April 25 2003: Asia and Our Moment art show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. After finding out about this from the nice lads at Giant Robot, I decided the opening party was for me. There was art, video, music and drink aplenty, plus several bizarre outfits. Some of the crowd were supposedly paid "ko gals" wearing Tokyo street fashion, but it was tough to determine who the hired help was. I took all these with my Clié, so they are a tad blurry, but you get the idea.
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| A fairly large crowd showed up to watch everything from video installations featuring a guy giving a squid a tour of Tokyo to giant airplanes made out of fabric. | This was an interactive exhibit that was supposed to simulate a bazaar. You could purchase any of the modern Asian "artifacts" for $1 each. There was also a DJ for some reason. I actually didn't have a dollar on me, but luckily Jonathan did and bought me this fabulous green hat. I wore it all night (got great comments on BART). Several of the hawkers were quite pushy and screamed at many of the "customers" including one guy who claimed that if you didn't buy his potholder, he'd cry. | ||
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| This was another interactive exhibit where visitors were instructed to leave behind something plastic to become part of the art piece. I wanted to stay here for hours seeing everything folks brought including a giant ant, playstation controller, and several cool looking toys. My contribution is on the right. | |||
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| There were like 20 of these tiny resin sculptures, I think this one is a satellite. | This exhibit made me feel like I was in a giant Xerox machine. | No idea what this was, but it sort of pulsed and moved around. | Sound/image installation with tiny stools to make you feel like you're in Shanghai. (Note hat purchased from bazaar.) |
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| In addition to J-pop and bad techno, there was traditional koto music. | They constructed a hotel out of sheets filled with things you would find in hipster Asian pads, such as DDR. | Here I am in the hotel perusing the latest goth anime magazines. I think I need more pink lights at my place. | This creepy video of a dark figure pacing in a morgue was projected at life size in a very chilly room. |
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| Here's Jonathan watching one of the dog videos. (I was too scared to go first.) They were taken from a camera mounted on a dog's head, showing it sniffing various things, eating, running around, watching other dogs. There were a few sculptures like these with face-shaped interfaces for viewing the videos. | This was a series of sculptures showing water draining into various containers. No idea what this was supposed to mean. | The idea here was to take a rubber band from the box to pass your body through. The real experience was being with 15 others also trying to do it. | |
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