New Books

The Engine by Andreas Schmidt, Jonathan Lewis and Mishka Henner
The Engine was a live image search performance by Andreas Schmidt, Jonathan Lewis and Mishka Henner which took place at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, England, from 7.30pm to 10.30pm on Friday, 16 December 2011. Using the pseudonyms Engine Ex, Engine Why and Engine Zed, each artist was stationed at a computer in the main exhibition space, conducting live searches and posting visual responses to each other’s posts. A live feed of the page was projected onto the gallery wall. Visitors to the performance and to the Facebok page were invited to comment on the images as they appear. The book The Engine is a printed record of the performance.

Beast by Andreas Schmidt
Beast is a beautiful book of beautiful pictures of a beautiful dog. Our hearts are touched by numerous and humorous pictures of the cute little creature as the dog is bathed, at play, learning about the world and more than often performing for the camera. 
All is well until we realize that this is one of the most famous dogs in the world, liked by 448,324 people. Beast is, of course, no other than Mark Zuckerberg’s dog.
Andreas Schmidt downloaded all images contained in the book from Beast’s very own Facebook page. Publishing these pictures which are readily available and shared on Facebook and on the web in an even greater public domain as a book is both an experiment and a warning to us all. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Does this book not teach us in the most powerful way that, no matter how innocent the pictures are and how wonderful it appears to be sharing your photographs with everyone world-wide, you never know who is looking and who might be using your pictures to their own advantage?

Im Reich der Zeichen by Jochen Friedrich
Im Reich der Zeichen (In the Empire of Signs) presents a selection of the author’s photographs of graffiti, posters, and stickers left on walls in cities around the world. Here, even the walls have opinions, symbolizing the fightback for personal expression in a public space dominated by corporate and governmental signs.

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