The Photo Surgery of Bobby Neel Adams' "Agemaps"

We were recently introduced to photographer Bobby Neel Adams' project, "Agemaps," which--for the visual aficianado out there--may remind you of Irina Werning's "Back to the Future" series from last year. It's a similar exercise in the meticulous replication of old film stock, lighting, art direction and facial expression--not to mention the freaky effect of looking at yourself today the way you were decades ago.

Adams has a similar goal, but by ripping his subjects' faces down the middle and pairing their adult faces with their faces as children, the contrast is much more striking. There's something haunting about how much a white-haired, seventy-year-old man looks like he did as a young boy, all decked out in his sailor suit and ready to have his photo taken. Adams has several other series that use similar techniques which he deems "photo-surgery."

If Adams' is the type of work that gets you going, feel free to peruse the slew of Alternate Process and Image Manipulation classes we've recently added.

Meanwhile, check out Adams' "Family Tree," a series of portraits of immediate family members (father/son, mother/daughter) that shows DNA at work without the use of photoshop.

-- Perrin Drumm

Your Daily Insight as told by Abraham Lincoln

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.

The Two Sculptured Sides of Barry X Ball and Matthew Barney

There are two things you may not be able to tell from looking at the above picture of "BXB Dual-Dual Portrait," by Barry X Ball. Number one: those are the faces of sculptor Barry X Ball and "Cremaster"-maker Matthew Barney. Number two: both hanging sculptures are made out of portoro marble and solid Portugese gold. Not surprising when you look through some of Ball's previous works (he even breaks down the steps of his process here); he's known to make solid stone look like a translucent veil. Still, there's something about the texture of this particular piece that made us initially think it was papier-mâché.

Aside from materials, we thought we had this piece pretty much digested--as in: the two-tone, happy face/sad face speaks to the duality of man, no? Well here's Ball's take:

"The composite figures richly embossed, in a manner reminiscent of late-renaissance milanese parade armor, with a cornucopia of silhouetted motifs: abrahamic ecclesiastical symbols, animals, decorative flourishes, and protuberant, warty, half-spheres...differing surface treatments keyed to the corresponding swag-draped corporeal flay strata: a glistening sheen for the splayed entrails, miniature horizontal flutes for the mid-level viscera, and gnarled, ridged, sfumato-esque soft-focus ornamental relief for the epidermis, with eyes, oral features, and the mutilated face gleaming, respectively, with a moist, lachrymal/salivary/mucosal polish, with mannered, attenuated, crown-like cranium-top shatter-burst exit-wounds." 

Maybe it helps to see it in person? You can in Paris next month; Ball has a solo show at Galerie Nathalie Obadia from March 17 - May 16, 2012.

Ahem, though maybe not planning on being in Paris next month but want to take a stab at one-upping Mr. Ball (and subsequently, his muse Mr. Barney)? 3rd Ward's got classes for that.

Meanwhile, hit the jump now for a couple more crucial shots of the piece.

Your Daily Insight as told by Eleanor Roosevelt

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards: One Week Left to Submit!

We know. First we tell you to get your cinematic brain in check for the Northside DIY Film Fest. And then along comes the Greenpoint Film Festival. What can we say? People like to watch. So why not add one more submission to your filmic laundry list and enter the 2012 Vimeo Festival?

Here's the catch:

You have exactly one week until the February 20th deadline to submit your short film, advertisement, animation or any kind of video experiment. But what is the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards ceremony? It's a web video competition doling out $5,000 prizes--and one $25,000 grand prize(!)--in thirteen glorious categories: Documentary, Narrative, Music Video, Captured, Experimental, Remix, Series, Motion Graphics, Animation, Lyrical, Action Sports, Fashion and Advertising. The panel of stellar judges for each category was just announced. Here are some of the names we're jazzed about:

Narrative: James Franco

Series: Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation) and Edgar Wright (director of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World)

Documentary: Lucy Walker (nominated for an Oscar this year for the documentary short The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom.)

Music Video: Colin Greenwood (of Radiohead)

Action Sports: Stacey Peralta (Skateboarder) and Travis Rice (snowboarder)

Fashion: Nick Knight, Thierry Mugler and Nicola Formichetti (UNIQLO creative director)

Animation: Geoff McFetridge (Where the Wild Things Are) and Shelley Page (Dreamworks)

Captured: Barbara London (MoMA)

Lyrical: Maria Popova, Blake Whitman, Philip Bloom

The entry fee is only $5 for Vimeo Plus or PRO users (which is just $5/month when you sign up for the year). The two-day festival will take place in New York, from June 7-9, 2012. You can watch the entire 2010 awards show here to get a sense of what the competition is like.

Get thee submitting!

-- Perrin Drumm

UbuWeb Offers Up A Vast Treasure Trove Of Avant-Garde Art

Still from a Salvador Dalí television spot - watch it on UbuWeb.We all have those moments, don't we? You're trying to get work done, but it's just not happening. So you click on over to YouTube for some cat-on-a-vacuum videos, or to [insert any gossip website here] for some juicy tidbits, or to Facebook to see what your friends (and people you haven't spoken to in twelve years) ate for breakfast today. Sure, those escapes can be necessary, but when you finally turn back to your work, you tend to feel a bit dirty, like you've just consumed too much digital fast food.

