On Monday of this week, myself, Lu, Mitu Hopu, and our friend Lu Jia visited the closest point of desertification near Beijing, Tian Mo. It took alot of turns to get there to the point our off-license taxi looked ready to give up on this pursuit. We prevailed to find our beloved sand dunes with 2 camels out front and a Chinese park troll trying to charge us all 25 RMB per person to enter the park, which semi-sadly consisted of only two massive sand dunes. Regardless the size of the dunes, we had an amazing experience with the strangest set of characters also seeking out these bald spots forming in the landscape.

View Larger Map

Lu and I took the photos, and she has some chinese text to go along with at her blog.

We traveled over 200 Kilometers to get to this location. So did two different couples to get their photos taken by a jesus-like art figure carrying a frame as burden for us all! So did a couple whose car got stuck in the desert sand. So did about 50 young Chinese soldiers who apparently get to goof off all day.

Of course, China has many vast desert deserts:

Even where we live. Cao Chang Di, is under assault from the desert helping to breed ideas and research like Cao Chang Mo (ah, a project waiting to be completed).

The Chinese government is not doing enough to combat desertification as “the desert is sweeping into China’s valleys, choking rivers and consuming precious farm land. Beijing has responded with massive tree-planting campaigns, but the Great Green Walls may not be able to buffer the sand, which could cover the capital in a few years.”

While this is a problem for some, others like our troll gatekeeper friend are setting up businesses around the desert, brining in camels, and offering horse rides for 20 RMB an hour.

Pick a side! Are you for the desert or against it!

Originally from Desertification Beijing Style

The Cantocore Import Opening went quite well as Lu blogged about on the Cantocore site, primarily in Chinese.

Her photos also unveiled my installation, Artonomics #11: Special Economic Zone, which uses 24, 7 meter pieces of bamboo, constructed into a tower to hold a 1.6 meter by 1 meter LED sign, as often found in Chinese hospitals and government buildings, which displays common economic data that reigns down upon Chinese (and global) citizens about the direction of the new superpower.

Artonomics #11, Special Economic Zone by Jon Phillips

I’m not sure if the installation I made is more interesting than the process of constructing it, as shown below. This involved finding bamboo, trying to get it far across the massive city of Guangzhou (which this fella did by three-wheeled bicycle), hire carpenters to construct it, re-do it to make it stronger, and then put the big LED sign atop the solid structure. Getting the LED screen happened to be the simplest part.

Misako Inaoka, who had a detailed installation with a zen garden, and her hybrid toy creations from Chinese toys (not the poisonous kind!), has also posted her photos up showing off the space and some great highlights of the installation (I’m waiting on the go ahed to post her photos up after she CC licenses them

Above are a couple of my good friends, Hu Xiangqian and Lu Jun, from Guangzhou who are both Lang Zai (pretty boyyyyz).

I’m still pulling together my thoughts from the show right now. I really needed to do something completely different than my gig at Creative Commons, and spending a good solid month on making this show happen successfully really took tons of energy. All the hard work paid off IMO, and I’m hopeful to get some other reviews of the show here shortly to highlight the work.

UPDATE: I just wrote an post on the cantocore.com website about the Cantocore Export opening and updated text on the website. And, Justin just posted a bunch of his photos as well. Here is a sampling:

Originally from Cantocore Opening Recap and Cantocore Export Opening

Over at Fabricatorz we launched the Cantocore.com website and are continuing to push on raising funds to fund selected artists projects. If you are in SF, we invite you to come to the Home Concert Preview next WED from 7-9. Tickets to the event are $50 and may be purchased at the door, or preferably, through paypal or contact jhoover.charles@gmail.com to process payment.

NOTE: If there is some other contribution to Cantocore by writing about the shows, contributing to the blog, helping record the event, please contact me to discuss bypassing ticket price.

Good friend Christopher Willits will be performing along with Chinese musician <a href=”Ma Jie“>Ma Jie. Wine and snacks will be served as well! From the RSVP list it will be a great mix of interesting folks from the area. We have a cap of 70 people, so please do RSVP today. More about the launch, project, and Cantocore.com Home Concert Preview:

Hi all, welcome to a new project which is a collaboration between Fabricatorz and Garage Biennale. Here are two levels of scale about the project:

“Art show in Guangzhou, China in September 2008 and then in San Francisco November 2008.”

And, a few more sentences…

“Garage Biennale and the Fabricatorz are bringing you Cantocore, a research project investigating contemporary art and culture between Canton (Guangdong) and cities around the world. The initial focus is a contemporary art exhibition with two versions of the same show in San Francisco and Guangzhou, China.”

There is a solid line-up of artists working on projects at present for both shows with the main concept being the ideas of import and export where projects in both locations are the same, but different versions.

Lu re-blogged the Cantocore Home Concert Preview we are doing next WED in SF, and so, I’m pushing out this post about the Cantocore project which is a contemporary art show that Lu, myself and Justin Hoover are pushing out this early September and November. The first instance of Cantocore is to generate some funds to help in production of the artwork. No one is getting paid from the raising of monies to support art production, so we are putting on a concert to preview the artwork for the show.

Lu wrote about here:

What it will take to make an art show. You will need three things: Artists, Space and Money! Sometimes these three things don’t come so easy, don’t they?

These are the things we are pushing right now for Cantocore exhibition, a show in both Guangzhou China and San Francisco this fall. There is a home concert preview party coming Wednesday 7/23 to fund the production of the shows. I am not a very good sales woman, but really want to make this one works!

