ICRONOGRAPHY

Comparative study of the iconic and ironic: the ICRONIC. Irony is relevant, if not essential, to the icon's authenticity. Seen through the lens of visual culture and practiced by following invisible lines. ICRONIC/ATL/GA/USA.

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"Other companies were not as accepting of Wong's work. In a collaboration with Ju$t Another Rich Kid, Wong turned a McDonald's coffee stirrer (an infamous 1980s "icon" that frequently appeared as evidence in drug trials) into a coke spoon. Tobias Wong and Ju$t Another Rich Kid, Coke Spoon 01, Coke Spoon 02 and Swizzle Stick, from the Indulgent series, 2005; metal; Collection SFMOMA, © Estate of Tobias Wong and Ju$t Another Rich Kid; photo: courtesy SFMOMA."

“I think he understood design as a kind of tool or means of social reflections as well as a way to propose new social forms. I think there’s a kind of critical or alienated or ironic attitude that comes through in his work and—this is what I think makes his work endlessly fascinating—there’s also a tremendous sense of enthusiasm, pleasure, care and generosity,” says Urbach.

Henry Urbach heads SFMOMA’s Department of Architecture and Design. Read more: http://www.dwell.com/articles/the-wong-show.html#ixzz1KppcSvnF

Tobias Wong

Artist

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365 Knitting Clock

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ahardthinginasimpleway:

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

For Carl Solomon I I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the...

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“My series trying to find my way… is an exploration into perception. One third of the human brain is devoted to processing the 8,960 kilobits of information that it receives per second; my objective is to arrest the brain’s split-second arrangements, assumptions and filtering systems by pausing this processing system. Each image in this series was taken with the Sigma DP1, a camera that captures ’reality’s’ naturally occurring surrealism in layers of red, blue and green.”

David Brown

Artist | Photographer

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isabellaburley:

Guerrilla Girls.

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Reading Now | Snap to Grid

by Peter Lunenfeld

"In Snap to Grid, an idiosyncratic guide to the interactive telematic era, Peter Lunenfeld maps out the trajectories that digital technologies have traced upon our cultural imaginary.  His clear-eyed evaluation of new media includes an impassioned discussion - informed by the discourses of technology, aesthetics, and cultural theory - of the digital artists, designers, and makers who matter most."

from Snap to Grid bookcover

"Snap to Grid: A User’s Guide to Digital Arts, Media & Cultures (MIT, 2000) was adopted as a model of how to meld disciplinary rigor with detailed attention to individual works and makers, and was covered in venues as diverse as Italy’s Flash Art and Britain’s New Scientist, the latter concluding its featured review by saying that artists working with digital technologies 'now have their bible, their Stones of Venice, their Ways of Seeing.' "

from Peter Lunenfeld's bio at peterlunenfeld.com

I first encountered Lunenfeld's work...in a course on Visual Culture, an experience that has forever affected the way I "see" and understand seeing - physically, perceptively, philosophically, relatively.  Required reading included his book USER: InfoTechnoDemo, the only academic text I've ever actually been tempted by.  USER stood out next to the 1,000 page hardbound books weighing down the shelves on either side.  Small, paperbound, stocked with electric graphics, and bold text.  A pocket sized academicomic.  USER was like shiny candy still wrapped and I quickly found its language as one I had never tasted before.  I liked it, in a techno-sugar rush kind of way.

The collection of essays explores topics ranging from video games and book design to "techno-masturbation," The Matrix, and life extension diets.  Connecting all of these, Lunenfeld encourages us to see the future beyond our "permanent present," which he describes as the fixation of visual culture.  While Snap to Grid was published before USER and includes more text than I have the attention for, I am anxious to read what Lunenfeld shows us about Digital Arts/Media/Culture.  (http://www.amazon.com/User-InfoTechnoDemo-Mediawork-Peter-Lunenfeld/dp/0262621983/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203723936&sr=8-6).

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David LaChapelle

Photographer | Director | Video Artist

"[M]y objective was to document America's obsessions and compulsions using publications as a means to reach the broadest possible audience. I was employing 'pop' in the broadest sense of the word. I was photographing the most popular people in the world to the marginalized always attempting to communicate to the public in an explicit and understandable way. The images were always meant to attract, not alienate."