| Moon's profileMoon RiverPhotosBlogLists |  Tools  Help |
|
Moon RiverNight Traveling, Day Dreaming, while Mapping my Escapisms, Tracing Love September 22 MovingSeptember 21 MotionMotion By Octavio PazIf you are the amber mare
"Motion/Movimiento" By Octavio Paz, Translated by Eliot Weinberger, from COLLECTED POEMS 1957-1987, copyright ©1986 by Octavio Paz and Eliot Weinberger. Afternoon on a HillI will be the gladdest thing I will look at cliffs and clouds And when lights begin to show Edna St.Vincent Millay spider web Looks as if someone was trying to catch the moon... the Floating World
Getting Evolution Up to Speed"People like to think of modern human biology, and especially mental biology, as being the result of selections that took place 100,000 years ago," said University of Chicago geneticist Bruce Lahn. "But our research shows that humans are still under selection, not just for things like disease resistance but for cognitive abilities." Lahn recently published the results of a study demonstrating that two key genes connected to brain size are currently under rapid selection in populations throughout the globe. Some radical thinkers suggest human evolution needs to move even faster, with a little help from science. "Biological evolution is too slow for the human species," said Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near. "Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust." READ ALL via anomalist HoneymoonAccording to Wikipedia (which in turn references the Oxford English Dictionary on the matter), the etymology of the word honeymoon is unclear. The American Heritage Dictionary (via answers.com) suggests it's "perhaps from a comparison of the moon, which wanes as soon as it is full, to the affections of a newly married couple, which are most tender right after marriage", which doesn't sound all that positive. Returning to the Wikipedia entry, honeymoon may have been used in Babylonian times to describe the bride and groom consuming honey (in the form of mead, a beverage) before the next moon. via kottke 
The Scandinavian word for honeymoon is derived, in part, from an ancient Northern European custom in which newlyweds, for the first month of their married life, drank a daily cup of honeyed wine called mead. The ancient practices of kidnaping of bride and drinking the honeyed wine date back to the history of Atilla, king of the Asiatic Huns from A.D. 433 to A.D. 453. There are various explanantions for the origin of the tradition and also the name of honeymoon. The word honeymoon has its roots in Norse word "hjunottsmanathr" which was anything but blissful. The Northern European history describes it as the abduction of a bride from the neighboring village. It was imperative, that the abductor, who is husband to be, take his bride to be into hiding for period of time. His friends assured his and her safe keeping and kept their whereabouts unknown. Once the bride's family gave up their search, the bridegroom returns to his people. This folkloric explanation presumably is the origin of today's 'honeymoon', for its original meaning meant 'hiding'.
The word first appears in the 16th century. The honey is a reference to the sweetness of a new marriage. And the moon is not a reference to the lunar-based month, but rather a bitter acknowledgement that this sweetness, like a full moon, would quickly fade. via http://www.datingmatchmakers.com/wedding/honeymoon.aspx Eye in the SkyNew York video artist Tony Oursler is best known for projecting video images of faces on dolls, mannequins, and disembodied heads, thereby bringing to life these otherwise inanimate objects.
Tony Oursler Eyes, détail, 1996 Eye in the Sky features a fiberglass sphere onto which is projected a single eye watching television. Although the rest of the body is not visible, we can hear the sounds of compulsive channel surfing. Without the emotive clues of facial expressions or gestures, we focus on the eye as an orifice, twitching as it gulps weather forecasts, commercials, sitcoms and game shows. For Oursler, the fragmentary nature of the piece -- the disembodied eye, the reflected television screen and the rapidly changing channels -- parallels features of mental illnesses that signal the disintegration of the personality and the inability of the individual to identify with and function in the real world.
Tony Oursler Eyes, 1996
 TONY OURSLER, American, born 1957 Eye in the Sky 1997, Mixed media video installation
September 20 The Naked City - Map Portraits'Unlike what most people think psychogeography is really very simple: the moment you first step into a room you immediately, without conscious effort, have a heartfelt opinion about it. Psychogeography is the study of the 'stuff' that causes this mental reaction and the psychological and behavioural effects that are evoked by it.' more Brian Collier Movement Patterns: Human Life as a Series of Lines
map-portraits 'Tracking an individual's regular movements can be both uncomfortably intimate and frigidly anonymous. In this project I create a series of map-portraits based on several individual people habitual weekly travels. These maps are intended as the sole description of each subject's life, paring away any additional events or behaviors.'
'The presentation of these map-portraits intentionally suggests a cold, removed observer studying an anonymous subject. This appearance of scientific objectivity works in direct opposition to the fact that I personally know all the individuals represented. Furthermore, the initial maps were made by those individuals themselves rather than an outside observer. There is an underlying intimacy, evoked only subtly, when the viewer notices the flesh-like quality of the hand-waxed paper or the use of only first names of participants.'
