Some Favorites: May 20 + H Elsewhere
Quirk
FakeTV - Simulates the light effects of a television to deter would-be burglars. Yes, it’s a gimmick, but it’s a brilliant gimmick. Signifying human presence via the simulated residue of the technology we use… There are so many places to go with this concept. Fascinating. [via BoingBoing Gadgets]
Blogs
Harvard Business’ Umair Haque- Whether I agree with him or not is almost irrelevant. I can’t help but admire intelligent people who are as (please excuse the phrase) balls-out as this guy. He called Facebook evil and discussed his rationale for it at length — twice.
Photoshop Disasters - Borked ads by lazy designers.
Articles
“The Affairs of Men: The Trouble With Sex and Marriage” - Ultimately, this NYMag piece is neither terribly original nor conclusive, but it’s still worth reading and contemplating. My favorite quote comes at the end: “A relationship is a myth you create with each other.” True of relationships of all kinds, parent-to-child more than anything.
Exhibits
The New Normal @ Artists Space through June 2
An exploration of privacy, with works by: Sophie Calle, Mohamed Camara, Hasan Elahi, Eyebeam R & D/Jonah Peretti & Michael Frumin, Kota Ezawa, Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher, Guthrie Lonergan, Jill Magid, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Trevor Paglen, Corinna Schnitt, Thomson & Craighead, Sharif Waked
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H Elsewhere
“Adventures in WeeWorld: Part One of One” - My brief excursion through a teen-oriented virtual community.
The Fourth Wall - A short interview with Amy Arbus about her upcoming book, along with a gallery of select photos
Hot shows: March 1
Musique ce weekend
Le debut americain de Yelle etait fabuleux!
I was on the balcony, both sadly and fortunately. Didn’t get to dance with the crowd, but it was a sold out show and the floor was PACKED. With pure positive energy. Fantastic.
If you missed the Knitting Factory show, you can still catch Yelle tonight, Thurs. Feb 21, at Hiro Ballroom.
This weekend:
|friday, feb. 22|
Blood on the Wall + Eric Copeland (Black Dice) @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
|saturday, feb. 23|
Matmos (two shows) @ The Stone
Eyebeam Mixer feat. D-Fuse, Bubblyfish/CHiKA + DJ Spinoza @ Eyebeam
[video via stereogum]
States and unions
[via blake allen]
The week of romance is upon us.
A friend from ITP is taking advantage of absurdly cheap fares to London for a weekend trip overseas with his girl. A blogger friend is moving to New Zealand to be with a girl he met and fell for six months ago.
Me, I’ll be painting my new room and lugging boxes up and down stairs, with time-outs for one or two of these:
| thurs |
MGMT @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
My friends Maigin Blank and Jared Whitham @ East Coast Aliens*
| fri |
Bootie NYC One-Year Anniversary Party*
All promise a great time, though I’m a little afraid I’ll have trouble enjoying myself. Afraid it will go something like…
MP3: “Everybody but Me” - Lykke Li
Because, believe me, there are plenty of ways to be un-lonely in New York. But none of them are as satisfying as giving your (real) love to someone who gives theirs in return.
Oh, I’m sorry. Was I talking about feelings? What I meant to say was…
*(Jonny Wilson of Eclectic Method will be involved in both of these. I watched him play with his new Panasonic gear at MadHouse / Mediatronica in December and it was amazing.)
Some Things, Jan. 21
<3 <3 <3 Time Capsule <3 <3 <3
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Pownce leaves private beta at 3 a.m. EST tomorrow.
(Also tomorrow: My second semester at grad school.)
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For the past couple of years, I’ve bookmarked certain things as “digests” and others as “blogs,” but the distinction is difficult to define. i.e. My new fave for MP3s, Phlow, calls itself a magazine, but it could just as easily be considered a group blog.
Where’s the distinction for you?
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Upcoming shows in NYC…
Cool Kids + A-Trak @ The Rose Center for Earth and Space, Jan. 25
Cornelius @ Webster Hall, Jan. 26
Blip Festival 2007 + MP3 of the Day: “By Sundown” - The Depreciation Guild
I went to Blipfest on Saturday night. It was out. of. con. trol!
Bitshifter absolutely owned the night — and solidified that I belong in this community, in this city. Only at an event like this will you see fully grown men crowdsurfing to sounds produced by a GAMEBOY. Absolutely amazing.
I actually went for Tree Wave, but, as I discovered from another attendee from their hometown, there was a falling out between the members, so he didn’t play my favorite song, “Sleep,” because it would have required the girl’s vocals.
