Umut Ozover assembled video and images of the installation process to make a fantastic making-of video. Watch it to see how we installed the display. http://www.vimeo.com/29679751
Monday's opening saw some press for Union Square in Motion. Here are some links, starting with those who visited the installation or contacted us directly NY1 did a two-minute story on it, "New Artwork Best Seen In Transit Through Union Square Station" Arts for Transit's Director, Sandra Bloodworth, mentioned Union Square in Motion in an in-depth interview in Urban Omnibus, "Arts for Transit: A Conversation with Sandra Bloodworth" The Village Voice announced it ahead of time, "Union Square Subway Station Now Boasts the World's Largest Linear Digital Zoetrope" WNYC covered it, "Look | MTA Installs New Digital Underground Art Project at Union Square", including a slide show DNAinfo.com, "Students Unveil Digital Art Project in Union Square Subway Station" The New York Observer, "Union Square Subway…
Writing on my North Korea trip has been waiting while I finished my series on my Model. Now it will have to wait a few days more. Today's opening of Union Square in Motion got big, particularly after the MTA's press release and Parsons the New School for Design's post. Here is an initial video of a few children and parents seeing the display during installation. You have to come to Union Square to see what intrigued and fascinated them so much. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jxbwP6MV2I For more background, please see my art section and the sites of the other creators of the installation: Jeanne Kelly Hilal Koyuncu Rose Maison Umut Ozover Josefina Santos Anezka Sebek Jaqi Vigil As well as the MTA Arts for Transit main page…
I caught these children at Union Square in Motion on video after they watched it a bit. Don't you wish you enjoyed art so much? https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/kids_at_Union_Square_in_Motion.mp4 Reminds me of the kids and family that watched Bryant Park in Motion a year and a half ago. And here is the first article about the piece, "Announcing the Zoetrope!" (pdf) which came out in Red Phone, the magazine of the school of art, media, and technology at Parsons. Here is another video, this one of the interior during installation, while we were still working on it. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/UnionSquareInMotion_interior_during_installation.mp4
Here is a video of the Union Square in Motion public art piece most of the way through installation. I haven't gotten a couple of the monitors working yet, but you can see the basic display. Umut Ozover created the video, as well as helping create the art. As always, video and still images don't convey the medium like seeing it in person. So if you're in New York City, come see the display. If you're not, come to New York. Then see the display. https://youtu.be/R3xAdhrc-i8 (Directions to see Union Square in Motion)
Readers have commented that my posts on my art differ from the main thrust of this page: success through value, meaning, purpose, importance, emotional awareness, and emotional intelligence. With the awesome new public art piece in Union Square, I expect many posts on my art soon. To clean this page, I created a new page -- My Art -- for all my art posts, separating it from the main page, with a link at the top. I hope this change makes both facets of what I about more accessible. Please let me know otherwise. Posts that apply to both categories -- I quoted Martha Graham while installing the display Saturday, so that post comes to mind -- should appear on both pages. This post should…
Here are a map and picture showing how to find Union Square in Motion, New York City's most amazing new public art work. If you need better directions, contact me and I'll help. It's convenient to the 4,5,6,N,R,Q, and L trains, not far from the B,D,F, and M trains. Look for the subway entrance in front of Walgreens or Food Emporium, take the escalator or stairs down, and you can't miss the display. The piece is outside the subway turnstiles so you don't have to pay to see it.
