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Entries for May 2003
Adolf Wolfli exhibit at The American Folk Art Museum
Acting on a tip from ‘crans, Meg, Lance, and I hit the American Folk Art Museum last weekend. Henry Darger’s young girls with penises opus was good, but the three-floor exhibit of Adolf Wölfli’s work absolutely blew me away. Wölfli was a Swiss artist who wound up in a mental institution around the turn of the last century (child molestation got him there, schizophrenia kept him there), cranking out art like his life depended on it until he died in 1930.
During that period, he produced over 25,000 pages of drawings, illustrations, and illustrated narrative. Wölfli’s drawings are incredibly dense, almost fractal in nature, requiring viewing from multiple distances to begin to see the whole. The American Folk Art Museum provides a good setting for seeing the exhibit, which consists of an impressive sampling of Wölfli’s work, from his earliest surviving drawings to the commercial “bread art” he produced to keep himself in pencils and tobacco. If you find yourself in NYC before the exhibit ends on May 19, I’d *highly* recommend checking it out.
More on the Wölfli exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum:
The Far Side (New Yorker)
Primal Time (Village Voice)
The Autobiography of St. Adolf II (artnet)
Using the touch wheel like a combination
Using the touch wheel like a combination lock could provide a simple security mechanism for the iPod.
The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players buy old slide shows at yard and estate sales and then play music to them. After catching them on a rerun of Conan O’Brien, my appetite was whet for their appearance at GEL last week. Among other things, they sang a six-part rock opera about a 1977 McDonald’s corporate meeting. Half the audience was laughing hysterically while the other half was very, very perplexed as to what was happening (one gentleman looked almost angry that his time was being wasted in this manner). For the unperplexable among you, I recommend checking out one of their shows.
I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding
I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding over some Nigerian spam.
Gehry architecture blamed for inability for police
Gehry architecture blamed for inability for police to capture gunman in building.
A comparison of the first draft of
A comparison of the first draft of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest with the published version.
Interview with Jason Trachtenburg of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
Interview with Jason Trachtenburg of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players.
iPod, youPod, we all pod for podPod
So, I got myself one of Apple’s new iPods. I only ever used an older-style iPod at the Apple Store a few times so I can’t really compare the new with the old, but I love my new little friend so far. Size was an important issue for me (you may insert your own joke here) so I got the 15GB model instead of the slightly larger and heavier 30GB one. It’s so small, thin, and light; it feels like it’s barely there sometimes.
I’m using it during the morning & evening commutes and at lunch while reading. As someone who is not used to wearing headphones in public, the elimination of audio in the urban environment — the rush of a cab through an intersection, the bustle of someone trying to get by you on a crowded sidewalk, the overheard snippets of an entertaining conversation — is disorienting. I’m relying on my other senses — particularly sight — to keep aware and safe. So far, I like the music but miss the sounds of the city. Perhaps I’ll give the iPod a rest 1 or 2 days each week.
Hey Charles, did you even look at
Hey Charles, did you even look at his weblog? His name is Salam, not Raed..
What I learned on my summer vacation
- I got extremely accustomed to not posting to kottke.org. I almost didn’t start up again. Maybe I’ll quit again soon.
- No one seems to use the bathroom here at work. I’ve gotten in the habit of drinking lots of water so I’m in there a few times a day and I never see anyone else in there.
- Thought it was weird that all these PC owners were weighing in on whether the iTunes Music Store was going to work or not when most of them hadn’t even used it. I’m in danger of turning into an evangelist here, but it’s the user experience, stupid. There are other services that do what the Music Store does, but none are as easy. Apple has made buying music easy by closely incorporating it with other things that people do with their music. I play my music in iTunes, I organize my music in iTunes, I can share my music from iTunes, and now I buy my music in iTunes. (Some quick down sides: no discounts on multi-song or full album purchases, no pooling of payments (I don’t want 8 $0.99 payments on my CC)**, and the selection is relatively small and undiverse.)
- I work in midtown Manhattan and my walk takes me up 5th Avenue for a few blocks. I feel so out of place there. Everyone looks like they care so much about their appearance and I’m just wearing what they wear to fit in. I can almost feel it…deep down, they all know I shouldn’t really be there.
- I quite like not having a phone.
- Bryant Park is a wonderful urban park. Reminds me of the jardins of Paris.
- The new X-Men movie is quite good and fun, especially for a sequel.
- I checked out America’s most postmodern pirate supply store while I was in San Francisco. Mr. Eggers was not in at the time, but while I was making a small purchase, the cashier remarked to one of her coworkers, “Neal Pollack just walked by in a tuxedo.” Surrounded as I was by glass eyes and peg legs, this did not seem strange.
- Ladies, no more wearing shoes with 2-inch+ platforms. It looks silly. I saw a woman wearing them this morning; she looked like a Star Wars AT-ST transport tromping down the street. Good for attracting Wookies, I guess.
** I looked at the Music Store preferences and there is a way to pool purchases into a shopping cart for bulk buying. Also, purchases made on the same day are pooled by Apple into one charge on your credit card.
Bush and Blair nominated for Nobel Peace
Bush and Blair nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for, um, war.
Computers are like matter, a lot of
Computers are like matter, a lot of abstraction and very little substance.
A somewhat technical explanation of using Bayesian filtering for spam
A somewhat technical explanation of using Bayesian filtering for spam.
Magritte’s “L’Oiseau de Ciel” sold at auction for $3.8 million
Magritte’s “L’Oiseau de Ciel” sold at auction for $3.8 million.
The best way to learn about a
The best way to learn about a blogger is to read their first post and their 9/11 post.
Keep up with the latest Beckham gossip:
Keep up with the latest Beckham gossip: will he or won’t he leave Man Utd for Real Madrid?.
Google to offer weblog search tool soon
Google to offer weblog search tool soon says CEO Eric Schmidt.
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