open-PLAYER and PLMJ Foundation, Lisbon
open-PLAYER is encoding and archiving video works from the collection of the Foundation. The videos shall be played-back on plasma screens at the Head-Quarters of PLMJ, Law Firm in Lisbon. Instituted by the partners of the law firm PLMJ – A.M. Pereira, Sáragga Leal, Oliveira Martins, Júdice e Associados, PLMJ Foundation has developed an important art collection, a significant portion of which is dedicated to contemporary video art by emerging Portuguese artists.
To view the collection please visit: PLMJ site
Video-on-Stick (VoS)
open-PLAYER is pleased to announce the VOS initiative, commissioning and distributing artists’ videos for small editions to be released on USB sticks utilizing our new compression and playback software. Each edition includes a video project and a USB enclosure designed or handmade by the artist. open-PLAYER playback software enables videos to play automatically upon insertion into a USB port. Editions will be signed and numbered, and include a certificate of authenticity.
open-PLAYER will also distribute an unlimited iPhone edition of videos in the series. Depending on the agreement with the artist, we will release iPhone edition either at the same time as the USB version or only when the main edition is sold out.
VoS may be purchased online; artists are compensated immediately on the sale of an edition.
UPDATE: ZDNet published a story yesterday, about a startup, Portomedia, who plans to start video rentals on USB video sticks.
Video Pick – Robert Adanto: The Rising Tide
The Rising Tide investigates China’s meteoric march toward the future through the work of some of its most talented emerging artists, whose work reflects the country’s rising influence as an economic, political and cultural force in the global arena.
open-PLAYER @ JEU DE PAUME
open-PLAYER facilitated the Passages video program screened at the “Petit Cafe” of the JEU DE PAUME from February 2 – 15, 2008.
Cette initiative est rendue possible par Open-Player, (www.open-Player.com), une technologie innovatrice qui permet de transmettre, par voie digitale, les videos en qualite optimale (haute d finition comprise).
Art Video / TV & Internet: Ovation TV to pair MOCA
Very interesting article in LA Times:
A co-production by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and Ovation TV will be the first in a series of collaborations between cultural institutions and the cable arts network to create programming intended to raise the profiles of both partners.As part of a long-term initiative to be announced today, the network and MOCA have produced a 10-minute video about MOCA’s upcoming exhibition “Collecting Collections,” opening Feb. 10. The video includes interviews with art collectors, donors and artists and will be part of the exhibition as well as air on Ovation.
The MOCA video will be shown not only during the “Collecting Collections” exhibition in MOCA’s Reading Room but also on the museum’s website. Concurrently with the exhibition, Ovation will make the piece available on the TV network, its website and VOD (video on demand). Ovation TV serves 25 million subscribers nationwide, with satellite carriage on DirecTV (Channel 274) and Dish Network in the Los Angeles area.
open-PLAYER has built-in syndication feature, what could enable galleries and artists to submit their videos (in form of an RSS feed) for potential air over TV networks, in full broadcast quality, but protecting version and copy right integrity.
Video Pick – Megan McLarney: Forest
open-PLAYER is starting a collaboration with Megan McLarney on a number of video projects. Here’s an example of Megan’s video work:
Video will be installed in a digital video frame with embedded open-PLAYER system. The artist will be able to upload remotely, over the Internet, new video material to the digital video frame.
Additionally, we will build an open-PLAYER multi-channel capable system for Mehan’s “Video Landscapes” multichannel panoramic videos…
Video Pick – Ana Prvacki: TVC for Money Laundering Wet Wipes
Video Pick of the Week aims to highlight the diversity of the video genre, and the new and experimental approaches that characterize the medium. Our goal is to introduce our audience to the wide range of contemporary explorations in video art, documentary, animation and so forth with a selection of works that often translates the blurring of boundaries so characteristic of present video production. The first entry in our Video Pick of the Week is “At the tips of your fingertips (towards a clean money culture)” by Ana Prvacki. This video is a TVC for money laundering wet wipes.
Extract from “Face Value”, catalogue essay, 25 Years Later: Welcome to Art in General, UBS Art Gallery, New York, 16 August-9 November 2007.
There can be a subtle beauty to futile actions. Within the context of a global bank that handles millions of dollars each day, Ana Prvacki sets up a money cleaning service that cleanses and “purifies” one note at a time through the use of specially branded wet wipes. Setting up the UBS space to test demand for her new product, Prvacki enters into an ongoing collaboration with the general public. As a project, this fits perfectly within her broader lifestyle consultancy, Ananatural Production, which she founded in 2003 to explore the esthetics of consumer goods, as well as the propagation of ideas, brands, or “mantras” that are designed to frame a way of living. Work embodies lifestyle, and an obsession with cleanliness is at the core of both. While consumers spend millions of dollars on attractive beauty products that contain harmful chemicals and colorants, Prvacki’s mail-order catalogue offers solutions such as a papaya face wash or a soap/soup bar that can be used both as a body cleanser and as a nourishing meal.3 These are recipes, suggestions and instructions for experiences that are both physical and psychological.
In cleaning each note by hand in an almost ritualistic way, Prvacki provides her clients with money that is fresh enough to use as a face wipe. But in doing so within the context of the UBS lobby, she becomes a kind of institutional Sisyphus, momentarily achieving the goal of cleanliness and then immediately failing as the note becomes “contaminated” on receipt by its owner. Given that some believe the actual value of the note may also be diminished through the act of cleaning, 4 the poetry of the piece lies in the sheer absurdity of the endeavor.
Anne J. Barlow
open-PLAYER and Passages Passagen Pasáze -Hommage to Walter Benjamin
 |
December 7 2007-January 4 2008
Video works by 16 international artists exhibited on Panenská street in Bratislava and transfered digitally by open-PLAYER video distribution platform to the Jeu de Paume in Paris, Goethe Institut in New York and g-mk Center in Zagreb. Featured Artists: Lida Abdul (AF), Zbybek Baladran (CZ,Sandor Bodo (HU), Pavlina Fichta Cierna (Sk), Danika Dakic (BA), David Dempewolf (US), Yang Fudong (CN), Jean Charles Hue (FR), Caporali & Marta Jourdan (BR), Leopold Kessler (DE), Miro Kohut (SK), Melik Ohanian (FR), Renata Poljak (HR), Sergio Prego (ES), Katarzyna Skupny (PL), Song Tao (CN), Adam Vackar 9CZ), Akram Zaatari (LB). A project curated by Gandy Gallery in Bratislava, with support from Goethe Institut and French Cultural Institute. |
open-PLAYER @ Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
 |
open-PLAYER provides its unique technology for High Definition playback and synchronization of a 5 multichannel video installation by Cliff Evans’ for his new work “Empyrean”. The show opens at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on November 8, 2007. From the press release:
“Empyrean” functions as five channel synchronized video — each channel being 720p High Definition video stream. For such a demanding task, we will build a highly optimized open-PLAYER system, with carefully chosen hardware components and our software for encoding and playback of multichannel video streams. All software is Open Source … Installation view and link:  |
open-PLAYER participates in Show Off 07
From october 16 – 22 2007, open-PLAYER has been invited by the cutting edge art fair Show Off 07 to organise the presentation of Video Best Venues’ (VBV) video programming at the Espace Cardin theater (650 seats). VBV consists of videos submitted by the participating galleries, from which a jury of curators and collectors shall select 10 works. In January 2008, these prize winning videos will be featured in a special exhibition at LE CUBE, the first contemporary art center in France to be entirely devoted to digital art. For more information on open – PLAYER and Show off 07, please follow this link.
