NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Port Huron Project in NYTimes

Max Bunzel delivers Paul Potter’s 1965 antiwar speech in Washington. Photo: Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

via NYTimes:

Giving New Life to Protests of Yore

By RANDY KENNEDY

Published: July 28, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 26 — It’s not an unfamiliar tableau these days: people gathered on a grassy expanse of the National Mall here, listening to someone deliver an impassioned antiwar speech with phrases like “aggressive, activist foreign policy,” “the war we are creating,” “vigorous governmental efforts to control information” and “distorted or downright dishonest documents.” At some point, the crowd breaks into applause and a young woman yells out, “That’s right!”

She shouts this, however, just after the speaker behind the lectern refers to men with last names like Johnson, Rusk and Bundy and to the destinies of the Vietnamese people. And at its high point, the crowd numbers only about 30 people, many of them involved in videotaping, recording and photographing the event as flags snap majestically in the wind around the Washington Monument.

In other words, if you had wandered into this spectacle on Thursday evening, you would have found yourself not exactly in the midst of an actual protest but somewhere slightly removed, in the disorienting territory where art meets political engagement.

The firebrand orator was Max Bunzel, a 23-year-old actor from New York, juggling the role between movie auditions — for a fee, although he said that the speech, originally delivered by Paul Potter, the president of Students for a Democratic Society, during the 1965 march on Washington, genuinely moved and affected him. Most of the college-age spectators gathered there in a clutch were fully aware they were witnessing art, but by the end they also seemed not to be simply playing along but to be genuinely engaged by Mr. Potter’s arguments.

Mark Tribe, an artist and assistant professor of modern culture and media studies at Brown University, has organized a series of such re-enactments at sites where important speeches of the New Left originally took place, and he says his intention was precisely to create such a strange cultural and political straddle. The goal was to use the speeches not just as historical ready-mades or conceptual-art explorations of context, he said, but also maybe as a genuine form of protest, to point out with the help of art how much has changed, yet how much remains the same.

Or, in Mr. Tribe’s view, has grown worse since the era when Mr. Potter urged his listeners, with characteristic 1960s deconstructionist fervor, to “name the system” that allowed the Vietnam War to happen.

“Forty years has elapsed,” Mr. Tribe said, “and the system that Paul Potter talked about has gotten so much more sophisticated. The military-industrial complex or capitalism or whatever you want to call it has globalized and intensified.”

The speech by Mr. Potter (who died several years ago) is the third so far in what Mr. Tribe calls the Port Huron Project, named after the New Left manifesto. The first, performed last summer in Central Park, was a re-enactment of a 1968 speech by Coretta Scott King, and the second, this month on Boston Common, was a reprise of a speech given in 1971 by the activist Howard Zinn urging widespread civil disobedience. Creative Time, the New York public-art organization, has agreed to help produce three more speeches next year.

The project fits into a growing subgenre of historical re-enactment as performance art. Among the best-known practitioners is the British artist Jeremy Deller, who won the 2004 Turner Prize. In 2001 he staged a re-creation of a seminal event in British labor history, a 1984 confrontation between the police and thousands of miners in Yorkshire, England, who were protesting layoffs. His epic re-enactment, filmed with the help of the director Mike Figgis, used vintage clothes, hundreds of extras and thousands of fake bricks (to be thrown by the pretend miners).

Mr. Tribe, by contrast, puts inexpensive ads in Backstage and other theatrical publications and hires one actor per speech, after auditioning many. “We get deluged by applicants,” he said, adding with a grin, “We do callbacks.” (Mr. Bunzel, the actor for the Potter speech, who was born almost a decade after the Vietnam War ended, heard about it through friends.)

Mr. Tribe found the plain pine lectern he uses for the speeches through craigslist.com. And, with the help of a handful of his students, he schleps it and some basic sound and video equipment around to the sites, using the Internet to try to draw people whom he hopes will feel the ground shifting a little beneath their feet.

“It doesn’t fit neatly into any category,” he said. “Is it protest? Well, no, not quite. Is it theater? Not really. What is it? Are we in the present tense? Yes, but we’re hearing this speech that was given 42 years ago.” [read on...]

Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight...

This summer I have work in several group shows in NY, including this one which opens Aug. 2 (unfortunately I won't be in town for the opening):

Vacationing....

moving house -- posting will be sporadic... newsletter will resume in late Sept/early Oct.

