April 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“The Fantastic Solution to Global Warming and Other Conundrums” An art show by Pete Ippel
May 16-31, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, May 16, 6-9 p.m. with DJ music and indoor-jumping photo souvenirs for guests. EDITORS: You, your reporters and photographers are welcome to cover the event.

Icthus Gallery
1769 15th Street (between Valencia and Guerrero), San Francisco, CA
Gallery hours, weekdays, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.; weekends, by appointment
Admission, Free

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For more information, contact, Pete Ippel, artist
Phone, (415) 425-8863
E-mail, pete at hypermodern.net
Web site, http://www.hypermodern.net/archives/fsgw/

“The Fantastic Solution to Global Warming”, 40 x 60 inches (101 x 152 cm), gouache, ink, pencil, and watercolor on paper

SAN FRANCISCO, Monday, April 28, 2008 - The Fantastic Solution to Global Warming and other Conundrums is an exhibition of new artwork by San Francisco based artist and athlete Pete Ippel. In this collection of drawings, photographic prints, and videos he explores themes ranging from nuclear waste processing to the pairing of art and sport.

In Ippel’s brightly rendered, fantastical 2-D world, a box of lightning, some incandescent light bulbs, and a gigantic, biological-organic turbine are coupled with wind, tide, hydroelectric, nuclear, volcanic, solar, and geothermal power sources to sequester carbon dioxide. Under intense heat and pressure, in a star-powered fusion-cooker, diamonds are produced, thus solving the dilemmas of green house gases, vacant mines, and human rights issues associated with diamond mining.

The exhibition also highlights artifacts, photographic prints, and video informed by Ippel’s work as an athlete and a coach. After completing a successful collegiate track and field career as a high jumper in New York, Ippel made the move to San Francisco to pursue a Masters of Fine Art in the New Genres Department of the San Francisco Art institute.

It was here in the Bay Area, inspired by local artists Tony Labat and Tom Marioni, where Ippel began to craft projects that married his passion for jumping to his artistic practice.

“When I saw that Tony had devoted a year of his life to boxing, and Tom was drinking beer with friends in the name of art while making movement based drawing and prints I felt empowered,” said Ippel. “And I’ve been fortunate to spend time with both of them here in San Francisco. I really respect their work,” Ippel added.

“The Jump Series” grows out of the tradition of New Genres where actions are performed for the camera. The body of work is based on the premise that to push of one’s self off any surface and into the air by using the muscles in one’s legs and feet is a glorious and enjoyable act; essentially human flight. The modes of lift-off on display include skateboarding, high jumping, jumping off of architecture, leaping into panoramic scenes, jumping over objects, and choreographed jumps with other individuals. Ippel utilizes a tripod and a remote control or the camera’s self-timer to execute this body of performative photographs.

TSP Athletics, also on display, is a competitive vertical jumps team, social club, and acts as a collaborative vehicle to generate images of athletes in flight. It blurs boundaries between art and sport while acting as a vehicle to temper the shock of moving away from traditional competitive athletics.

“When you have something obscure like the high jump that has been your top priority for so many years, it’s foreign when it’s gone,” says Ippel. “Because I went directly to SFAI from Cornell, it was quite a challenge to no longer have the support of my team, nor be able to celebrate my athletic gifts in competition. I went through a real period of grief.” Ippel satiated his needs by creating a one-person team and traveling alone to meets a few times a year. “I made a uniform, started a website, and I kept in touch with my jumping peers. When I was at the meets after being away for so long, I started to see the beauty of the action and the camaraderie and wanted to capture it, and still keep it active in my life.”

The project has developed as an answer to what collegiate athletes do upon graduation to keep in touch, keep jumping, and make art.

