"In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work . . . all planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art." Sol LeWitt The French artist Marcel Duchamp paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works -- the readymades, for instance. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was Fountain (1917), a standard urinal basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York--it was rejected. In traditional terms, a commonplace object such as a urinal cannot be said to be art because it is not made by an artist or with any intention of being art, it is not unique, and it possesses few of the expected visual properties of the traditional, hand-crafted art object. Duchamp's relevance and theoretical importance for future "conceptualists" was later acknowledged by US artist Joseph Kosuth in his 1969 essay, "Art after Philosophy," when he wrote: "All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually." Conceptual art emerged as a movement during the 1960s. In part, it was a reaction against formalism as it was then articulated by the influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg. In 1961 the term "concept art," coined by the artist Henry Flynt in his article bearing the term as its title, appeared in a Fluxus publication.[4] However it assumed a different meaning when employed by Joseph Kosuth and the English Art and Language group, who discarded the conventional art object in favour of a documented critical inquiry into the artist's social, philosophical and psychological status. By the mid-1970s they had produced publications, indexes, performances, texts and paintings to this end. In 1970 Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects, the first dedicated conceptual art exhibition, was mounted at the New York Cultural Center. Conceptual art also reacted against the commodification of art; it attempted a subversion of the gallery or museum as the location and determiner of art, and the art market as the owner and distributor of art. Lawrence Weiner said: "Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it." Many conceptual artists' work can therefore only be known about through documentation which is manifested by it, e.g. photographs, written texts or displayed objects, which some might argue are not in themselves the art. It is sometimes (as in the work of Robert Barry, Yoko Ono, and Weiner himself) reduced to a set of written instructions describing a work, but stopping short of actually making it—emphasising that the idea is more important than the artifact. The first wave of the "conceptual art" movement extended from approximately 1967 to 1978. Early "concept" artists like Henry Flynt, Robert Morris, Adrian Piper, and Ray Johnson influenced the later, widely-accepted movement of conceptual artists like Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, and Douglas Huebler. The Young British Artists (YBAs), led by Damien Hirst, came to prominence in the 1990s and their work is seen as conceptual, even though it relies very heavily on the art object to make its impact. The term is used in relation to them on the basis that the object is not the artwork, or is often a found object, which has not needed artistic skill in its production. Tracey Emin is seen as a leading YBA and a conceptual artist, even though she has denied that she is and has emphasised personal emotional expression. Many of the concerns of the "conceptual art" movement have been taken up by many contemporary artists since the initial wave of conceptual artists. While many of these artists may not term themselves "conceptual artists", ideas such as anti-commodification, social and/or political critique, and ideas/information as medium continue to be aspects of contemporary art, especially among artists working with installation art, performance art, net.art and electronic/digital art. Many critics and artists may speak of conceptual aspects of a given artist or art work, reflecting the enduring influence that many of the original conceptual artists have had on the art world.

Black Mountain created an environment conducive to the interdisciplinary work that was to revolutionize the arts and sciences of its time. For a short time in the middle of the twentieth century a small town in North Carolina became a hub of American cultural production. The town was Black Mountain and the reason was Black Mountain College. Founded in 1933, the school was a reaction to the more traditional schools of the time. At its core was the assumption that a strong liberal and fine arts education must happen simultaneously inside and outside the classroom. Among Black Mountain's first professors were the artists Josef and Anni Albers, who had fled Nazi Germany after the closing of the Bauhaus. It was their progressive work in painting and textiles that first attracted students from around the country. Once there, however, students and faculty alike realized that Black Mountain College was one of the few schools sincerely dedicated to educational and artistic experimentation. By the forties, Black Mountain's faculty included some of the greatest artists and thinkers of its time: Walter Gropius, Jacob Lawrence, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, John Cage, Alfred Kazin, Merce Cunningham, and Paul Goodman. Students found themselves at the locus of such wide ranging innovations as Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome, Charles Olson's Projective Verse, and some of the first performance art in the U.S. By the late 40s, word of what was happening in North Carolina had started to spread throughout the country. With a Board of Directors that included William Carlos Williams and Albert Einstein and impressive programs in poetry and photography, Black Mountain had become the ideal of American experimental education. Its concentration on cross-genre arts education would influence the programs of many major American institutions. In 1953, as many of the students and faculty left for San Francisco and New York, those still at Black Mountain saw the shift in interest and knew the school had run its course. Black Mountain had existed on its own terms, and on its own terms had succeeded in expanding the possibilities of American education. Realizing that they had essentially achieved their goals, they closed their doors forever. Black Mountain's legacy continued however, with former students such as painter Robert Rauschenberg, publisher Jonathan Williams, and poet John Wieners bringing the revolutionary spirit of their alma mater to the forefront of a number of other cultural movements and institutions. Legendary even in its own time, Black Mountain College attracted and created maverick spirits, some of whom went on to become well-known and extremely influential individuals in the latter half of the 20th century. A partial list includes people such as Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Ben Shahn, Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, Buckminster Fuller, M.C. Richards, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Dorothea Rockburne and many others, famous and not-so-famous, who have impacted the world in a significant way. Even now, decades after its closing in 1957, the powerful influence of Black Mountain College continues to reverberate.

