Digital Fusion Media: Forum

Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant

2011-09-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

DFM designs, prints and installs Gordon Biersch restaurant graphics at locations throughout the US.

Gordon Biersch Kansas City, Missouri

The Power & Light District is a shopping and entertainment district in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, developed by the Cordish Company of Baltimore, Maryland and designed by Beyer Blinder Belle and 360 Architecture. The district comprises nine blocks on the south side of the downtown loop. It is located between Baltimore Avenue to the west, Grand Boulevard to the east, 12th Street to the north, and Interstate 670 to the south. The $850 million "mixed-use" district is one of the largest development projects in the Midwestern United States The Power & Light District is one of only a few places in the United States where possession and consumption of open containers of alcoholic beverages are allowed on the street, although they remain prohibited on the street throughout the rest of Kansas City. The Power & Light District is immediately to the west of the Sprint Center.

Explore an Arctic Wonderland

2010-12-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Digital Fusion Media, Inc. produced and installed the Academy’s Piazza holiday graphics.

Inside the Academy’s Piazza, festive décor awaits, along with an igloo presentation dome, holiday craft activities, and a stage for special presentations and shows each day.

Indoor snow flurries will dust the Piazza throughout the day, against a backdrop of stunning photographs by Arctic National Wildlife Refuge photographer Subhankar Banerjee.

November 23, 2010 - January 2, 2011

Checkout our Tradeshow Exhibit and Event Graphic Display Options

2010-07-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

DFM printed & installed the Birth of Impressionism wall murals at the de Young

2010-06-07T23:42:00.000-07:00

This project was nerve racking and very exciting!

Thank you Earl, Ted, the Michell's, Dave and Richard

Art review: 'Impressionism' at the de Young

2010-06-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

Musée d'Orsay selection traces Impressionism's many faces, facets

SF Gate: ART REVIEW: May 21, 2010|By Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic

Follow the feet as you make your way through the M.H. de Young Museum's grand exhibition, "Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces From the Musée d'Orsay," which opens Saturday. Not fellow visitors' feet, but those in the paintings.

From the unearthly perfection of Adolphe-William Bouguereau's "Birth of Venus" (1879) in the first room of the show to the homely ritual of Edgar Degas' "The Pedicure" (1873) in the last, you can track the arc of artistic change through painters' treatment of their subjects' feet.

That pictorial thread winks out of the complex fabric of this show only by chance. But it suggests how much more this selection of mid- to late-19th century paintings from Paris holds than just the standard account of an avant-garde eclipsing a creatively bankrupt art establishment.

Bouguereau's "Birth of Venus" depicts the classical goddess of love afloat on a giant seashell, accompanied by cherubs and centaurs. Its subject provides a built-in pretext for nudity and (male) erotic fantasy. It also displays all the qualities that the Impressionists and their Realist and Barbizon School predecessors renounced: calculated false feeling, historical irrelevance and the "licked surface" that sealed off the picture space from the tangible, temporal world.

But even visitors schooled to revile Bouguereau as exemplar of everything retrograde must admire the technical dexterity and effort that his most famous picture demanded. Every bodily twist that it describes, from torso to toes and fingertips, looks plausibly observed, hinting at an extensive process of life studies and composition.

To understand the artistic gap between Bouguereau and high Impressionism, compare "The Birth of Venus" with Degas' depiction of callow ballerinas in "The Dancing Lesson" (1873-76).

No Venuses here. We look in on the working life of the demi-monde: young dancers in training for the ballet of the Paris Opera, where they might hope one day to meet a male benefactor backstage.

A couple of girls take prompting from their famous instructor, who stands at the center of the picture. But most look on, bored, restless and awkward. They chafe in their costumes. One in the foreground scratches her back.

The title "Birth of Impressionism" fits the exhibition well, accommodating the multiple meanings of "Impressionist" and the multiple paths along which it evolved.
Many paths

One path leads from mythological fantasy such as Bouguereau's through the revisionary realism of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Raffaëlli to the interest in contemporary life shared by Degas, Edouard Manet and Gustave Caillebotte.

Another path winds from the fetid dream landscape of Gustave Moreau, in whom the Surrealists saw a precursor, through the charged symbolism of France in views of peasant field workers and battle scenes inspired by the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune to ostensibly becalmed plein-air studies by Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and others.

The shifting relations among technique, subject matter and artistic attitude offer other paths through "Birth of Impressionism."

Forget nomenclature for a while and look hard at the rich range and variety of physical detail in the paintings assembled here.

Again and again in going through the show, I recalled art historian James Elkins' advice to imagine imitating physically the brushwork gestures in a canvas. In general, this gets easier to do as you move through the show.
Photography intrudes

Here and there, we sense the pressure of the new medium of photography.

A photograph appears tucked into the frame of the mirror in James Tissot's "Portrait of Mademoiselle L.L." (1864), complicating Tissot's reprise of J.A.D. Ingres' famous portrait of the Comtesse d'Haussonville. The sitters in Bazille's "Family Reunion" (1867) meet the viewer's eye in much the way they would a camera's. The offhand framing of Degas' images and the flickering busyness of a Monet such as "The Tuileries" (1875) imply the very instantaneity that photography promised almost from its invention.

Through careful selection and deft labeling, "Birth of Impressionism" even evokes some of the shifting allegiances among the Impressionists. Artists' portraits of one another ricochet around the center of the show. And Pierre Auguste Renoir's affectionate portrait of Bazille at his easel shows him working on a dead game still life. Sisley's version of the same subject hangs alongside.

The last room of "Birth of Impressionism," where Degas, Paul Cezanne and Camille Pissarro predominate, leaves us at the threshold of modernist painting. It also serves as a hinge for the de Young's September extravaganza, "Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces From the Musée d'Orsay."

In view of the present exhibition, expectations for the second installment could not be higher.

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces From the Musée d'Orsay: Paintings. Through Sept. 6. De Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. (415) 750-3600. www.deyoungmuseum.org.

Painting: Cezanne, Pont de Maincy [Maincy Bridge], circa 1879 © Musee D'Orsay

E-mail Kenneth Baker at kennethbaker@sfchronicle.com.
(C) San Francisco Chronicle 2010

ALEX ZECCA AND SUZANNE FRAZIER: TWO SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2010-06-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

Gallery 16
501 Third St SF

June 4 - July 16, 2010

Opening reception on Friday June 4 from 6 - 9pm

ALEX ZECCA AND SUZANNE FRAZIER TWO SOLO EXHIBITIONS

June 4 - July 16, 2010

Opening reception on Friday June 4 from 6 - 9pm

ALEX ZECCA: NEW WORK

Gallery 16 is pleased to announce its fourth solo exhibition with San Francisco artist Alex Zecca. The new drawings are the result of Zecca's obsessive and precise methodology. The drawings are time-intensive, process-oriented works made through a laborious process of accumulating steady inked lines.

Color, mixing, reaction and saturation, as well as sequence and systems are the visual dialogue central to my work.

Alex Zecca

SUZANNE FRAZIER: NEW WORK

Gallery 16 is pleased to present a show of recent paintings by Suzanne Frazier from her Tidelog series - paintings inspired by the entangled seaweed of the Northern Coast.

SFMOMA's 75th celebrated with youthful zest

2010-05-17T19:46:00.000-07:00

SFGate . Carolyne Zinko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, May 17, 2010

As an institution, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is 75, but it has never been so young.

More than 1,200 people celebrated the art museum's birthday Friday, about 550 at a $50,000-a-table private dinner and several hundred others at an afterparty that lasted into the wee hours.

