The Fire and the Flames

Earlier today we went to Florian's house in west Dawson for meal and a percussion session, and just to chill around. He's got a nice log cabin. Anyway, on the way back he noticed that the car was making funny sounds, but we still drove down towards dawson. About a kilometer away from the Yukon riverbank, Florian looks out the window, stops the car on the road and "GET OUT" he says. I couldn't find the handle to the door, so I had to wait until Sophie and France (got caught in the doorhandle and had to be pulled out by Florian) got off on the driver side. We jumped out and ran away as the car and the ground beneath it glowed orange and flickered, and bits of frame fell into the snow under the vehicle and lit in cinders. After a while, Florian crept back up to it in the ditch, looked underneath, and came back. We waited, not knowing if it would explode but the fire gave out. Florian explained that the gas tank had been leaking onto the exhaust and the heat finally lit up the fuel.

He offered to take us into Dawson anyway, but France suggested that we walk, so we walked down and took pictures and crossed Florian on the ice, he on his ATV heading back out of town.

Coming home I didn't really know what to draw into my sketchbook, and finally decided to do that scene. When Sophie saw it she told me that it should be a creative response, so it will be one. Car burning with wildlife scenery and Dawson lights in the distance, Ink, watercolor and ballpoint pen. By SpearHead.

Leekspin

These are called internet phenomena.
Wikipedia them if you want. I did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_phenomenon

Anyway, this particular one is called "Leekspin". It comes from episode 2 of the japanese anime series BLEACH. In the original show, the scene is a running gag in which Orihime Inoue (the featured character) describes how she plans to make a dinner that everyone else thinks would be barely edible. The four frames were put in a loop to the finnish folk song Lleva's Polka by Lolituma, thus the other name, "lolituma girl" The 6 lines are essentially scat singing, and have no actual meaning. The flash animation has been commented on for it's hypnotizing quality. The video became quite popular and has been remixed and released multiple times with CG animated characters, as one would a music video. See "Holly Dolly"

Anyway, the original clip here:
http://www.leekspin.com/
It actually features a timer!

Inspired Anonymous

I was reading through AIRGEAR, two years ago and came across an interesting poem. I was around chapter 49-63... Anyway, I only remembered two lines from the poem, but I found it on the net. As it were, it was actually a fusing of multiple poems together... here they are, acessed through another blogger;
feed://leopedia.com/blog/?feed=rss2


Here I lie in stinky vapor,
Because some bastard stole the toilet paper,
Shall I lie, or shall I linger,
Or shall I be forced to use my finger.

Before he graduated to be a poet, he wrote this…

Here I sit
Broken hearted
Tried to shit
But only farted

Someone who had a different experience wrote,

You’re lucky
You had your chance
I tried to fart,
And shit my pants!

Perhaps it’s true that people find inspiration in toilets.

I came here
To shit and stink,
But all I do
Is sit and think.

There are also people who come in for a different purpose…

Some come here to sit and think,
Some come here to shit and stink,
But I come here to scratch my balls,
And read the bullshit on the walls…

Toilets walls also double as job advertisement space…….

(written high upon the wall)
If you can piss above this line, the Singapore Fire Department wants you.

Ministry of Environment advertisement.

We aim to please!
You aim too! Please

On the inside of a toilet door:
Patrons are requested to remain seated throughout the
entire performance.

And finally, this should teach some a lesson…
Sign seen at a restaurant:
The hands that clean these toilets also make your
food…please aim properly.

Connected Through the Void

First of all, we should try to shake the myth. The internet does not act as a tool that brings people together or connects them; only a small fraction of the world can even access the internet. Among us that can, it can let us roam freely to data from other continents, but from my point of view, the internet is like... the shredding of everything we value in real life. The internet is perceived as "anonymous" - or was, until recently- a place where you could be whatever you wanted to be, and put on and switch masks as you saw fit. No one had to know who you were, where you came from, what kind of cereal you ate in the morning.

But that's not actually what's going on. With a little effort, even casual surfers can track down people they know using google and facebook. And then, there are the randomized (or not so randomized) advertisements,  gimmicks, e-mail buddies you've never met before, purchase tracking devices, and countless more ways to screw or find or spy on a person than I can imagine. Our world really is being sucked into computers, and surprisingly, we're going along with it, while at the same time lamenting our loss of privacy. It's as if rich and modern citizens from rich and modern countries have somehow become addicted to the net, much like one becomes addicted to cigarettes, so that it becomes a necessary evil...