Unfortunately, the adorable boys of The Depreciation Guild had terrible technical difficulties during their opening song, “By Sundown.”
A low hum grew more pronounced as the song progressed, practically swallowing it by the end. Most people were standing there looking confused by what they presumed was intentional dissonance gone wrong. The band recognized and fixed it after, but it killed the mood for the rest of their set.
It was a real shame, since it’s basically their best song. Or at least the most 8-bitty. So to redeem them in the ears of those who hadn’t heard them before that night, here you are…
Design, Wit and the Creative Act Speaker Panel: Final Thoughts
Kelly Dobson
As an ITP student, it was nice to hear the perspective of a female technologist represented on stage — however quietly it may have been conveyed. For you see, Kelly Dobson is a very meek, but very endearing, person. Giggles and downright whispers were ubiquitous throughout her presentation, which, let’s admit it, is pretty cute.
But this bothered me. And let’s just get straight to why…
When you are the only female participating in a public event, you, in some ways, become a stand-in for all women. Kelly was qualified to be there and was likely not as shy as she appeared. (After all, you can’t talk about communicating with machines without cojones.) But because her mode of expression was, shall we say, “delicate,” I am sure there was at least one male brain in the room thinking, “Oh those women. They’re so adorable when they try to communicate!” And that’s just… sad.
So it would have been nice if the token female chosen for this event (or maybe even a second woman) was a stronger public speaker. Maybe then we could get closer to a place where the men in the room just think, “That was a very interesting presentation,” without recognition of gender-based levels of attraction or intelligence.
But on to the content of her presentation…
Of all of the speakers, her work was the least-intentionally funny. In fact, according to Kelly, her pieces didn’t start off as purposefully funny at all, and it’s only recently that she’s begun to recognize and play up their comedic value.
This was maybe the most sincere statement of the evening.
Her presence there was valuable because she recognized and brought up the fact that reaction often doesn’t follow intention. And also that, as she put it, humor is often an invitation to something serious.
In the case of her work, the humor that exists is largely the humor that we, the viewers, superimpose on it. And it’s not just any humor, but a nervous, defensive kind of humor, because we aren’t quite sure what to make of it. If it looks kind of funny and acts kind of funny, well… it must be funny! Just like if it says it’s Tobias Wong and acts like it’s Tobias Wong, it must be Tobias Wong!
Paul Budnitz
Moderator excluded, Paul was my favorite of the bunch. He shared his art-making process with us in the distanced tone of a veteran and recognized the the money-making aspect of his work. In fact, he stated outright that he’s more like a curator at this point than an artist.
As I mentioned in my first post, there was one kind of frustrating aspect to his presentation. And that is that Paul’s approach to answering the subject of humor in his work was to plea ignorance. “I make objects that I delight in” was the default answer to most questions about how his work becomes imbued with humor both dark and light.
OK, but what informs your sense of joy? What life experiences and artistic influences came together to form your aesthetic? If he had answered those questions, we might have been able to get to the bigger question, “Where does wit come from and why?” Unfortunately, Ze was never quite able to pull it out of him.
But, again, he was a great asset to the panel on the whole. Most of all, I enjoyed getting a peek into his creative process, and will try to employ some of this “rules” for collaborative art-making in my group projects at ITP. Choice quotes:
- “The generative part of the creative process needs to be as distinct as possible from the process of deciding what’s good and what’s bad”
- “Bringing the conscious mind into the creative process kills it”
To deal with these issues, he and his collaborators perform rapid prototyping without any critique at all. Ideas are thrown out, and then they’re executed. If you say something negative about what’s going on, you have to leave the room. So great.
Faux Tobias Wong at Design, Wit and the Creative Act
It’s been confirmed. The tall blond was a stand-in for the real Tobias Wong at Design, Wit and the Creative Act, hosted by Core77.
Quote from an e-mail…
Yes, you are correct. The guy who said he was Tobias Wong at the conference was not. [X] and I got the info from a woman who was helping at the conference when we were walking out. Apparently, they really organized it and practiced the questions ahead of time so that he would answer them to sound like Tobias Wong.
So, dear design community, you’ve been duped (and so have I).
As I wrote in my as-yet-unanswered e-mail to Ze Frank earlier today, seeking confirmation about the hoax…
“Though I am not personally a fan of being played for a fool, I get the joke. It’s a commentary on the nature of popularity through art and not through your own person. A commentary on how trust operates, a la Clay Shirky’s notion of social capital. And a commentary on how people in the art world are suckers.