Rhizome, Meet Creative Commons

 

via email:

Rhizome is proud to announce its integration of Creative Commons licenses into its online archive of art, the Artbase. As of today, artists have the option to license their work under Creative Commons Licenses. This suite of licenses allows creators to shift the terms of copyright from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved," therefore enabling authors, scientists, educators and artists, amongst others, to mark their creative works with the cultural freedoms they abide by. Rhizome's hope is that through the use of these licenses, artists will have greater access to each others' work in furtherance of their goals.

Rhizome would like to thank Wendy Seltzer, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, for her guidance and Fred Benenson, Creative Commons Cultural Fellow and student at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, for his coordination of the project. "By implementing Creative Commons, Rhizome aligns itself with sites like Blip.tv, Flickr and Digg, who nurture not only a community of free creativity, but of free culture," says Benenson. Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome, adds that "It's in the spirit of Rhizome to foster collaboration amongst artists. I'm happy that Rhizome is able to make these licenses available, and to support the practice of sharing cultural material within the arts."

About Rhizome
Rhizome is an online platform for the global new media art community. Our programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.
http://www.rhizome.org

About Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach.
http://creativecommons.org/

Mass MoCA/Büchel: "sad, dumb, and shameful"

{Scroll down for some background as well as updates and other points of view. NEWSgrist should mention that although its sympathies tend to lie with artists rather than with institutions for obvious reasons, in this case the stubborn pigheadedness of both parties has led them into an untenable situation... "sad, dumb, and shameful", like celebrity divorce.}

“Obviously, Mass MoCA's faith in the artist and his process was sorely tested. But does that warrant exacting revenge by turning his project into a show that misrepresents, dishonors, vilifies, and even ridicules him [Büchel]? A show that admits no responsibility for the project's failure on the museum's part and that affirms popular perceptions of our most innovative contemporary artists as frauds and charlatans?”

via The Boston Globe
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

No admittance
Mass MoCA has mishandled disputed art installation
By Ken Johnson, Globe Staff  |  July 1, 2007

As Globe readers may recall, last year Mass MoCA invited the Swiss sculptor [Christoph Büchel] to create a giant installation at the vast former factory complex it occupies in North Adams. On paper, it sounds like it should have been a great match. Büchel has an international reputation for creating ambitious, marvelously complex walk-in environments using all kinds of found materials, and Mass MoCA is known for sponsoring artists with ambitious, big ideas.

What went wrong in the fall of 2006 -- when Büchel and his assistants took up residence in North Adams and began working on his project, which was to be called "Training Ground for Democracy," his first major US museum show -- is in dispute. Mass MoCA says Büchel's unreasonable demands pushed the project way over budget, from $160,000 to $300,000. Büchel says Mass MoCA's incompetence and disregard for his expertise caused unnecessary delays and expenditures.

In any event, the exhibition did not open as scheduled on Dec. 16, and it remains unfinished. In May, Mass MoCA declared the exhibition canceled and then, paradoxically, said it would sue for the right to open Büchel's unfinished installation to the public as an "open back lot workshop." Büchel has strongly objected to his work being shown in its current state.

In fact, the installation is now open to the public, but under odd conditions: Yellow tarps affixed to construction fencing block the visitor's view of most of the materials assembled for the project. This is to propound the idea that the museum is not actually exhibiting Büchel's unfinished work and cannot therefore be sued for doing so. If the US District Court in Springfield rules in the museum's favor, then the fencing will be removed.

What is at issue is a law called the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990. Among the stipulations of this law is one saying that the creator of an artwork "shall have the right to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation."

This explains why, for the moment, you will find no signs at Mass MoCA announcing Christoph Büchel as the author of the unfinished installation in Building 5. A visitor who has not learned about the show and the controversy beforehand will be mystified by what he or she encounters.

As you follow a path between the fencing that leads through the unfinished installation, you can see through openings below the tarps parts of cars, trucks, trailers, storage containers, and other objects close to the ground. And you can see rising above the fence the second story of a white clapboard house, shipping containers stacked 20 or more feet high, cinder-block walls topped by coils of barbed wire, a guard tower, and the upper part of an amusement-park carousel. At one end, there's an almost completely reconstructed interior of an old movie theater. It is altogether a gloomy, frustrating, and not at all illuminating experience.