Visit Cantocore site for information about the show, artists, and detail about the preview concert. Performing musicians for the the preview concert are Ma Jie and Christopher Willits.

And then there is a follow-up post on the Cantocore website:

Cantocore Home Concert Preview is coming up next Wednesday July 23rd, 7-9 PM in San Francisco. Right now our RSVP deadline for this event is extended to Monday, July 21st. And tickets are on sale right now for $50 USD! All money goes to the production of the Cantocore exhibition in Guangzhou and San Francisco. And, all contributions will be rewarded with praise, promotion in printed materials and on this website.

This event is a preview of the coming exhibitions, and also a home concert featuring Chinese traditional instrument musician Ma Jie and electronic musician Christopher Willits.

To reserve your tickets please do one of the following:

Call Justin at 415-425-1647
Email: jhoover.charles@gmail.com
Or use Paypal option

We are eager to raise some funds from those interested in the ideas which will gain both a plug on the http://cantocore.com website and then in our printed material. Feel free to ask questions here on this blog post publicly, or send us email about this.

Please participate in this project and if in SF, RSVP by next MONDAY, July 21 to come to the Cantocore Home Concert Preview.

Originally from Cantocore.com Launched + Home Concert Preview Next WED

I have cool wife! Check out this documentation of her project on display now at McBean Gallery at SFAI in recently sunny San Francisco. The show is totally free and interesting.

Adam has helped me document the installation in the Walter & McBean Galleries. This is part of the exhibition “We Remember the Sun”, on view from now till Sept 19th. Documentation video-taped by Adam Barczak.

This documentation footage is quite great and feels like some type of 3d model rendering or something. Speaking of which my cousin, Brad Phillips, is here this week working on pulling together his resume, doing some 3d modeling of upcoming projects, and generally hanging out. Great to have him here!

Originally from Deer Fang’s Don’t Talk About Politics Video Documentation

I’m bummed out! Due to my Creative Commons responsibilities next Wednesday, I can’t physically get to my wife’s art opening next Wednesday. So, I will try to drive as many people as possible to the show. Please do go if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area! Its free and will be great! I will get to the after-party as soon as I can physically drive back from Creative Commons “Future of CC” night event which several of you are going to attend.

Check out Lu’s big installation:

My latest project “Don’t Talk About Politic” is being installed in “We Remember the Sun” exhibition, a group show in the Walter & McBean Galleries. Opening is this coming Wednesday, exhibition on view through September.

“Don’t Talk about Politic” is a two channel video installation. Proposed plan is as image followed, as well as exhibition statement written by Mary Ellyn Johnson. I have been working on this in the past several weeks. And I found out that if you use NTSC video camera to shoot video in a lighted studio in a PAL country, then your video will be possibly have flickering all through it. What a lesson! Luckily I am able to eliminate this unexpected effect because it was shot in a blue screen studio. I am very excited to see when all is installed. And it should be an interesting show!

Some Video stills:

We Remember the Sun
Exhibition of Work by Fifteen Bay Area Artists
—Live Musical Performance at Opening Reception

Walter and McBean Galleries
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)

800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, CA 94133

Opening reception:  Wednesday, 18 June 2008, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Cost: Free and open to the public
Exhibition Dates:  19 June–13 September 2008
Images: High-resolution digital images available
Press Contact: Bob Gamboa, (415) 749-4507, bgamboa@sfai.edu
We Remember the Sun, an Exhibition by Fifteen California Artists,
Opens at  SFAI on 18 June 2008

Here are the directions to SFAI.

Originally from Go Check Out Lu Fang Art Show Next Wednesday at SFAI

Ok, the title pretty much says it all. Lu bought me a new 250 gb backup drive for locking down my backups while on the road (and I already have a halfway solution at home thanks to advice from readers). I’m curious what is the best option for syncing up my 80 gb thinkpad x61 to a partition on this drive, which can act as a daily backup, and be used in the event of something bad? I run gentoo on my computers currently, and want to just do more than just rsync to this drive in that I want the content encrypted.

Please help me lazyweb! Another option is to pay for a service like mozy.com or carbonite, but I want to stay in commandline realm and where I don’t need network access..

Originally from Dear Lazyweb, Need Simple Encrypted Backup Method to USB on Linux

AhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHhhhhhh! Our time in Guangzhou is nearing an end for this spell. I have not adequately covered what Lu and I have been up to. Here are some immediate photos taken of Guangzhou which illustrate the dynamism of where we live right now.

Photos below by Lu Fang under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

We discovered this village a couple of blocks from our house was being destroyed to make way for new housing and skyscrapers which you’ll see at the end of this.

Also, a few of my colleagues will be happy to note that a W hotel and Ritz-Carlton are being built on these grounds — ironies abound. The other day as well, helped my wife’s parents plant some plants. They wanted me to help dig out this huge *rock* in the ground. That rock happened to be a big multi-colored chunk of rubble from the village that lays under where we live — some kind of rock!

I need to get into photo dumping online. What is the linux workflow that others use to get photos from camera, to desktop, to flickr, Internet Archive, etc? I just took a hard look at just uploading all my photos to Internet Archive, but the interfaces are not there for photo fun nor conversion to other formats, and the biggest part is lack of active community. Any thoughts?

Originally from Photos from Guangzhou China Town Demolitions and Linux Photo Sharing Question