Renowned gallerists, museum directors, artists and art collectors from near and far - Robin Vousden, director of the Gagosian Gallery in London; Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; painter Cheyney Thompson of New York; and San Francisco sound sculptor Bill Fontana, to name a few - came to celebrate the accomplishments of the museum, one of the three oldest modern art museums in the country.

"This is the most ambitious modern art museum in North America," proclaimed Vousden. "Civilization tends to move west. It got to England in the 16th century and it's predominant in San Francisco in the 21st century. This is like England of Elizabeth I - it's the center of the world, for art, for technology, financial services, arts and architecture. The energy is here, it feels young and ambitious and has totally great art and totally great collectors."

"Innovation is deeply embedded in the DNA of the museum, in its history and its present," said SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra. "There is no other museum, honestly, with such bright prospects, and it's the product of a great community of support."

The depth of support was evidenced by the demand for tickets for the event, from well-established collectors such as Doris Fisher and her extended family to younger patrons such as Google's Marissa Mayer and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. "When I called people to ask them to buy tables," said party chairwoman Norah Stone, "nobody said no."

New York art dealer Ethan Wagner, attending with wife Thea Westreich, said that when he told friends he was going to San Francisco for the museum party, nobody believed him. "No you're not," they challenged him. "It's sold out."

Stone and her husband, Norman, fun-loving characters known worldwide as much for their art collection as their joie de vivre, set a playful tone by requesting creative attire. Charlotte and George Shultz wore coats made of digitally printed fabric with newspaper stories about SFMOMA. Philanthropist Cissie Swig wore a headpiece adorned with butterflies. Norah Stone wore a hat made in the likeness of the museum's skylight, by New York designer Patricia Underwood. And London art dealer friend Ivor Braka came with drippy black eye makeup a la shock rocker Alice Cooper. Decor man Stanlee Gatti set a chic, spare tone adorning each table with a wood-block centerpiece spelling "SFMOMA" and a single gerbera daisy tucked inside.

There were other artistic creations - catered food by McCalls, the avant-garde music of headliners the Brazilian Girls, and birthday cakes galore in chocolate, fruit and violet by Elizabeth Faulkner, butter cake with strawberries poached in Lillet and vanilla bean with lemon verbena Swiss meringue by Caitlin Freeman, and croquembouche by Gerhard Michler.

But the best artistic endeavor of the night belonged to interior designer Sunny Merry and her mother, Jamie Jackson, a rancher. They put on wigs and had their faces painted with dots earlier in the day at the MAC cosmetic store on Union Street. The result was a Roy Lichtenstein painting come to life.

"I saw it on a Web site at Halloween," Merry said, "but I waited until tonight to do it."

Creativity Explored 6th Annual Art Auction & Celebration

2010-03-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Join Creativity Explored MAY 6 to celebrate and support CE's artists with developmental disabilities.

Art Changes Lives 2010

6th Annual Art Auction & Celebration

THURSDAY, MAY 6, 2010 6:30 pm - 10:00 pm

FOREIGN CINEMA2534 Mission Street (between 21st and 22nd)
San Francisco CA 94110

To honor Creativity Explored’s diverse art styles, artists, and personalities, the theme of Art Changes Lives 2010Annual Auction and Celebration is “Celebrating Color."

Enjoy seasonally inspired, award-winning cuisine prepared by Foreign Cinema. Toast the evening with plentiful wine, beer, colorful cocktails, and non-alcoholic beverages.

Bid on spectacular live and silent auction items, including quality works by Creativity Explored artists. Treat yourself to unique luxury auction items provided by our supportive neighborhood businesses and corporate partners. Be entertained by amazing live music and colorful characters.

Chromatic attire encouraged!

Purchase Event Tickets Online!

Visit the Creativity Explored Online Store or call 415-863-2108 to purchase tickets TODAY!

$125 per single ticket or $225 per pair

Photo by Orange Photography

Rube Goldberg Machine

2010-03-14T15:38:00.001-07:00

SFMOMA expansion

2010-02-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

SFMOMA says it is more than halfway home in $480-million expansion campaign

LA Times | by: Mike Boehm | February 4, 2010 | 5:39 pm

Photo: Andy Warhol's "Triple Elvis," 1963, from the Fisher Collection. Credit: Fisher Family.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art says it has raised $250 million toward a $480-million campaign to expand the museum, including a new wing that will be the primary home to the prized, 1,100-work Fisher Collection (including Andy Warhol's "Elvis, 1963," pictured) that the museum will receive as a long-term, renewable loan for 100 years.

San Francisco's modern art cache: the Fisher Collection
Donald G. Fisher; co-founded the Gap chain

Digital Printing on Fabric: Campbell Soup tablecloths and chair covers

2009-12-26T18:26:00.000-08:00

This is an good example of what's possible with fabric printing.

SFMOMA's 2007 Modern Ball, designed by Stanlee Gatti, featured a table setting with Warhol Campbell Soup decor.

SFMOMA opens 75th anniversary celebration

2009-12-26T18:08:00.000-08:00

SFGate | December 19, 2009 | By Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic

People expecting flashiness from "The Anniversary Show" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art may come away disappointed at first, but those who revisit the show that kicks off the museum's 75th anniversary festivity a month early will leave each time more impressed with the curatorial decisions that shaped it.

A museum celebrating itself inevitably risks exaggerating its prestige, influence or prescience. To the credit of "The Anniversary Show's" organizers, curators Janet Bishop, Corey Keller and Sarah Rogers, they have refreshed our view of the institution while keeping its claims for itself in proportion. Their selections weave together accounts of patronage, exhibition and collecting history, within a sketchy outline of nearly a century of international art production.

The exhibit, which runs for 13 months, takes the form of a head-snapping re-hanging of the permanent collection on the second floor that it customarily occupies. Only the gallery contractually devoted to the Anderson Collection of Pop Art figures as a still point around which everything else seems to have pivoted, including chronology and thematic groupings.

A wall full of San Francisco views on the second floor landing provides a seemingly superfluous but frankly thrilling reminder of where we are. "San Francisco Views, 1935 to Now" encompasses everything from a Timothy Pflueger graphite and charcoal "Bird's-Eye View of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge On-Ramps" to Rigo 98's panoramic ink on paper "Study for Looking at 1998 San Francisco From the Top of 1925," a view west from the roof of Pflueger's 1925 Pacific Telesis building, SFMOMA's immediate neighbor.

Even signature images such as John Gutmann's 1938 "Nob Hill, San Francisco" and Max Yavno's Filbert Street "Garage Doors" (1947) regain life alongside less familiar pictures by William Gedney, John Harding and Mary Kocol.

Absorbed in the historical zigzag the pieces on view trace, you forget you are looking at a core sample of SFMOMA's holdings.

Such triumphs of fascination over didactics occur throughout "The Anniversary Show," though it effectively pays tribute to defining personalities such as SFMOMA's founding patron, Albert Bender, and its dynamic early director, Grace McCann Morley.

In recognition of Morley's unblinkered vision, the curators have hung opposite canonical works by Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky and Alexander Calder 100 watercolors made by teenage boys in 1950s Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) that Morley acquired through the Chirodzo Art Centre there.

A wall full of San Francisco views on the second floor landing provides a seemingly superfluous but frankly thrilling reminder of where we are. "San Francisco Views, 1935 to Now" encompasses everything from a Timothy Pflueger graphite and charcoal "Bird's-Eye View of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge On-Ramps" to Rigo 98's panoramic ink on paper "Study for Looking at 1998 San Francisco From the Top of 1925," a view west from the roof of Pflueger's 1925 Pacific Telesis building, SFMOMA's immediate neighbor.

