Art I Like

Simon Pericich

Melbourne-based sculptor; DF's former housemate.

I remember the first time I went to their house on Johnston St in early 2007, the studio was full of weapons he was making from found objects, which I thought were frikken awesome.

Also especially liked: Lost Dog and Your Best Friend.

Harry Goldgar, Telepath

Googling on the phrase "telepathy project", I found this. See also.

I think most people would call this psychosis, not art. But like many manifestations of delusional paranoia, it's also recognisable as beautiful art, even if it wasn't created with that intent.

We all live in our own dreamworld(s) - some people's are just more divergent from the norm (and, for better or worse, a lot more interesting) than others'.

Craig

Age article. Time magazine article (!). Flickr set of Craig's work.

It soon emerged that Craig is actually a ripoff of Chris, aka New Yorker Todd Lamb.

But I still like Craig better (and not just because he's local).

realityhacking.com

Link.

Blurb:

By taking a perspective usually limited to looking at art in the museum to the everyday world I interact with existing public situations. The consequences of these encounters are interventions or temporary installations which are often abandoned. In this process the artist subjugates himself to the act of perception by being anonymous.

Yes.

I Feel Better After I Type To You

From Lot 49:

Within the third of the ten files of user search queries AOL mistakenly released, there's a poem of sorts. Between May 7 and May 31 of this year, AOL user 23187425 submitted a series of more than 8,200 queries with no evident intention of finding anything - only a handful of the entries are paired with a search results URL. Rather, the author's series of queries forms a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy.

Whether it's fact or fiction, confession or invention, the search monologue is strangely compelling. It's a uniquely temporal literary form in that the server time stamps make the passage of time integral to the storytelling. It could be the beginning of a new genre of writing, or simply an aberation. But it does beg further explanation. What circumstances prompted the author to converse thus with AOL's search engine?

AOL user 23187425's "stream of consciousness soliloquy" has now been turned into a book by Superbunker (Superbunker being "a framework for conducting and disseminating cultural research... operating as a cross between a think tank and a decentralized federation of neo-alchemical laboratories..").

I want one.

Danielle Freakley

AKA The Quote Generator. See also: Artist Running Space, Text Masks, Fotolog.

Hero turned mentor. Unique case.

I wanted to post some excerpts from the surreal, amazing Neurocam application that brought her to my attention in the first place, but of course I can't. Oh well.

I heart you, DF.

Keep on redeeming garbage and doing that beautiful, masochistic, discombobulating lived performance art. (And have fun in New York.)

Carol "Riot" Kane

I discovered Riot earlier this year via Chaos: Year Zero, a blog kept by her imaginary daughter from the future.

This was Kane's homemade response-tribution to Nine Inch Nails' 42 Entertainment-executed Year Zero ARGstravaganza (which I also liked, incidentally. Despite its many dodgy elements).

Riot likes NIN. A lot.

She also has a (sporadic) blog of her own.

Website bio excerpt:

Riot is the gun toting, plaster casting, ass kicking, punk rock verison of the Greek poet Homer, brilliantly translating pre-existing legends of the band she follows into truly epic works of art. With preternatural determination, she writes and illustrates graphic novels, builds elaborate sculptural installations, and directs short films all inspired by her Rock Warrior Life.

Many Artists have constructed works of Rock Star fantasty, projecting themselves into Rock Music's Realm. However, these artists sit safely on the fence between fantasy and dream reality. From their protected, pejorative, perch they can expound on the intricacies of the precise lighting techniques of each rock iron or reiterate, ad nauseam, the phallic implications of the microphone. They may cast an eye into this place contemplating the passions that motivate musicians and their respective fans but they have yet to stick a soft, well-manicured, overwrought toe into the fetid angry waves of the real Rock Arena.

Riot not only crosses that boundary, she does everything in her power to blur and destroy that line, slamming a well heeled boot into the glass wall to stand battered, bruise, and euphoric on the other side. Functioning in both the art and the rock worlds to the consternation of many an art patron and avid rock fan, Riot is often unsure herself in which world she stands; stomping through an art opening in all her purpled splendor or drawing at the rail while the sweaty screaming masses surge behind.

Art and music aren't the only worlds she walks between.

(Apart from anything else, I like her coz she seems spookily like an alternate-universe manifestation of my long lost ex girlfriend Sarah - if she'd ended up becoming an artist, instead of doing a PhD in economics.

Hooray for alternate universes.)