Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold

Read the article here.

Wordle

A few weeks ago, I discovered Wordle. And now I can't quit.

Wordle is a website that allows you to upload text that will then be transformed into a "word cloud," as the site describes it. Words that appear most frequently in the text will appear larger and words that appear only once or twice will be quite small. The order and organization of the words is random and once you enter text, you can ask the site to generate new designs (or tweak a specific design) until you're happy with it.

There's nothing very fancy about the site or about its product, but what I find most interesting is the idea of tranforming a set of words into a different kind of visual text. The word cloud contains the essential elements from the original text, the words, but in their organization and presentation, the meaning is altered. We don't know exactly how to read a text presented in this way.

It's been an interesting exercise for me to write something, tranform it into a word cloud and see which words are largest, towering above the others. What am I really trying to say? Sometimes the wordle makes it undeniably clear.

Here's the Wordle from this blog's text:

the literary reading

Literary readings are an interesting thing. People assemble in an ill-lit space sometime after dark, order drinks, and wait to listen to authors read from their recent work. In my experience, there are two different kinds of readings: readings in which attendees pay an admission fee to hear a well-known writer read, and then there's the kind I'd like to talk about here, where a reading usually involves an array of writers, many of them emerging writers or recent MFA graduates and maybe a few who've published books. It is the readings of the up-and-comings that I find so interesting.

The crowd at these readings is often comprised of many interconnected people: everyone knows everyone else. Or almost. People who come are friends of a reader, former classmates in an MFA program, family. The atmosphere, then, is quite jovial and social. Everyone is reconnecting, getting caught up on each others lives. Someone wants to buy you a drink, someone wants to introduce you to a friend they think you will like, someone wants to divulge the latest drama in their life. At times, it feels as though the actual reading is merely the excuse for being there, a side note in an evening that will usually last far after the reading is over.

I attended a reading last night with a friend who was my only connection to the reading. When we arrived, I realized in shock that I knew no one else there. This fact shouldn't have been a shock as I'm a recent San Francisco transplant, not yet involved in the literary community here the way I was in Boston. But I was at a literary reading and I knew no one. How had this happened? What I discovered is that readings are not so much fun when you're not there with all your friends. You listen to a reading--and the writers are hit or miss, as usual--but then there is no social time afterward for gossip and fun. Sure I enjoyed the reading. In fact, it was good motivation for getting back to work on my own writing, but there was something missing.

This Sunday, the magazine I used to read for back in Boston, Redivider, is hosting their fall launch party and reading. And I really wish I could be there.

H8

One more reason to love Shepard Fairey. As if we didn't already have enough.

Artists I like: Alexander Calder

Whenever I look at an Alexander Calder mobile, I think of balance. I think that's why I like him so much: his work makes plain this very precise exchange between parts of a whole. His mobiles feel delicate, almost temporal (even though they're not), that even my presence in the room is affecting the way the wires are moving, the way the pieces slowly turn. Participation.

On a recent trip to Washington DC (in my opinion, the land of art, art everywhere) I was fortunate enough to spend two full days museum hopping and I was able to see Calder's work a few different times. The first was a delightful surprise in the Hirshorn. I hadn't done any research to see what the museums were showing or what their permanent collections were like. I'd never been to DC before. I simply went and decided to see what I would see. When I stumbled into a room with a few of his mobiles, I'm pretty sure I made an audible squeal of job. And then I sat there with a huge grin on my face, looking like an idiot. Mobiles will do that to me.

And then again I stumbled upon him again, this time in the National Gallery's sculpture garden.
Calder is maybe known even better for his non-mobile sculptures, which are often red, white, or black and look very much like the one picture below, installed in the sculpture garden at the National Gallery. These pieces are a very different experience for me than his mobiles. This is not temporal or delicate--I do not feel as though I have any influence on the piece. Although, I can't quite pin this one down. The sculpture is entitled "Red Horse" and while it certainly appears red, there is not much horse-like about it. But then again, maybe there is. The legs taper down into--well, if nothing else, perhaps hoofs. And the neck(s)? reaching up tall and strong. These pieces I find appealing for different reasons. They're ambiguous, resisting definition and classification. What is it, my mind wants to know right away. Into what category can I file this thing? And there is no easy file in which to store it.







