3.01.2010

Interesting Choice Episode 2: Remember the Fish




Episode 2 of Interesting Choice is now up.

Polls are open until noon EST tomorrow, so go to www.interestingchoice.com to vote!

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2.22.2010

Interesting Choice Episode 1: "F" is for Fish



Episode 1 of Interesting Choice is now up.

Polls are open until noon EST tomorrow, so go to www.interestingchoice.com to vote!

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2.15.2010

Interesting Choice Episode 0: The Pitch Line



The first episode of Interesting Choice is now up.

Polls are open until noon EST tomorrow, so go to www.interestingchoice.com to vote!

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12.24.2009

So real it almost looks real



The Golden Age, a series of photographs by Kevin Best recreating the effects of Dutch Master still life paintings.

The series is featured in the Role Models, the first issue of Second Nature, an International Journal of Creative Media. Thanks to editor Shiralee Saul for pointing me her way — I've found a lot of interesting things there!

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11.16.2009

Charming comics









Thanks to Maktaaq for turning me onto the witty, whimsical comics of cartoonist and illustrator Tom Gauld.

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11.04.2009

Bits and blocks




In this New York Times feature from last winter, illustrator Christoph Niemann spots bits of New York in Legos.

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10.16.2009

New releases from Tale of Tales



Continuing in its line of artful, boundary-pushing not-quite-games, Tale of Tales this month released Fatale, an "interactive vignette" inspired by Oscar Wilde's 1894 play Salomé.

Explore a living tableau filled with references to the legendary tale and enjoy the moonlit serenity of a fatal night in the orient. Fatale offers an experimental play experience that stimulates the imagination and encourages multiple interpretations and personal associations.



There's also The Path, released earlier this year, a meandering, introspective horror game based on Little Red Riding Hood in which six sisters wander in a foreboding forest and one by one lose their innocence. Completely open-ended, the game eschews goals and challenges and invites the player to simply explore and experience.

Six sisters live in an apartment in the city. One by one their mother sends them on an errand to their grandmother, who is sick and bedridden. The teenagers are instructed to go to grandmother's house deep in the forest and, by all means, to stay on the path! Wolves are hiding in the woods, just waiting for little girls to stray.

But young women are not exactly known for their obedience, are they? Will they be able to resist the temptations of the forest? Will they stay clear of danger? Can they prevent the ancient tale from being retold?

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9.30.2009

Blog discoveries for September

9.11.2009

More September happenings

Friday, September 18; Thursday, September 24; Tuesday, September 29




"On Clouds" Exhibition at Observatory

with prints and photographs by James Walsh in the gallery, and an evening program of projections, performances, poetry, and other events by various artists throughout the run of the show.

Friday, September 18 through Sunday, November 15, 2009
Opening: Friday, September 18, 7-10

Th 9/26 Joshua Beckman on clouds. Two seatings, 8 and 9pm
Tu 9/29 Klara Hobza on cloud making and Catriona Shaw and Pauline Curnier Jardin on their cloud opera. 8pm
$5 admission to all events

Beginning Sunday, September 27 we will have regular gallery hours -
3-6 Thursday and Friday
12-6 Saturday and Sunday

Clouds have long been the object of scientific study and artistic depiction. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the emerging science of meteorology allowed the fleeting and apparently formless clouds to be closely observed, categorized, and recorded. At this same time, in England and Germany, painters and poets also began to look more intently at clouds. While insisting on artifice and inspiration over mere recording, they increasingly sought to give their work a sense of greater realism and emotional power by focusing on the careful observation and accurate depiction of the natural world. The worlds of science and art were much closer then, with artists and scientists meeting in society and following each others’ work, and this allowed a shared culture to develop. At its best, detached observation was allied with emotional projection, and imagination was grounded and enriched by careful, systematic recording, all in the service of what they called natural philosophy and we would call natural history.

In this exhibition, James Walsh will present three bodies of work that trace this blending of science and art in the depiction of clouds from the early 1800s to the early 1900s.

Saturday, September 26



Monthly Jazz-Age dance club Wit's End this month features music by the Brian Newman Trio and a Charleston dance lesson by Neal Groothius and Jeri Lynn Astra.

Antik/Marion's at 356 Bowery
The last Saturday of every month at 8:30
$10 at the door

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You gotta do what you gotta do



You Have to Burn the Rope, a very short game with very well-defined goals. Do what you have to do, then sit back to enjoy end credits that are longer than the game itself. You've earned it, hero!

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9.09.2009

Wednesday wallpapers: Windows and doors

9.02.2009

Wonderland

Made almost exclusively from spliced and recombined audio samples from Disney's 1951 film Alice in Wonderland, Wonderland, by Australian electronic artist Pogo, is an oddly pleasing album of eerie, rhythmic chillout tunes. All four songs are available for download from Last.fm. (My favorite is Lost.) The first track, Alice, is also available as a music video on YouTube.





Be sure to check out Pogo's other remix work. Classic movie mélange Go Out and Love Someone is well worth a listen.

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8.31.2009

Blog discoveries for August

8.15.2009

Around town in August

Saturday, August 15




EVENT: Dances of Vice Third Year Anniversary Party
TIME & DATE: Sat, August 15, 2009 - 9PM, show at 10PM
LOCATION: 303 Bond Street Theater - 303 Bond St, Brooklyn

Complimentary lashings of specialty HENDRICK'S GIN punch for the first 100 guests! Hendrick's cocktails offered throughout the evening at most unusually discounted prices.