Even signature images such as John Gutmann's 1938 "Nob Hill, San Francisco" and Max Yavno's Filbert Street "Garage Doors" (1947) regain life alongside less familiar pictures by William Gedney, John Harding and Mary Kocol.

Absorbed in the historical zigzag the pieces on view trace, you forget you are looking at a core sample of SFMOMA's holdings.

Such triumphs of fascination over didactics occur throughout "The Anniversary Show," though it effectively pays tribute to defining personalities such as SFMOMA's founding patron, Albert Bender, and its dynamic early director, Grace McCann Morley.

In recognition of Morley's unblinkered vision, the curators have hung opposite canonical works by Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky and Alexander Calder 100 watercolors made by teenage boys in 1950s Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) that Morley acquired through the Chirodzo Art Centre there.

Outside the Box: 50 Extraordinary Billboards

2009-09-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

Most billboards are unsightly blights along the highway, blotting out the sky to shill for car dealerships or talk radio personalities. Four states with an abundance of natural beauty—Maine, Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska—have banned the beasts altogether. But sometimes, as this collection of extraordinary and attractive examples show, a billboard can be the vehicle for innovative and perspective-altering design.

Johnson Koh, an art director for a Singapore gaming company, collected his favorite billboard images for his Photoshop tutorial blog 10Steps.SG. The best ones break the conventional rectangular mold: A quit-smoking banner is held up by a giant three-dimensional cigarette butt; an ad for Tylenol features a wrecking ball lodged in a headache-sufferer’s forehead. In other cases, design is less important than clever writing. Take, for instance, the tag line for this Smart Car advert: “German engineering, Swiss innovation, American nothing.”

This is a re-post from: Very Short List

Maurice Sendak Exhibition: Contemporary Jewish Museum

2009-09-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

Author-illustrator Maurice Sendak's work is the subject of a show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
Mercury News - Posted: 09/03/2009
By Sura Wood

For Maurice Sendak, the prolific, award-winning author and illustrator of more than 100 children's books, no place is safe, not even a child's bedroom.

The snug comfort of idealized childhood, the gauzy, soft-focus variety envisioned by hopeful parents and hawked by advertisers, doesn't interest him. Rather, the province of Sendak's stories is in many cases a reflection of his own fearful coming of age in a world filled with peril and savage bullies, nightmarish monsters and jackbooted boogeymen who wreaked havoc, and a barbaric society of outsiders and insiders with a caste system and a set of enforcers that make the Mafia look like a brotherhood of softies.

He has often said that his abiding theme is children's tenacious drive to survive. "In my books, my fighting is all there, my fighting to stay alive, my fighting to communicate," he has said.

The new exhibition "There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak" takes a novel look at the influences and biographical themes that have shaped the author's sensibility and highlights his formidable talent as an illustrator while exploring the neurosis and terror, brilliance and humor that inform his work.

The show, organized by the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, the repository for Sendak's 10,000-piece archive, opens Tuesday at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Built around four thematic sections, the show presents more than 100 objects, encompassing original watercolors and drawings from more than 40 of Sendak's books, as well as rare sketches, working materials, stage designs, dummy books and manuscripts. Interview footage with the 82-year-old Sendak, a notorious curmudgeon who serves as a pithy albeit cranky narrator, can be accessed via touch screen in the galleries.

The Brooklyn-born son of poor Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Sendak has been plagued by demons that have haunted him throughout his life and have emerged in his work. They include a terror of kidnapping triggered by the 1932 abduction and murder of Charles Lindbergh's baby and especially the profoundly chilling shadow of the Holocaust, which took the lives of many of his relatives.

For example, in Sendak's frightening drawing for a nearly forgotten Wilhelm Grimm story, "Dear Mili," about a girl sent into the woods to escape an impending war she doesn't survive, Sendak links Grimm's tale to the true story of Anne Frank and the plight of Jews forced into hiding.

He shows the title character wandering in a burned out, denuded forest where the trees resemble corpses; a silhouette of the guard tower at Auschwitz looms in the background.

Horror also finds its way into a pen-and-ink drawing of the devil with tiny minions scrambling at his feet, a truly demonic incarnation created for a collection of short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

"Scariness is important to Sendak," says Patrick Rodgers, the Rosenbach's coordinator of traveling exhibitions.

"Look at how he grew up: His generation saw Europe descend into fascism, and he was aware of every family member who was eradicated in the Holocaust, every village that was razed. Half his family was killed.

"To be true to himself as an artist, he must deal with scary things in his work. The Holocaust looms very large, and so do other ghosts: AIDS, kidnappings, poverty, war."

Early in his career, the fear quotient made Sendak a lightning rod for child psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim and some concerned parents, who believed that their sensitive offspring were too fragile to handle the dark undercurrents of his books. With the 1963 publication of what is now acknowledged as his masterpiece, "Where the Wild Things Are," the controversy surrounding the artist reached its apex. But the admonitions and finger wagging haven't prevented Sendak's stories from being adored by legions of children.

The fantastical and playfully dangerous realms to which he has transported young readers have offered comfort and escape for millions of kids grappling with the travails of growing up. They are found in books such as "Kenny's Window," about the adventures of a boy whose bedroom window becomes a magical portal, and "In the Night Kitchen," where Mickey, in a dream state, floats down from his room to a kitchen with a bevy of rotund bakers who busily fold him into the cake batter.

In the aforementioned "Wild Things," naughty Max, after being sent to his room without supper, dons a wolf suit and consorts with an array of hairy and horned mythical beasts.

In a tribute to the cathartic power of literature, Sendak admits to working out his own long-standing childhood grudge against a despised uncle by turning him into the ugliest creature in the latter book, though he declines to divulge which one.

The brightly colored, original illustrations and final watercolors for "Wild Things" - a film adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze, is due out in mid-October - and a 1930s comics-inspired picture for "Night Kitchen" are among the high points of the museum show.

However, no Sendak retrospective would be complete without the infamously misbehaving, tantrum-throwing children beloved by fans. Take Pierre, for instance, introduced in the early 1960s: The author's alter ego stands on a chair and shouts his favorite anthem, "I don't care," to whomever will listen, while his mortified parents look on.

Sendak "creates characters that are easy for kids to identify with," Rodgers says. "They're simple, with loud personalities, a lot of brass and a big taste for adventure. And, fantasy aside, they behave like real kids." Hey, out there, you know who you are.

But it's the portion of the exhibition devoted to Sendak's specialty - monsters, boogeymen and bullies - that's likely to elicit the greatest enthusiasm from youngsters and those adults for whom childhood was more battleground than playground.

"What is too often overlooked is the fact that, from their earliest years, children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions. That fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives," observes Sendak in an exhibition text panel. "And it is through fantasy that they achieve catharsis."

"There"s a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak"

When: Tuesday-Jan. 19, 2010

Where: Contemporary Jewish Museum. 736 Mission St., San Francisco

Admission: $10, $8 students and ages 65 and older, free to members and ages 17 and younger, $5 for both adults and students after 5 p.m. Thursdays; 415-655-7800, www.thecjm.org

Oracle & Sun showcase 'world's fastest' database machine

2009-09-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

DFM produced the prototype graphics and screen printing for the world's fastest' database machine!

On September 15th Oracle and Sun introduced the "world's first" online transaction processing (OLTP) database machine. According to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Exadata 2 is the "fastest machine" for both data warehousing and online transaction processing.

