Meow For Me, Meow For You

Thanks to Marisa Olson's delicious stream for pointing me to this hilarous For-Kittens-By-Kittens video See it in context. Love it. Just the movie by itself.

Good Conversation

I just came upon this strange, rambling thread on google groups. It starts off with some not all that interesting "is this art" kind of back and forth-- but then some fellow named "chirstopher" weighed in and made what i thought was a pretty good comment One of my favorite parts of what he said was his ending:

I believe art should take people by surprise-   but not in the same manner as a banana peel... too much of fine art has become slapstick in its impact. Rather, art should surprise people in the way that a very well thought out gift surprises the recipient as they realize, over a long period of time, how much thought went into something you chose, or created, especially for them.

I totally agree with Christopher here, and i think that most of the people that i know and care about are trying to hold themselves to their own version of that standard despite the fact that so much of Chelsea seems to mostly ask "is it really, really weird?" and "does it have some kind of recognizable 'look' that can serve as a kind of brand for this artist and make them more collectible?" So much of the time i see things that are clever and fun, and wierd, and enjoyable and by the time i walk to the subway on 8th avenue i've forgotten all of it. Of course (as someone points out also in this thread i'm talking about) it was ever thus and ever shall be-- right? 95% of everything made in all time periods is crap. But its the stuff that keeps coming back into your mind that matters?

I want to say that my favorite art is art that is that which surprises me by being in some way exactly what i didn't know i needed.

Also a gem, i thought, is this:

artists take stuff out of context, make it larger, smaller, a comfy looking sofa made of concrete, turn a dress form into bulletin board, or a urinal into an installation

This reminds me of a joke i like to make that all contemporary conceptual art (even some that i like) can be described by the following formula: "Its a {blank (could be anything, a taxi, a tree, the artists' grandma)} except that its {blank(looks like elvis, is twice its normal size, is half its normal size, is surrounded by jello)} and its made out of {blank(snails, moon-pies, high-strength aluminum tubes for-use-in-uranium-enrichment-or-are-they?!, puppy-dog-tails)}"

The thread is 80 posts long and veers wildly through some other topics including Christopher's defense of Picasso, a raging debate about communism, and the authenticity of alien crop circles -- Amy you might like some of christopher's conspiracy theories thoughts. then, at one point a link to this video gets posted as some kind of support for someone's argument. I'll admit i was skimming at that point, but it kind of jumped out. I wonder if anyone had suggested that that the alien autopsy video is a Rovian-Duchampian fake-of-something-real to discredit the fake trick? (forgive me the shameless plug for my own essay, i can't help myself, i'm an ego-maniacal artist-type) (also on the topic of Mr. Mutt did y'all see this?!

The conversation goes back around to art including a debate with someone who may or may not be a robot and then gets capped off by someone spamming the board with a "save the internet" post about the net neutrality law-- which, is really important, and (i think) needs to be passed, and you should all write to your representatives about it (i did!) but its not really the place for it and i just thought it was funny that 'save the interenet' ended up being the thing that made this example of one of the great things about the internet stop dead in its tracks.

( interestingly i later figured out through googling his email address that the thoughtful and intelligent Christopher is a sculptor based in California best known for his sculptures of indians)

Singularity Approaches Indeed!

Apparently Tom Delay is quoting Steven Colbert as a supporter on his website. Its detailed here. Thanks to Delicious posters for this-- some of their comments are pretty funny especially "Zota" who says:

Vdeo clip of Glen Greenwald interview on the front page of Delay's defense fund website, without comment. Dead serious. Parody used as truthiness by the object of parody. The singularity approaches.

Amendment number 4

I know that the blogosphere is and has been all over the topic of the NSA's giganto list of our phone bills, and some would say that no more need be said about it, but damn it, you know, what are blogs for if not for saying one more thing about something that everyone is already talking about. Particularly, I looked up the actual text of the 4th amendment and found it to be really beautiful in the way that it gets right to the heart of what this issue is about- exactly why and how the power of the state to search us and arrest us needs to be limited. Those folks that started our country were smart, smart folks i tell ya-- check it out:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, (surely this should be read to include email, phone calls too) against unreasonable ('cause i said so' is not a good reason, it is unreasonable-- what did the founding fathers consider unreasonable? Despite our future CIA chief's statements to the contrary there is some further description coming right here that fills us in, here it comes...) searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue (see they thought there should be warrants! Assumed it actually, it sounds like) , but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation (This is my favorite part right now-- This means -i think---any lawyers out there want to disagree with me?-- that some ACTUAL PERSON - needs to take responsibility for the evidence that supports the idea that this search needs to be done. This way if the government ends up searching, like for example, the office of the president's political opponents or the phone calls of reporters who have blown the whistle on the governments other illegal activity, there is someone to be held accountable for that. If you can search people without saying why, it opens up the possibility for all kinds of abuses) , and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized (particular as in you can't get a warrant that says search every damn phone record of every American because that's not 'particular' -- is it? And if what they're doing now is data-mining maybe we should change the law to say that it might be ok to collect huge amounts of data if you're doing it above board- and within the law, but then if you're going to do some kind of query against that data- the query or the pattern recognition system or whatever constitutes a search-- and needs to be warranted by a judge -- even a secret judge like the FISA court allows for-- someone, somewhere needs to be looking over the shoulder of the people doing the searching or its going to be abused- its just is- its human nature).

Sometimes the easiest way to a man's heart is through his blog.

Jay: SVA has this website that they're trying to get artist's projects to run on. And I thought of you. And I thought of me. And, specifically, I thought maybe we could do something together - like maybe I could interview you and we could link it to that project you did at MICA or maybe the criticality website or something. Or maybe something totally different. I dunno. But you seemed like the guy to ask. So, hey hey Jay, whattaya say? And I sent you an email to this effect but I got tired of waiting for a response so I decided to post it here for God and all His children to see. And I thought maybe this could be another layer to the whole thing - you know, making the making of the piece totally transparent, whatever the hell we're making. Or maybe not. I'll shut up now. love always, Amy

why I love the internet reason number 4,582

I love it that I can miss Saturday night live most of the time, because its not very funny most of the time, knowing that if something funny is on, someone out there will find and point me to it so i can see it.

work in progress

web design trend death clock

Thanks to Digg for this one. This may only be of interest to web designers and if so forgive me-- i was falling off my futon laughing at this-- what does that make me?

Somebody Shoot me in the Face

Thanks to Dan over at Bald and Effective for turning me on to Steven Colbert's hillarious send up of the president. If you've not seen it, you must: (i'm just copying Dan's links for you here):

Check out Part I here.
Part II here.
And Part III here.
(If, for some reason, those links don't work, go to www.youtube.com and do a search using the terms, "Colbert roasts Bush.")

Bad Basketball is back

The bad basketball club of new york city is looking for members. We had some great games in the fall with a diverse crowd including men and women playing basketball with great enthusiasm if not skill out doors at the corner of Houston and 2nd Ave. --we're going to play again this weekend-- everyone is encouraged to join.

In other news, I'm quiting my day job so i can devote more time to painting, which is very exciting. Hopefully i'll have more time to blog here as well.

More soon.