Cats & Blog

Burrito December 8, 2009

:D Final projet (proh-czay)

Burrito

Lumiere Brothers and Heavy Metal Parking Lot November 12, 2009

When comparing the two videos, what was really interesting to me was while Heavy Metal Parking Lot was a much more recent video (aka not the first ever), and accordingly in a more developed documentary style, a lot of elements seemed more raw to me than in the Lumiere Brothers films. I think what was most shocking to me was the raw quality of the bodies of the individuals in Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Most every person interviewed had crooked or missing and miscolored teeth. The men were especially comfortable with wearing no shirts, even though they were not particular well taken care of (lots of body hair, not much muscle etc.) The women were wearing very crude looking makeup (the makeup of today is probably just better designed chemically to do what you want it to) and their permed hair looked very damaged to me. It seemed like a stark contrast to the concerts and parties that I have experienced in the twenty-first century. I can imagine that the people in Heavy Metal Parking Lot were pretty typical of 1986. Braces were not affordable, and many personal engineering practices were nascent or nonexistant. But what struck me especially was just that these people are parents now. They are probably still around. Have dentures, several tooth implants, are parents. I thought of Roland Barthes, who analyzed photographs in this way: He wrote about the death of a moment and the potential death of the figures portrayed by a photograph, the aging, further decay and development. And like we were saying in class, the grandchildren of the figures in the Lumiere Brothers films are very old now. Two world wars, the invention of the airplane, it just seems like so long ago, especially in the context of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which after 23 years seems so aged that the people don’t feel real to me. I think just the groups of people that the filmmakers chose to show were especially effective at inciting this feeling in me. If the Lumiere Brothers showed the lower class, their more minimal attire would probably seem more contemporary than the ridiculously extravagant clothing of the upper classes (I assume) that they film. The heavy metal subculture, also probably because the attire it’s associated with is so bizarre, also just seems very aged. These elements make both videos really powerful at putting my own life and times into perspective and making me think about just how rapidly humans change. I thought how the parking lots of raves look. The people, I think, on average seem a lot more capable of transforming themselves today into robotically perfect. What will a subcultures parking lot look like in 20, 50, 110 years? (Lol, as if we’re not all dead first.)

Lemmings November 10, 2009

I hate the internet. Does this work?

Stop Frame October 27, 2009

Charcoal: Drawings from Garrett Nickerson on Vimeo.

Charcoal: Girl and Drawings from Garrett Nickerson on Vimeo.

Charcoal: Girl from Garrett Nickerson on Vimeo.

Vimeo October 25, 2009

Vimeo

Check me out

Response October 8, 2009

Response to RIP and History if the Amen Break

Both videos were pretty great. I love the section at the end of the Amen Break when the narrator talks about how impossible it is to copyright sounds with companies like Zero G protecting property they stole or which they generated later and separately from older versions. I like the idea that being “free to borrow and build upon the past is culturally richer”. I liked RIP a lot. The video was so engaging and well edited. I especially liked references to Dada which I found potent not only because Dada represented early “remixes” of pasted images, but also vividly points out the senselessness of government and law. I think the governments attempts to regulate music copyright is a lot like babbling incoherently. The charges are unfair, even ridiculous, and created by people who clearly misunderstand my generation. I really  think that more groups should pursue ending the “fear of copyright” which has been ineffective and really harmful.

October 7, 2009

Something to listen to:

Rollerskate – Matias Aguayo

Song October 6, 2009

Time (\”mashup\” of real good time by diane cluck, amen, brother, and close chorus by a sunny day in Glasgow)

How to Raise a Blue Ribbon Mouse September 30, 2009

The original “dipped” mouse (my roommates hand)

Something to listen to:

Horizon Lined With Scars- Bagheera

Reading September 21, 2009

Tufte Explaining Magic

This article was very compelling especially when compared to some other writings in social semiotics. I was recently reading Kress and van Leeuwan’s “Reading Images” which discusses how biases and processes can be depicted in visual structuring. I think magical diagrams very much meet the theses of Kress and van Leeuwan, who grant the image producer with a lot of intentionality.   I think effective visual structuring is the idea behind diagrams showing magic, even when the intent is to obscure the actual action of the proceedings. Even in “The Flying Glass of Water” vectors and dynamic forces are used to hasten the reading of the image and lead the viewer’s gaze in a swoop across the page. I think the author is entirely correct in his thesis that these diagrams could be very important to social semiotics.

Modern hieroglyphics

I had never thought about those bathroom signs until this article. I wonder how closely related Neurath’s Isotype and the contemporary system of rating (movies,for example) out of a certain number of stars. The olympic figures were painted in my high school gym. Those are very intriguing and they seem like they would make good stencils. One good Isotype figure to check out s the one on the back of Orbit gum. It looks really odd: Think I’ll make a stencil.