Congratulations Nova Jiang for receiving a Wave Hill's 2012 Van Lier Visual Artist Fellowship. The Fellowship provides the opportunity for New York City-based emerging artists of diverse backgrounds to develop the skills and professional credentials needed to establish a successful career in the arts. As part of the Fellowship, Nova Jiang will take part in Wave Hill's Winter Workspace Residency as well as have a solo exhibition in Wave Hill's Sunroom Project Space.

Technology often conjures up images of mobile devices, machines, and programming. Yet, technology, according to Wikipedia, “...is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function”. With all the taxonomies and ever evolving nature of art, new technologies present themselves everyday. Yet, the barrage of images in the media are not the only thing that inundate us. Language is ubiquitous. What limitations do we experience when we're forced to use only 140 characters? What does this impact the way we communicate? Or how do we make sense of the words that make it into our vernacular in such a fast paced environment?

On most days I am by my lonesome starring into my laptop screen engulfing tech blogs, playing around with new apps and hunting memes on YouTube. On most days my social life lives in cyber-space with avatars as my comrades. I have no ideas who of the faceless screen names are women or men, or that it even makes a difference. On Saturday January 28, 2012 I no longer geeked out alone. Over a hundred women gathered at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA for the She’s Geeky Conference.

Creative Capital is now accepting online Letters of Inquiry for grants in Emerging Fields, Literature and Performing Arts.

The deadline for submitting inquiries is March 1 at 4:00pm EST. Visit creative-capital.org/apply to learn more about the application process, read the grant guidelines and access the Inquiry Form.

Creative Capital provides integrated financial and advisory support to artists pursuing innovative and adventurous projects. Acting as a catalyst for the development of exceptional and imaginative ideas, we support artists whose work is provocative, timely and relevant; who are deeply engaged with their art forms and demonstrate a rigorous commitment to their craft; who are boldly original and push the boundaries of their genre; and who create work that carries the potential to reshape the cultural landscape. Selected grantees receive up to 50,000 USD in direct support for their project and advisory services valued at more than 40,000 USD.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an Upgrade! SF meeting filled with artists, writers, theorists, and curators within the new media arts community. The evening was filled with conversation around Chance Operations and stochastic methods related to the art making process. Luke Ogrydziak, principal architect at Ogrydziak / Prillinger Architects gave a brief talk around chance in the architecture and design processes. His presentation touched heavily on the idea of indeterminable factors affecting a final outcome or product. For instance, some of the objects constructed through C++ programming language.

Blog written by Patrick Lydon and orginally posted on Society: People, Nature, Place

The Lumarca project by artist Albert Hwang, Matthew Parker at Eyebeam in New York City (photo: Patrick Lydon)
A fellow San Jose Arts Commissioner forwarded us a note from the American Association of Museums this afternoon which pointed out a primary need to break down barriers, change mindsets, blah blah blah.

What we found most interesting in the note, however, was that the AAM — in reviewing grant applications where $500,000 was being doled out — cited a need for grant applicants to take risks. Playing it safe won’t get you the money anymore.