 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Brancusi’s Bird in Space, 1932-40 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Brancusi’s Bird in Space, 1932-40 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-09-01,23238038 Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:53:27 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530372-De-Kooning-Woman-I-1950-52 An enhanced podcast about Willem De Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Willem De Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Willem De Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-09-01,23530372 Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:47:31 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23238039-De-Kooning-Woman-I-1950-52 An enhanced podcast about Willem De Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Willem De Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Willem De Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-09-01,23238039 Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:47:31 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530373-Jasper-Johns-Flag-1954-55 An enhanced podcast about Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-09-01,23530373 Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:36:30 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23238040-Jasper-Johns-Flag-1954-55 An enhanced podcast about Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-09-01,23238040 Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:36:30 -0700 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530374-Raphael%E2%80%99s-School-of-Athens-in-the-Stanza-della-Segnatura We’ve been busy! We’ve been busy! We’ve been busy! tag:odeo.com,2008-08-10,23530374 Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:56:51 -0700 no Smarthistory Renaissance, vatican, raphael, Video Podcasts http://odeo.com/episodes/23170045-Raphael%E2%80%99s-School-of-Athens-in-the-Stanza-della-Segnatura We’ve been busy! We’ve been busy! We’ve been busy! tag:odeo.com,2008-08-10,23170045 Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:56:51 -0700 no Smarthistory Renaissance, vatican, raphael, Video Podcasts http://odeo.com/episodes/23164224-Leonardo%E2%80%99s-Last-Supper A video about Leonardo’s masterpiece. A video about Leonardo’s masterpiece. A video about Leonardo’s masterpiece. tag:odeo.com,2008-08-08,23164224 Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:27:30 -0700 no Smarthistory Video Podcasts http://odeo.com/episodes/23530375-Leonardo%E2%80%99s-Last-Supper A video about Leonardo’s masterpiece. A video about Leonardo’s masterpiece. A video about Leonardo’s masterpiece. tag:odeo.com,2008-08-08,23530375 Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:27:30 -0700 no Smarthistory Video Podcasts http://odeo.com/episodes/23161935-Part-2-smARThistory-in-the-Sistine-Chapel-in-Second-Life-The-Last-Judgment Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, discuss Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, recreated by Stan Fragible (aka Steven Taylor), on the Vassar College Second Life campus. Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, discuss Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, recreated by Stan Fragible (aka Steven Taylor), on the Vassar College Second Life campus. Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, discuss Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, recreated by Stan Fragible (aka Steven Taylor), on the Vassar College Second Life campus. tag:odeo.com,2008-08-08,23161935 Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:55:58 -0700 no Smarthistory second life, Renaissance, vassar, michelangelo, sistine chapel http://odeo.com/episodes/23530376-Part-2-smARThistory-in-the-Sistine-Chapel-in-Second-Life-The-Last-Judgment Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, discuss Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, recreated by Steve Taylor (aka Stan Frangible), on the Vassar College Second Life campus. Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, discuss Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, recreated by Steve Taylor (aka Stan Frangible), on the Vassar College Second Life campus. Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, discuss Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, recreated by Steve Taylor (aka Stan Frangible), on the Vassar College Second Life campus. tag:odeo.com,2008-08-08,23530376 Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:55:58 -0700 no Smarthistory second life, Renaissance, vassar, michelangelo, Video Podcasts, Thoughts about Teaching and Technology, sistine chapel http://odeo.com/episodes/23152692-smARThistory-visits-the-Sistine-Chapel-in-Second-Life Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, visited the Sistine Chapel there, and created this video about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. They discuss Michelangelo, the commission from Pope Julius II, and the structure and meaning of the ceiling. Thanks to Steve Taylor (aka Stan Fragible) and Vassar College. Part 2 on Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall coming soon… Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, visited the Sistine Chapel there, and created this video about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. They discuss Michelangelo, the commission from Pope Julius II, and the structure and meaning of the ceiling. Thanks to Steve Taylor (aka Stan Fragible) and Vassar College. Part 2 on Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall coming soon… Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, visited the Sistine Chapel there, and created this video about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. They discuss Michelangelo, the commission from Pope Julius II, and the structure and meaning of the ceiling. Thanks to Steve Taylor (aka Stan Fragible) and Vassar College. Part 2 on Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall coming soon… tag:odeo.com,2008-08-06,23152692 Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:19:50 -0700 no Smarthistory second life, Renaissance, Rome, vatican, vassar, michelangelo, Video Podcasts, sistine chapel http://odeo.com/episodes/23530377-smARThistory-visits-the-Sistine-Chapel-in-Second-Life Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, visited the Sistine Chapel there, and created this video about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. They discuss Michelangelo, the commission from Pope Julius II, and the structure and meaning of the ceiling. Thanks to Steve Taylor (aka Stan Frangible) and Vassar College. Part 2 on Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall coming soon… Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, visited the Sistine Chapel there, and created this video about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. They discuss Michelangelo, the commission from Pope Julius II, and the structure and meaning of the ceiling. Thanks to Steve Taylor (aka Stan Frangible) and Vassar College. Part 2 on Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall coming soon… Max Newbold and Sez Zabelin, Second Life correspondents for smARThistory, visited the Sistine Chapel