I’m going to use a couple of words that you might have been trained to switch off at and back away from: “culture” and “art”. Don’t panic.
Locally, “culture” and “art” tend to be rather primitive, grim and at best just a creative reaction to the various past and present oppressions in this society — regardless of the ethnic origins of whoever is doing it.
So, there’s not much visible imagination, fun, sense of having a wider perspective on anything — or even indications that most of the artists around can actually “draw fingers” to start with.
Here’s some art that actually has a brain and is rather cool. For instance (and feet fetishists especially take note), how about a large collection of various celebrities’ feet during performances? Everyone from Deep Purple and David Bowie to Jello Biafra, Celine Dion and Linkin Park have their feet and footwear immortalised at the amazing Feet Me!.
How about art that combines the craft of bookbinding with social commentary? You end up with The Book Art of Richard Minsky. To help you get into it, here’s a selection of reviews.
For art that comes from a place where many people have been butchered by the military forces of the United States, have a look at these Iraqi Disney Wall Murals. (These were taken a week or so ago, by a travelling self-confessed geek who is travelling around and blogging from Iraq.) You can see more of his photographs of Iraqi walls, children’s art and graffiti here.
I don’t generally link to photographic exhibitions, mainly because there’s just way too much out there, but have a look at these uniquely unsettling pix from a photographer who is in strange American gothic territory. (These are part of a current exhibition of his work in Los Angeles.) Go look at Michael Garlington Photographs, and for some info about him and a few more pix, go here.
How about an online Italian magazine of “technology, art and culture”? Beats the hell out of the brain-dead print magazines. Read through the English version of Neural.
Just to wake you up, and to show you that we humans are wonderfully insane as a species, read about what must be the first-ever wireless multiplayer game (SuperMario) played by skydivers during a freefall: Sky-High Gamers Go to Extremes.
What happens when you are on a plane, in flight, with three vials of a homeopathic medicine and an MP3 player, in the modern United States? Correct, your airplane has an emergency landing, 74 passengers evacuated and you get to meet the bomb squad. Read MP3 Player and Herbal Remedies Lead to Emergency Landing.
Feel like looking for multimedia goodies? Try this new site for independent filmmakers and public television broadcasters who want to spread their work around to whoever would like to see it. Go dip into the early stages of the Open Media Network.
When mathematics meets “holy communion” — technically, the belief of many branches of Christianity that when you take communion, the bread and wine transform physically and literally into the flesh and blood of Christ (this is called transubstantiation). Okay, now go find out just how big Jesus must be, in reality, based on the numbers of wafers eaten. Go do the maths at God Is Great, By Which I Mean Really Really Large.
Then, to help you along — and probably get you attacked if you raise this with a low-IQ religious type — try the equally accurate, but very geeky, How Many Atoms of Jesus Do You Eat Every Day?.
Back to art. Maybe. See if you can work out what and why Chinese Poet Chooses to Live in Nest for a Month.
Or to tie in with the upcoming and undoubtedly rubbish but thankfully final Star Wars film, go look at photographs of the images some people have permanently marked on to their skin, at Star Wars Tattoos.
In China, fake business-management books by equally fake authors are a huge business, selling millions of copies. (Hmm, I wonder if local wannabe internet service provider IBurst trained itself using these.) Read this fascinating Los Angeles Times article on the widespread faking of instructional books in China, called Ripping off Good Reads in China.
Now here’s a cheerfully cheeky way to approach the concept of walled-off communities. Locally, the supposedly successful in South African society lock themselves away into what are simply “protected villages”, more commonly known as “cluster-home developments”.
In the United States, there is a similar trend, but there they call it “gated communities”. So how do artists make a useful comment about this phenomenon? Easy, they create viewing platforms for people to stand on and stare over the walls of these communities at the residents beyond, as if they were animals in a game reserve. Go look at these cute Viewing Platforms for Gated LA Communities.
Just because I can, have a look at this great hole in the side of a building, and see if you can work out how Car Lands in Top Floor of House.
As you may have noticed, South African architecture — and especially the so-called official government emergency housing — generally looks like “bad brick shrines to snot”.
“Prefabricated” housing, when you have intelligent architects who have some understanding of the social context of what they are doing, doesn’t have to mean people are made to live in brick versions of prison cells. Have a look at what real architecture looks like, via these amazing German pre-fabricated Designer Houses.
And for the retards disguised as “local architects”, as well as those in the government who think three prison cells joined together, overlaid with a cheap roof and a primitive door, somehow equals a “home” for their citizens, do yourself a favour, and before shooting yourself in a sweeping public gesture, look at the wonderfully aesthetically pleasing module homes at Live Modern.
The government recently tried suggesting that fingerprint identification be used for banking. To show that this idea is among the most dumb-ass, mindless, thick, cheesy-brained human thoughts ever, take a look at How to Fake Fingerprints: A Step-by-Step Guide.
Then, in the way-too-much-free-time category. see the geeky discoveries when you have a USB-powered Geiger counter, and decide to Take Radiation Samples on Civilian Aircraft.
Free audio stuff. A major copyright debate happened recently at Cornell University; grab the audio of the debate.
Finally, I’m a happy owner of a video projector, allowing me the joys of a cinema-like experience at home — and letting me sneer at the craziness of people buying ever-larger TV sets, or worse, those expensive “plasma” TVs that will need to be thrown out in a few years’ time once they fade and fail (something they don’t mention in the adverts).
So I stumbled across the equivalent of the Holy Grail for video-projector film geeks. Go see what one person created in his own home, at Steve’s Home Theater. And to see how the process was done, step by step, start at The Before Pictures.
Until the next time, if artists and architects don’t get me.
Quick picks
- Cute photos of users kittens now taken to the extreme, at Kitten Wars!.
- Need to go “awww”? Try a Kitten with a Harelip.
- Or how about this Mini Dog?
- And here’s a hairball hacked up by someone’ cat, for sale on eBay, supposedly showing Elvis.
- Frightening Russian journalism. One reporter, many prostitutes, much Viagra.
- Inappropriate Indian Restaurant Names: the “Vagina Tandoori”.
- Odd beer reviews at Tramp Juice.
- You thought some local names for kids were bad? Try “Aryan Justice”.
- To have fun with fundamentalist Christians, go browse some of their vile-yet-fun T-shirts and stickers.