For a more healthy and enriching diversion we recommend UbuWeb, a website that'll provide a long-lasting diet that's high in intellectual and artistic nutrients. Founded way back in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith, UbuWeb is a gold mine of artistic goodness, offering a range of materials from "all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts," including a huge collection of film and video art, an eclectic sound archive, an anthology of conceptual writing, and the always-fascinating Outsiders section, which highlights "broader cultural trends toward the legitimization of Outsider work, be it in the visual, musical, or literary arts."

There's an overwhelming amount of stuff to check out on UbuWeb, so after the jump we've culled five choice nuggets to get you started.  Here they go:

The Blank Generation - Amos Poe's film offers the earliest look at New York's punk scene, featuring Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie, Television and many others.

Salvador Dalí videos - A collection of television ads and other strange moments with the famed surrealist.

Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine archive - The entire decade-long collection of the bimonthly audio publication, which featured works by many experimental and avant-garde downtown New York artists, from Fluxus icon Alison Knowles to Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo to turntable innovator Christian Marclay.

Videos and audio by Mike Kelley - A range of work by the acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, who died earlier this month.

Curated Top Ten lists - Lists of of UbuWeb goodies curated by a wide range of notable figures, including renowned designer Paula Scher, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, graphic novelist Warren Ellis and Whitney Biennial curator Jay Sanders.

-- John Ruscher

Your Daily Insight as told by Ira Glass

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

Contemporary Music Organization "Ear To Mind" Asks David Karlins To Take Their Vision From Mind To Screen

David Karlins and Ear to Mind co-director Inhyun Kim meeting in the conference room.

Since its beginnings in 2010, contemporary music nonprofit Ear to Mind has relied on a typical cookie cutter blog-style website as their online home. It did the job, but with an upcoming concert at illustrious Carnegie Hall, the organization decided they'd like something more original and reflective of their adventurous artistic identity. For that they turned to 3rd Ward Web Design teacher and prolific author David Karlins.

"They felt it was essential to create a Web presence more in keeping with the creative energy and spirit of what they are all about," Karlins says. He met up with Ear to Mind co-director Inhyun Kim and worked to create an online destination that achieves just that.

"A substantial focus of my Web consulting involves working with artists, musicians, performers and particularly venues, organizations that promote the arts," Karlins says. "While my main activity is writing books and developing online teaching materials for publishers like Dummies and teaching material for Adobe, I do keep my fingers on the pulse of cutting edge Web challenges by continuing to do design projects."

Karlins' upcoming book is Web Sites for Dummies All-in-One. Here at 3rd Ward he teaches classes including Web Design with Adobe Creative Suite (both regular and condensed) and Intermediate Web Design // CSS3 and loves soaking up our positive vibes. "My meetings with the principles and people involved at 3rd Ward allow us to absorb and bounce off the diverse activity and creative energy here, and in turn feed into my work on books, my live and online classes, and the teaching materials I create here," he says.

The Ear to Mind Carnegie Hall concert that prompted Karlins' design work happens on April 19 and will feature pianist award-winning Jenny Q Chai playing a variety of music, including the world premier of a new composition by Inhyun Kim.

-- John Ruscher

Fall in Love With Networking Mixer // Photos Are Up!

Last Wednesday, creatives of all types came together to mix, mingle and speednetwork at Work It Brooklyn : Fall in Love With Networking Mixer!  See below for our favorite photos from the night and check out the 3rd Ward Facebook page or Flickr to see the full set.

Thanks to Liz Clayman for the photos!

The 2nd Annual Greenpoint Film Festival Wants Your Visionary Films

 

Hey filmmakers—while you're readying your submissions for June's Northside DIY Film Fest, why not aim for even more North Brooklyn domination by entering the Greenpoint Film Festival?!

The inaugural Greenpoint Film Festival, produced by Brooklyn arts organization Woven Spaces, went down over four days back in October, presenting local talent alongside film titans like David Lynch and Jonas Mekas, who premiered his documentary about the East Village's now-defunct Mars Bar. The festival will return this fall, and the deadline for submissions is April 3—or May 3 if you don't mind a slightly higher entry free.

Before you submit your film, note the festival's requirements:

The film must have been completed between May 2010 and May 2012.

Works in any language other than English must have English subtitles at the time of submission.

Short films and student works must be under 50 minutes. Features must be 50 minutes or longer.

Films must be available for exhibition in 16mm film, BluRay or DVD.

All filmmakers must have obtained any necessary clearances to exhibit the film at the time of submission.

Full details are available on the submissions guide page. We'll leave you with some wise words from Mekas, from his 1979 film Paradise Not Yet Lost: "Be idealistic, don't be practical. Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life."

-- John Ruscher