Here's the link to the Flashpoint Interview on the Spike O'Dell morning radio show or click on the title of this post.
LINK:
http://mfile.akamai.com/21880/wmv/cmfour.download.akamai.com/21880/wm.communications-four/7277Tullman/01Track.asx
HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Thursday, May 31, 2007
HAT Flashpoint Interview on Spike O'Dell Morning Radio Show
Here's the link to the Flashpoint Interview on the Spike O'Dell morning radio show or click on the title of this post.
LINK:
http://mfile.akamai.com/21880/wmv/cmfour.download.akamai.com/21880/wm.communications-four/7277Tullman/01Track.asx
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
A New Piece from Caleb Weintraub
This very large-scale piece is called:
"CLOUDY, WITH A CHANCE OF APOCALYPSE"
"CLOUDY, WITH A CHANCE OF APOCALYPSE"
Passage Events Completes Successful Blitz of Chicago Experiential Marketing Summit 2007
After weeks of painstaking planning and preparation, the Passage Events team descended on the annual Experiential Marketing Summit at the McCormick Place Conference Center in Chicago.
The $100,000 Golden Opportunity Sweepstakes was a major hit. We FedEx’d this package in a wooden box to about 85 marketers who were attending the Summit and who we carefully selected as target prospects for us. We enjoyed an incredible 35% response to this! One in three of these marketers came to our booth and not only entered our Sweepstakes, but almost all demonstrated high interest in the “golden opportunity” Passage is pioneering in experiential marketing.
Here are the Summit highlights:
- Sunday and Monday were spent on setting the stage at the conference - the Starbucks sampling stations were prepped, booth built, and tongues sharpened.
- Come Monday, as the conference attendees registered, our select group of 85 potential clients received a personalized golden envelope further reminding them to come to our booth for a special gift (a digital picture frame loaded with our Golden Moments – images from past events).
- Who would pass on the complimentary cup of aromatic Starbucks coffee for breakfast, especially if it’s served by our team?! Dozens of unforgettable connections and impressions of the Passage Events services were made to start the day.
- At the 8am opening key note speech (the most attended and important part of the conference) Brad Stevens, VP of Advertising and Marketing for Starbucks, talked about how his company became a leader in experiential marketing, AND mentioned Passage Events, as a great partner responsible for their out-of-store promotional activities, not once, not twice, but THREE times, directing all attendees to the sampling stations and then to our booth for a Starbucks reward card. Over a hundred attendees (more than 10%!) redeemed their Starbucks Passports (left on each conference chair by our team) for a $5 gift card at our booth.
- As the crowd rushed to fuel up on coffee, the sampling team was once again at their best creating memorable moments with the sniffing and tasting techniques as well as stories of growing and roasting the Starbucks coffee in exotic Latin American locations.
- Then this caffeinated and energized wave of attendees descended on our booth, including those from our highly desired brand marketers list, showing great interest in the Passage Events capabilities.
- After lunch the sampling team took the spotlight again providing the Orange Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème as part of the nationwide Starbucks summer campaign launch, which coincided with the first day of the conference.
- The last day of the conference went even smoother with more sampling, more lead generation, and more hard work and fun had by all.
- The bottom line? Passage Events definitely made a long-lasting memorable impression, and gathered lots of sweepstakes entries from very interested prospective new clients.
Now, our new web site has been launched (click on post title above), new literature produced, sales & marketing wheels on track and turning, we’ve made a huge debut at the industry’s leading conference of the year, and our operational and service capability has been geared to scale up as business volume requires.
Get ready world, here we come!
The $100,000 Golden Opportunity Sweepstakes was a major hit. We FedEx’d this package in a wooden box to about 85 marketers who were attending the Summit and who we carefully selected as target prospects for us. We enjoyed an incredible 35% response to this! One in three of these marketers came to our booth and not only entered our Sweepstakes, but almost all demonstrated high interest in the “golden opportunity” Passage is pioneering in experiential marketing.
Here are the Summit highlights:
- Sunday and Monday were spent on setting the stage at the conference - the Starbucks sampling stations were prepped, booth built, and tongues sharpened.
- Come Monday, as the conference attendees registered, our select group of 85 potential clients received a personalized golden envelope further reminding them to come to our booth for a special gift (a digital picture frame loaded with our Golden Moments – images from past events).
- Who would pass on the complimentary cup of aromatic Starbucks coffee for breakfast, especially if it’s served by our team?! Dozens of unforgettable connections and impressions of the Passage Events services were made to start the day.
- At the 8am opening key note speech (the most attended and important part of the conference) Brad Stevens, VP of Advertising and Marketing for Starbucks, talked about how his company became a leader in experiential marketing, AND mentioned Passage Events, as a great partner responsible for their out-of-store promotional activities, not once, not twice, but THREE times, directing all attendees to the sampling stations and then to our booth for a Starbucks reward card. Over a hundred attendees (more than 10%!) redeemed their Starbucks Passports (left on each conference chair by our team) for a $5 gift card at our booth.
- As the crowd rushed to fuel up on coffee, the sampling team was once again at their best creating memorable moments with the sniffing and tasting techniques as well as stories of growing and roasting the Starbucks coffee in exotic Latin American locations.
- Then this caffeinated and energized wave of attendees descended on our booth, including those from our highly desired brand marketers list, showing great interest in the Passage Events capabilities.
- After lunch the sampling team took the spotlight again providing the Orange Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème as part of the nationwide Starbucks summer campaign launch, which coincided with the first day of the conference.
- The last day of the conference went even smoother with more sampling, more lead generation, and more hard work and fun had by all.
- The bottom line? Passage Events definitely made a long-lasting memorable impression, and gathered lots of sweepstakes entries from very interested prospective new clients.
Now, our new web site has been launched (click on post title above), new literature produced, sales & marketing wheels on track and turning, we’ve made a huge debut at the industry’s leading conference of the year, and our operational and service capability has been geared to scale up as business volume requires.
