A Brief History of John Baldessari (by gosupermarche)

“In collaboration with shoe designer Masaya Kushino, Sputniko! is currently developing the work “Healing Fukushima (Nanohana Heels)”, a pair of shoes that plant rapeseeds (Nanohana) into soil through mechanical high-heels.

Using the heels, rapeseeds are automatically planted as the user walks. The piece is currently in its work-in-progress phase, and is exhibited from March 11th to April 16th, 2012 at Omotesando Gyre’s Hyper Archipelago exhibition, along with works from exhibitors such as architects Arata Isozaki and Ryuji Fujimura. The final music and video for the project are planned to be released in Summer 2012.

“Experiments by Belarusian scientists have shown that rapeseed blossoms absorb radioactive substances such as Caesium-137 and Strontium-90 from soil. These radionuclides are stored in the blossoms’ stalks and seed coats, but not in the seeds themselves- which is fortunate because the seeds can be turned into Canola oil, the most popular source for biodiesel. This discovery led, in the 2000s, to the planting of rapeseeds by the Ukraine and Belarus governments in over 50,000 hectares of Chernobyl-affected land, in a move to revive the area’s agriculture industry which had been wiped out by the 1986 nuclear accident….”

More here.

I would so love to write a profile of Sputniko.

(via Design Fiction: Sputniko, “Healing Fukushima Nanohana Heels” | Beyond The Beyond | Wired.com)

Artist Rosemary Williams’ Kickstarter project:

Broadway showgirl Rosemary Williams was an up-and-coming model and star of the stage in the early ‘50s. She graced the covers of everything from pinup magazines to Life between 1949 and 1951. In the final year of her fame, Williams – who also went by Williamson – was pulled into the scandalous court trial of her ex-boyfriend Sid Levy, charged with conning several of Rosemary’s wealthy acquaintances out of $50,000, and using the money to buy her fur coats, diamond bracelets, and even a Cadillac. The phone calls from producers stopped, and she disappeared from the public record after 1953.

In Two-Faced Beauty I will re-create a short period in the life of Rosemary Williams, whose name I share. As a woman, Rosemary sought empowerment through the attention she gained from fame and the gifts she gained through guile. I am fascinated by the circumstances of her life, and the twists it took.

The script is built entirely from “found words” obtained in court files, magazine articles, gossip columns, transcripts of police interrogations, and wire-tapped phone calls from the apartment she shared with three showgirls.

More here.

Williams (the artist, not the showgirl) was the subject of this Consumed column.

Hennessy Youngman is one of things-on-the-internetz that validates the entire enterprise. In the fast and fascinating 10 minute clip here, Youngman traces the history of performance art, linking it to Occupy and our contemporary engagement with the internet. Oh, and totally worth watching to the end.

(via Performance Art in the Age of the Internet » Sociological Images)

Still Life is an interactive gallery piece that takes traditional still life painting into the fourth dimension with a motion-sensitive frame on a rotating mount. 

Still Life | Scott Garner