ARTstor is now available to registered users on mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad equipped with Safari 4+. ARTstor Mobile features include keyword search, image group access, flashcard view, and collection browse. For more information about ARTstor Mobile, click here and be sure to register for ARTstor.
Today is World AIDS Day 2010.
“The Estate Collection is a database of high quality images representing the works of artists with HIV/AIDS. With the ability to find and see these works of art in detail, the Estate Project will ensure continued access, presentation, and study of the cultural legacy created by the artistic community during the AIDS crisis. The images are drawn from the collections of Visual AIDS, Visual AIDS/Boston, Visual Aid/San Francisco, and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center.”
Click here to view the Estate Collection in LUNA.
Or, click here if you don’t have a cnet id.
The VRC has a a new and improved coffee station just in time for finals! Our new Keurig coffee maker brews individual cups of coffee or tea on command. Bring your own mug, then choose your own blend or flavor. Suggested donation: 50 cents per cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate; 25 cents per cookie or treat. Stop in, try it, and let us know what you think!
The VRC will close at 2pm on Wednesday, November 24th and will remain closed through the end of the week for the Thanksgiving holiday. Happy Thanksgiving!
The article “Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches” recently published in the New York Times discusses the growing importance of data and technology to research in the humanities.
The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data.
The focus on digital humanities is timely; this weekend the Visual Resources Center and the Division of the Humanities are co-sponsoring, along with the Newberry Library and Northwestern University, the very first THATCamp Chicago. THATCamp Chicago is a user-generated “unconference” where humanists and technologists work together for the common good. For more information, click here.
See also the University of Chicago Press’ recent blog entry exploring the top five recent books about new methodologies in the digital humanities.
The new Wright Guide, developed by Azara Apps and adapted from William Allin Storrer’s The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, offers descriptions and a photograph of each of the built works by Frank Lloyd Wright. Building descriptions link to other nearby architecture as well as to directions from the user’s current location. Buildings may be searched through the index or by browsing location or date. Users can even keep track of which buildings they’ve visited in the application.
The app is $9.99 and compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad with iOS 3.0 or later. It is available from the iTunes store.
Via Deep Focus.
Jason DeCaires Taylor creates environmental artwork by dropping cement casts of real people onto the ocean floor — creating artificial reefs that help restore coral ecosystems. His latest project, completed this month, is a massive collection of 400 sculptures off the coast of Cancun.
The sculptures will continue to evolve as sea creatures and plants colonize them. Video of the Cancun installation and photographs of previous transformations in Grenada are available on Science Friday’s blog Science & the Arts.
Art labeled “degenerate” and thought destroyed during the Nazi regime was recently rediscovered during construction activity in Berlin.
In digs carried out throughout this year, archeologists have unearthed 11 sculptures thought to have been lost forever — valuable works of art that disappeared during World War II after having been included on the Nazis’ list of degenerate art. Most of them have now been identified and have been put on display in Berlin’s Neues Museum.
Via Spiegel Online.
Electrical engineer and light sculptor Jim Campbell creates outdoor installations that quietly play with ideas of technological advancement and images. One work, called Scattered Light was recently installed in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park and comprises 1,600 lightbulbs fitted with LED bulbs. From afar, each bulb creates a kind of pixel, appearing flat as the shadows of people walking around the sculpture move through the light.
As the artist states in a videotaped interview:
“I see the work as an homage to the lightbulb, in a way… I like the light bulb shape. So I’m saying goodbye to it.”
For more information, please see the artist’s website.
Via Deep Focus.
In honor of the upcoming holiday weekend, check out the Farber Gravestone Collection in LUNA Commons:
The Farber Gravestone Collection is an unusual resource documenting the sculpture on over 9,000 gravestones most of which were made prior to 1800… These early stones are both a significant form of artistic creation and precious records of biographical information, now subject to vandalism and to deterioration from the environment.
Or get costume-inspired by browsing images in ARTstor. Marilyn Monroe? Spooky bride? Witch teacher? Zombie/punk on the CTA? Cat/sad pumpkin? The possibilities are endless!
(Please note: links will not work unless you are on the University of Chicago campus or have logged into LUNA/ARTstor remotely).