The Vendor Client Relationship

2009-09-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

A photographer friend emailed a link to this video and asked, "how many times have we heard these phrases?"

Profit, not learning, drives 'Tutankhamun'

2009-07-28T13:16:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Baker
SF Chronicle Art Critic
Saturday, June 27, 2009

Among people with a professional interest in the arts, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," which opens today at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, will merely deepen the tarnish on the reputation of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Although FAMSF curator Renee Dreyfus has swapped out four objects presented at other venues for four of her own choosing, the show in bulk comes here prepackaged by National Geographic and Arts and Exhibitions International, a subsidiary of corporate impresario AEG Worldwide, which also owns the San Francisco Examiner.

Critics have hammered every art museum that has hosted "Tutankhamun." (A parallel exhibition, "Tutankhamun, the Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" - same size, same sources, same organizers - opens today at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.) But here, as elsewhere - except Dallas, where attendance fell about 40 percent short of projections - a vast audience probably will eat it up, even at $27.50 a head for general admission.

Why?

Therein lies a mystery to eclipse the unanswered questions represented by many of the objects on view.

Granted, the exhibition, an initiative of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, contains some spectacularly beautiful and exotic objects. (A portion of the event's proceeds and store sales will benefit Egypt's program of museum construction.) But the enveloping stagecraft will encourage no one to reflect on the reasons why these things fascinate.

A large dedicated shop connected with the show incites visitors to spend as little time as possible outside the fog of consumer desire. The commercial spirit of the affair shows even in the presence of large-type labels at the top of each case, to inform viewers of what they can only glimpse through a crowd.

Yet who would fail to be impressed by the antiquity and strange elegance of the carved limestone relief "Balustrade Showing Akhenaten and His Family Under the Aten" or the ebony and ivory "Child's Chair With Footrest," made during Tutankhamun's brief reign?

The age and lavish nature of many such objects have their own magnetism.

But do these 3,000-plus-year-old relics of Egyptian royalty's immortality cult also chime perversely with our own culture's elaborate denial of death? Does the extreme privilege and power that these artifacts represent cast a spell because of our own stifled consciousness of deepening economic injustice all around us?

Whatever the answers, we may safely assume that "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" is not the sort of immortality that the ancient Egyptian elite envisioned for itself. Hold that thought as a reminder that the show probably exaggerates, as any such project might, the ability of all but the most imaginative scholar specialists to enter into the ancient Egyptian worldview.

We can chalk up a quotient of interest in the present exhibition to memories, or the legend, of its predecessor, "Treasures of Tutankhamun," seen at the old de Young Museum in 1979. A few of the 130 items on view in the current show appeared in the earlier version. The 1978-79 exhibition still figures as a landmark in art museums' unhappy evolution from research centers into institutions of mass entertainment. Recall that Thomas Hoving, the flamboyant but well-connected director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art when it propagated "Treasures," titled his memoir "Making the Mummies Dance."

The Metropolitan has the size and resources to conduct itself along both lines at once. The Fine Arts Museums do not.

Unfortunately, hard times have lent traction to the bottom-line thinking behind "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs." With museums across the world - even the Met - trimming staff and programs, and sometimes taking artworks to the auction block to raise cash, the sate-the-gate approach of the Fine Arts Museums' John Buchanan, a museum director in the Hoving mold, looks almost prudent.

Defenders of the Buchanan approach argue that an event such as "Tutankhamun" sends ripples of needed traffic through local hotels, restaurants, even other cultural institutions during its run.

Well and good, if true.

But what will we not be seeing that we might have in the de Young's special exhibitions galleries during the nine-month span of "Tutankhamun"? What projects did FAMSF curators have to postpone or scrap altogether for the sake of the costly "Tut" gamble?

And what happens after the eventual economic recovery, when nonprofits can again begin to sustain themselves without pandering? Will the Fine Arts Museums regain the prestige their curators earned so hard in decades past?

We can only wait and see.

Meanwhile, another book title comes to mind: Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs: Sculpture, jewelry, ritual implements and funerary artifacts. Through March 28, 2010. De Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. (415) 750-3600.

Why do I think of MTV when I see the work of Richard Avedon?

2009-07-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Baker, kennethbaker@sfchronicle.com
SF Chronicle Art Critic
Saturday, July 11, 2009

Because in his early fashion photographs, Avedon invented pictorial-style-as-branding. It envisions all demeanor as performance and uses movement that meets the camera more than halfway. These qualities reached an unanticipated apex in music videos but made their appearance first in Avedon's innovative magazine pictures of the late 1940s.

For proof see "Richard Avedon: Photographs, 1946-2004," which opens today at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Despite using a still camera, Avedon (1923-2004) found all sorts of ways to get kinetic energy into his pictures.

In 1955, working in Paris, he posed the model Dovima in a Dior evening dress, elegantly splayed between live elephants from the Cirque d'Hiver. She looks as composed as a figure in a designer's sketchbook, but the animal energy of the pachyderms nearly bursts from the frame.

Eight years earlier, Avedon had posed Elise Daniels in a Balenciaga suit amid Parisian street performers, as if high fashion, or the ability to carry it off, presented a human case as odd and exceptional as the contortionist and the strongman who perform alongside Daniels in the photo.

The present exhibition of pictures and ephemera, selected by Helle Crezien of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and fine-tuned by SFMOMA curator Sandra Phillips, encourages us to discover all the signature qualities of Avedon's art foreshadowed in his early fashion photography.

In "Suzy Parker, Evening Dress by Dior, Paris Studio, August 1956," Avedon widened the camera view to include the rough edges and skylight of the studio that surround the model posing before a seamless background. He compounded the disillusioning effect by letting the negative's black margins into the picture.

Printing the negative margins rather than cropping them out became a mark of Avedon's mature work. It signaled his mindfulness of the materials in hand and of parallel modernist gestures of self-consciousness among artists working in more traditional media.

"Jean Shrimpton, Evening Dress by Cardin, Paris Studio, January 1970" explicitly echoes Futurist Umberto Boccioni's modernist classic, the bronze "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space" (1913/1931).

Framing figured more deeply in Avedon's art as he matured and celebrity portraits eclipsed fashion work as his mainstay beginning in the 1960s.

"Rudolf Nureyev, Dancer, 'En Pointe,' New York, May 31, 1967" evokes the dancer's athleticism, punishing self-discipline and supreme ability with a close-up of his veined, flexed ankle and foot as they keep him vertical.

Slacken your attention to the stance as a feat of strength, and Nureyev's toes seem to reach down delicately to the floor from above. But when the sense of the posture's reality returns, a slightly demonic aspect - as of a cloven hoof - comes with it.

When he photographed "Andy Warhol, Artist, New York, August 20, 1969," Avedon avoided the famous face and had Warhol expose instead the torso scars of his near-fatal shooting by Valerie Solanas in 1968.

The picture quietly marks Avedon's sense of himself as a shooter and risks the charge of sensationalism. But people close to Warhol said that the trauma of the murder attempt changed him irrevocably. Did Avedon sense this?

The portraits continually raise the question of what Avedon could intuit, or thought he knew, about his sitters. A panoramic, nearly life-size group portrait of the Warhol Factory crowd is the centerpiece of the exhibition. In it, Paul Morrissey, whom critics accuse of having ruined Warhol as a filmmaker, appears as a peculiarly sinister figure. Had Avedon already heard gossip about Morrissey's influence? Did Morrissey unwittingly or wittily tip his hand before the camera?

