Life-Like

Update on the latex sculpure!

After a week it has grown some flesh and skin and has been standing upright in one piece for several days.

Now I'm ready to get informed on electromagnets, because that's how I want to let jellyboy shake it. I have integrated several neodymes which I hope will react to fields I will be able to produce.

As I got a bit carried away creating the tiny golem, I used up 3/4 of the latex intended for the net-dress ... at least I also had a try at applying it as intended - and though it looks I won't need as much for covering the netlike structure of the dress as for a sculpture, I still think I should go ahead and order another can - it's kind of fun to work with ...

Update: Video

Latex Life

With the latex arriving yesterday, which I ebayed in order to seal the paper-structure of the dress, I'm making out of "netart", I started experimenting with small things.

Then I got to starting an object, which will be a kinetic sculpture in the end. Using mostly organic material, I began making body parts: torso, legs, a forearm.

Happy Mc Life

This image has been sitting in my camera for about a month, but now it's time to say: The guy has probably just had a very happy meal!

Tourist Life

So, the first lady is dragging George W. to Vienna's national library ... well, all those old books ARE pretty to LOOK AT!

Meanwhile the first fake bombs have been blown up downtown and even the local ORF weather-studio has tight security measures in place.

It is demonstrated the airspace-block will also affect bad weather.

(As I couldn't find mention of the mock bomb incidents on english-language pages - here is the google-translation of a Standard-article.)

Diplomatic Life

Just around the corner there's a couple embassies, which you normally don't realize so much, as it's none of those heavily guarded among them.

(I wouldn't want to live round the corner from the US-embassy these days, it's pretty likely it's cordoned off during Dubya's visit this week.)

The North Korean embassy here is never visibly guarded (altough I suspect a Korean Gestapo-officer behind each window) and they even sport a showcase, where the passerby can marvel at their great leader meeting his underlings in various settings (industrial, military, farming ...).

Kitten Life

The kittehs at my sister's place have had 4 weeks to grow ... no need to say, they're still full of cute-power.





I put some short videos on YouTube and fotos on 23, showing they have entered the interactive phase.

BoingBoing Life

BoingBoing is coming to town!
... to Perm, Russia, to be exact.
(thx Sergey)

Life on Paper

Welcome Oskar Fischer to the Art Yard Sale, where one of his fine black&white drawings from the 1980s is available ... and also to the SHIFZ Fine Arts Gallery, where the color drawing Clown+Controllor is for sale, which has the proto-clown for the clowns later appearing as cover-art on his CD Seaside Clowns in it.



This drawing here is titled Geisterflug, 1985.

Rolling Life

On the way to Graz, to attend the opening of getuned, Expertina and I met Red White in the train, Australia born artist, who has had a piece at ROBOEXOTICA 2002 and who has another piece stored in France, which I am looking forward to see at a future ROBOEXOTICA.
He was on his way to Carinthia to sculpt some marble, 3 tons to be precise!

In Graz, there was time to drink a cappuccino on the "Murinsel" and the mild weather even allowed us to take it on the terrace in the open air.

Fine Arts Life in our Times

You know, when I work on canvas these days, I restrict myself exclusively to making Popelismus, like this latest one, White.

And besides I was never too good in painting realistic copies from fotos.


So, thanks to the internet and the progress of online-services, anno domini 2006, I sent off a jpg containing my fotographic quotation of René Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe to Artido in neighbouring EU-country Germany and got back this print on canvas this morning.

This very first print of that motive is for sale on our fine arts gallery.

Reading Life

I can't remember when the last time was, that I read a magazine from front to end, usually starting at a random page, jumping around ...
Not so with Make:Volume05, which I had ordered, in an attempt to prove I could overcome the local amazon's (.de) obstacles that seemed to try to prevent one from finding, identifying and purchasing Make: Volumes, a while ago and that I had sitting in my living room as a chic piece of decoration.
When I finally moved it to the loo (when the historian supplements of Wiener Zeitung, which my father provides me with, were all finished), I found myself starting with page one and continuing from there sequentially!
It really got me wondering when I realized I was reading the third article in a row in that sequential matter - something quite out of the ordinary, because even when I start a magazine frontwise, it doesn't take long and I start skipping forth and back.
While none of the article's sounded so overwhelmingly interesting that I would have read it instantly when first reading the table of contents, when the magazine finally arrived (it had been sent back once without reaching me at all, so it took twice as long), each of the articles were short enough and in itself interesting enough to not make me stop reading after the headline.

So far so good, many people already know Make: is a cool zine ...
but today I experienced another fine moment with my Volume05, when I had gotten to the interview with Woody Norris, a remarkable, REMARKABLE inventor, who is responsible for the LRAD device, which got into the news when a cruise ship used it's sound beams to fight off pirates.
He also invented some other cool stuff and the interview ends touching on the subject of gravity, or defying gravity, a task Norris has turned to with some academic help. If he's right he might start fighting gravity in about ten years.
So imagine me sitting on the loo, imagining myself 20 or 30 years into the future, holding my Volume 05 of Make: magazine, and regarding it as we today regard those marvelous magazines from the 1950s.

Hm, what was the point I was trying to make?
Dunno, let me sum it up like this: I like imagining the future. I hate gravity. Make: is a good read and I also recommend the blog.
Besides, when I was looking for a pic of Volume05, I found out Volume06 is out now and has that article about ROBOEXOTICA in it, Cory was writing!

Life on the Wall

This mural has survived for over ten years on a wall in a former apartment of mine.

When I handed over the apartment to art-lover Wolfgang Eichinger, it was under the condition that all the wallpaintings had to be left intact ...

This foto is actually from 1995, but when I last visited 2 or 3 years ago it was just fine (and Wolfi just recently confirmed the perfect condition).

Life on Polaroid

As everything is quite more accessible in my basement with the brainwashingmachine etc. being currently removed, i dug out a few old photographs from the 1990s and scanned them.
Among them a couple polaroids depicting Gerhard K., a photographer-friend, who moved to the country years ago - I hear he's coming to town about once a year to provide samples of his achievements in Schnaps-destilling and bacon-smoking.
To the right - Eva H., an early sponsor of SHIFZ.