there, and created this video about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. They discuss Michelangelo, the commission from Pope Julius II, and the structure and meaning of the ceiling. Thanks to Steve Taylor (aka Stan Frangible) and Vassar College. Part 2 on Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall coming soon… tag:odeo.com,2008-08-06,23530377 Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:19:50 -0700 no Smarthistory second life, Renaissance, Rome, vatican, vassar, michelangelo, Video Podcasts, Thoughts about Teaching and Technology, sistine chapel http://odeo.com/episodes/23530378-smARThistory-looks-at-Art-in-Second-Life-Alizarin-Goldflake We’ve been spending an increasing amount of time in the virtual world of Second Life, and have become more and more interested in the art that is being made there. And while there are several valuable blogs, and online journals looking at art in Second Life (perhaps the best known being SLART Magazine, edited by the tireless Richard Minsky - aka Artworld Market), it seemed to us that bringing the eye of the art historian to what’s being created there could have real value. One major source of inspiration over the last few months has certainly been Bettina Tizzy’s NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life). After the Technology Day conference at FIT in late April, W. James Au (our keynote speaker), Raymond Yee, and other friends and colleagues were out having a drink, when the conversation turned to how silly it is how we walk around Second Life building and wearing very much the same things we do in real life. I had recently discovered Bettina’s blog — and James... We’ve been spending an increasing amount of time in the virtual world of Second Life, and have become more and more interested in the art that is being made there. And while there are several valuable blogs, and online journals looking at art in Second Life (perhaps the best known being SLART Magazine, edited by the tireless Richard Minsky - aka Artworld Market), it seemed to us that bringing the eye of the art historian to what’s being created there could have real value. One major source of inspiration over the last few months has certainly been Bettina Tizzy’s NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life). After the Technology Day conference at FIT in late April, W. James Au (our keynote speaker), Raymond Yee, and other friends and colleagues were out having a drink, when the conversation turned to how silly it is how we walk around Second Life building and wearing very much the same things we do in real life. I had recently discovered Bettina’s blog — and James graciously introduced us. It was just at the time that Bettina’s project (together with Rezzable Productions), the Garden of NPIRL (inspired by Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights), was happening. Here’s the bottom line: the art that we saw there really moved us. This one is by Sabine Stonebender (whose work we have also long admired). Click the thumbnail to see. Amazing, no? Last month, Bettina announced on a Metanomics show, that NPIRL and the Fashion Institute of Technology were hoping to plan a project where RL and SL fashion designers collaborated. So, this summer, we’d like to begin a new podast/blog series — on art and artists in Second Life, beginning with an artist whose work I discovered just last April, Alizarin Goldflake. But before we begin to talk about her work in more detail (in our next post), a few comments about what we’ve discovered about the power of the virtual world, specifically Second Life, is in order. As I have written elsewhere, and as many have noted before me, it is remarkably easy to feel very real and powerful emotions in Second Life. I am deeply fond of my avatar, Max Newbold, who, it seems represents the best of me and also some deep truths about me. She has, to my mind, the best clothes. She is brave. She is beautiful. I created her. She is, and is not, me — both, simultaneously. When Max is slighted, I am slighted. When Max looks at art, I am looking at art. How does this happen? In his book, I, Avatar, Mark Stephen Meadows, explains this in terms of our biology, the way we are hard-wired with “mirror neurons,” It’s the actions and appearances of avatars that allow us to identify with them and gets the mirror neurons hot. They may be just pixels, but your brain responds as if they were human. Our wiring quickly bridges the gap between the real and fictional. (90) Even as I write this, I am aware that this is patently obvious to anyone who has spent any time in Second Life (or any other virtual world). But there are all those others, who are skeptical… When Max is transported into and through works of art in Second Life, I am too. Is it strange that I have been as deeply moved while looking at art in Second Life as I have been looking at some of my favorite things in the “real” world, Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses for example — sculptures that very directly engage the body? It seems that art in Second Life can have the visceral, bodily power of Baroque art (think: Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa). But there’s more. Even when I am in Second Life looking at art that IS possible in real life, I am looking at it in the context of an entire virtual — unreal — environment, that enhances it, just as it enhances and transforms everything inside it. So perhaps one of the big questions we will tackle in our new series is the question of precisely how the context of the virtual environment changes our experience of looking at art. The great power of art in Second Life derives precisely, it seems to me, from its Not-Possible-In-Real-Life aspects, from the way it can — quite literally — move your body for you, lift you, drop you, move around you, move you around, immerse you (literally) — and as I am writing this, I realize that what it often does is PUSH you into unexpected positions and movements that can, in turn, have an affect of your body — your REAL body. And more — in Second Life your “camera” is not fixed. You can look at yourself inside a work of art. I find myself doing this all the time (as in the photo above — that’s Max there on the right edge). Somehow looking at myself while immersed in a work of art, or inside an installation of sorts, becomes very important. Clearly, I am not the only one who snaps pics like this (witness the NPIRL Garden photo pool in Flickr). And this is certainly NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life). And perhaps that explains why I feel so moved by Alizarin Goldflake’s work in Second Life. She creates completely immersive environments that one can inhabit and that move around you, stimulating the eyes, the ears — creating, as Steven Zucker (aka Sez Zabelin) noted, a true gesamtkustwerk. But more on Alizarin and our time with her in her studio in our next post. Here’s a taste of her work — this is a new piece called Night Light (TP from here). Oh! And in the pic on the front of the video I am wearing gorgeous dress by 3Star Tyne (more on 3Star soon) and in the video itself I am wearing a dress by Raven Pennyfeather, inspired by Minoan Snake Goddess figures. We’ve