Now I'm not a lawyer, but it does appear to me as an art critic that what Mass MoCA has done certainly misrepresents Büchel's art. Whether or not the exhibition is clearly labeled "unfinished" and whether or not Büchel is identified as its author, many people are going to judge him and his work on the basis of this experience. Indeed, one critic has already gone on record. Writing in Commentary Magazine, Michael J. Lewis observed, "Having inspected it Thursday afternoon, I am not sure that it suffers from being enveiled. On the contrary: just as most naked bodies benefit from clothing, the yellow shrouds hiding most of the exhibit add a note of complexity and mystery to what would otherwise be a rather simplistic exercise in political art."

Leaving aside the strictly legal issues, there are larger concerns at stake, which have to do with the relationship between the artist, the museum, and the public. In this regard, Mass MoCA has compounded its wrongs by mounting a slick, disingenuous, egregiously self-serving photo and text display called "Made at Mass MoCA" in a small gallery at one end of the Büchel hall. It tells viewers all about the many successful large-scale projects it has produced with well-known artists such as Tim Hawkinson , Ann Hamilton , and Gregory Crewdson . The implicit message is that Büchel must be a real jerk to have been so uncooperative.

"Made at Mass MoCA" also includes a bulletin board adorned with newspaper articles describing the controversy, mainly in terms unfavorable to Büchel. Among them is an editorial from the North Adams Transcript that reads, in part, "Kudos to Mass MoCA for not only taking Swiss artist Christoph (The Great) Büchel to task but also to court for his shameful behavior regarding his long-promised but still not delivered 'Training Ground for Democracy.' "

"Made at Mass MoCA" usefully explains something important about how the museum operates. It prides itself on its ambition not only to exhibit works of art that challenge conventions in terms of scale and media but also to participate with artists in the actual production of large-scale works by providing funding, materials, labor, fabrication expertise, and other kinds of resources.

This is different from how art museums traditionally operate, which is to exhibit artworks created at the artist's expense in the studio or in the workshops of professional fabricators. Mass MoCA's approach entails significant risks for the museum. Budgets can be overridden, chemistry between artists and museum personnel can go sour, and a successful end product is not guaranteed. To collaborate with an artist in the production of a large-scale work is a leap of faith.

One would hope that a museum thus engaged in artistic collaboration would understand and adapt to what kind of artist it is dealing with in any given project. Some artists are less fussy than others about how their concepts are executed. What may seem to museum workers a perfect solution to a given problem may not necessarily be acceptable to an artist who has an extremely exacting vision of what he is trying to achieve. Anyone familiar with Büchel's past work might guess that he would be one of the fussier, more demanding artists.

For example, three years ago, I had occasion to review an installation that Büchel created at the Swiss Institute in New York. A miracle of industry and imagination, it presented to the visitor a grungy, fully-furnished apartment in which, for unexplained reasons, a meandering cinderblock wall divided every room and passageway in half, with crawl spaces allowing entry to some hidden areas. To make your way through this labyrinthine space was to enter an Alice in Wonderland-like world animated by mysteries the visitor could only guess at. What was clear about the installation was that the artist worried over every object in it the way a literary novelist worries over every word and every sentence.

Obviously, Mass MoCA's faith in the artist and his process was sorely tested. But does that warrant exacting revenge by turning his project into a show that misrepresents, dishonors, vilifies, and even ridicules him? A show that admits no responsibility for the project's failure on the museum's part and that affirms popular perceptions of our most innovative contemporary artists as frauds and charlatans?

I don't think so.

Ken Johnson can be reached at kejohnson@globe.com

UPDATES:

ARTINFO
Site-Specific Impasse
By William Hanley
Published: July 20, 2007

7/25/07, via CLANCCO:
MASS MoCA Counterclaims Arguing Büchel Project Is Not Art

BACKGROUND:
The Boston Globe
Behind doors, a world unseen
Dispute cloaks massive installation at MASS MoCA
By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff  |  March 28, 2007

The Boston Globe
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Büchel, List Of Demands
(Two adds from today's story.)

NYFA Undercurrents
Artists’ Moral Rights and the Visual Artists Rights Act
By Linda J. Park

The Art Law Blog
Mass MoCA's Lawsuit
 

Nancy Spero—still angry after all these years

Nancy Spero’s Maypole: Take No Prisoners in the Padiglione Italia (Venice Biennale)

via The Art Newspaper, From Features:

Artist Interview: Nancy Spero—still angry in her 80s
By Adrian Dannatt | Posted 26 July 2007

For over 50 years, Nancy Spero has been active not only as a professional artist but also political activist, street protester, community organiser and proudly avowed socialist and feminist. Spero often exhibited with her ­long-time husband Leon Golub, an overtly political partnership as well as a great art world love story. If Spero has often been more acclaimed in Europe (especially the UK and France) than her native country where she remains almost a cult ­figure, this seems to be shifting as she steams into her 80s.

