In Progress: Light Artist JIM CAMPBELL's Installation of "Scattered Light" At Madison Square Park

(See the night time photos from the Scattered Light Premiere at Madison Square Park)

Last Sunday, I captured these images of workers installing a new artwork by San Francisco-based light artist , JIM CAMPBELL at Madison Square Park. The art installation will open tomorrow, October 21. The main piece, called "Scattered Light" is being installed in the park's central oval lawn and features 3-D matrix of about 2,000 LEDs hanging on an 80-feet-wide support and displaying flickering human silhouettes when seen from a certain vantage point. (information from http://www.nycgovparks.org/art and https://www.madisonsquarepark.org). From other angles, the play of flickering lights will seem abstract, but still beautiful and interesting to watch. The main piece will be accompanied by two other components for the show that will run through this fall and winter (December 10).

Mr. Campbell was first trained as an engineer, and most of his work incorporates very complex lighting rigs, elaborate video systems and very unconventional screens. The centerpiece of his show this spring at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea, Exploded View, looked like a group of elegant, scintillating light garlands, except at one angle, from which a short video loop showed a human silhouette running, falling, getting up and running again until it fell. "Scattered Light" will be very similar, except that the blinking light-bulb figures will be life-sized.

Broadway Marquee: SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark

Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark, the new musical arrives next month on Broadway. Up on the marquee is the gigantic billboard in front of Foxwoods Theatre on 42nd Street. The box office at the newly renamed Foxwoods Theatre opened last month. The new musical will begin previews Nov. 14 at 3 PM with an official opening scheduled for Dec. 21. The box office, located at 213 West 42nd Street, will now be open Monday-Saturday, 10 AM-8 PM.

From Playbill.com:

Directed by Julie Taymor, the cast will be headed by Reeve Carney as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Next to Normal Tony nominee Jennifer Damiano as Mary Jane Watson and Broadway veteran Patrick Page as Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin. They will be joined by Natalie Mendoza, Michael Mulheren, Ken Marks, Isabel Keating, Jeb Brown, T.V. Carpio, Mat Devine, Gideon Glick, Jonathan Schwartz, Matthew James Thomas, Laura Beth Wells, Matt Caplan, Dwayne Clark, Luther Creek, Gerald Avery, Collin Baja, Marcus Bellamy, Emmanuel Brown, Erin Elliott, Dana Marie Ingraham, Ayo Janeen Jackson, Heather Lang, Ari Loeb, Natalie Lomonte, Kevin Loomis, Kristin Martin, Jodi McFadden, Kristen Oei, America Olivo, Jennifer Perry, Kyle Post, Brandon Rubendall, Sean Samuels, Dollar Tan, and Christopher Tierney.

Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark features a book by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger, and new music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge.

"Drawing from more than 40 years of Marvel comic books for inspiration,"Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, according to press notes, "spins a new take on the mythic tale of Peter Parker, a teenager whose unremarkable life in Queens is turned upside-down—literally—when he's bitten by a genetically-altered spider and wakes up the next morning clinging to the ceiling. Bullied by his classmates and tortured by an unrelenting crush on next-door-neighbor Mary Jane Watson, this science geek discovers he has suddenly been endowed with astonishing powers. He soon learns, however, that with great power comes great responsibility. Maligned by the media, buffeted by financial woes, and stretched thin by the expectations of the world-at-large, Peter now must struggle to navigate the perilous and peculiar demands of being a web-slinging superhero."

The creative team includes Daniel Ezralow (choreography), George Tsypin (scenic design), Academy Award winner Eiko Ishioka (costume design), Tony Award winner Donald Holder (lighting design), Jonathan Deans (sound design), Kyle Cooper (projection design), Julie Taymor (mask design), Campbell Young Associates (hair design), Judy Chin (makeup design), Scott Rogers (aerial design), Jaque Paquin (aerial rigging design), David Campbell (orchestrations & arrangements), Teese Gohl (musical supervision) and Kimberly Grigsby (music director).

TANYA AS BANDIT by Cady Noland

On exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art is "Tanya as Bandit" (1989) by Cady Noland. The artwork is made of silkscreen ink on aluminum, and bandana, 72 x 48 x 3/8" (182.9 x 121.9 x 1 cm). It features the famous Symbionese Liberation Army publicity photo of Patty Hearst wielding a gun, as well as reprinted lines from AP's coverage of the brainwashed heiress-cum-bank robber.

Cady Noland (born 1956 in Washington, DC.) is a conceptual sculptor and an internationally exhibited installation artist, whose work deals with the failed promise of the American Dream and the divide between fame and anonymity among other themes. Her work has been exhibited in museums and expositions including the Whitney Biennial in 1991 and Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany.

Zombies Go Political For ZOMBIECON NYC 2010

Zombies can't spell

Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty want you and your brain!

Andy Warhol Pop Art still very much alive.

Taxed to death but still smiling

Bill Clinton fan?

Invasion of Time Warner Center

video from groovehoops

Zombie Protest and Brainless Politics. This is the theme of this year's ZOMBIECON, New York City's largest zombie crawl yesterday. ZOMBIECON NYC is a loosely organized group of bloodthirsty zombies. They gather once a year to attack NYC in a theatrical, absurdist parody of blind consumerism and brainless politics. This year the group first assembled at Kennedy's restaurant at west 57th Street, then invaded the Time Warner Center. The zombies then proceeded to midtown Manhattan to 46th Street and Broadway, then Rockefeller Center and downtown Manhattan, stopping frequently for brains and beers.

"Hermes" By Robert Mapplethorpe And "AIDS Wallpaper" By General Idea

MoMA Multimedia Audio about AIDS (Wallpaper) By General Idea

Robert Mapplethorpe's gorgeous portrait of the statue of Hermes (1988) in gelatin silver print is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art's Contemporary Art From The Collection. The photograph is juxtaposed with General Idea's (AA Bronson, Felix Patz, Jorge Zontal) AIDS wallpaper that features repeating the words AIDS in Robert Indiana's famed LOVE typography. Mapplethorpe died of AIDS related complications in 1989, Patz and Zontal in 1994.

New York Police Department's 10-Foot Cops (NYPD Mounted Unit) On Fifth Avenue

These are three of the New York Police Department's 10-foot cops (NYPD Mounted Unit) during a ceremonial trot down Fifth Avenue for a recent parade. These cops on horses also patrol high-crime neighborhoods, make late-night shows of force through Times Square and take the lead during search-and-rescue missions. In recent years, the mounted patrols play a larger role in battling crime in NYC. “There’s a reason we call them the 10-foot cop,” Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said, “You can see them from blocks away, they’re great at crowd control and they’re probably the most photographed piece of equipment we have. I’m a huge fan.”