James Franco on SNL

Since Franco has been such a hot topic for us i'd thought i'd post my favorite blip from his appearance on SNL.

HP webcams racist haha

Check out this article and video. Mainly this is about a software glitch in which the cameras software doesn't work as well with darker people. (it's a problem with the lighting and how darker people don't reflect light as well) Aside from that, look at the comments. Just some of the most racist stuff like "Black Desi is just another fucking nigger complaining that white people are holding him down when really he is just holding himself down by doing stupid shit like this."



Here's the cnn article --> http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/22/hp.webcams/index.html

Tao Lin

Hey guys,
not sure if you read much (jk!) but if you read stupid stuff you've probably come across the writer Tao Lin. His prose is super weird and "quirky" but what interests me more is his project, Hipster Runoff. At least, I'm 99% sure this is his project. For years, someone named "Carles" has been posting wonderful and hilarious articles which succinctly encapsulate the Brooklyn scene and its repercussions so perfectly.
Check it out:
http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/

http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/

Campber Bike

What a fun little invention! This camper bike is part of a sculptural piece and a convenient concept. who wouldnt want to nap on a bike while in between meetings? I think this is really interesting. I also really like Camper Kart.

Some insight into the Lady GaGa "debate"...?

I know Lady GaGa's been on this blog a lot this semester, but I just thought these interviesw with Ellen DeGeneres and particularly Barbara Walters shed some light on to why GaGa is so hot right now...

Artic Surf Film

If you're like me and enjoy watching videos over writing essays, take 9 minutes and watch this film. I found the whole thing--music, images, story--totally captivating.

Le Grand

Video Phone

Hello Laura Mulvey!! This video basically personifies the Male Gaze to the fullest. Also note how Beyonce appears "white" in some of the scenes and then is juxtaposed in different scenes with her darker skin tones...

the song is pretty uninteresting I feel, however the lyrics do incorporate a great aspect of today's culture and the "video phone." I also really enjoyed the doubled images of beyonce and the men in suits.

Daily Show

The Daily Show with John Stuart is a great show that grounds American domestic and foreign policy. Yet again, John Stuart makes politics just a little bit more entertaining in his new "Most Immature Montage Ever".

What's in there?

I found this animation of an x-ray of someone talking really fascinating. I've been thinking a lot lately about the mechanical functions of the body that allow us to do insanely complex things, like communicate through language, but that really come down to a physical movement in our body. It also makes me think back to my Magic School Bus days (I know I'm not the only one who watched that wonder of a show) and the episode where they take a field trip inside Arnold (I think)'s body to see how it works. It's so strange that we don't know what the majority of our bodies actually look like, not to mention how it works. Like the tongue! We use it every single time we talk or eat or swallow and we know it's the strongest muscle in the body but I still had no idea how big it is! That sucker takes up a third of our skill.
Anyway, something to think about. Or rethink about if you haven't watched Magic School Bus in awhile.

Split Screen Madness!

This video is really interesting. It is a split screen with percussion and really great graphics. Check it out.

Texts from Last Night

Sorta like Lamebook, Texts From Last Night posts peoples most ridiculous text messages they have recieved. Its pretty entertaining.
this is a good one:

(850): you ran down to the water at 3am and rolled in the sand and ran around screaming that you were the corn dog monster.
i now want a corn dog.

Mysterious Spiral in the Night Sky

This short clip is interesting and beautiful.

Disney as Performance Art?

At first I thought this was real, but as it went on, I grew less certain. Is this an example of real love, performance art or Disney advertising?

Dockers...the world needs its MEN back!

"Somewhere along the way, the world decided it no longer needed men!" Docker's new ad campaign is essentially claiming that in order to be a man you must wear khakis. Once all men own a pair of Docker's khakis, the world will be restored of its heros and once again old women will not have to cross the street alone. Apparently its causing quite a controversy.

My question: what is wrong with advertisement and what makes them make such HUGE and HORRIBLE claims that are overly offensive??!

PostSecret Video

Pretty much speaks for itself. While this idea isn't necessarily "new," it's still captivating. Is it art?