The Art Newspaper: Your installation at the Venice Biennale is both physically attractive and rather gory.

Nancy Spero: Well, it’s called Maypole: Take No Prisoners and from this maypole we’ve hung almost 200 heads. They’re cut out of aluminium sheets, scrubbed down to give them a surface with a power-sander then primed with house wall paint, like priming a canvas but with a much more severe surface, then we paint and print on them. The head images come from these ­little paper cut-outs I made.

TAN: Can we assume these are people being tortured?

NS: Well, yes they are, they’re kind of screaming, the tongues sticking out, I think that has to do with language and also ­obviously with being tortured, it’s like vomiting, just the body in a dire situation. But it’s also about a language, about ­sticking one’s tongue out at the world… I’ve always wanted my art to be something that would not be acceptable in the usual daily, ordinary, polite way of ­communicating.

TAN: The title Maypole: Take No Prisoners might be a direct reference to current American military activities?

NS: It’s kind of a continuous theme in my work and unfortunately seems a continuous theme in American policy, as an earlier version of this imagery was in my “War” series and that’s from 40 years ago!

TAN: You make a direct ­parallel between Vietnam and Iraq.

NS: It’s the same, it’s no ­different, I don’t have to do a special series on Iraq, it’s just like Vietnam. I did the “War” series about Vietnam and now here we are again in the Iraq debacle, watching the same damn thing, I don’t feel I need to say it again. I find it really so unbearable, and there doesn’t seem to be any activism in the US, it’s amazing there doesn’t seem to be any strong reaction or response to this catastrophe.

TAN: When you did your 1975 series on Chilean political ­torture, you never imagined such torture would be an issue in America itself in 2007?

NS: It’s really so shocking, ­seeing what is going on here. The US did once, in the past, have this sense, this ideal, of what it stood for, for something else, against terror, against ­torture, to get rid of these things that took place in other parts of the world. And to see the sanctimoniousness of Americans now, it’s too much to bear, it’s even worse than it was 40 years ago, because of the power of the US and what that means now.

TAN: Those involved in ­political activism in the 60s surely could not have dreamt how bad it was going to get?

NS: That’s right, it’s unbelievable. I shouldn’t torture myself listening to the radio, especially late at night, what Bush does daily, every moment, it never fails to shock me...With Bush I now really have someone to stick my tongue out at, if not other parts as well!

Biography
Currently showing: Padiglione Italia, Venice Biennale (until 21 November); Galerie Lelong, Paris (until 21 July); Frac Haute Normandie (until 29 July)

Born: 1926, Cleveland. Lives New York City

Education: Art Institute, Chicago; Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris

Selected solo shows, 2004: Retrospective, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela 2003: Baltic, Gateshead 1992: Museum of Modern Art, New York

Selected group shows, 2007: “Wack!”, Lacma, Los Angeles 2000: “Open Ends”, MoMA, New York       

Africa, Offline

via goldwaterlibrary.org:

Bringing the Internet to Africa ... slowly

From The New York Times, July 22, 2007

A customer in the Bourbon coffee shop in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, uses a wireless connection. (Riccardo Gangale for The New York Times)

Africa, Offline: Waiting for the Web
By RON NIXON

ON A MUGGY DAY IN KIGALI IN 2003, some of the highest-ranking officials in the Rwandan government, including President Paul Kagame, flanked an American businessman, Greg Wyler, as he boldly described how he could help turn their small country into a hub of Internet activity.

Mr. Wyler, an executive based in Boston who made his fortune during the tech boom, said he would lace Rwanda with fiber optic cables, connecting schools, government institutions and homes with low-cost, high-speed Internet service. Until that point, Mr. Wyler, 37, had never set foot in Africa — he was invited by a Rwandan government official he had met at a wedding. Mr. Wyler never expected to start a business there; he simply wanted to try to help the war-torn country.

Even so, Mr. Wyler’s company, Terracom, was granted a contract to connect 300 schools to the Internet. Later, the company would buy 99 percent of the shares in Rwandatel, the country’s national telecommunications company, for $20 million.