"One of the issues that inspired this project is the contemporary paradox of feeling both invisible and overly visible: the ever-increasing anonymity of an individual meets the ever-increasing exposure of his or her life in environments affected by high-technology tracking, surveillance, and profiling. The more information that an organization has about an individual, the more likely it is that he or she will be reinvented and renamed as a number in a database. Government agencies and businesses have developed ways to categorize and classify an individual based on data collected from a variety of sources. From an aesthetic perspective one may consider the movement lines on the maps as representing large-scale process drawings made unconsciously by the body of each person as he or she moves through a local environment. These drawings, arguably made by people everywhere as they move through space, remain unrealized unless monitored and documented. I use a book of transparencies to compare movement patterns to one another and also to create a new pattern consisting of all the participants movements. The issue of tracking movements has taken on new implications in the era of "The War on Terrorism." The recent increase in surveillance and the new powers given to the government to monitor citizens lives create questions about the limits of freedom and privacy. In news debates and private life, people commonly worry that their lives may be "invaded." During the creation of this work, in fact, several participants expressed discomfort, saying that the collection of data about their movements felt intrusive."
***
During the last weekend of Marchs the first session of the 'Hot Summer of Psychogeography' (2002) took place in Amsterdam. Socialfiction, the organisers, sent participants on their way from Dam Square with an algorithmic description of the route. The same experiment was repeated later in the day in the Bijlmer district.
Dérive through Utrecht last year
read this as well
Situationist Guy Debord devised the notion of psychogeography in the 1950s. It deals with the study of the exact laws and specific effects of our geographic environment. Psychogeography describes the sudden change in atmosphere a few metres further along a street, and the different characteristics of city districts. It reveals the path of least resistance a person subconsciously takes when wandering aimlessly and points out the attraction or repulsion of particular places. One of Situationism's practices is the dérive (literally: wandering or drifting), a technique of rapid passage through varied environments. Involving playful-constructive behaviour, dérive examines psychogeographical effects and is thus quite different from the classic notions of journey and routing. Dérives weren't random; they challenged the psychogeographer to use his powers of imagination to experience the urban environment anew - for example, by following scents or negotiating a route through Paris armed with a map of London. What propelled these strollers was not so much curiosity but political and theoretical motivations.>>> *** Imagine if you were walking in an unfamiliar area of town and suddenly you realized that it was very dark and the shadows looked distinctly unfriendly. But what if you had a map, a map that clearly marked out entire sections of the city as safe, or peaceful or even scary. September 19 ''Atomix - Full of Love, Full of Wonder'A room full of 50,000 floating, coloured balls arouses some odd responses in people. The spray-painted balls, attached to strings of fishing line, vibrate when wall-mounted fans are switched on, and took 10 days to install.
via thingsmagazine September 18 M O O N
 Moon with Stars I, Bronze. : 97.2 x w: 97.2 x d: 5.1 cm / h: 38.3 x w: 38.3 x d: 2 in
September 17 ASCII architectureSt George Hall, Liverpool, Designed by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes at the age of 23 is one of the finest neo-classical building in Europe: The project consists in fully covering the St. Georges Hall with the projection of ascii rendering of the same surface that it's being projected on. September 16 The Laws of SimplicityThe simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.>>> September 14 Soundwalking`When was the last time you went somewhere just to hear the sounds?' asks Melbourne-based sound artist Anthony Magen. The sound walk is a simple exercise. It is free! It requires no additional paraphernalia other than your ears and some walking shoes. There is only one rule: no communication within the group. Talking or otherwise. This helps to allow the sounds to become the focus. Magen is the facilitator of our sound walk. A chance to walk through the streets of Sydney and experience the diverse sounds it has to offer. ..The group is one unit, and it is best to stick together through visual contact, especially at night as it can be easy to get lost or separated from the group. Whether experienced as private meditation or as collective silence, soundwalks can refresh your ears and reset your sensual awareness to where you are, live or work. " via junkforcode September 12 BlattschnitteNatalie Czech, uses vertical aerial photographs that are freely available on the Internet and combines them by multiple superimposition. she concentrates on industrial and railway facilities whose linearity lends itself to suchlike montage.
 Blattschnitte 30, 2005 146 x 108 cm September 11 Mapping Your FutureI have found this at the divorce support at About site. but i find it an interesting game for every one At This Moment, You Are HERE Most major shopping malls have locator maps at various spots, a red "X" with an arrow pointing to it and the words "You Are Here" so that you can see how close or how far you are to the place you really want to be. Similar maps can be found at highway rest stops to show travelers where they've been and the distance and roads to their destinations.
