The Road

Illustration Friday: Horizon

I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road a while back and it has haunted me since. I tried, with this image, to capture the darkness and the gray landscape that makes the story so vivid yet suffocating.

Race in Britain, the video

This video is a powerful statement about race and class in Britain.

For succinct and comprehensive analysis read this posting from Obtusity.

That Grocery Mood and the Starbucks/Safeway Hybrid

I can't really file this under Design in a Small Town because I am sure it is happening everywhere.

My local Safeway, which seemingly just opened in its present location a few years ago, has undergone some renovation. The whole notion of renovation to a store that was new to begin with is utterly confounding to me.

The newspapers (yes, apparently this merits coverage) report that Safeway is now better suited to be a 'lifestyle' store. I have searched for some meaning in that and I have to call a designer/marketing bluff and say this is nonsense. I am sure I will royally anger other designers by this proclamation but the fact is this is appears to be a frivolous venture meant simply to provide Safeway with some differentiation when, inevitably, the Walmart superstore goes in across the street. Safeway = equals lifestyle (read 'high class') and Walmart = equals convenience and economy (read 'low class'). The brilliant part of this is that by claiming the lifestyle status, Safeway gives itself justification for its prices. Heck, they might even want to set the prices higher for allowing us to experience their store.

It is funny how 'lifestyle' is expressed. It is as though the Starbucks, once relegated to an awkward corner of the store, has now exploded, covering the rest of the store in a creamy hazel nut mocha wash. But this doesn't produce lifestyle. I still buy the same crap that I did before. I am not viewing myself any differently when I shop there. It is still the same old Safeway just darker, I suppose.

The store is dark. Apparently, my lifestyle is supposed to be vision impaired. Dim lights, faux cherry fixtures. In fact, it is so dark my wife and I joked that the next time we visit they are going to have to hand out flashlights. The fixtures are interesting, actually, because the cherry wood makes the bread aisle as though it were some sort of library reading room.

In fact, the whole store has that feel. It is an exclusive men's club. Ironically, when the store takes this affectation, the in-store Starbucks still seems awkward. It has grown in the current redesign and now, strangely, includes a fireplace. I am not sure anymore how exactly I am to use the store. Do I hang out by the fireplace with my skinny half-caff latte then, when the grocery mood hits me, wander the store in search of items meant to supplement my social standing? Or do I buy my crap but then, to reaffirm that I am more elevated that my Tide and Bounty suggest, I can put my feet up by the fire and count my commercial blessings?

I guess one good thing about the dim lights could be that the store looks cleaner than it really is. You know the Walmart will be bright enough to reveal the everyday, working class grime.

But beyond the differentiation one should consider the strangeness of this arrangement. Our grocery spaces, it seems now have to be injected with mood and atmosphere. Yet, our public structures (libraries in particular) which should have that same sort of quietness and interiority are all about transit, openness, and light. The university libraries, for instance, are about windows and wide, communal spaces.

Needless to say, we can see that our focus is to be trained in the commercial site and the public place is quite the opposite. Public spaces, for the most part, represent prestige and scale yet are designed to move you through. Not to linger and contemplate but to move on to other spaces.

Perhaps to the comfort of a lifestyle space.

Another reason for change...

Read this and feel concerned, please.

Serious Strips

Graphic Novels are often remarkable for the frankness in which they deal with issues that, until recently, were not the common fare in comic form. In fact the strength of the graphic novel, as opposed to the traditional comic serial, is a concentrated storytelling that allows for in-depth exploration of ideas, relationships, and more implicit internal states. The complexity of stories then is allowed to occur in ways often developed through a series of parallel sub-stories or shifts in time that rival anything found in, say, HBO dramas or the well-crafted film.

If graphic novels are a sort of visually-rich literary meat (Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan being a very juicy prime cut), then comic strips are the equivalent of those little baco-bits that your grandma used to sprinkle on your salad to hide the fact that lettuce had gone a little limp.

Recently, two baco-bit comic strips from my youth have become, I dunno, hormone injected (my metaphor is falling apart) and thus more meaty. For Better or For Worse, while at times super-saccharin, has also had moments of emotional intensity and social consciousness. I remember several years ago a storyline that followed a gay character. I found the telling the of his story remarkable in its unremarkableness (if you'll allow me this term). The character appears infrequently but when he does there is little to bring us back to the story the centers on his gayness (unless you are like me and have followed the story for some time). He is, for all intents and purposes, any other character woven into the meandering story of the protagonist family's lives (he is a friend of the son, I believe). If we are to criticize then we should comment that he is perhaps too bland and, worse, a token personage.

