The Topography of Emotion: New Study Maps Feelings in the Body / Hyperallergic
A new study by a team of Finnish researchers recently published in the journalProceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS) analyzes where we feel emotions in our bodies. Through color-coded visualizations that show different emotions, the team discovered...
New Selfies for a New Year / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — We’re starting 2014 off right with lots and lots of selfies. Now that we’vecrowned the selfie kings, it’s back to selfie business as usual. Twenty-year-old Jen Selter seems complacent with the fact that she does mostly body selfies, telling the New York...
Michelangelo’s Grocery List / Hyperallergic
The great Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo ate fish and bread like most everybody else. In his 16th century handwritten list of 15 grocery items with accompanying illustrations, the artist requested fish, bread, two fennel soups, a herring (un aringa), four...
100-Year-Old Photographs of Doomed Expedition Discovered in Antarctica / Hyperallergic
Some photographs are best left to be discovered decades after they were first exposed. Much like the work of Vivian Maier — whose images were found years after she said her goodbyes — a recent finding of 22 undeveloped cellulose nitrate negatives from a 1914–17...
Crowning the Selfie King / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — The race for selfie king is on. James Franco’s piece in the New York Timesnow rivals Benny Winfield Jr.’s interview in VICE. “Selfies are something new to me, but as I have become increasingly addicted to Instagram, I have been accused of posting too many of...
6 Videos from the Past that Predicted the Future / Hyperallergic
Which television family do you prefer: the Jetsons or the Simpsons? If you picked the former, you will certainly enjoy this visit to the future past, when sci-fi-esque advertisements provided a vision of the then-future, which is now a part of our present...
Flowers on the Blue Line / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — For two days in a row this past weekend, I boarded the train to Forest Park at the Damen Blue Line station. This was unusual for me, as I’m not a regular commuter — I mostly write from my home office or at one of a few coffee shops. Dragging my feet up the...
A Polar Bear’s Lap Is the Best Place to Be / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — For the past three Christmas seasons at The Suburban, an artist-run project space in Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam’s Oak Park backyard, artist Diego Leclery has decided to become a polar bear. On Sunday, December 21, the polar bear situated itself in the...
The Accessible Pleasures of Excess / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — The unwieldy synthetic materials of late capitalism’s throwaway culture are worth their weight in gold spray-painted styrofoam bricks. In her solo exhibition Ornament at the Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Gallery, curated by Anne Harris, artist Sabina Ott...
How Good You Must Be When Everyone Can See / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — In the age of social-networked identities, when every private thought is often public declaration, what does it mean to be “good” or “bad”? Our words become performances, our self-portraits become selfies, and we are present as online brands. It becomes hard...
All the Pretty Selfies Are Here to Stay / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Just because “selfies” was named Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year and Barack Obama shot that funeral selfie doesn’t mean these internet self-portraits are a passing fad. No, my friends, selfies are here to stay, both in a public discourse and art...
Making Art in the Midwest / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — The Midwest is no place for haters, slackers, and anyone who can’t admit that they secretly love hot dogs and regularly daydream about living on a farm, or at least somewhere in the woods. Michelle Grabner, co-curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, conceived...
Top 5 Chicago Art Shows of 2013 / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Thick snowflakes drift from the gray sky above, the energy-sapping inflatable Christmas decorations are in a constant state of blowing across front lawns citywide, and even my parents’ German Shepherd needs a sweater. It must be that time of year again, when...
Internet Archiving Trans Oral Histories / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — It didn’t happen for me during the summer of ’69, but rather sometime around 2009 when I headed to San Francisco for an internship at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. As an archives intern, I was holed up in the back of the fluorescently-lit...
Picasso Raffle, Baby / Hyperallergic
“I just want a Picasso in my casa, no, my castle,” raps Jay Z in his appropriately titled song “Picasso Baby.” Jay Z’s song most certainly stirs up a desire to own some Picasso art bling, which is becoming increasingly important nowadays for the rich and famous. But...
Creative Commons Goes More Global With Version 4.0 / Hyperallergic
Most people who regularly use or create images, videos or music available online are familiar with Creative Commons, the California-based nonprofit organization that provides licensing options for building on, sharing or just keeping control over a user’s creative...
Norman Rockwell’s Family Doesn’t Want You to Think He Was Gay / Hyperallergic
Former New York Times columnist Deborah Solomon’s new biography of Norman Rockwell, American Mirror, hints that America’s “most beloved artist” may have been acloseted gay man. Rockwell, who died in 1978 and was perhaps best known for his The Saturday Evening...
Sculptural Remnants and Re-creations of Jimmy Page / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — Led Zeppelin, man — they were so before my time. Arguably the inventors of heavy metal, the band reached their height of fame in the early 1970s with the song “Stairway to Heaven” on their untitled fourth album. Through the works of artist Karolina...
Selfies as the Other Side of the Mirror / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — What’s it like to be on the other side of the mirror? Selfies are contemporary self-portraits shot through the reverse-mirror effect available through smartphones and webcams. We see ourselves reflected back into the smartphone or webcam mirror, snap the...
The ‘Grandmother’ of Performance on the Internet / Hyperallergic
CHICAGO — “You are the future, and you get love by video,” chants artist Jillian Mayer in ”I Am Your Grandma,” a simple, catchy, one-minute video in which the artist ponders the idea that she will be a grandmother and her grandkids will find this video on YouTube....