~e; local EM artworks

[human being <human@electronetwork.org>]

  [happened upon the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (in search
  of air-conditioning) and saw a few artworks which had EM-
  related contexts or content, all wildly divergent. one of
  them is a painting from 1904, which on its description next
  to the painting made reference to 'listening to telegraph
  wires' similarly to putting one's ear to railroad tracks
  to hear the future, etc. it has wooden e-poles, which are
  symbolic (in a sense) to the drive across N.America to
  the west, via train and telegraphy, which would be in the
  same sedimentary layer of old glass electrical insulators
  often seen on older e-poles from hemingray, etc, which are
  now collectors items/antiques. another work was seen in an
  exhibit of telephones, which was small but interesting and
  of the wide variety of ideas, Dali's phone was there, which
  seemed to be a good precursor for such things as the 'mickey
  mouse' phone, or football phone, or whatever else a phone
  later became. at least that is one possible interpretation
  phone-aesthetics may have relations, or not. then, and firstly,
  a textile artist whose work was in a very compressed space so
  hard to really see (for this person at least) yet which has
  great meaning in terms of traditional finearts (weaving) and
  new/today's ideas/information, in this case, microchips and
  code. in this way, all of these works explore EM or are EM-
  based, in a different way, yet share a similar context in
  that they all relate to electromagnetism. it is this type
  of work, from wildly divergent sources, that someday the
  electronetwork.org project hopes to organize online in an
  exhibit based on electromagnetic content in various artforms]

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Cyber-Textiles by W. Logan Fry

"I weave the patterns of brain structures, microchips, microsensors, 
bar codes and machine language. - W. Logan Fry

As a weaver, I have noticed striking similarities between the designs 
incorporated into traditional and ethnographic textiles, on the one 
hand, and contemporary technological design, on the other. Ancient, 
"primitive" and traditional cultures have often used the complexity 
afforded by strong design not merely for aesthetic purposes, but also 
to record complex information pertaining to such important matters as 
hunting lore, epic battles, genealogy, the spirit world and sacred 
rite.

The complicated patterns of microchips have a parallel purpose - to 
facilitate the recording and manipulation of information through 
complex, digital pathways; but the designs themselves are often 
remarkably similar to traditional, ethnographic design."

curated at the Through the Looking Glass exhibition 
http://www.voyd.com/ttlg/physical/fry.htm

small exhibit at local museum with title of one work
http://www.artsmia.org/exhibitions/details.cfm?EV_ID=431

archived images
http://www.oberlin.edu/news-info/01jun/images/wk42/1-digital_interface.jpg
http://www.oberlin.edu/news-info/01jun/images/wk42/6-the_nature_of_time.jpg
from article: http://www.oberlin.edu/news-info/01jun/sourcecode.html

---------------------------

Dali's Lobster phone

http://www.artsmia.org/uia-bin/uia_doc.cgi/query/1?uf=uia_BvKaVc

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Henry Farney, The Song of the Talking Wire (1904)

description w/out image of painting:
http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:IZ4LCSqQVFEC:lily.mip.berkeley.edu/classes/history16/pages/img0038.html+%22the+song+of+the+talking+wire%22&hl=en&start=1&ie=UTF-8

Taft Museum
Cincinnati, Ohio
Henry F. Farny

The Song of the Talking Wire, 1904\
oil on canvas, 22 1/8 x 40 inches
"Song of the Talking Wire, which Farny painted in 1904, exemplifies 
the theme and serves as the centerpiece for the exhibition. The 
wintry backdrop, setting sun, buffalo skull, and deer carcasses slung 
across the horse all contribute to the feeling of a doomed Indian 
confronting the inevitable white expansion in the form of the row of 
telegraph poles."

http://www.tfaoi.com/newsmu/nmus14a.htm
http://socialstudies.com/itemimages/CYP106.JPG


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  [and, if in MPLS, the new exhibit of works from China is outstanding.]

  the electromagnetic internetwork-list
  electromagnetism / infrastructure / civilization
  archives.openflows.org/electronetwork-l
		http://www.electronetwork.org/