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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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,[…] Keep reading →

Here are some pictures of the Parsons students working on the linear zoetropes and their results. Now that I can make slide shows, I have to split the images by dimensions, so there are two slide shows.

Following yesterday’s primer on flow, here are two simple ideas to bring more flow. If you’ve read only Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s book, they may be new. The Wikipedia page on flow but not Csikszentmihalyi’s book covers the first. The second is new, as far as I know, though small. Recall the ten conditions of the flow state (from Wikipedia, citing Csikszentmihalyi articles): Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals[…] Keep reading →

Do you remember the last time you felt like this musician? You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as if you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just[…] Keep reading →