Because of his portraits' unsparing detail, commentators have accused Avedon of merciless scrutiny, yet the few people among his subjects whom I have met, such as Jasper Johns and Doon Arbus, appear very much themselves as they confront Avedon's lens.

Implicitly answering his critics, Avedon said that his true subject was a condition, not the peculiarities of individuals or a stratum of society.

But which condition: embodiment, mortality, subjection to the judgment of others? All of these and one more condition particular to Avedon's time: the inevitability of being photographed.

That fate touched the powerful, the glamorous and the luckless alike through Avedon's oeuvre. To the Facebook generation, mad for self-exposure, that inevitability may seem trivial and like a gift, but the SFMOMA retrospective makes it seem momentous again.

The Richard Avedon Exhibition is open at SFMOMA: Photographs, 1946-2004: Through Nov. 29. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., San Francisco. (415) 357-4000.

Interview: King Tut Exhibition Designer Mark Lach

2009-06-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

The latest episode of the de Young Podcast features an interview with Mark Lach, senior vice president at Arts and Exhibitions International (AEI) and exhibition designer for Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.

Mark answers questions about the exhibition and his role in bringing King Tut to San Francisco.

Podcast: Interview with King Tut Exhibition Designer Mark Lach

AVEDON was not a commercial photographer!

2009-06-14T22:56:00.000-07:00

SFMOMA July 11 - November 29

Whether photographing politicians, artists, writers, fashion models, or movie stars, Richard Avedon revolutionized the genre of portraiture. He rejected conventional stiff-and-staid poses and instead captured both motion and emotion in the faces of his subjects, often encapsulating their intrigue in a single charged moment.

SFMOMA is the only U.S. venue for this retrospective that spans the artist's remarkable career. Featuring more than 200 photographs along with a selection of vintage magazines, the exhibition presents work spanning Avedon's entire career, from his earliest street scenes to his breakthrough 1950s Paris fashion pictures and the iconic celebrity portraits that brought him world renown. This in-depth retrospective reveals Avedon's singular ability to blur the lines between photojournalism, fashion photography, and fine art.

Europe's Biggest Banner: BMW Project

2009-06-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

Russian advertising agency Mir Reclamy has produced a 6000sqm grand format banner for BMW.
The hoarding, which surrounds the Hotel Rossiya’s construction site facing the Moskva River in Moscow, is claimed to be the largest advertising platform in Europe.

It was printed on a frontlit banner substrate using an HP Scitex Grandjet. The 398.5×15.5m panel consists of 10 vinyl pieces seamed together with grommets.

The huge outdoor graphic features six BMW 7 Series cars covering the evolution of the model over its 55-year history.

www.printweek.com

HP Designjet L65500: Latex Printing

2009-06-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

HP's wide-format Designjet L65500 machine has been named Environmental Digital Printer 2009 by the European Digital Press Association (EDP).

Latex Printing Technologies provide durable, odorless prints and sharp, vivid image quality.

New water-based Latex Inks provide many of the benefits of solvent-ink technology without imposing the typical environmental, health and safety considerations. Odorless prints produced with Latex Inks emit extremely low levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). No special ventilation is required, facilitating an improved printing environment. Latex Inks are not classified as hazardous waste and are non-flammable and non-combustible.

François Martin, marketing director for HP's graphic solutions business within the Imaging and Printing Group for EMEA, said: "As environmental considerations continue to rise up the agenda for PSPs and brand owners, HP is committed to providing the best solutions both for our customers and for the planet."

Greenwashing or Just Misunderstood?

2009-02-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

Increase in Dubious Claims of LEED Certification Seen in Marketplace:
As Interest in LEED Buildings Intensifies, Claims of Certification Sometimes Overstate the Case

Many of the claims indicated that a property has earned LEED certification when it has not, or imply that certification is guaranteed at a time when the achievement is still uncertain. In other instances, registered or certified buildings are sometimes depicted as environmentally and financially superior to competitive properties without credible evidence.

Read the February 4, 2009 article by Andrew C. Burr

THE 6 SINS OF GREENWASHING

2009-02-15T12:34:00.000-08:00

Greenwash: the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental
practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.

THE 6 SINS

1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off
2. Sin of No Proof
3. Sin of Vagueness
4. Sin of Irrelevance
5. Sin of Fibbing
6. Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils

Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño

2009-02-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

Art collector and philanthropist Dolores Olmedo left her former home, the grand Hacienda La Noria, as a museum featuring the works of her friend Diego Rivera.

At least 137 of his works are displayed here, including his portrait of Olmedo, 25 paintings of Frida Kahlo, and 37 creations of Angelina Beloff (Rivera's first wife), many of them drawings and engravings. Among the notable Kahlo works here is her famed The Broken Column, which is considered the artistic embodiment of her physical suffering, the result of a trolley accident that pierced her spine when she was young.

Besides the paintings, there are fine pre-Hispanic pieces on display, colonial furniture and other hacienda artifacts, and a collection of folk art. An excellent gift shop and a cafeteria are on the premises. Olmedo was the executor of both the Rivera and Kahlo estates, a close friend and former lover of Diego's, and a rival to Frida. Olmedo died in 2002, recognized as one of the most astute collectors of contemporary Mexican art.

For more on the museum read:

Outside Mexico City, The House That Art Built
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer

New Deal Liberalism: WPA Artwork

2009-01-25T09:36:00.000-08:00

The development of modern American liberalism may be traced to the late 19th and early 20th century, it may also be viewed as the modern version of the classical liberalism upon which America was founded. Following the Great Depression, it became the dominant ideology in the U.S., until the late 1970s, when it was challenged by supporters of religious conservatism, laissez-faire economics, and a strong military presence overseas.

The New Deal arts projects provided work for jobless artists, but they also had a larger mission: to promote American art and culture and to provide Americans with access to what President Franklin Roosevelt described as "an abundant life." The projects saved thousands of artists from poverty and despair and enabled Americans across the country to see an original painting for the first time, attend their first professional live theater event, or take their first music or drawing class.

With the United States economy spiraling down the drain, there's been a renewed interest in the New Deal projects of the 1930s and 1940s as potential models of how to once again make big government good government.

Read Lincoln Cushing's new article:
Privatizing the Commons: The Commodification of New Deal Public Art

Lincoln Cushing has been researching New Deal prints for his forthcoming book from Cornell University Press, Agitate! Educate! Organize! American Labor Posters.

WPA New Deal Art: New Mexico

2009-01-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

In small towns across New Mexico are treasures from one of New Mexico's great artistic periods. For years they have been hidden away in schools, post offices and court houses. Promises Kept rediscovers our WPA artistic heritage by interviewing some of the remaining WPA artists such as Pablita Velarde and by looking closely at the artists and artworks themselves. The goal: to form a new respect, appreciation and to help preserve this treasures for generations to come.

Originally broadcast on New Mexico PBS station KNME.

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NewMexico PBS: June 25, 2008

Creativity Explored Celebrates 25 Years: May 2009

2009-01-02T14:51:00.000-08:00

Creativity Explored is a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art.

The Gala event at Foreign Cinema will sell out! Buy tickets in advance.

In just 25 years, Creativity Explored has earned a reputation as one of San Francisco's best art galleries and one of its most beloved arts organizations. Creativity Explored is more than just a gallery and a studio - it's a spirited community of more than 120 artists with developmental disabilities creating some of the most profound, fearless and innovative art on view in galleries today. This May marks the 25th year that this extraordinary art center has been changing lives through art. To celebrate this important milestone, the gallery at 3245 16th St. hosts "Quarter Century" - a rare display of its archives and permanent collection May 1 through June 18 and celebrates with a gala event May 15 at Foreign Cinema - the Mission District’s hot spot for food and film.

