Let the Basel Frazzle begin…

This poster is a collaboration between the supertalented wearygunfighter & C-Monster.net. Interested in owning a copy? Visit the OMNI Board of Tourism booth inside the marketplace at Scope Miami. Proceeds go to support The Omni Bot, a non-profit organization supporting business development in underprivileged neighborhoods. Cost: a mere $5. (Plus: Omni’s having a pop-up party on Wednesday afternoon from 4 to 8 p.m. (with beer!) Get the deets here.)

Giveaway Extravaganza: Leave a comment below and you could win your very own Miami: Where Art Sweats poster — the official poster of the C-Mon Basel Frazzle.

It’s summer in the city and the social calendar here at C-Mon is packed! Last night, we managed to be the most unfashionable person in the room at a little soiree held at Marilyn Minter‘s studio to celebrate her upcoming artist ad campaign with MAC Cosmetics. Events were also held at the studios of painter Richard Phillips and illustrator Maira Kalman, who are also doing campaigns for the company. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to those because the driver (aka, husband) was waiting to escort me off to a multi-course wine-laden dinner (assorted bread and cheese products, lubricated by invigorating quantities of Two Buck Chuck).

Even so, being able to freely roam around Minter’s studio was pretty badass. And so was ogling the Adonis-like waiters in pec-hugging T-shirts dishing out pink lemonade and ice cream. Though next time, dear MAC people, I sure could use a gift bag — with a little liquid liner in black.

Click on images to supersize, waiters after the jump.

Delicious colors.

But not as delicious as this: ice cream, with colored sprinkly things…

…served up by buff waiters in tight tees bearing the image of Minter’s upcoming MAC ad campaign. Hubba, hubba.

Minter’s studio had a lounge area that was equipped with good couches, lotsa art books, a TV (dispensing MAC marketing, of course), vag art, a Jeff Koons ceramic dog and a killer Sigmar Polke piece (off camera, behind the plant — sorry, I couldn’t get a clear shot). This is a spot I could seriously hang out in.

Notes to self.

Party people.

The artiste’s snazzy silver sandals.

I’ve made some sorely needed improvements – aka, scrawled my name — across Rhizome’s 50,000 Dollar Web Page, a “collaborative” fundraiser for the New Museum‘s digital arm. Last month, the organization set up a permanent web page on their site where anyone can buy a space and a link (10 x 10 pixels go for $5) — and put up pretty much whatever they like. With your donations, I was able to roller tag the mutha — something far bigger and better than if I’d try to go at this alone.

Needless to say, I’m pretty darn grateful that there are folks out there who saw fit to help me finance this silliness. As promised, my “project” is neither socially nor politically redeeming. And as promised, everyone is thanked on the site. In the process, Rhizome, a non-profit, made a tidy $620 in donations. I’ve raised $447 of that total, surpassing my goal of $400 — and I didn’t even have to get all Sally Struthers. If you still want to contribute a couple of bucks to the cause, however, I’m not gonna say no. (You can do that here.)

In the meantime, thankyouthankthanyouthankyou to everyone who gave $$$ (in the middle of a recession, no less!). I love knowing that there are people out there who not only encourage ridiculosity, they sponsor it! You guys rock HARD.

xox,
C.

After: That same page with art. So soothing!

How to put it delicately? Advertising sucks. And thankfully, there are mad-genius artist types in the universe who are working on dealing with this scourge. Brooklyn-based artist Steve Lambert, a senior fellow at Eyebeam, has, for the past year, been developing a Firefox plug-in that replaces Internet advertising with images of art.

The widget is based on a popular ad-blocking software, with added layers of coding that allow websurfers to see art rather than ads. Lambert, who has worked on other anti-advertising projects in the past, including Budget Gallery in California, and the Anti-Advertising Agency in NYC, came up with the idea three years ago. But he didn’t begin serious work on the project until about a year ago, when he got the hackers at Eyebeam to help write code. (Here’s the list of people who have contributed to the project.) In addition to the Eyebeam folk, other tech types have also been involved. “I’ve had groups of people get together every week or two weeks and we have pizza and beer and work on this,” explains Lambert. “There’s a guy at Bank of America who works during the day but then he comes over at night. He really has a great spirit about it.”

The plug-in is still in the beta stages, but I’ve been testing it out for several days and am happy to report that it kicks ass. (All of the screengrabs in this post are from my websurfing travails.) Seven out of ten times, the widget, formally known as Add-Art, effectively replaces all advertising with images of art. At other times, it just leaves ad spaces blank. The art, unfortunately, does not click through to an arts site. But no matter, Add-Art vastly improves the visuals on any websurfing experience. Ultimately, Lambert is seeking to create up-to-date galleries by guest curators that will be rotated in and out of selection every two weeks. “Right now, the plug-in replaces most ads and sometimes it leaves things blank,” he says. “But that’s fine with me. At least you’re not seeing ads.” Hallelujah to that.