The display looks amazing. It only took most of a year and fifteen hours today to put it up -- part of the joy of making art. That and it's much bigger, brighter, and in a higher traffic area than the Bryant Park display. People seem to love it already. (Directions to see Union Square in Motion, video of the display during installation) I have too many people to thank, but tops include my stepfather Bill, who built a major part of it, and the students whose names are on it for making beautiful images. Many people at MTA Arts for Transit (they're team players and ask not to be named individually but they should be), Parsons the New School, Submedia, and, of course our…
Another quote from the Man Ray biography reminded me of a recent post of mine on values (exercise to the reader: which recent post?). Man Ray had a number of great quotes, especially on this page and this page, relevant to my focus on understanding values and meaning. As a surrealist and dadaist, movements whose "purpose was to ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world," he questioned values and meaning, which can lead to a greater understanding of them. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/manray_cadeau.mp4 In a last minute attempt to provide a dada gift for his friends, Man Ray assembled one of his most famous objects. I passed by a hardware shop and I saw a flatiron in the window. I said, "Now…
Why do we create and invent? Many people enjoy creating, but can't express why -- what they get out of it or what motivates them. The masters often express these things best -- mastery often requires understanding your motivations. A quote by Man Ray has stuck with me for years after first hearing it on an American Masters documentary on him. I believe it expresses a, or perhaps the, fundamental reason we create. He talks about fine art, but his answer is general. I'll let him say it best below. I'll say a bit on the matter in my words so you can see how much better he puts it. I believe we create art to express emotions words don't or can't. Any emotion is…
In the midst of my series on Communication Skills Exercises, yesterday I worked with the brilliant, talented, and accomplished Nina Paley -- free culture advocate, creator of Sita Sings the Blues, cartoonist of the insightful, funny, and subversive Mimi and Eunice, and friendly neighbor. We animated the Freedombox logos John Emerson and I worked on. She also does things like post blog entries titled "I am awesome," suggesting an obvious affinity for someone as awesome as I. I enjoyed the links in the reference section of Nina's Wikipedia page. Search on her and you'll find more creativity, humor, and support for spreading and sharing culture and ideas. She knew about the Freedombox project and was open to contributing. We shared ideas of how to animate…
Here are two new videos of my art by Bill Magargal from the opening of my solo exhibit at the Crossing Art gallery. First the north wall. I think it's better than the earlier video I took and posted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMam1KRcdJw Next, one piece on the south wall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbY7jddR1D4
The closing event for my solo exhibition at Crossing Art gallery will be held in conjunction with Leaders in Software and Art (LISA) Thursday, July 14, beginning at 6:15pm. Details and directions are below. Both organizations are outstanding and I owe gratitude to each. I spoke at Crossing Art for my opening event last month and at LISA in February. Unlike most LISA events, which are members only, this one is open to the public. So at this event you will have not one, but four artists represented, and not only wine, but hors d'oeuvres. LISA events are incredible. They mix art, software, related media and technology, and -- most importantly -- the people behind them. The people who speak at and attend these events…
Lillian Chan is an independent film producer and friend who has attended and recorded a couple of my seminars and now my gallery opening. After writing a few paragraphs reviewing the seminars, she reviewed my solo gallery show too.
I'm big in China! I can't tell what the video or text says, but Sinovision.net covered my opening. Here's a video of me and my work. Totally cool to watch, assuming they are saying cool things about me. Here's a write up. Here's a web translation of the write-up. If anyone can make better sense of it, please let me know: Static in the move - Joshua Spodek expansion diorama display 18 Flushing Author: Bin Zou time :2011 -06-16 17:50:07 Click: 78 [medium and small] [Zou Bin, China Press correspondent in New York reported on June 16] "Static in the move - Joshua Spodek expansion diorama" personal art exhibition will be held on the 18th day in Flushing, New Moon Art Gallery formally meet with…
Here are a couple videos of my solo gallery show "Motion in Stillness" at the Crossing Art gallery in Queens. Yesterday was the opening. These videos are from before the opening. Better quality video will go up soon. Some people at the opening had some serious cameras. From before the press preview, here is a quick tour of the show. As always with my medium, only seeing it in person does it justice. Still, it's something. Some of the pieces were still under construction (the ones showing the animations in the back) and the camera is the low quality one in my phone. Another recording, slightly better, I'd say, is here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwbPjVO_wQY From Friday, after the press preview and before the opening, my sister, father,…
Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery I've been working day and night on the finishing touches for the show, mainly simplifying things, inspired by the space and the quality of the work by Jennifer, Sunny, and Kyung Yung (sp?), who work at Crossing Art. You'd think the sad irony would be that the more your work, the less chance of people recognizing it. But you don't have to worry about that. Most importantly, enjoying the work makes it its own reward. Secondarily, people who you want to recognize the work required for simplicity will. They've done it too. Others will simply enjoy the simplicity and you can…
Anyone knows making it big in the art world means challenging people's views of art and making complicated, ponderous pieces. It can't be accessible to children. I guess I can't to anything right. I explore and draw out wonder, curiosity, amazement, and fascination -- the emotions of scientists. And children. My four-year-old niece came to the gallery today to see the installation in progress. She came with my sister (her mother) and my father. Here are a few pictures of her. She loved running past the display and telling my sister where to walk her around when being carried. Tomorrow I expect people to move around a lot too and to watch each other moving. It's fun. You'll smile. Don't tell people in the art…
I worked about twenty hours today preparing for the opening, so only a brief post today. The Q-note, a page about cultural life in Queens, interviewed me and mentioned me and the upcoming show in their blog. At the end of the 7 train, in Flushing, Crossing Art will put the spotlight on Joshua Spodek's (joshuaspodek.com) striking linear zoetropes in the astrophysicist-entrepreneur-artist's solo show, Joshua Spodek: Motion in Stillness (Saturday, 4 p.m. — 6 p.m.; artist talk, 3 p.m. — 4 p.m.). This transformative retro medium, which Spodek contemporized in subway tunnels, allows viewers to see still images as if they were animated. "If I actually want to meet the artists, I don't go to Chelsea; I go to smaller places. In Queens the artists…
Cancel your plans for Saturday afternoon, June 18, 3-6pm, this is better -- my first solo show in years, at the beautiful Crossing Art Gallery: Joshua Spodek: Motion in Stillness If you haven't seen my work, now is your chance to see some mind-blowing and amazing art. Like no other medium, there is no substitute for the wonder of seeing it in person. (EDIT: more posts on the show: images and video of the show, reviews, closing event with Leaders in Software and Art, more videos) Critics hail it as both retro, recalling Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, and radically new, pushing limits on laser-cut machining and digital image processing; showing both its commercial and subway-based roots as well as my science and nature background…
By chance I found a video of a display made by a Dutch art student last summer who contacted me to help make a lenticular linear zoetrope. Her name is Kyra Martens and she was incredibly resourceful and a terrific problem solver in creating the piece. She was able to bring together the Amsterdam Zoo (for whom she made the display), the Dutch equivalent of Macy's (in whose window she installed the display), a media company, and me to create a display as a final project for an art class. The video below shows the display she made with random members of the public viewing it with the usual wonderment people have viewing it the first time. Congratulations Kyra!
More Freedombox logo ideas, in collaboration with John Emerson. Click on them for larger versions. If you don't know about Freedombox, I recommend learning about (and supporting) it, unless you like third parties like corporations and governments having access to your personal life.
Ladies and gentlemen, my first solo gallery show in over five years will have its opening event Saturday, June 18. You're invited! I will be showing new works I've been working on and have been excited to show. Publicly showing your work is what an artist lives for. That said, until people see the new stuff, you never know how it will go over, so there's the usual anxiety and excitement. The logistics: Joshua Spodek at the Crossing Art Gallery June 18 - July 17, 2011 Artist talk: Saturday, June 18, 3-4pm Opening reception: Saturday, June 18, 4-6pm Press preview: Thursday, June 16, 2pm Address: 136 - 17 39th Avenue, Ground Floor, Flushing, New York 11354 Directions: 7 Train to Flushing Main Street, walk one…
Here are videos of the final non-digital linear zoetropes made by the students in Parsons Submedia collaboration studio in the spring of 2011. The students are superstars. The students' next step will be the display in Union Square, so stay tuned. I took all the videos with my low quality camera phone. More videos are at the course blog. First the grand tour of all the zoetropes in the Arts, Media, and Technology department -- i.e., the tenth floor. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/grand_tour_tenth_floor_zoetropes.avi The linear zoetropes downstairs facing Fifth Avenue and 13th Street at night. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/5th_and_13th_night.avi The linear zoetropes downstairs facing Fifth Avenue and 13th Street during the daytime. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/5th_and_13th_day.avi linear zoetropes that were downstairs back upstairs. Group 1's linear zoetrope -- the Unicorn. Group 2's…