Kenn Brown's latest piece

Feast your eyes on Kenn Brown's latest, what will be the final cover illustration for Jamil Moledina’s epic SciFi novel ‘Tearing the Sky’.

The art of Patrick Millard

Patrick Millard is Pittsburgh-based artist whose work in photography, new media, and sound has resulted in a diversified portfolio that addresses ideas about media, digital culture, technology and the interactions that human beings have within their own synthetic environment. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and continues to gain recognition.

In 2008, Patrick began to show his work inside the virtual simulation world Second Life; exhibitions that advance beyond two-dimension work and expand his ideas of simulation, virtual reality, and the synthetic future where the physical object gives way to its virtual counterpart and its presence is valued entirely for its idea rather than its place in space.

In 2009, shortly after becoming a regular exhibitor in the virtual environment, Patrick embarked upon his first photographic series that used the environment and society of Second Life as its subject matter and conceptual theme. Virtual Lens is an artistic and anthropological investigation into the life of the avatar, landscape of the sim environment, and experience of the virtual world. Patrick continues to photograph and exhibit his portfolios as well as spend time with fellow avatars in Second Life.

He currently works as Assistant Professor of Photography at Point Park University in Pittsburgh.

During the month of June, 2010 Patrick will be artist in residence at the Biosphere 2. During his time in residence he will be working on photographic, sound, and digital media portfolios.

Thousand-Hand Guan Yin

This performance is as spectacular as it is beautiful. The human capacity for creativity never ceases to amaze me. The choreography and precision required to pull this off boggles the mind.

The art of Pixelnase

More about this artist.

The surrealist art of Vladimir Kush

This is not transhumanist or futurist art per se, but I thought I'd share it with you here in all its surrealist glory. The influence of such painters as Salvador Dali, Hieronymus Bosch and René Magritte are unmistakeable.








Vladimir Kush's homepage.

Latest piece: Singularity [art]

"Singularity"

Latest piece: Observation Selection Effect [art]

I'm teaching myself how to paint. Check out my most recent work, "Observation Selection Effect":

Video games as art?

The interwebs are angry because Roger Ebert, a film critic who knows virtually nothing about video games, is arguing that video games will never be considered an artform. Grant Tavinor of Kotaku takes a more nuanced approach to the question and uses the popular BioShock video game to make his case:

Finally, and this is my judgment, BioShock is the result of the intention to make an artwork. Intentions can be slippery things, but it seems evident enough in the game that it is intended to be something more than just a game: BioShock is intended to have the features listed above (they are not accidental) and it is intended to have these features as a matter of its being art.

Hence, BioShock seems an entirely natural candidate for art status. It has, in some form, all but one of the criteria. The one it lacks-belonging to an established artistic form-it lacks because of the very newness of video games. BioShock is not necessarily a masterpiece (the last act is problematic) but this is beside the point; the vast majority of art works are not masterpieces. Surely it would be unfair to deny BioShock art status when it has so many of the qualities that in other uncontested art works accounts for their art status?

I agree that part of the problem is the nascent status of video-games-as-art. Pacman never attempted to be artist; Bioshock clearly does. It's still early days.

Moreover, even if you dismiss current games as having any artistic merit, Ebert's claim that they will never be legitimate artforms is suspicious. Never? Really? Not even when augmented reality enters the picture? Or completely immersive virtual reality?

Even more profoundly, a number of years ago I speculated about the potential for directly altering subjective and emotional experience and how mental manipulation could become an art form. In the article, Working the Conscious Canvas, I wrote:

It's conceivable that predetermined sets of emotional experiences could be a future art form. Artists might, for example, manipulate emotions alongside established art forms, a la A Clockwork Orange-but certainly not for the same questionable ends.

For example, imagine listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" or "Moonlight Sonata" while having your emotional centers manipulated in synch with the music's mood and tone. You'd be compelled to feel joy when the music is joyful, sadness when the music is sad.

The same could be done with film. In fact, last century, director Orson Welles, who was greatly influenced by German expressionistic filmmaking, directed movies in which the subjective expression of inner experiences was emphasized (Touch of Evil, for example). In the 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock, also a student of expressionism, went a step further by creating and editing sequences in a way that was synchronized with subjective perception, such as the quick-cut shower sequence in Psycho.

In the future, audiences could share emotional experiences with a film's protagonist. Imagine watching Saving Private Ryan, Titanic or Gone with the Wind in such a manner. The experience would be unbelievably visceral, nothing like today's experience of sitting back and watching.

The beauty of such experiences is that sophisticated virtual reality technology isn't required, just the control mechanisms to alter emotional experience in real-time.