Check out a slideshow of his work at the Whitney.

headlines

I'm sure that by now you've seen what I think to be a brilliant invention that should've come to be much sooner. If you haven't experienced this moment of bliss yet, check it out here.

A fake newspaper's a fake newspaper (I'm pretty sure I made one in 5th grade), but this one not only made me laugh, but gave me hope. That people in this country care enough to put together a comprehensive, in-depth commentary on our country's current situation (grammar nitpicking aside) and then stood on the streets of New York to diseminate it makes me proud. In the way that John Stewart makes me proud. Amid this Proposition 8 madness, I've found it hard to be proud of my country.

What struck me even more than this, though, were today's headlines in the real New York Times (yeah, remember that paper?). Here are the highlights:

Gay Marriage Begins in Connecticut

The Return of the Interview Suit (!!!)*

AIDS Patient is Reported Cured (I'm not kidding).


* exclamation marks are my addition

Don't get me wrong: there are a lot of headlines you'd rather not see. There are more headlines about kids shooting people and civilians dying in Afghanistan and there not being any money (for anyone), but good things are happening in the world. Good things are happening all the time.

Americans are talking back, a historic election right behind us, and now peaceful protests will happen simultaneously on Saturday in over 80 cities in all 50 states to show the country (and mostly the Mormons) that discrimination is not ok.

I don't know where I was going with any of this. I even neglected to make any pretense of connecting this post to the topic of my blog (making a fake newspaper is art, right?). Whatever. I'll write about Andy Goldsworthy soon and you'll all forgive me. I promise.

a poem for today

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window;at the gold


of november sunset

(and feeling :that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)


-e.e. cummings

presidential puns (and pumpkins)

One of the greatest things to come out of this election: Yes We Carve. Check out these presidential pumpkins. I carved the Ooobama stencil last night and it turned out great!

Don't miss the pun-kins page. Puns, presidents, and pumpkins: what could be better?

Andre!

Today (of course, since this seems to be the way the world works), I saw my first Obey Giant poster. They are real and I, as usual, am a few years late to the party.

Obey Shepard!

Shepard Fairey used to be known for street art: graffiti and stickers. He was best known for his Obey Giant campaign, a plastering of public spaces with a black and white image of Andre the Giant, often with the word "obey" written underneath. (As a side note, I still don't quite believe that this campaign was ever as prevalent as some make it out to be, as I have never actually seen one of these images plastered to anything). But now he's best known for creating a series of limited-edition prints depicting Obama, prints that sold out almost immediately.

His first solo museum show opens at the ICA in Boston in February.

On why I haven't posted in one month

Everyday for the past 3 weeks, I've woken up and travelled across the city to spend most of my day with this mural. Well, down the hall from this mural.

It's official: I finally have a job.

I'm the Assistant Director of Student Life at the San Francisco Art Institute, a position that provides me with the benefits of health insurance (!), a steady paycheck (!!), and exposure to new art on a daily basis. And yes, of course, Diego. That's him sitting on the middle rung of the scaffolding.

I'll leave you with a promise that I'll post more regularly (or at least try!) and this, my favorite portion of Rivera's mural in the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City recounting Mexico's history. Check out the blue-eyed baby.

Vietnam Veterans' Memorial

When we think of memorials, we usually think of something carved in white stone, rising up above the ground. We think of the over-sized Lincoln sitting in the shadows behind the pillars of the Lincoln memorial. We think of the Washington Monument, the great phallus rising from the National Mall. We think of a man on a horse, a battle scene, towering pillars, a tank! We think of grandeur.