been spending an increasing amount of time in the virtual world of Second Life, and have become more and more interested in the art that is being made there. And while there are several valuable blogs, and online journals looking at art in Second Life (perhaps the best known being SLART Magazine, edited by the tireless Richard Minsky - aka Artworld Market), it seemed to us that bringing the eye of the art historian to what’s being created there could have real value. One major source of inspiration over the last few months has certainly been Bettina Tizzy’s NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life). After the Technology Day conference at FIT in late April, W. James Au (our keynote speaker), Raymond Yee, and other friends and colleagues were out having a drink, when the conversation turned to how silly it is how we walk around Second Life building and wearing very much the same things we do in real life. I had recently discovered Bettina’s blog — and James graciously introduced us. It was just at the time that Bettina’s project (together with Rezzable Productions), the Garden of NPIRL (inspired by Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights), was happening. Here’s the bottom line: the art that we saw there really moved us. This one is by Sabine Stonebender (whose work we have also long admired). Click the thumbnail to see. Amazing, no? Last month, Bettina announced on a Metanomics show, that NPIRL and the Fashion Institute of Technology were hoping to plan a project where RL and SL fashion designers collaborated. So, this summer, we’d like to begin a new podast/blog series — on art and artists in Second Life, beginning with an artist whose work I discovered just last April, Alizarin Goldflake. But before we begin to talk about her work in more detail (in our next post), a few comments about what we’ve discovered about the power of the virtual world, specifically Second Life, is in order. As I have written elsewhere, and as many have noted before me, it is remarkably easy to feel very real and powerful emotions in Second Life. I am deeply fond of my avatar, Max Newbold, who, it seems represents the best of me and also some deep truths about me. She has, to my mind, the best clothes. She is brave. She is beautiful. I created her. She is, and is not, me — both, simultaneously. When Max is slighted, I am slighted. When Max looks at art, I am looking at art. How does this happen? In his book, I, Avatar, Mark Stephen Meadows, explains this in terms of our biology, the way we are hard-wired with “mirror neurons,” It’s the actions and appearances of avatars that allow us to identify with them and gets the mirror neurons hot. They may be just pixels, but your brain responds as if they were human. Our wiring quickly bridges the gap between the real and fictional. (90) Even as I write this, I am aware that this is patently obvious to anyone who has spent any time in Second Life (or any other virtual world). But there are all those others, who are skeptical… When Max is transported into and through works of art in Second Life, I am too. Is it strange that I have been as deeply moved while looking at art in Second Life as I have been looking at some of my favorite things in the “real” world, Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses for example — sculptures that very directly engage the body? It seems that art in Second Life can have the visceral, bodily power of Baroque art (think: Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa). But there’s more. Even when I am in Second Life looking at art that IS possible in real life, I am looking at it in the context of an entire virtual — unreal — environment, that enhances it, just as it enhances and transforms everything inside it. So perhaps one of the big questions we will tackle in our new series is the question of precisely how the context of the virtual environment changes our experience of looking at art. The great power of art in Second Life derives precisely, it seems to me, from its Not-Possible-In-Real-Life aspects, from the way it can — quite literally — move your body for you, lift you, drop you, move around you, move you around, immerse you (literally) — and as I am writing this, I realize that what it often does is PUSH you into unexpected positions and movements that can, in turn, have an affect of your body — your REAL body. And more — in Second Life your “camera” is not fixed. You can look at yourself inside a work of art. I find myself doing this all the time (as in the photo above — that’s Max there on the right edge). Somehow looking at myself while immersed in a work of art, or inside an installation of sorts, becomes very important. Clearly, I am not the only one who snaps pics like this (witness the NPIRL Garden photo pool in Flickr). And this is certainly NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life). And perhaps that explains why I feel so moved by Alizarin Goldflake’s work in Second Life. She creates completely immersive environments that one can inhabit and that move around you, stimulating the eyes, the ears — creating, as Steven Zucker (aka Sez Zabelin) noted, a true gesamtkustwerk. But more on Alizarin and our time with her in her studio in our next post. Here’s a taste of her work — this is a new piece called Night Light (TP from here). Oh! And in the pic on the front of the video I am wearing gorgeous dress by 3Star Tyne (more on 3Star soon) and in the video itself I am wearing a dress by Raven Pennyfeather, inspired by Minoan Snake Goddess figures. tag:odeo.com,2008-08-03,23530378 Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:44:41 -0700 no Smarthistory Uncategorized, second life, NPIRL, Bettina Tizzy, Alizarin Goldflake, Bernini, SLART http://odeo.com/episodes/23146996-smARThistory-looks-at-Art-in-Second-Life-Alizarin-Goldflake We’ve been spending an increasing amount of time in the virtual world of Second Life, and have become more and more interested in the art that is being made there. And while there are several valuable blogs, and online journals looking at art in Second Life (perhaps the best known being SLART Magazine, edited by the tireless Richard Minsky - aka Artworld Market), it seemed to us that bringing the eye of the art historian to what’s being created there could have real value. One major source of inspiration over the last few months has certainly been Bettina Tizzy’s NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life). After the Technology Day conference at FIT in late April, W. James Au (our keynote speaker), Raymond Yee, and other friends and colleagues were out having a drink, when the conversation turned to how silly it is how we walk around Second Life building and wearing very much the same things we do in real life. I had recently discovered Bettina’s blog — and James... We’ve been spending an increasing amount of time in the virtual world of Second Life, and have become more and more interested in the art that is being made there. And while there are several valuable blogs, and online journals looking at art in Second Life (perhaps the best known being SLART Magazine, edited by the tireless Richard Minsky - aka Artworld Market), it seemed to us that bringing the eye