But after nearly four years, most of the benefits hailed by him and his company have failed to materialize, Rwandan officials say. “The bottom line is that he promised many things and didn’t deliver,” said Albert Butare, the country’s telecommunications minister.

Mr. Wyler says he sees things quite differently, and he and Rwandan officials will probably never agree on why their joint venture has been so slow to get off the ground. But Terracom’s tale is more than a story about a business dispute in Rwanda. It is also emblematic of what can happen when good intentions run into the technical, political and business realities of Africa.

Attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses have made little headway on the continent. Less than 4 percent of Africa’s population is connected to the Web; most subscribers are in North African countries and the republic of South Africa.

A lack of infrastructure is the biggest problem. In many countries, communications networks were destroyed during years of civil conflict, and continuing political instability deters governments or companies from investing in new systems. E-mail messages and phone calls sent from some African countries have to be routed through Britain, or even the United States, increasing expenses and delivery times. About 75 percent of African Internet traffic is routed this way and costs African countries billions of extra dollars each year that they would not incur if their infrastructure was up to speed.

“Most African governments haven’t paid much attention to their infrastructure,” said Vincent Oria, an associate professor of computer science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a native of the Ivory Coast. “In places where hunger, AIDS and poverty are rampant, they didn’t see it as critical until now.”

Africa’s only connection to the network of computers and fiber optic cables that are the Internet’s backbone is a $600 million undersea cable running from Portugal down the west coast of Africa. Built in 2002, the cable was supposed to provide cheaper and faster Web access, but so far that has not happened.

Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors. And plans for a fiber optic cable along the East African coast have stalled over similar access issues. Most countries in Eastern Africa, like Rwanda, depend on slower satellite technology for Internet service.

The result is that Africa remains the least connected region in the world, and the digital gap between it and the developed world is widening rapidly. “Unless you can offer Internet access that is the same as the rest of the world, Africa can’t be part of the global economy or academic environment,” said Lawrence H. Landweber, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who was also part of an early effort to bring the Web to Africa in the mid-1990s. “The benefits of the Internet age will bypass the continent.”

• Read more of the article here
  

Posted by Ross Day on July 23, 2007 at 04:32 PM in Africa, Ross Day, Web/Tech, e-resources | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

From The New York Times, July 22, 2007

A customer in the Bourbon coffee shop in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, uses a wireless connection. (Riccardo Gangale for The New York Times)

Africa, Offline: Waiting for the Web
By RON NIXON

ON A MUGGY DAY IN KIGALI IN 2003, some of the highest-ranking officials in the Rwandan government, including President Paul Kagame, flanked an American businessman, Greg Wyler, as he boldly described how he could help turn their small country into a hub of Internet activity.

Mr. Wyler, an executive based in Boston who made his fortune during the tech boom, said he would lace Rwanda with fiber optic cables, connecting schools, government institutions and homes with low-cost, high-speed Internet service. Until that point, Mr. Wyler, 37, had never set foot in Africa — he was invited by a Rwandan government official he had met at a wedding. Mr. Wyler never expected to start a business there; he simply wanted to try to help the war-torn country.

Even so, Mr. Wyler’s company, Terracom, was granted a contract to connect 300 schools to the Internet. Later, the company would buy 99 percent of the shares in Rwandatel, the country’s national telecommunications company, for $20 million.

But after nearly four years, most of the benefits hailed by him and his company have failed to materialize, Rwandan officials say. “The bottom line is that he promised many things and didn’t deliver,” said Albert Butare, the country’s telecommunications minister.

Mr. Wyler says he sees things quite differently, and he and Rwandan officials will probably never agree on why their joint venture has been so slow to get off the ground. But Terracom’s tale is more than a story about a business dispute in Rwanda. It is also emblematic of what can happen when good intentions run into the technical, political and business realities of Africa.

Attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses have made little headway on the continent. Less than 4 percent of Africa’s population is connected to the Web; most subscribers are in North African countries and the republic of South Africa.

A lack of infrastructure is the biggest problem. In many countries, communications networks were destroyed during years of civil conflict, and continuing political instability deters governments or companies from investing in new systems. E-mail messages and phone calls sent from some African countries have to be routed through Britain, or even the United States, increasing expenses and delivery times. About 75 percent of African Internet traffic is routed this way and costs African countries billions of extra dollars each year that they would not incur if their infrastructure was up to speed.

“Most African governments haven’t paid much attention to their infrastructure,” said Vincent Oria, an associate professor of computer science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a native of the Ivory Coast. “In places where hunger, AIDS and poverty are rampant, they didn’t see it as critical until now.”

