glitterfish.com

This image is so interesting because it mashes up a couple of different styles making it hard to pin down. The landscape is sort of crude impressionism but it’s really serving as a backdrop for the woman to cover up. That means what we are looking at is actually a painting of a women painting over a painting (or if you want to get super technical actually a digital photograph on your computer screen of a painting of a women covering up a painting). That sort of self-referentialism moves it into DaDa territory but limited only to the “this is not a pipe” kind of DaDa.

It’s not exactly a Venus or anything but it is the female form. The upskirt angle is certainly provocative I would say borderline porny. And what does it mean that she’s white washing over nature? Does she look so caught in the act because her underwear is showing or because we caught her covering up the mural?

I couldn’t find anything about the artist other than it’s part of flickr user Trentcall’s series of similar images. Check them out.

Mark Khaisman is the artist.

Link.

Favorite.

…also, check out this minimalistic website that I designed.

The first picks of this years award season are trickling in. Its a year with no clear cut winners; critics seem to be defaulting to partisan favorites:

I find it sort of suspect that the Boston Society of Film Critics favorite is, guess what, The Departed. The film won four awards including best picture, director, supporting actor and screenplay. Also shocking is United 93’s win for best picture from both the DC Area Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle.

I’ve been telling people for weeks that Sacha Baron Cohen had award traction but nobody believed me! I’m stoked that Sacha tied with Forest for the Los Angeles Critics best actor spot. I love it when left field mavericks upset establishments. All my friends thought I was nuts but I voted for the Arizona ballot initiative that would have entered every voter into a one million dollar lottery as means of increasing turnout. Partially I voted like that because its hilarious, but I also did it because there’s lots of merit in compelling out of the box ideas.

Actually these films are all in my top 5 best films of the year. Personally, I think 2006 was one of the best years for movies in a long time.

I saw a this weeks secret Beck show at the Echo. It was one of those “omg I saw x-rockstar at this intimate venue and now I can die” things. Celeste was there:

Then Jonny overheard a guy talking to his friend’s girlfriend. He said, “The Postal Service is like, emotion, and Death Cab is like, rock.” It was hipster hell in there. Maybe I’m too judgmental or maybe I read glitterfish too much, but when Beck sang, “One by one I’ll knock you out,” I was convinced he was talking to the young hipsters in the audience. And I cheered.

You can never read enough Glitterfish.com.

There is an awesome quote in this AP story regarding music snobs:

In America, rock authenticity is a really important thing, whereas in Britain, there aren’t so many hang-ups like ‘Is it cool to like this?’

I totally agree; however, it’s a shame that the article is written about the The Scissor Sisters. No matter what 2.5 million Brits have to say, they suck.

After the success of Charles Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the issuing of such statements became popular with all kinds of political, social, and artistic organizations. Art manifestos were a feature of many Modern art movements of the early 20th century and they have continued to be issued by new groups ever since. Circulated in magazines, journals, newspapers, and now the web, the documents served as an easy platform for art movements to renounce the outdated ideas of the past and outline new aesthetic and thematic frameworks.

Generally manifestos contain a brief introduction followed by an enumerated list of demands and then some commentary. Usually they are written in a revolutionary or even incendiary tone. In his dada manifesto, Feeble Love & Bitter Love II (1920), Tristan Tzara’s describes the art manifesto as follows.

A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretension is to the discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it’s always right, it’s strong, vigorous and logical. Apropos of logic, I consider myself very likeable.

I’ve said before that art is in a slump. These days art is dominated by the page-view-click-thru critics. With their penchant for hype and smarmy language, the blogant-garde has gone from a cornucopias “chorus of voices” into a homogeneous indiecrat PR machine. If you think that’s a grim situation, I don’t even want to get into god and politics. Because the world needs revolution, and because I find myself very likeable, Mr. Tzara’s words strike me.

The reasons are all the usual suspects: cheap cameras, cheap bandwidth, cheap blah blah blah. The deluge of short form video is upon us. Artist, filmmaker, and photographer Nathan Swango of Freeworkingspace.com proposes:

Laying awake I recall an idea shared with me by a good friend, his thought is that anything is watchable as long as it is short. Lately it seems true, a new wave in videography and digital filmmaking has emerged in the form of amatuer filmmaking and internet streaming video. Enormous trends have been set already, funny cats, inside jokes, personal video journals, sexy-smoking-housewives, music video parodies, etc. More often we are seeing professional concepts being inspired by amatuer videographers. The mass contribution continues non-stop and it is a global phenomenon.

Here is my list of rules for Short Concept Digital Video, this is an experiment:

1. One minute in length (60 seconds).
2. Up to but not more than four edits.
3. Camera is hand held.
4. Sound must be original.
5. Playback demensions must be 320X240.
6. No credit to the director.
7. Quick, Cheap, Easy but no sacrifice to the integrity and the quality of the idea.
8. Showcased in a digital public forum, i.e. the internet, youtube.com, Google Video.

Nate doesn’t think like the hand held camera rule and I definitely agree. There seems to be consensus that the 4 cut limit is at least very interesting even if there is disagreement on the exact number of cuts. My favorite rule is #6 but I think it contradicts #4. To me rule number #4 totally flies in the face of what digital short form video is. Digitized information has no “final cut.” Putting something on the web is implicitly giving permission to have your work remixed, mashed up, and made fun of.

Go read the manifesto and check out Freeworkingspace.com.