of the art historian to what’s being created there could have real value. One major source of inspiration over the last few months has certainly been Bettina Tizzy’s NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life). After the Technology Day conference at FIT in late April, W. James Au (our keynote speaker), Raymond Yee, and other friends and colleagues were out having a drink, when the conversation turned to how silly it is how we walk around Second Life building and wearing very much the same things we do in real life. I had recently discovered Bettina’s blog — and James graciously introduced us. It was just at the time that Bettina’s project (together with Rezzable Productions), the Garden of NPIRL (inspired by Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights), was happening. Here’s the bottom line: the art that we saw there really moved us. Last month, Bettina announced on a Metanomics show, that NPIRL and the Fashion Institute of Technology were hoping to plan a project where RL and SL fashion designers collaborated. So, this summer, we’d like to begin a new podast/blog series — on art and artists in Second Life, beginning with an artist whose work I discovered just last April, Alizarin Goldflake. But before we begin to talk about her work in more detail (in our next post), a few comments about what we’ve discovered about the power of the virtual world, specifically Second Life, is in order. As I have written elsewhere, and as many have noted before me, it is remarkably easy to feel very real and powerful emotions in Second Life. I am deeply fond of my avatar, Max Newbold, who, it seems represents the best of me and also some deep truths about me. She has, to my mind, the best clothes. She is brave. She is beautiful. I created her. She is, and is not, me — both, simultaneously. When Max is slighted, I am slighted. When Max looks at art, I am looking at art. How does this happen? In his book, I, Avatar, Mark Stephen Meadows, explains this in terms of our biology, the way we are hard-wired with “mirror neurons,” It’s the actions and appearances of avatars that allow us to identify with them and gets the mirror neurons hot. They may be just pixels, but your brain responds as if they were human. Our wiring quickly bridges the gap between the real and fictional. (90) Even as I write this, I am aware that this is patently obvious to anyone who has spent any time in Second Life (or any other virtual world). But there are all those others, who are skeptical… When Max is transported into and through works of art in Second Life, I am too. Is it strange that I have been as deeply moved while looking at art in Second Life as I have been looking at some of my favorite things in the “real” world, Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses for example — sculptures that very directly engage the body? It seems that art in Second Life can have the visceral, bodily power of Baroque art (think: Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa). But there’s more. Even when I am in Second Life looking at art that IS possible in real life, I am looking at it in the context of an entire virtual — unreal — environment, that enhances it, just as it enhances and transforms everything inside it. So perhaps one of the big questions we will tackle in our new series is the question of precisely how the context of the virtual environment changes our experience of looking at art. The great power of art in Second Life derives precisely, it seems to me, from its Not-Possible-In-Real-Life aspects, from the way it can — quite literally — move your body for you, lift you, drop you, move around you, move you around, immerse you (literally) — and as I am writing this, I realize that what it often does is PUSH you into unexpected positions and movements that can, in turn, have an affect of your body — your REAL body. And perhaps that explains why I feel so moved by Alizarin Goldflake’s work in Second Life. She creates completely immersive environments that one can inhabit and that move around you, stimulating the eyes, the ears — creating, as Steven Zucker (aka Sez Zabelin) noted, a true gesamtkustwerk. But more on Alizarin and our time with her in her studio in our next post. Here’s a taste of her work — this is a new piece called Night Light (TP from here) Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite We’ve been spending an increasing amount of time in the virtual world of Second Life, and have become more and more interested in the art that is being made there. And while there are several valuable blogs, and online journals looking at art in Second Life (perhaps the best known being SLART Magazine, edited by the tireless Richard Minsky - aka Artworld Market), it seemed to us that bringing the eye of the art historian to what’s being created there could have real value. One major source of inspiration over the last few months has certainly been Bettina Tizzy’s NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life). After the Technology Day conference at FIT in late April, W. James Au (our keynote speaker), Raymond Yee, and other friends and colleagues were out having a drink, when the conversation turned to how silly it is how we walk around Second Life building and wearing very much the same things we do in real life. I had recently discovered Bettina’s blog — and James graciously introduced us. It was just at the time that Bettina’s project (together with Rezzable Productions), the Garden of NPIRL (inspired by Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights), was happening. Here’s the bottom line: the art that we saw there really moved us. Last month, Bettina announced on a Metanomics show, that NPIRL and the Fashion Institute of Technology were hoping to plan a project where RL and SL fashion designers collaborated. So, this summer, we’d like to begin a new podast/blog series — on art and artists in Second Life, beginning with an artist whose work I discovered just last April, Alizarin Goldflake. But before we begin to talk about her work in more detail (in our next post), a few comments about what we’ve discovered about the power of the virtual world, specifically Second Life, is in order. As I have written elsewhere, and as many have noted before me, it is remarkably easy to feel very real and powerful emotions in Second Life. I am deeply fond of my avatar, Max Newbold, who, it seems represents the best of me and also some deep truths about me. She has, to my mind, the best clothes. She is brave. She is beautiful. I created her. She is, and is not, me — both, simultaneously. When Max is slighted, I am slighted. When Max looks at art, I am looking at art. How does this happen? In his book, I, Avatar, Mark Stephen Meadows, explains this in terms of our biology, the way we are hard-wired with “mirror neurons,” It’s the actions and appearances of avatars that allow us to identify with them and gets the mirror neurons hot. They may be just pixels, but your brain responds as if they were human. Our wiring quickly bridges the gap between the real and fictional. (90) Even as I write this, I am aware that this is patently obvious to anyone who has spent any time in Second Life (or any other virtual world). But