Africa’s only connection to the network of computers and fiber optic cables that are the Internet’s backbone is a $600 million undersea cable running from Portugal down the west coast of Africa. Built in 2002, the cable was supposed to provide cheaper and faster Web access, but so far that has not happened.

Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors. And plans for a fiber optic cable along the East African coast have stalled over similar access issues. Most countries in Eastern Africa, like Rwanda, depend on slower satellite technology for Internet service.

The result is that Africa remains the least connected region in the world, and the digital gap between it and the developed world is widening rapidly. “Unless you can offer Internet access that is the same as the rest of the world, Africa can’t be part of the global economy or academic environment,” said Lawrence H. Landweber, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who was also part of an early effort to bring the Web to Africa in the mid-1990s. “The benefits of the Internet age will bypass the continent.”

• Read more of the article here
  

The Problem With Old World Meat-Space Corporations

A Second Life avatar looks into an empty American Apparel store. Many companies are leaving the online world.

via LATimes:

Virtual marketers have second thoughts about Second Life
Firms find that avatars created by participants in the online society aren't avid shoppers.
By Alana Semuels, Times Staff Writer, July 14, 2007

SECOND LIFE — a three-dimensional online society where publicity is cheap and the demographic is edgy and certainly computer-savvy — should be a marketer's paradise.

But it turns out that plugging products is as problematic in the virtual world as it is anywhere else.

At  http://www.secondlife.com — where the cost is $6 a month for premium citizenship — shopping, at least for real-world products, isn't a main activity. Four years after Second Life debuted, some marketers are second-guessing the money and time they've put into it.

"There's not a compelling reason to stay," said Brian McGuinness, vice president of Aloft, a brand of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. that is closing its Second Life shop and donating its virtual land to the nonprofit social-networking group TakingITGlobal.

Linden Lab, the San Francisco firm that created Second Life, sells companies and people pieces of the landscape where they can build stores, conference halls and gardens. Individuals create avatars, or virtual representations of themselves, that travel around this online society, exploring and schmoozing with other avatars. Land developed by users, rather than real-world companies, is among the most popular places in Second Life.

But the sites of many of the companies remaining in Second Life are empty. During a recent in-world visit, Best Buy Co.'s Geek Squad Island was devoid of visitors and the virtual staff that was supposed to be online.

The schedule of events on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s site was blank, and the green landscape of Dell Island was deserted. Signs posted on the window of the empty American Apparel store said it had closed up shop.

McGuinness said Starwood's venture into Second Life did accomplish something. Feedback from denizens gave Aloft ideas for its physical hotels.

The suggestions included putting radios in showers and painting the lobbies in earth tones rather than primary colors. But now that the design initiative is over, he said, it's difficult to attract people to the virtual hotel to help build the real-world brand.

For some advertisers, the problem is that Second Life is a fantasyland, and the representations of the people who play in it don't have human needs. Food and drink aren't necessary, teleporting is the easiest way to get around and clothing is optional. In fact, the human form itself is optional.

Avatars can play games, build beach huts, dress up like furry animals, flirt with strangers — sometimes all at once.

Their interests seem to tend toward the risque. Ian Schafer, chief executive of online marketing firm Deep Focus, which advises clients about entering virtual worlds, said he recently toured Second Life. He started at the Aloft hotel and found it empty. He moved on to casinos, brothels and strip clubs, and they were packed. Schafer said he found in his research that "one of the most frequently purchased items in Second Life is genitalia."

Another problem for some is that Second Life doesn't have enough active residents.

On its website, Second Life says the number of total residents is more than 8 million. But that counts people who signed in once and never returned, as well as multiple avatars for individual residents. Even at peak times, only about 30,000 to 40,000 users are logged on, said Brian Haven, an analyst with Forrester Research.

"You're talking about a much smaller audience than advertisers are used to reaching," Haven said.

Some in the audience don't want to be reached. After marketers began entering Second Life, an avatar named Urizenus Sklar — in the real world, University of Toronto philosophy professor Peter Ludlow — wrote in the public-relations blog Strumpette that the community was "being invaded by an army of old world meat-space corporations."

He and other residents accused companies of lacking creativity by setting up traditional-looking stores that didn't fit in. His column was reproduced in the Second Life Herald.

