1. Ball-Nogues Studio: Gravity’s Loom - Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues have been the guests of the IMA for the last week installing their site-specific work made of multicolored string. This week, don’t miss your opportunity to get up close and personal with the artists and the IMA’s design and installation crew as they install the work in the Efroymson Entrance Pavilion.  The team will be working throughout the day and in open view of visitors, so stop by and check out how this exhibition comes together. The show opens to the public this  Friday, but if you’ve got time, come by Thursday evening for a preview and artist talk.

2. Distance closes this Sunday. Kids and adults alike have been mesmerized all summer by Jeppe Hein’s rollercoaster-like track in the Forefront Galleries. Stop by this week for your final chance to follow a white, plastic ball as it rolls through 3 different rooms on the IMA’s fourth floor. This exhibition is a can’t miss, but hurry…you’ve only got 6 more days to see it!

3. Bring your family and friends to 100 Acres this weekend. I just checked the forecast and the weather looks perfect for a picnic! Bring a frisbee or a football and play around in the Park’s meadow. Interested in a tour? Every Sunday, there is a docent-led walk around the Park from 11 a.m. to noon.

(Don’t forget the Museum is closed on Mondays, but 100 Acres is open 7 days a week, including Labor Day.)

OK, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, but those are 3 good reasons for our friends in and around Indianapolis to come to the IMA this week.

Want more? Visit our calendar to see a full list of programs and exhibitions.

They are related to assassin bugs and as that name implies I guess, they eat other insects. The old “inject you with toxins that dissolve your soft tissue then I suck you dry” routine. More or less. Wikipedia has a bit on them here. Here you will find lots of info on assassin and ambush bugs at UK.

They are very well camouflaged as is demonstrated here.

I love their architecture. Kinda looks like a vehicle in a Mad Max movie.

I assume they were having sex. But human sex is complicated enough so I won’t say without a doubt that that was what was happening.

But I did read they mate in the fall, the female lays her eggs, they hatch in spring and the cycle begins anew. The timing would be pretty close.

Here’s some more pics of our pair of freaks. Enjoy.

Ask us, and well, after last week, we might have to say Felder Rushing. IMA TV stopped to chat with the Southern gentleman in the Oldfields orchard while he was at the IMA for his talk as part of our Planet Indy series. Check out the latest IMA TV episode and you’ll see why we’re crazy for this offbeat gardening guru.

Before this more than 2,000 year old artwork came into my Objects and Variable Art conservation lab, it was safely stored in two separate boxes—one box contained the ceramic vessel, the other contained the 9 pieces that were detached from it.  There’s a photograph in the historical files dating to the early part of the 20^th century showing how the vase was assembled when it was acquired in 1928.

My job was to carefully re-assemble these pieces and fill the missing areas to make the joints appear more seamless.  Finally, I inpainted my fills to make them less visible (if you get up really close to the case, you can see my work).

Aaron Steele, the IMA’s Digital Assets Specialist & Associate Photographer, photographed this object before and after my conservation treatment up in his photo studio.  Have a look:

Before treatment photographs

After treatment photographs

Call it a mod beehive, a jaunty porous blob, a bold yellow organ.  In the hands of Greg Lynn, form reigns…with materiality a close second.  Lynn is credited with coining the term “blob architecture.”

I first heard the name Greg Lynn last year while reading a piece in The New York Times Magazine about architects with an ardor for sailing.  Guys like Lynn and Frank Gehry regularly hit the waves in sleek, complex contraptions in a true test of human-made forms vs. the energies of nature’s elements.

Preview Lynn’s design perspective with this recording of a talk at the Univ. of Michigan.

So back in March as the snow began to recede I would regularly peer out into the drab naked trees with great anticipation of watching them green up and return  to the former glory of last summer.  As luck would have it someone shared this link with me around the same time.  It’s the Timelapse group on vimeo and there are some breathtaking videos created via time lapse photography

Here is one example that blew my mind.

This all got me thinking.  What if I stuck a camera facing out of our window for a month and took a photo every half hour?   Well, sounded like there was only one way to find out.   So here is 1 month of spring as taken every half hour, condensed into 23 seconds.

Watch as the gardens go green.

The welcome mat is always out for all to participate in this annual rite of spring and fall, but if you have ever been a guest at a private wedding in the gardens, attended an event in the Nourish Café or Deer Zink Pavilion during peak shutterbug activity, you may not appreciate the migratory habits of local photographers during your special occasion.

Although the plumage and ritualistic mannerisms are interesting to witness, these moments cannot adequately compare to the swallows of San Juan Capistrano, or the great migrations of wildebeest and zebras of the Serengeti Plains.

A component of our mission is to serve the creative interests of our communities by fostering exploration of art, design and the natural environment, and that certainly implies photography, so the question remains: How do we welcome photographers, both amateur and professional to our horticultural oasis, and still maintain the decorum necessary for all to flourish without resorting to complete banishment of photographic exploration?