there are all those others, who are skeptical… When Max is transported into and through works of art in Second Life, I am too. Is it strange that I have been as deeply moved while looking at art in Second Life as I have been looking at some of my favorite things in the “real” world, Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses for example — sculptures that very directly engage the body? It seems that art in Second Life can have the visceral, bodily power of Baroque art (think: Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa). But there’s more. Even when I am in Second Life looking at art that IS possible in real life, I am looking at it in the context of an entire virtual — unreal — environment, that enhances it, just as it enhances and transforms everything inside it. So perhaps one of the big questions we will tackle in our new series is the question of precisely how the context of the virtual environment changes our experience of looking at art. The great power of art in Second Life derives precisely, it seems to me, from its Not-Possible-In-Real-Life aspects, from the way it can — quite literally — move your body for you, lift you, drop you, move around you, move you around, immerse you (literally) — and as I am writing this, I realize that what it often does is PUSH you into unexpected positions and movements that can, in turn, have an affect of your body — your REAL body. And perhaps that explains why I feel so moved by Alizarin Goldflake’s work in Second Life. She creates completely immersive environments that one can inhabit and that move around you, stimulating the eyes, the ears — creating, as Steven Zucker (aka Sez Zabelin) noted, a true gesamtkustwerk. But more on Alizarin and our time with her in her studio in our next post. Here’s a taste of her work — this is a new piece called Night Light (TP from here) Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite tag:odeo.com,2008-08-03,23146996 Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:44:41 -0700 no Smarthistory Uncategorized, second life, NPIRL, Bettina Tizzy, Alizarin Goldflake, Bernini, SLART http://odeo.com/episodes/23117497-How-do-we-find-meaning-in-works-of-Art It may not look like we’ve been busy, but we have! We’ve been working hard, with colleagues Lotte Meijer and Mickey Mayo to redesign smARThistory — with the generous help of the Kress Foundation — with a special thanks to Max Marmor and Lisa Schermerhorn. In addition, we created some new content. We took a whirlwind tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art to talk about how, if we think carefully about the way that an objects looks, we can learn a great deal about the culture that created it. Our focus, in this enhanced podcast, is on the human body, and questions of the human condition, from ancient Egypt to the contemporary art world - from Queen Hatshepsut to Boccioni to Damien Hirst. It may not look like we’ve been busy, but we have! We’ve been working hard, with colleagues Lotte Meijer and Mickey Mayo to redesign smARThistory — with the generous help of the Kress Foundation — with a special thanks to Max Marmor and Lisa Schermerhorn. In addition, we created some new content. We took a whirlwind tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art to talk about how, if we think carefully about the way that an objects looks, we can learn a great deal about the culture that created it. Our focus, in this enhanced podcast, is on the human body, and questions of the human condition, from ancient Egypt to the contemporary art world - from Queen Hatshepsut to Boccioni to Damien Hirst. It may not look like we’ve been busy, but we have! We’ve been working hard, with colleagues Lotte Meijer and Mickey Mayo to redesign smARThistory — with the generous help of the Kress Foundation — with a special thanks to Max Marmor and Lisa Schermerhorn. In addition, we created some new content. We took a whirlwind tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art to talk about how, if we think carefully about the way that an objects looks, we can learn a great deal about the culture that created it. Our focus, in this enhanced podcast, is on the human body, and questions of the human condition, from ancient Egypt to the contemporary art world - from Queen Hatshepsut to Boccioni to Damien Hirst. tag:odeo.com,2008-07-26,23117497 Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:23:01 -0700 no Smarthistory Enhanced Podcasts, At the Met, Kress Foundation http://odeo.com/episodes/23530379-VAM-Student-Podcasts The VAM (Visual Art Management) senior class did a great job on their podcasts last week at the Courbet exhibition at the Meropolitan Museum of Art. Here they are. Great work guys! The VAM (Visual Art Management) senior class did a great job on their podcasts last week at the Courbet exhibition at the Meropolitan Museum of Art. Here they are. Great work guys! The VAM (Visual Art Management) senior class did a great job on their podcasts last week at the Courbet exhibition at the Meropolitan Museum of Art. Here they are. Great work guys! tag:odeo.com,2008-03-20,23530379 Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:53:58 -0700 no Smarthistory At the Met http://odeo.com/episodes/23010290-VAM-Student-Podcasts The VAM (Visual Art Management) senior class did a great job on their podcasts last week at the Courbet exhibition at the Meropolitan Museum of Art. Here they are. Great work guys! Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite The VAM (Visual Art Management) senior class did a great job on their podcasts last week at the Courbet exhibition at the Meropolitan Museum of Art. Here they are. Great work guys! Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite The VAM (Visual Art Management) senior class did a great job on their podcasts last week at the Courbet exhibition at the Meropolitan Museum of Art. Here they are. Great work guys! Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite tag:odeo.com,2008-03-20,23010290 Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:53:58 -0700 no Smarthistory At the Met http://odeo.com/episodes/23530380-Matisse-The-Red-Studio-1911 Whew! Did this one by editing the audio in Garageband, then saving it in iTunes, converting it to an mp3, bringing that into Camtasia, and then using the zoom and pan feature which is a lot of fun. Click below to watch the video of this painting at MoMA. Whew! Did this one by editing the audio in Garageband, then saving it in iTunes, converting it to an mp3, bringing that into Camtasia, and then using the zoom and pan feature which is a lot of fun. Click below to watch the video of this painting at MoMA. Whew! Did this one by editing the audio in Garageband, then saving it in iTunes, converting it to an mp3, bringing that into Camtasia, and then using the zoom and pan feature which is a lot of fun. Click below to watch the video of this painting at MoMA. tag:odeo.com,2008-01-06,23530380 Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:41:32 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23010291-Matisse-The-Red-Studio-1911 Whew! Did this one by editing the audio in Garageband, then saving it in iTunes, converting it to an mp3, bringing that into Camtasia, and then