More recently I think that mundaneness has worked to great effect however. The grandfather has suffered from a stroke and the stories surrounding him and his companion have given us insight into her and the grandfather's internal struggles. The story has unfolded in an excruciating slow pace to the effect that we, like the caregiver, desire some progress and we share in the grandfather's frustration. It is an interesting device in this series that the characters often are saying something but never connecting. This point made more explicit by the fact that they are framed by the same box thus share that space with dialog balloons that never really interconnect.

The story is ongoing and unfold in way that begins (if only slightly) to mirror the sort of storytelling happening primarily in graphic novels.

Funky Winkerbean is another strip that has been a bit more daring. Recently, the strip has followed the story of a character who is dying from cancer. The story falls back on some very common devices (autumn=death, rain=sadness) but the harshness of the end of this woman's life this week - her physical pain, her husband's unending selflessness hiding his fatigue, and both characters coming to grips with her impending death - all somehow make the story real and, ultimately, life-affirming. It is this type of storytelling which reveals that, far from being irrelevant, comic strips can and should probe more than the silly little things children do. And make a nice meaty read.

The Dublin Spire

Slate magazine has a very good essay by Witold Rybczynski about a monument in Dublin. The article describes the qualities of the Spire and why something that is primarily an exercise in engineering has more impact that those monuments (read: world trade center memorial) that deal only obvious, staid symbolism. Rybczynski writes:

"What does the Dublin Spire mean? Whatever you want. There is no writing, no iconography, no overt symbolism. This spire is not a sign. St. Augustine said of signs that if you didn't know what an object was a sign of, it could teach you nothing, but if you did know, what more could you learn from it? That's why the most potent monuments—the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the Kaaba at Mecca, the Washington Monument—lend themselves to many interpretations."

The essay is accompanied with photos of the project: LINK

photo by bruno brunecky (sxc.hu)

I don't know what to say exactly...

(from Cartoon Brew)

Ron Mueck

Ron Mueck Installation - "Untitled (Big Man)"
Originally uploaded by The Modern.

If you aren't familiar with Ron Mueck's work you should Google his name or click on the image to see the installation of some of his better known, more recent pieces. Mueck, an Australian artist who worked as an effects artists for tv and film, has created very hyperreal human forms that are out of scale (either very large or very small). The are amazingly well-crafted, so much so, that when assembled they give you pause.

Great Picture

I think this is a strangely captivating photo simply due to composition and cropping (as the photoblog's name implies).

Under Tokyo

There is something in underground Toyko. Could it be a secret city or just giant storm drains?

The Divide

This video is essentially raw footage that betrays its quiet presentation. There is nothing graphic about this video but it is subtly disturbing nonetheless. The story unfolds quickly and while most of the video is a police spokesperson explaining the situation, she does little to bring closure or even fully explicate why the police did what they did.

A/Effective Display

Ran across this recently and thought it to be an effective visual display of presidential doublespeak. With all the useless dribble cut away we see the real meat of the speech. The simple revision makes apparent a certain desperation that I find pitiful. I guess the speech was meant to stir us up and scare us even, perhaps. It utterly fails to elicit those feelings. I think what I feel is tantamount to frustration even a little pity.

Summer 2007

This is a crap picture of the Bodleian library at Oxford University in England. It is one of the oldest in Europe (the library not my picture - hah!) and is the main research library at the university. The architecture has made it a favorite of the film industry (parts of the first two Harry Potter movies were shot inside). It would've been fun to visit the library but my visit to Oxford was filled with other academicky (<-- my new word) things to do.

Jayme and I presented a paper at a visual literacy conference at Mansfield College early in July. I think we both enjoyed ourselves although Jayme was probably just being very polite as she usually is. We met lots of interesting, talented, and gentle people and gorged ourselves on pub food (not in front of them thankfully). I stayed on in England for the past month to visit family and experience British-style rain .

It rained - I am not joking - almost every single day! Needless to say, I am thrilled to be back stateside in our near 100 degree temperatures. I had plenty of time to read and think. Stay tuned.

My Bad, Part Deux

Maybe I was right?!

For honest eco-building check this out.

It's called empathy. You might try a little...

Is it the healthcare system or have we just stopped being human?

Friday Lovin': Animal Actors

Where are they now?

(This is funniest thing I've seen in a while.)

Sisyphus Family Vacation

(click for larger version)

Illustration Friday: Cars

Why? MCA!

Some people have too much time on their hands!

My Bad: Eco-Dubai

In an earlier posts I put down the growth in Dubai because of the unsustainability of the development. But recently I have come across some very interesting projects that use Dubai's abundant natural resources (mainly sunlight and wind).

Check this out. A very interesting project that incorporates solar panels and wind turbines. What's equally interesting is that there was concern for incorporating social spaces and using the design to reference middle eastern Islamic architecture and geometric patterns.

Intimate Pain

Renee Byer recently won a Pulitzer Prize for this incredibly heart-wrenching series of photographs for the Sacramento Bee.

