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Tag: art

morning computer, notebooks and such

Published June 18, 2024 by Warren Ellis

🌐 TODAY IS TUESDAY 18jun24

📡 NOTEBOOKERY

Julian Simpson on creating in notebooks:

These notebooks may hold the key to who I was and who I am now, and if there is any substantial difference between the two. As storytellers, it is drummed into us that characters must change. Must they? Have I changed? As the star of my own movie, surely I must have some kind of an arc?

A pile of notebooks on a desk. A record of a section of my life. messages from a previous version of me, messages that, until now, I have left largely unopened…

Tara Walters.

Notebook artist Jose Naranja on Satoshi Kon.

Somewhere between dystopian and historical fiction, reality and the imaginary, dreaming and waking, sits East of Noon (2024), the second feature film by the Egyptian visual artist and filmmaker Hala Elkoussy. Ostensibly a film about the spirited rebellion of youth in the face of an authoritarian regime, its narrative abstraction makes it a beguiling prospect; this work, set “outside of time,” to use Elkoussy’s own words, floats in an undefined space, both temporally and geographically, yet the world it portrays is so richly detailed and specific. This contrast makes for a fascinating tension in the film—the question “Where are we?” soon gives way to “Where are we going?” 

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morning, computer

Published June 17, 2024 by Warren Ellis

🌐 TODAY IS MONDAY 17jun24

📡 DIVERS, SPACE BEES, GRAVEYARDS

“High-speed baby stars circle the supermassive black hole Sgr A* like a swarm of bees.”

Observational astronomy shows that newly discovered young stellar objects (YSOs) in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* located in the center of our galaxy behave differently than expected. They describe similar orbits to already known young evolved stars and are arranged in a particular pattern around the supermassive black hole.

Shyama Golden.

Ago Bay lies beneath a rolling coastline lined with lush green trees in the Mie Prefecture of Japan. A peninsula protects it from the Pacific, but on a windy day the sea turns white with waves and the trees shiver all the way up the bluff. It’s here, in these waters, that you find the legendary Ama, the female freedivers who have sought pearls, lobsters, abalone and more for 3,000 years. 

And I found this via Jay last night: ostensibly about the Old School Renaissance, a movement in tabletop role-playing games, it sources some scary quotes about US book publishing:

The DOJ’s lawyer [the DOJ having brought the antitrust case] collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies.

And:

Tamika D. Mallory, a social activist with over a million Instagram followers, was paid over $1 million for a two-book deal. But her first book, State of Emergency, has sold just 26,000 print copies since it was published in May, according to BookScan. The journalist and media personality Piers Morgan had a weaker showing in the United States [than the UK]. Despite his followers on Twitter (8 million) and Instagram (1.8 million), Wake Up: Why the World Has Gone Nuts has sold just 5,650 U.S. print copies since it was published a year ago, according to BookScan.

and:

[I]n 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies.

All of which makes me think about many things, not least being how I put a return to self-publishing aside again due to lack of time. Maybe I should make the time. Maybe it’s okay to retrace my steps.

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simultanism

Published May 23, 2024 by Warren Ellis

[no title]

‘Delaunay and her husband, Robert, both central to the emergence of painterly abstraction at this moment, saw the dress as an example of their art of “simultanism”: the use of colour contrast, which creates specific effects in the eye of the viewer and captures the dynamism of modernity.

‘For the curators of Sonia Delaunay: Living art, the dress is emblematic because simultanism was also an avant-garde method that ignored the boundaries between fine and decorative arts, and between art and everyday life. They present it as a brand, too, and Delaunay not only as a tireless innovator in fashion, textiles, costume and interior design, but also as an astute promoter of her work.’

May 23, 2024 at 07:52PM

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17may24

Published May 17, 2024 by Warren Ellis

OPERATIONS: script, trailer notes round 2, tv doc, newsletter, development, eyestrain. Offline until I get hold of this.
READING: BEYOND THE LIGHT HORIZON, Ken MacLeod (UK) (US+) 
ORBITAL:


MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter. Forthcoming 2024: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, DESOLATON JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION. 2025: THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM.

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Head boy; How André Breton policed a movement for artistic freedom

Published May 12, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Head boy; How André Breton policed a movement for artistic freedom

‘Finally, at a benefit gala at the Grand Central Gallery in New York in April 1917, Arthur Cravan was set to deliver a lecture on “the Independent Artists of France and America”; having sunk too many pre-show drinks with (here they are again!) Duchamp and Picabia, he instead swore at the audience, did a striptease, waved his cock around and was promptly arrested. Cravan was a one-man awkward squad: painter, poet, provocateur, publisher, critic, hoaxer, athlete, amateur diplomat, dandy, draft dodger, merde-stirrer, tango dancer, early tattoo adopter, professional loose cannon. He advertized one performance promising that it would end with his suicide.’

