[spectre] Face-to-facebook: Disrupting Monopolism.

Thu Oct 6 17:47:21 CEST 2011

you are numbered
you are product
you are doomed

PROXY Gallery
http://cart.iabrace.com
http://bit.ly/proxygallery

now showing: Profile Portraits (we the people...) build your own exhibition
+ catalogue with commissioned encaustic profile paintings on 12x12" panels,
any subject!

perhaps this reemergence of the individual is vital. perhaps this is how we
react as living beings, as mortals, to the threat of an omnipotent
universe, the threat of a definitive unreality. so this whole array of
technology could be taken to mean that we have again come to believe in our
own existence.

PROXY GALLERY (now showing: we the people): select and assemble your own
custom art exhibition with catalogue based on commissioned
portrait-paintings!  ultra hi-res art files, suitable for printing, are
delivered in one custom pdf/ebook/directory. thousands of enlarged (custom,
patented algorithms) and enhanced photographs (now, likely several hundred
thousands, soon over a million,)  mostly low-res cellphone, web-cam, and
low-end digital camera self-portraits (self-packaging), culled from
dating/social websites -- as you might expect, there is some explicit
content (more than is permitted here unfortunately: you really should see
them all, but it probably makes little difference) -- fascinating and
occasionally disturbing. I've decided to also add a set of painting-filters
-- this was good, as it enabled a 'recovery' of many more worthwhile
images, and also clouded any possible erogenous/irregular corporate claims,
but the project now extends beyond my life-span. I easily make small
paintings from these images and people support that activity: commissioned
portrait paintings, 12" square encaustic on panels, from your choice of
subject -- selected pairs/couples can be intriguing --for $15,000US. it's
interesting to find the balance/inertia point between the look of photo and
painting, and it speaks to the current social/heroic condition! often the
image-processing makes faces look squinty so it's necessary to 'bring-back'
facial aspects. the display images on the PROXY Gallery storefront are but
quick approximations of the larger art files which simply don't scale --
kinda like painted panels. another advantage of the painting filters is
that they drastically reduce the file sizes and make it well-nigh
impossible for someone to covertly res-up these display images for
printing. it's quite incredible to realize that many of these pictures were
only 3-4K or so when I started to work on them. you may realize that this
is not the first time I've collected anonymous found-public imagery:
notably dumpster-diving (bicycling with backpack at midnight,) at
photofinishers' in the 70's. and of course, there's the "Insatiable
Abstraction Engine" -- collections from newsgroups.
[http://bbrace.net/insatiable-abstraction.html] but come to think it,
nearly all my work involves repeated multiples or collections of imagery.
my new friends. whenever possible I retained any color casts, cropping and
lighting. the self-portraits are actually very considered, sometimes
selections made/altered merely to obscure the identity that they wished to
presumably portray initially. sunglasses are a popular ruse, as are
close-ups of cleavage, butts, tattoos, feet and groins. (curiously, I've
yet to see a picture of hands... ok, now I have:  some intricate
fingernails and the love/hate finger-tats.) many feature-obilerating
camera-flash-portraits in the bathroom mirror. many of course, occur in and
around motorized vehicles. only one (so far) in a grocery store. and some,
but surprisingly few, are filched from somewhere online, but this must be a
risky choice in the event of an 'actual encounter.' how much introductory
information/description do you want to put out there to begin with?  there
are some very creative, even artful, solutions to this dilemma. various
select national groups of portraits are also included in pdf
ebook/directories for $250 (this is refunded with the order of one or more
paintings; sorry about the price but it was a hellish amount of work and I
guarantee you won't be disappointed or YMB), and can be ordered directly.
these images contain sufficient resolution to print them out on
letter-size/A4 paper (or coffee-mugs, keychains, magnets, photo-stamps,
cards, calendars, tea-towels...) use my verified Paypal account to have the
pdf delivered at no charge: [bbrace at eskimo.com;
http://bradbrace.net/buy-into.html] also available through Scribd and Lulu.
you can curate/assemble your own catalogue/exhibition at the PROXY Gallery
storefront [http://cart.iabrace.com/].  art files along with encaustic
painted panels are $15,000US each. my new friends. having been recently
kicked-off Facebook (there was an anonymous report of a depicted nipple!),
and losing 5,000 appreciative friends - the online storefront was the
perfect place to host a social-media profile-portrait-collection...  how
hypocritical to object to profile pictures that may have been on FB to
begin with; but it's fun to now position coloured boxes and bars over
n´pples, c´nts and c´cks. how idiotic is that? the files of course required
different custom algorithms and some masterful retouching -- they look
great! technically given the incredibly diverse range of imagery it was
difficult to make them all equally legible; despite a variety of intricate
processing directives, the scripts would inevitably crash or be unable to
render a decent image. these were handled individually as were the
painting-filters. sure to be a collectors' (socio-anthropologists') item!
an amazing and compelling, collective portrait! the interspersed
military/gangster imagery (or maybe something else), also introduces a new
spin on the hopes for this already tenuous social-media culture. I've had
to organize/sub-divide these in some fashion, so by state/country seems to
be the prevailing approach. California had to be the place to begin. and
given how often workers are compelled to move around, there's more of a
local difference in cultural self-perception, body language, and
social-sexual proclivity than you might expect. it really is a perhaps
overlooked (overly-present), socially significant era when a massive
proportion of the population is able to individually exorcise their
self-imagery instead of being routinely dependent on existing systematized
systems of portraiture and presentation -- which is not to say that it's
entirely free from stylistic-cultural-corporate constraints and
codification (and why, for now at least, I left the imagery in a nearly
random arrangement within each national/state sub-division), but the
individual, probably for the first time ever, is seen freely negotiating a
shifting porous skein of varied reception... well, something like that...
but how could it possibly matter in this bigger world of shuffled lies. the
future of humanities: buy-now -- it's an obviously exclusive, pointedly
calculated, dismal, tired and insular discussion that somehow sadly
shuffles "the deadly futures" of increasingly indebted/desperate privileged
artworld acolytes who are compelled to repay by recycling received
collegial/corporate diatribes...  not unlike treacherously asking
interrelated corrupt institutions such as illegitimate States whether they
have any future: who will continue to profit and at what repercussive-peril
for the populace (?) -- and what can it now mean to cling to the bandied,
hollowed refrain of "we the people..."

