— unpredictable thoughts

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December, 2009 Monthly archive

Dur­ing Octo­ber 26 through Octo­ber 30 I was involved in a twit­ter per­for­mance piece. The project was con­cieved and orga­nized by @Platea. @Platea is a global col­lec­tive of indi­vid­u­als inter­ested in the power of pub­lic art car­ried out in the dig­i­tal megac­ity of social media.

Method­ol­ogy : observe and let the story unfold, improvise.

It all began with my first tweet:
The woman with the blond hair put on her rain­coat, took her umbrella and headed up 18th street. #fp20

This was the begin­ning of a sur­pris­ingly par­tic­i­pa­tory per­for­mance. I’ve writ­ten a recap at @Platea. I’m plan­ning to make a series of draw­ings and a book to expand the story and expe­ri­ence from the performance.

You can read it here.

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hirshornbubble

We’ve spent plenty of time on the national mall usu­ally in a gath­er­ing to protest an injus­tice and lend a voice for a more per­fect union. Imag­ine our sur­prise at this new pro­posal for struc­ture that would bring cre­ative cul­ture to the cen­ter of civic energy.
What an inter­est­ing approach to a design a dual agenda: raise the museum’s national pro­file and to put Wash­ing­ton in closer touch with cre­ative life around it. Within weeks he was pro­mot­ing his vision to leg­is­la­tors, museum direc­tors and for­eign cul­tural attachés.

The direc­tor of the Hir­shorn Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­den, Richard Koshalek pro­poses erect­ing an inflat­able meet­ing hall That would pop out of the inter­nal court­yard of the museum.
This is an excit­ing idea from any design point of view includ­ing archi­tec­ture and place­mak­ing, The other excit­ing aspect is a tem­po­rary struc­ture reduces bud­get yet expands the impact the museum can make.
Con­grat­u­la­tions to Mr. Koshalek and the Museum for such bold think­ing.

Designed by the New York firm Diller Scofidio & Ren­fro, the translu­cent fab­ric struc­ture, which would be installed twice a year, for May and Octo­ber, and be packed away in stor­age the rest of the time, would trans­form one of the most somber build­ings on the mall into a lumi­nous pop landmark.

from the NY Times

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4171129321_636899ecab_b

The cam­paign by John and Yoko Lennon con­tin­ues again this year with new tools. You can head over to Flickr and find a War is Over (if you want it) poster. There are as many lan­guages as they have been able to man­age. If you can help to trans­late into any of the addi­tional lan­guages give them a hand at www.imaginepeace.com

Or sendin your con­tri­bu­tions & refine­ments to admin [at] IMAGINEPEACE [dot] com

I choose to show Burmese for Aung San Suu Kyi and the strug­gle in Burma.

Peace.

WAR IS OVER! Multilingual posters _ postcards - a set on Flickr

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Loved my SX-70. Find­ing this video on the web actu­ally made me a bit sad.

This cam­era cre­ated a paradym shift in pho­tog­ra­phy. Instant and high qual­ity the SX-70 was a joy to use. This film made by the Eames Office to explain the tech­nol­ogy and uses for the cam­era. It is a won­der­ful lit­tle film. It is inspir­ing from a prod­uct and design view. The Eames office took a lik­ing to explain­ing com­pli­cated concepts.

Enjoy a tech­nol­ogy of the past that set the bar for the future.

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In their excess, their blowsy dream­ing
and King Solomon-like tem­pers, the clouds
pos­sess the grandeur of eighteenth-century oils,

when a painter earned his pro­fes­sion
as an anatomist. Those artists of verdi­gris
and gam­boge, too gorged on joy, perhaps,

treated that blank pas­ture of the “heav­ens”
like some­thing that had lived.
Their crawly undo­ings remind us

of the mean curiosi­ties of sheep, the sea’s
half-remembered boil, or a few twisted bolls
of cotton—the morn­ing phosphorescent

or sun­set a dull, worn-out gilt.
The nights there were scum­bled with light.
How could we ever have taken them

for the absti­nence of art?

by William Logan

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square-signature-screen

Sim­ply, Square is a com­pany that will let you make credit or debit card trans­ac­tions from a smart­phone. Square is a new com­pany who has a founder from another inter­est­ing com­pany, twitter.

Credit and debit card trans­ac­tions take all kinds of devices phys­i­cal and tech­ni­cal includ­ing mer­chant accounts that cost you a bun­dle each month whether you make a trans­ac­tion or not. This is dif­fi­cult for small busi­nesses, sole pro­pri­etors, crafts­peo­ple, and artists.

The story is that “In Feb­ru­ary 2009, Jim McK­elvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as pay­ment” and the next day Square was born.

The whole process seems ter­ri­bly slow for a small trans­ac­tion but the advan­tages of mar­ket­ing offers to fre­quent cus­tomers, an iden­tity ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, text and e-mail receipts, and trans­ac­tions to the cloud make it a player in this ser­vice space.

I know that I’m ready to try it out.

video from TechCrunch:

square-signature-screen

Sim­ply, Square is a com­pany that will let you make credit or debit card trans­ac­tions from a smart­phone. Square is a new com­pany who has a founder from another inter­est­ing com­pany, twitter.

Credit and debit card trans­ac­tions take all kinds of devices phys­i­cal and tech­ni­cal includ­ing mer­chant accounts that cost you a bun­dle each month whether you make a trans­ac­tion or not. This is dif­fi­cult for small busi­nesses, sole pro­pri­etors, crafts­peo­ple, and artists.

The story is that “In Feb­ru­ary 2009, Jim McK­elvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as pay­ment” and the next day Square was born.

The whole process seems ter­ri­bly slow for a small trans­ac­tion but the advan­tages of mar­ket­ing offers to fre­quent cus­tomers, an iden­tity ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, text and e-mail receipts, and trans­ac­tions to the cloud make it a player in this ser­vice space.

I know that I’m ready to try it out.

video from TechCrunch:

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kd lang sings Bare­foot from Salmonberries.

This is from a film writ­ten and directed by Percy Adlon If you haven’t seen the film rent it. Well, that is if art films are an inter­est. This isn’t a hol­ly­wood thing.

Salmonber­ries has won sev­eral awards:

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No words. Just Roy’s.

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Off rows of wind­shields
in the Amtrak lot
rain in sud­den
clumps like jacks. Parked cars
with peo­ple in them
await­ing peo­ple they imag­ine
hurtling through sub­urbs
of sil­ver woods
await­ing them. True
love needs inter­fer­ence,
a cer­tain bliz­zard dis­tance,
for the words to worm through.
Remem­ber Iowa?
August storms that would self-spark
as if our fights could trip
the finest wire beneath the side­walk.
And the sun­light, harder after.

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