Ice Typography is a series by Canadian artist Nicole Dextras that revels in impermanence.Dextras constructs provocative text out of ice, installs it on a wintry landscape and waits for Mother Nature to do her thing. For the "temperature determines how long it will take for them to change state from solid to liquid. This phase of transition becomes symbolic of the interconnectedness of language and culture to the land as they are affected by time and by a constant shifting and transforming nature."Dextras continues "The visual poetry in this series aims to subvert the authority of the English language and the...
Search Lights
Filament Mind is the brilliant installation that graces the new Teton County Library in Wyoming.It is a real-time visual rendering of the "collective curiosities and questions of Wyoming library patrons". It is composed of over 5 miles of fiber optic cables and has 44 LED illuminators that connect the visual data to 904 text labels with each fiber optic cable corresponding to a Dewey Decimal call number! The 1,000 categories represented by the Dewey Decimal call numbers are displayed on the north and south walls.Here's how it works:When a search is performed by a library patron, the Dewey Decimal call numbers of...
The Lighted Books of Airan Kang
Luminous WordsSouth Korean artist Airan Kang takes an illuminated approach to her art. Her striking digitally lighted books, along with her new LED paintings, are currently on view in her second solo show at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York. To prepare for her 2010 show, Light Reading, Kang traveled around the world to visit and photograph different bookstores and famous libraries in order to then recreate each environment as digitized versions of the original simulacra.Lord Byron (Hyper Open Book), 2010. LED lights, resin encasement, custom electronics. 24 1/2 x 16 1/2 x 4 inchesThe current show, Luminous Words, features over one hundred digital...
A History Lesson with Bill Woodrow
SITTING ON HISTORY. Bronze. 1999. Edition of 10. Here are some gems from British sculptor Bill Woodrow done around the millennium. As we all wondered if we would survive Y2K Woodrow was busy making sense of history through sculpture.REGARDLESS OF HISTORY. Bronze. 2000. UniquePLAYING WITH HISTORY - 2002. Aluminium, fabric. 13 x 24 x 26 cm. Edition of 15SWEET HISTORY - 2002. Maquette: wood, plastic, card, gold leafNATURAL HISTORY - 2000. Bronze, copper, water. Edition of 8 plus 4 ap'sand here are a few more book-themed sculptures from Woodrow's Y2K years:TIME TABLE - 1999. Bronze, goldleaf. 59 x 106 x 85 cm. Edition of...
Kris Martin’s Idiot
Idiot. Kris Martin, 2005.Kris Martin's work provides a humorous existential twist on the ready-made.One of the seeds of his current show at Kestner Gesellschaft is Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot.For his 2005 piece Martin copied the entire text of the novel in his hand. It took him 5 months!There was one catch:He replaced every mention of Prince Myshkin with his own name!More if the exhibit at Contemporary Art Daily