NEWSgrist - where spin is art

New Technologies + the "Obama Surge"

Barry Blitt.

via NYTimes Op-Ed, 8/31/08:(nice quote - but do read the full article)

Obama Outwits the Bloviators

By Frank Rich

...now that media are being transformed at a speed comparable to the ever-doubling power of microchips, cable’s ascendancy could also be as short-lived as, say, the reign of AOL. Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum, which monitors the intersection of politics and technology, points out that when networks judge their success by who got the biggest share of the television audience, “they are still counting horses while the world has moved on to counting locomotives.” The Web, in its infinite iterations, is eroding all 20th-century media.

The Obama campaign has long been on board those digital locomotives. Its ability to tell its story under the radar of the mainstream press in part accounts for why the Obama surge has been so often underestimated. Even now we’re uncertain of its size. The extraordinary TV viewership for Obama on Thursday night, larger than the Olympics opening ceremony, this year’s Oscars or any “American Idol” finale, may only be a count of the horses. The Obama campaign’s full reach online — for viewers as well as fund-raising and organizational networking — remains unknown

Celebrating Women Political Bloggers

This is nice, to be included here. (though is NG a political blog? an art blog? both or neither??)

via Informed Voters as well as Political Voices of Women:

Celebrating Another 100 Women Political Bloggers

Posted by Catherine Morgan on August 6, 2008

Celebrating Another 100 Women Political Bloggers.

All week we are celebrating women political bloggers. Monday, I posted on the first 100 women blogging politics, from our list of over 500.  Tuesday, the next 100.  And today, another 100 women political bloggers.

One of my goals for this site, is that women will use each other’s sites, to link to in their own blogs, and promote each other.

You can help promote women political bloggers, by linking to them on your own blog. And, if you know someone not on the list, please send me their link, and I would be happy to add them.

[see list]

Summer Hiatus

Image via

Posting will be sporadic while NEWSgrist takes a vacation...

The Art Life Fights Censorship [...]

reblogged via The Art Life:

Press Release: Fighting Censorship

In the interests of the dignifying debate on art and censorship, The Art Life today has taken the bold step of publishing on its blog a photo of a ball of dividing cells from the moment a zygote implanted itself on a uterus wall.

Although the zygote in question is currently still too young to understand the full ramifications of this decision, we feel that by exploiting these eight cells we will dignify a debate that for too long has been dominated by hysterical sections of the media clamouring for "controversy".

A press release has been sent out to newspapers, television and current affairs programs in the hope that - by playing the media's own game - we will be able to widen discussion.

We're also hoping that a journalist, researcher or moral rights campaigner will trap the Prime Minister into making a comment about the morality of exploiting zygotes without seeing the image in question.

Phase two of our campaign will be the revelation that both parents of the currently healthy eight celled object are completely in favour of publishing the photo on our blog and will be available for a 9am media call on a day of the media's choosing.

The zygote, knicknamed "Morula", will also be available for comment in approximately 2 years.

It is our sincere hope that our decision will help widen debate on art and censorship.

Although we understand the irony of creating yet another controversy in the name of debating controversy, this irony will be overlooked and that we sincerely believe we will not alienate the rest of the art world through our act of staggering bad faith.

Art Life Editorial Team.

Labels: fake controversies

   

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 1:02 PM. Comments (7) | Trackback (0)

Drawing On the Utopic

Austin Thomas, artist and director of Bushwick's Pocket Utopia, has a new blog up called Drawing On the Utopic - check it out. (I grabbed the images below from it). Also check out Sharon Butler's piece in the June issue of The Brooklyn Rail that mentions Austin's and others' "post-studio" alternatives: Lost in Space: Art Post-Studio.... Although I have to say, this paragraph is a little weird, especially coming from an inveterate artist blogger:

Acutely aware of shrinking real estate opportunities yet persistently nostalgic for the kind of old-fashioned, three-dimensional community that's threatened by the Internet, some artists are making their contemporaries' space predicaments the focus of larger projects and installations.

(Sharon??) I'd say that the Internet, if anything, is very much a part of "post-studio practice", if not studio practice proper, and to say it's part of the threat to artist communities seems a bit silly, considering the social networking potential and community it in fact has provided in spades since the late '90s. Why not drive the point home about the real threat to the visual art community in this city? (cf: From Welfare State to Real Estate: Regime Change in New York City, 1974 to the Present).

Above: Obama in Bushwick; below: Hillary sporting an Obama cap on 39th St.
click to enlarge.


click to enlarge.