I love the nature of this program: match up artists and technologists for 48 hrs and see what you get.  And it is great to hear that it worked to some degree.  I too, would love to see more of these programs.

You’re gonna love it!

We are on a mission to find more ways to get money into artists hands.  Following the funding models that seem to work, models that seem to use what people are paying for anyway, we have decided to start hosing websites.  A website has almost become a business card these days.  So we wanted to create a platform that would not only help people create their own websites in an affordable way, but give them the opportunity to do something good with the money they would be spending anyway to host their sites. So host with us! At $84/year, it is comparable to most quality hosting sites out there.  Over a quarter of that payment goes directly into The Present Group granting fund.  Each granting period, we will choose a theme, accept nominations from within that theme, and allow all the hostees to vote on the winner. For the first grant, we are teaming up with the Collective Foundation to fund a travel grant for a Bay Area artist.  As Renny Pritikin has noted on the SFMOMA blog, the Bay Area sometimes has a hard time holding on to its notable artists.  Inspired by the way many other governments work, Joseph del Pesco‘s idea is that part of keeping artists here is to help them with the funds to travel away for opportunities and come back.

Now you can easily stay up to date on our artist interviews, or explore our archives via iTunes.

IN REAL LIFE At Capricious Space March 7–28, 2009 Art Fag City, ASDF, Club Internet, Ffffound, The Highlights, Humble Arts Foundation, I Heart Photograph, Loshadka, Netmares/Netdreams, Platform For Pedagogy, Private Circulation, UbuWeb , VVORK, Why + Wherefore An exhibition that invites innovative and independent online art initiatives to each come do a 4-hour residency inside the space of a gallery—attempting to explore how the distribution, production, analysis, and consumption of culture are rapidly evolving in an online context. In particular the exhibition aims to render the labor of these online practices transparent, providing “real life” access to these cultural producers, and overall inspiring public dialogue around their practices. Capricious Space 103 Broadway Brooklyn, NY 11211 (between Bedford and Berry) 718.384.1208 Gallery hours (from March 7–March 28 only): Saturday noon–8pm Sunday noon–8pm Plus special evening events: Opening and Roundtable Discussion “Browser As Exhibition Space” / Saturday March 7 from 8-10pm “Docent Tour of Art on the Internet” performed by Tyler Coburn / Friday March 13 from 8-10pm Closing Party / Saturday March 28 from 8-10pm Visit the online Calendar of Events for full details. www.letsmeetinreallife.com www.capriciousspace.com

Posted via web from thepresentgroup’s posterous

For the past couple of days I have been discovering Art Slant, as it calls itself the “#1 Contemporary Art Network.” It is actually pretty impressive in its dynamic content building and the ways in which it connects artists, galleries, events, resources, writers, and even art lovers/collectors.  Any information that is added by any one person is added into anything or person that it relates to.  Example: If you add an event- the event gets added to the artist’s page, the gallery’s page, the curator’s page. So artists may have a full page of information with their history of shows and images even if they have not even ever gone onto the website. There are a couple of things that seem to be unfortunate: -the inability for it to upload your own blog feed into your profile’s blog -the fact that there seem to be three categories of profiles and there doesn’t seem to be a way to combine the different profiles: profesional profiles, gallery profiles, and resource profiles.  The Present Group now has a profile in each category and though they are connected through links, I would have to manually update

That last one perhaps won’t be a problem for most people.  So all in all, I am pretty excited by this website and might, just might, stop updating my terrible, ugly, out-of-date myspace profile as this seems a much better alternative with a much more honed audience.  There is also no “friending”.  Your connections are made through who you work with- so it isn’t a popularity contest.

Oliver sent this to me: A Handbook for the Nerd Companion

Celebrating their 25th year, 4th estate, a book publisher, decided to make a video celebrating the world of books.  The stop motion animation is fantastic.  On their Vimeo site, you can watch the making of this project (also stop motion,) which is pretty impressive.  They had help from APT and Asylum Films. This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Our very first artist/writer pair have teamed up again for an exciting new web project entitled “Tumbarumba.” Tumbarumba, by Ethan Ham and Benjamin Rosenbaum, is a frolic of intrusions, a conceptual artwork in the form of a Firefox extension. Tumbarumba hides stories, twelve new stories by outstanding authors  where you least expect to find them, turning your everyday web browsing into a strange journey. The project is a 2008 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

From the people of We Can’t Paint:  Wassenaar photo: Andrés Marroquín Winkelmann From the Editor’s Letter about Wassenaar: “Wassenaar is an Internet specific publication that focuses its curatorial eye on emerging photographers, photography books from established, independent, and self-publishers, as well as interviews conducted by bloggers. This simple formula, while structured much like a magazine, takes the ethos and subjective freedom of blogging by existing as both absent of commercial interests and free from a specific template. The ability to take risks in an online space means that the following issues of Wassenaar may only focus on a specific artist, type of photography, a single book, or even simply feature a collection of artist portfolios. In short, Wassenaar aims to be an online magazine that reflects its place within the web as an entity that continually evolves, never forgetting that this form publishing is indefinable.”

In this election year, there has been a lot of energy focused on the “other side” of whatever your political views are.  There’s blame for things that did or didn’t get passed, people who did or didn’t get elected, and things that could have been.  Today I have had a couple of glimpses into the idea that many people know, deep down, that all of that is not productive. From Ze Frank (internet creativicist and proprietor of The Show):

From 52 to 48 with love

“i would love to have a place for obama supporters, mccain supporters and supporters of third parties (over 1%) to reach out in a gesture of reconciliation… simple messages from individuals. perhaps it is naive. the differences are real, i know. but we have to repair the damage done from this election cycle somehow… the fringes (all of them) have been allowed to dominate our conversations for too long. to create a cycle of hate, ill-will and revenge.”

From No on Prop 8:

“In working to defeat Prop 8, a profound coalition banded together to fight for equality. Faith leaders, labor, teachers,civil rights leaders and communities of color, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, public officials, local school boards and city councils, parents, corporate law firms and bar associations, businesses, and people from all walks of life joined together to stand up against discrimination. We must build on this coalition in order to achieve equal rights for all Californians. We achieve nothing if we isolate the people who did not stand with us in this fight. We only further divide our state if we attempt to blame people of faith, African American voters, rural communities and others for this loss. We know people of all faiths, races and backgrounds stand with us in our fight to end discrimination, and will continue to do so. Now more than ever it is critical that we work together and respect our differences that make us a diverse and unique society. Only with that understanding will we achieve justice and equality for all.”

We realized that after two years, it is about time to make it easier on people to look through all the issues we’ve done so far. So we made a back issues page! Check it out.

Orlagh O’Brien did a project that asked participants about five emotions: joy, anger, fear, sadness, and love. He asked them to represent where in the body they felt those emotions, how the body feels those emotions, the direction of those emotions, the things that create those emotions, and the color of those emotions. His easy to use website dipicts the compilation of the answers to those questions.  Neat project and interesting results.