Yule Heibel's Library tagged sculpture →  View Popular, Search in Google

I looked at the video included here, and I thought, "this is simultaneously retarded and brilliant." Chris Burden reminded me of Robert Moses (implied in Burden's artistic construct is an infrastructure for automated cars that can easily obliterate any neighborhood in its vicinity), and at the same time I think he's on the right track (no pun intended) in predicting the end of driver-controlled driving. So, on 2nd thought, scratch "brilliant"...
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“It’s a hopeful future,” Burden says. “Cars will have an average speed of 240 miles per hour as soon as Google gets all their cars up and running. Because the future of automobile transportation is that there won’t be drivers anymore.”
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atlantic_cities chris_burden cars infrastructure sculpture installations video

Strange and awesome sculptures of the human form, made from old typewriters...
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As we browse through Mayer’s work, you will notice that there are few (if any!) typewriter parts that do not resemble a feature of the human body. A mechanical part becomes a human spine; a typebar a finger. Surprised? We sure were.
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simone_preuss jeremy_mayer sculpture typewriters recycling

Interesting semi-permanent art project, by Miranda July (who's primarily a novelist):
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...a new public art installation, the comparatively terse “Eleven Heavy Things,” organized by Deitch Projects, which opened late last week in New York’s Union Square Park. (The installation will remain in the park through October 3rd.) The sculptures, many of which revolve around a line of text written in July’s own hand, prod the viewer into audience interaction. “What I look like when I’m lying,” reads one, a white tablet through which the viewer can stick his head. A trio of pedestals — labeled 'The Guilty One,' 'The Guiltier One,’ and ‘The Guiltiest One’ — asks participants to gauge (and flaunt) their general culpability. Three of the sculptures are wordless “headdresses,” decorative sculptures that July compares to the dialogue-free stretches of a movie: “The shapes are those parts of this piece.”
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art sculpture public_art miranda_july installations nyc

File this under amusing novelty?
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Chinese artist Shi Jinson created sculptures depicting baby accessories which would fit right in as toys for the Addams Family or for a future Terminator baby. Strollers, cribs, rattles, and walkers are made from razor-sharp blades, making a macabre and bizarre fine art collection.
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art web_urbanist sculpture shi_jinsong subversive

Wow... I love this! What an amazing piece:
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"In this interactive sculpture, thousands of recycled keyboard keys are embedded into a continuous textile. The keys spell out a line-by-line transcript of the email correspondence between the artist and fabricators regarding the creation of the artwork. As a result, the sculpture documents its own making. Viewers can also type their own messages on the active keys amid the first three rows of emails. These new messages are then projected onto the opposite end of the fabric, thereby continuing the virtual dialogue. The project speaks to the pervasiveness of email in our lives while commenting on the fact that, despite the modern technology of virtual communication, our written language is linked to the tactile sensation of moving our fingers over an outmoded typewriter system."
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jean_shin textile sculpture art

Room-sized installation -- a landscape/mountainscape terrain "generated by datasets relating to the frequency & position of urban crimes." Not sure over how long a period of time the stats were compiled, though, and how they cumulatively (literally) added up to create the "Mountain Fear" model. Interesting attempt at data visualization, at any rate.

sculpture aesthetics statistics data_visualization london crime art

First time I've tagged something under "gunpowder," but Cai Guo Qiang's art deserves its own tag and niche. I love this guy's work (although, admittedly, I haven't had a chance to see it in person, even though it was displayed at the Seattle Art Museum). Just to give an idea of this man's thinking:
"Gunpowder is a spontaneous, unpredictable and uncontrollable medium. The more you learn to control it, the more obsessed you become with the material. It is like making love with your husband or wife. The outcome is unpredictable and the same results are never guaranteed. Furthermore, in using gunpowder I can explore all my concerns: the relation to notions of spirituality as well as an interest in spectacle and entertainment, and the transformation of certain energies—such as violent explosions—into beauty and a kind of poetry. An artist should be like an alchemist using poison against poison, which is very much a philosophy from Chinese medicine. Turning something bad into something good…countering the force. It’s the whole idea of the alchemist, using dirt, dust, and getting gold out of it. From gunpowder, from its very essence, you can see so much of the power of the universe—how we came to be. You can express these grand ideas about the cosmos."

This is philosophy and art, not just tired old ideology and art. Brilliant stuff, truly.

On the Olympics -- a salient topic for us, in BC, given that next-door Vancouver will host the Winter Games in 2010 -- Cai Guo Qiang notes:
"The Olympics combine the entire country’s efforts, and can do a lot of previously unimaginable things. You can display your work in front of an audience of billions, but at the same time it can feel like you’re making the work for yourself. Through this event, one can contemplate and better understand what “Chinese culture” is. One needs to think about the past, present, and future of China and its relationship with the world."

That makes me think it's the most significant statement yet (for the non-athlete) on the Olympics: time to step

art cai_guo_qiang gunpowder ideas sculpture