Daniel Mafe’s artist statement:

We see things, shapes and forms we think we recognise like heads, circles, eyes but their relationship to one another is not so clearly perceived. It would be true to say the paintings are not quite as they appear; that they unfold slowly over time and act as mirrors to the vagaries of the viewer’s perception. The work shifts attention at first towards a narrative of process only to later focus that attention onto the notion of a “forming ground”, that is a ground that seems to generate form and sensation. In this way the paintings function dynamically and generatively. Layers of poured paint, veil and then reveal detail while continuring to work as both figure and ground. Each painting is an actively self-constructing whole, both disassembling itself into a diaspora of fragments, geometric and gestural, and then reassembling itself into whole that is only so through time. In this way the paintings are never fully present to the eye but instead are only wholly present, virtually, in memory.

Dan was actually my mentor/tutor for my last studio class in university. An extremely kind and patient man, he agreed to oversee my project even though I was neither a BFA student nor was I in any of his previous classes. A thankless task, I must imagine, seeing that I tend to ramble and think that I-don’t-know counts for a very reasonable answer to questions. (I suddenly recall my long meandering final report and this book.)

But personal history aside, I’ve always enjoyed Dan’s works and I do visit his site on a regular basis, since that seems to be the only way to get to see any new art. You hear about how artists have the greatest egos and talk about themselves all the time, but Dan was exactly the opposite. I don’t recall him ever saying anything about his art; he had a painting in his office and for the longest time, I didn’t know who the artist was (googling your tutors can be informative). Anyway, I am really liking his new stuff. They strike me as more dynamic and intuitive, but also more layered and considered. I am doing such a horrid job at this. I like! The end.

(All images from artist’s site)

The upcoming U2 album cover art uses a Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph. I saw an image of it a few days ago and found it familiar. Being a non-U2 fan and because I thought the “equal” sign ruined the cover, I didn’t bother finding out who designed it or whose photograph it was. Now that I have, I am disliking it even more. Not because I am a huge Sugimoto fan – I do like his stuff though, but I won’t get particularly indignant if someone would ‘bah!’ him (so what is it that I’m trying to explain here? Not sure). I would probably be a lot less irritated if the photograph was taken with that design in mind, but imposing a (silly) “=” sign on a photograph that could stand and has stood on its own terms? If it adds value to the design, I am all for it. But this is just uninspired and a little blah. No line on the horizon? Okaaay, I get it. From the Rolling Stone article: 

There’s also an equals sign, but it doesn’t actually obscure the horizon, thus No Line on the Horizon. It’s only halfway through January but it’s safe to assume we have an early front-runner for album cover of the year.

Really? It must be a depressing year for music too. And uh-oh, U2’s new album cover is a ‘rip-off’. I do quite like the Brothomstates’s Claro album cover, though I must say the white square in the middle thing has been done before too. Hmm where did I see that?

Chinese New Year can get boring, and reading is much more satisfying than conversing. 

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall – Head photo editors from AFP, AP and Reuters and their pick of the photographs they feel best represents the Bush administration. I like this and this.

From Seeing Eye to Eye:

While The Civil Contract of Photography’s value has been damaged as a result of such bitter tendentiousness, its argument remains breathtakingly inspirational: “The citizen of photography”—for instance, that vicious photo rapist the AP photographer—“enjoys the right to see because she has a responsibility toward what she sees.” It has always been my pride to feel responsible as I raise the lens to my eye in situations of misery and urgency; it has been my duty to feel, refine, and transmit that misery and urgency when it expresses itself to me in the archives of others. But although I believe in the Golden Rule, without reading this book I would most likely never have formalized what my photography ought to strive for: “When a photograph turns into a grievance, whoever articulates it becomes its civic subject.”

From here: “More powerful than the march of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.” – so true.

So this is kinda my way of bookmarking. I can’t believe the CNY holidays are almost over. And yet, my plan to clean up my room remains strangely unfulfilled. Spring cleaning is almost certainly irrelevant to people who live in the non-seasonal tropics. Why bicker with dust? Why fight against the all-so-natural descent into chaos? I want new Billy bookcases though, and that isn’t going to happen unless I throw my old ones out. And that won’t happen unless I throw a lot of stuff out. And that won’t happen until I buy a pack of trash bags and put things into them. There should be a ‘Clear All’ function I can write. 

function resetRoom(whose:Name) { 
var thisRoom:Room = this[whose];
for (var i=0;i<clearThese.length;i++) {
thisRubbish = thisRoom[clearThese[i]];
if (thisRubbish.useful ==1) {
thisRubbish.arrange(); 
}
else {
thisRubbish.remove();
} 
}

Real life is hard, but I feel much better after visiting here and here.