Get ready world, here we come!
Charlie Leadbeater visits Experiencia for Filming and Panel Discussion on The Global City
In today’s world, innovation is the new imperative for urban leaders. That includes addressing the realities of globalization in smart new ways, by uncovering the hidden assets found in cities that will keep them competitive in our rapidly changing world. The CEOs for Cities international conversations address these realities and develop strategies for urban competitiveness in a global economy. “The Global City” tour convenes elite groups of urban leaders from the United States as well as mayors from Canada and South and Central America to explore the role that cities and their leaders can play in confronting the challenges – and capitalizing on the opportunities – of globalization.
CEOs for Cities latest international conversation on "The Global City was held and filmed in Chicago and, after a meeting with Mayor Daley who was a co-founder and the co-host of this visit, the group moved over to Experiencia for a panel discussion lead by Charlie and HAT. Other participants included Elaine Mondschein, Craig Benes, Manny Sanchez and Marc Schulman.
COMMENTS FROM CHARLIE'S BLOG
Experiencia
After a meeting with Mayor Daley in which education was the primary topic of conversation, Charlie toured Experiencia, an "an educational company that delivers unique, Immersive Learning programs providing exciting classroom curriculum, teacher training, parent involvement and all-day simulations in a state-of-the-art learning laboratory where students learn by doing." Experiencia's facility in Chicago (in an older industrial area) has two different programs, ExchangeCity and EarthWorks. Both involve a weeks-long curriculum that students' teachers carry out in their own classrooms, and then culminate in a day where they run a simulated city or shepherd a fragile ecosystem through various natural disasters.
Charlie met with Howard Tullman (Experiencia's Board Chair), Elaine Mondschein (Experiencia's President and founder), Craig Benes (Principal at Talcott Fine Arts & Museum Academy, part of Chicago Public Schools), Manny Sanchez (a partner at Sanchez Daniels & Hoffman LLP), and Marc Schulman (CEO of Eli's Cheescake, who also provided snacks, including the cake that Eli's developed specifically in support of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics).
Experiencia is unique because it mixes kids from different schools, parents from different communities, and leaders from the civic, corporate, and nonprofit sectors in order to co-create effective learning opportunities. They've demonstrated the impact their programs have on ever-important standardized test scores, but of equal interest to us is the way in which they've created a sustainable environment for learning that's unbounded by traditional systems but interfaces successfully with them.
New Flashpoint Ads Start Shortly
Flashpoint Ads begin next week and will appear in a variety of magazines and other media. This is the new ad (addressed to parents) for Chicago Magazine.
This is the new ad for CS Magazine introducing the Academy.
This is the new ad for CS Magazine introducing the Academy.
A Return Visit to Experiencia from Marc Schulman
We were pleased that Marc Schulman from Eli's took the time to visit with an excited group of students who were working that very day in the Eli's Snack Shop at Exchange City. Marc has been a great supporter of Experiencia from the beginning and also joined us later in the day for the CEOs for Cities panel.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
New York Times Article - Video Games in Business
THIS IS, OF COURSE, ONE OF THE MAIN THINGS THAT WE TELL PARENTS ABOUT THE EXTENSIVE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR THEIR KIDS COMING OUT OF FLASHPOINT ACADEMY
May 20, 2007
Prototype
Why Work Is Looking More Like a Video Game
By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
WORK is not play. But maybe it should be.
In fact, Paul Johnston has remade his company on the idea that business software will work better if it feels like a game. Mr. Johnston is not some awkward adolescent, but the polished president and chief executive of Entellium, which makes software for customer relationship management. Businesses spend billions of dollars on such software to try to track their sales staff, their marketers, their customer service — anything that connects them with customers. Unfortunately, most of the software is the business equivalent of calorie counting. No one does it gladly. Worse, the software has a Big Brother aspect to it.
“C.R.M. software is designed to let your manager peek at you,” Mr. Johnston says. He notes that even at Entellium, based in Seattle, he has had trouble getting his sales staff to update their data consistently. Reasoning that sales people are wildly competitive, he thought that they would respond to a program that showed where they stood against their goals — or their peers’. Hence, Rave, which Entellium introduced in April.
Rave adapts a variety of gaming techniques. For instance, you can build a dossier of your clients and sales prospects that includes photographs and lists of their likes, dislikes and buying interests, much like the character descriptions in many video games. Prospects are given ratings, not by how new they are — common in C.R.M. programs — but by how likely they are to buy something. All prospects are also tracked on a timeline, another gamelike feature.
Rave isn’t exactly the business version of Madden N.F.L., at least not yet. But Craig K. Hall, president of Logos Marketing Inc., a graphics company in Albany, said it reminded him of video games he has played, like the Legend of Zelda. Mr. Hall, 31, says he likes the way Rave pops up information, including news that will matter to clients. He also said its use of sales stages and checklists, also borrowed from the way games progress through levels, had helped him rethink the way his company operates. “They’ve done a good job of it,” he said.
Most people under 35 grew up playing video games. Many still do — the average age of gamers is over 30 — and video games have become a mainstream form of entertainment. While “twitch” games like Doom or Quake, in which a player has to react quickly, remain popular, there are now huge games run in online virtual worlds. World of Warcraft, for instance, has millions of players around the world who must organize themselves into teams to accomplish complex tasks. In some online games like EVE, these teams are actually called companies, and the politics involved would impress the most cutthroat executive.
The emergence of these complex role-playing games inspired the formation of Seriosity, which sells e-mail software. A Stanford communications professor, Byron Reeves, was a co-founder of the company in 2004, and, two years later, received $6 million from Alloy Ventures. Mr. Reeves and an Alloy partner, J. Leighton Read, met poolside, and while their daughters practiced their swimming, they discussed whether work would not be better if it were more like a video game.