May 12, 2024 at 07:37PM

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Random assemblage 8apr24

Published April 8, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Because of its size and location, the henge would have been a prominent place in the region and provided a major site for ceremonial activity. At this time, Crowland would have been a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water and marshes, and the henge was situated on a distinctive and highly visible point projecting out into the Fens.

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The henge seems then to have been deserted, perhaps for many centuries, but the significance already given to the site by the substantial prehistoric earthworks—which would have still been visible into the medieval period—meant it was probably seen by hermits like Guthlac as a unique landscape with a long and sacred past.

Scribbled numbers, wiped-away letters, word-like scrawls: all of these recur in Kikuo Saito’s paintings of the early 1990s, a selection of which form a wonderfully mystifying solo show on view now at James Fuentes gallery in New York.
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Wet Monday 1apr24

Published April 1, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Nature’s subtle irregularities and variations are fodder for Jon Foreman (previously). Using found leaves, stones, and sand, the Wales-based artist assembles swirling gradients and organic motifs that radiate across forest floors and beaches. He precisely arranges each composition by size and color, relying on basic geometric principles to transform a humble material and unconventional backdrop into stunning artworks. Considering the constructions last just a short time before they’re blown or washed away, head to Foreman’s Instagram to see them in pristine condition.

Kaye Donachie.

Louisa Gagliardi.

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Arts And Crimes

Published February 28, 2024 by Warren Ellis

In 1967 Japan Air Lines issued this box set of leaflets which informed on all aspects of life in Japan.

Erin L. Thompson has one of the more unusual job titles in the art world and academia.

As a professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Thompson uses her law degree and a PhD in art history—both from Columbia University—to teach and report on looted antiquities, art forgery techniques, museum thefts, repatriation efforts, art made by Guantánamo Bay detainees, collections of human remains, and, most recently, the melting of notable Civil War monuments.

Meet Robert Pickton – a demented serial killer who fed his victims to pigs.

A monster who claimed he was disappointed with himself that he had only killed forty-nine and did not “make the big five-O.”

Latter saved for reference: not sure if this is the crime scene I was thinking of, but I have something similar lodged in my memory. Awful thing.

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Monday In The Light

Published February 26, 2024 by Warren Ellis

Pensive faces, ambiguous light sources, and mysterious spaces characterize the atmospheric drawings of Moonassi, whose solo exhibition Murmures at Vazieux Gallery delves into the surreal world of memory and emotions.

In black-and-white ink and acrylic, the Seoul-based artist cross-hatches figurative scenes onto Korean hanji paper, portraying deep contrasts, dualities, and tensions. Rich, black shadows reveal glowing hands and faces, exploring relationships between light and dark, awareness and the unconscious, presence and absence, and the known and unknown.

Moonassi uses meok, a type of traditional Korean inkstick ground against a stone with water to produce a liquid medium. The meditative process of preparing the ink helps the artist focus on the task at hand and concentrate on each step.

the painting of Dhaka-born, LA and Portland-based painter, Srijon Chowdhury. His last solo show, The Nude, was on view at Ciaccia Levi, Milan in 2023.

Something born out of a rough doodle, redid a more ‘proper’ little sketch out of it before colours.
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Burned Books And Bad Robots

Published February 21, 2024 by Warren Ellis

When Vesuvius erupted in AD79—the same eruption that buried Pompeii—the papyrus rolls in the villa were carbonized. Without enough oxygen to combust and turn to ash, they became charcoal instead.

This meant the scrolls were fused solid and to get at the writing inside, they had to be opened. This process has been ongoing since the 1750s and researchers have just entered a new stage, thanks to AI. The lumps of carbonized scroll have been digitally scanned and, using 3D mapping and AI, researchers have been unable to “virtually unroll” the papyri and detect letters. This process has, for example, allowed them to read a previously unknown philosophical work discussing the senses and pleasure by the Epicurean philosopher and poet, Philodemus.

Matt Webb takes his first ride in a robotaxi:

It wasn’t a great first ride, on the way up.

We approached a school bus and blocked the road. The Waymo didn’t leave room. While we were waiting, the school bus drive waved at me to get out of the way. I sat in the front passenger seat. I gesticulated at the empty driver’s seat –

It’s empty! (I tried to say by waving my arms.) I’m in a haunted car! I can’t tell the ghost what to do!

Nicolás Kisic Aguirre builds rolling, gyrating, unruly machines that have been exhibited all over the world. Sometimes, however, they escape gallery spaces and take to the streets of Valparaíso or Boston where they amplify the voice of citizens protesting against racist deportations, inequality or the presence of a war criminal in town. Whether they are deployed in artistic performances or used as a tool to broadcast political messages, Kisic Aguirre’s works challenge the boundaries of our common understanding of the city and the spaces we share in it.
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