I’m very surprised that those who are actually involved in the industry and claimed to be familiar with his work prior to the conference didn’t say a word. Only one other person who I talked to during cocktail hour mentioned being surprised at his uber-American appearance, but that’s where the conversation stopped. Oh the poor boy who had ‘Tobias’ sign his poster… he’ll feel like such a dope. Not to mention the others who gathered around him with praise and questions.”
Design, Wit and the Creative Act Speaker Panel - Where Tobias Wong fooled us all (??)
The lineup for Design, Wit and the Creative Act, Core 77’s latest offsite event, promised to make for a fun and informative evening.
Ze Frank
Digital Age Satirist
zefrank.com
Tobias Wong
Artist
brokenoff.com
Paul Budnitz
Founder, Kidrobot
kidrobot.com
Kelly Dobson
Technologist
kellydobson.com
Steven Heller
Writer/Editor
hellerbooks.com
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First Impressions
As I walked into the Art Directors Club*, it seemed as though all of my ideas about what a design conference should look like had finally been realized.
Songs from an indie rock playlist filled the gallery-like space. A pair of young guys dressed in black fiddled with a video camera set up on a track that traced the back corner of the room. Attractive men and women with black-rimmed glasses sat in black folding chairs, paging through free copies of ID and Craft, or chatting near the coffee and Pepperidge Farm cookies.
It was, in short, the sexiest conference I’ve attended to date.
* (an appropriate and well-equipped venue, which I greatly appreciated after reading accounts of the horrible venue chosen for The Future of Webdesign)
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Ze Frank
The star of the evening was Ze Frank, who acted as moderator.
His ability to crack wise during awkward moments and play the jerky gentlemen helped smooth over bumps both technical and interpersonal.
Best of all, his bullshit barometer is well calibrated. On more than one occasion, Ze called out a speaker when he or she circled around or completely avoided questions. For instance, Paul Budnitz kept insisting that his morally-offensive aesthetic comes from nothing other than his personal sense of joy. Ze’s reply? “I guess I don’t buy [it].”
And did I mention he can name-drop DuChamp, Barthes and Sontag in a single sentence and not sound pretentious? Yeah. Great stuff.
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Steven Heller
There’s no question that Steven Heller is extremely well-qualified to speak at an event that deals with issues of design and “the creative act.” In fact, Ze pointed this out during his introduction and suggested that maybe Heller should have been the moderator. But the “wit” part tripped him up.
The crowd was unresponsive to his bogglingly brief slideshow, which seemed to focus on blunt humor more than wit — an important distinction. So he reverted to the role of “the unhip old guy,” inserting loudly lame jokes into his responses during the panel. As another attendee put it (too harshly, I think): “He just ended up looking creepy.”
But when he wasn’t trying to be funny, his insight into the history of the medium was refreshing in the midst of the others’ unintentional self-promotion. If he would have recognized the value in his ability to play the straight man instead of trying to mix it up with the younger crowd, he could have avoided the discomfort that he both obviously felt and sometimes evoked.
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Tobias Wong — or Not
It’s entirely possible that the man that was saw speak and present himself as Tobias Wong was, in fact, someone else entirely.
Before the event, I had seen only one small photo of Wong, which seemed to picture a dark-haired Asian man. So I was surprised when a very American-looking blond took the stage. But not being entirely familiar with him or his work, I took only a mental note of this, and listened on. Later that evening, another attendee mentioned his surprise at his appearance and I agreed. The conversation ended there.
But today I couldn’t get over the feeling that something about him wasn’t quite right. So I Googled his image and found that all of the results were of a short, thinnish Asian man with dark hair, kind of large eyebrows, and a mark on his chin. The man that we saw lacked any of these traits.
Observe…
(guy in the middle is Tobias Wong in 2006, via Inhabitat)
(guy on the right is “Tobias Wong” in 2007, via my Flickr photos)
I think it would take more than a dye job and some weight gain to make these two bodies belong to the same person in a little more than a year.
After hearing him speak about his work — and considering the topic — I have the sneaking suspicion that we were all listening intently and paying homage to someone who was, in fact, an actor.
I’ve been in a very conspiracy-theory kind of mindset since the latest Facebook fiasco, but I think I might actually be right here. If anyone has any comments on this, I would very much like to hear them, either here or via e-mail [heather (dot) rasley (at) gmail].
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Thoughts on Kelly Dobson and Paul Budnitz to follow.