This is something that less developed countries have better than we do. With all our time and focus being drawn into the codified void, what happens  to our physical reality? We really are being shackled into following this new social phenomena, "connection through the void"

I did a little research, and was flabbergasted to find that people are actually finding ways to make use of cybershit like virtual reality practical, for teaching, or rehab. I always though I was a pretty techie guy, but as it turns out, I'm analog after all. Computers are nice for entertainment, instant gratification of a desire for information, and e-mail. (which really is instant gratification of mail sending). I was horrified when I saw all the positive, peer reviewed articles on the OCAD database that had to do with the benefits of VR. Online games? not in this lifetime, not unless I was being held at gunpoint, and even so, it would have to be a pretty big gun.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. 


Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
His story here: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm

We've all heard about this poem before, it has become something of a symbol for remembrance day. The first verse is featured on the Canadian 10$ bill. Let's focus on two things: A though, as usual in appreciation for what was gained by those that fought long and hard, those that died, those that lived but were not spared. The cost of victory was high; once, twice, but I and countless others sacrificed nothing for that victory. That is what we should be thankful for. Not that they fought - the state of the world at the beginning of the 20th century meant that fighting was inevitable, and plus they did not fight for our sake - but that they fought and died in our stead.

Also, I think of all those things which we are vaguely told about, and have always assumed, like this poem. It is a remarkable poem, but I did not know that it was longer than the version on the 10$. A thought out there, a shot in the dark, for all those things we were ignorant of, things that are vital but no one cares to learn.

...Take up our quarrel with the foe

No Ghost Just A Shell

Phiplippe Parreno and Pierre Hyughes went to Japan and bought the copyrights to AnnLee, a manga character. She was cheap; the price of a manga figure relates to the complexity of their character traits and how well they can adapt to a storyline and "survive" in the long term. Since AnnLee had no particular traits to begin with, she was destined to be scrapped. The two artists saved her life and set her to work. She was offered free of charge to artists who wished to use her for their own stories. "No Ghost Just A Shell drains her of her soul and makes her a vessel. She also raises interesting questions about the artmaking process; the "same" image appears again and again, but it begins to show some difference. Is her shell really always the same? What is the role of the people who operate it? Are they subjective? How does identity come into being for characters in cinema and art? She is the Mickey Mouse of today, a commercial unit, a shell meant to be inhabited by others. 


She has been saved by culture in order to be exploited by it, and she has been invented by culture in order to fuel it. That great symbol of fuel, the Shell Oil trademark, an arbitrary sign, replaces the word “shell,” itself an arbitrary sign, in M/M’s poster for the show. Arbitrary, perhaps, but essential to remember: I mean, wasn’t our desire for oil part of what got us into this mess? And wasn’t controlling others in order to save them part of it, too? It’s hard to know, and it’s hard to say.


This entire post was more or less directly quoted from the conclusion of this article:
http://linedandunlined.com/2004/09/15/the-problem-with-posters/ 

which I found by Google Imaging the topic after I read this document, which looks like an artist statement:
http://www.mmparis.com/noghost.html
Some notes by Philippe Pareno:
http://www.airdeparis.com/pann.htm

I want to write down this link too. Archive.
http://www.stretcher.org/archives/r3_a/2003_02_10_r3_archive.php

There's a No Ghost Just A Shell T-shirt. I'd like to have one.

Her Morning Elegance

The guy is called Oren Lavie, more info on him here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oren_Lavie
And some on his recently popular stop motion music video, Her Morning Elegance (why write it yourself if you can just tell someone where to find them, and let them see a less diluted version...
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=99738779&blogID=467348012
And finally, the music video itself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

...I like his musical style. But since this has gone mainstream, he's gonna get noticed if he hasn't already...

Ownership

Remove yourself from your personal values and assumptions. They cloud your judgement. I have come to an interesting discovery today, and that is appreciation and understanding of what it means to be #1. Humans dominate the planet. We are the primera, the numero uno. Our actions catalyze huge changes in the world around us.

My entire life I have thought of humans as tenants on earth, with a condominum much larger than that of any other species, but I have always thought that earth does not belong to us; it precedes us and will outlast us, and thus we are it's creation - and that though we share this relationship, it is not ours in the way that we possess our parents (our mothers, our fathers) but rather, our creation has little intent behind it; we are an "accidental" creation, at best, though it would be better to make a comparison  to a woman suddenly being with child despite still being a virgin, i.e. having taken no steps, intentional or otherwise, to create. Like all things, living or no, we are the growth of the planet, and it really does not care or consider us when it unleashes a cataclysmic disaster on a densely populated human settlment; to the planet, the space is her own, and it is leased to us at our own risk, like a decrepit apartment. It is most certainly cheap and easy to acquire, but not safe. (interestingly, when we buy a house, we rarely choose the "cheap and easy" option, but when choosing a settlement humans have little concept of the long term.) In this sense, it might be safe to surmise that the planet "owns" us.