using the zoom and pan feature which is a lot of fun. Click below to watch the video of this painting at MoMA. Whew! Did this one by editing the audio in Garageband, then saving it in iTunes, converting it to an mp3, bringing that into Camtasia, and then using the zoom and pan feature which is a lot of fun. Click below to watch the video of this painting at MoMA. Whew! Did this one by editing the audio in Garageband, then saving it in iTunes, converting it to an mp3, bringing that into Camtasia, and then using the zoom and pan feature which is a lot of fun. Click below to watch the video of this painting at MoMA. tag:odeo.com,2008-01-06,23010291 Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:41:32 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530381-Barnett-Newman%E2%80%99s-Onement-I An enhanced podcast about Barnett Newman’s Onement, I, 1948 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Barnett Newman’s Onement, I, 1948 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Barnett Newman’s Onement, I, 1948 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-01-05,23530381 Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:53:04 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23010292-Barnett-Newman%E2%80%99s-Onement-I An enhanced podcast about Barnett Newman’s Onement, I, 1948 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Barnett Newman’s Onement, I, 1948 (MoMA). An enhanced podcast about Barnett Newman’s Onement, I, 1948 (MoMA). tag:odeo.com,2008-01-05,23010292 Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:53:04 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530382-An-enhanced-podcast-Rothko%E2%80%99s-No-3-No-13 Click below for a video of Mark Rothko’s No. 3/No. 13, 1949 (MoMA) Click below for a video of Mark Rothko’s No. 3/No. 13, 1949 (MoMA) Click below for a video of Mark Rothko’s No. 3/No. 13, 1949 (MoMA) tag:odeo.com,2008-01-02,23530382 Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:04:52 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23010293-An-enhanced-podcast-Rothko%E2%80%99s-No-3-No-13 Click below for a video of Mark Rothko’s No. 3/No. 13, 1949 (MoMA) Click below for a video of Mark Rothko’s No. 3/No. 13, 1949 (MoMA) Click below for a video of Mark Rothko’s No. 3/No. 13, 1949 (MoMA) tag:odeo.com,2008-01-02,23010293 Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:04:52 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530383-Warhol%E2%80%99s-Gold-Marilyn-Monroe An enhanced podcast about Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Museum of Modern Art. An enhanced podcast about Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Museum of Modern Art. An enhanced podcast about Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Museum of Modern Art. tag:odeo.com,2008-01-02,23530383 Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:31:57 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23010294-Warhol%E2%80%99s-Gold-Marilyn-Monroe An enhanced podcast about Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Museum of Modern Art. An enhanced podcast about Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Museum of Modern Art. An enhanced podcast about Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Museum of Modern Art. tag:odeo.com,2008-01-02,23010294 Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:31:57 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23530384-Van-Gogh%E2%80%99s-Starry-Night-Helping-students-describe-what-they-see%E2%80%A6 Every semester I seem to fail at my goal of getting students to describe an image. So, I thought I would try to tackle the problem head-on. I want them to recognize that describing what you see helps you see more and see better and helps you to understand the possible meanings in a work of art. It’s hard to do, but an important skill I think. Here’s my attempt. I’m open to suggestions! Every semester I seem to fail at my goal of getting students to describe an image. So, I thought I would try to tackle the problem head-on. I want them to recognize that describing what you see helps you see more and see better and helps you to understand the possible meanings in a work of art. It’s hard to do, but an important skill I think. Here’s my attempt. I’m open to suggestions! Every semester I seem to fail at my goal of getting students to describe an image. So, I thought I would try to tackle the problem head-on. I want them to recognize that describing what you see helps you see more and see better and helps you to understand the possible meanings in a work of art. It’s hard to do, but an important skill I think. Here’s my attempt. I’m open to suggestions! tag:odeo.com,2008-01-01,23530384 Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:38:50 -0800 no Smarthistory Uncategorized http://odeo.com/episodes/23010295-Van-Gogh%E2%80%99s-Starry-Night-Helping-students-describe-what-they-see%E2%80%A6 Every semester I seem to fail at my goal of getting students to describe an image. So, I thought I would try to tackle the problem head-on. I want them to recognize that describing what you see helps you see more and see better and helps you to understand the possible meanings in a work of art. It’s hard to do, but an important skill I think. Here’s my attempt. I’m open to suggestions! Every semester I seem to fail at my goal of getting students to describe an image. So, I thought I would try to tackle the problem head-on. I want them to recognize that describing what you see helps you see more and see better and helps you to understand the possible meanings in a work of art. It’s hard to do, but an important skill I think. Here’s my attempt. I’m open to suggestions! Every semester I seem to fail at my goal of getting students to describe an image. So, I thought I would try to tackle the problem head-on. I want them to recognize that describing what you see helps you see more and see better and helps you to understand the possible meanings in a work of art. It’s hard to do, but an important skill I think. Here’s my attempt. I’m open to suggestions! tag:odeo.com,2008-01-01,23010295 Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:38:50 -0800 no Smarthistory Uncategorized http://odeo.com/episodes/23010296-Mondrian-%E2%80%94-a-podcast Piet Mondrian’s Composition No. II, with Red and Blue, 1929 (original date partly obliterated; mistakenly repainted 1925 by Mondrian) (MoMA) Piet Mondrian’s Composition No. II, with Red and Blue, 1929 (original date partly obliterated; mistakenly repainted 1925 by Mondrian) (MoMA) Piet Mondrian’s Composition No. II, with Red and Blue, 1929 (original date partly obliterated; mistakenly repainted 1925 by Mondrian) (MoMA) tag:odeo.com,2007-12-22,23010296 Sat, 22 Dec 2007 05:07:47 -0800 no Smarthistory At MoMA http://odeo.com/episodes/23010297-Technology-in-the-Art-History-Classroom-this-semester I was asked to give a couple of presentations at FIT on Second Life. But instead of talking myself, I invited Elaine Polvinen from Buffalo State College, and she had two Second Life contacts that we invited to join us as well, Nyla and Shenlei Winkler. Here’s a blog all about this. When I taught the High Renaissance a few weeks ago, I took my students into Second Life to see the Vassar