Real world questions applied to fictional creatures: “If these beasts evolved, how would their organ systems have to work to support their exterior features and behaviors?” To read more and see a similar study of Gamera‘s foes check this post from Pink Tentacle
Another beautifully shot piece of poetic reality from 13th Witness
Once I was a Millionaire… from 13thWitness™ on Vimeo.
Responding to Aram Bartholl’s blogpost. Read that one first.
As our innovations in technology & communication accelerate they get further out in front of our need for them. In turn our uses for these advances accelerate and try to catch up with the innovations themselves. A common example: The general population didn’t have mobile phones 20 years ago but you now we can’t function without them. Or in the interest of beating a dead horse, simply check this out.
As more of our interaction and social life goes virtual, industry and artists alike find new ways to “inject” digital interactions into the most mundane and analog of contexts. The present era is a fertile frame for “data transfer” themed art installations. My recent favorites occur in public space as grafitti, technology & the established art world cross-pollenate.
What I find most intriguing about Bartholl’s execution of this concept is that these public USB fixtures are a deliberately offline “drop.” They are not networked. This means that the “user” can only “interact” with the other “users” that (have already or have yet to) plug an appliance in to this physical location. It’s basically data oriented geocaching.
The relative anonymity and subjective intent of each user’s “drop” and each USB drive’s single physical location is somehow more compelling than if the inputs were networked like a common server. The downside I expect is that these drives will fill up quickly by users unknowingly or deliberately dumping huge files or the hardware will be bent or broken by haphazard vandals. This is ultimately limiting the variety and the interpretable “value” of the stored record but the concept and potential for response campaigns is strong.
I’m a sucker for any reinterpretation of a Rubik’s Cube. I once went to an Art Museum and spent the whole time distracted by the abundance of braille signs found there. Do blind people like Art Museums? I guess if they need to use the bathroom or the elevator there simply needs to be braille there to indicate such.
I imagine that if I lost my eyesight this Rubik’s Cube would be a prized possession. I also imagine that using a tactile sense to arrange the cube is probably a more direct approach. Seems to me that what makes the cube difficult to solve is the disconnection between visual indicators, eye hand coordination and the physical object. This novel object cuts out the middle man to some extent.
I’ve been misusing the word “dude” for quite some time now. Apparently it has quite a specific definition. Also apparent is that there was once an historical “King of the Dudes.” Now generally speaking, I’m not a fan of flamboyancy for flamboyancy’s sake. I prefer an understated, substantive, functional approach to life. Style is crucial but decoration is more or less superfluous, unessential. I’m however humorously fascinated with this foppish historical figure, Evander Berry Wall, as he relates to brand. A compelling historical example of personal branding, I’m thinking he was a previous world’s Kanye West.
excerpted from Wikipedia:
“He is credited for having been the first person in the United States to have worn during a ball, at a time when the tailcoat was still the rule, a white dinner jacket, sent to him by the London tailor Henry Poole & Co “to be worn for a quiet dinner at home or at an evening’s entertainment at a summer resort”. He was immediately ordered off the floor.[*]“
“He was popularly credited with the possession of over 500 trousers[*] and 5,000 neckties.”
Image & title recycled from Derek Lerner’s blog post
Lerner’s most recent art work involves a publicly installed QR code mounted on aluminum and attached to a street sign. The curious user scans the QR using their mobile device and hears an evolving soundscape comprised of environmental noise from that location and additional content sourced from previous callers. The current “viewer/caller/user” is then prompted to make their own sound byte to be included in the composition.
Taking a QR code out of it’s generalized commercial context defies expectation, brings the curious user back to a more fundamental awareness of simple interaction and interbeing. It provides a control variable in the experiment that is the evolution of communication, pointing out to us how conditioned our expectations of our environment have become. The sourced soundscape component enlists the user in the creation of the art and becomes an archive of time and place. Dig!
Read Derek Lerner’s statement here
The grit and honesty of this story shines despite the heavily stylized “Lynch-ness” of its presentation. Beautiful movie. Released in 1999, I had never heard of this memorable and poetic film until last week.
This micro-documentary addresses the fundamental social issues of identity and interrelationship in a funny way. It makes a brilliant point about road safety in doing so.
Chapter 1: Mutual Respect from Team !ola on Vimeo.
Making a living vs. Making a difference.
Productivity vs. Creativity.
Labor vs. Talent.
Tasks vs. Discoveries.
theRSA.org — April 01, 2010 — This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.
UP THERE from The Ritual Project on Vimeo.
Some art forms simply grow impractical as systems of efficiency and economy dominate old artistic principles of dedication, discipline & quality. Artistic technique and intuition used to take a lifetime to develop under a mentor that spent a lifetime learning from a previous generation. Skills like woodworking, painting, architecture; the kinds of things that you can’t price by the production hour. It seems that fewer people invest that depth of training with every generation.
We enter an accelerating time when the previous era’s wisdom is often lost and replaced with new techniques and technologies. This trend is an accelerating phenomenon and for the first time, virtually none of our generation’s new tools will be handed down to the next generation because the next generation won’t need them. They will evolve so far and so fast within our generation that they will cease to be recognizable as their origin.
There will cease to be a continuity of “literacy.” Our successors will have new tools and new “languages” by which they learn to use them.
Will we be able to impart some wisdom, understanding, know-how that they will value or will they look at us as irrelevant relics from a time gone by? I think I’m starting to understand the Amish.