Twittering about change (in para. form)
Change is wonderful; continuity also doesn't hurt. The desire for continuity isn't the same thing as conservatism or clock-stopping; it's ultimately efficient not to reinvent constantly. One might ask: Does the change improve or does it just create anxiety so someone can sell you a solution? "If it ain't broke don't fix it" may be the most violated truism in modern society.
forms of continuity in cyberspace
Textchimp candy cloud
My rearrangement of textchimp candy cloud
Keltie Ferris / Candy Cloud altar, by Jeanette Hayes
Keltie / Candy hybrid, also by Jeanette Hayes
18X24
By Thomas Galloway, posted on the Loshadka blog. This jpeg is 113 KB and the original is 347 KB but the dimensions are the same.
This image has a Katamari Damacy feel (the Japanese game where everything gets rolled up together in a magnetized snowball) combined with the Memphis furniture aesthetic of Neapolitan ice cream on hard, polished surfaces. Every element has (simulated) three dimensionality yet hangs weightless in a shallow 2-D space. The loose, irrational weave suggests an 8-level chess version of gestural abstraction, yet somehow without the painful, implied "critique of painting" that usually accompanies references to mid 20th Century modernist art.
Some of the quasi airbrush and painted formica patterns are pure kitsch but every facet of the work seems so careful and considered we embrace these FX-slash-faux-finish indulgences as natural elements of the scheme. This is where an artist's eye and control can begin to tame the lamer aspects of "anything is possible" digital culture.
Afterthought: Perhaps the drawing's most salient property is its paradoxical calm in spite of all its zigzagging motion. The weightless elements don't bob or rock but sit as obdurately as a building. This is how Frank Gehry probably thinks his architecture is--arrested movement on a monumental scale; unfortunately he is a hamfisted sculptor and forgets the poetry.
amusing netflix error
Screenshot--I did not fabricate this.
The Alan Rudolph film is pretty good, though I haven't seen it in ages. Ed Ruscha has a minor role as a radio DJ who makes locker room remarks about on-air sex therapist Genevieve Bujold from the safety of his soundproof control room. Keith Carradine plays her mysterious love interest. The Tolkien parts were good, too.
Also, "romantic comedy" doesn't quite nail it for Rudolph: he prefers the term "emotional science fiction." Maybe someone thought that meant hobbits.