Early this year, Seriosity released a beta version of an e-mail add-on called Attent, which is being tested by about a dozen companies, some in the Fortune 500. Attent takes the idea of a virtual currency, common in online games as well as online worlds like Second Life, and applies it to corporate e-mail. Employees assign one another “Serios,” the currency in Attent, for ideas, completing tasks and so on, and use them to help distinguish their e-mail from normal corporate spam. Over time, Attent users can gain not only Serios but also badges of excellence for, say, linking engineering and marketing, much as public skills rankings are widely used in online multiplayer games. Others in the company can see the badges, and presumably tap those people for help when they need it.
Right now, Attent doesn’t look much like a video game, and it will probably never have a dramatic, colorful three-dimensional appearance. But Mr. Reeves noted that virtual economies were key to most online games, and that Attent would help companies assign value to the collaborative aspects of work. “Right now, we barter our attention and our willingness to attend a meeting, and we barter feedback and credit in collaborative groups, and it’s just not very efficient,” he said.
Executives may find that software is not the most valuable thing they can get from video gaming. Jane McGonigal, an affiliate researcher and resident game designer at the Institute for the Future, said she had done research that showed the qualitative advantages companies gain when they hire gamers, including an enhanced ability to innovate rapidly and collaborate effectively, even across far-flung regions.
“Skills you develop in game worlds solve real-world problems,” Ms. McGonigal said, adding that 70 corporate executives came to a recent institute gaming event.
Gamers also tend to be more loyal to their companies and more likely to want to work with others than nongamers, according to research by John C. Beck, a management consultant who runs the North Star Leadership Group, and Mitchell Wade, chief executive of Choice Humanitarian, a nonprofit group that seeks to end poverty in the developing world. Mr. Beck and Mr. Wade were co-authors of the book “Got Game.” (The book is out in paperback under the title “The Kids Are Alright.”) Mr. Beck says children who grow up playing video games typically have to figure the games out for themselves, because adults don’t know how to play.
That’s quite unlike, say, children who play baseball, where the adults tell them what to do. One downside to managing the gaming generation is that it associates “bosses” with level bosses, the obstacle in their way to the next level in a game. (Mr. Beck tells managers to avoid this by becoming a strategy guide to their charges, something any gamer can appreciate.)
Mr. Beck says he sees a gaming generation gap in companies, but that he expects it to disappear in 10 years or so, as the gamers move up in management. In fact, he says, in the last three years, his reception from chief executives has gone from “Huh? That’s crazy” to “Tell me more.”
OF course, there’s already plenty of gaming going on in business (and not just gaming the system). Companies use simulation tools for product development and build games for marketing products, as well as for corporate training or education. Cold Stone Creamery, for instance, has used video games built by Persuasive Games to train ice cream servers and Cisco Systems used Persuasive’s games for its engineers. Corporate executives routinely develop skills through role-playing and other strategy games, said Ben Sawyer, co-director of the Serious Games Initiative and head of Digitalmill Inc., a consultant group based in Portland, Me., that works with businesses to carry out gaming strategies.
Mr. Sawyer said that companies were beginning to see that they could use video games to develop skills and spread corporate culture through their ranks, even to help individual employees understand how they could contribute to the overall success of the company. He said that companies struggle to manage tens of thousands of people, of varying experience and skill levels, who are often dispersed around the globe. But the developers of games like World of Warcraft have created exactly that kind of environment.
Nobody knows just how much gaming will ultimately affect business. But it’s clear that the game is changing.
Michael Fitzgerald is a Boston-area writer on business, technology and culture. E-mail: mfitz@nytimes.com.
May 20, 2007
Prototype
Why Work Is Looking More Like a Video Game
By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
WORK is not play. But maybe it should be.
In fact, Paul Johnston has remade his company on the idea that business software will work better if it feels like a game. Mr. Johnston is not some awkward adolescent, but the polished president and chief executive of Entellium, which makes software for customer relationship management. Businesses spend billions of dollars on such software to try to track their sales staff, their marketers, their customer service — anything that connects them with customers. Unfortunately, most of the software is the business equivalent of calorie counting. No one does it gladly. Worse, the software has a Big Brother aspect to it.
“C.R.M. software is designed to let your manager peek at you,” Mr. Johnston says. He notes that even at Entellium, based in Seattle, he has had trouble getting his sales staff to update their data consistently. Reasoning that sales people are wildly competitive, he thought that they would respond to a program that showed where they stood against their goals — or their peers’. Hence, Rave, which Entellium introduced in April.
Rave adapts a variety of gaming techniques. For instance, you can build a dossier of your clients and sales prospects that includes photographs and lists of their likes, dislikes and buying interests, much like the character descriptions in many video games. Prospects are given ratings, not by how new they are — common in C.R.M. programs — but by how likely they are to buy something. All prospects are also tracked on a timeline, another gamelike feature.
Rave isn’t exactly the business version of Madden N.F.L., at least not yet. But Craig K. Hall, president of Logos Marketing Inc., a graphics company in Albany, said it reminded him of video games he has played, like the Legend of Zelda. Mr. Hall, 31, says he likes the way Rave pops up information, including news that will matter to clients. He also said its use of sales stages and checklists, also borrowed from the way games progress through levels, had helped him rethink the way his company operates. “They’ve done a good job of it,” he said.
Most people under 35 grew up playing video games. Many still do — the average age of gamers is over 30 — and video games have become a mainstream form of entertainment. While “twitch” games like Doom or Quake, in which a player has to react quickly, remain popular, there are now huge games run in online virtual worlds. World of Warcraft, for instance, has millions of players around the world who must organize themselves into teams to accomplish complex tasks. In some online games like EVE, these teams are actually called companies, and the politics involved would impress the most cutthroat executive.
The emergence of these complex role-playing games inspired the formation of Seriosity, which sells e-mail software. A Stanford communications professor, Byron Reeves, was a co-founder of the company in 2004, and, two years later, received $6 million from Alloy Ventures. Mr. Reeves and an Alloy partner, J. Leighton Read, met poolside, and while their daughters practiced their swimming, they discussed whether work would not be better if it were more like a video game.
