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I think I’m in an unhealthy relationship.
This morning all I said was ‘now honey stop screaming for one second I just want to have a chat about our hobbies’ She crossed the room and ripped my arm off and now there’s blood everywhere. I guess I’ll cancel bowling tonight.
This is the trailer for Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin, in competition this week in Cannes. It’s been described as a reflection of “an economic giant slowly being eroded by violence”, weaving together four strands, spanning the bustling southern metropolis of Guangzhou to rural townships.
This is the awful 747 crash at Bagram airfield in Afghanistan on 29th April 2013
Seven American crewmembers RIP
Every minute a new impossible thing is uploaded to the internet and that improbable event becomes just one of hundreds of extraordinary events that we’ll see or hear about today. The internet is like a lens which focuses the extraordinary into a beam, and that beam has become our illumination. It compresses the unlikely into a small viewable band of everyday-ness. As long as we are online - which is almost all day many days — we are illuminated by this compressed extraordinariness. It is the new normal.
Read more of Kevin Kelly’s view that on the internet, the extraordinary is the new ordinary.
Cristina De Middel
The Afronauts (Self-published, 2012)
CdM: Obviously, when I started producing the images of the series I was aware that I was approaching a sensitive subject matter and that whatever I decided to do it could potentially offend others. I tried to work on the cliché and the icons to be, at least, honest with what I was documenting and not trying to state that things are like that in Africa. The dreamy and legendary ambience of the whole series, I think, is a good tool for that because I use a language that is closer to a tale than to a report. The images, in one hand do not pretend to be documents and in the other hand the poses and the action are respectful and emulate the images we already respect from the NASA space missions. If I had done a literal translation to the documents I found, the result would have been certainly more offensive, even if more accurate to what really happened.
From the feedback I have got so far I think it looks like most of the people understood my message and intention, but it is true that I received a couple of emails accusing me of racism… just a couple of them, which is not that bad. The funny thing is that the most enthusiast feedback always comes from African countries. I don’t think they see it offensive as it is as if we could be offended by movies as Bridget Jones´s Diary or Rambo. It is a fabulation of their lives and I understand that the Western world is the only one having trouble in understanding that Africans have aspirations and that they can pursue them.
Kevin Sprouls
Self Hedcut, 1979
FCD: What do the Mona Lisa smile and the Wall Street Journal have in common?
They both employ a design principle related to subtraction and minimalism. By limiting information, they engage the imagination.
THE SQUINT
In his book The Laws of Simplicity, RISD President John Maeda describes “the squint”: “The best designers in the world all squint when they look at something. They squint to see the forest from the trees—to find the right balance. Squint at the world. You will see more, by seeing less.
I asked Sprouls if he squints a lot. I asked him in all seriousness. “Absolutely I squint, and I’ve got the wrinkles and reading glasses to prove it,” he joked. “But seriously, yes. Squinting shows you what to pay attention to, what to ignore. It helps me know when and where to add something, or leave well enough alone. This work, and I guess any work if you think about it, is a constant process of focusing and unfocusing of my eyes, working up close, then standing back, little details and the big picture. Or it should be, anyway.”
I’d do anything to be able to draw like this.
There’s more of Sprouls work at his site.
Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian man during clashes with Jewish settlers, left background, near the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus. April 30, 2013.
No Caption Needed is quickly becoming one of my favourite reads on the internet.
Robert Hariman: This photo was captioned by Corbis as, “April 30, 2013. Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian man during clashes with Jewish settlers, left background, near the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus.” Now, the photographer and magazine were playing by the rules, carefully identifying who, what, when, and where in sufficient detail to place the photo within the event being covered. We now know that the photo was not taken on April 29th and that it was near Yitzhar (the Jewish settlement) near Nablus (the Palestinian city) and not near some other settlement or city. Given either forensic or historical questions, those could be crucial details.
Those are not the only questions that apply, however. There also are political and moral questions, for example. In respect to those questions, a very significant detail has not been identified. Look closely: the man is double over in pain while trying to get something out of his eyes. He is a large, well-muscled man yet unable to resist the two soldiers grabbing him, so the pain must be debilitating. Now look closer still: the two soldiers are trying to spray something into his face. The one is spraying–you can see that he is holding and firing a spray canister, and that the foam or mist is coming out as white blur. The other soldier is trying to hold and turn the man so that the first can hit him directly in the face. Hit him squarely in the eyes, that is, and for the second time.
The caption did not say, “April 30, 2013. Israeli security forces try to force a second dose of pepper spray into the eyes of a Palestinian man during clashes with Jewish settlers.” That would be the more specific, more accurate description of what is being shown. It also would shift the sense of political blame: instead of a man being “arrested,” as if a criminal, we have Israeli soldiers siding with the settlers who rioted following a stabbing. (The stabbing of a settler was of course criminal and should lead to an arrest, but ask yourself how rioting following a crime would be treated in your town.) Instead of settlers violating the rule of law, here the Palestinian is the sole law breaker. Instead of soldiers attacked a wounded man to deliver a second dose of punishment, we have merely an arrest.
The saving grace of photographs is that they can show what is happening contrary to the interpretation that is applied to them. Even so, as many commentators have pointed out, captioning can significantly influence what is seen, what is remembered, and how it is used. The caption tells you both what to see and what to ignore in the photograph.
Read on and see the other photograph they question
Photograph by Nasser Ishtayeh/Associated Press
I’ve just begun reading this Feynman classic.
It’s a bummer that he does not read the audiobook of it, he’s got such a fantastic voice.
On this tip due to the brand spanking new BBC documentary The Fantastic Mr Feynman, check it out:
Choices
A ‘mini movie’ by Tee Mac
Thanks to Bobby G I’ve just learned that there’s another Tmac out there, and it’s not Tracy McGrady, the average basketballer.
It’s Tee-Mac, a homegrown Melbourne rapper.
Check out his music videos for Big Paper, Hard Hitta, and his live performance at the Holi Festival.
For me though his best track is Stay Positive, which truly helped me out of an emotional tailspin this afternoon.
Check out his website or twitter @teemurdamac
Ricky Gervais gave us the return of Brent with Equality Street
Now prepare for guitar lessons:
UPDATE: He also just tweeted a link to a ‘Mr and Mrs’ Q&A from last year
The answer to the final question ‘what is Karls pet hate?’ is pretty amazing.
Melbourne’s enfant terrible Lush is in Japan racking toys then returning them slightly modified.
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