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Articles, Reviews, Interviews

What the H BOX?!

Barreling down the 405 one recent Sunday morning led me to the Orange County Museum of Art inconspicuously nestled in a well-manicured but eerily quiet business park. Inside the museum was bustling with the comforting cacophony of its current exhibition The Moving Image: Scan to Screen, Pixel to Projection, a wonderful survey of video art. However, it was the accompanying "H BOX," a package deal of container and content produced by the Fondation d'Entreprise Hermés, upon which I had my sites set after reading a short review in a design monthly.

The container, designed by Paris-based architect Didier Fiuza Faustino, looks quite handsome, if somewhat militaristic with its rugged looking details—bent honeycomb aluminum modular units attached and balanced on outriggers. The accompanying brochure states, "Faustino designed H BOX to literally nest the moving images in their own setting, and to reference the centuries-old tradition of travel kits." Designed as a mobile unit that disassembles and fits into a standard shipping container, this process unfortunately is not illustrated in a gallery graphic or in the brochure. I left wondering how the forms would nestle together, if they even do. The H BOX is mobile (as are most objects on display in museums) and began its journey by premiering at the Pompidou Centre, Paris in 2007 and subsequently traveling to Luxembourg, Spain and England, and the Yokohama Triennale (in Foreign Office Architects' passenger ferry terminal). Unfortunately consistently isolated as a museum piece presented under controlled conditions, it begs to be seen outdoors or in conditions that require the independent autonomous unit.

This "screening device," according to H BOX curator Benjamin Weil, provides "artists an original venue for their works while guaranteeing an uncompromised presentation to the audience." The unit employs ‘state-of-the-art’ a/v equipment, but it does not require the H BOX. Presuming from the dimmed gallery, tinted windows flanking the entry allow too much light into the viewing area. Additionally, much to our discomfort, my buddy and I were the only viewers to watch the entire looped 90+ minutes of ten videos. An oval bus shelter style 'seating' bar offers equal amounts support and discomfort, and even with beanbags, the H BOX is too shallow to place them anywhere except directly between other viewers and the screen. The H BOX angled floor/walls provide a perfect recliner but the viewing angle is too oblique. The viewing experience is ultimately quite conventional and reminiscent of my mother yelling at me not to sit so close to the TV–“You’re gonna go blind!” More comfortable and practical, the museum could have used a ceiling-mounted projector and some sofas. The H BOX, neither an individual viewing pod nor communal lush lounge, offers a sexy package exploring new materials.

The content runs the gamut of innovation and interests and consists of mixed-bag of commissioned videos. This year's additions include Cao Fei's The Birth of RMB City (2009), an animation about urban production and artistic appropriation in her virtual exploration of Second Life. Cliff Evans presents The Wolf and the Nanny, (2009) an animated commentary on the perceptions of dys-/u-topia, whether technological or natural. One animation incited high expectations, as it required 3D glasses, something that many wore for the entire program (funny seeing people wearing them for twenty minutes before realizing that they were only hindering viewing); however, Kota Ezawa's Diorama (2009) 3D video sadly disappointed—merely two minutes of fairly static images of the Beatles and Rolling stones playing to an invisible cheering audience. The videos present diverse styles and techniques—narrative, abstract, documentary, stop motion, computer animation, live action, color, black and white—a fair culmination of contemporary practices to top off The Moving Image: Scan to Screen, Pixel to Projection.

On view at Orange County Museum of Art
H BOX until September 6, 2009
The Moving Image: Scan to Screen, Pixel to Projection until September 27, 2009.

The Walls Are Up: "The Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City"

After nine months of work, The Walls of Algiers has opened at the Getty Research Institute. With books, photos, maps and artworks, both historical and contemporary selected by GRI curator Frances Terpak and architectural historian Zeynep Çelik, the exhibition gives a wide view to Algiers as it existed under colonial occupation to its post-colonial stance. Above you see our title wall treatment and a light curtain with a photo by French photographer Charles Marville depicting the Mosque al-Kebir in a view from "rue de la Marine." In the background you can glimpse Dennis Adams' Double Feature, which juxtaposes scenes from The Battle of Algiers and Breathless. On view at the Getty Research Institute Gallery through October 18, 2009.

