meredith cutler :: artist :: designer ::

Here's a calorie-burning, life-affirming, utterly wacktastic participatory arts activity to help you while away your extra day of calendarial life: Performance artist Brian Feldman is challenging you (yes, you) to contemplate how you will spend your extra 1,440 minutes on this February 29, 2008, by leaping off of a 12-foot platform in front of Orlando City Hall every 3 minutes and 56 seconds, for a total of 366 occurances during the 24 hours of leap day. Will somebody get this guy a Red Bull? (Whee!)

As if we don't already have an overwhelming array of online time-wasters (I mean, ahem, enriching online activities), now I discover the new online networking community of "ItSpace".

A clever derivative of the now ubiquitous MySpace, ItSpace makes its mark on cyberspace by allowing inanimate, household objects to "network" with each other via the beautiful music trapped just beneath their shiny (or soft) surfaces.

And just HOW does this apply to reality (cyber or no) you might ask? Users are asked to record the sounds made with a household object, and to create a musical piece using just these sounds. Then, by uploading the musical clip along with a photograph of the object, a profile is created. Objects may then "befriend" other inanimate objects whose profiles are already included on the site. Another means of enjoying ItSpace is to remix existing objects (or, better yet, create a mashup! Blender, anyone?)

If anyone from the 9yds. days has a recording of that infamous '00 kitchen appliance and powertool jam at 40 Newcastle, please send it my way!

Just when you think it's safe to venture out in public, the damn Trekkies steal your identity! Is this unprecedented identity theft simply retribution for having been seen motoring around Rome in un casco molto grosso e bianco? Alas, we may never know the truth...