ANNIVERSARY EVENTS

EXHIBITION: Quarter Century
Creativity Explored's 25th Anniversary exhibition will feature many treasured artworks set aside over the years for the gallery's permanent collection, highlights from past exhibitions including the critically acclaimed "Don’t Call Me Retard" and select pieces from the traveling Steele Art Collection. The exhibition also offers fans of some of CE's most highly regarded and widely collected artists such as John Patrick McKenzie, Michael Bernard Loggins, Douglas Sheran and Vincent Jackson a chance to see early works that trace their creative evolution. A special memorial wall honors the work of studio artists who have passed away. Videos made by and about the artists will also be a featured part of the display. The exhibition is on view May 1 through June 18, 2008; Monday through Friday 10 am to 3 pm, Thursday until 7 pm, Saturday 1 to 6 pm. The gallery is located at 3245 16th St. in San Francisco.

GALA EVENT: 25th Anniversary Celebration
To celebrate 25 years of changing lives, Creativity Explored hosts a gala event May 15th at the Mission District's hot spot for food and film, Foreign Cinema. The evening features a screening of selections from Ben Wu's Academy Award-winning student documentary about the artists of Creativity Explored "Cross Your Eyes, Keep them Wide" and a silent and live auction of tantalizing items and exceptional artworks by studio artists and some of their nationally-known colleagues. Partygoers will enjoy delicious gourmet treats and an open bar while listening to the Parisian café stylings of The Baguette Duet, western swing and cowboy music by Chris Leone and the Spurs of the Moment plus special performances by surprise guests. The event takes place May 15th from 7 to 10 pm Tickets are $100 per person in advance; $125 per person day of the event. Foreign Cinema is located at 2534 Mission St. in San Francisco.

FOR INFORMATION ABOUT EITHER EVENT OR TO PURCHASE TICKETS FOR THE GALA, THE PUBLIC SHOULD CALL (415) 863-2108 OR VISIT WWW.CREATIVITYEXPLORED.ORG

SF Camerawork: 2 New Exhibitions 1 Reception

2009-01-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

United in Nima: Bay Area and Ghanaian Youth
Share Lives Through the Lens

The new photography exhibition United in Nima features photographs by low-income youth from SF Camerawork’s First Exposures photography mentoring program and teens living in the notoriously poor Nima slum of Accra, Ghana who spent three weeks together last summer in Africa sharing their lives, culture and art.

Test Patterns: Recent Video From South Africa

The new video exhibition Test Patterns brings together the work of nine contemporary South African video artists who explore ideas of citizenship and belonging in the post apartheid era. The artists include Churchill Madikida, Penny Siopis, Berni Searle, Simon Gush, Jo Ractliffe, Ismail Farouk, Ruth Sacks, Steven Cohen and Usha Seejarim.

SF Camerawork
January 8 - March 25, 2009
657 Mission Street
415-512-2020

Opening Reception for both United in Nima AND Test Patterns:
Thursday January 8, 5 - 8 pm

High Dynamic Range Imaging: what is it?

2009-01-02T13:17:00.000-08:00

The intention of High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) is to accurately represent the wide range of light to dark intensity levels found in real life scenes that include bright highlights, dark shadows and every shade between light and dark.

Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884) as been called "the most important French photographer of the nineteenth century because of his technical innovations in the still new medium of photography, his role as the teacher of other noted photographers, and the extraordinary imagination he brought to picture making"

His most important technical innovation:

Combination Printing, creating seascapes by using one negative for the water and one negative for the sky at a time when it was impossible to photograph both the sky and the sea in one image because of the wide luminosity range. He invented the photograph technique currently known as High Dynamic Range imaging or HDRI.

Today; one problem with HDRI is viewing the images. Typical computer monitors (CRTs, LCDs), prints, and other methods of displaying images only have a limited dynamic range. Thus various methods of converting HDR images into a viewable format have been developed, generally called "tone mapping".

Early methods of tone mapping were simple. They simply showed a "window" of the entire dynamic range, clipping to set minimum and maximum values. However, more recent methods have attempted to compress the dynamic range into one reproducible by the intended display device. The more complex methods tap into research on how the human eye and visual cortex perceive a scene, trying to show the whole dynamic range while retaining realistic colour and contrast.

Images with too much "HDR" processing have their range over-compressed, creating a surreal low-dynamic-range rendering of a high-dynamic-range scene.

Synthetic HDR images

Computer-created HDR images were first produced with various renderers, notably Radiance. This allowed for more realistic renditions of modelled scenes because the units used were based on actual physical units e.g. watts/steradian/m². It made it possible for the lighting of a real scene to be simulated and the output to be used to make lighting choices (assuming the geometry, lighting, and materials were an accurate representation of the real scene).

At the 1997 SIGGRAPH, Paul Debevec presented his paper entitled "Recovering High Dynamic Range Radiance Maps from Photographs". It described photographing the same scene many times with a wide range of exposure settings and combining those separate exposures into one HDR image. This HDR image captured a higher dynamic range of the viewed scene, from the dark shadows all the way up to bright lights or reflected highlights.

A year later at SIGGRAPH '98, Debevec presented "Rendering Synthetic Objects into Real Scenes: Bridging Traditional and Image-Based Graphics with Global Illumination and High Dynamic Range Photography". In this paper he used his previous technique to photograph a shiny chrome ball to produce what he called a "light probe", essentially an HDR environment map. This light probe could then be used in the rendering of a synthetic scene. Unlike a normal environment map that simply provides something to show in reflections or refractions, the light probe also provided the light for the scene. In fact, it was the only light source. This added an unprecedented level of realism, supplying real-world lighting data to the whole lighting model.

HDRI lighting plays a great part in movie making when computer 3D objects are to be integrated into real-life scenes.

Dream Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II

2009-01-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

Canon's update to the wildly popular full frame EOS 5D is here, and it's better than ever.

The EOS 5D Mark II has a 21.1-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with DIGIC 4 Image Processor, a vast ISO Range of 100-6400 (expandable to ISO L: 50, H1: 12800 and H2: 25600), plus EOS technologies like Auto Lighting Optimizer and Peripheral Illumination Correction. It supports Live View shooting, Live View HD videos, and more. It can shoot up to 3.9 fps, has 9 AF points plus 6 AF assist points, a new 98% coverage viewfinder, a 3.0-inch Clear View LCD (920,000 dots/VGA) and a rugged build.

Features

What's Hot at Macworld 2009!

2008-12-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 5th - 9th 2009

DESIGN

Power Tools

2-day in-depth training on popular Mac software applications and tools

Session topics include:

- NEW! InDesign CS4 for the Practical User
- Dreamweaver
- Final Cut Studio 2 In-Depth
- Photoshop
- Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite
- Learning Flash CS4

Market Symposium

New Media Artists
Attend this day conference and learn about the latest trends, solutions and what customers want today. You will gain valuable knowledge on how to manage projects, developing new ideas, the latest hardware and software tools and what's new in delivery for the web, cd and dvds. Whether you'll be creating marketing, education, presentations, e-learning, e- mail campaigns, asset and content management applications you won't want to miss this symposium!