The images remarkably steer clear of saccharin sentimentalism and reveal the intimate pain of a mother who must confront every parent's nightmare. There is a delicacy to the way Byer has handled the events and their representation. It is honest and not intrusive but yet brutally there-in-the-moment. Byer's work reminds me of Philip Jones Griffiths but without sweeping political undertones. The story is simply and powerfully life affirming.

Father and Daughter

From Videosift

Tuesday Lovin': An American Self-Portrait

Serious small multiples here.

A Failure of Imagination

Sometimes, it seems, we are consumed by visions of the future. I think this is a learned behavior as capitalism, at this point in time, seems obsessed with selling us a shinier, technologically enhanced version of ourselves. Techno-fetish lust abounds and the never ending cycle of new product introductions continues unabated. Everyday there are countless technological devices that bring to the mix unnecessary new features or styling.

There are moments, however, when the national (or global?) psyche bubbles up and we are forced to face our demons. Iraq is ever present as is global warming. Corruption, corporate greed, and the list goes on and on. We try desperately to hide in our personal mediascapes but we can't escape the real world.

This week there was an item that kept popping up. The Ministry of Defence in the UK released a report about future threats. The report outlines the use of such technologies as neutron, biological, and chemical weapons. More interesting is that it discusses social class imbalances and even raises the spectre of a Marxist revolution.

The meager descriptions of the report got me thinking about this clip regarding the movie, The Children of Men:



Slavoj Zizek is one of the great thinkers of our time and lays it out for you in black and white about how the real story in the film is the background or the situation. To me it is the nagging sense that everything in the techno-present isn't rosy and outside of our mediated bubble things are beginning to disintegrate.

But I am not really interested in what the film reveals as these fears we openly express everyday or, in the least, surround us in a subtle mediated hum.

The more interesting concern is that our governments are unable to envision a new world and instead prepare for the worst. Yet "the worst" that is "probability-based, rather than predictive" is actually the made-for-film simulacra/parable of what exists now.

It strikes me as wholly plausible that late capitalism, as Zizek reports, has run its course and instead of investing in new paradigms (that could do a hell of lot more to saving the planet, for instance) the vision lingers in a pitiful old-school utter villainization of alternative economic and social models.

This reveals that those in power are of a generation trained to be in their place (often narrowly defined, uncreative roles). They are so uncreative, in fact, that they can't even see that a real defense would be to attack the inequality and the existing system - not their country's own citizens. Needless to say, it is time for visionaries to put forth their imagined realities.

New Stuff

I know I have been negligent in keeping up with the posting but, hey, haven't you heard that blogging is, like, so 2005 and, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Anyway, with that said, I must say that I have updated the all my sites just to keep them tidy. Metasurface has been turned into a general homepage that will primarily host the links to academic writings (metasurface.net/deeper) and the two blogs - metasurface blog and parallel practice.

The blogs have moved to blogspot and I think by the end of the school my focus will be primarily on parallel practice.

Not that it matters. Metasurface is dead. Long live Metasurface.

Sunday Lovin': Famous Balloon Movies

Cartoon Brew has an interesting post about a animator who has used After Effects, a post-production effects editor and video compositing tool, to add balloons into well-known films. The results are very well done and very funny. I have added them all below:

Anniversary

My wife and I just celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary recently and it is hard to believe that during a sizable chunk of our married life the US has been at war in Iraq. My daughter is as old as the war and just celebrated her 4th birthday. (If the war was a child it'd be jumping on the couch, and telling potty jokes)

It is interesting to see how, beyond the daily potpourri of images of violence and political talking heads, we visualize the war, the costs of war, the other, and, really, how the visual becomes a playground where we think through all facets of our situation trying to make sense of nothing less than our political reality.

Here are two illustrations of that:

The Iraq Veterans Memorial is a video tribute to fallen soldiers in the vein of the Vietnam memorial or the AIDS quilt project.

Rageh Inside Iran is a BBC documentary that gives the viewer a very complex, nuanced view of Iranians.

UPDATE:

Additional videos to check out: Hometown Baghdad follows several young Iraqis as they struggle to survive in Baghdad.

Global Interior Design

My wife Lipi sends this one: Normal Room is social media/design culture taken to its breaking point. The premise of the site is this: upload pictures of your house to share it with a global audience.

That's it.

What results is, as Lipi describes, strangely fascinating. What I find interesting is that people make no attempts what-so-ever to clean or organize the rooms they are showing and a meta-reading of the whole experience of viewing several hundred pictures of various rooms in homes all over the world is that we, as citizens of that giant condominium we call planet Earth, pretty much all have really bad taste.

There are, of course, some anthropological investigations begging to be done. How, for instance, does the Irish family squeeze into that teeny bathroom, get the door closed, pull down their pants, and successfully navigate to the toilet without falling into the shower? Or what is wrong with the Brazilian kids? Why is their bedroom so frighteningly clean?