It stands to reason, then, that the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, designed in 1981, elicited controversy. Designed by Maya Lin, a then 21-year-old Yale architecture student who won a national competition, the monument looked unlike any before it.* It was a simply a shiny retaining wall, some said. It's practically below ground.

For me, as I walked along the wall, I thought that there couldn't be a better way to memorialize a war--especially a largely unpopular war. This was not a glorification of the fighting, or the dying. There were no men on horseback, no large marble pillars, no soldiers toting guns looking nobly into the distance. There was simply a long, low wall and a list of names. No distractions, no sublimations: these people died, it proclaims. People die when we go to war. But the wall does not pass judgment or tell us how to interpret this fact, it merely states it. This wall gives them a space--each individual--in which to be remembered. What's more is that it makes space for viewers to take part in the experience, to see the reflection of their own face in the black granite as they walk along the wall, running their hand across the carved-out names, forcing them to consider their own relationship to what the wall represents.


*if you ever have the chance, watch the excellent documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision, that chronicles Lin's journey in the design and finally construction of the memorial

Artists I like: David Lance Goines

I stumbled upon David Lance Goines because of the amazing posters her produces every year to celebrate the birthday of Chez Panisse. What I found is that he's produced hundreds of posters over the years for organizations around the Bay Area.

He works in letterpress and lithography through Saint Hieronymus Press in Berkeley, a press he started in 1968 after being expelled from school for participating in the Free Speech Movement.

Many of the posters are for sale on his website, but many more are out of print and are available through the poster exchange section of his site. The poster exchange allows people to sell, trade, or acquire out-of-print posters. Goines has an immense catologue of prints to peruse, but be careful: finding the poster you most adore (that is likely out of print) can lead to long hours perusing the poster exchange, hoping that someone is willing to part with the print you want.

Sins Invalid

I don't often go to the theater. It's not that I don't want to: it's that I can't afford it. So, on Friday night when I found myself invited to a performance at the Brava Theater priced at $10-$15 (and, in typical San Francisco fashion, promised that no one would be turned away due to lack of funds), I went.

The performance was called Sins Invalid, the third-year effort of a group committed to embracing "an unshamed claim to beauty in the face of invisibility." In short, it was a performance that sought to bring light to the relationship between disability and sexuality: namely, that the able-bodied public pretends such a relationship doesn't exist.

That afternoon, a friend brought up reservations about attending the show. You'll see a lot of images that you wouldn't normally see, she warned. It will be intense. I understood what she was saying, but wasn't that the point?

The show consisted of a series of short performances, never longer than ten minutes each, many taking monologue form, but some setting up interactions between the performers. An able-bodied guide, as she called herself, served as the MC and framed the performances with explanation, theory, and well-worded requests for the audience to go on a journey or unraveling along with the performers. It was all very touchy-feely.

But in a good way. The performance reminded me of the reason we go to the theater (even when we can't afford it): to be made to think. Yes, sometimes we go to be entertained, to escape from the stress-filled world we live in, to laugh, but we also go to challenge the way we look at the world and to be forced to reevaluate our position.

Slow down, food!

Labor Day weekend in San Francisco brought not only sunshine and weather one could reasonably associate with summer, but Slow Foods Nation, a four-day celebration of the slow foods movement.

Slow food is an international movement, one started in Italy and fostered in the United States by Slow Food USA. On their website, they claim to support "good, clean, and fair food," an idea that, in practice, means eating food that at once nourishes our bodies but also nourishes the earth (think biodiversity and healthy ecosystems). The last piece of this is that food should be cared for by laborers paid a fair wage, given excellent working conditions, and be available to all, not matter their economic status. In a nutshell, the slow food movement is everything that fast food isn't. In a nation where we rarely simply sit and eat (eating is most often accompanied by television, the internet, or a car ride, to name a few), slow food is a refreshing change. And it is, arguably, a food movement that more closely aligns eating with art.

