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“The Greek authorities recently published the names of high-profile citizens accused of being tax cheats. Among other tactics, the government is trying to catch tax evaders by using satellite photos to spot undeclared swimming pools — an indicator of taxable wealth.”

Source:

AP-Greek Tourism Official Quits Over Husband’s Tax Debts, May 17, 2010

23 min. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present Photo by Marco Anelli. © 2010 Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović’s  performance “The Artist is Present” at her MoMA retrospective is unsettling. Her posture and stillness are otherworldly. She’s a guru. A crowd of people surrounded her perimeter, their eyes locked for hours. The foyer was brightly lit and cameras were stationed at each corner. To add to the spectacle while I was visiting,  a superfan stood in line wearing a robe that was an exact copy of the robe worn by Abramović.

MoMA, being social networking savvy these days,  has a Flickr pool of the performance participants. This set of images allows a new reading of the performance that one would never contemplate in the presence of the actual piece. The grid of faces allows for a quick deduction that about 1/8 of them are in tears, a few are celebrities, and according to one comment – New Yorkers have bad hair (ouch! – guilty as charged). Three weeks into the show comes the blog: “Marina Abramović Made me Cry.”

The blog’s author, 28-year-old Katie Notopoulos, hadn’t seen the exhibit before making the blog, even though she apparently works down the street. (As a fellow overwhelmed New Yorker, I am not one to judge not taking advantage of things that occur down the street.) I find this detail interesting in wondering if her unique read of the performance was aided by the fact that she had not attended the exhibit. For instance, would you be inclined to research the Flickr pool after visiting? This theory would be difficult to prove.

Notopoulos, did eventually see the exhibit, but did not partake in the performance. However, based on her Flickr expertise, she is receiving as much coverage as the man who lost his membership for engaging in inappropriate behavior (hopefully). If this comment sounds snarky – it is not in relationship to Notopoulos’s blog – perhaps I roll my eyes at WSJ’s lack of reference when covering the blog. They treat the blog author as an expert on the phenomenon of people coming to tears during the performance. I would think an expert on hypnosis or the silva method would need to be consulted as well.

The site of the exhibition (MoMA) is filled with copycat performances in all corners. I even saw a charming couple wrapped in duct tape recreating “Point of Contact” on the street outside.

Perhaps because of MoMA’s enormous size, I often feel blasé when I finally make it through an exhibition and its crowds. Abramović’s work in an institutional setting can surpass its mall-like confines and  inspire people to get their freak on in the streets and engage Internet surfers and lackadaisical  journalists. I will be sad when it leaves.

With the introduction of the new iPad, a new wave of freedom of speech concerns has swelled to the surface. The New York Times reported on Pulitzer Prize winner, Mark Fiore, being rejected by the iPhone app store because it “included cartoons that ridiculed public figures.” After the public embarrassment, Steve Jobs personally wrote to Fiore and called the rejection a mistake.  It is not clear that other applications making political commentary will be accepted in the future. A slideshow of other rejected applications is available at The Huffington Post.

This story brings up an interesting point about the future of freedom of speech as our personal devices migrate to platforms that only have access to information approved by one publisher — Apple.

After all of these years of enjoying freedom of expression and content on the Internet, we are steering in a conservative, corporate direction with a new device that controls the information we are allowed to receive. Not only that, Apple guides the design principles of their volunteer-content-producer-army…that’s us.

A blog post at Information Architects discusses design “suggestions” in Apple’s HI Guidelines.

Now one thing just didn’t click: The guideline to make apps look like physical objects. It’s quite clear why Apple would try to push designs to imitate tangible things:

1. It’s a touch interface: 3D objects look more tangible and inviting
2. Everyday interfaces are easy to understand and familiar in their use
3. Glitzy interfaces are easier to market

Everybody in the iA team strongly doubted the validity of that particular guideline, but we had no way to verify or falsify our doubts. So we went full steam ahead: Everything 3D! Make a newspaper look like a newspaper! Make that word processor look like a type writer! Use wooden backgrounds! And why? Because Apple said so. – IA Blog

Before the Internet, Public Access Television was developed to give airtime to diverse voices and points of view. Unlike the Internet, there were still communities who could challenge content they found objectionable. There were times when obscure technical requirements would disqualify material from being aired. It was suspected that these technicalities were a guise for censorship.

