Back in the beginning of June, Creative Time and artist Paul Ramírez Jonas set up a kiosk in New York City’s Times Square and gave away free keys to the city to groups of two. Keys that would enable the duos to see rarely visited or in some cases previously unacessable areas in all five boroughs.

Places such as:

• Brooklyn Museum
• Gracie Mansion
• Whitney Museum of American Art
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• The Louis Armstrong House Museum
• Among many others

The awarding of the keys has a small amount of built in pomp and circumstance requiring there to be two and that each oratorically awards the key to the other declaring why that person has earned this right.

None of the destinations are life altering or that exclusive (some are just dressed up marketing attempts) but it is a wonderful treasure hunt of sorts even if at times we do not like treasure hunts and an excellent artiface or conceit to excitingly get people to venture out into the city beyond the usual commercial destinations. To see the romantic corners & rooms of NYC so to speak.

The Art project was a kind of API but instead of allowing computers to share data or tools it empowered people with the theater, opportunity and open ended purpose to expand on it if they so desired, a Art Project Interface of sorts. Many have built other projects on top of it from bike routes, water gun assassinations to interestingly extending the romantic couple metaphor into literal dates.

Thats what Lauren Burke, a 26-year-old Manhattan lawyer, art reporter and photographer decided to do. Turning each of the locations into a date with the following statement:

Take one single girl, the most inspiring public art project yet, and summer in New York City and you have the idea for a perfect blog:

Key2thecity, key2my heart.

After being presented with the key to the city and now having the ability to unlock 24 secret sights around all five boroughs, 24 dates will be had throughout the summer, seeing if both love and intrigue can exist in the city where no one sleeps.

The rules:

1) Every first date this summer must somehow incorporate a key to the city site

2) Each sight can only be visited once before another sight is visited.

3) Men or women may be repeated before sites, meaning that a site may be visited on a second date if the man or woman warranted a second visit.

4) No ex-boyfriends allowed as sight visits unless they too are warranting a second visit.

5) As the key to the city project is to expand our city horizons, each site visit date must also incorporate a food or drink spot never before tried.

5) Whoever wins my heart also wins my second key to the city.

6) Have fun, love life, love NYC, love love.,

So with summer approaching, 4th of July celebrations this weekend and a economy/job market that just keeps going down like it was from Jersey and in The Situation‘s room (not you Blitzer) find that special someone and explore the little known hidden free gems of your city or town with them. I have every intention to.

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Design Miami/Basel: The Blog

This is the week the design world heads to Basel, Switzerland for Design Miami/Basel which opened in Basel, Switzerland Tuesday, a day ahead of Art Basel is closer then ever before if your curious about the design worlds activities. This year they are starting their own blog, the cleverly titled Design Miami/Basel Blog.

Posting images, quotes, news and other updates from participants in the fair like designers and gallery owners for fans and journalists alike. They even went as far as publicizing a RSS feed so nice to see someone is listening to the youthful techie in the group since the larger art world seems allergic to RSS feeds on a whole.

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Bad at Sports should have received a a grant from the XYZ foundation last year to help them make their art podcast website a real day job. But the powers that be often sleep on what is engaging, innovative and important in favor of the familiar, lame and business as usual. Bad At Sports was our top local art resource of the year. Thank you guys.

No thank you Ed, Rachael & everyone at Proximity and the Public Media Institute. We really apriciate the kind words and look forward to 2010 and what Proximity Magazine has in the works.

Also we have taken your advice and hired a few free interns to track down this XYZ foundation and get that grant asap. I can only assume that the Xavier Young Ziebold award is biennial so maybe next year

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Everyone at the BAS blog would like to wish you a happy holiday. We won’t be back until the new year. Hopefully we will have some new things in store.

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