François Morellet was preoccupied with configuring the picture field as an infinite structure reaching beyond the confines of the picture itself. In so doing, François Morellet eliminated the all-over technique of a Jackson Pollock from his range since Morellet based each work on principles and systems established in advance. Morellet was in fact more interested in method than in the finished painting. Morellet joined 'GRAV' ('Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel': 1960-1968), a group of Kinetic artists who explored the possibilities of the visual arts in a scientific and experimental way. Determined to find a new medium of expression, François Morellet used neon from 1963 as his material of choice. What interested Morellet in neon tubing was its specific material properties: its luminosity, the way it could be made to shut on and off automatically and the fact that it was manufactured. From 1968 François Morellet became interested in architecture and space. He was given commissions for working in public spaces, including the Centre culturel in Compiègne, the La Défense section of Paris and the Kröller-Müller Museum Park in Otterlo. In 1992 François Morellet summed up his work himself in 'Relâche n° 1' by combining in it all the materials he had ever used: painted canvas, neon tubing, adhesive tape and strips of metal. Following aleatoric principles, Morellet allowed chance to transform his materials into an aesthetic disorder. His provocative stance and humour place Morellet closer to Dada than to Geometric Abstraction and Minimal art. François Morellet lives in Cholet and Paris.

For the period it existed from 1953 through 1968, the Ulm School of Design was one of the most important contemporary design academies. It saw itself as an international institution for teaching, research, and development in the field of design. Students from many different countries were drawn to Ulm, attracted not only by the interdisciplinary aspects of the training program, but also by the names of founders and teachers such as Otl Aicher, Inge Aicher-Scholl, Max Bill, Max Bense, Hans Gugelot, Tomás Maldonado, and Gui Bonsiepe. The special methodology used in Ulm is still internationally influential today in design teaching. Known as the "Ulm Model," it has helped define what it means to be a professional industrial designer. Systematic thinking and logically-argued design processes offered rational, technically-oriented solutions to a modern mass society, made possible by scientific and technological progress in new materials, media, and techniques. By the late 1950s close cooperation with business had already been established. The Ulm School of Design, beset by political and financial problems, began to decline from 1966 on. In 1968 its members decided to close the institution.

SHIFT is an Japanese online magazine which translates international information to Japan and Japanese information to overseas, featuring art, design, fashion, music, and multimedia. In 2006, they started another website with event or shop information in world cities, "A NEW CITY GUIDE". This is a site to provide the latest information by alternative spots or opinion leaders in each city, including galleries, clubs, live houses, and theaters. You can quickly and easily find out what is happening, when, and where.

When a video camera and microphone on one side of the wall send media to a projection and speakers on the other side of the wall, a digital window is created. We can serve as performers on one side of the wall, and as audience members on the other. At some moments the representation is live, but at other times it is pre-recorded and constructed. A good principal for video windows, mirrors, and architectural video approaches. The See Through Wall is a time machine that allows us to traverse time and space, across the border between living reality and historical fictions. Exhibited at The Chelsea Art Museum. Created by WIKA.