Early this year, Seriosity released a beta version of an e-mail add-on called Attent, which is being tested by about a dozen companies, some in the Fortune 500. Attent takes the idea of a virtual currency, common in online games as well as online worlds like Second Life, and applies it to corporate e-mail. Employees assign one another “Serios,” the currency in Attent, for ideas, completing tasks and so on, and use them to help distinguish their e-mail from normal corporate spam. Over time, Attent users can gain not only Serios but also badges of excellence for, say, linking engineering and marketing, much as public skills rankings are widely used in online multiplayer games. Others in the company can see the badges, and presumably tap those people for help when they need it.
Right now, Attent doesn’t look much like a video game, and it will probably never have a dramatic, colorful three-dimensional appearance. But Mr. Reeves noted that virtual economies were key to most online games, and that Attent would help companies assign value to the collaborative aspects of work. “Right now, we barter our attention and our willingness to attend a meeting, and we barter feedback and credit in collaborative groups, and it’s just not very efficient,” he said.
Executives may find that software is not the most valuable thing they can get from video gaming. Jane McGonigal, an affiliate researcher and resident game designer at the Institute for the Future, said she had done research that showed the qualitative advantages companies gain when they hire gamers, including an enhanced ability to innovate rapidly and collaborate effectively, even across far-flung regions.
“Skills you develop in game worlds solve real-world problems,” Ms. McGonigal said, adding that 70 corporate executives came to a recent institute gaming event.
Gamers also tend to be more loyal to their companies and more likely to want to work with others than nongamers, according to research by John C. Beck, a management consultant who runs the North Star Leadership Group, and Mitchell Wade, chief executive of Choice Humanitarian, a nonprofit group that seeks to end poverty in the developing world. Mr. Beck and Mr. Wade were co-authors of the book “Got Game.” (The book is out in paperback under the title “The Kids Are Alright.”) Mr. Beck says children who grow up playing video games typically have to figure the games out for themselves, because adults don’t know how to play.
That’s quite unlike, say, children who play baseball, where the adults tell them what to do. One downside to managing the gaming generation is that it associates “bosses” with level bosses, the obstacle in their way to the next level in a game. (Mr. Beck tells managers to avoid this by becoming a strategy guide to their charges, something any gamer can appreciate.)
Mr. Beck says he sees a gaming generation gap in companies, but that he expects it to disappear in 10 years or so, as the gamers move up in management. In fact, he says, in the last three years, his reception from chief executives has gone from “Huh? That’s crazy” to “Tell me more.”
OF course, there’s already plenty of gaming going on in business (and not just gaming the system). Companies use simulation tools for product development and build games for marketing products, as well as for corporate training or education. Cold Stone Creamery, for instance, has used video games built by Persuasive Games to train ice cream servers and Cisco Systems used Persuasive’s games for its engineers. Corporate executives routinely develop skills through role-playing and other strategy games, said Ben Sawyer, co-director of the Serious Games Initiative and head of Digitalmill Inc., a consultant group based in Portland, Me., that works with businesses to carry out gaming strategies.
Mr. Sawyer said that companies were beginning to see that they could use video games to develop skills and spread corporate culture through their ranks, even to help individual employees understand how they could contribute to the overall success of the company. He said that companies struggle to manage tens of thousands of people, of varying experience and skill levels, who are often dispersed around the globe. But the developers of games like World of Warcraft have created exactly that kind of environment.
Nobody knows just how much gaming will ultimately affect business. But it’s clear that the game is changing.
Michael Fitzgerald is a Boston-area writer on business, technology and culture. E-mail: mfitz@nytimes.com.
Flashpoint Academy at HD EXPO - June 7th - Navy Pier
June 7 Panels
MAIN THEATER - ROOM #203
2:00PM - 3:00 PM
A CONVERSATION WITH STEVEN POSTER, ASC
Steven Poster, ASC, newly elected President of the International Cinematographers Guild, talks about what's in store for cinematographers and cinematography. Cinematographers are the keeper of the vision, but they are also increasingly employing and experimenting with rapidly changing technologies and tools. Poster will look at the collision of Creativity and Technology as the future unfolds.
3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
AICP.next ROUNDTABLE
AICP/Midwest President Don McNeill, (Digital Kitchen) gathers production industry leaders and visionaries in a lively discussion of the rapidly changing environment and evolving horizons of creativity and production. How is our work affected by platforms, formats and media that are empowering consumers revolutionizing the production industry? What's next?
EXHIBIT HALL FOYER
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
SPEED DATING WITH INDUSTRY EXPERTS
Sponsored by Flashpoint Academy
This is a unique industry opportunity to ask a technology/entertainment industry expert your burning questions, get insider tips, how-to and knowledge of future trends. The selected participants will be chosen by lottery through both online and day of requests made at registration. Each participant receives 5 minutes with an expert at which time a bell is rung and participant moves to next expert. There will be follow up time with the experts once the rotation is completed. LOTTERY CLOSES MAY 20. Please check the Speed Dating box on the registration form to be entered in the lottery. Winners will be notified via email.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Blog Review of Orly Cogan Show
Thursday, May 17, 2007
A girlie's nudes: Orly Cogan at Projects
Post by libby
Orly Cogan, Cupcake Girl, 55 x 53 inches, ebroidery applique and paint on vintage print tablecloth
The embroidered nudes of Orly Cogan have it both ways. They are so full of exuberant self-posession of the artist's own body in circumstances that are clearly of this moment in time (with cellphones, hair dryers, current clothing styles, etc.) that they are hip. But they refer copiously to the history--art history and archetypal fairy tale rolees--of women objectified. So Cogan gets to have her cupcake and eat it, too--a little titilation rising from a feminist perspective.
I had a lot of favorites in her exhibit, . . . and don't forget to rescue the princess!, at Projects Gallery. I like the way the embroidery and the old fabric prints work together and in competition with each other (see the first and last images in this post, Cupcake Girl on top and Surveying Suitors, last). It's a nice metaphor for the present and the past working to create something new.