Nissan Motor Co., a subject of such protests, has since transformed its presence in Second Life from a car vending machine to an "automotive amusement park," where avatars can test gravity-defying vehicles and ride hamster balls. Sun Micro has made its participation more interactive and fanciful, Chief Gaming Officer Chris Melissinos said.

Ludlow isn't impressed. He said most firms were more interested in the publicity they received from their ties with Second Life than in the digital world itself. "It was a way to brand themselves as being leading-edge," he said.

Angry avatars have taken virtual action. Reebok weathered a nuclear bomb attack and customers were shot outside the American Apparel store. Avatars are creating fantasy knockoffs of brand-name products too.

Some buying and selling does go on in Second Life. An avatar can acquire currency — called Linden dollars — by earning it or buying it with U.S. dollars. (The exchange rate is 268 Lindens to $1.) With a stack of Linden dollars, an avatar can spice up his or her look or while away the time in a casino.

Only a few other virtual worlds allow avatars to create and sell content as Second Life does. But users are flocking to the other worlds, in part because some don't require people to download software to take up residence.

Others just want to access a larger community than Second Life offers. Between May and June, the population of active avatars declined 2.5%, and the volume of U.S. money exchanged within the world fell from a high of $7.3 million in March to $6.8 million in June.

Companies are following them. IBM Corp., which has an extensive presence in Second Life, is expanding into the other environments, including There, which features a digital version of the popular TV show "Laguna Beach," and Entropia Universe, which pits users against one another in a sci-fi civilization.

Consulting firms that were set up to bring brands into Second Life are busy helping clients explore other worlds.

One such agency, Millions of Us, recently announced that it had formed a partnership with Gaia Online, a site popular with teenagers, and CEO Reuben Steiger said it would be unveiling more soon. Millions of Us had previously worked only with Second Life.

"It's not about whether Second Life is good or bad," Steiger said. "It's just that there are a lot of alternatives."

NYC Film Permits? Independent Filmmakers et al. Fight Back

Marshall Reese (of ligorno/reese) writes in that he and Svetlana Mintcheva of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) have been crafting a letter in response to the regulations under consideration by the Mayor's Office.

Click here to read the City's proposed rules (PDF)

Click here to read the NYCLU's comments (PDF)

via ligorno/reese email:

[...] there are a number of individuals and organizations, (the New York Civil Liberties Union for one), who are also suggesting appropriate actions. The initial regulations proposed by the Mayor's Office seem unrealistic, hard to enforce, and potentially stifling to filmmakers and photographers in New York, as well as to have serious, negative, first amendment consequences.

[...] download the letter at:

http://ncac.org/NYCfilmphotorestrictions.pdf

If you agree and would like to sign it, please contact Svetlana
Mintcheva at NCAC.

svetlana@ncac.org

Please include your name, professional affiliation and city of
residence to be added to the letter. We will send the letter out by
end of this week, July 27, 2007. The deadline for comments by the
Mayor's Office is August 3rd and we want to send the letter to them
before that.

We feel that the more options that the Mayor's office receives, the
better the likelihood they will make a decent decision.

Thanks for your time. & please feel free to circulate the letter.

Sincerely,
Marshall Reese

the letter:

Ms. Julianne Cho
Assistant Commissioner
Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting
1697 Broadway
New York, N.Y. 10019

July 27, 2007

Re: Chapter 9, Title 43 of the City Rules of New York Film Permits

Dear Ms. Cho:
We are writing to you to express our concern about the adverse impact the new rules on Film Permits (Chapter 9, Title 43 of the City Rules of New York), currently under consideration, will have on independent filmmakers, photographers and film and photography students in the City. While we understand and appreciate the need for written guidelines regarding photographic and film making activities in New York – especially when large film crews are involved - we are concerned that Sections 901(b)(1)(ii) and (iii) would impose unnecessary, yet significant burdens upon small, one-camera professional filmmaking and photography enterprises. Those sections require that a permit must be acquired for filming with a hand-held camera when it lasts more than 30 minutes (including setup) in a single location and involves two or more people, as well as for filming with a single tripod when it lasts more than 10 minutes (including setup) and involves five or more people.

Independent filmmakers and photographers, whether students or professionals,
frequently work on extremely small budgets and with minimal equipment. Very often, they work only with hand-held cameras or tripods (and with portable sound-recording devices if interviewing individuals on the street). This equipment certainly is not of the kind that would create safety hazards, tie up traffic or otherwise disrupt the free flow of activity on City streets, presumably the underlying concerns the City had in formulating the rules.

