A potted plant at a cafe near Tokyo, Japan is entertaining customers by writing a regular blog about its feelings.

It is the work of a university engineer who has been studying how to communicate with plants.

He devised a sensor which he attached to the plant named “Midori-san” that measures bio-electric signals. These are converted into data by a computer next the plant and then translated into Japanese in the form of a blog.

The plant’s latest entry reads: “It was cloudy today. It was a cold day.”

This fall is probably the most busiest I have been. Despite having 11 shows and screenings in this season and travel to various places including Boca Raton and Boston giving lectures, I am working my ass off with Ben Abrams and Noah Vawter to finish the Gas Zappers online flash game. We are approaching the Beta stage and the game will debut at the end of this month at my solo show at Berkeley Arts Museum.

Please come to Gas Zappers solo show at BAM/PFA! I will be there on Oct 30 giving talk to Prof. Richard Rinehart’s class.

October 22, 2008 - February 8, 2009

Gas Zappers, by artist Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, is an interactive online art game that tackles global warming. Hung is among the contemporary artists and educators who have adopted video games as a new platform for social debate and aesthetic experience by developing “serious games.” In Gas Zappers, the idiom of the video game is exploited to challenge and illuminate the simplistic notion of quick fixes to environmental issues.

Berkeley and the Bay Area have been at the center of the cultural debate around alternative energy sources and global warming, due in no small part to developments like the $500 million joint project between UC Berkeley and British Petroleum to develop alternative biofuels. Gas Zappers furthers this discourse in a serious game that is also at times fantastical and wry.

Like much of the artist’s work, Gas Zappers is visually frenetic and colorful, referencing numerous popular and political sources. The animation style of Gas Zappers reinforces and goes beyond the game’s subject of global warming, caricaturing the exasperating and vulgar noise of the political media engine itself. In adopting the artistic strategies of photomontage, political satire, humor, and surrealism, Hung is an artistic descendent of Dadaist John Heartfield, whose photomontages lampooned Hitler and Mussolini. Ken Johnson wrote for the New York Times, “Looking at Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s art is like peeking into the fever dream of an overworked political blogger. Mr. Hung, 31, is a fierce, funny and inventive political satirist.”

Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung received a New Media Fellowship, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, to develop Gas Zappers. A video version of the work was shown in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. BAM/PFA’s exhibition, on view starting October 22 at bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/gaszappers and in the museum’s Bancroft Lobby, is the world premiere of the fully realized work, including the interactive game.

Richard Rinehart
Digital Media Director and Adjunct Curator

My work is part of the exhibition “Party Headquarters: Voting is Just the Beginning” curated by Eleanor Heartney and Larry Litt. It is shown at Pratt Manhattan Gallery (144 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011) with an opening reception on Thursday, September 25, 6 – 8 pm.

“Artworks examining diverse artists’ opinions about political media, the art of persuasion, the persuasion of art, voting attitudes, and the consequences of democracy”

Artist lists:

• CLARK CLARK(EN)
• Kyle Goen
• Cheryl Harper
• Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung
• Ligorano/Reese
• Jack McLean
• Arnold Mesches
• Dan Mills
• Tim Rollins and KOS
• Claude van Lingen
• Allan Wexler
• Yee Haw Industries/KEVIN BRADLEY

More info: http://www.partyheadquarters.org/

By Richard Black (original article)
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Levels of noise in the world’s oceans are causing serious problems for whales, dolphins and other marine mammals, a report warns.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) says undersea noise blocks animals’ communication and disrupts feeding.

Naval sonar has been implicated in the mass deaths of some cetaceans.

In some regions, the level of ocean noise is doubling each decade, and Ifaw says protective measures are failing.

“Humanity is literally drowning out marine mammals,” said Robbie Marsland, UK director of Ifaw.

“While nobody knows the precise consequences for specific animals, unless the international community takes preventive measures we are likely to discover only too late the terrible damage we’re causing.”

In its global assessment of cetacean species, released last month, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) concluded that ocean noise posed a significant threat.

Across the spectrum

Whales and dolphins use sound in ways that are clearly important to their survival, though not completely understood.

Baleen whales, such as blue and humpback whales, produce low frequency calls that can travel thousands of kilometres through water.