Orly Cogan, Noah's Playpen, 42 x 54 wide, embroidery and applique
But I also like the obvious art historical harem references in Noah's Playpen. Projects Gallery's Helen Meyrick mentioned that Cogan's model is herself, by in large, the who's who and what's the point is not exactly pinned down in this piece, which makes me like the portrait of the ladies in the Noah's harem all the more.
Coffee Break, 26 x 17 " hand-stitched embroidery and paint on vintage linen, by Orly Cogan
Cogan has a wicked sense of humor, as in the nude seated on a vacuum, pausing for a coffee--the image embroidered on a linen tea towel. The tea towel suggests all those women of the past in the kitchen. Not our Orly. The nipples and the towel stripes match in bold red, and the Electrolux is one sexy machine. As is so often the case, Cogan is on top.
Surveying Suitors, by Orly Cogan, 30 x 24 inches; handstitched embroidery on printed raw silk
A number of pieces rewrite fairy tales. The frog princes in Surveying Suitors, however, are less rewritten than a statement about who's in charge. For all her storybook source material, Cogan is not so much an illustrator but a chronicler of a modern woman who knows how to play the game and not go all serious on us. She clearly is enjoying the position she's in.
Posted by libby at 11:58 AM
A girlie's nudes: Orly Cogan at Projects
Post by libby
Orly Cogan, Cupcake Girl, 55 x 53 inches, ebroidery applique and paint on vintage print tablecloth
The embroidered nudes of Orly Cogan have it both ways. They are so full of exuberant self-posession of the artist's own body in circumstances that are clearly of this moment in time (with cellphones, hair dryers, current clothing styles, etc.) that they are hip. But they refer copiously to the history--art history and archetypal fairy tale rolees--of women objectified. So Cogan gets to have her cupcake and eat it, too--a little titilation rising from a feminist perspective.
I had a lot of favorites in her exhibit, . . . and don't forget to rescue the princess!, at Projects Gallery. I like the way the embroidery and the old fabric prints work together and in competition with each other (see the first and last images in this post, Cupcake Girl on top and Surveying Suitors, last). It's a nice metaphor for the present and the past working to create something new.
Orly Cogan, Noah's Playpen, 42 x 54 wide, embroidery and applique
But I also like the obvious art historical harem references in Noah's Playpen. Projects Gallery's Helen Meyrick mentioned that Cogan's model is herself, by in large, the who's who and what's the point is not exactly pinned down in this piece, which makes me like the portrait of the ladies in the Noah's harem all the more.
Coffee Break, 26 x 17 " hand-stitched embroidery and paint on vintage linen, by Orly Cogan
Cogan has a wicked sense of humor, as in the nude seated on a vacuum, pausing for a coffee--the image embroidered on a linen tea towel. The tea towel suggests all those women of the past in the kitchen. Not our Orly. The nipples and the towel stripes match in bold red, and the Electrolux is one sexy machine. As is so often the case, Cogan is on top.
Surveying Suitors, by Orly Cogan, 30 x 24 inches; handstitched embroidery on printed raw silk
A number of pieces rewrite fairy tales. The frog princes in Surveying Suitors, however, are less rewritten than a statement about who's in charge. For all her storybook source material, Cogan is not so much an illustrator but a chronicler of a modern woman who knows how to play the game and not go all serious on us. She clearly is enjoying the position she's in.
Posted by libby at 11:58 AM
Flashpoint Academy Open House and Construction Update
We used a Trolley for today's Open House because it was a great way to handle a larger crowd and make the trip to the studio in one shot.
Construction continues with almost all of both floors fully framed out and work starting on HVAC and electrical. Here's a few update shots:
Perishable Art
Perishable Art: Investing
In Works That May Not Last
Collectors Struggle to Preserve, Insure Contemporary Pieces;
Replacing the Dead Shark
By M.P. MCQUEEN
May 16, 2007; Page D1
In the white-hot market for contemporary art, a delicate issue is emerging: How do collectors preserve and insure works that may be short-lived -- often by design?
Some of the priciest contemporary works -- such as Damien Hirst's dead shark in a tank and Jeff Koons's 40-foot-high topiary puppy -- are made from perishable or delicate materials whose deterioration isn't covered by insurers. Other works, including pieces by Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko, use synthetic paints that may not hold up over time and aren't easily restored; video art uses electronic and digital media that may stop working. Some installation pieces are even meant to disappear over time.
Aging and wear affect all art, but the ephemeral nature of some contemporary art has become more problematic as values have soared. Prices of contemporary and postwar art shot up 44% in 2006 and 19% annually over the past five years, while art prices overall rose nearly 12% a year from 2001 to 2006, according to Artasanasset.com, a Web site founded by the creators of the Mei/Moses Fine Art Index.
This week's auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York are expected to break records set last year for postwar and contemporary art with more than $1 billion in sales. Among the items up for grabs this week is Andy Warhol's 1963 "Green Car Crash," made of synthetic polymer and acrylic on linen, which has a presale estimate of $25 million to $35 million. A Damien Hirst painting in household paint on canvas with dead butterflies on it, "Untitled (Birthday Card Suite)," from 1999, is expected to sell for about half a million dollars.
But even as prices for such pieces vie with those for traditional oil paintings and sculptures, many of their materials are proving significantly less durable, breaking down in a matter of years rather than decades. "The materials they're made with are more delicate and more fragile and more susceptible to loss," says Katja Zigerlig, art specialist for American International Group Inc.
Dead animals, insects and hair decompose. Acrylic paints dry out and flake. The newspaper used in some works by Robert Rauschenberg has faded. If damaged, some newer paintings can be harder to restore than some Old Masters from the 1600s, experts say, because synthetic paints are hard to match. Some complex works may even require the replacement of parts -- not normally an option in traditional fine art -- and many will require special care if they're to preserve their value.