recreation of the Sistine Chapel. They were very excited to see Second Life (95% of them had not heard of it) and they had lots of questions about it. I didn’t stay in the virtual Sistine Chapel for more than a few minutes, it seemed a little difficult to teach the chapel from there, instead of with static images. Click here to see a slideshow of photos of the Chapel in SL. I suppose there must be more creative ways to use it in teaching — where the students visit themselves, but I am not really sure how to create a learning activity around it. We also looked at youtube tourist video... I was asked to give a couple of presentations at FIT on Second Life. But instead of talking myself, I invited Elaine Polvinen from Buffalo State College, and she had two Second Life contacts that we invited to join us as well, Nyla and Shenlei Winkler. Here’s a blog all about this. When I taught the High Renaissance a few weeks ago, I took my students into Second Life to see the Vassar recreation of the Sistine Chapel. They were very excited to see Second Life (95% of them had not heard of it) and they had lots of questions about it. I didn’t stay in the virtual Sistine Chapel for more than a few minutes, it seemed a little difficult to teach the chapel from there, instead of with static images. Click here to see a slideshow of photos of the Chapel in SL. I suppose there must be more creative ways to use it in teaching — where the students visit themselves, but I am not really sure how to create a learning activity around it. We also looked at youtube tourist videos from the inside of the chapel (see example below), as well as the Vatican Museum’s site which is quite good. I am pretty sure I am the only art historian in the department to use the internet live in the classroom (instead of ARTstor’s Off line Image Viewer) and I am also teaching art history (all but one of my classes) in the computer lab (anyone else out there doing that?). The students get on ARtstor at the same time as me, and can follow along, and zoom in and out etc. As a result, they are getting very familiar with using ARTstor, and not simply using it to see my image groups when it is time for the test or something. In fact, I think the students in the Survey course that I am teaching, which does NOT meet in the lab, probably never consult ARTstor at all. Why would they? 90% of the images I teach are readily available in google. My sense is that some students are emailing and not paying attention, but would they be paying attention in the classroom? The vast majority are following along diligently in ARTstor, zooming in on the image and engaging with it and at least being more active than they would be in the classroom. Once in a while, they will also look things up on the internet that come up in class. One time, I had them pick the name of an artist out of a hat, find an image by that artist and then describe it as carefully as they could, then they swapped their descriptions with another student who had to try to picture the image in their heads and ask questions. Then they got to see each other’s images. It was a fun activity and taught them a lot I think about how difficult close description is — but also (and this was the key point) that close description would bring them closer to understanding the meanings of the work of art. It would have been a pain to do this in the classroom with reproductions that they would have had to hide from each other. My students in the Modern Art sections are making web pages using Wetpaint. When they are done I will ask their permission to link to them here. And in my survey course, students are working in groups on multimedia final projects. We’ll see how those turn out. I was asked to give a couple of presentations at FIT on Second Life. But instead of talking myself, I invited Elaine Polvinen from Buffalo State College, and she had two Second Life contacts that we invited to join us as well, Nyla and Shenlei Winkler. Here’s a blog all about this. When I taught the High Renaissance a few weeks ago, I took my students into Second Life to see the Vassar recreation of the Sistine Chapel. They were very excited to see Second Life (95% of them had not heard of it) and they had lots of questions about it. I didn’t stay in the virtual Sistine Chapel for more than a few minutes, it seemed a little difficult to teach the chapel from there, instead of with static images. Click here to see a slideshow of photos of the Chapel in SL. I suppose there must be more creative ways to use it in teaching — where the students visit themselves, but I am not really sure how to create a learning activity around it. We also looked at youtube tourist videos from the inside of the chapel (see example below), as well as the Vatican Museum’s site which is quite good. I am pretty sure I am the only art historian in the department to use the internet live in the classroom (instead of ARTstor’s Off line Image Viewer) and I am also teaching art history (all but one of my classes) in the computer lab (anyone else out there doing that?). The students get on ARtstor at the same time as me, and can follow along, and zoom in and out etc. As a result, they are getting very familiar with using ARTstor, and not simply using it to see my image groups when it is time for the test or something. In fact, I think the students in the Survey course that I am teaching, which does NOT meet in the lab, probably never consult ARTstor at all. Why would they? 90% of the images I teach are readily available in google. My sense is that some students are emailing and not paying attention, but would they be paying attention in the classroom? The vast majority are following along diligently in ARTstor, zooming in on the image and engaging with it and at least being more active than they would be in the classroom. Once in a while, they will also look things up on the internet that come up in class. One time, I had them pick the name of an artist out of a hat, find an image by that artist and then describe it as carefully as they could, then they swapped their descriptions with another student who had to try to picture the image in their heads and ask questions. Then they got to see each other’s images. It was a fun activity and taught them a lot I think about how difficult close description is — but also (and this was the key point) that close description would bring them closer to understanding the meanings of the work of art. It would have been a pain to do this in the classroom with reproductions that they would have had to hide from each other. My students in the Modern Art sections are making web pages using Wetpaint. When they are done I will ask their permission to link to them here. And in my survey course, students are working in groups on multimedia final projects. We’ll see how those turn out. tag:odeo.com,2007-12-01,23010297 Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:32:00 -0800 no Smarthistory Thoughts about Teaching and Technology http://odeo.com/episodes/23010298-Degas-The-Dance-Class-1874 An enhanced podcast about Degas’ The Dance Class, 1874 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) An enhanced podcast about Degas’ The Dance Class, 1874 