When the “Spectrum News Network” of Orange County came under fire by conservative members of the community because of its content for gay audiences, the cable access channel proposed a two-week review process before programs aired to ensure “that programs meet certain technical standards, such as clear picture resolution. It also allows the board to reject obscene or defamatory material.”

Carol A. Sobel, senior staff council for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said mandatory review does not violate cable law. The guidelines must clearly state the technical criteria, however, “so that technical quality does not become a mask for eliminating controversial viewpoints,” she said. – LA Times

Not that Apple is approving any content they deem objectionable, the aesthetic standard set by Apple seems ambiguous with ample room for arbitrary enforcement. As the App Store is an open marketplace, it is unclear why Apple should enforce its aesthetic standards on designers creating content for the device. If an app is poorly designed, no one will buy it. But already, Apple has rejected content based on the design having “limited utility.”

The “Pull My Finger” app allowed users to virtually ‘pull’ a character’s finger to have it emit a farting sound. “Pull My Finger” was initially rejected by the iTunes App store on the grounds that it was of ‘limited utility.’ Three months later was accepted and went on to become one of the store’s most popular apps. –Huffington Post

Before you rush out and buy your iPad, just remember the struggles of free speech and the “Pull My Finger” app. Not only can Apple control what you say, they can control how you say it. Has anyone had success in turning that annoying Ken Burn’s effect off of their slideshows?

Photo above from Pee Wee’s Funny or Die video.

Last week I came across the fantastic web site seolol.net where the site authors post humorous searches they stumble across while looking through search engine optimization tools such as Keyword Discovery and WordTracker.

As an homage, I made a movie of some of my favorite searches using the new google search engine movie maker.

A street in the Uptown Tenderloin district.Thor Swift for The New York Times

San Francisco Detours Into Reality Tourism published April 11 in The New York Times describes a new area for San Francisco tourism: the Uptown Tenderloin. Includes walking tours of “the world’s largest collection of historic single-room occupancy hotels.” Just like the tenement museum in New York — except people are living there NOW! Instead of the bus tours like south central Los Angeles mentioned in the previous post, it seems like these tours avoid night time meanderings, when the “drunken people collapsed on streets and others furtively smoking pipes in doorways.”

Previous post: Slum Tourism in the U.S.

Horst Ademeit, Untitled, 2003, Polaroid with pen, 4 1/3 x 3 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne

White Columns has a solo exhibition for the Dusseldorf-based outsider artist Horst Ademeit (b. 1937). Mr. Ademeit’s body of work is more like a body of evidence that documents “cold rays” in his environment. These documents are a series of polaroid pictures that have painstakingly written  notes in all of the margins. I imagine the content would produce a full page if typewritten. They are illegible without a microscope.

I am not sure that Ademeit is trying to make art; in fact, it is hard to believe he lives on his own and takes care of himself.

Ademeit seems tortured by his all-consuming paranoia. Apparently his delusions have escalated so that he wears 3,000 small wood spheres in his orfices (reminiscent of a character from Jan Svankmeyer’s Conspirators of Pleasure).

Ademeit’s polaroids are vaguely similar to work by fellow German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, they share a similar banality in composition with captions that lead to the “back story.” (see car radio below.) In Feldmann’s case, without the title the image would not “read.” Ademeit faces the same dilemma in his documentation.

Hans-Peter Feldmann Pictures of car radios taken while good music was playing 2004  Detail Courtesy of 303 Gallery New York

Although not an artist, the challenges Mr. Ademeit faces are similar to an artist. I especially appreciate his choice of the polaroid medium in a desire for authenticity, to present evidence that has not been altered or tampered in the way regular film or digital images can be. He has built a system of complex relationships in the world he sees in the small radius around his apartment, so that even scaffolding becomes a subject of inquiry. However, his perception is sensitive to the extreme – a scary world where making art is of least concern.