Tag Archives: Art

Gallery ML – Collective Body Art Gallery – Kickstarter for their Big, New Space!

Gallery ML, the fine art body painting gallery in Philadelphia, is expanding. They have acquired a much larger new space (7,000 square feet!) and will have a Grand Opening Event in their new home on April 6, featuring the current bodypainting world champions Scott Fray and Madelyn Greco of Living Brush, plus a score of guest artists.  Gallery ML has initiated a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to cover the costs of converting the space into an art gallery, and everyone who donates will receive something for their support: limited edition show posters, signed prints, postcards, t-shirts, and canvas printing for their own images (one of the wonderful things about Gallery ML is that they offer printing services for body painters).

Please consider helping their Kickstarter campaign:

 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/galleryml/the-worlds-first-collective-body-art-gallery

And check out their video to learn about the Gallery and their plans for the new space:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/galleryml/the-worlds-first-collective-body-art-gallery/widget/video.html

45,000 Views — 2008 Transformations

by Christopher Agostino

I was checking out a colleague’s video on You Tube when I saw one of mine come up in the column of suggested videos, and I was very surprised to see it had 45,811 views, way more than any of the others I’ve posted. [Shortly after this post, it was age restricted on YouTube, so here it is on Vimeo]

2008 was an adventurous year. The impulse to start collecting faces in slideshow videos came in response to a comment by an artist I met while painting at a Parrish Art Museum event. She came in to the gallery where we were painting and told me she had seen our faces all through the village of Southampton on her way to the museum (there’s a few photos in this video from a Parrish Art Museum event.) What she wanted to tell me was that we were creating a “kinetic art form”—particularly, that the style of our facepainting, with very colorful faces and every one different, made her look for them as she saw the painted people moving through the village, wanting to see each face. “kinetic art is art that contains moving parts or depends on motion for its effect. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer.” (from Wikipedia)

Facepainting at an event is a collective art. It is the sum total of the faces we paint that is the art form, rather than each individual face. Her description of this as a kinetic art had me thinking about this collection of faces in motion, and how to try to document that. That led to creating  “Every Face” videos, in which I photograph every face I paint at an event and put them in to a slideshow in the order painted, and that led to taking a selection to put a year together in 2008.

The music is “I am An Animal” by Pete Townshend. I felt ok using it because he gave it away as a free download on his web site, on an album of odds and ends and some unreleased “Scoop” tracks, which are the demo versions he recorded of his songs as he wrote them before bringing them into the studio to be done by The Who.

See more of our  Videos.

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Is this ok, Twitter?

Twitter didn’t like this one, my Twitpic just disappeared:

Is this one ok, Twitter?

(I wonder if they will notice the little guys’ little thingies?)

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UPDATE: I guess it wasn’t ok with Twitter, because the 2nd Ingres Venus image, with the breast and genital covers in place, also disappeared from my Tweet. Once again, the image was somehow taken off the tweet (there’s a question mark in its place) with no notice to me or explanation. In their Terms of Service the only relevant language about offensive content I find is this, and the way I read it, it says that they don’t limit content and it’s a “let the viewer beware” policy regarding whatever they might stumble across, which is how I think an intelligent culture should approach the issue of censorship in the public forum:

“We do not endorse, support, represent or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any Content or communications posted via the Services or endorse any opinions expressed via the Services. You understand that by using the Services, you may be exposed to Content that might be offensive, harmful, inaccurate or otherwise inappropriate, or in some cases, postings that have been mislabeled or are otherwise deceptive. Under no circumstances will Twitter be liable in any way for any Content, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any Content, or any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted, emailed, transmitted or otherwise made available via the Services or broadcast elsewhere“

UPDATE to UPDATE: Apparently it’s Twitpic that is doing the image removal. From their terms of service: “TwitPic reserves the right to remove any image for any reason whatsoever. Specifically, any image uploaded that is pornographic or offensive in nature (including nudity, violence, sexual acts, or sexually provocative images.), infringes upon copyrights not held by the uploader, is illegal or violates any laws, will be immediately deleted and the IP address of the uploaded reported to authorities. Violating these terms may result in termination of your ability to upload further images. We reserve the right to ban any individual uploader or website domain from using our services for any reason.”

Twitpic’s reply to my request for explanation: “Thanks for contacting Twitpic. The photo was deleted as it was in violation of Twitpic’s TOS http://twitpic.com/terms.do It is a beautiful painting however, to be user friendly for all our users we have to have guidelines of what is allowed. While some will appreciate this beautiful art work others may be offended because of nudity.”

UPDATING, Again: I was able to Tweet the Ingres Venus photo directly via Twitter (without Twitpic) and so far it has not been taken down—different standards apparently. This tiny exploration of the way art images are censored by social media was initiated due to the removal of images on Facebook pages of some of the participants of the Breast Cancer Awareness Body Painting Project.

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