Slow Food Nation, the first gathering of its kind in this country, brought together over 50,000 people to celebrate and relish this idea of slow food. Events ranged from local farmers' markets to tastings, performances, restaurant specials, and music. I attended two events in the celebration: the Saturday Slow Food Rocks concert as well as Sunday's farmers' market.

Both events were enjoyable ventures for me, the hand-pulled noodles I ate at the farmers' market being quite possibly my favorite experience of the weekend (if ever there is an art to food preparation, these hand-pulled noodles would be at the top of the list. They were reportedly from the Imperial Tea Court, although I find no mention of them on the tea house's website). I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of tasting raw milk and hearing about the health benefits of ghee, prepared while mantras are chanted, or sampling local honey that cost $10 per bottle. But one thing stuck with me all weekend.

Ozomatli, one of my favorite bands, performed at the festival on Saturday. They're a band that not only performs exceptional music, but they're committed to social justice and to using their fame and music as a platform for social change. In my mind, what could be a better mission for artists? During a break between songs, Raul, the guitarist, spoke about the slow foods festival of which we were all a part. He encouraged listeners to sample some of the food sold at booths around the stage once their set was over. He praised the slow food movement. But then he said: We have to figure out a way to bring some of this good food into the neighborhood. Give people a choice other than McDonald's.

And isn't that the truth? It was all well and good for us to out in San Francisco on a sunny day listening to good music and eating delicious foods, but it was, of course, a great priviledge to be there and to have the means to do so. Slow food is a movement I support and enjoy, but for those people (myself included in this category) who can't afford a meal at ChezPanisse or even a bag of local, organic spinach, what's the point? What's the point of the revolution if only certain groups are permitted, economically, to take part?

The good news is that the celebration attempted to answer these question. In the plaza outside the civic center, an organic garden had been planted, all the harvest going to local food banks. World leaders on the global food crisis spoke to sold-out crowds. Sessions convened on farm worker and meatpacking worker advocacy. What I come away from this weekend with is an admiration for the cause, an honest look at the act that many argue is the universal tie that binds us: eating.

Public Art: take it or leave it?

I stumbled upon this article in the Sunday Times this past weekend, asking the questions about what purpose public art serves. Of course it brought to mind the much loved and much hated (pick a side) Flamenco Dancer sculpture by Luis Jimenez on the University of New Mexico Campus, cited by some as being "ugly" and praised by others for being "real."

Outside Lands

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a free and available ticket to the final day of the Outside Lands Music Festival held in Golden Gate Park. This was the first year for the music festival--boasting over 130,000 attendees and 65 bands including names such as Radiohead, Ben Harper, and Manu Chao.


Sunday's lineup wasn't as enticing as the previous days, but there were still many performances to see. Vienna Teng was among them. She plays with a quartet consisting of violin, cello, percussion, and herself on piano. With the full backing of the quartet, the sound was full and rich, but throughout the short set (the music festival only allowed for 45 minutes) Teng performed alone on the piano or simply acapella. For me, the true sign of a great musician and performer is commanding an entire stage and audience with only your voice and your instrument. This is, in part, why I fell in love with Patty Griffin and why (don't judge) I respect Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas who can move an entire audience when he sends the rest of the band offstage and sits down behind the piano.

Teng is a talented pianist, but also possesses a great vocal and stylistic range. She performed some of my wistful favorites like country-inspired "City Hall" (a sweet song centering around the brief legalization of gay marriage in San Francisco two years ago) and "Harbor." They also played the eclectic, beat-driven "1br/1ba" as well as a new song from the album she's working on about what happens when you listen (or not, in her case) to the advice of your elders in forging your own path. The synthesis of jazz piano, country twang, and complex beats creates an unmistakable depth in the music and a sound that you haven't heard before.

The two friends I dragged to the performance were converts by the end of the set. We even stood in line to meet Teng and ask her to sign the albums we purchased. So, go. Listen to a song on Rhapsody. Plug her into Pandora. Buy an album!