Yet, despite this non-intrusive filming process, under the new rules filmmakers would be required to obtain permits were they to film with a hand-held camera for more than 30 minutes within a 100 foot radius of any given location, or for more than 10 minutes with a stationary camera within the same radius. The conditions placed on the number of people “interacting” would preclude even the filming of a small documentary where a cameraman, sound person and producer are interviewing a couple visiting, say, Ground Zero. These rules virtually ensure that no filmmaker or professional photographer would henceforth be able to work without going through the permission and insurance process.

The 10 and 30 minute time limitations would present an unrealistic time frame for most documentary filming and professional photography. In fact, some common film/video techniques, used by amateurs as well as professionals, such as time-lapse photography, inherently require both a tripod and longer periods of time. The new restrictions effectively eliminate time-lapse as an option unless a permit and insurance are obtained in advance.

Worse, even were the filmmakers do go through the process of obtaining a permit, the requirement that “[p]ermittees shall confine their activities to the locations and times specified on their permit” places an insurmountable burden upon the work of documentary filmmakers for whom spontaneity and a quick
reaction to urban life is a key. Seminal work like Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb and James Agee’s In The Street, a portrait of late 1940’s Harlem street life, would be among the kind of work unfairly burdened under the new restrictions. In a more recent example, many of independent filmmaker Jem Cohen’s films (f. eg. This Is A History Of New York (1987), NYC Weights And Measures (2006)) could not possibly have been made if the filmmaker had to get permits in advance or restrict the time he stood in a given place as they were predicated on spontaneous shooting on the street over a long period of time, both with and without a tripod, often done with a crew of 2 to 3 people.

Finally, the requirement of a $1 million liability policy for low-budget filmmakers and photographers, whose work entails virtually no disruption or compromise of City life or safety, is disproportionate and unduly burdensome for the artists.

There is simply no justifiable safety or congestion rationale for the City to apply its permit requirements to two or more individuals based solely on their use of hand-held cameras or tripods in a single area for more than 10 or 30 minutes. To the extent that these rules encompass an entire class of independent documentary filmmakers and professional photographers, they create an unintended, but no less unfortunate, intrusion into First Amendment protection of artistic expression.

Not only do the new rules have a potentially chilling impact on artistic freedom, but by discouraging small productions and student filmmakers from using New York as a site they could also have a negative economic and cultural impact: small productions help support the City’s many labs, equipment rental
companies, postproduction facilities, and festivals, whereas its film and art schools draw talented students and professors from around the world. Yet students, to an even greater extent than professional filmmakers and photographers, cannot afford the insurance and rarely plan ahead in the way the
regulations require.

For the above reasons, we are calling for the elimination of rule 901(b)(1)(ii) and (iii) restricting the use of hand-held or tripod-mounted cameras without a permit, as well as the elimination of the language of rule 901(b)(2)(i) and (ii) beginning with “provided that such activity. . .” Additionally, we propose that the $1 million insurance requirement for photographers and documentary filmmakers who use only hand-held or tripod-mounted cameras be eliminated.

We hope that the MOFTB will give these suggestions its utmost consideration in light of the serious issues raised above.

You may also download the letter via newsgrist:
nycfilmphotorestrictions_1.pdf .pdf

Robin Hood Foundation: Benefit Auction @ apexart!

apexart, one of the not-for-profit mainstays of downtown Manhattan, recently opened an international exhibition titled "The Most Curatorial Biennial of the Universe" with 450 participating artists and curators.

Download Press Release:

http://apexart.org/images/biennial/biennial_pr.pdf

>This open call exhibition and online art auction will benefit the Robin Hood Foundation of New York City while making a statement about the proliferation of such exhibitions and activities and the prices at commercial auctions "uptown".  Individuals may place bids on the works of art in increments of $10 by visiting the apex art website at www.apexart.org or by visiting exhibition.

The exhibition will close August 11, and the auction will close August 10 at 6pm.

apexart asked the Robin Hood Foundation to be the recipient of all proceeds from the online auction because of their important work in targeting poverty in New York City. Robin Hood's work comes in many forms, partnering with more than 240 of the most successful poverty-fighting nonprofit organizations in New York City, and initiating and running projects when it sees unmet community needs. The Foundation also created and operates a 9/11 Relief Fund. While there is great diversity among these programs, they all have one thing in common: they work. For more information, visit: www.robinhood.org.

{No funds go to apexart directly or otherwise}