Cyberpunk’d: Cornell’s Boxes are Gorges

So a few months ago went all nerdcore and ordered $3 paperbacks of all of William Gibson’s old books. You know, guy who coined the word cyberspace, was writing about “the matrix” in the 80s, imagined we “jack in” to the internets through literal sockets in our skulls.

Anyway, we’re reading Count Zero at the moment, and a nodal point in the plot references Joseph Cornell boxes. Being embarrassingly unversed in art history, we looked ‘em up–little boxes of composed ephemera and second hand objects–french maps, cut outs of birds, newsprint–it’s like this guy is channelling an inner aesthetic we could never quite put our finger on. Here’s a little write up on a nice meta-collectors blog that we came across in our digging. We are amazed and inspired.

The Museum of Material Culture

Ah, anthropology as art gallery as museum. We likey! We may have this all mixed up, but the new Museum of Material Culture, formerly the Common Wealth Gallery, located on the third floor of an old warehouse building in Madison, WI, is now exhibiting a show called “Here’s Everything I Know, She Said. (Excerpts From the Research of Dorothy Hamlin)” The exhibit focuses on everyday objects and their personal, psychological connections with their owners and users, such as an anthropomorphized letter opener named Rebecca and a yellowed linen shirt displayed with a powder brush which bears evidence of compulsive over-powdering of the face and neck region.

Oh good stuff. Upcoming @ MoMC:

* Handmade Etiquette
* The Art of Leather Carving
* Tools of Unknown Origin
* Jesus Sightings: Concrete to Toast

in real life we’re much less bitchy

Art Fag City’s pitting (overrated light artist) James Turrel vs. Alice Aycock in a devestating expose of public sculptures in New York (catalogued via google maps). It’s part of the Let’s Meet In Real Life series that we mentioned a few weeks back with regard to SD Idea Man Jesse Aaron Cohen.

And look, they’re making a zine!

In keeping with the intent of the show — to reveal the behind the scenes operations of online work through the use of public physical space — we intend to use the gallery itself in the same way we employ the Internet: as a method of distribution. As such, the last two hours of the residency will be dedicated to printing out the findings and compiling them as a homemade limited edition zine. This will include individual works found on Google maps, a map locating all sculptures, and a lot of low resolution pictures.

In other google map projects, today we discovered SeeClickFix, which maps civic problems to be reported (by volunteer “fixers) to 311.

kinetica

Since seeing the Calder exhibition at the Whitney a few months ago, we’ve been increasingly interested in mobiles, kinetic sculptures, and the like.

We love the “natural” simulacrum of Casey Curran’s “Oceania” and, from a design perspective, we’re appreciating the simple elements in the work of Julie Frith.

Do you have a favorite object or collection?

covert op needed

Hey Ladies! Are you really good at sleeping? Do you like Museums? Do you need a job? Well then we’ve got the gig for you. The New Museum has some wack-a-doodle installation up and they need women to sleep in it during public hours. For money. No joke! I mean it’s on idealist, really!

Suggested Donation wants you as a correspondent. Blog/tweet/fax your experience–we keep late hours. Write us.

Chun Yun, I will sleep for you, but alas, I am not a woman.

Full text of the want ad, after the jump!

warhol’s fucktory?

Seems the Guggenheim’s gone guerrilla. Our favorite salmon-colored newspaper reports on a promotional postcard for an upcoming Warhol panel, “The Worst of Warhol,” whose text-side reads, in faux-ball point handwriting:

“Andy Warhol was a boring fuck and so

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