Billed as an inspirational interior design resource, Normal Rooms does little to inspire thoughts about design but instead is the internet equivalent of driving through the neighborhood on a winter's evening and peering the windows of your neighbors' homes.

If some of the web 2.0 has been about getting the average person to share their creative enterprises with an international crowd of like-minded people then I think it is important to note that what seems to matter to most is not cutting-edge aesthetics or the latest design fashion. It is, instead, comfort and the grind of everyday life.

And piles of books and magazines, apparently.

close encounters of the 5th kind

close encounters of the 5th kind
Originally uploaded by raccuia.

Technofetish: Taking it down a notch

This week's technofetish award goes to all those who are drooling about the new Apple iPhone. My reaction at the announcement was: *sigh* a phone. Apart from being a little turned off by the hype (can't anyone see how the slavish followers reflect the 90s Microsoft fan club or is that just an ex-Seattlite privilege), I have to admit that I am not excited by the fact that it is an all in one package - phone, camera, internet device, media player. I actually like my appliances being separate so that when one gets outdated it is less expensive (in theory) to upgrade. Furthermore, the whole phone thing (what Jobs calls the killer app) didn't interest me simply because, surprise, I rarely use a phone (cell or otherwise).

Kottke has a wonderful distillation of all the recent writing about the iPhone.

While I thought the design of the phone and interface was very beautiful both, at closer inspection, leave a little to be desired. I don't want to go into detail (see some of the mentions in the Kottke piece) but I will say that the iPhone does begin to spark my interest when you think of small computers such as the oqo. I am more than eager to see a full-fledged OS X machine in a package slightly larger than the oqo or the iPhone with features like voice recognition and touchscreen/stylus input.

Heck, you could make calls through something like skype if you really needed, as I have ascertained from exhaustive informal research and eavesdropping, to tell your friends about the incredibly mundane things about your life that you wouldn't normally tell anyone (except perhaps your gastroenterologist).

I think if Apple did a small form factor sub-notebook with touch/voice/stylus and it could perform some of the same tasks as both the iPhone and appleTV devices, then I think they'd be looking a more than the 1% market share they are hoping to attract (which I am sure they will get) and would have a product that is perhaps more attractive to the Japanese and European market where space is premium.

But Apple Inc. is more about cleaning up: Taking the jumble that is out there and making it better. My bet, though, is that the iPhone is just a test technology that is a stepping stone to a larger more powerful device (sub-notebook? tablet? both?).

Note: Blake, a grad student, asked why voice recognition and speech-to-text technology that has been around for a while wasn't incorporated to make facilitate speedier texting.

The Gimli Glider

Found this on Digg and thought the experience for both pilots and passengers sounds horrifying. It is a quick and captivating read.
More on the incident: 1, 2

Note: Apparently the incident is a result of bad metric conversion. This happens to me all the time when I convert to the decabet!

Media Diet

The last post got me to thinking about mythologies. One that I see students buying into all the time is that media are inert. When I taught Introduction to Visual Communications, I was surprised by how students were unaware of the "mediatedness" of their daily lives. After all, sometimes I go home with "plastic poisoning" from spending too much time in front of the computer only to go online minutes after the kids go to bed. But I also spend a lot of time in social situations. Could I be the one believing in something that is fundamentally incorrect?

So, as a sort of New Year's experiment, I am going to follow New York Magazine's lead and write about my Media Diet. Here it is:

Wednesday: 7:15 - 7:30 - Check email and quickly review nytimes.com, cnn.com, commondreams.org, huffingtonpost.com, digg.com, gizmodo.com, and surf for CFPs (calls for papers)

7:35 - 8:00 - Watch Arthur while feeding the kids.

8:40 - 9:00 - Listened to iPod on my commute (car stereo doesn't work): Oldies - Police (Roxanne), Pink Floyd (Wish you were here), Beatles (Strawberry fields)

9:00 - 9:10 - Walked to work from far reaches of parking lot listening to iPod (too cold to read): Jazz - John Coltrane (Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye), Ahmad Jamal (The Awakening)

9:30 - 9:50 - Review CFPs (calls for papers)

10:00 - 10:10 - Review digg.com, drawn.ca, boingboing.com

11:05 - 11:25 - email

11:25 - 11:30 - prepare last post

1:00 - 1:20 - prepare this post

(more later)

Happy New Year (Now, Don't Mess it Up!)

Open Democracy is an interesting website that:

is the leading independent website on global current affairs - free to read, free to participate, free to the world...offering stimulating, critical analysis, promoting dialogue and debate on issues of global importance and linking citizens from around the world.

This article captured my attention recently. How many mythologies have you bought into recently?