Hammer Museum introduces new mobile application

On your next visit to the Hammer Museum, don't be surprised to find more people fiddling with their iPhones than actually looking at the art hanging on the walls. That's because the Hammer has joined the growing list of art institutions to launch their own mobile applications.

The Hammer's app, which is available for free download for iPhones and Android devices, provides audio guides, videos, interviews, images of artwork and more for visitors to the museum.

The Hammer said that the content provided on the app will be expanded in future versions. The present version features content about the current exhibition on artist Richard Hawkins, as well as upcoming shows devoted to Ed Ruscha and Paul Thek.

In addition, the app provides background information on the Armand Hammer collection.

Other museums that have already launched mobile apps include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and New York's Museum of Modern Art.

RELATED:

Art review: 'Richard Hawkins: Third Mind' at the UCLA Hammer Museum

It Speaks to Me: Richard Hawkins on Gustave Moreau’s “Salome Dancing Before Herod,” 1876, at the Hammer Museum

Art review: 'All of This and Nothing' at UCLA Hammer Museum

 

-- David Ng

Photo (top): A screen from the Hammer Museum's mobile app for iPhones. Credit: Hammer Museum / Apple

Photo (bottom): Richard Hawkins, "Crepuscule #1," 1994, mixed media. Credit: Hammer Museum

Arts writers declare 'strike' against Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, has long espoused progressive political views, which has made her website's reliance on unpaid writers a rather awkward sticking point for the left-leaning pundit. Now Huffington's values are being put to the test by a group of arts writers, largely from Southern California, who are asking to be paid for their contributions to the site.

Writers for the websites ArtScene and Visual Art Source said Monday that they are declaring a "strike" against HuffPo, to which they have contributed content since the summer of 2010. In their announcement, the writers listed two primary demands: that a pay schedule be proposed and initiated for all contributing writers and bloggers, and that paid promotional material no longer be posted alongside editorial content.

They also objected to the HuffPo's publishing of catalogue essays — non-journalistic pieces that usually serve a commercial function for art galleries — without separating them from other editorial content.

"It is unethical to expect trained and qualified professionals to contribute quality content for nothing," said the writers in their announcement.

"It is extremely unethical to not merely blur but eradicate the distinction between the independent and informed voice of news and opinion and the voice of a shill."

Bill Lasarow, the publisher and editor of the two websites, said in an interview that the move is "not a hostile act in any sense whatsoever," but added that the writers felt "like they were being taken advantage of by the company to make an enormous profit."

He said that the action was prompted at least in part by the HuffPo's recent sale to AOL for a reported $315 million.

Google unveils online 'Art Project' but bestows new technology mainly on Old World museums

Aiming to open the world’s art collections to online viewers, Google today unveiled the Google Art Project, a website that allows visitors to see more than 1,000 works by 486 artists, take virtual 360-degree tours of galleries, and zoom in for extreme close-up views to inspect a great artist’s brushwork.

But Google's masters of new technology began by taking a distinctly Old World view of art: Of the 17 museums in the Google Art Project, 13 are in Europe. In America, none of the art on view is housed west of Manhattan or the Potomac River, which means no exposure for museums in Google’s home state of California.

If it's the thought that counts, Google, based in Mountain View in the Bay Area, was neighborly enough to invite the nearby Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the De Young and the Legion of Honor) to be part of the Art Project, museum spokeswoman Jill Lynch said, "but due to scheduling conflicts we were unable. We hope that our exhibition schedule will permit us to work with them in the next round."

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was not approached to participate, spokeswoman Miranda Carroll said; a Getty Museum spokeswoman told a Times reporter that she hadn’t heard yet about Google’s online initiative and would check whether the Getty had been invited. (Updated, 5:55 p.m.: the Getty confirmed that it was not invited or contacted, either.)

The four United States museums involved are New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Frick Collection and in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art. Otherwise, the project focuses on two museums each in Madrid, Berlin, London and Amsterdam, and one each in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris, Prague and Florence.

Many museums around the world have made a priority in recent years of making their collections available on their websites, albeit not typically with a virtual tour of actual galleries. The extreme close-up technology that's one of Google's new wrinkles is available for one artwork picked by each museum.