Arby's 5 for $5.95 deal

I've recently begun watching cable television again after a long absence; thus, I am once more subjected to the television advertisement, a noxious little invention I've lived happily without for three years. One commercial, especially, keeps catching my eye: an Arby's spot advertising their 5 for $5.95 deal.

What the deal entails is a limited list of menu items that are available 5 at a time for the low price of $5.95. I decided to participate in this to the extent that is possible: as a lactose-intolerant mostly vegetarian eater who does not eat fast food. So I made a let's-pretend menu. For my 5 for $5.95 meal, I ordered an Arby's Melt, a small Diet Pepsi, a small curly fry, an apple turnover, and an order of mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. My meal, in total, costs only $5.95, but consists of an enormous 1,444 calories. That's a lot of bang for your buck.

In comparison: I bought asparagus the other day at the market, attempting to buy the wide range of green vegetables that are recommended for a balanced vegan diet. Asparagus cost $3.99 per pound and holds 91.4 calories. (Bear with me now as we venture into the scary proposition of me doing math). Asparagus then costs $4 per 100 calories (or so). The Arby's value meal costs $.41 per 100 calories.

I'm not going to go into a complicated breakdown of nutrition or anything like that because it seems a moot point. Given the fact that calories are the measurement of energy in a food source, who would choose to buy the asparagus when the 5 for $5.95 offer is clearly a better value? Read: more energy for your dollar? Well, fortunately, we have a basic understanding of nutrition and so for those of us who hold that understanding and have the means available to us,we purchase the asparagus. But for so many, the knowledge and the means are simply not there.

This is one of the points that Michael Pollen raises, among many others, in The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin, 2006). The book is an in-depth study of the origins of our food. Pollen traces the origins of four meals: a McDonald's meal consumed in a car, an all-organic meal from Whole Foods, a local meal prepared of ingredients raised on a single, sustainable farm, and a mostly-foraged meal of wild boar and mushrooms. The food chain, something that was once such a constant, immediate presence in humans' lives, has become a distant concept for modern Americans, used to buying shiny red apples all year round, preparing microwaveable meals in disposable containers, and comparing wines from around the world under fluorescent lights. Our food chain is immediate nor local, something that has, up until recent history, been a constant.

Pollen traces what has become of our food chain and how it evolved into the industrial beast that it is. One example is the history of corn, which Pollen follows in its evolution from a simple grain cultivated in Central and South America, to a monolithic American crop (with a bit of help from the government), cultivated so that it might be a part of almost everything we eat. (If you don't believe me, check out how many labels include high fructose corn syrup, only one of the many corn derivatives used regularly in the United States). Sometimes the details are a bit dense--overly scientific discussion of the genetics of corn, for example--but they're sections worth pushing through for the vast amount of knowledge packed into the prose about a topic that is so pertinent to everyone's life.

Eating is one thing that brings us together as humans: we all eat, across cultures, continents, and classes. Our food supply is something with which we are all connected and everyone should be concerned. If you're a person who ever spends $3.99 to buy a pound of asparagus, this book is a must-read.

Face of Jamaica Plain

Check out this documentary project I participated in, put together by Margaux Joffe.

work in progress

I started this blog a couple weeks ago for two reasons: to have a body of work to show to prospective freelance jobs and to (maybe) get paid by PNN. However, I dislike the format of the PNN system (see the original blog here, if you're interested), I was confined to a very limited subject matter, and I wasn't nearly diligent enough to support a salaried blog. Also, I lost my digital camera, which set the whole thing back.

The short version of this is that I'm now blogging here, with similar focus to the original, but with more freedom. Soon, if I ever get a real job, I'll buy a new digital camera and then--watch out! Art and art-ish news from San Francisco. More than you could ever want.

The Dark Knight

On opening weekend, I saw The Dark Knight (the newest Batman film for any of you who, by some miraculous act, have no idea what I'm talking about). I stood in a disconcertingly long line outside the theatre only to find that our late-arriving friends had caused us to miss out on any seating opportunity that would not put a permanent crick in my neck. We switched theatres, and finally—finally!—got to see the film.