PROXY Gallery
http://cart.iabrace.com
http://bit.ly/proxygallery

now showing: Profile Portraits (we the people...) build your own exhibition
+ catalogue with commissioned encaustic profile paintings on 12x12" panels,
any subject!

/:b

On Thu, 6 Oct 2011, marc garrett wrote:

> Sorry for any cross posting...
>
> Face-to-facebook: Disrupting Monopolism.
>
> Reviewed by Elin Ahlberg
>
> Elin Ahlberg reviews 'Face to facebook' by Italian artists Paolo Cirio
> and Alessandro Ludovico. It was the Final project of a series of three
> called 'Tha Hacking Monopolism Triology'. The 'Face to facebook' project
> was to steal 1 million facebook profiles and re-contextualize them on a
> custom made dating website (lovely-faces.com).
>
> http://www.furtherfield.org/features/reviews/face-facebook-disrupting-monopolism
>
> Paolo Cirio works as media artist in various fields: net-art,
> street-art, video-art, software-art and and experimental fiction. He has
> won prestigious art awards and his controversial works have been
> sustained by research grants, collaborations and residencies. He has
> exhibited in museums and art institutions worldwide. As public speaker
> he delivers lectures and workshops on media tactics.
>
> Alessandro Ludovico is a media critic and editor in chief of Neural
> magazine since 1993. He's one of the founders of the 'Mag.Net
> (Electronic Cultural Publishers organization). He also served as an
> advisor for the Documenta 12's Magazine Project. He has ben guest
> researcher at the Willem De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. He teaches at
> the Academy of Art in Carrara.
>
> Furtherfield reviewer, Elin Ahlberg is studying Art and Visual culture
> at the University of the West of England in Bristol. She has been living
> in the UK, and Bristol, since her move from Sweden in 2006. As an
> artist, she works in a variety of mediums and produces work which aims
> to both amuse and provoke. Her practice and research is informed by
> quasi-anthropological observations and an interest in technology. "One
> year ago I gave up Facebook for lent. It was quite an interesting
> experiment and I realised how integrated my life was with the social
> networking website..." Ahlberg's essay 'Meanings constructed around
> Facebook 2011' can be found here - http://tinyurl.com/6a34xyv
>
> ----------------------->
>
> Other Info:
>
> A living - breathing - thriving networked neighbourhood - art,
> technology & social change - claiming it with others ;)
>
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>
> Other reviews,articles,interviews
> http://www.furtherfield.org/features
>
> Furtherfield – online arts community, platforms for creating, viewing,
> discussing and learning about experimental practices at the
> intersections of art, technology and social change.
> http://www.furtherfield.org
>
> Furtherfield Gallery – physical media arts Gallery (London).
> http://www.furtherfield.org/programmes/exhibitions
>
> Netbehaviour - Networked Artists List Community.
> http://www.netbehaviour.org
>
>
>
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