So I’m currently totally infatuated with this song.

» Continue reading “russian red: gone, play on”

End Times – Can America’s paper of record survive the death of newsprint? Can journalism?
Back Issues – The day the newspaper died
Bailing Out the Gray Lady – Can a Mexican billionaire rescue The New York Times?
Can CNN, the Go-to Site Get You to Stay?

It’s all a little worrying when all these articles start popping up one after another, even without you seeking them out. Newspaper Death Watch! The Print Media Are Doomed! Even before the economic downturn/recession/shithole, the print media weren’t doing that great. Now with everyone cutting corners, I wonder if more publications will shutter or if they do have digital versions, shift to an entirely digital presence. And, that is a little disheartening.

That sentiment is a little hypocritical – or ironic, if you’re feeling generous – since even though I am subscribed to the local rag (The Straits Times), I can’t remember when it was the last time I actually held the paper in my hands and read it proper (as opposed to just referring to it for movie screening times – but wait, I use the internet for that too. Hmm). I do still read the paper, albeit in its online form, but that’s been a lazy habit. The online edition of the paper, if you aren’t a subscriber to its digital edition, limits access to its articles and archives. And I don’t see why I would want to pay an additional fee to access the paper online, especially when I can pretty much access the same articles on AFP, AP and Reuters (news agencies where the ST frequently sources its articles from). You may argue that since I might as well change my ink-and-paper subscription to a digital one. Well, let’s see, the page where apparently the benefits of getting a subscription to STI (Straits Times Interactive) are listed is currently no longer available. It bodes well, it really does. But why not just give up the subscription altogether? It is a small world, and it keeps getting smaller, but I do like to know what happens in my proverbial backyard first before the rest of the world gets a whiff of it (if they do, ever, at all). And, local culture/customs/quirks/inanities just ain’t the same when interpreted or translated. Chope-ing seats with packets of tissue paper or umbrellas? Silly kids dancing around the Bugis water fountain? You kinda have to experience it to know how horribly annoying it can be. 

But I digress. So despite(?) my phony dismay at the prospect of more print media, especially newspapers, going on this long death march, I do wonder if this is an inevitable outcome, brought on by the changing habits of readers/consumers and the ever chang(ed/ing) technological landscape. How many newspapers can you go through in a single day? How many can you get access to or afford to buy? One might be a common answer in the past, but I should think that that is an obsolete figure now. Excluding news links that I find on blogs and news snippets from sites like Yahoo, I visit 2-3 news sites daily. And while I don’t read everything and anything, the fact that I can if I choose to (at a time of my choosing – be it a day after its initial publication, or a fortnight after) is strangely liberating.

I site-hop a fair bit; if I read something that interests me, I google for relevant articles on other sites. If it is of a topic that I have no prior or little knowledge on, I wiki it and often, a Wikipedia visit leads to many other google searches. Many more tabs of Youtube videos, forum discussions, interactive features etc appear on my browser window. If I do eventually return to the original article, I return hoping that my understanding of it is now more thorough. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t, and then, sometimes I find something new to read up on, but it’s all pretty fun. Can reading a printed newspaper do all that? Certainly. But the process is not as inituitive. I can’t right-click on a word or a name, click “Search Google for” and know that in a background browser tab, results pertaining to said word/name are being called up. I can’t bookmark an article (well, I probably can, but I am now trying to keep my living quarters in a stable state of disarray). I really want to see pictures of the ugliest dogs in the world. I don’t get the reference to a certain joke. I want to watch a movie trailer. By the time I get to a computer, I will have probably forgotten what got me there in the first place.  

