I’m out on vacation this week, but I had a really great photo shoot yesterday with friends Nadia and Charles. Incredible people take incredible photos. Check them out:
Monthly Archive for June, 2009
I haven’t even seen it and I know it’s interesting. Just the premise alone is worthy of spending some time on. I will be furiously hunting for re-airings of this show, so I can get the full story, but until then, I’m watching these little clips on the PBS site. Everything from scientists studying how birds make songs, to songwriters getting scans of their brains to Bobby McFerrin discussing the different roles music has between cultures. One of my favorite books ever is Steven Pinker’s “The Language Instinct,” which opened my mind to the inner workings of the human brain and redefined cultural standards for how we think about linguistics, which influence many parts of Western thinking. Coincidentally, or not, this show is called “The Music Instinct” and it seems to be further proof that humans are more amazing, by design, than we give ourselves credit for. We have a cultural bias to believe that you have to work hard to become creative, but in fact, it seems to be in us from the get go. That’s a great, hopeful, thought and could mean a lot for the field of education, if they were paying attention. It is, after all, PBS – can we get these people to talk to those people?
The site is here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/
The schedule tool to figure out when it’s playing next is here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/schedule/
I took a test when I was really young, I think in pre-school. Back in the 70’s they were always testing us for one thing or another. Among other optical illusion, this image was on the page, with the caption: “Which line is longer?”
I got it wrong. In fact, I got just about every question wrong on that test. All the other kids were a little older and wise to these kinds of visual puzzles and figured most of it out. I remember a couple kids and the moderator sitting around trying to explain to me why the two lines were the same size and I couldn’t get it. Couldn’t see it. Besides scarring me for life with mindfucks (another byproduct of the 70’s), it also began a fascination of the visual world. I remember later on spending hours watching a pencil refract as it entered a glass of water.
Continue reading ‘“It’s all an eelooosian.” The importance of mind-altering.’
I got gravitationally pulled into the Apple store over the weekend and the iPhone 3GS lifted out my wallet and bought itself with my money. It’s real purty. But as I was reinstalling the apps, I did something wrong and the order got all messed up. Happy mistake though as I ended up adopting a new philosophy to my home screen. I used to group apps by type: utilities together, photography together, games together, etc. Turns out that’s a good organizational philosophy, but not really the best day-to-day usage philosophy. So, I brought the apps I just plain use the most to the front. Muuuuch better. The 20 apps that have made it to the front of the line for me are…
I showed you mine. Show me yours!
Posters back in the day weren’t that easy to get your hands on. Not the good ones, anyway. The record store my band hung out in on the weekends had posters on the wall that were terminally Not For Sale. Which made me want them all the more. The most coveted ones were the black and white Specials and Selector posters that Chrysalis and 2 Tone labels put out. The look of those were raw and graphic, playful but serious. Nothing else in the record store looked anything like it. We got our cues as to how the rude boys in the UK were dressing from those posters, and we followed suit. Pins were a big deal back then, too, and nobody was pumping out more black and white pins than The Specials. We wore them on our black suspenders, we wore the white socks with the black shoes, we drew black and white checkers on everything. But I never got my hands on one of those posters.
I guess the chance has come up again as many of them are being reprinted. David Storey, one of the guys behind that iconic look, has a limited edition set of six that he’s offering on his site. A bit on the pricey side, but if adulthood isn’t for buying the crap you couldn’t get as a kid, then what good is it?
Check it here: http://www.david-storey.co.uk/shop.html
Many have gathered to make art in the form, and spirit, of collaboration. Little of it transcends. Originally, the Louvre was a place for a sort of artists’ collective, during the French Revolution. But collectives borne of necessity have a distinct advantage over graffiti artists getting together to do a mural for Nike. Maybe this kind of thing has been done before, but I haven’t seen it. A UK Website here proposes that an interaction on the site results in instant action/reaction at a real art studio. Like much art that relies on technology, rather than a more viscous material, it feels a bit cybercold underneath it all, but from what I’m seeing, the art that’s getting made at the studio itself is secondary to the possibilities that this opens up. Remember Christy Brown, of “My Left Foot” fame? Putting that into context with today’s technology offers some very encouraging possibilities. Beyond that, the gap bridged by technology has never seemed to reach into the world of fine art. All of the sudden, the Internet is a real tool for expression and the spreading of paint, clay, pencil lead and many other things. It is well time that our exponential growth in technology lead to something more artistic, human, tactile and expressive. I’m into it.
I didn’t find as many images as I thought I might, but not bad for a five-minute interest in “objects with human legs attached:”
Not everything is designed to make a point
Sometimes a point is made from things facing away from each other
And that’s the point
Sonny came by today, shot some hoops after dinner
And I had an inch-long needle stuck just north of a lingual nerve
As the novocaine crawled through my gums I thought about Sonny
My boy and me separate dentist chairs, mouths open, mouths in pain
For things we try to say but make no point
Understanding more from a basketball and a darkening sky
Two points.
Some art teacher in Philly exacts revenge with this seething, but smiling, summary of stereotypical art students. Having taught a few myself, I can verify and relate, although strangely I looked for myself and couldn’t find me. But it is a reminder of how much of an influence comic books are on a young artist. It is a predominant theme through all of these.
See the whole lot at: “Which Art Student Are You?”
These are the words to the famous Apple ad, featuring the likes of Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Picasso and many other famous rule-breakers:
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
I’m reminded of it while I’m reading today’s story of Shepard Fairey getting arrested for tagging. Certainly, he’s a bit of a misfit. Definitely not fond of rules. But it got me thinking. How do we distinguish between “good” rule-breaking and “bad?” At what point is trouble-making just trouble-making. Remember during the election when Jill Greenberg shot John McCain for the cover of The Atlantic and then manipulated some outtakes to create some much less flattering shots of him for her own anti-McCain campaign? She was called a “disgrace to her profession” by the very magazine that hired her. Certainly she’s a round peg in a square hole. Is what she did good or bad? What about Fairey? Lofty questions.