In the year 2071, the crew of the spaceship Bebop travel the solar system trying to apprehend bounties. In the slang of the era, "Cowboys" are bounty hunters. Most episodes revolve around a specific bounty, but the show often shares its focus with the pasts of one of each of the four main characters and of more general past events, which are revealed and brought together as the series progresses. (カウボーイビバップ, Kaubōi Bibappu?) is a Japanese anime series created by Sunrise. Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and written by Keiko Nobumoto, it consists of 26 episodes (called "sessions"). It follows the adventures of a group of bounty hunters traveling on their spaceship, the Bebop, in the year 2071. Cowboy Bebop was a commercial success both in Japan and worldwide, notably in the United States. After its commercial success, Sony Pictures released the Cowboy Bebop movie, Knockin' on Heaven's Door to theaters worldwide and followed up with an international DVD release. Two Cowboy Bebop manga series were adapted based on the anime, as well as two video games, one each for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles. Cowboy Bebop has been strongly influenced by American music, especially the jazz movements of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and the early rock era of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Many of its action sequences, from space battles to hand-to-hand martial arts combat, are set and timed to music. Episodes are called Sessions (in reference to musicians playing a "jam session"), and titles are often borrowed from album or song names (such as Sympathy for the Devil or My Funny Valentine), or make use of a genre name (Mushroom Samba and Jupiter Jazz), indicating the episode's musical theme.

Dazzling LED light shows from this 38 story tower in Barcelona, Spain. According to Nouvel, the shape of the Torre Agbar was inspired by the mountains of Montserrat that surround Barcelona, and by the shape of a geyser of water rising into the air. Jean Nouvel, in an interview, described it as having a phallic character. (warning: you may want to mute the music) The Agbar Tower measures 144.4 m (473.75 ft) in height and consists of 38 storeys, including four underground levels. (warning: you may want to mute the music) Its design combines a number of different architectural concepts, resulting in a striking structure built with reinforced concrete, covered with a facade of glass, and over 4,500 window openings cut out of the structural concrete. The building stands out in Barcelona; it is the third tallest building in Barcelona, only after the Arts Hotel and the Mapfre Tower, both 154 m (505.25 ft). A unique feature of the building is its nocturnal illumination. It has 4,500 LED luminous devices that allow generation of luminous images in the facade. (warning: you may want to mute the music) In addition, it has temperature sensors in the outside of the tower that regulate the opening and closing of the glass blinds of the facade of the building, reducing the consumption of energy for air conditioning.

Max Bill, a member of the Swiss 'Zurich Concrete' group, was an architect, painter, sculptor, politician, educationalist, writer, in short, a 'universal creator'. He analysed the principles of Concrete Art and sharpened Theo van Doesberg's definition as follows: "we call those works of art concrete that came into being on the basis of their inherent resources and rules - without external borrowing from natural phenomena, without transforming those phenomena, in other words: not by abstraction. concrete art is independent in its characteristic features. it is the expression of the human spirit, intended for the human spirit, and it should have the sharpness, the clarity and the perfection that must be expected from the human spirit. concrete painting and sculpture imply creating something that is open to visual perception. their creative resources are colours, space, light and movement … concrete art is ultimately the pure expression of harmonious measure and law. it orders systems and uses artistic resources to give life to these orders … it strives for universality and yet it cultivates uniqueness. it suppresses things individualistic in favour of the individual." Bill also requires that art should find a mathematical mode of thought to guarantee that the creative principles can be controlled. In the mean time he sees this as only one of the possible methods, "a useful aid, through which ideas can acquire visible form." Max Bill – a product of the bauhaus generation, pupil of walter gropius and kindred spirit of le corbusier and mies van der rohe – was a virtuoso designer and creative artist, as his diverse activities as a painter, architect, sculptor, teacher and designer amply demonstrate. his work is characterised by a clarity of design and precise proportions which are unrivalled to this day. The work of max bill was a continuous balancing act between free art and applied art, between severe, reduced forms and flowing natural ones, between philosophical thinking and practical application.

Artist and designer Bruno Munari may be best known for the beautiful children's books he published with Edizioni Corraini [He began making children's books for his son Alberto.] But Munari also created furniture and lighting designs and art. This stainless steel edition of a sculpture/game Acona Biconbi, was part of Munari's exploration of repetition and multiples. Galleria Corraini issued it in an edition of 50 in the early 1960's. It looks like an installation by Olafur Eliasson, which is to say it's spectacular. In 1927 Munari started to follow Marinetti and the futurist movement, showing his work in many exhibitions. Three years later he associate with Riccardo Castegnetti (Ricas), with whom work as a graphic until 1938. During a travel to Paris, in 1933, found Louis Aragon and André Breton. From 1939 to 1945 work as a press graphic designer for the Mondadori editor, and as art director of Tempo Magazine. At the same time he start to write books for kids, originally created for his son Alberto.: In 1948, Munari, Gillo Dorfles, Gianni Monnet and Atanasio Soldati, founded the Arte Concreta movement.