dLux MediaArts sponsored an event with for the August 3rd Art After Dark night of the 2012 Sydney Biennial with Warren Armstrong, Andrew Burrell and Virta-Flaneurazine. On Pier 2/3, the Sydney electronic collective, Filthy Children, played as free prescriptions of the mobile version of VF were handed out to willing participants. Apparently hundreds have taken the experimental medicine and benefited from its results. If you are there, the secret is you can get a drug dose simply by downloading the Layar Augmented Reality application and searching for the layer, “Dose”. In fact the best way to take the drug is to access the layer “Bufo Colonies” which will reveal a small outgrowth of the Stedelijk Museum colony Bufo toads which can be licked on your phone screen or iPad.
Remember also, that although the experience has pleasurable side effects, the medication is primarily developed to help with problems of Wanderlust Deficit Disorder (WAD), a form of Internet addiction. This is an unapproved virtual medication and at this point Virta-Flaneurazine cannot take responsibility for its use or affects.
The Stedelijk Museum has been in renovations for 8 years now. This has apparently lead to conditions ideal for the spreading of invasive animal species that thrive on art. The Stedelijk Museum colony has recently been discovered, around and inside the main museum under construction and renovation, but also at its temporary events and exhibitions site at the Trouw Amsterdam. Specifically, this colony seems to have taken on items related to the first upcoming fall exhibition there of Mike Kelley’s work, displaying skin coloring from afgans to “Sex to Sexty” magazine to abstraction. At the event at the Trouw Amsterdam entitled “Augment IT” the colony was clearly sighted. Apparently the visionary effects of touching or licking good toads are some of the most powerful experiences yet.
Stedelijk Museum Colony growth with workmen
Stedelijk Museum Colony inside the empty museum in front of the Karel Appel wall
Trouw hallucination experience after contact with toad’s skin toxin- near a total black out…
October 9: Video documentation of Occupy Wall Street colony breaching the barriers set up at the NYSE with mounted police. Later strange clump-like behavior above the drum circle at Zuccotti Park, with a very large rising uber OWS toad.
As of today, October 5, the outbreak of a new bufo colony was documented in augmented reality in a barricaded area in front of the New York Stock Exchange. We will simply call it the Occupy Wall Street Colony, or the OWS Colony for short. This particular species seems to have markings on its skin in the form of a swirling NYSE façade and generate above, a hovering pie chart of the US skewed distribution of wealth.
Bufo toad of the Occupy Wall Street Colony at an organizational meeting of Occupy Wall Street leaders at Liberty Park, including Michael Moore in the orange hat. Police presence severely hampering cell phone reception, causing toad to adopt a highly decreased size. VIDEO
A evening moment with the 33 1/2 RPM Sunset Bufo Toads in the process of colonizing the ICA Boston. apparently they have adopted a record skip associated with the “Record” show there.
It seems that the Sex and Death Colony hatched quietly in the Sydney Botanical Gardens has gotten out of control and is spreading to a series of smaller Australian towns (d/lux MEDIA ARTS). Colonies seem to be appearing westward and southward with no apparent rhyme or reason. My colleague there, Warren Armstrong, (the organizer of (Un)seen Sculptures), is vigorously monitoring the situation and calls weekly on Saturday nights to let me know the conditions. It’s uncanny that this subspecies should spread in a country that has been plagued by its ancestor. This is I suppose, a similar sort of infestation, with all good intentions of those of us at VF, looking for a means to free internet living. Warren has ambitiously set up a site to track what he calls “Bufo’s Progress“.
Reports are surfacing of a new Bufo Virtanus outbreak in Sydney, Austrailia, developing in the area of the Royal Botanic Gardens Glass Pyramid. The subspecies has been named the Sex and Death Bufo Colony, because it has developed visual traits of the orchid exhibition created in 2005. In addition to sex and death, there were three themes identified during that exhibition; “Seduction”, “Cooperation” and “Deception.” We have heard that the toads change different textural colors; pink, white, red and black. These are the colorations of some of the orchids in the preceding exhibition. They seduce with pink, cooperate or copulate with red and white, and finally deceive and die with a display of black. We have also heard unconfirmed reports that possible other colonies spreading southward. This will probably not be confirmed till early April during the Surry Hills Festival, with its event (Un)Seen Sculptures curated by Warren Armstrong.
As we have previously noted, the prototype for Bufo Virtanus is the bufo toad, the species known in Australia as the Cane Toad, which was introduced to Queensland in 1935 to combat the Cane Beetle. Unfortunately this bio-attack never solved the beetle problem and the giant species of cane toads instead became an uncontrollable infestation. in this case we might be dealing with that kind of virtual plague, with the toads as harbingers of a plethora imagery and information leaking, cascading into the physical landscape.
We were up at the very beautiful Diller Scofidio designed ICA Boston only to find a peculiar giant bufo virtanus, an apparent new subspecies of blender bufos taking on attributes of the 2 upcoming shows- Catherine Opie and The Record. We can only call this “33 1/2 RPM Sunset Bufo.” (to part of Manifest.AR at the ICA, Boston, for Cyberarts, opening April 22nd)
Late in November, 2010, the MoMA Bufo Virtanus specimen conjoined with the MoMA exhibition, “Abstract Expressionist New York,” and seemed to have multiplied and mutated into what has been named the Bufo Virtanus Heroicus Sublimis subspecies, taking its name from the famous Barnett Newman painting exhibited there.
During the Anselm Kiefer exhibition entitled, “Next Year in Jerusalem” in December of 2010, researchers at VF Labs discovered that the subspecies originating from the colony at MoMA, had spread to the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, NY. I went there myself to see the spectacle. This subspecies is oozing with VF betaAR. It is not yet known what habitats the subspecies gravitates towards, other than heroic or sublime artworks which certainly would include those of the Anselm Kiefer exhibition.
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Virta-Flaneurazine 