Since its inception in 2004, TSP Athletics has grown to include former NCAA qualifiers and university record holders. Ippel’s plan is to produce limited-edition prints with participation by distinguished jumpers who are invited to be athletes-in-residence for TSP. In the frame of social sculpture these artists/athletes will each, contribute to the TSP Archive to add to its expanding collection of images and memorabilia.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Pete Ippel was born in Oak Park, Illinois, USA and has been surrounded by the arts since birth. He moved to Morris, Illinois in 1989 and started to participate in athletics rather than dance. After high school, Pete attended Cornell University where he earned a BA in psychology and a BFA in photo / digital art making. He continued to follow his sporting dreams in the high jump, which culminated in a school record leap of 7 feet 1/2 inch in 2001. In May 2004 he attained an MFA degree in the New Genres department of the San Francisco Art Institute. Presently Pete is a practicing artist whose work is in numerous private collections. He’s also the residence manager for the San Francisco Ballet, a fitness professional, coaches basketball and track at University High School, and still high jumps from time to time.

Technorati Tags: art, artist, athlete, california, carbon dioxide, contemporary, Cornell University, diamonds, exhibition, fantastic, global warming, green house gas, high jump, hypermodern, Icthus Gallery, Ippel, jump, Mission, New Genres, Pete Ippel, photo, photography, San Francisco, San Francisco Art Institute, SFAI, solutions, sustainablility, Tom Marioni, Tony Labat, TSP Athletics, Video

Cornell Entrepreneur Network of Northern California in partnership Cornell Silicon Valley and The Cornell Law School presents: “Climate Change and Global Warming: The Evolving Legal Framework” featuring Kevin Haroff ‘77, MBA ‘81, JD ‘81, Partner, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP.

Climate change is now an acknowledged scientific fact, caused primarily by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with human activity over time. California is playing a lead role in attacking the problem with its Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32) - the first legislation in the country to set a cap on GHG emissions statewide. The Attorney General’s office also has filed several lawsuits raising climate change issues in both federal and state courts, most recently joining a multi-state effort to force regulation of GHG emissions from cars and trucks under the federal Clean Air Act.

Tuesday April 29th, 2008
6:00 PM Reception
7:00 PM Presentation
Cost: $20 per person (includes Hors d’oeuvre Reception). This event is expected to sell-out and requires pre-registration.
Location:Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP, 390 Lytton Ave, Palo Alto.

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you “look ahead,” before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

So a few times over the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen cars driving down the streets of San Francisco with 8 digital SLR cameras attached to the roofs, for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why they would be just taking photos of the street.

It reminded me of how they made the Matrix bullet time with multiple cameras facing in on the subject. You can find a very thorough explanation of the Bullet Time technique on YouTube

Well, I’m positing that with the cameras facing out, it’s the work of Google, digitizing the “Street Views” of The City for their Google Maps application.

It’s incredible, I just needed to look up my friend’s zip code and typed in his address, and then I was given the option to check out the street view. This is especially useful if you’re on foot and don’t have GPS, you can actually *visualize* the place you’re headed to.

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I’m at Green and Embarcadero, coming north is the Chinese demonstrators, coming south are Tibetan demonstrators and they’re going to meet right in the middle here. Tibetans on the left side of the street, the west side, Chinese on the east side. We’ll see what happens. There’s 4 policemen. listen

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I’m at the corner of Embarcadero and Green waiting for the torch. I’ve talked to a couple of people and heard that they are not coming this way anymore. Now they’re on Van Ness after a bus ride from McCovey Cove to Van Ness. So I’m going to wait here for a little bit longer and then go back to Justin Herman.[lots of noise, please listen] listen

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I’m now at the Embarcadero at Justin Herman Plaza. It’s looking like the torch is getting down the street somewhere, its on the Jumbo-Tron. I can’t tell where, I am gonna investigate and get back. listen

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I’m down at Pier one at the Embarcadero. It doesn’t look like the torch will make it there. There’s minimal police presence and probably about 5,000 or so protesters. Lots of flags. We got Turkistan and Taiwan, Tibet, China, America, the Three Crazy Pink ones. listen

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I’m on my way downtown to see the Olympic Torch relay. I hope everything is peaceful and I’ve brought my camera and will be posting photos very soon. listen

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Pete_Ipp.jpg

Originally uploaded by hypermodern

Free Tibet rally in San Francisco, California.

“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.”
-Francis Bacon

Tags: quotes, Francis Bacon, art,

There is so much potential in the Casio Exilim EX-F1 for those interest in capturing athletic events, nature, and performance. Indeed it is a revolutionary camera, in that it doesn’t tout it’s mega-pixels but is a paradigm shift in camera features with a blazing frame rate.

