Back from the New Museum and other things on the internet

This Thursday, with my trusty Digital Art and New Media class, I headed to the New Museum to check out Carsten Holler’s exhibit. There has been a lot of buzz around this exhibit particularly around its interactive side: a mirrored carousal, a slide that goes through the floors of the museum, a bin of pills, and a sensory deprivation tank in which museum goers must strip down naked and then have the privilege to float around in a white tank filled with warmed salty water.

The exhibit definitely enlivened museum goers in a way that I hadn’t seen in other professional art spaces. In that way, I though that the exhibit was extremely successful; however, other aspects felt a bit gimmicky at times. The best experience, I had, by far, was my trip into the tank. It was just this wonderful and bizarre moment of calm (that I had waited for the upwards of 40 minutes to experience). The tank gives a feeling of weightlessness and was an absolutely absurd interlude into my museum experience. Definitely worth the wait, if you choose to venture to the museum.

In other news, Alice Rawsthorn wrote a compelling article on the Occupy movement that I read, see it hither. It basically remarks the evolution and growth of the occupy movement as it has spread rapidly across countries and pages of the internet and ways in which different groups have altered and personalized their participation within the movement.

Also check out this video with Mark Read who is responsible for the “99%” projection during an Occupy Brooklyn Bridge march. Read discusses how the idea came about and what it took to actually execute this display. The article is definitely worth a read as it is nice to hear how enthusiastic everyone surrounding the project was.

Speaking of projections, it seems as Saks had taken to 3D projection mapping for a slightly less important cause—the Holiday season. Check out the cool video of their display, thus proving that it seems as though all sorts of people are moving towards the Digital Art and New Media tradition.

Another cool thing I read about is the ways in which Microsoft is revolutionizes how it is it is developing its latest models of Kinect. Instead of keeping hackers out, Miscrosoft seems to be ushering them in and calling on their talents to aid Kinect’s development. Cotton states, “The goal of the project is to find 10 finalists who will enter a three month incubator program that will give these budding entrepreneurs access to key Microsoft talent, the VC community, plus all the development kits they need and that all important office space.”

Finally check out this article on the use of Music Blog content and how it can change certain “song discovery platforms.” It specifically references Shuffler.fm which is an app that takes music from music blogs and channels it via genre. The video is an interview with Tim Heineke, a Shuffler developer. Take some time to watch it or try the Shuffler.fm experience for yourself.