But that’s what we do. We give, get, trade, throw away, and get more. We celebrate the stuff. It is us, and we are our stuff. We don’t buy things just because we need them. We buy things to show ourselves we deserve them. We buy things to stretch our power. We buy things so we can get home and sit down and look around us at our possessions and feel big. We buy because we have opinions, and we want to express those opinions through our purchasing choices. Discerning marketing has targeted this need to make our opinion known, flex our power. And they give us the consumer experience to fulfill that. A forum where you can thrash about, have a temper tantrum, cry, indulge, make your needs known. Because whatever it is, you are guaranteed a product to fill that need, be it an actual need or whim.

But what you are really buying isn’t the product. You are buying the experience. The item or service holds significance because of the feelings it makes us have about ourself. It’s not about the stuff, it’s about us. We are buying indulgence, prosperity, the feeling of wealth and security. We’re so attached and addicted to our things because of the experience created around them, not so much the item itself. But what happens when we move on to the next feeling, the next new thing, faster, better, bigger, our next plastic love? What happens to our old self-indulgences?

Artist and Photographer Chris Jordan‘s images struck me as graphic documentation of our one-sided, destructive relationship with things. Look at these images and tell me what you feel. I for one felt a strange, almost reverent awe. It was like I had created that sea myself, that sea of bottles. Like a kid staring at all the shattered pieces of a lamp they just broke. All those pieces. All those parts. Like a string of bad decisions from your past lined up in front of you. In a sense, viewing our waste should be a spiritual experience, because it really is a part of us. It is us. 

I think Chris Jordan might be saying it best here, when he says,

The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.

As an American consumer myself, I am in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action.
  

Read more about Chris Jordan on stalkmarket here.

Andy Warhol’s tomato soup can design revolutionized the world of Art and Advertising when it first smiled at a customer on the shelf of a grocery store. No one then imagined that Campbell’s destinity was sealed to Posterity.

Few years later, a very personalized, identifiable potatoe crisps container launched Pringles to perennity.  Its author Frederic J.Baur. Master in his chemistry laboratory, he developed the tubular concept to trigger commitment to the brand and he succeeded.

If I refer to him today, it’s because he left this world in his Pringles container! it was his last wish! The goddess of the potatoe crisps blesses you!

Among a large choice of sculptors, our attention captured in our nets of curiosity, atypical animated post-historic animals “standbeests” evolving majestically as the Animaris Ondula on the beaches of Netherlands.

Made with electric tubes moving in the principle of the wheel, those gigantic animals have sensitive organs as a brain (that steps counts, changing the facto the pattern of zeros and ones when an obstacle appears) and a nose utilized as a tiller. Their mission so far is to learn how to survive in an hostile environment.

Like the father of creative engineering (Da Vinci) did with his Vitruvian Man by setting the Canon of proportions, by relating man to nature, Theo Jansen uses nature to relate his kinetic sculptures, juggling essentially with genetic algorithms.

As Da Vinci, Jansen in his experimental approach, studies, analyzes, doubts, succeeds and fails.

His main problem to challenge is how to move while being aware of the obstacles (and avoid them)! Consequently his futuristic dinosaurs dispose of artificial intelligence enabling them to “recognize” their limitations (the end of the dry sand arm and the beginning of the ocean) to automatically adapt themselves to the environmental and climatic configurations.

Very interesting…

Either way, the imagery is powerful. More on the 5th Berlin Biennial here.

It’s very rare that any messages genuinely encourage interaction, or try to start communication.

That’s why art is different than advertising. Some art, like installation art, pushes for a response, initiates a dialogue, starts a two-way communication. Art refreshes us in a time when almost every image you see is designed to sell something.

Check out Akay, a Swedish artist, and some of his installation art. He explains some of the motivation behind his product-less advertising, and the communication that it spurs:

“People come down to change the message, (art installation). In some magical moments the message becomes a dialogue, a political debate, a declaration of love. We’re not really sure what it was that got the conversation started. But maybe it helps to begin with an apology.”

The one-sided nature of current advertising should take a hint. I for one, am tired of one-directional conversations, like those on most billboards. They’re speaking, not listening.

How about more conscious messaging, designed to that encourages response and interaction?

ted. But maybe it helps to begin with an apology.

debate, a declaration of love. We’re not really sure what it was that got the conversation starte

d. But maybe it helps to begin with an apology.

It was a privilege for us to write the following homepage description of the newly redefined Nicola Collection:

“Nicola Collection is a business-to-business provider of quality original artwork. If you need access to a broad catalog of the finest original paintings and sculptures you needn’t look further when seeking to match your client’s needs—we are equipped with a diverse palette of established, talented artists, an extensive existing collection, and multiple years of experience in the commercial art market. High quality product, market acumen, shrewd analysis of design and commercial trends, as well as having an excellent relationship with many different artists and clients distinguishes the Nicola Collection from other art purveyors. Nicola Collection is the premier provider of fine art service to all clients, from residential homes to large-scale commercial facilities such as hotels and hospitals.”

According to their site, “Artists At War asks artists to respond to the larger world and to reflect on their personal relationships to the war, its symptoms and causes. Knowing our hands do not reach the levers of global power, Artists At War provides shelter and exposure for work that defies a market that tends to be anesthetized and distracted during these tumultuous times. Among current cultural output, we trace spontaneous reflexes of a society at war, locating work that, beyond being “Anti-War,” embodies our human predicament.”

This web-based project is a collaborative effort between Angelenos Steven L. Anderson and Thomas McKenzie, inspired by the work of the artists whose projects appear on this site. New projects will be posted on roughly a monthly basis. Their first project is work by Los Angeles artist Charles Irvin, with four pieces that explore the nature of the political press conference.

Additionally, they plan to launch a blog feature that publishes original and found content that we think is important for artists and anyone else who is enduring the war. GREAT!!!! We are so into another resource of rich creativity. Bravo!

To provide feedback, artwork, or writing to Artists At War, please e-mail them at info@artists-at-war.com.

“Frozen Grand Central” is a brilliant new mission by Improv Everywhere where 207 agents all froze in place at the exact same time for five minutes in the middle of Grand Central Station. Here’s the full mission report:

original source