Of course, some will argue that when artists can directly manipulate emotions, they will have lost a dialogue with their audience, as audience members will simply be feeling exactly what's intended. But this won't necessarily be the case. Rather, audience members will respond to emotional tapestries in unique ways based on their personal experiences, the same way they do now to other art forms.

Imagine this same technology, but in the context of video games. Now there's some scary potential.

Art, whether it be traditional or novel, has always been about transcending the individual and sharing the subjective experience of others. As I've written before, "The greatest artists thrill us with their stories, endow us with emotional and interpersonal insight, and fill us with joy through beautiful melodies, paintings and dance. By doing so they give us a piece of their selves and allow us to venture inside their very minds—even if just for a little bit."

And yes, this includes video games.

The art of Jonathon Rosen

More about Jonathon Rosen.

The art of Tomas Saraceno

Tomas Saraceno, Galaxies Forming along Filaments, Like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web (2008)

The art of Heidi Taillefer

Venus Envy
Heidi Taillefer is a Canadian artist living in Montreal. Her work is an original creative fusion of classical figurative painting, surrealism, contemporary realism and mythology combined with popular figurative traditions ranging from Victorian romanticism to science fiction. Her artwork is consonant with some early 20th century surrealists, such as Max Ernst and Giorgio DeChirco.

Introspection

Taillefer addresses eternal issues on the human condition borrowing from mythologies throughout different eras and cultures, through the lens and language of mechanism, mirroring the ubiquity of technological advancement in the world.

Hemoglobin
In her work she attempts to marry primordial human essence with the explosive expansion of the machine, as a new paradigm looms close on the horizon and promises a redefinition of what it means to be human.

Chimeric

You can find out more about Heidi Taillefer at her homepage.

Mondolithic Studios: Unraveling the mystery of DNA [image]

The Mondolithic boys put this together for Scientific American Magazine. This will go down as one of my favorites.

Mondolithic Studios: Global Super Organism [image]

This is a concept sketch from the guys at Mondolithic Studios. It was done for Focus Magazine who were looking for an image that represented the emergence of a true ‘global’ intelligence:

Global society can be defined by incorporating concepts from cybernetics, evolutionary theory, and complex adaptive systems and can therefore be seen as a network of self-producing components, and therefore as a living system or “superorganism”. A superorganism is a higher-order, “living” system, whose components are organisms themselves. (in this case, individual humans and their technology).

More.

Celebrating 150 years of Charles Darwin

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species and the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. This piece was put together by the boys at Mondolithic Studios and used on the cover of Le Scienze Magazine in Italy and on the table of contents of the US Edition of Scientific American magazine.

What a fitting and dignified portrait of this literary and scientific giant.

Alex Grey's "Obama"

"After hearing Barack Obama's speech in Berlin, and noting the degree of excitement and hope that he generated throughout many countries besides the US, I started to see him as one of the first true "world leaders." This may be partly because of his extraordinary childhood and political life that has bridged many cultures. Obama's restraint and intelligence, exhibited as foes were bating him throughout the campaign, his heartful clarity coming through in his talks are all qualities of a highly evolved person.

We need to consider our planetary citizenship, because solving the world's ecological and economic problems, and creating a culture of peace and reconciliation will require the co-operation of all nations.

Perhaps you can use this symbol of Barack Obama to send him a prayer of support, to send all the loving hopeful healing and creative energy that we can focus on him so that he can perform the task of leadership in the most effective and powerful way for the greatest good, for the greatest number." -- Alex Grey

Xolotl, the self-replicating robot

Xolotl: from the master visionaries over at Mondolithic Studios.

Imagining branded prosthetics of the future

In the future, will all the cool kids will be wearing Air Jordan prosthetics? Designer Colin Matsco certainly thinks so:

3D printing has become an incredibly powerful tool to customize one-off products for differing applications. This project was based on using this technology to design a customized prosthetic leg for a specific user- a young, urban, male athlete. Nike was chosen as an appropriate brand to bring form to the leg. It also required familiarizing oneself with the emotional, medical, lifestyle, and physical changes the user would encounter.

Next-gen photorealistic CGI

"This is a painting completed in February 2005. It was a Portrait Class project that I decided to finish in my spare time after the workshop. It probably took a total of around 65-75 hours to complete. The small images are step by step photographs taken during the painting process, and the large image is the final painting after detail and skin texture are added with an eraser and colored pencil. The main colors are blocked in at the beginning, but refinement is withheld until the very end." - Dru Blair

The art of William Scott (1913-1989)

Beans on a plate with mushrooms

Study for Still Life

Still Life With Orange Note

Tasty abstract minimalism and still life. More about William Scott.

The art of Fred Harper

Fred Harper's website.