As he browsed the auction preview at Christie's on Saturday, Fred Brandt, 57, a prominent dermatologist in Miami and New York, said he had wondered whether the butterflies in a Damien Hirst painting he was considering might be a problem. Dr. Brandt said he asked his advisers about the butterflies' possibly disintegrating, but was told not to worry. Still, he added, "I will check out every butterfly and look at them before buying."
A similar Hirst recently was considered a total loss because butterfly wings on it were damaged in moving. While moving damage was covered, the wings couldn't be replaced because they came from a rare butterfly species, one insurer said.
Protecting such pieces' value poses unique problems for collectors. Insurance policies almost always rule out insuring art objects for "inherent vice," which includes natural deterioration such as rot and mold, or mechanical wear and tear. Vermin and insect damage, which affect textiles and objects made from organic materials, are also excluded from coverage. Insurance policies cover only damage from unexpected events like fire, theft and accidents.
Because of the difficulty of restoring some fragile contemporary artworks, some art insurers are charging as much as double the premium they would charge for more durable pieces such as oil paintings. Policies also may stipulate that collectors take painstaking conservation efforts, such as controlling light and temperature in the environment, as a condition of providing coverage. If the conditions aren't met, claims won't be paid.
While raising the personal-contents limit on one's homeowner policy or buying a personal-articles floater might be good enough for insuring ordinary collectibles, it isn't sufficient for major works of contemporary art, because of their complexity. Experts advise getting coverage from an insurer specializing in art.
Contemporary art also requires frequent reappraisals in this fast-moving market to avoid being underinsured. Also, buyers of some of the more avant-garde video, computer and multimedia installations should consider obtaining a document signed by the artist that states which elements of the artwork can be replaced or repaired without compromising the artist's intent or the piece's integrity, art scholars and insurance experts say.
Repairing and restoring contemporary art can pose novel problems. One example is the 1991 installation piece by Damien Hirst "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," a 14-foot tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde that is considered the seminal work of the Young British Artists movement. Purchased in 2005 by hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen of Greenwich, Conn., from the collection of British advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi for a reported $8 million, the dead shark was rotting from the inside out, causing it to take on a withered appearance and clouding the fluid in the tank.
Last year, Mr. Hirst replaced the original shark with another one at his workshop in England -- at Mr. Cohen's expense, a cost well in excess of $100,000, Mr. Cohen's spokesman confirmed. Though the centerpiece of the work has changed, it hasn't been regarded as damaged or diminished in value, though the issue is open to question among art historians.
A number of the other art works currently provoking bidding wars among hedge-fund billionaires and young collectors are vulnerable. The ephemeral media used in such artworks are often part of the artist's message of life's evanescence or -- strikingly, in view of their current values -- represent a rejection of conventional measures of aesthetic and commercial value.
In some conceptual art, breakdown is the point. For instance, the late Félix González-Torres illustrated the subject of loss and disintegration with a series of works, one a pile of 175 pounds of individually wrapped multicolored candies representing his lover's body wasting away from AIDS. The pile diminishes as viewers help themselves to the candy. Ownership of such a work usually consists of a license to re-create it.
Some types of postwar art are so new that they present unprecedented technological issues. Video and computer installation artworks, such as those pioneered by the artist Nam June Paik, who died in January 2006, use electronic components such as television monitors that wear out, or recording media whose formats become obsolete, like audio and videotape and computer files.
Other post-World War II objects are made of plastic, vinyl and acrylic, which came into use in the mid-20th century and aren't proving as durable as initially thought. For instance, some plastic Eames chairs have begun to break down gradually, and some acrylic paintings by the artist Mark Rothko are fading, insurers say.
The fragility of these types of art poses big risks for fine arts insurers because art policies are among the broadest of all policies, covering just about all the standard risks like fire and theft and some perils that are normally excluded from ordinary homeowner policies, such as earthquake and flood. (Some insurers may make exceptions for catastrophic risks in some states.) Only terrorism, war, inherent vice, intentional damage and damage inflicted during repairs are usually excluded from fine-arts insurance policies sold by AIG, AXA SA, Chubb Corp., Hiscox Ltd., and Fireman's Fund Insurance Co., a division of Allianz SE, among others.
Fine-arts policies also often contain a provision for "loss of value" that occurs when a piece cannot be completely restored to pristine condition after a covered claim. If a $2 million painting is worth just $1.5 million after a tear in the canvas, the insurer pays for the repair plus the $500,000 difference in price. Some fine-arts policies also cover up to 150% of the insured value to allow for appreciation.
Because art insurers are on the hook for so many types of losses, the difficulty of restoring fragile contemporary art is of growing concern to them. "If you damage an oil painting, it is relatively easy to mix up some oil paint and make a repair that the eye cannot really see, but with the acrylic paints, you can match the surface color but you cannot get it to match the texture," said Charles Dupplin, head of the art and private-client division at Hiscox Group, a large European art insurer that recently started writing policies on the East Coast.
Another area where restoration has posed new problems is video and computer art. Whether or not a piece of installation art can be restored without diminishing its value often hinges on whether one element, such as a VCR, can be replaced with a newer component, such as a DVD player, without changing the artist's intent or the integrity of the work as a whole. At Christie's, for instance, a 1985 video installation by Bruce Nauman, "Good Boy, Bad Boy," uses two VCRs and two videotapes.
Payce Louis, chief underwriting officer at AXA Art, says a consensus has emerged among insurers that certain video and computer art cannot get the broad all-risk coverage traditionally given to fine-art collections. "You cannot insure video art like a Picasso," Mr. Louis said. "We have all decided the VCR is not a part of the art itself and can't increase in value. The DVD and VCR are just players and insurable for its replacement cost only."
In instances where artists are still living, sometimes the creator has been able to authorize restorations, or even has made them himself, as with Mr. Hirst's shark. But the issue becomes much more complicated and controversial when the artist has died.
