Robert Whitman: local report

local report

Local Report is the latest in a series of communication media works that Robert Whitman has produced since 1972.

The basic structure of these works was for 30 people assigned to different parts of the city or calling area to call at five minute intervals and describe something they saw at the moment; these reports were then broadcast live. Whitman put the incoming calls directly on the air as they came in, his only intervention being to end the call when, as he puts it, “The caller has produced a coherent image.” Ninety calls over a thirty minute period produced the final work. The news reports capture the nature of a specific place and time, revealing it to audience and participants alike.

Mind Your Manners

Mind Your BlackBerry or Mind Your Manners - NYTimes.com

For the first half-hour of the meeting, it was hardly surprising to see a potential client fiddling with his iPhone, said Rowland Hobbs, the chief executive of a marketing firm in Manhattan.

At an hour, it seemed a bit much. And after an hour and a half, Mr. Hobbs and his colleagues wondered what the man could possibly be doing with his phone for the length of a summer blockbuster.

Someone peeked over his shoulder. “He was playing a racing game,” Mr. Hobbs said. “He did ask questions, though, peering occasionally over his iPhone.”

But, Mr. Hobbs added, “we didn’t say anything. We still wanted the business.”

iPhone Art Pool on Flickr

Lily Pads
Originally uploaded by suziq54241

Flickr: The Brushes Gallery – iPhone Art Pool

Great examples of what is possible with the Brushes app. It would be interesting to know how many of these paintings are actually done on top of photos. Some are obviously not.

The Hybrid Book

Pattie Belle Hastings: The Hybrid Book

I just returned from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts where I spoke at the Hybrid Book Conference. My panel was called “The Reciprocity of Books and Digital Media.” I spoke about “Mobile Misuse: the artistic subversion of mobile technologies in the creation of book-like experiences.”