Frankly, it will be a very legitimate cause for concern and worry if the local rag does cease publication (but really, I don’t see that happening). And I suppose I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who has not bought any physical copy of the newspapers she reads online on a daily basis, so the world sans a certain printed newspaper is likely to be one that I imagine would not have any real concrete effect on my immediate lifestyle. Unless its online edition dies as well. That might piss me off a little. However, I do realise that a substantial amount of revenue comes from print advertisements, and without that, it is unlikely that a newspaper, online or otherwise, will be even able to maintain/afford the same level of journalism and reporting. That, I guess, is the main worry. I’m not too concerned about newspapers dying (weeklies another matter though) and/or going exclusively online, I’m more paranoid about losing them altogether. Impossible? Right.

No solution desu.

Publisher Rethinks the Daily: It’s Free and Printed and Has Blogs All Over - hmm.

Much has been written/said about the inhumane finning and slaughter of sharks, but there is another animal facing pretty much the same horrendous fate – the dolphin. And for what? To preserve ‘traditional culture’ and for, well, pest control. If traditional culture involves such senseless cruel behaviour, then I say we should do away with tradition altogether. 

From Of Dolphins and Decency (on the Save Japan Dolphins site): 

While humans and all the other mammals breathe automatically, dolphins don’t have that automatic reflex; every breath they take is deliberate. When human beings fall into deep water, we drown because we lose consciousness and then, when the automatic reflex kicks in, we breathe water. Not so the dolphin. The dolphin will kill himself by drowning if he deliberately breathes water, but, more likely, he dies for lack of oxygen in his blood caused by not breathing at all. This suicide option the dolphin takes is another proof of his self-awareness, without which suicide would never even occur to him.

Related media:
Eyewitness to slaughter in Taiji’s killing coves
Youtube video (graphic content)
 The Cove  - a documentary on Taiji’s dolphin slaughters
Save Japan Dolphins

An(other) interesting profile on NYT’s One in 8 Million feature: Melissa Dixson, a former painter turned taxidermist. “[...] taxinet. It’s basically like ebay for taxidermists.” Heh.

I’ve always found taxidermy fascinating though a tad morbid (and watching Taxidermia didn’t help that a bit). There’s just something about how perfect taxidermies are/look that unsettles me a little, but it is probably that same something that interests me. Quite like creatures made realistic by their lifelikeness, but rendered fantastical by the impossibility of existence (under that specific skin, at least). La di da.

Still on the topic of taxidermy, Danielle van Ark’s The Mounted Life is a great series on the topic(ish). None of the photographs are posed, by the way. And therein lies the charm, at least for me. My favourite is this.

(Image from the NYT profile)

I never do watch as many films as I hope to, but I guess the trick is to keep trying. So this year is no different. One that I really want to watch is The Conscience of Nhem En, which is a documentary short film (which also means this one stands as big a chance of being screened locally as me eating broccoli).

THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN
explores conscience and complicity in the story of a young soldier responsible for taking the ID photos of thousands of innocent people before they were tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Nhem En was 16 years old when he was the staff photographer at the notorious Tuol Sleng Prison, also know as Security-21 or S-21, where, from 1975 to 1979, 17,000 people were registered and photographed, then imprisoned and tortured, before they were killed.

Damn, I want to watch this too.

Kondoh Akino. Other than the song being horribly catchy, the animation is pretty damn neat as well. His site doesn’t have any of his animations, but his drawings and illustrations are great too.

Of course, there has to be one: the Obama action figure. Comes with three (3) pairs of interchangeable hands. The suit is not fitting him very well though. (link via Jeansnow.net)

Despite my nose being a leaking faucet, I managed to catch most of the inauguration last night. What for, I guess some might say, well, it just seems unreasonable to blame the damn economy, the damn wars, the damn anything-that-is-wrong-with-the-world on a certain country and not be concerned with who’s governing that same country. Even though the inauguration is, well, just an inauguration. It was fun to watch, and I couldn’t help but snicker (cruel as that might sound) at Dick Cheney.

I was actually more impressed with CNN.com. Was watching the ceremony online since ten p.m., and the streaming was smooth as hell. Only until a little before midnight did the live video start to break a little (and then I just took over the tv outside). Why should I be impressed then? Considering the amount of traffic the site was getting, I was surprised I could even get to see any video. So maybe low expectations are the key to pleasant surprises, but for someone with a shitty internet connection (apparently, this computer gets the poorest signal among all the others at home), it was a very pleasant and welcomed surprise.

You will need Silverlight, but this is kinda cool. I wonder how many people will download Silverlight just to view that.