Banksy installed his own work, again. Brilliant. This time at the British Museum featuring a placard desribing a "finely preserved example of primitive art dating from the Post-Catatonic era" - a rock decorated with a caveman with a shopping cart. Here

MS announced that in the new versions of windows OS text readability is a "top 5 issue." Having announced that, MS has announced 6 user friendly fonts for use with their Cleartype and Opentype technologies (2 serif, 3 san serif + 1 monospace for programmers).

I will point you in the right direction, go here

Ohio State University (OSU) is hosting a course that many physicians are calling a pointless exercise in cruelty. Nicknamed “Cruelty 101,” the course attempts to instruct students in spinal cord injury research methods. Unfortunately, students will not be focusing on the newest in vitro cell biology, neural cell imaging, and clinical research techniques. Instead, OSU neurologists are teaching the students how to systematically injure the spinal cords of rats and mice using a weight dropped on the animal's exposed spinal cord and then putting the animals through behavioral tests and surgical manipulations.

http://www.pcrm.org/resch/anexp/osu_boycott.html

For awful pictures and more description.
http://www.pcrm.org/resch/anexp/osu.html

Fontlab Ltd. has just announced it has licensed the Fontographer product line from Macromedia Inc. Fontographer hasn't been updated in around 7 years(?) I think.

Definately a local exhibition worth attending. Columbus based artist Scott Shelton (aka. Scotty Boombox) will be having his masters thesis exhibition:

Personal Data
an MFA performance exhibiton
Thursday May 26th, 2005

Haskett Hall Soundstage
156 W 19th Avenue
Columbus, Ohio
The Ohio State University
Performance begins at 7:30pm

more info at his website.

Warhol has been in the spotlight again lately. The silkscreened portrait of Liz Taylor just sold for 12 million at Sotheby's.

Also recently the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has received a $4-million donation from Teresa Heinz Kerry.

While thinking (and drinking) about coffee and tea and had a quick idea for some packaging.

I especially like the relationship of chopping up circles and the negative shapes you get (in the logo forms).

Rosewood Fill is a really great font - really hope to use it more often - also it looks good with Georgia Italic (I should have probably used Bodoni Italic and just said no to MicroSoft fonts but oh well it was already loaded).

(Bodoni was designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF in 1909 while Georgia was developed by Matthew Carter for MicroSoft in 2000.)



If I get some more time I'll concept the 'hidden' sides of the boxes too.

"Nine cars arc through MASS MoCA's 300' long gallery, tumbling and suspended in mid-air as if by stop-action. Long transparent rods radiate from the car, pulsing with dazzling multicolored light. An explosive moment - expanded in time and space as if in a dream - the cars form the centerpiece of Inopportune, Cai Guo-Qiang's new commission for MASS MoCA."

Wow this looks amazing. I'd love to see this up close; it just looks like there is so much quiet motion and energy captured in the stillness of the cars. Massachusetts Musuem of Contemporary Art

Fullsize images here and here.

Wow. More is a great short film.

It's a 6 minute animated short. It's hard to believe but it totally encompasses our bleak consumer society and our want for "more." It's really well done scored by New Order.

Ok. So there is this group of 20-somes calling themselves the "Philistine Group" that apparently stole art from small art spaces in some sort of mock protest of art that "lacked merit" supposedly elevating the act of theft as art inspired by critique.

"Balsa said he doesn't see the thefts as theft, because his crew of roughly six people -- all in their early 20s -- always intended to give the work back. The idea of taking art without permission came to him last summer when he was standing in a gallery looking at art he believed lacked merit."
News story here

Apparently they did give the artback, seemingly begrudgingly. News update here.

Now I ask the question Why is this art group (lol. I use that term loosely) suddenly the barometer of art-relevance? I may point out that lesser minded people literally attacked (with hammers) the art of Man Ray in 1923. The original Object to be Destroyed was destroyed by a group of students in 1957 at a Paris exhibition. Where those attackers really a group of omnipresent art critics? no.

Now I am not purporting that the art stolen by this group of brigands was or will be as influential as the indestructible object. Yet I cannot help thinking that these people make the lesser known art spaces seem like dens of thievery at worst, and at best they seem less important spaces.

All have to say is this, spend time making your own art better if you perceive what is showing in gallery "lacks merit."

Now if you want elevate theft to conceptual art, choose a worthy target - I mean come on - art-burgle from a mega corporation or the whatever incarnation of the "man" you have (someone who can afford the loss). Or Reverse-burgle art and leave it in public spaces (attach shoes to lamp poles or whatever else makes you conceptual or avant garde). Don't target your peers as pigeons to steal from. You can try and justify your theft as dadaist-post-marxist-modernist-craptastist all you want, but simply put you're a theif.

Bah this just makes me furious. I'll probably edit this later when I have a more cogent thought.