Arts: The Last Word
Austin artist plugs into global news sources
By Jeanne Claire Van RyzinMarch 4, 2004
Call it the anxiety of our information age. The Internet provides us access to unlimited information. But the advantages of search engines aside, how do you find all the information you want? And moreover, now that we're all cyber-connected, shouldn't we all know a lot more about each other?
Austin artist Cinqué Hicks thinks so. Sure, ArtsJournal.com, the Art Newspaper, Artnet and other sites offer good links to arts news from and about all general areas. But, as an African American artist, Hicks was looking for something more. "There was literally no alternative for someone such as myself for whom Artnet's one article a month on William Pope L. or Iona Brown just wasn't enough," he says. That's why he started Electric Skin, a site that compiles news of black visual art, including film and digital art in the United States, Canada, Africa and the United Kingdom.
The focus of Electric Skin is fairly nonexclusive and frequently includes news on technology, nonvisual arts and news on artists of all cultures. Electric Skin is published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with Hicks himself canvassing some 50 to 60 news sites, two of three of which canvass other sites for a total of more than 200 news sources. Most of the articles are in English, but since Hicks knows Spanish, French and Portuguese, expect to see an occasional link to news from, say, the Portuguese-language Angola Press, along with articles from Nigeria's Daily Champion or UK's The Guardian, among others.
Electric Skin is just one more global venture from the 35-year-old cyber-savvy Hicks. About a year ago, he launched his "We Are All Global Citizens" project that had people from around the world sending picture of themselves to a Web site and answering the question "What's outside your window right now?" Hicks compiled all the entries and then, one April evening, streamed them onto seven 10-foot screens that he set up in Republic Square Park, adding more profiles from those who sent in live feeds. "(I'm interested in) that chance encounter in a public place with the borderless world of the Internet," he said at the time. For more on the project, go to www.cinquehicks.com.
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Of the 5,201 entries from around the world, 107 entries were from Texas with 21 from the greater Austin area. Among them was one from architectural designer Carl Trominski, who designed "Moments," the much-asked-about public art project for the Lamar Boulevard railroad underpass -- you know, that series of rectangular blue pseudo-signs that line Lamar between Fifth Street and Town Lake. Other entrants include artists Mark Gibbs, Deborah James and Jill Bedgood and architects Earl Swisher and Juan Miró.
And to complete the zero degrees of separation that seems occurs in all cultural stories these day ... as we reported in February, master landscaper designer Walker has been tapped by the Blanton Museum of Art to collaborate with Houston-born conceptual artist Mel Chin on a design for the 72,000-square-foot plaza that will separate the two-museum complex now rising out of the ground at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Speedway. We hear that Walker proposes to replace the originally planned hardscape plaza with a shady cluster of mature trees. Preliminary plans could be ready in the next few months.
KUDOS, KUDOSIn other news from the Blanton ... Jonathan Bober, curator of prints, drawings and European paintings, was recently invited to join -- now take a deep breath -- the International Advisory Committee of Keepers of Public Collections of Graphic Art. Bober is one of seven U.S. professionals on the 40-member international committee and the only person representing a university museum.
Three Austin architects get to add another letter to their professional titles. Tommy Cowan of Graeber, Simmons & Cowan, Stan Haas of TeamHaas Architects and Peter Pfeiffer of Barley & Pfeiffer Architects have all been named fellows of the American Institute of Architects for their significant contributions to the profession. The trio is now entitled to use "FAIA" following their names instead of just "AIA." Fewer than 2,500 of the AIA national membership of nearly 72,000 get an "F." Cowan, Haas and Pfeiffer will officially get their F's at a ceremony in Chicago in June.jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699