Carvers & Collectors at the Getty Villa

85 diverse objects comprised this comprehensive exhibit about carved gems and affiliated books, cases, prints, and castings. The exhibition design highlighted various carving techniques (intaglio and cameo) and materials - including two cases that used video cameras (shown above) to get a closer look. Our team developed front and back lighting techniques to highlight image legibilitywithout sacrificing the intricacies of the carvings or the materials. The exhibition curated by Kenneth Lapatin continued through September 7, 2009.

Reviewed: Pecha Kucha Night, A Celebration and Designing Design

Pecha Kucha Night, A Celebration
Within the past two years Pecha Kucha Night (PKN), founded in Tokyo in 2003 by KleinDytham architecture, has achieved a parabolic trajectory in spreading to over one hundred cities worldwide, yet maintaining its humble, if not ambitious beginnings and underground coolness. Multiple voices, including its founders, organizers, critics, and presenters, recount PKN’s grass roots beginning, purpose, and dissemination through the scrapbook-oral history-memoir of Pecha Kucha Night, A Celebration.

Designing Design
The second thing one notices about this monograph, after its white varnish cover and disproportionately small black title is the book’s text. There’s a lot of it. This is not your ordinary vanity publication presenting glossy photos of every object the designer conceived since university — though there are plenty of extremely innovative, interesting and inspiring products and research represented. Designing Design records cerebral tactility and a philosophy of designing as process rather than focusing solely on products.

Continue reading either of these reviews --> Tokyo Art Beat

New Home for Tomorrow

In mid-November 2008 Myth of Tomorrow was unveiled in Tokyo's Shibuya Station. The 30-meter wide mural by the late Taro Okamoto (1911-1996) depicts the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The oil painting had been missing for a quarter-century until it was found in a warehouse in 2003. After restoration and a showing at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo it was installed in this highly public forum: Shibuya Station, one of the most trafficed spaces in the world. Okamoto is widely-known for his contribution to Expo '70 - Tower of the Sun.

For more background on the project see David Willoughby's article at --> Tokyo Art Beat

Shadi Nazarian

July 2 – 25, 2008
Introversions
UB Art Gallery
201A Center for the Arts, Buffalo, NY

Shadi Nazarian designed an interactive minimal structure, suspended in midair that is currently on exhibit at the University of Buffalo Art Gallery. Developed at the intersection of art, architecture, and new technologies, the installations uses liquid crystal layered privacy glass to explore cognition and how we navigate environments. Commercially, privacy glass is used for partitions, display cases, and as privacy enclosures, and more provocatively, in dressing rooms and bathrooms, as at Prada Aoyama in Tokyo and Bar 89 in New York. Introversions explores how this new material alters spatial relationships and human perception. Nazarian combines minimalist sculpture, architecture and technology to generate uncanny optical effects by isolating and enhancing disorienting moments, reflections and other strange sights seen out of the corner of the eye.

See it while you can and pick up, while they last, a project pamphlet featuring an essay by Timothy Murray.

For gallery information: www.ubartgalleries.buffalo.edu

The film subsequently was heavily edited in attempts to make it more accessible, thus yielding several version. Restorations have been attempted but vital footage had been lost, by various accounts 1/4 to 1/3 ended up on the cutting room floor. The 1984 version, one of the more 'popular' versions, featured such music heroes of the heyday as Freddy Mercury, Pat Benatar, Adam "what do you do?" Ant, Billy "Stroke" Squier, and Lover-"Everybody's Working for the Weekend"-boy, especially the poor saps in the underworld.

Distributor Adolfo Z. Wilson acquired a long version of Metropolis in 1928, a surviving copy rested in the Museo del Cine for nearly eighty years. Planned restoration will replace twenty-plus minutes of footage. A suspected five minutes remains missing. The restoration of the film stock, reported to be in terrible condition, could be available as early as next year from Kino.

In 2001 Metropolis was ushered into UNESCO's Memory of the World Register the first film...ever.

For a more detailed account you can read: Green Cine Daily