PHOTOGRAPHY

Power Tools

2-day in-depth training on popular Mac software applications and tools

Session topics include:

- Aperture
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
- Photoshop

Users Conference

The Macworld Users Conference offers a broad range of presentations designed to sharpen skills and provide instruction on how to work most effectively on your Mac. Hear from experts in diverse fields providing inspiration and new computing ideas for both new Mac users and skilled masters alike.

Session topics include:

- The Art & Craft of Digital Photography
- Five Ways to Work More Efficiently in Photoshop
- The Passionate Photographer - Aperture 2.1
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Workflow for Digital Photographers
- Aperture in Nature & Landscape Photography
- Exploring Panoramic Virtual Reality (VR) Photography
- Ask the Editors!
- Creating Digital Portfolios
- DVD Montage on the Go
- Getting the Best Out of Your Images
- Digital Art Pioneers and Trendsetters

Legacy: DFM's Partner in Exhibit Shipping & Warehousing

2008-12-23T10:15:00.000-08:00

Transportation Services

LEGACY Trade show services include exhibit and product transportation, with specially equipped air-ride vehicles, drivers and customer reps who are highly trained and focus only on trade show transportation.

Our full service trade show offerings include logistics programs for partner booths and equipment, on-site supervision and expert, careful pad-wrapping and handling of all your booth properties. We’re the best in the business, and we're ready to make sure your show experience is a success.

Other trade show services include global logistics, air freight, mobile exhibit programs, exhibit warehousing, exhibit crating, security cage rental and insurance protection packages.

Warehousing

Racked storage space is available at all locations (San Jose, CA; Santa Fe Springs, CA & Elk Grove Village, IL). All our warehouses are organized, clean, safe, secure with 24-hour surveillance and well-located.

Shipments in storage are palletized to keep them secure and separate from one another. Barcoding assists with inventory control at delivery and load out.

Our warehousing staff is on call 24/7 to help with unforeseen needs.

Through our network of United agents in the U.S. and worldwide, we can secure storage for you virtually anywhere you need it.

THE STREET WISE PROJECT: Peter Adams

2008-11-24T03:46:00.000-08:00

Peter Adams photographic essay THE STREET WISE PROJECT is about Australian people in the Blue Mountains. The exhibition of digital prints include scientists to buskers, and sculptors to ambulance drivers. The exhibition is currently open in the boiler room of the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba NSW.

Checkout the blind speed skater and other wonderful images.

Vote NO on Prop 8 - Nov. 4th 2008

2008-10-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

DFM position on California's No on 8 campaign:

Digital Fusion Media oppose Proposition 8. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 - we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

Lenticular Printing

2008-10-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

What are lenticular graphics?

Two-dimensional graphics that can show these special effects:

- Motion or action sequencing
- Flip from one image to another
- 3-Dimensional or depth appearance

They can vary in size from postcard, to large format murals or tadeshow graphics.

How are they created?

A special lens is adhered to the face of an interlaced graphic. This lens is called lenticular film. The thickness of this film can be between 1/16" and 3/8" due to the intended effect (motion, flip, 3-d) and is made of acrylic with a raised surface of precisely measured, half-circular ridges or lenses.

Before the lenticular film is adhered, a technique called interlacing needs to be done to the graphic's file. In the case of creating a flip graphic, 2 or more images are imput into a software program, which slices them into narrow bands and is arranged in an alternating sequence. The width of each slice of image must match exactly to the width of the acrylic ridges or lenses of the lenticular material being placed on top of the graphic. The file is now output, and the interlaced graphic is created.

Place the lens material over the newly interlaced graphic, and you will see an image emerge. As you move to the side, you will see another image, because it is a different viewing angle. Since each slice of graphic is perfectly sequenced by the software program, the visible slices always correspond to the same image. Make the viewing angle shift, and a different collection of strips comes into view, showing the different image.

Why use lenticular graphics?

Lenticular imaging is catching on as the way to capture a potential customer's attention. As a person walks by, the image appears to move, change, or jump out! Lenticular images do not require any special equipment to use. They can easily be placed on a wall or window, or even hung from a ceiling. They can be front-lit, or backlit for even greater impact!

Ideal for tradeshows! Research shows that the trade show exhibitor has 3-5 seconds to capture the attention of an attendee; in that brief time, the decision is made whether or not to stop at the exhibitor's booth. Seeing an image instantly flip into another image, or float off the wall, will certainly make them stop dead in their tracks!

Adaptable for any retail application, these graphics can fit easily into any sign holder, end cap, light box, or ceiling-hanging apparatus. Imagine how you can stop traffic in front of a store window showing motion or action-sequencing without the need for costly television monitors or electricity!

What types of effects?

Motion or action-sequencing: this effect creates the impression that the image is either rotating on an axis or moving in one or more directions. These can be 5+ images similar to animation frames, so that as you flip past them, you see movement.

Flip from one image to another: these are the most multi-functional. Flipping graphics on a panel is a nice way to tell a story visually, while saving space on your booth walls for additional signage. The image will change to an entirely different image, so you can show several signs on one graphic.

3-dimensional or depth appearance: this is the only process where the viewer is standing still to see the effect. There are a number of graphic elements contained in the original image that are separated and put on different layers, to produce the illusion of depth in a 2-dimensional image. The viewer sees part of the image float over the lens by 1/2 a foot, and sees into the graphic almost a foot deep!

How are files set up?

300 dpi at final size up to 30x40. sizes bigger can be at 150 dpi. Files are created in rgb format. If the file is too large to be built at 100%, then build at 50%, or even 25%.

Image quality important, if the image is not sharp, or is a small file interpolated to a larger size, will not work well.

Always specify whether there is a specific PMS color to match, and enclose a hard copy.

Send all art elements used to make the final composite. Do not flatten file, so we can manipulate if needed.

Try to stay away from horizontal or vertical lines running in the same direction as the lens. Use text and lines which are large enough so they will not be distorted by the curvature of the lens material. Lines running diagonal to lens will show a stair-stepping effect.

Avoid serif fonts and outlined text.

3-d specific file set-up:

Use photoshop layered files for imaging 3-d graphics. For motion of flip graphics, save as a TIFF. If you are working in a vector program such as illustrator, you need to export to a tiff for each of the layers being created.

3-d background files need to be made 1/3 size larger than original in the width. Avoid solid color or horizontal stripe backgrounds; use a textured background instead.

Build the file with the important text or logo at the image center plane, to keep as sharp as possible. As elements are placed forward or back of the image plane, the will get softer.

If objects are cut out of the background and placed on a separate layer, the removed area of the background must be cloned to cover the void area left by the object's former position.

Elements that overlap slightly are good depth cues to enhance the 3-d illusion.

Try to force perspective- make larger objects in front, and smaller objects in the background.

Psychologically, warmer colors tend to project, and cooler colors recede.

Elements that are projecting forward should not bleed beyond the trim area. This will cause confusion with the depth cues.

Flip specific file set-up:

2 image flips work best: 3 images flip too fast, and it is hard to see each flip.

When choosing images for a flip, avoid areas of solid colors which can cause ghosting.

Do not try to flip opposites; if one image has a black background, and the 2nd image has a white background, ghosting will appear.

Photographic images work better that line art.

Design your flip so that they share a common background.

If there is a logo or text that repeats from 1 image to the other, keep them in the same location on each graphic.

Lenticular Graphics

2008-10-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

Lenticular graphics come in four flavors: 3D, depth, motion and flip. These visual effects are achieved via a special sheet lens with built-in lenticules. When the lens is placed over interlaced images it separates the images and fools the eye into seeing the a visual effect.