There was something worrying about watching the film for me, recognizing that part of the film's hype must have at least a bit to do with the recent death of Heath Ledger (Ledger played the Joker in the film, for the hopelessly unaware). Ledger was a method actor--an actor who actually becomes a character while filming, incorporating that character's attitude, outlook, and actions into their everyday life as much as possible. One thing is certain: this worked for Ledger. The performance, as everyone says, is amazing. It's the kind of performance that makes you remember that acting is tough work, especially when you're playing a sociopath.

On a roundabout way to my point. The problem for me, then, is that while I sat there watching Ledger's convincing performance (it's hard even to discern that it's him), I couldn't help but think that his role as the Joker in part contributed to his death. Did he not try to embody the life of a crazy person? A killer who toys with people's emotions, who has no compassion or empathy for anyone? And if so, wasn't that a likely contributor to his spiraling psychological issues, to his drug abuse that ultimately killed him?

I'm not trying to point fingers here, or make a judgment call about Hollywood or what is sacrificed in our adamant demand for entertainment. What Ledger accomplished in the film is legendary, but at what cost? All I know is that while I sat there watching the last role that Ledger filmed, I felt a little guilty. A little like a conspirator. A little sad.

art in the park

There is something quite decadent about hearing live music outdoors: sun on your face, feet reaching for grass, perhaps a picnic, and all accompanied by music. I had nearly forgotten these delights, but my memory was refreshed this past Sunday at a free concert given by the San Francisco Symphony in Dolores Park.

It had been a long time since I'd listened to a symphony--perhaps five years or more, truth be told. I attend many musical performances, but lately I've been more inclined to see bands that feature a lead singer sporting a ripped t-shirt than one in which the musicians wear tuxedos. This is not always the way things were. As a child, music was intermingled with almost everything I did. My father was a band director at a small high school in Montana and I attended every performance, whether it was a classical concert or the pep band playing snippets of songs during time-outs at a basketball game. As I grew, I played the piano under the tutelage of my father, learned the trombone and the euphonium, and eventually played in the symphony orchestra in my hometown. But as childhood loves tend to do, these fell away as life crowded in.

Here I was listening to a trumpet soloist (Alison Balsom--check her out here)--the instrument my father and sister both played--backed by a symphony, for the first time in my recent memory. I had been away from this world for so long, but the orchestra's affect on me, however, was familiar: I got lost in the music. The orchestra started in on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and even the picnicking groups chatting around me failed to distract from the music. What I began to think about was the way a person can lose themselves in art--in music, a painting, a poem, performance, or even a finely-prepared meal--and what value that holds.

At the end of the concert, people stood on their blankets and while the conductor bowed and then swept his hand back to the orchestra, people clapped. And clapped. And while some concert-goers corked their leftover wine and slipped on shoes, many of us simply stood and clapped. The applause lasted for so long that I was sure there must be an encore around the corner, but the conductor only came back and bowed a last time before leaving the stage. This was the longest-running applause I have ever experienced at a symphony orchestra concert, the length perhaps only rivaled by the applause of a crowd after an especially raucous rock show. These people were appreciative. And moved.

I'm not planning to get into the age-old question of what value is art. I'm not nearly academically minded enough to attempt that. But it's something I like to think about and it's something that has certainly been written about since we started calling art, art. What does it all mean?

It made me think of something Susan Sontag wrote about art in her essay, "Against Interpretation." She says that the best critics of art are those who "reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking it up." And that's exactly what this concert did for me: it let me experience the sensuality of a piccolo running through a string of high notes, french horns' regal sound, the bounce of a violin's string when it's plucked. I need to slow down more, to look at the sensuousness of art, to really experience it. In a world where life is accelerating at a frightening pace, where people work more than they play--this call for slowing down and paying heed to those things we pass is apt. This blog, then, is my attempt to do just that: to take Sontag's advice and "learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more."