The difference between those maps and the map of your life is that the "future" is fixed on those maps; the towns ahead will not move or disappear, the stores in the mall will be there when you get there. Life is certainly not that predictable but what we both know is that right now, this minute, YOU ARE HERE.  photo: Created by Anton Leroy. get some paper - it can be one of those long rolls of banner paper for a printer or a ring binder or journal - and a box of crayons or felt tip markers in different colors. Make a big red "X" for right now on your paper or in your journal, leaving room to the left of the "X" for your history. Now, starting at the left or "history" side of your "X" put in significant dates and events as far back as you can remember and as few or as many as you wish. Put the good events on "peaks" and the bad events in "valleys" and you'll no doubt have quite a few events that just happened and you don't consider them peaks or valleys. For those of you who want to get extremely creative, paste photographs for different events or use other graphics for illustration (such as a baby's crib for the birth of your child, etc.). You don't have to hit every significant spot because you can always come back and add more later. Putting "What If's" Into Your Life's Journey Putting peaks and valleys in your future will be more difficult. Your life right now may be in a valley. Here's where you will project some "what if's" for the next few years. For example, what will happen in your life journey if something you're dealing with right now goes through the way you want it to, and what will happen if it doesn't? You have two possible paths you'll travel as a result of that one event. Maybe you have some goals such as going back to college, or starting a new career, or finding a new love, or leaving an abusive husband, or confronting your wife about a suspected affair, so start there.
Using this method, think about your future in steps. What you project for your future is only your best guess based upon your life up to now and your the goals and dreams you wish for yourself. You already know that your best plans will change despite your work to keep them together. Reviewing and Revising Life's Peaks and Valleys Once you have completed your "I am here" map, put it somewhere that you can look at it occasionally and amend it as your future becomes present and then history. You might be surprised at what you see. Much like making a list of the good and bad of your life and your relationships, mapping out your peaks and valleys up to now and then into the future will give you new insight into what you have, what you want, where you've been and where you're going. Your life's map will also help to remind you that what you have and where you've been will always be influenced by what you want and where you're going. September 10 Forming a ThoughtNature is a continuous transformation of energy, from galactic motion to starlight to tree to seasonal cycles to human to idea. Though genes and culture are intimately linked the rate at which they each evolve is different. Though culture changes very quickly it is limited by the inherent abilities of brains. The interaction between individual brains and cultural information is a dynamic system of transformation and change. This continuous system moves with wavelike patterns.
- dots indicate galaxies.Every organism is a living map of time and interaction in nature. Every artwork and sciencework is a physical record of memories, ideas and information. They are also maps of the human brain. Anything that records an interaction, the movement of one thing through another, can be considered a map. The neuronal connections that represent the growth and learning one has experienced throughout life, a series of stroboscopic photographs of a milk drop falling through air, the path of ones footsteps through a park, each is a map of interaction. As the cut marks of a figure skater's path through ice store information about the speed, direction and weight of the body, a map stores information about its creator. Maps are the external storage of memories. These external databases enable an organism to compare past and distant events with present ones. In the case of land maps, users can locate where they are now, where they have been and where they might want to go. Brain maps can be images of the physical structures of the brain as well as show complicated interconnections of an individual brain's neuronal pathways.>>world is a complex storm of mathematics'...with the world political situation as it is at the moment the political radical is put in a difficult position because, how do you rebel against chaos? You know, much as political conspiracy theorists would like to think otherwise, the brutal truth of the thing is nobody's in control, this is a runaway train. Nobody's in control, there's not some big conspiracy in control, whether it's Jewish bankers or nazis or CIA spooks, the simple truth is that the world is a complex storm of mathematics, basically... Very complicated mathematics that is beyond human comprehension.' -- Alan Moore.
via timemachinego
September 09 Tracesvisiting again an artist i love. Berni Searle has been trained as a sculptor, the Cape Town artist now utilises large-scale digital photographic prints and combines them with found materials to make her compelling installations. Using her own body as subject and point of departure, Searle experiments with the surface of her skin, allowing it to be clad in layers of coloured and aromatic spices, leaving her bodily imprint on drifts of spices on the floor, or staining certain areas of her body with various substances, suggesting trauma, or damage.
 Traces (details) 1999, from the 'Colour Me' series, Three digital prints
New York City WalkCaleb Smith began visiting as many neighborhoods in NY since, 'Over a Two Year Period he explored them systematically.
He bought a Hagstrom map of Manhattan, which he laminated. As he walked, he marked off the streets with a black marker. He took notes and a lots of photos along the way. After about a year, he had made much more progress than he expected, and it seemed natural to extend the walk to the entire island. Eventually he walked over 700 miles.
via plep September 08 Path of Silence: Telepresent LabyrinthsIn Path of Silence, real-time video images from 11 different labyrinths throughout the world are brought together in a virtual 11-circuit labyrinth to create a collective sacred space, that can be experienced by multiple participants as a single labyrinth. A video camera records the activity within this collective labyrinth and sends it back out to each individual labyrinth location, thus completing the cycle. Like the journey of those who walk sacred labyrinths, traveling form the outside to the center and back again, each of the physical external sacred labyrinths travels into the center of the collective inner virtual labyrinth space and returns outward, completing the journey.
casual searchWas talking with a friend about Frappr and it's visual interesting search metohds. and had a serepentidy finding at
a 'casual' media contents landscape, which presents indexed & semantic contents (definitions, related tags, pictures & related news) retrieved from various sources. the system parses definitions & related tags through wikipedia, while images originate from google image search. the contents are positioned randomly, to create a visualization that mimicks how people perceive & browse through reality.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Send a private message
Subscribe to RSS feed
Tell a friend
Add to My MSN
Add to your network
Sign up for alerts
|
|