Come, celebrate with us another year of jubilance, decadence and depravity amongst the finest of femmes and fellows at Dances of Vice. Entering our third year, a new saga of forgotten eras unfolds, as Dances of Vice joins forces with the sensual sophisticates of COMPANY XIV to continue our nocturnal phenomena at the "Dance Eden" that is their theater in Carroll Gardens.

Our Third Year Anniversary Party will feature a musical performance by Miss SHIEN LEE with the scintillating syncopations of GRANDPA MUSSELMAN and His Syncopators, and the exhilarating dramatics of COMPANY XIV.





"Ice Music" by Emily Lacy (Cabinet, 3­00 Nevins ­Street, Brooklyn; Saturday, August 15, 2009; 4-8 pm, and Sunday, August 16, 2-6 pm; reservations for 20-minute appointments are recommended). Working with time, music, color, and, temperature, "Ice Music" allows for fantasies of intimate visceral mischief with folk and electronic sound patterns. Performances made for 1-2 people will be available by Emily Lacy inside a small, freshly cooled homemade music environment, similar to an igloo or personal camping tent.


Thursday, August 20




Victor Houteff: "At the Eleventh Hour" (Cabinet, 3­00 Nevins ­Street, Brooklyn; August 21—September 16, 2009; opening on August 20, 7-9 pm). Cabinet is pleased to present “Victor Houteff: At the Eleventh Hour,” an exhibition of paintings by the founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist group that was later taken over by David Koresh in Waco, Texas. The exhibition is drawn from the collection of Los Angeles-based artist Jim Shaw.


Friday, August 21




An Iconography of the Flesh: The Bizarre Afterlife of Eva Perón
at Observatory

Date: Friday, August 21
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5

When Argentine First Lady Eva Perón died in 1952, the intent was to embalm her body for display in a monument to the Argentine worker: a fitting tribute for the martyred patron saint of the working classes. This ambitious project—it was to be three times the height of the Statue of Liberty—was never realized, and when Perón was overthrown in 1955, the embalmed corpse became the new regime’s most stubborn problem and potent secret. In its thirty years in search of a permanent resting place, the embalmed body left a trail of death, insanity, and corpse-napping in its wake as Evita sympathizers sought to find the body of their saint and Evita’s enemies tried to keep the body’s whereabouts a secret. Professor Margaret Schwartz tells the story of the corpse’s afterlife and shows how Evita has stubbornly refused to die a proper death, thus rendering her corpse one of the world’s most unique and potent objects.


Saturday, August 22




You are cordially invited to attend the Dreamland Gala - a fundraiser for the 2009 Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island in September.

The State of New York has cut funding for programming on Governors Island. While the island will thankfully remain open, there will be no funding provided for entertainment on the island. In order to raise funds for the Jazz Age Lawn Party, we are hosting the Dreamland Gala.

Featuring Michael Arenella and His 12-piece Dreamland Orchestra, this promises to be an enthralling night of music, dancing cocktails, and treats, as well as other attractions. A silent auction will be held showcasing an array of items donated by local high-end boutiques and restaurants, including Ellen Christine Millinery, House of MacGregor, Flatiron Lounge, Rock Love Jewelry, Magar Hatworks, Artikal Studios, and many more. Handmade chocolates will be sold from local chocolatier Chocolate Meurens.

Guests are encouraged to attend in their finest Roaring Twenties evening wear.


Monday, August 24




Poetry Lab: "Sappho in Fragments" (Cabinet, 3­00 Nevins ­Street, Brooklyn; August 24, 2009; 7-9 pm). This month, Cabinet’s Poetry Lab plays host to the ancient Greek poet Sappho and her gifted modern-day translator Anne Carson. Readings, performance, special guests, and the chance to put a scattered oeuvre back together for yourself. Roll up your sleeves and join us: free, as always, and as always, wine will be served.


Friday, August 28



The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle 1926-1972
at Observatory

Date: Friday August 28th
Time: 8:00 PM - Sharp
Admission: $5.00

A discussion with Zoe Beloff, artist and archivist and Aaron Beebe, Director of The Coney Island Museum

The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society was a unique organization which flourished from 1926 through the early 1970s. Members, most of them working people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, were filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century. The exhibition currently on view at the Coney Island Museum presents a range of their activities which reveal an incredibly brave, unapologetic exploration of their inner lives. Beloff and Beebe will present an overview of the work of the Society including the long lost “Dream Films”, the Sunday lectures, plans for Dreamland and the controversy over the lost “Sigmund Freud” figure at the World in Wax Musée.

The book/DVD “The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle 1926-1972″ published by Christine Burgin (June 2009) will be available for purchase.


Saturday, August 29




Cynthia Sayer & Sparks Fly at Wit's End
Saturday, August 29
7-11 pm

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7.31.2009

Blog discoveries for July

Art History, Old Books, Vintage Style:

My pet arts

Science, Humanities, Culture:

MadSilence
The Popular Uncanny

Design, Tech, Advertising:

2experts Design

Nude & Erotic Art:

Au carrefour étrange

Characters:

Romantoes

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7.27.2009

A little says a lot





A stunning collection of minimalist wallpapers at 2experts Design.

Via intenta via Portafolio.

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7.24.2009

Flickr raid: Wondrous things