We have also rescheduled the beginning of our Creative Commons Salon.  It will take place on Wednesday, April 16th at 7:30pm.  We will be screening some work, holding presentations by guests speakers [on topics such as art in Second Life, transformative works, and many more focused on modern content creators and platforms].  It will be free, of course.  More as it all crystallizes.

An anonymous tagger [redundant, right?] decided to spray his/her ugly, uninspired [and not worth duplicating here, that’s for sure] tag, ‘Yuck!’ several nights ago on one of our windows.  It must be really tough to tag a gallery window.  Things must be hard.  Mommy must not have said ‘I kind of don’t regret you’ enough.  Luckily, I wasted two minutes on the phone calling LADPW’s graffiti hotline, and today the little mess was wiped out by the experts.

Notice: If you’re going to tag us, make it good.

Notice also: If you’re going to tag us again, bring your running shoes.  We’ll eventually catch you and force you to watch the American Masters series on Dick Avedon.

You’ve been warned.

Found Gallery

I’m sure I’m late in the discussion, but I had to mention my experience two weekends ago at the opening preview at BCAM. I went there primarily to see a new performance by the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, choreographed by Michael Crotty and inspired by some of the artwork inside the BCAM. Often splayed and baking on the concrete, the company performed three times a day for three days [I believe]. While waiting in line, guests were treated to a very nice treat that began with the dancers slowly creeping through the lampposts. It was a very nice preview of how the company works, though I don’t think there was much improvisation [which was aplenty at the first show I saw of theirs, Pinky Swear]. Their next local performance is in April. Buy tickets.

Speaking of dance and fine art in town, Pharmaka has been exhibiting collaborative dance projects at its space that are complex and remind me of some of our upcoming projects.

Oh, and there was art in the buildings too, a survey that smacked of the 80s and art textbooks from high school. As I’m not as aware of what’s happening on the museum circuits, I was surprised to be thoroughly familiar with all the artists, which was more of a letdown. Here’s who was represented.

Old favorites: Robert Rauschenburg, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, David Salle, Andy Warhol, Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Leon Golub, Susan Rothenberg, Jenny Holzer, Chris Burden, Damien Hirst, Robert Therrien, Richard Serra, Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly

It seems, again, that LA is playing catch up. The Mike Kelley room was incredibly eerie to me, and the Serra pieces seem to be a big favorite. I’m sure children would enjoy this exhibit, but children also eat paste. Come on LA, where’s something as exciting as the New Museum here, where both the structure and art inside seem to be boldly going where leftovers from the 80s and early 90s cease to strive? I’m not sure.

The Vosotros-conceived ‘Lazy Susan’ listening show has been rescheduled. It is now taking place on Sunday, March 23 from 7-10pm. More soon.

What’s the real problem with Eastside gentrification? Nothing really. Dave Eggers has recently launched Echo Park’s Time Travel Mart, which is an outpost of 826LA, basically a non-profit after school tutoring/educational space for local tweens. They’re looking for an assistant and volunteer tutors. Read more.

The kids at Found are up to no good this month. In their pursuit of the good life, two perennial Found Collaborators, Drew Baldwin and Brady Brim-DeForest, are out there hocking their wares – and they need your help.

GreenByte: The Global Computing Cloud

GreenByte is both a framework for the world’s first Global Computing Cloud, and a crowdsourced commodities market where data storage and processing power are traded among corporations and individuals alike, GreenByte will lower the barrier to entry for mass storage and processing services, and increase the per-kilowatt-hour efficiency of the networked world. Elegance, not power, will become the future of computing.

GreenByte is currently ranked #1 out of over 1,000 ideas submitted to Cisco’s iPrize competition. If you feel compelled, head over to iPrize and leave us some constructive comments: Read more about GreenByte at iPrize (sorry registration required).  Or, if you feel so inclined, vote for us over at IdeaBlob: Vote for GreenByte at IdeaBlob

Crowdsourcing: Cover Competition

The publisher’s of Jeff Howe’s newest book, Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, are doing a little bit of Crowdsourcing themselves, and Brady is helping them out. Random House UK, teamed up with Apt to bring you Coversourcing.

If you are feeling generous, you can vote for Brady’s first entry or his second entry. Or, find an entry you like even better, and cast your ballot. Only four days left. No registration required.

Painter/filmmaker/teddy bear Julian Schnabel unveils his newest body of work, ‘Christ’s Last Days,’ as the annual Oscar show at Gagosian, Beverly Hills. This will be the first time that one of the artists is nominated for an Oscar himself. Schnabel joins the ranks of such heavies as Damien Hirst, Richard Artschwager, Richard Prince, Andy Warhol, and Cecily Brown to be the solo show that opens bombastically before the Oscars. His new paintings use old X-Rays as references. Opens tonight; info here.

Currently showing at Found, Stephen Tompkins and I were talking a lot about Poe before the show’s opening, particularly a short story I hadn’t read until then.  It informs a lot of Stephen’s work and, particularly, his new work ‘Transmogrifications.’

Quoth Tompkins:

Part of my Masters thesis back in the 90s was studying schizophrenia through semiotics and phenomenological methods - (you can see why I left grad school) It wasn’t the most popular subject for analytic philosophers.

There are many ideas in the story Angel of the Odd about the difference between hallucination and reality - and belief in one’s hallucination as reality - i.e. having a conversation with this odd character - where one’s figments take hold and take on a life of their own…

The last line of the story “Und you pelief, ten…at te last? You pelief, ten, in te possibility of te odd?” acted as an epigraph for the show that phrases a question.

Read Angel of the Odd online

Transmogrifications is open through Feb. 28.

Long Beach’s Sparrow Love Crew, who have opened for the Cold War Kids many times, will be performing at the opening of Matt Maust and Matt Wignall’s upcoming show ‘Your Alimony Check Won’t Buy a Bigger Room,’ next Saturday, March 1 6-9pm at Found Gallery.

Here is a video from one our first shows, when we were still ‘The Orphanage,’ from 2006 that I just saw for the first time. Matt Maust [who is showing next month with Matt Wignall] and fellow Cold War Kids discuss the interrelation of Matt’s design/collage work, the band’s travels, songwriting, and performing. Well put.