Dolphins and toothed whales generate higher frequency clicks used to locate prey.

Noise generated by ships’ engines and propellers, and by seismic airguns used in oil and gas exploration, produce a range of frequencies that can interfere with both these groups of species, Ifaw concludes.

Its report - Ocean Noise: Turn it down - cites research showing that the effective range of blue whales’ calls is only about one-tenth of what it was before the era of engine-driven commercial shipping.

It also notes that high-energy military sonar systems have driven the mass strandings and deaths of beaked whales.

The sonar is thought to disrupt the animals’ diving behaviour so much that they suffer a condition rather like “the bends” which human divers can contract if they surface too quickly

Pressure from conservation groups has led to restrictions on the use of sonar by the US Navy.

In some places, companies involved in oil and gas exploration limit their use of seismic airguns.

But Ifaw argues these restrictions are not enough.

The use of high-energy sonar and seismic airguns should be completely prohibited in sensitive areas, it says. National legislation, such as the UK’s Marine Bill, should comprehensively restrict the exposure of cetaceans to noise.

The UK branch of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) has sounded alarm bells recently over oil and gas exploration in the Moray Firth, home to a small population of bottlenose dolphins.

The Ifaw report is not the first to raise the threat posed by ocean noise, and it will not be the last.

The problem is that most of the activities causing the problem - commercial shipping, mineral extraction - are part and parcel of the modern, interconnected economy.

A further obstacle to legislation is that much of the noise is generated on the high seas, which are largely unregulated.

Mucho Mucho Gracias for Mr. Paul Laster from Art Asia Pacific (he is also the editor of everybody’s favorite Art Krush) wrote a ten pages spread feature article on my art works. The issues NO. 60 Sept/ Oct 2008 article chronicles every steps of my art career, summarized all the things that I have done to this date far better than my own explanation.

I am invited to participate in this exhibition marking the 30th anniversary of Edward Said’s book Orientalism. I will be there on Sept 18 for the panel discussion and opening receptions too. see ya!

Empire and Its Discontents
September 11-November 23, 2008
Tisch Gallery- Tufts University Gallery

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 18, 2008, 5:30-8:30pm

Empire and Its Discontents includes the work of an international roster of contemporary artists with ties to previously colonized regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. The exhibition explores various notions of “Empire”—Empire as a conceptual lens through which previously distinct cultural iconographies are merged or juxtaposed, often in provocative, conceptual, or humorous ways that toy with viewers’ expectations; Empire as a historical term evoking traditional art-making practices; Empire as embodied in grandiose nationalistic events re-presented to indicate collapse; Empire in the media today, approached critically through the appropriation and recombination of pop cultural and political icons. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color publication.

My works is part of this huge show “Democracy in America: The National Campaign” curated by Mr. Nato Thompson. Mine is gonna be in the CONVERGENCE CENTER AT PARK AVENUE ARMORY:

Creative Time is pleased to announce the largest public art initiative in its 34-year history, Democracy in America: The National Campaign. A multifaceted project on a national scale, Democracy in America travels across the country to take the temperature of artists’ relationships with and reactions to the historic roots and practical manifestations of the American democratic tradition. Creative Time will promote active participation and open discourse during the 2008 election season and beyond by engaging a diverse community of artists, activists, thinkers, and citizens to create spaces for dialogue, exploration, and congregation. The project includes: a 7-day exhibition at the historic landmark Park Avenue Armory, performative artist commissions from coast to coast and at the RNC and DNC, mobile projects visiting communities in Queens and Brooklyn, and a publication giving artists a platform to reflect on democracy in this country. Democracy in America: The National Campaign is curated by Nato Thompson.

SEPTEMBER 21 TO 27
12 TO 10 PM DAILY*

OPENING RECEPTION: SEPTEMBER 21, 2 TO 10 PM

643 PARK AVENUE BETWEEN 66TH AND 67TH STREETS

PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY
*Open from 2 to 10 pm on September 21 and from 12 to 6:30 pm on September 23.