Monster Mash: Ovation Award winners announced; Sarah Palin 'battle hymn' becomes an online hit

Honored: The winners of the Ovation Awards for the 2009-10 season were announced Monday, with the Geffen Playhouse and Fountain Theatre bringing home the most trophies. (Los Angeles Times)

Catchy: A new song called the "Sarah Palin Battle Hymn" -- set to the music of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" -- has become an online hit. (Alaska Dispatch)

Authoritative: CNN's Anderson Cooper will lend his voice as the narrator for the upcoming Broadway revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," starring Daniel Radcliffe. (Playbill)

In the works: The city of Helsinki, Finland, has enlisted the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to produce a concept and development study for a potential new Guggenheim Museum in Finland. (World Architecture News)

Guest star: Anne Hathaway says she will perform music from the musical "Rent" on an upcoming appearance on Fox's "Glee." (Playbill)

Resolved: New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs said it was satisfied with updated advertising for "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" that more clearly indicates its preview period. (New York Times)

Online initiative: The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation has unveiled a digital archive providing access to materials related to the 35th president’s time in office. (Washington Post)

Long road home: A Renaissance-era painting that was looted by Nazis in Holland and that eventually landed at Rutgers University is being returned to a Los Angeles-based descendant of its original owner. (Cherry Hill Courier Post)

Poor taste: A painting depicting soccer star David Beckham being crucified has spurred a police investigation in England. (Daily Mail)

For the kids: Dolly Parton is working on a new stage musical for children. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Endurance test: A violinist in India has attempted to set a record by holding a 50-hour recital. (Oneindia)

And in the L.A. Times: Theater critic Charles McNulty reviews "Circle Mirror Transformation" at South Coast Repertory; rare Ansel Adams photographs are on display in Palos Verdes.

-- David Ng

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

 

A breakdown of the 2011 YouTube Symphony winners

The creation of the YouTube Symphony two years ago was intended to marry the populist, borderless ethos of online culture with the highly competitive nature of the classical-music world. The 2011 class of winners announced Tuesday shows that the YouTube Symphony continues to pull talent from the far ends of the globe, but in the end, U.S.-based musicians dominated the playing field.

The 2011 YouTube Symphony comprises 101 musicians from more than 30 different countries, ranging in age from 14 to 49 years old. The selection process involved an online audition period on YouTube last fall, from which 300 finalists from 46 countries were chosen.

The orchestra will have 97 members plus four improvisational soloists for a Mason Bates piece to be performed at the Sydney Opera House. The previous YouTube Symphony Orchestra had 96 members.

Winners are scheduled to arrive in Australia for a week of rehearsals and concerts from March 14 to 20, with a final performance on March 20 that will be live-streamed online. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas will lead the orchestra, as he did in 2009 in New York.

The most represented country in the orchestra was the U.S., with 43 musicians, followed by Australia, Canada and Italy with five each. But some of those were foreign students who used the country in which they are studying.

Destroyed Apple products become photographic works of art

 

When does an iPhone or an iPad cease to be a mere consumer gadget and enter the rarefied world of visual art? How about when someone willfully destroys it, turning it into an abstract, brutalized husk of its former self?

A series of smashed, mangled, shot up and melted Apple products are the subject of a recent photography project by a San Francisco-area graphic designer who said he's trying to make people think about their relationship with these universally beloved gadgets.

Michael Tompert said he had spent the last several months purchasing the newest in Apple consumer technology and then creatively destroying the pricey toys. The results, which he photographed, briefly went on display at a gallery exhibition that ran over the weekend at the small Live Worms Gallery in San Francisco. (The art show was first reported on the site Cult of Mac.)

Speaking on the phone, Tompert said the idea for the project came to him after he gave each of his two sons an iPod touch for Christmas. He said the two boys fought over one of the devices, which had a certain game on it. Fed up with the quarrel, Tompert said he grabbed one of the iPods and smashed it on the ground.

"They were kind of stunned -- the screen was broken and this liquid poured out of it. I got my camera to shoot it," Tompert said. "My wife told me that I should do something with it."

In all, Tompert created 12 images of destroyed Apple products, working with his friend Paul Fairchild, a photographer. "They had to be a brand-new product," Tompert said. "It's not about destroying old products. It's about our relationship with the new."

His methods of destruction varied by gadget. To destroy an iPhone 3G device (seen above), he used a Heckler & Koch handgun to blow a hole through it. To obliterate a set of iPod Nanos, he placed the devices on a train track so that a locomotive would run over them. (See an image of them after the jump.)

The most difficult product to obliterate was the iPad -- "it's practically indestructible," Tompert said.

Finalist in Guggenheim's YouTube Play competition finds a use for WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks, the website that publishes leaks from sources in the government, corporations and other institutions, has been in the news a lot lately for the headaches it is causing the Pentagon on information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of that published military material has now found its way into an unexpected format -- a work of art. "Post Newtonianism," by Josh Bricker, is a two-channel video work that uses audio from a WikiLeaks video released earlier this year documenting a U.S. military offensive in Iraq that is believed to have resulted in the deaths of two Reuters news staffers, among others.