For that reason, John Ippolito, professor of art at the University of Maine at Orono, suggests that buyers of contemporary installation and video art obtain a signed document from the artist spelling out his or her intentions with respect to restoration. "A questionnaire that creates a last will and testament of the artist is the only way we can decide whether a given component is essential to the re-creation of the work," he said.
Outside the world of fine art, some newly popular collectibles pose similar quandaries. For instance, Hollywood ephemera, including costumes, sets and props belonging to famous films and film stars, have been soaring in value recently. James Comisar, of Beverly Hills, Calif., owner of the largest archive of original television artifacts, has insured the Cowardly Lion costume from 1939's classic film, "The Wizard of Oz," for $1 million or more with AXA.
Dirt, perspiration and make-up stains can enhance the desirability and authenticity of costumes and props, doubling their price, Mr. Comisar said. But those very same stains can help destroy them eventually, he said.
"People love Marilyn Monroe's lipstick stain or fake studio blood and bullet holes in a John Wayne costume. It makes it a lot more personal and a lot more valuable," he said. "But if you come back as a collector and say the perspiration stain on Lily Munster's dress is now a giant hole and file a claim, they will say absolutely not. They don't insure for that type of deterioration." Mr. Comisar stores his items in a special temperature, humidity and light-controlled warehouse to prevent that kind of wear and tear.
Collectors who want to acquire avant-garde art and treasures should consult with experts on conservation and insurance in advance. Robert Manley, a senior vice president of Christie's New York, also recommends working with artists who have strong gallery representation because of the greater responsibility involved in taking care of installations and other unorthodox works. "For installations and technological things, they have to be one part scientist and one part media expert," he said.
Write to M.P. McQueen at mp.mcqueen@wsj.com1
In Works That May Not Last
Collectors Struggle to Preserve, Insure Contemporary Pieces;
Replacing the Dead Shark
By M.P. MCQUEEN
May 16, 2007; Page D1
In the white-hot market for contemporary art, a delicate issue is emerging: How do collectors preserve and insure works that may be short-lived -- often by design?
Some of the priciest contemporary works -- such as Damien Hirst's dead shark in a tank and Jeff Koons's 40-foot-high topiary puppy -- are made from perishable or delicate materials whose deterioration isn't covered by insurers. Other works, including pieces by Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko, use synthetic paints that may not hold up over time and aren't easily restored; video art uses electronic and digital media that may stop working. Some installation pieces are even meant to disappear over time.
Aging and wear affect all art, but the ephemeral nature of some contemporary art has become more problematic as values have soared. Prices of contemporary and postwar art shot up 44% in 2006 and 19% annually over the past five years, while art prices overall rose nearly 12% a year from 2001 to 2006, according to Artasanasset.com, a Web site founded by the creators of the Mei/Moses Fine Art Index.
This week's auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York are expected to break records set last year for postwar and contemporary art with more than $1 billion in sales. Among the items up for grabs this week is Andy Warhol's 1963 "Green Car Crash," made of synthetic polymer and acrylic on linen, which has a presale estimate of $25 million to $35 million. A Damien Hirst painting in household paint on canvas with dead butterflies on it, "Untitled (Birthday Card Suite)," from 1999, is expected to sell for about half a million dollars.
But even as prices for such pieces vie with those for traditional oil paintings and sculptures, many of their materials are proving significantly less durable, breaking down in a matter of years rather than decades. "The materials they're made with are more delicate and more fragile and more susceptible to loss," says Katja Zigerlig, art specialist for American International Group Inc.
Dead animals, insects and hair decompose. Acrylic paints dry out and flake. The newspaper used in some works by Robert Rauschenberg has faded. If damaged, some newer paintings can be harder to restore than some Old Masters from the 1600s, experts say, because synthetic paints are hard to match. Some complex works may even require the replacement of parts -- not normally an option in traditional fine art -- and many will require special care if they're to preserve their value.
As he browsed the auction preview at Christie's on Saturday, Fred Brandt, 57, a prominent dermatologist in Miami and New York, said he had wondered whether the butterflies in a Damien Hirst painting he was considering might be a problem. Dr. Brandt said he asked his advisers about the butterflies' possibly disintegrating, but was told not to worry. Still, he added, "I will check out every butterfly and look at them before buying."
A similar Hirst recently was considered a total loss because butterfly wings on it were damaged in moving. While moving damage was covered, the wings couldn't be replaced because they came from a rare butterfly species, one insurer said.
Protecting such pieces' value poses unique problems for collectors. Insurance policies almost always rule out insuring art objects for "inherent vice," which includes natural deterioration such as rot and mold, or mechanical wear and tear. Vermin and insect damage, which affect textiles and objects made from organic materials, are also excluded from coverage. Insurance policies cover only damage from unexpected events like fire, theft and accidents.
Because of the difficulty of restoring some fragile contemporary artworks, some art insurers are charging as much as double the premium they would charge for more durable pieces such as oil paintings. Policies also may stipulate that collectors take painstaking conservation efforts, such as controlling light and temperature in the environment, as a condition of providing coverage. If the conditions aren't met, claims won't be paid.
While raising the personal-contents limit on one's homeowner policy or buying a personal-articles floater might be good enough for insuring ordinary collectibles, it isn't sufficient for major works of contemporary art, because of their complexity. Experts advise getting coverage from an insurer specializing in art.
Contemporary art also requires frequent reappraisals in this fast-moving market to avoid being underinsured. Also, buyers of some of the more avant-garde video, computer and multimedia installations should consider obtaining a document signed by the artist that states which elements of the artwork can be replaced or repaired without compromising the artist's intent or the piece's integrity, art scholars and insurance experts say.
Repairing and restoring contemporary art can pose novel problems. One example is the 1991 installation piece by Damien Hirst "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," a 14-foot tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde that is considered the seminal work of the Young British Artists movement. Purchased in 2005 by hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen of Greenwich, Conn., from the collection of British advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi for a reported $8 million, the dead shark was rotting from the inside out, causing it to take on a withered appearance and clouding the fluid in the tank.