3D lenticular images are similar to a hologram. They offer simulated 3 dimensional imaging. To create a 3D effect photos are taken of the object from different perspectives. The photos are transferred onto the lenticular layers. When viewed from different angles, you see different angles of the object. This creates a very realistic 3D effect.

Depth images are created by layering objects in a file. The lenticular software allows a visual depth to be chosen for each of the layers and the final effect is that of a three dimensional space. Changing viewing angles allows you to see behind objects in the foreground.

Flip graphics bounce visually between several different images. Two or three images are usually all that are used for this effect. These are the original lenticulars, like the old Crackerjack promotions from the 40s.

Motion graphic images are a sophisticated version of the flip. They appear to show an object in motion, like a short video clip. This requires a series of 30 or more images to show the motion.

To create the interlaced images used in lenticular graphics, special lenticular software is needed which can slice up and combine images in a number of interesting ways. Different lenticular lenses with different numbers and thicknesses of lenticules are used to create the various effects.

To create the interlaced images used in lenticular graphics, special lenticular software is needed which can slice up and combine images in a number of interesting ways. Different lenticular lenses with different numbers and thicknesses of lenticules are used to create the various effects.

Interactive Walls

2008-10-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

Play all at once!

Art Wall:

Mood Wall:

Media Wall:

Super Object Wall:

Pool Wall:

Art Wall::

Wind Wall:

Subway Wall:

Museum Wall:

Bally & Zoom: Exclusive Media Agreement

2008-10-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

Bally, one of the wold's largest fitness organization with US headquarters located in Chicago, has signed a long-term contract whereby Zoom Media - recent purchaser of ClubCom - becomes Bally's exclusive provider of customized digital media solutions as well as Bally's exclusive advertising partner.

The deal marks a major expansion with Zoom, which already had 1,800 static billboards and 800 backlits in changing rooms and common areas in Bally's fitness locales. Zoom will now add 1,500 digital screens to include all 350 Bally locations across the US.

The Bally digital media network (Bally TV) will include overhead audio-visual entertainment, personal entertainment programming and digital signage.

Zoom will provide advertisers with systematically integrated advertising and sponsorship opportunities throughout each of the digital programing offerings. Overall, the Bally network will be one of the largest private digital media networks in the US with over 10 million monthly viewers captivated for nearly 90 minutes per viewing for a yield of over 180 million annual viewing hours.

"The creation of the Bally TV Network in association with ClubCom and Zoom Media will tremendously enhance our members' experience and provide a unique platform for educating our members," says Stephanie Burnham, associate vice-president of marketing and planning for Bally.

The addition of Bally brings the number of US ClubCom gyms to almost 1.200 and 2000 worldwide.

Dennis Roche, US president of Zoom Media, New York, says, "Adding Bally to the ClubCom digital network gives Zoom an unparalleled national platform for advertisers interested in reaching the fitness audience."

The Bally media network will be rolled out this fall and fully installed and integrated by the Spring of 2009.

Gail Chiasson

Pop-up Exhibit & Digital Signage

2008-10-02T00:31:00.000-07:00

DFM is happy to announce a new digital signage product the MonitorStand.

LCD screens are new to portable displays. The MonitorStand combines printed exhibit graphics with video clips and animation.

The MonitorStand can be used in three ways:

- As a freestanding monitor holder
- Completely integrated with the Pop-Up Exhibit
- Partially integrated with the Pop-Up Exhibit

HOW DOES DIGITAL SIGNAGE TECHNOLOGY WORK?

2008-09-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

Digital signs may be scrolling message boards, LCD or plasma display panels, elictronic billboards, projection screens, or other emerging display types like living surfaces or Organic LED screens (OLEDs) that can be controlled electronically using a computer or other devices, allowing individuals or groups to remotely change and control their content (usually via the Internet).

Content scheduling and playback can be controlled by a number of technologies ranging from simple, non-networked media players that can output basic loops of MPEG-2, N-tier player networks that offer control over many displays in many venues from a single location. The former is ideal for small groups of displays that can be updated via sneaker net (the practice of physically transporting data to each location on a disc or CD-Rom, usually by walking), while the latter allows Digital Signage Network Operators to either push content to many players at once or have each player pull content from a server as needed.

Rapidly-dropping prices for large plasma and LCD screens and wide availability of Internet connectivity have caused digital signage deployments to gain in popularity, and displays can now be found in such diverse locations as retail outlets, transit hubs (like airports or bus stations), doctor's offices, fast food restaurants and even gas stations.

Another price related benefit that is allowing a larger group of businesses to install digital signage is the increasing availability of newer LCD and plasma display brands in the market. Many locations have opted to forgo more expensive brand name displays for more affordable non name brand displays. A recent study shows that there is a statistically significant relationship between price and the display size. The same study also shows that there is a significant relationship between whether or not the display is a name brand. These two variables actually account for 77% of the price in displays.

The recent introduction of free digital signage software may further expand the "pool" of potential users of this technology. It will now be attractive to smaller businesses (that may have otherwise found this technology too expensive), as well as to "non-profits" such as schools, universities and churches.

A further development is the use of mobile media, mobile or wireless phones. By combining mobile media with out of home advertising, print or digital, either the mobile phone becomes the digital signage display or the media becomes interactive. By various means, messaging, scanning a barcode or taking an image with a phone cam, a user can interact with a print advert or digital signage media. This enables a user to obtain further or even local information about an advertised product or subject on the go.

IS THE TERM "DIGITAL SIGNAGE" ACCEPTED INTERNATIONALLY?

2008-09-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

While the term "digital signage" has taken hold throughout North America and most of Europe the same technology in the Netherlands is often referred to as Narrowcasting or Narrowcast.

There are some companies who prefer screen media, place-based media, digital merchandising or "digital media networks" or in some cases "captive audience networks", or "CANs".

The large number of terms that have emerged to describe the nascent industry led Point of Purchase Advertising International (POPAI) to form a digital signage standards group in 2005. This group was tasked with assembling a list of standard terminology for describing digital signage technology and business models and was expected to release a final list of its recommendations in 2006.

Electronic digital signage displays are also known as Retail TV, Electronic Billboard Signage, Dynamic Digital Signs, Electronic Display Networks, Digital In-Store Merchandising, Out-of-Home Media Networks, Employee TV, Electronic Posters or Digital Posters.

For more info read the POPAI Digital Signage Blog.

WHAT IS DIGITAL SIGNAGE?

2008-09-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

Digital Signage: Electronic displays that are installed in public spaces. Digital signs are typically used to entertain, inform or advertise (together known as "adfotainment").

Major benefits of digital signs over traditional static signs are that the content can be exchanged without effort, animations can be shown, the signs can adapt to the context and audience, and even be interactive.

Digital signage advertising is a form of out-of-home advertising in which content and messages are displayed on digital signs, typically with the goal of delivering targeted messages to specific locations at specific times.

DIGITAL SIGNAGE COMPANY TO WATCH

2008-09-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Founded in 1987, Scala, is a leading digital signage company providing software solutions for digital networks.

Digital Signage Markets Include:

Retail

Corporate

Transportation

Government

Cable TV

Education

Supermarkets

Hospitality

Healthcare

Digital Signage software creates, manages, and distributes electronic content to networks of digital displays that are centrally managed and addressable for targeted information, entertainment, merchandising, and advertising.

DIGITAL SIGNAGE: TRANSIT ADVERTISING

2008-09-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

Digital Transit Signage Video Links:

Tunnel Advertising

Shanghai Subway Advertising

Corvette Ad Inside Tunnel

Tokyo Subway

Digital Signage on Truck