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Beauty and Dread

I've never been big into poetry (too much of a philistine, I suppose), but I heard the poem that I've excerpted in the vid this past weekend on NPR and it really stuck with me. The poem is Rilke's God Speaks to Each of Us. Absolutely incredible. I've been very interested in the idea of content on the internet that is more performative, if you will. What would it mean to transcend the scale and form factor of the browser? What is the (Platonic) form of art on the internet? Tough to say. Despite the wonder and reach of the WWW, there is a fundamental lack of presence that makes work seem prosaic and small, and the most interesting stuff is typically straightforward and narrative (and often text based). Video or image-based work on the internet simply cannot compete with film or the physicality of the painted or printed image. So what will the cultural artifacts of our generation look like? What combination of 1s and 0s will resolve into Beauty with a capital B? Time will tell. In the meantime, appreciate the past and take in the whole poem after the jump. (more...)

Landscape and Nostalgia

I love love love visiting the Sutro Baths at sunset. Cheesy, sure, but you really have to be a cold, soulless individual to take in the view without being moved, and as scenic as San Francisco is, I can't think of a spot that more perfectly encompasses the Western landscape tradition more perfectly than the Sutro Baths. It's all kind of a no-brainer when you consider the combination of large, still bodies of reflective water, the mist off the crashing waves, rocky outcroppings, and introspective people silhouetted against the setting sun. We're pretty squarely in David Casper Friedrich territory with this stuff (tell me this painting couldn't have taken place at the site of the Sutro Baths). Everything becomes noble, evocative and nostalgic. (more...)

Past Imperfect

"Cross-processed" shots from Big Sur.

The rise of Lomography and Hipstamatic-like camera filters is something I've been noodling over lately. It is a curious return to the idea of the analogue and imperfect, not dissimilar to fetishizing vinyl and its limitations (or warmth and humanity, depending on your point of view). Both trends were championed by the hipster: vinyl coinciding with the first wave of contemporary hipster-ism, 1999-2003, and Lomography aligning with the hipster resurgence of 2004-present (you really must read this ethnography of hipsters. Proper infotainment). (more...)

So cold. So very cold.

I'm a huge fan of the fog in San Francisco. It's an almost physical presence when it rolls in thickly in the evenings, and a heavy fog makes the whole city seem gauzy and quiet and slightly out of focus. It can be stunning. That said, I think I'm ready for some proper warm weather. The city has seen record cold this summer, and the net effect is that the whole city seems to be suffering from seasonal affective disorder...in the summertime. It's like a double bummer. But as I was combing through some video files, I came across these shots of some kids playing in the ocean in decidedly colder conditions. This was shot in Maine in early June, and the general pallor of the shots may indicate the temperature, but cannot come close to capturing the biting wind and miserable climate. Nonetheless, the kids had a blast. Maybe happiness is relative, and one man's crappy summer is another man's balmy vacation. Or not. It's pretty cold here.

Fat Weaners!

This post is quickly shaping up to be another experiment on search terms and an informal gauge of the spelling ability of hopelessly adolescent web users. Anyhow, the matter at hand is really a trip to Ano Nuevo State Reserve, where they offer guided tours of one of the largest colonies of elephant seals. The seals mate, birth, and wean their pups on the beaches of the park, and the tours offer pretty close proximity to these interesting, if a bit underwhelming, porkers. I was expecting blubbery flesh on the beach as far as the eye can see, violent clashes between the bulls in the breaking surf, whiskered curiosity gently nibbling sardines out of my bare hands (well, that was more of a fantasy, but a hope nonetheless). What I got instead was beach-y looking lumps of seal scattered here and there amongst the dunes, largely static, and completely impassive. We may have been there at the wrong time, as the mating was over, the females off to feed near Hawaii, and the seals left behind killing time until they were mature enough to swim off themselves. Regardless, what I found to be especially interesting was that they call the weaned pups "weaners" instead of simply, well, "weaned pups", leaving me to spin all sorts of clever lines in my head about the experience. Alas, the rest of the tour group proved to be way more mature than me and no double entendres were thrown out there for the docent to tactfully deflect. Ahh, well. Next time I'll show up boozy and free of taste or social graces. (more...)

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