Last year, Mr. Hirst replaced the original shark with another one at his workshop in England -- at Mr. Cohen's expense, a cost well in excess of $100,000, Mr. Cohen's spokesman confirmed. Though the centerpiece of the work has changed, it hasn't been regarded as damaged or diminished in value, though the issue is open to question among art historians.
A number of the other art works currently provoking bidding wars among hedge-fund billionaires and young collectors are vulnerable. The ephemeral media used in such artworks are often part of the artist's message of life's evanescence or -- strikingly, in view of their current values -- represent a rejection of conventional measures of aesthetic and commercial value.
In some conceptual art, breakdown is the point. For instance, the late Félix González-Torres illustrated the subject of loss and disintegration with a series of works, one a pile of 175 pounds of individually wrapped multicolored candies representing his lover's body wasting away from AIDS. The pile diminishes as viewers help themselves to the candy. Ownership of such a work usually consists of a license to re-create it.
Some types of postwar art are so new that they present unprecedented technological issues. Video and computer installation artworks, such as those pioneered by the artist Nam June Paik, who died in January 2006, use electronic components such as television monitors that wear out, or recording media whose formats become obsolete, like audio and videotape and computer files.
Other post-World War II objects are made of plastic, vinyl and acrylic, which came into use in the mid-20th century and aren't proving as durable as initially thought. For instance, some plastic Eames chairs have begun to break down gradually, and some acrylic paintings by the artist Mark Rothko are fading, insurers say.
The fragility of these types of art poses big risks for fine arts insurers because art policies are among the broadest of all policies, covering just about all the standard risks like fire and theft and some perils that are normally excluded from ordinary homeowner policies, such as earthquake and flood. (Some insurers may make exceptions for catastrophic risks in some states.) Only terrorism, war, inherent vice, intentional damage and damage inflicted during repairs are usually excluded from fine-arts insurance policies sold by AIG, AXA SA, Chubb Corp., Hiscox Ltd., and Fireman's Fund Insurance Co., a division of Allianz SE, among others.
Fine-arts policies also often contain a provision for "loss of value" that occurs when a piece cannot be completely restored to pristine condition after a covered claim. If a $2 million painting is worth just $1.5 million after a tear in the canvas, the insurer pays for the repair plus the $500,000 difference in price. Some fine-arts policies also cover up to 150% of the insured value to allow for appreciation.
Because art insurers are on the hook for so many types of losses, the difficulty of restoring fragile contemporary art is of growing concern to them. "If you damage an oil painting, it is relatively easy to mix up some oil paint and make a repair that the eye cannot really see, but with the acrylic paints, you can match the surface color but you cannot get it to match the texture," said Charles Dupplin, head of the art and private-client division at Hiscox Group, a large European art insurer that recently started writing policies on the East Coast.
Another area where restoration has posed new problems is video and computer art. Whether or not a piece of installation art can be restored without diminishing its value often hinges on whether one element, such as a VCR, can be replaced with a newer component, such as a DVD player, without changing the artist's intent or the integrity of the work as a whole. At Christie's, for instance, a 1985 video installation by Bruce Nauman, "Good Boy, Bad Boy," uses two VCRs and two videotapes.
Payce Louis, chief underwriting officer at AXA Art, says a consensus has emerged among insurers that certain video and computer art cannot get the broad all-risk coverage traditionally given to fine-art collections. "You cannot insure video art like a Picasso," Mr. Louis said. "We have all decided the VCR is not a part of the art itself and can't increase in value. The DVD and VCR are just players and insurable for its replacement cost only."
In instances where artists are still living, sometimes the creator has been able to authorize restorations, or even has made them himself, as with Mr. Hirst's shark. But the issue becomes much more complicated and controversial when the artist has died.
For that reason, John Ippolito, professor of art at the University of Maine at Orono, suggests that buyers of contemporary installation and video art obtain a signed document from the artist spelling out his or her intentions with respect to restoration. "A questionnaire that creates a last will and testament of the artist is the only way we can decide whether a given component is essential to the re-creation of the work," he said.
Outside the world of fine art, some newly popular collectibles pose similar quandaries. For instance, Hollywood ephemera, including costumes, sets and props belonging to famous films and film stars, have been soaring in value recently. James Comisar, of Beverly Hills, Calif., owner of the largest archive of original television artifacts, has insured the Cowardly Lion costume from 1939's classic film, "The Wizard of Oz," for $1 million or more with AXA.
Dirt, perspiration and make-up stains can enhance the desirability and authenticity of costumes and props, doubling their price, Mr. Comisar said. But those very same stains can help destroy them eventually, he said.
"People love Marilyn Monroe's lipstick stain or fake studio blood and bullet holes in a John Wayne costume. It makes it a lot more personal and a lot more valuable," he said. "But if you come back as a collector and say the perspiration stain on Lily Munster's dress is now a giant hole and file a claim, they will say absolutely not. They don't insure for that type of deterioration." Mr. Comisar stores his items in a special temperature, humidity and light-controlled warehouse to prevent that kind of wear and tear.
Collectors who want to acquire avant-garde art and treasures should consult with experts on conservation and insurance in advance. Robert Manley, a senior vice president of Christie's New York, also recommends working with artists who have strong gallery representation because of the greater responsibility involved in taking care of installations and other unorthodox works. "For installations and technological things, they have to be one part scientist and one part media expert," he said.
Write to M.P. McQueen at mp.mcqueen@wsj.com1
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Joe Pine II Visits Experiencia
Joe Pine, noted co-author of The Experience Economy, spent a couple of hours with the Experiencia team in Chicago recently. Since he's about 9 feet tall, he was a good sport, not only in signing a few copies of his book, but in helping us fit him into the frame.
Elaine, Joe and HAT
Christina, Joe and Liz
Elaine, Joe and HAT
Christina, Joe and Liz
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