Vanity Search creates an instant web collage using search engines doing a vanity search on the name G.H. Hovagimyan. One might call this Neo-Fluxus information art. The interesting part is that the piece changes as more information is added to the web. This is a very fragile piece. It depends on all the search engines now in existence to continue to function. In the world of corporate communications cut-throat competition this is highly unlikely. this piece deals with information entropy. I liken this to Robert Smithson's famous musings, in his 1968 essay, "A Sedimentation of the Mind." How many search engines will be in existence in 10 years? Will the web become censored like in China or "privatized" and made the domain of commercial culture only? The fluidity of information has an ebb and flow like a tide washing away a shoreline.

gh hovagimyan homepage 2006
I've just spent the last 4 days upgrading my homepage: G.H. Hovagimyan homepage updated April 1, 2006, http://nujus.net/gh

People have been asking me to put up my HD morphs online. I've resisted doing that because they are high definition video and should be seen in person. They are at Sara Tecchia's gallery in New York, 529 West 20th Street. http://saratecchia.com/artists/gh_hovagimyan/

I just put this piece up on the IFC channel. It's rough footage for a larger installation work called Assembled Cinema. Actually they vetted the piece and put it up so now there is a voting process. I'm pretty excited about this piece. If you get a chance to vote on it please do.

http://medialab.ifc.com/film_detail.jsp?film_id=1354

Civilization stands on a precipice. A series of disasters can unravel the built-up infrastructure of a country. This is the way empires fall. Water supplies dry up and cities are abandoned. Storms and earthquakes destroy food supplies and roads. Disasters are always about disruption of normal routines. Think of an anthill. The ants are busy bringing food back to the nest. You come along and destroy the hill with your foot. The ants now have to shift into emergency response to get back to normal. What had taken them a certain amount of time to build is ruined in a moment. If this happens enough times the ant colony becomes unsustainable and is abandoned. It’s every ant for himself.

manhassat

In case you are wondering about the next Documenta theme I've been on the Empyre list doing the intellectual equivalent of Curly from the Three Stooges doing the early floor spin (pre hip-hop) without going anywhere.

Here's my algorithm for art.

Let's say that you've graduated from art school. You decide
to make something or do something. Let's call this something
S. You use all the techniques (T) that you've learned in art
school to make/do S. You then show this to a friend. Your
friend doesn't recognize [EQUIV] it as art A even though
you've used all the techniques (T) and procedures [FUNC]
you've learned in art school. You know that S is art. You now

Here’s an amusing intellectual exercise; define performance art.

I tend to know it when I see it. I also know what it isn’t. It’s not theatre and it’s not acting. I’d even venture to say that performance art is the antithesis of acting.

A fairly standard definition is that performance art takes the structure of art making and uses it as a starting point. Performance art tends to use the artist body as a material or as a tool within an active art making system.

Some people are touting the death of the artist. This is where everyone is creative. No more need for exceptional individuals. Only organizers, only curators. We can all work together. No one is special. That’s because we’re all special because we’re all the same. Yeah right. I bumped into a friend of mine, he’s a painter but he does high end cabinets to make a living. He lives in a tiny apartment in the Lower East Side.

Both Jerome Joy and Peter Sinclair are sound artists who live and teach in the south of France. They decided to instigate an experimental sound art program for post-graduate students in between their two schools (Aix-en-Provence and Nice). I was invited to do a workshop about podcasting for Locus Sonus at Villa Arson, the art school in Nice.

I was remarking to Kevin Clarke(he has an opening tonight at Sara Tecchia's, 529 West 20th street), that much of my work has been relational in nature.  Kevin said I should make a book about my work so that people can see the range and get some sense of what I've done.  Here's something  I wrote in 1993 in one of the original forums of the thing bbs;