A Camera for the Shot You Missed - New York Times

I got a Space Pen today, it is amazing. I highly recommend the bullet model shown above. It’s small enough to fit in a pocket, and it’s great to use for reading and annotating books while inverted in space…Or if you are laying on the couch.listen

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Pete_Ipp.jpg

Originally uploaded by hypermodern

San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design at night. Very striking, indeed.

When I was a child, I was very adventurous. I have many scars on my body that remind me of stories…

I was born near Chicago Illinois in a small town called Oak Park.
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I lived at the corner of East Avenue and Randolph Street in an apartment with eight other families. Many of the families had children my age.

I was the only child in my family, had curly blond hair, I was tall for my age, and usually wore very colorful clothing. My mother shopped at used clothing stores, and bought me one pair of new shoes a year because I wore everything out so fast.

My parents made a rule that I was only allowed to watch one hour of television per day. The two shows I watched religiously were Alf and Pee Wee’s Playhouse. But I always wanted to watch more cartoons, and my parents said no.

Because of this restriction, my favorite thing to do when I was a child was play outside with my two best friends Gary and Sam

Every day the three of us would meet to ride our bikes around the front and side yards of the apartment. We invented all sorts of games. And spent a lot of time hanging from trees, and combining sports. The best one was baseball on roller-skates, I got a concussion, but that’s another story.

One day Sam was sick and I wanted to ply outside. I walked over to Gary’s door, rang the bell, and asked his mother “Can Gary come out to play?”

“Of course,” she replied, “but I have to go to the store, so can he stay over at your house later?”

“My mom said he’s welcome any time.”

Gary came out and we started looking for something to do. Around the corner, near the alley, was a shopping cart. We decided that it would be a great idea to give rides to each other. Gary was a year younger and a little smaller than I was. We decided that he should get the first ride, and I should push.

I had used a similar cart at our local grocery store, named Jewel. The cart was tall, awkward and rusty. The wheels didn’t roll straight, and the basket was bent to one side. It looked like a car had hit it.

Gary climbed in, and moved up to the front of the basket. He wrapped his fingers between the metal bars and got a good grip. He was bracing himself with his knees pressed into the front corner, and his head poked out and looked like a gargoyle.

Immediately I lunged at the orange handle, and started to push with all my strength. I began to run very fast. Gary and I were laughing together when all of the sudden there was a crack in the sidewalk. The cart stopped instantly, and the ejection of Gary’s body began. His fingers were still between the metal of the cart, and because of this, his feet went over his head and it looked like he was standing on his hands or diving into a swimming pool.

While Gary was upside down, my body stayed in the same path, and I crashed into the card with much force. Both of our bodies and the cart tangled into one great heap of metal and flesh. Gary landed on his face with the cart on top of him, and me on top of the cart. His cheek looked like ground beef.

Both of us got up with fear in our eyes…(but not because we were bleeding)

“Oh no! I ripped my pants and got blood on my shirt!” Gary shouted. “My mother is going to KILL me!”

Both of my palms were skinned, and I replied, “Well, try not to bleed on it…”

We thought and thought, and finally came up with a story of how we got hurt. And decided that falling out of a tree seemed reasonable. After all, Sam had broken his arm falling out of a tree earlier that year.

The door to my family’s un air-conditioned apartment was open to let in the fresh summer breeze so we just walked right in. I shouted up the stairs, “MoooOOOOoom, Gary fell out of a tree, and skinned his face.”

She reacted quickly and covered the wound with aloe and vitamin E, and for the rest of the day we got to stay inside and sit on the couch…

The biggest surprise to us, was that she never yelled about the clothes, the best part, for the rest of the day we got to watch all the television we wanted…

This is powerful, short, and gets the point across very quickly.

dothetest.co.uk

Tags: video, basketball, skateboarding, safety, urban

Pete_Ipp.jpg

Originally uploaded by hypermodern

Sustainable recycled plastic skating rink at University High School San Francisco. You can use regular ice skates too!