But now I have been exposed to a thought: what if we, humans, owned the planet? That is certainly the way we've been acting up to now. And besides, there are none to tell us otherwise. There was, once long ago a pretender, a follower of the "path not taken", a conscious species much like our own, but Darwin's theory took care of that. They were extinguished, either as a result of their own inferiority, or because we though it unsightly to share the throne. We are at the top of the food chain, the kings, if you will, of the natural world. We are in fact so far ahead that it is unlikely that any creature in existinance or as a future mutation of any other species in this era will ever surpass us. Nothing stops us from laying waste to mile after mile of our territory, or polluting our own water resources. That is the extent of our power. If we are the kings, then the rest of the world is are our subjects. And what does it matter if a peasant goes hungry or dies in the eyes of a king? As long as the king himself does not bear witness to the suffering of the peasant, whatever happens to him is irrelevant to the life of the lord. I would view animals in much the same way. No matter how many of them die, or what happens to the ecosystems they live in, if we are not affected, why should we be concerned? Cruelty is natural. And the Strong rule. Let the weak argue that that isn't the way the world works. They're dead meat anyways.

Twisted Metal

Okay, so we went on a dump run last thursday, and today we went out to have our findings crushed flat by steamroller - which each of us got to drive! It was cold though.

So there's only one important part of this post: Pictures!

Relationships

Serial Photography looks at the relationships between photographs. Every time we look at an image we are comparing it to another, or a history of images. But placing it next to some other image may highlight a key feature or theme, like the "Wine and Cheese" work for 2D.

And so the class was spent assembling pictures through photoshop. And as it were, I happen to have drawn a landscape with ink this morning at 3am, and I realize that the pairing of ideas may be complimented by the pairing of scans of a single image. This ink sketch uses techniques inspired from Sophie's inkwork, but the heavy use of line is my personal preference.... The joining of scans however, is not.

Logo1

My first official looking logo... It's of semi-pro quality, if I may say so myself... It was commissioned in august by a friend of my mother, and I totally forgot about it... And then I deleted the file by accident, but I had a rough scan, which I used as a base, then applied vector paths, one for each segment, and clipped layers of color into the design. Like this, it looks cool and can be modified - which is what they wanted, something that can be made as big as a banner or as small as a businesscard.

Anyway, it's not so much of a company as a volunteer organization, so of course I'm not getting paid. But I'm glad I did it, I had to learn more about photoshop, and that is always good. And it's a good cause; a group that collects and gives away winter clothing to children without the means...

Culinary Creation #1

My first ever dish. Yahoo. Or rather, the first ever dish that i've made from scratch, and without a recipie that I know of. It's Chicken Cheddar Fricassee, and happens to be a derivative (and very different) form of the chickenburger with fries I was about to make. It's all because one of my pots is of terrible quality. Fearing that the potatoes would stick, I put oil in the pan, but they stuck anyway. So I put the potatoes in the same pan as the grilling chicken, and went from there.

1 chicken breast, cut into those small rectangularish pieces
1 garlic unit (whatever the name is, I'm no cook) diced as small as possible
1 Potato, diced
Onions, diced
1/2 bell pepper, diced
1 green onion,
MTL steak spice
Cheddar cheese, grated
Serves one.

Mushrooms woulda been good too.

So after I combined the garlic-chicken and onion-potato, I mulled over what to do, and France came and put some MTL steak spices on the "thing" So I put in some veggies, let it finish cooking (my potatoes never fully cook with this method, but that's ok, I like them crunchy. They woulda turned out better if I'd used a better pan... Anyway.) Add the cheese, let it melt mix the mixture... Do all of this more or less to your own fancies, and you've got yourself a Chicken Cheese Fricassee! It's actually quite good, I was suprised.

PinkRam Jam (2 different kinds)

Well, I went to the grocery store 3 times this morning, burnt my inital pudding (cooked pudding, who the hell came up with that?) and then ran out of milk.

But I did make another one of those greek pasta salad (and another chunk of Feta cheese gone :) and I also made the trifle thing from last time, and it was good. I played the harmonica and the weird drum thingy... France told me I should look up harmonica techniques on the web... maybe I'll do that. And I learned to play more of the guitar; now I know the chords for E, E- G, C, C-, D, D-, A, A-, F and B and my fingers are sore from playing... And I'm excited for next week's Jam, and I'll try to sing next time (I have a sneaking suspicion that they tried to make me sing a song to make sure I wouldn't sing the other ones, but I didn't feel moved by the song and couldn't come up with anything good... And also sang later on, half to myself. Also I can't perform on demand.)

This marks the 4th, no, the 5th  White Ram Jam and Brunch and it was also Rosie's birthday today. Looking back from an academic point of view however, I might as well have stayed in bed all day.