Major Fun award-winning Rafael Lozano-Hemmer creates Olympic Light Art

According to Switched The ten, online user-controlled (yes, really, go ahead and try it while you still can) search lights currently installed on each side of Vancouver's English Bay is the work of none other than Major Fun Award-winner Rafael Lozano-Hemmer!

"Ah!" says I, and also "ha!" How satisfying it is to see a Major Fun award-winner earn something closely equivalent to gold medal Olympic recognition for playfulness.

This opportunity has been a long time coming. Lozano-Hemmer debuted his Vectoral Elevation in Mexico, ten years ago!

(Photo from Rick Hamrick who writes: "It works, Bernie! Not only that, when I submitted my design, it was executed in the predawn sky over Vancouver within about 30 seconds. My cool design (ahem) is attached.")

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Sign post

Jeroen Beekmans writes: "To inform the world about their (free) Ovi Maps mobile navigation software, Nokia built a house-sized, interactive signpost in the form of a dynamically rotating electronic LED screen, and hung it next to London’s Thames river, 50 meters up in the rainy sky. The gigantic structure allows passers-by to send in a location via text or email and then automatically rotates to the given direction and displays the submitted description (which are called ‘Good Things’ by Nokia, but why?) and the distance to it."

In a manner of thinking, this "sign post" is a related phenomenon, pointing you, in a computer-augmented kind of way, to something I think is worthy of your notice. Nokia's Signpost allows erstwhile anonymous individuals are invited to broadcast their appreciation for particular city sites and services in a way, similar to blogging, that evokes both personal empowerment and public playfulness. The anonymity, accessibility and giant public display all oddly heighten the sense of personal authority - "I can show the world what I like." They also provide an opportunity for a kind of altruism. Unless you're pointing at something you own, you are given the opportunity to advocate places you like - a personal appreciation to share with the world at large and small.

Nokia comments:

"Based on the simplest form of giving someone directions (pointing) it lets you share the places you love, or tells you about the places others love. When the signpost is live it constantly turns and shows the distance and direction to new Good Things. Submit your favorite cafe, an upcoming concert or a rare record store and the signpost will [apparently] automatically turn in the right direction and the giant LED screen will light up.”

via Popup City

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Towel Surfing?

They called it "Towel Surfing." Apparently, it was a flash mob event on beautiful Bondi Beach, very much in keeping with the guerrilla dancing meme made famous by our beloved Defenders of the Playful, Improv Everywhere, producers of the inspiring Where's Rob stadium event. I didn't see anyone actually surfing or dancing or even standing on towels, so I didn't get the towel surfing part. But the event was definitely YouTube-worthy (starting with the semi-inspiring image of a fat-challenged man dancing in his Speedos and then going on to embrace the more clearly inspiring images of lovely lasses dancing in their all-but-all-together), and the commercial underpinnings remained safely in the background. But commercially under-pinned it certainly was, sponsored by Do You Flip, an Australian site promoting the people who make the Flip digital video camera. And therein lies the departure.

So, OK. So they take a very successful meme which was created as a playfully artistic statement and use it to sell cameras. And it makes one perhaps enter into disturbing conjectures, similar to those entertained by the recent conference, called "The Internet as Playground and Factory, where variously sober thinkers discuss the way that some people make money off of others' freely contributed inspirations, the Towel Surfing video vividly exemplifying the very point the speakers make over and over again. And yet, and yet, when all is said and done, it's still fun. Even without towels.



via The Presurfer


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Cloud Gate

According to the official site

Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.

Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T.

As you look at the photos of the sculpture, it becomes clear how playful this work of art becomes. It plays with the skyline of the city. It invites people to play with their amazingly clear and strikingly distorted images. Anywhere you stand, inside or out, gives you a different way of looking at yourself, at the people around you, at the space you are sharing. For me, as your personal fun-advocate, it is iconic, representing with stunning appeal what public art is when it is at its most public best.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith