Out of Touch

This article really doesn’t have much do with digital arts or culture, but I think it is important to call someone on saying something really fucking stupid. Elon Musk wants to be one of the first to set up a colony on Mars. Okay, that’s all well and good. Ah, and he wants to make it so the “average guy” in their mid-forties could easily afford a ticket. Well, damn that’s even better. It’s the Mayflower all over again. Humanity is finally stepping out of the nest and expanding to new horizons of greatness…I’m sorry, Mr. Musk what was that? I was kinda high on the seer awesome of…WHAT! A “reasonably” priced ticket to you is HALF A FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS!...you can kind go fuck yourself.

Pictured: the average savings of a male in his mid-forites

I try to not be such a belligerent dick, I really do…but why does the world keep making it so damned hard. Even adjusted for inflation that is still a lot of money. What’s gonna happen is only the super wealthy are going to be able to afford tickets and BAM, just like that Mars just became the next Dubai-esque playground for the rich. I bring this up because the future of humanity is something I’m often concerned about…but this guy is either just completely out of touch with just how much the “average guy” makes or is just that fucking stupid.

Symphony for the Office

No, I don’t mean the television series in either its American or British formats. I meant, you know, like an office…with cubicles and shit. Anyway, use this article to go to a composition by Rolf Liebermann. I’ll wait…

Okay, so if you managed to get through thirty seconds of that without losing your goddamned mind, congrats you fared much better than me. Hey, I love trying new and crazy things as much as the next guy, but at some point it is important to remember that a gimmick is not a replacement for an actual artistic experiment. But that’s just me, if you liked it than I’m not disparaging your musical taste at all. I’m happy for you, nay envious. I think it’s a cool concept, but I also think it could have pushed itself a little harder to make a better tune.

Artist's renderign of my reaction to this song

 

The huffpost article asks us “What do you get when you combine 16 typewriters, 18 calculators, eight accounting machines, 12 office perforators, 10 cash registers, eight humidifiers, eight tickers, two metronomes, four bells, two entrance door gongs, 10 electric horns, 16 telephones, 40 experimental signal receptors, a fork lift, a duplicator and an elevator?” Well, unnamed author, for one you get a long fucking paragraph of a question, and two you get one of the most annoying techno songs made entirely of things that inhabit workplaces…take that as you will



This Photo came from Someplace very Interesting...

Act Swiftly Awesome Pachyderm

(Title, not my non sequitur flippancy)

 

That right there was made on a freakin’ iPhone. Hand to god. It’s one of the pieces being exhibited in a new show featuring nothing but works made on iPhones, iPads and so on. It’s called “digital painting”. Unfortunately the story doesn’t really explain how people managed to do this but it makes me all kinds of happy.

This is what I like to see. People actually taking the new technology we have and using it for artistic purposes. It makes even me, the grouchiest cynical ass you’ll meet for a good long while (at least I hope so), simile like an idiot. I posted before about “Resses Moments” those times when tech and art fuse to make the most kick as creative cyborg…this is one of those moments. Gotta love it!



More like PFA-1

I would call this Pretty Fuckin’ Awesome One (see what I did there…bask in it for a second). The Public Farm One is a project to show how somewhat large scale agriculture can be carried out in a small urban environment and look good. They tell about it far better than I, so have at it. I’m always fascinated by things like this, it’s a shame that practically none of them have caught on in a big way. Imagine what our country would be like if we didn’t depend solely on rural farms for agriculture. We could produce that much more fresh produce. It would kick several kinds of ass.

I would totaly use this as a water slide

 

I post this because I just had a…I’m going to be generous and call it a “discussion” with an individual who espoused the idea that creativity was something next to useless. I’m not a patient person when it comes to these kinds of things. One need only look at older posts to find ample evidence of that, but I think creativity and innovation go hand-in-hand to the point that they’re inseparable. All I have to do to prove that creativity makes the world go ‘round is point at irrigation. You think whoever came up with that idea was some idiot who stumbled on the idea of redirecting water for crops. Hell no. and what made civilization advance to the point were we have access to damn near the entire accumulated mass of human knowledge on a fucking phone…you guessed; irrigation. The next time some dick tells you creativity doesn’t matter simply point to his smart phone and give him a proverbial knowledge bitch-slap. 

Color of a Season

Every now and then I do post about artistic projects that aren’t in some way related to bouncy houses. This awesome triptych is the work of Katrin Korfmann, a German artist famous for the use of birds-eye View photography. The subject is a festival called the “Hali” festival which is a celebration of the coming of spring. This is done by throwing pigmented powder and perfume at one another. The result would give a bag of skittles penis envy.

'Kolorit-Yellow' by Katrin Korfmann

Flippancy aside I find it to be absolutely beautiful. I love bright colors because I rarely get to see them when they aren’t sprayed on the sides of freight trains. It’s also a really good example of a triptych, which is a nice call back to earlier from the semester.

 

Yo-Ho

The fight against Internet piracy continues. A new policy isin the works from some major internet providers and the government. Which I’ll just go ahead and translate for you as SOPA Lite…well I’d like to anyway. What strikes me as super-sketchy here is the fact that the people who are making this policy (as well as enforcing it) haven’t told us sweet fuck-all about it. What we do know is that people caught going to pirating sites (read torrent sites) will be redirected and could have their internet speeds severely and have access to sites blocked. The article linked above poses the important question of “which sites, guys?” which is a good goddamn question.

 

YAR! Load as much free porn as the hard drive can hold!

 

The number of times I’ve talked about piracy on this blog is starting to get old for me, but holy hell, this crap just keeps happening. My feelings on pirating are pretty straightforward: Don’t Fucking Do It. The best argument I can present is thus: If you’re torrenting a TV series or movies or music that you like then you’re actively hurting the sales of those things. We live in a capitalist country and if something doesn’t make money we stop making it. In the long run, by pirating you’re acting to ensure that you want get any more of the things you love. That being said, I’ve yet to see a movie producer, recording artist, or television executive who was wont for anything. Oh, and I love the quote in the article about how this new Six Strikes (as they call it) policy is “more valid under human rights law,”. Keyword more that doesn’t make it any better. Example, getting kicked in the shin is more merciful than getting kicked in the testicles (or ovaries). It’s a problem to be sure, but sweet mercy there needs to be a better way to deal with this crap.

In Honor of Black Friday...

This. This is a thing.

Apparently, Black Friday is a cultural phenomenon so ubiquitous right now that articles about waiting line playlists are published by respectable news sites. I’m not angry (as many of my previous posts would like to prove otherwise), I am merely baffled. Yes, saving money in an expensive society (very much preoccupied with monetary gain) can be nice…and also lead to Battle Royal style battles between normal (I hope) sane individuals. I tend to avoid lines whenever possible due to my tendency to dislike camping in front of a Best Buy for the privilege of braining some poor bastard that I might get my hands on a TV at a severely reduced price.

I think a good many artistic opportunities lie in the Black Friday phenomenon. I’ve seen plenty of institutional critique pieces about rampant consumerism, but none have been directly tied to Black Friday.

As for things to do in line…I just misquote Macbeth “This line doth stretch on till the end of time”…that’s about all I got.

Well, no Shit

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It’s November 6^th everyone! YEA! Thank god, now that election season is over I can go onto the internet and not suffer as much political asshattery…for the most part. But apparently something hilariously interesting happened a few months before. Apparently a lot of people dropped off of Twitter. The reason given? Well, supposedly if you give enough people an open forum with a lot of anonymity it tends to make them behave like complete dicks. For proof of this I point you to highly acclaimed internet master John Gabriel’s extremely helpful mathematical diagram.

Penny-Arcade.com

To be less vague about it people were swearing off Twitter because they got sick and tired of trolls being armature political pundits and demanding they vote. Now, I’ve been on the internet for years now and have come to learn much about the wily Troll but I now see that it is news. This is why the internet is so fascinating; it’s a one-of-a-kind environment where people can express themselves without anyone ever knowing who they are. This one system has completely changed the world by such magnitude that its staggering. However, it has also reveled the stagger levels of idiocy, racism, and general asshattery that the populace will engage in when given said open forum and anonymity.

I really wish I could stop posting about this crap...

Have you ever been mugged? Where you in the awkward situation of presenting your assailant with your iPhone instead of your pepper spray can? Well guess what? That will never happen again thanks to the new pepper spray iPhone case.

I swear to god sometimes the comedy starts just align in perfect order. This case, designed by the head of Spraytech as a means to find a protection device for his daughter, is a real thing. Now, I’m going to drop a personal security bomb on y’all. I have a good friend who worked in law enforcement for years and he gave me the straight about personal security stuff. First is your assailant (most likely a mugger) armed with a gun? If so give up your money without any fuss because a bullet moves a fuck load faster than pepper spray. Okay if not then pepper spray is not a very good means of self defense. What if it’s windy? Now you’ve made your attackers job that much easier as your wondering how it is possible to experience that much pain in her face. Stun guns are ever worse in case the assailant is has on thick clothing. In which case that thing is better used as a toy pistol than anything else. His umber one suggestion: collapsible baton. It’s extremely light weight and getting smashed in the face with a carbon fiber stick hurts like unholy hell no mater how much clothing you’ve got on or how windy it is. Hitting someone right under there nose with just a fist is good enough to incapacitate them for long enough to GTFO, but use a stick designed for explicitly beating ass will do even better.