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) An enhanced podcast about Degas’ The Dance Class, 1874 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) tag:odeo.com,2007-09-19,23010298 Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:43:51 -0700 no Smarthistory At the Met http://odeo.com/episodes/23010299-Goya-Politics-the-Power-of-Images My online students got into a heated discussion about how Enrico Scrovegni, the patron of Giotto’s frescos in the Arena Chapel, asked Giotto to depict him handing the chapel to the angels and Virgin Mary in heaven — thus implying a kind of virtuousness about himself, that the students felt to be a kind of potentially false representation. So, we made this vodcast about how images can be used to support specific political agendas, focusing on the famous painting by Goya, The Third of May, 1808. Warning: There are some difficult images in this video that may not be appropriate for all ages. Click here to see a larger version. My online students got into a heated discussion about how Enrico Scrovegni, the patron of Giotto’s frescos in the Arena Chapel, asked Giotto to depict him handing the chapel to the angels and Virgin Mary in heaven — thus implying a kind of virtuousness about himself, that the students felt to be a kind of potentially false representation. So, we made this vodcast about how images can be used to support specific political agendas, focusing on the famous painting by Goya, The Third of May, 1808. Warning: There are some difficult images in this video that may not be appropriate for all ages. Click here to see a larger version. My online students got into a heated discussion about how Enrico Scrovegni, the patron of Giotto’s frescos in the Arena Chapel, asked Giotto to depict him handing the chapel to the angels and Virgin Mary in heaven — thus implying a kind of virtuousness about himself, that the students felt to be a kind of potentially false representation. So, we made this vodcast about how images can be used to support specific political agendas, focusing on the famous painting by Goya, The Third of May, 1808. Warning: There are some difficult images in this video that may not be appropriate for all ages. Click here to see a larger version. tag:odeo.com,2007-09-02,23010299 Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:02:00 -0700 no Smarthistory Video Podcasts http://odeo.com/episodes/23010300-Monet%E2%80%99s-Gare-St-Lazare tag:odeo.com,2007-08-31,23010300 Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:52:21 -0700 no Smarthistory Video Podcasts http://odeo.com/episodes/23010301-Euphronios-Terracotta-calyx-krater Euphronios (painter), Terracotta calyx-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water), ca. 515 B.C. News update: For two and a half millennia this magnificent vase laid relatively undisturbed, however its recent history has been far from tranquil. Long disputed by the Italian authorities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art had claimed legal ownership based on the belief that the vase had been purchased from a reputable dealer prior to the enactment of a 1939 Italian antiquities law. Nevertheless, the Italian authorities have finally prevailed. They contend that the vase was unearthed by thieves who raided an ancient tomb at the necropolis at Cerveteri, north of Rome and that the Metropolitan acquired it from a dealer who’s story of its provenance has been directly contradicted by a confiscated diary outlining the involvement of another dealer convicted of trafficking in looted antiquities. The upshot is that ownership of one of the single most important works of art in the Met’s collection has... Euphronios (painter), Terracotta calyx-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water), ca. 515 B.C. News update: For two and a half millennia this magnificent vase laid relatively undisturbed, however its recent history has been far from tranquil. Long disputed by the Italian authorities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art had claimed legal ownership based on the belief that the vase had been purchased from a reputable dealer prior to the enactment of a 1939 Italian antiquities law. Nevertheless, the Italian authorities have finally prevailed. They contend that the vase was unearthed by thieves who raided an ancient tomb at the necropolis at Cerveteri, north of Rome and that the Metropolitan acquired it from a dealer who’s story of its provenance has been directly contradicted by a confiscated diary outlining the involvement of another dealer convicted of trafficking in looted antiquities. The upshot is that ownership of one of the single most important works of art in the Met’s collection has been transferred to Italy. Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite Euphronios (painter), Terracotta calyx-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water), ca. 515 B.C. News update: For two and a half millennia this magnificent vase laid relatively undisturbed, however its recent history has been far from tranquil. Long disputed by the Italian authorities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art had claimed legal ownership based on the belief that the vase had been purchased from a reputable dealer prior to the enactment of a 1939 Italian antiquities law. Nevertheless, the Italian authorities have finally prevailed. They contend that the vase was unearthed by thieves who raided an ancient tomb at the necropolis at Cerveteri, north of Rome and that the Metropolitan acquired it from a dealer who’s story of its provenance has been directly contradicted by a confiscated diary outlining the involvement of another dealer convicted of trafficking in looted antiquities. The upshot is that ownership of one of the single most important works of art in the Met’s collection has been transferred to Italy. Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite tag:odeo.com,2007-08-04,23010301 Sat, 04 Aug 2007 11:32:29 -0700 no Smarthistory At the Met http://odeo.com/episodes/12271793-Campin-Merode-Altarpiece-ca-1425-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art tag:odeo.com,2007-05-08,12271793 Tue, 08 May 2007 06:51:34 -0700 no Smarthistory http://odeo.com/episodes/10561023-Vermeer-Young-Woman-with-a-Water-Pitcher-ca-1662 tag:odeo.com,2007-03-04,10561023 Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:24:17 -0800 no Smarthistory http://odeo.com/episodes/1869683-Rembrandt%E2%80%99s-Self-Portrait-from-1660-at-the-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art tag:odeo.com,2006-09-10,1869683 Sun, 10 Sep 2006 17:36:42 -0700 no Smarthistory http://odeo.com/episodes/1832620-An-enhanced-podcast-about-David%E2%80%99s-Death-of-Socrates-1787-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art tag:odeo.com,2006-09-03,1832620 Sun, 03 Sep 2006 23:29:11 -0700 no Smarthistory http://odeo.com/episodes/1832619-An-enhanced-podcast-about-Gerard-David%E2%80%99s-Madonna-and-Child-with-Angels-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art tag:odeo.com,2006-09-03,1832619 Sun, 03 Sep 2006 19:43:34 -0700 no Smarthistory http://odeo.com/episodes/1534036-Jackson-Pollock-One-Number-31-1950-1950-MoMA tag:odeo.com,2006-07-20,1534036 Thu, 20 Jul 2006 23:20:43 -0700 no Smarthistory