The iotaWeekly July 5-July 11, 2010

Clip of the Week
“Lumia” (2006) by Paul Vlachos and Meredith Finkelstein

Watch this trailer for Paul Vlachos and Meredith Finkelstein’s documentary “Lumia” (2006), a film that traces VJ culture to its roots in live visual performance, documenting the innovation of Thomas Wilfred and his Lumia machine to create the eighth major fine art, the art of light.

Site of the Week
ARTSEDGE: Art of the Explosion

Featured as a tribute to the yearly Fourth of July festivities, this interesting website sponsored by The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. chronicles Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang and his creation of an explosive pyrotechnic-art show that opened the 2005 Festival of China. In a unique fashion, Art of the Explosion highlights not just the chemistry and physics involved in the creation of a pyrotechnics show, but also how thoughts of design and conceptualization can merge with science in order to create a work of art, in the same vein as animation and other forms of multimedia art.

Artist of the Week
Neil Ira Needleman
“I was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1957 and learned filmmaking in the alleys of Brooklyn. Somewhere along the way I got lost in a tunnel that led me into a career in advertising. I have now rededicated myself to tinkering with motion images.”– Neil Ira Needleman

An example of an artist engaged in both commercial practice and personal expression, Neil Ira Needleman’s work is featured in film festivals throughout the world, including Exploding Cinema in London and the upcoming 2010 Festival Images Contre Nature in France.

Neil Needleman continues to live and work in New York. To view more of Neil Ira Needleman’s artistic or commercial work, please click here.

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