Yes, it has a diagram for use...

Sorry, got off on a weird tangent there…still valuable knowledge I suppose…but back to the dumbest defense tool invented. Am I the only one who sees how this will be immediately abused to make the most dipshit photos ever. Imagine (shouldn’t be too hard) some bro pulls out his p-phone (that’s short for pepper phone. Thought that one up myself, thank you very much) and tells his bros to pose. He then, as most dickhead bros are wont to do, pepper spray them and immediately snap a photo of the post-spray pain and crying. Which he will post to Facebook posthaste with the caption “LOLS PEPED”. And just like that a new meme is born for the internet…like planking or T.Bowing. This will be Peping and we’ll have Spraytech to thank for what has got to be one of the worst ideas in self defense since a rabid badger tied to a stick

Actually, this is a better idea



So...this happend today...

            In good old England today, November 5^th is remembered as Guy Fawkes Day…which I was introduced to by Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta graphic novel…but that’s neither here nor there. Outside of Parliament in London today a group showed up to show support for Anonymous. You might recognize that name as the group of Garbage Dicks responsible for hacking the Playstation Networking and stealing the personal information of many people. In short (clears throat) FUCK THESE ASSHATS. At some point the cultural lexicon shifted “activist” to “shitheel how thinks they’re being a goddamned new revolutionary” and suddenly being part of a hacker (read: cyberspace thug) collective is on par with some like, I don’t know, Guy Fawkes. They way I see it a ‘good hacker’ is a lot like a good thief in that they don’t announce to the fucking world how great they are!

            Now I’m no major hater of the “underground internet” as sometimes some very interesting art and creative works can spring from it (still waiting on the virtual spaces Banksy) but these people aren’t helping anybody. They’re just…well, asshats. As someone who damn near had his credit card number stolen by these fuck-muffins I think I have a good right to tell them to go a flog themselves with an AC adapter….oh shit, now they’ll read this and I’ll be a victim of identity theft…grand. Oh well, read it up while you can people. For the story go here

I haven't seen this many assholes with black and white faces since the Gathering of the Juggalos

Sky Walkin'

Okay, so Tomás Saracneo has a new exhibit called “On Space Time Foam” which is an art project designed to simulate the feeling of walking on a cloud and possibly scaring the literal piss out of those with acrophobia. The material is suspended sixty feet in the air in the exhibit building and is an unspecified thin clear film…I really can’t stress the unspecified part of that sentence enough.



SEE! That guy in the middle. That is the look of a man who's pissed himself...told ya.


Pee jokes aside, this is supposed to be a kind of “adult playground” which as a man child I fully endorse. It certainly looks to be a very interesting piece. If it were anywhere near me I’d be willing to try it out just for the undoubtedly surreal experience.

Check it out

Worth your Time and Money

Last week I actually saw a movie that was worth watching. You all may have seen it advertised or heard about it. It’s called Cloud Atlas. This film is technically an independent film as the directors The Wachowski’s (The Matrix trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) could not get any Hollywood studio to buy in. It is an extremely ambitious film based on a book of the same name that was considered to be of the “unfilmable” family. It looks pretty damn amazing thanks to the fact that they did manage to get some German financial backing (which is kind of…odd). Essentially it is six stories being told at once that are all connected in some way or another and share common themes of causality, human connectivity and love. All of these stories are pretty drastically different in both tone and setting and a handful of actors play various roles that have them changing race and gender. The stories range from 18^th century period piece, a seventies crime thriller, hardcore sci-fi and upbeat British comedy. The “Atlas” part of the title is certainly fitting.

I would highly recommend that people go and see this movie simply because that it was so hard to get made. And holy hell is it a blast of fresh air. I can guarantee that you won’t see anything quite like it. Go and give it your money. Be forewarned that it is 3 hours long and doesn’t give you any warning as to the fact that it’s telling you six stories at once. It gets right into the thick of it. In all seriousness though, in a time when a movie needs to be a sequel or be about superheroes it’s inspiring to see something so unique and inventive.

The make-up can get pretty bad at times though…asian Hugo Weaving looks more Klingon than Korean.