Archive for October, 2015
Mary Reid Kelley’s “The Thong of Dionysus”
Mary Reid Kelley – "On Embarrassment" from Hammer Museum on Vimeo.
Last week I encountered Mary Reid Kelley’s new video at Frederick & Freiser Gallery in Chelsea and it is great! Upon walking in, I was about to walk out, because the video uses poetic verse which I generally do not want to listen to. However, the visuals, the costumes and makeup, the embedded videos and the use of Greek mythology are so quirky that I stuck around and I’m glad that I did. The artist takes the role of Dionysus and has fun with gender role reversal while celebrating sexual appetite and I’m certain there is more to the piece. The entire video is available on Mary Reid Kelley’s site.
Richard Stallman at The New School
Unfortunately, I was not prepared to record Richard Stallman’s song about email that he sang before his lecture, but I did record the entire lecture which is smart and entertaining. Unfortunately, it feels like a battle cry for a long lost war. However, if you’ve been thinking about deleting your FB and Instagram accounts and dumping your proprietary operating systems for GNU/Linux and switching to free software, then listen to this lecture and allow Richard Stallman to convince you to make the leap into freedom.
People should have the right to copy and modify programs.
People should have the right to redistribute programs with changes.
People should not be used by their programs or it’s makers.
Amazon Swindle will track your reading, delete files, make changes to your device.
Companies abuse their users for profit, don’t allow yourself to be abused.
You are tethered to Apple to make the company immense amounts of money.
When teachers teach proprietary software, it’s just like selling cigarettes to kids.
Free software presents the freedom to knowledge, to learn what makes the software, it presents the possibility to modify the software and to freely share with others. The basis of free software is the free exchange of information and knowledge. So meet the free software gang and be liberated from the likes of Microsoft or Adobe.
“Old Man” by Leah Shore
Animator Leash Shore is awesome! She fluidly mixes so many different types of animation from hand drawn and painted to computer drawn to claymation to montage, from black and white to color… and it all comes together beautifully. I particularly like how she will render the same character in different formats. Charles Manson is at first a drawing with a blacked out head, later he is a claymation style puppet with a ball of hair for a head.
And the train of thought represented in the visuals is engaging while being imaginative… The jumps from one subject to another is weird, but they make sense, such as JFK’s head morphing into Fidel, Marilyn, Hitler… This is inspiring work!
Old Man from Leah Shore on Vimeo.
Hong Kong Glitch
I don’t recall what compelled me to start saving images from the Hong Kong protests last year. However, as I saved them, I began manipulating the digital files by changing the files extension to be able to open them in a basic editor as text and to read the meta data on the images. As I did so, I would rearrange the data making up the image itself. It seemed appropriate to confuse the file by cutting data, changing the order of the data or adding new data. Not unlike the Occupy Movement here in the United States, the Umbrella Revolution appeared as a young and inspired population that would eventually dissipate against an all powerful ruling force. Perhaps, when this generation comes to power, they will recall the energy and desire of this time. I’ve decided to arrange the images into a small book that is available on Blurb or you can merely view the images online. Below are a few images from the series of 20.
Support Nathan Fitch’s “Island Soldier”
Nathan Fitch is an extraordinary photographer and film maker and the pieces that I’ve seen of his documentary “Island Soldier” are emotionally striking and enlightening. This is a project well worth supporting via Kickstarter “Island Soldier”.