The artwork recently was selected as one of the top 25 videos from a field of more than 23,000 submissions in the Guggenheim Museum's YouTube Play competition.

In the piece, the screen is divided into two panels, one of which features actual wartime footage while the other shows scenes from the war-themed video game "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare." On the soundtrack, audio from the WikiLeaks video gradually merges with audio from the video game.

Bricker, 30, lives in New York, but he grew up in Southern California, in the town of Fillmore in Ventura County. In a phone interview this week, he explained that the artwork is intended to explore the increasingly blurred boundaries between military technology and video games. It also serves as a commentary on the way people experience warfare via television and online.

"I wanted it to be a catalyst for conversation," he said. "Obviously, I have my own political agenda, but I wanted to give it wiggle room so people can argue about it and not be didactic."

Kevin Smith is king of the Smodcastle

 

The comically raunchy universe of director Kevin Smith is a place where low-brow humor rules supreme and no subject, no matter how offensive, is off limits. At age 40, Smith has built a career that consists of nine feature films, several comedy podcasts, numerous comic books and -- thanks to his prolific tweeting habit -- more than 1.6 million online followers.

Recently, Smith added another wing to his media biosphere: a 50-seat house in the heart of Theater Row in Hollywood. The modest venue, called the Smodcastle and located at the Complex on Santa Monica Boulevard, serves as headquarters for Smith’s new hybrid experiment combining comedy theater and podcasting.

A few times a week, Smith and a band of garrulous pranksters appear live on the Smodcastle's stage to entertain audiences with their profane brand of trash talk. Past subjects included sex, drugs, filmmaking and a wide range of embarrassing bodily malfunctions described in minute detail. Each session is recorded and then disseminated online as a podcast.

Smith had been podcasting with producer Scott Mosier for two years at Smodcast.com when the filmmaker decided that a live-performance component would add a new dimension to the material. 

"The nice thing about the space is that it was born from the podcasts, and then the space has allowed us to grow the network," Smith said in a recent interview.

There are five live shows a week at the Smodcastle, and Smith appears in four of them. Soon, Smith is scheduled to start holding weddings at the theater -- he’s an ordained minister -- which he will also put online as podcasts.

The director said performing in front of a live audience has sharpened his comedy skills. "The shows have completely changed in front of people," he said. "On stage, you don't even go for semi-amusement. You have to kill, you have to make them laugh."

Eli Broad says Yaroslavsky website is wrong; no decision yet on museum's destination

The continuing saga of the very public path Eli Broad's museum is taking from idea to reality added a new chapter on Wednesday.

The latest development has to do with the unexpected outcome of one of Broad's news interviews -- this time, with Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's website.

The billionaire philanthropist and the operation sponsored by Yaroslavsky disagree over whether it accurately quoted Broad as saying that the museum to house the 2,000-plus artworks he and his wife Edythe have collected is "absolutely" going to be built in downtown L.A.

L.A. Phil encourages micro-donations via texting

 

Anyone who has attended the Hollywood Bowl this summer has probably noticed the Los Angeles Philharmonic's jumbo-screen advertisements encouraging people to donate to the orchestra via text message. 

The ads -- which started running in June at the Bowl -- are part of a test campaign by the orchestra to try out a new wireless donation service, said a spokeswoman for the L.A. Philharmonic. 

Depending on the night, you can donate $5 or $10 to the orchestra by texting a special keyword to the number provided on the ad. The service, which is hosted by mGive, adds the donation amount to your monthly wireless bill. At the end of the day, the L.A. Philharmonic said it receives 70% of the amount donated while the remaining 30% goes toward covering the cost of the service and other expenses.

Mobile donating, as it is often called, has become a common fundraising practice for charity and humanitarian projects, such as the earthquake relief effort in Haiti. But now cultural institutions are catching on to the trend, providing the non-profit groups with yet another avenue for raising dollars in the tough economic climate. 

Other performing-arts organizations that have launched campaigns for wireless donations include the New York Philharmonic, which has been doing it for about a year, and the Intiman Theatre in Seattle.

So far, the L.A. Philharmonic has only run the ads for donations-via-texting at the Bowl and has not promoted it elsewhere. The orchestra spokeswoman said that it are in the process of gauging user interest between the $5 and $10 donation options, so it's too soon to tell how successful this is.

-- David Ng

Photo: Hollywood Bowl. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

RECENT AND RELATED

David Fray and Pablo Heras-Casado make 'heroic' Hollywood Bowl debuts 

Music review: McGegan, Labèques and Mozart at the Hollywood Bowl

Music review: Joshua Bell and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos at the Hollywood Bowl

Watching Bugs Bunny bring down the house at the Hollywood Bowl