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Oct 26
Oct 26
Starts with a time machine, gets better
Just another ho hum beautiful day. One of those from the “Why must we spend it indoors variety?” which, of course, is a subset of the “Who thought responsibilities were a good idea?” typology. Days like today you want to build a time machine, go back in time, and thump that guy on the nose. Of course, you’d build the time machine in the garage, door open, enjoying the weather. Counting your lucky flux capacitors for it. Scrolling through Craigslist looking for the right kind of car to house your time machine.
I gave that a glance, to see what my time machine would be. The most recently advertised car is a 2012 Kia Sportage. No idea if that’ll hold up against the strain of going back in time for responsibility thumbage.
What’s that? A Sportage EX you say? I guess that might work.
Last week there was a listing for a “1951-ish, CHEVY-ish RATROD, street rod-ish.” I think the seller might be too attached to it, but it does look time machine-ish.
In class today we talked about Flock cameras, because someone mentioned this map.
Someone else recently emailed me this clip, which we watched today.
That paired nicely with this video, which I’d recently stumbled across myself.
I wrapped up a bit about doxxing with a another layer to the horrible Cornell case. It allowed me to make the point I was previously after.
We discussed about Jose Van Dijck’s Culture of Connectivity. It brought up wonderful questions about how the communal nature of the web has changed, how social media can shape habits, and what this book looks like if it were written today. I was also about to talk about my social media sameness singularity, which is an argument I’ve been making for a decade now. (In short, all of the platforms are trying to become one another in competition.)
Someone else asked a question that allowed me to read a now nine-year-old passage from bestselling author (and now bookshop owner, apparently) Matt Haig which has fundamentally changed the way I think about all of this stuff.
Kurt Vonnegut said: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be.” This seems especially true now we have reached a new stage of marketing where we are not just consumers, but also the thing consumed. If you have friends you only ever talk to on Facebook, your entire relationship with them is framed by commerce. When we willingly choose to become unpaid content providers, we commercialise ourselves. And we are encouraged to be obsessed with numbers (of followers, messages, comments, retweets, favourites), as if operating in a kind of friend economy, an emotional stock market where the stock is ourselves and where we are encouraged to weigh our worth against others.
Your relationship is framed on commerce. I have lots of friends I met at my job or their job our our jobs. I dated at least two people that way. None of those were framed on commerce, of course, but Haig makes a really interesting point, and I was glad to talk about it today.
I’d spent the last several weeks writing about the Seward Johnson work, Contact, that sits on the walk between my office and that classroom. I wrote about it here. Then, last month, we looked a bit more closely at the couple’s hands. The next week, I offered a closer look at some of the textures. Our last look at that curious little piece of art was last week, where we focused on a few more of the illusions of textures of the trompe-l’œil painted bronze statue.
So, now, we’re moving on to one of his other nearby works. This is titled Photo Shoot, and as you look at all the styles here it is important to note that this was completed in 1989. The curator of this little collection wanted you to notice that, too. (There are five pieces within a short walk of one another. (We’re on number two, and we’ll see them all before the year is out.) They quote Johnson, “If you know where to look for it and how to look at it, life is marvelous.” So it’s a bit of a time capsule, in the most well-intentioned ways.
Photo Shoot was commissioned for the grand opening of the Giorgio Armani building, on Rodeo Drive, in Beverly Hills. You’ll see a nod to to the designer in just a moment. I don’t know the history of this piece, but it is here now, and it does have its delights. Let’s begin.
Right away, it is obvious what’s going on here. In our foreground, the man in his expensive 1980s jacket and tasteful slacks, has taken up a low angle to capture a family moment. Mother and child are just in the background.
We can see them a bit better from this angle. And it is interesting that the color scheme of his “clothes” closely mimics the wardrobe of the subject of his photograph. We, the viewers, need to understand these two pieces go together. There’s just enough distance between them (I wonder how far apart they were in the original installment, before they came here.) that a visual line needs to be made and the color scheme can make that connection.
Here’s a view from over the mother’s shoulder. Neat sweater, tasteful skirt, the classic Armani tote. Also, there’s a puppy in the mix.
From here, you can clearly see that everyone is hanging on to something. Boy with his puppy, dog with the kid, mom with son, dad with his camera. I’m not sure if we’re meant to draw inferences from this, but you can if you are so inclined. I’m trying not to. It seems a happy piece.
I have a small handful of photos of these statues for next week. We’ll look at a few interesting details.
For now, I have to work on a slide deck about ethics.
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Oct 26
Oct 26
Won’t you look at all these pretty peektures
These are the weeks of autumn. The season is long, but the actual event is a sporadic part of it these days. Perhaps a bit late in arriving, certainly erratic in its behavior. But on balance the milder temperatures are nice, and maybe they’ll stick around until February, when spring should begin early, which is on time.
The leaf turn is promising, as you can see here. All of these are photos I took on campus last week.
Jayita Bhattacharjee, the poet, journalist, author, wrote that “Autumn is the season when cathedrals of memories are built. They become palaces of light, amid the falling leaves.”
“Only with a leaf can I talk of the forest,” wrote the Albanian poet, Visar Zhiti.
“There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky,” said the Serbian American writer, Dejan Stojanovic.
“Each leaf tells us a story. The story of its struggle. The story of the storms that it faces in life,” notes Avijeet Das.
“Even a leaf can fly if it so wishes,” according to Anthony T. Hincks.
The Italian outdoorsman and poet David Passarelli tells us that “Every twig, every leaf, a scholar, participating in this universal dialogue, a profound and ancestral communication.”
Perhaps that’s how Akilnathan Logeswaran came to know that, “When the time has come, every leaf turns to face the sun!”
Then there’s Shel Silverstein. “And the tree was happy.”
This happy tree is a ginko. It is the oldest one on the campus. Several are older than the campus. Others, younger than this, are older than the nation. But this guy is the dean of trees.
It sits in front of Bunce Hall, one of the campus icons, and the very first academic on the campus. It opened in September of 1923. The tree had been there for more than 150 Septembers prior.
In between that building and that tree is where every student there starts their studies, at the President’s Welcome, and ends their studies, at graduation.
If you’ll notice that tree on the left side of the photo in front of Bunce, you’ll see another tree with some remarkable character in its trunk.
Hanging from the front porch of Bunce Hall are banners that are a part of the university’s new marketing campaign.
At just the right time the other day I was in a meeting and was able to say, “I dunno. Seems like you could just do that and say you’re defying definition … ” and I brought the house down. So, at the very least, the faculty are aware of the new branding.
Speaking of perfect weather and fine foliage, here are a few shots from a recent bike ride. I started a bit later than I wanted, which meant I didn’t get to ride as far as I would like (’tis the season for that, sadly) but it did mean that the roads were quieter. And I had this going for me.
I like how the road dips and curves as it gets over that little nameless creek bed in the woods. I don’t move fast enough to really notice it, but it looks cool.
It did not turn foggy, but the lens on my camera fogged up.
One field later, there, that’s better.
And then I got back in the neighborhood, where one of the big welcoming trees is beginning its show. And look, it is still daylight out.
I got in 25 miles on that ride but now, looking at that photo, I’m thinking I might have been able to sneak two or three more before the darkness won out. Let that be a lesson to me.
