May 15
First up, the 2006 North American Wife Carrying Championship:
From there, we move on to MUTO, a graffiti-meets-stop-motion-animation monstrosity of oddness:
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Feb 02
The riches of the Internet:
* The subtle beauty of subversive humor and unexpected virtuosity on the daily commute.
* A skillful blending of the old and new in a tribute to classic cinema.
* Utilitarian structures finding new life as striking architecture.
* Yes We Can.
One final note on the last item: Obama may be the most liberal Senator of 2007, but boy does he go down smooth.
Nov 15
Storage for 16,000 book, simplicity, and oodles of natural lighting.
The house appears to be a trapezoidal shape, all open on the interior. The largest side is all windows to funnel the light in and provide a natural panorama. The siding looks like the cheap corrugated metal siding, like what you’d expect to see in a junkyard; combined with the wood, in this setting, it works. The only change I might make would be to the porch: I’d like one large enough to relax and watch a storm roll in. Photos after the jump.
Sep 20
I am infatuated with simplity: reading Unclutterer, Zen Habits, Paul Graham’s Stuff… purging my cubicle, cleaning out the garage, and maybe even picking up around our home office (the worst den of disorganization). We are paring down the amount of stuff we own. Nothing radical yet, but just a little here, a little there.
Jun 27
Just came across a neat Firefox plugin for Flickr addicts (you know who you are) or anyone who enjoys browsing digital photos via the web: PicLens.
PicLens enables full-screen slideshows and photo browsing and supports integration with a number of popular photo sites:
- Flickr
- Google Images
- Yahoo Images
- Friendster
- Picasa Web Albums
Oct 25
Sony has posted the follow-up ad to the previously-blogged Bouncy Balls. Once again, beautiful, funny, and a skilled piece of art masquerading as an ad. I prefer Bouncy Balls–it’s a bit more slowed down, soothing, and surreal–but I definitely recommend watching Sony paint-bomb an apartment building in Belfast.
Aug 20
The highlight of this weekend was “BarCampGrandRapids”:http://barcamp.org/BarCampGrandRapids. To briefly describe: BarCamps are technology conferences that take place worldwide, from Austin, Texas to Perth, Australia. Most professional conferences are expensive events, and you often end up listening to a lot of marketing pitches from companies, rather than learning something.
Continue reading »
Aug 01
The idea of a BarCamp sounded really appealing to me:
BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.
Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.
One of the neat things about BarCamps is that the amount of pre-conference organization is minimal, due to the ad-hoc nature. Consequently (in theory) normal geeks like me should be able to help organize one. In theory.
We’ll see how it works out in practice. Presenting: BarCampGrandRapids.
Any and all Michigan geeks, artists, and anyone with a general interest in technology are welcome to attend.
Jul 28
One of my favorite “Paul Rand”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand quotes:
bq. Art comes in the ingenuity of a designer who is able to, in a way, conceal art as a service to business.
When that happens, the product is beautiful. Exhibit A: “Sony’s BRAVIA Balls”:http://www.bravia-advert.com/balls/ advertisement. If you can afford the bandwidth, splurge and watch the “high definition (H.264) version of the extended ad”:http://www.bravia-advert.com/commercial/braviaextcommhigh.html.
Oct 12
Ambiguity is Good
Art Comments Off
Kathy Sierra, an educational expert and technical trainer, has an excellent post on “the role of ambiguity in the learning process”:http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/the_best_thing_.html. If you’re not a technical person, don’t get thrown by the talk about “Web 2.0″ at the beginning–just know that it’s a new idea that’s still pretty vague and undefined. You don’t even need to read the article to continue on in this post, if you trust my summarization of Kathy’s points.
Kathy’s post relates a longtime frustration of mine that I’ve struggled to put into words: the illiteracy of American Protestants when it comes to visual art.
h3. The Backdrop
In the Western world, we spend a good portion of our education learning how to read, write, and interpret the written word (grammar, sentence structure, poety, interpreting allegory, the classics, etc.). Most American high school graduates leave school having gained some exposure to Shakespeare, Dickinson, Jane Austen and other masters of the written word.
Visual art, on the other hand, is an elective. You could easily graduate from high school without taking a single art class, without learning about the Renassiance artists or the Impressionists. This lack of education is further compounded by the historical absence of visual art from Protestant worship, due to the backlash against Catholic “idolatry” during the Reformation.
Consequently most American Protestants have little experience at interpreting visual artwork, due to lack of opportunities within the educational system and their church communities.
h3. Back to Ambiguity
So what does this have to do with ambiguity? Artists of all stripes know that (as Kathy puts it) “…if you’re trying to help someone learn, inspire them, motivate them, engage them, involve them, or just get some kind of a reaction beyond mental and emotional flatline, turn down the gain in strategic places.” “Turn down the gain” means to making something less than crystal clear. Nothing helps implant a concept in a brain like having to work that concept out on your own. This is not a revoltionary statement.
This statement is just an extension of knowing that the life lessons experienced first hand are the ones best learned. If we have to wrestle with something and work it out on our own, our brain isn’t going to lose the rewards gained at the end of the struggle.
h3. The Problem with Art
The problem is that, through lack of exercise, American Protestants have become lazy when it comes to wrestling with ambiguity in visual art. We don’t have the experience doing it, it’s hard, it takes too much time and thought, it’s not interesting… we just don’t do it. So when we encounter artwork that contains ambiguity, rather than attempting to work it out and thereby learn something, we just move on. Give us our artwork “Thomas Kincaide-style”:http://www.thomaskinkade.com/: nice and fluffy with no heavy mental lifting involved. All we really want is something easy on the eyes and pretty in the living room.
The whole situation reminds me of the Newsboys song, “Lost the Plot”:
When you come back again
would you bring me something from the fridge?
Heard a rumour that the end is near
but I just got comfortable here.
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