Robert Montgomery who was featured on here earlier for the Istanbul Biennale shows his largest billboard project in Berlin right now.

Montgomery’s billboards are poetic pieces of text and always using the strong contrasts of a white letters on a black background. He captures spots that are usually occupied by advertising, trying to create a surprising artistic situation.

In total, the project Echoes of Voices in the High Towers, organized by Neue Berliner Räume, will display 23 billboards, two illuminated poem sculptures as well as artistic interventions in several print publications like EXBERLINER, Sleek, Päng!, Um[laut] and others, as well as an exhibition of his drawings.

Echoes of Voices in the High Towers runs until October 2012.

> read more about the interesting anonymous publications / interventions of the project and the historic context here

> more photos on Facebook here and here

Fireflies have become a rare sight in Japan. Once they used to glow their low light all over the country in the summer time but now they have become an uncommon sight even in rural areas. Last month 100,000 LED lights floated down through Tokyo’s city centre on the Sumida river mimicking a stream of fireflies. This happend on the occasion of the Tokyo Hotaru Festival (Tokyo Firefly Festival) which was first held in 2012 and is intended to revalue the river and its surroundings, similar to what Seoul has done with their prestigious Cheonggyecheon stream renaturation project. The LED lights were sponsored by Panasonic and equipped with solar cells. At the end all of the lights were taken out of the river by using a big net.

(via, photos by Tokyo Hotaru & Mai Suzuki)

Scottish/British Montgomery is the associate publisher of Dazed & Confused and also a conceptual artist. He shows his poetry in public space, similar to ads. Some of his recent works have been shown throughout the city of Istanbul as part of the 12th Istanbul Biennial.

His thoughts about the reception of his work by the public:

“They know its not advertising, and its not graffiti either and they do not need an art history knowledge to read it. I’m super-interested in the ordinary person at the bus stop getting on the bus to their job everyday and suddenly seeing this weird text. I’m interested in reaching those people. They are my primary audience.”

> read an interview with Montgomery at Dazed Digital

(via)

UPDATE: Check out Montgomery’s works in Berlin

This installation draws information from the intensity and movement of the water in a remote location. Wave data is being collected in real-time from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data buoy Station 46246 (49°59’7″ N 145°5’20″ W) on the Pacific Ocean. The wave intensity and frequency is scaled and transferred to the mechanical grid structure installed at The National Museum in Wroclaw, Poland. The result was a simulation of the physical effects caused by the movement of water from this distant location.

By David Bowen

Via, Via

Cyprien Gaillard (b. 1980 in Paris) put up the enormous Neon Indian on the Haus der Statistik at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin. The Indian is reminiscent of the logo of the US Baseball team Cleveland Indians. Gaillard often uses this in 1894 created image and refers to the use of indian names and mascots in the US, despite their extermination. Even though those images seem outmoded, they still continue to exist in mass culture, and although Indians were victims of exclusion, some part of their culture serves as marketing tools for American sport teams and others.

The Neon Indian can be see until the 11th of December, then the Haus of Statistik will be teared down.

Details:
Neon Indian, 2011
Neon tubes, steel construction
Height: 10m

Address:
Haus der Statistik
Otto-Braun-Str./ Karl-Marx-Allee
10178 Berlin

(Image Cyprien Gaillard Neon Indian, 2011 (Skizze), Courtesy: Berliner Künstlerprogramm / DAAD & the artist / Sprüth Magers)

wherethereis, 2011
spraypaint/ink on styrofoam,
figure 2,60×2,80m
installation 6,00×3,40m

Shown at Hidden Beauty, Eindhoven (NL)

Hemer used information by Google and Google Earth to rebuild the Korean city Ulsan in the game SimCity and showed it later in form of a public sculpture.

“This project started with the point of view that much of our cultural knowledge in the contemporary world is gained from online digital media and interface. As such there is often a disconnection between the fragmented nature of digital culture and real histories and culture.
As an international artist removed from the historical realties of Ulsan, I choose to respond to the location through the cultural means that are most obvious to me. While working in Sydney I began the project by locating Ulsan through various Google and Google Earth searches to geographically understand Ulsan. I then used the geographical information to create a virtual map of Ulsan in the computer game Simcity. Using this map I played Simcity for one month- to reimagine and recreate my own Ulsan. Using 3D models of actual Korean and International buildings created by online gaming users, and hacks within the game to produce my own colour buildings, I was able to create a city that is a combination of real and fantastical elements.
The installation of this project presents the map of Ulsan based around the Taehwa River back to the local population- to question, provoke, and engage with both the real and imagined Ulsan. Additionally, the media work captures fly-bys of the game in play.”

The project was on display at the Taehwa-river Eco Art Festival (태화강국제설치미술제) in Ulsan, Korea.

> More about the Taehwa-river Eco Art Festival (in Korean), curated by Hzone

> More installations of Andre Hemer on Public Delivery