This Summer, Elastic City (one of my recently launched projects), is giving walks throughout New York City. But these are not your typical tourist walks. These walks are led by artists. Todd Shalom, the founder of Elastic City, realized the idea while suffering from altitude sickness in Cusco, Peru.

The walks intend to make its audience active participants in an ongoing poetic exchange with the places we live in and visit. Artists are commissioned by Elastic City to create their own walks. These walks tend to focus less on providing factual information and more on heightening our awareness, exploring our senses and making new group rituals in dialogue with public space in the city.

The walks have been featured in TimeoutNY, WNYC, Wallstreet Journal, Gothamist, and other publications.

To listen Todd talk about the walks on WNYC, click here, or hit play on the player below

Browse the walks listing and rediscover New York.

This video is a timelapse/animation comprised of 118 individual photos. Its subject is Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls, and was shot during City of Water Day, organized by the Waterfront Alliance.

photo by : Jaki Levy

Legions of Kayakers from around the NYC area (including Yonkers) descended (or ascended) towards Governors Island, celebrating New York City’s rivers and waterways.

The event also featured teams of videographers, who joined the kayakers. I joined a total of 8 videographers who arrived at 8 separate locations throughout the New York area. We all documented the kayaks leaving their individual destinations, and all converged at Governor’s Island at mid-day.

The video collective was organized by Solarmitra and Habitats :
solarmitra.com/

If you or a friend would like to go Kayaking for FREE, visit my starting location in Red Hook, the Red Hook Boaters or the New York City Downtown Boathouse

Last night, I attended the Yoshida Brothers’ amazing performance at the Highline Ballroom.

Here is a YouTube video from the show:

for pictures visit MisoVibrations’ site or my own flickr set

For those lucky enough to be in NYC this Spring . . . make sure to check out the the ITP Show. The shows just keep getting better and better.

For those into nostalgia (me), it was only last year that my friends and I presented our own projects. Most of us have moved onto better things (or have we?)

The Official Info:

ITP Spring Show 2008
Monday, May 12 and Tuesday, May 13
from 5 to 9pm at ITP
A two-day festival of interactive sight, sound and technology from the student artists and innovators at ITP.

An oversized Greenwich Village loft houses the computer labs, rotating exhibitions, and production workshops that are ITP — the Interactive Telecommunications Program. Founded in 1979 as the first graduate education program in alternative media, ITP has grown into a living community of technologists, theorists, engineers, designers, and artists uniquely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of interactivity in the real and digital worlds. A hands-on approach to experimentation, production and risk-taking make this hi-tech fun house a creative home not only to its 230 students, but also to an extended network of the technology industry’s most daring and prolific practitioners.

Interactive Telecommunications Program
Kanbar Institute of Film and Television
Tisch School of the Arts
New York University
721 Broadway, 4th Floor, South Elevators
New York NY 10003

BLOG PRESS LINKS :

Coolhunting :
http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2008/05/itp_spring_show_3.php

Make Blog :
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/05/itp_spring_show_2008_1.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

Silicon Alley Reporter :
 http://www.alleyreporter.com/events/2204899/itp-spring-2008-show

The Daily Graze :
http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/chris/?p=269

Dance-Tech :
http://dancetech.ning.com/

Jody Sperling is an NYC based choreographer. Her company is called Time Lapse Dance. She creates these amazing hula hoop dances:

This past weekend, I saw Christian Jankowski’s hula hoop performance in Chinatown. It was part of Performa07, which is again defining performance, art, and performance art. The work featured 30 performers hula hooping on the rooftops of buildings in Chinatown.

The work was inspired by one hula hooping mother, who hula hoops for exercise. Christian saw this woman from his apartment and decided to create this piece. The New Yorker tells this story very nicely.

I really enjoyed the light-hearted approach this work had. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of viewing a piece like this involved the parameters of performance. People were asking, “When does this begin?” Clearly, it begins when one person begins hula hooping on a rooftop. But the entire experience was so unique, that it in fact began when people were waiting to get into the viewing space. And it ended long after the last person stopped hula-hooping.

For more info, follow the links:

Performa07

Jankowski’s Hula Hoop Performance

You can also read The New Yorker’s Piece about the performance.

This is a video I shot with Hatti Lim for Planned Parenthood.

To celebrate the 34th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Knitting Factory hosted a benefit for Planned Parenthood. Bands playing that night included World Without Magic, Takka Takka, and The Wrens.

This is the final edit I put together for Planned Parenthood. Watch for more music from The Wrens and World Without Magic (including a few bonus tracks from the Wrens and World Without Magic) on my YouTube page. I’ll be uploading certain songs from that night’s set.

When attending the personal democracy forum, I entered in with a question – will the emphasis in the ’08 presidential election be on the personal rather than the democracy? I would hope that would not be the case. We have enough MYspace and YOUtube. How will this campaign cycle actually change the way we interface with politicians? Will the YouTube + social network campaigns carry over into the white house?

This is truly a question of how politics will manage this new level of participation. Online Civic Engagement. What will it look like in 2008?

I am glad the campaign trail is setting a precedent for how people want to participate. I just hope there are not too many gates put up to block the surge of action that will surely arise during this online campaign cycle.

Danah Boyd made an interesting point. Politicians spend countelss hours shaking hands with civilians during campaigning (and afterwards). How can we take this gesture and personalize it in the online world? Shouldn’t politicians and their camp be spending time on other people’s blogs virtually shaking hands and reaching out to this online commmunity? Why wait for us to watch them? They should be spending as much time watching and interacting with us.

This Friday, leaders, activists, thinkers, and maybe even a few politicians will be congregating to talk about blogs, politics, the internet, and yes even youtube. Confirmed speakers include Thomas Friedman, Arianna Huffington, Lawrence Lessig, Eli Pariser, Clay Shirky, among others.

Visit the site for more, more, more…

Brand Upon the Brain

Originally uploaded by jakilevy.

this is a silent movie by Guy Maddin. There will be LIVE narrators, along with 3 foley artists (creating live sound effects). Lou Reed, Isabella Rosalinin, among other distinguished guests will be there. pretty exciting event….Last Time something was done with this movie, Guy used an orchestra / band to create ALL the sound effects LIVE near Julliard.

amazing.

go see it. don’t miss it. and please let me know how it was.

A projection system for the show “Losing Something” creates virtual characters onstage, like the “older self” for the actor Aldo Perez. The show is being put on by 3 legged dog (3LD). It’s playing at 80 Greenwich St until May 5th.

The NYTimes has a real interesting article on the entire project, along with Eyeliner’s technology.