The answer is simple…it’s on you. Personal responsibility and professional etiquette should be your guide.

As Chief Photographer at the IMA, I consistently follow a general strategy when practicing my craft:

• Be very aware of your surroundings and take great care not to step on or in flower beds that have been diligently created by IMA Horticulture staff.

• Be mindful of the activities in this public space during your time here, and defer your photographic needs to those attending a private event.

• Be cognizant regarding the works of art on our grounds, as the individual artist maintains the legal rights to publish any image of their work in print or online. (We are contractually obligated to gain permission or pay a fee each time we utilize the LOVE or the numbers sculpture in our publications.)

• Be aware of the conservation and safety consequences related to the sculptures if you do not refrain from climbing or posing subjects on the works of art.

• Lastly, be prepared to be amazed by the natural beauty of our historic grounds and gardens and be inspired to create and post your images on the IMA Flickr site for all to enjoy.

Auto-rotate proved more confusing than anything else

Yes, the image above is supposed to be confusing. It’s one of the lessons learned from collecting feedback and tracking events on the TAP iPod tour for Sacred Spain. Patrons didn’t quite realize that as they interacted with the tour, we were secretly shooting off messages to a server.  We tracked everything from incorrect codes to device rotations.  All in all we collected over a quarter million events.  Almost half of those events were rotations of the application layout.  We heard back from people that they were “catching up with the rotations”.  Based on this we have decided to flat remove any rotation from the next tour. Everything will be in portrait mode with the exception of video playback.

Here’s a few more simple stats I pulled.

2,788 times TAP was launched during the Sacred Spain exhibition.

90,984 tour stops visited.

3,051 incorrect codes entered.

Interested in more?  Here’s a dump of the log file.

I invite you to experience the next TAP tour of our upcoming exhibition, Tara Donovan: Untitled.

Explore Tara Donovan: Untitled using the next TAP tour from the IMA

]]> http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2010/03/25/tap-analytics/feed/ 0 Auto-rotate overload Splash screen for TAP Tara Donovan: Untitled http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2010/02/04/not-a-last-minute-blog-post/ http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2010/02/04/not-a-last-minute-blog-post/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:37:11 +0000 Daniel Incandela http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/?p=10821 I’ve written similar posts in the past. It’s usually when I realize I’m supposed to blog at the last minute, so I scramble for some inspiration and typically end up recapping some of our current projects. Fortunately, The Nugget Factory projects are usually pretty cool.

You may have heard, that we softly launched the new IMA website on Tuesday? Well, we were kind of busy with that recently. But we’ve kept our eyes on a couple of other projects, including a major video documentary. You may recall our first major documentary, on Maya Lin which we debuted on ArtBabble. A pic of Dan on location for that documentary, below.

Senior New Media Producer Dan Dark, on location in Walla Walla

So speaking of documentaries. In December, Danny Beyer and I spent a week in NYC working on our next documentary, featuring the artist duo Type A.  This is a really unique project for us, because we have enjoyed a wonderful working relationship with them – in fact, they’ve become ingrained in IMA’s culture through their work in 100 Acres….even on this blog. We’ve been even luckier in that we’ve received the full support, encouragement, collaboration and engagement from IMA’s contemporary curator, Lisa Freiman. It’s the makings of something special.

Stay hydrated! Simple advice.

In fact, this might be our most prolific collaboration with any artist. We’ve got hours and hours of team building raw footage, a Flickr set, blog posts, hilarious phone calls, hugs, the exchange of gifts and more.  It’s lasted years. They’ve also given us (and ArtBabble) one of the best In the Factory series to date. You can view that below. I implore you to at least watch the beginning…which will prompt you to watch the end.

It’s already become a very special project (and we’re a couple of months away from completing the documentary). Type  A have opened their studio to us, befriended the entire IMA family and been incredibly kind, patient, funny and inspiring collaborators. They even gave us hockey tickets for a Rangers game.

Our week in NYC was intense and we shot hours of footage. Interviewing people is an exhausting process and during the week we conducted on-camera interviews with several different people involved in Type A’s career (you’ll meet them in the video) and we grabbed tons of studio b-roll footage. It was an intense but good time.

The final day of shooting at Type A's studio

We’re a couple of months away from completing this video. Danny is currently editing the piece, sifting through all of the footage and searching for usable nuggets. There are plenty.  Even though it’s not done yet, I can imagine the final product being well over twenty minutes long, in which case, this would be our longest documentary to date. We’ve come a long way.

So while you’re waiting for this release, take time to watch Type A’s In the Factory interview (above) or check out their section on the IMA site and what they’re doing in 100 Acres. We love them.

Below is the list of who you see in order of appearance.

• 
  Ed
• 
  Matt
• 
  Charlie
• 
  Kris