EXHIBITION AND SPEECH SERIES WITH OVER 40 ARTISTS, INCLUDING:
Erick Beltrán, Center for Tactical Magic, Critical Art Ensemble and the Institute for Applied Autonomy, Annabel Daou, dBFoundation, Hasan Elahi, Feel Tank, Luca Frei, Chitra Ganesh & Mariam Ghani, Group Material, John Hawke, Sharon Hayes, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, InCUBATE, Magdalena Jitrik, Matt Keegan, Jon Kessler, Olga Koumoundouros & Rodney McMillian, Steve Lambert, Ligorano/Reese, Pia Lindman, Rachel Mason, Carlos Motta, Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere, Trevor Paglen, Cornelia Parker, Jenny Polak, Steve Powers, Greta Pratt, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Red76, Duke Riley, Martha Rosler, Dread Scott, Allison Smith, Chris Sollars, Chris Stain, Mark Tribe, United Victorian Workers, Chu Yun, and more.

After traveling across the country to glean perspectives from artists and activists on the state of democracy, Creative Time’s year-long program Democracy in America: The National Campaign culminates in the “Convergence Center”: a major exhibition, participatory project space, and meeting hall mounted in New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. The Convergence Center at Park Avenue Armory will provide an activated space to both reflect on and perform democracy and will be punctuated by speeches by leading political thinkers as well as community leaders and activists throughout the run of its program. These orations are organized by Creative Time in collaboration with The Nation Institute. As one of the largest unobstructed spaces in New York, the non-traditional setting of the Armory features interiors—such as its vast drill hall and historic period rooms—that are ideal for artists presenting multifaceted visual and performing arts productions.

Work by more than 40 artists will fill the Armory’s period rooms on the first, second, and fourth floors as well as Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Creative Time will present the four performative national public art commissions made for Democracy in America in the Convergence Center at Park Avenue Armory. Some of the projects featured include giant, silvered surveillance balloons by Jon Kessler; wearable art by dBFoundation; an installation by Critical Art Ensemble and the Institute for Applied Autonomy of the physical artifacts of the 2004 FBI investigation of Steve Kurtz; a 20-foot-tall counter-surveillance tower by Jenny Polak; a nine-foot wooden hobbyhorse sculpture by Allison Smith; and Duke Riley’s functional replica of America’s first submarine. In addition, curator Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy organized the inclusion of work by four international artists that will offer incisive viewpoints on the notion of democracy and some of its core principles: nation building, freedom of speech, and labor rights. Three participatory projects will travel to parks in Queens and Brooklyn in early September before convening at the Convergence Center.

A diverse group of political thinkers, writers, theorists, and activists will be invited to deliver speeches on various subjects—including local city politics, the war on “terror,” the art world, and cultural production. Speeches will occur throughout each day the Convergence Center is open, punctuating the activity of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall’s participatory projects and social space. As speakers approach the front of the hall, they will be invited to select a podium from an array designed by artist Paul Ramirez Jonas—from a modest soapbox to an intimidating rostrum. A 40-foot backdrop by artist Chris Stain will frame the speakers in a social realist scene rendered through the technique of hand-cut stencils. In addition, select artists from the show—including Rachel Mason, and Pia Lindman—will give special performances. Lastly, local activist organizations will be invited to distribute information from tables set up throughout the space.

Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

Read the entire article here

At the end, I am more like a “Blank Generation” kinda dude:

Do you want to spin the Axis of Evil! Do you wanna fund terrorism with WMDs? You can expand your empire through funding terrorism, wage war, nuke others, funding regime change and kidnap politicians! or you can simply be a terrorist!

Everyone starts with the best intentions. Then things start to get cramped. Then you notice your neighbour has more oil than you. Before long, war is waged, nukes are dropped, revolutions are fought and terrorists are doing your dirty work, before turning on you…

This is the War on Terror, the boardgame: A quality boardgame for 2 - 6 players, lovingly illustrated and politically correct (in a very literal sense). Playing it will bring out the nastiest, greediest, darkest, most paranoid aspects of your character. It’s all great family fun.

The goal of War on Terror, the boardgame is to liberate the world, ridding it of fear and terrorism forever. Naturally, only the biggest and strongest Empires are up to this task and so a certain amount of dominance needs to be shown. Alternatively, you can play as the terrorists, fighting for a world without empires.

Images from BoardgameGeek

I guest millions dudes of SF Bay Area is gonna masturbate on this!