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.

reanimator

Thanks to Suzanne from Public Historian who pointed us to Arthur Ganson, who’s got a ton of crazy weird machines for view on youtube, not to mention in the MIT Museum.

Pretty Art Robots

Jansen, who comes off as a mad scientist with a hint of a god complex, has been developing (“evolving”) these things for almost twenty years, and his labor is evident in the creatures’ graceful movement. Most are made from PVC, but one particularly striking Strandbeest is made from 3.2 tons of what looks to be Corten steel. It’s so perfectly engineered that a single person can push it around, its many lumbering metal legs attached to an axis that somehow lets a person move forty times his body weight.

More inside.