Lambert will formally “unveil” the plug-in next Thursday, May 22nd, at 7:30 p.m., at the New Museum. In the meantime, you can download Add-Art here.

Click on images to supersize. More before-and-after pairings after the jump.

Before: ArtForum, a site that is purportedly about art, has a news page that never shows any. Though they do show plenty of logos for commercial galleries.

After: Much better! The tacky logos on the right have been successfully blocked, while others have been replaced with a little Gustav Klimt. What a relief!

* * *

Before: Behold…the Miami Herald‘s Visual Arts section. The arts stories on this page look about as enticing to read as a government report on tax reform. In fact, the only visual elements on the page are the SCREAMING ORANGE MARLINS ADS that make me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon.

After: Thank Jehovah! A little Klimt just cleaned this puppy right up! Now the Herald has a Visual Arts site that looks like it’s about, well, visual arts.

* * *

Before: Here we have the Old Grey Lady. And while the paper is actually a good example of a well-done interactive arts site (lots of pics, audio, video, slideshows), it’s also laden with ads. On this page, a story about auction sales by blogosphere favorite Carol Vogel has ads above and to the side that overshadow that nice Rothko with messages of: buy, buy, buy…a gas-guzzling car that will help send the planet to its ultimate demise.

After: Much more dignified! Rothko is now in good company.

* * *

Before: The New York Post‘s Entertainment Page. (Gotta have at least one lowbrow entry in the group.)

After: Okay, the tacky red banner is still tacky, but the page is made infinitely better by removing the bubble-gum pink animated ad for Xanadu on the right. Now I can read about the Sex and the City movie in peace. Whew.

Posted by C-Monster.

Last night, while flipping through Juxtapoz‘s May photo issue, I came across the above ad for Colt 45. We’re a little slow on the uptake here at C-Monster.net, and had no idea that the famed malt liquor brand was now marketing itself to hipsters. But lo and behold, there it was, in the pages of an art magazine. This, of course, begs the question: what are the requisites of selling a grody-tasting beer-like product to all those trend-making young influentials? C-Monster investigated, and came up with these four essential rules:

Marketing Lesson #1:
Put the word “Yo” in front of anything and it’ll sound street. And street=cool.
Notice the fine print on the bottom right of the ad: Yo, enjoy our frosty malt beverage responsibly! See how easy that was? Now you try it. Here are a few examples to help you along: “Yo, hand me the organic peanut butter” or “Yo, I can’t go out because my parents haven’t sent me my monthly allowance yet” or, if you want to switch things around: “My stock portfolio is taking a beating, yo.” See how easy it is? Now do this while holding a 40 and you’ll have serious street cred.

Marketing Lesson #2:
Give it a heavy-duty interactive/graphic design element.
You gotta have an online presence. And hopefully, that online presence will give all those graphic designer-types something to do. Because they don’t have much else going now that they’ve graduated from art school and the economy is in the pooper. In this case, Colt 45 encourages creativity by asking people to create their own Colt 45 comics. Mind you, a real Colt 45 tale would probably feature somebody face down in the parking lot behind the Liquor-Mart, covered in their own piss, but no matter. This is advertising. It doesn’t have to be truthful, yo.

Marketing Lesson #3:
Have hot alterna-chicks talking about how great your product tastes.
It doesn’t matter if you’re shilling jailhouse hooch brewed with a moldy gym sock, just describe your product the way you’d lovingly describe a fine wine and some sucker is bound to fall for the ruse. The sweet little lady above talks about flavors that are “smooth yet robust,” an “ample body and smooth finish” and “flavorful extracts of malted barley and corn.” It doesn’t matter that malt liquor tastes like cheap, stale beer, or that it’s just what the doctor ordered if you’re looking to induce a near instantaneous headache. It’s smooth yet robust! And this hot chick wants me to drink it! I gotta get me some! Just serve it iced so the swill don’t make you ill.

Marketing Lesson #4:
Give your online store a clever name.
Those wily hipsters are on to all the typical marketing ruses. So, if you’re gonna try to peddle useless trinkets to them, you gotta baptize it with a cool-sounding name. No one wants to shop at an online “store.” It sounds too merch-y, too late ’90s. So call your sales site something clever, like, in this case, the Colt 45 online bodega. Now your average white, middle-class twentysomething isn’t just mindlessly consuming T-shirts and keychains, they’re gettin’ down with some underrepresented minority group. They’re part of the struggle. And that, my friend, is coolness you can’t buy. (But you can sell.)

Posted by C-Monster.