Pagan Poetry

I like Bjork. A lot of people don't like her music, but this piece is actually much more focused on her performance and uses lyrics, tone, rhythm and her body to really drive home her point. I find this clip to be sensual, violent and effective. It reminds me of a poem my core class had to read by Sappho about desire as a sweetbitter pain:
Now Love, the ineluctable, with bitter sweetness
Fills me, overwhelms me, and shakes my being.

Here are the lyrics in case you cannot understand her:
She loves him, she loves him
And he makes me want to hurt myself again
She loves him, she loves him
She loves him, she loves him
And he makes my want to hand myself over


Also, some of you may not want to watch this if you are easily disturbed.... I don't want to say more without ruining the tension but... it is not for everyone.

MTV's Jersey Shore

MTV Shows

I don't watch reality TV, but I need to make an exception for this masterpiece.

A place for all the missed connections

I found this blog and thought it was another one of those internet places to get lost in. The drawings add to my curiosity and connection to each post.
Here's the artist statement :
Messages in bottles, smoke signals, letters written in the sand; the modern equivalents are the funny, sad, beautiful, hopeful, hopeless, poetic posts on Missed Connections websites. Every day hundreds of strangers reach out to other strangers on the strength of a glance, a smile or a blue hat. Their messages have the lifespan of a butterfly. I'm trying to pin a few of them down.

enjoy!

A View From A Cat's Perspective

This is an article I read awhile ago from the Seattle PI that I just remembered. These two artists in Seattle put a small digital camera on their cat Cooper's collar, and it was programmed to take a picture every two minutes. The owners decided to do this because they were curious to know what their cat did all day. There ended up being many interesting photographs that were taken, and sixteen of them went on display at an art gallery. I find this to be a very creative approach, and interesting concept to use an animal and create artwork from their perspective. Take a look at the article, and check out the photos as well.

James Franco Interviews Marina Abramovic

I really like both James Franco and Marina Abramovic (who is sometimes referred to now as the "grandmother  of performance art").  So needless to say I find this pairing for an interview (filmed as Abramovic instructs Franco on how to make an edible golden ball of peeled almonds and crushed cardamom pods) to be, well, fantastic.  Abramovic is a sort of sage.   I think anyone (artist or not) could learn a lot from her... and I see her as one of the bravest people I've ever known about.  In this interview she says two profound things:

1. the studio is the worst place for an artist to be today

and

2. no one has ever been transformed doing things that they like

...and she says it with her charmingly classic eastern European accent.

Don't not watch this or read the subsequent article that Franco wrote after the taping!(posted by me yesterday)
Do enjoy!

Real House Built From Lego

Check out some pictures of this full size house built entirely with legos.  It looks cool as can be (especially in its environment) if you ask me.

FAIL

Here's a great list of 15 failed predictions about the future. I just love it when people are wrong.

“Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
--Dr Dionysys Larder

Required Reading! by James Franco in the Wall Street Journal

This is such an awesome article on performance art written by the actor James Franco in the Wall Street Journal. Recently Franco decided to do 20 episodes of General Hospital, taking on a job which he also saw as a kind of conceptual art performance on account of the fact that he is usually seen in major motion pictures (fantastic idea!) Please everyone in 180 and 280 take the time to read this excellent piece because I'll definitely bring this up in class next week, and I think you'll see the parallels we've been discussing in class. It also mentions a number of the performance artists we've brought up and discussed this semester.

Tiger Woods Voicemail Slowjam Remix

clever. posted 2 days ago, and not surprisingly over half a million hits.

Butoh Dance

Okay, so i went a little crazy here with posting some butoh dance videos.  As I mentioned in my comments from the other post, butoh emerged in the late 50's and 60's in Japan, and while it explores many universal themes of existence, it has always been thought to have been birthed out of the horrific experience of the hiroshima bombings and the aftermath of that. I find these vids mesmerizing - the movements and the contexts - simultaneously hypnotic and frightening, and just plain intense.  Hope some of you will enjoy them.







here is a rather intense clip from a performance in paris that has embedding diabled

The Parlor

This super clever movie came out several years ago.  It takes the various voices from a somewhat sordid chat room exchange and imagines that all the people are actually sitting face to face in the same room.   It's hilarious and deep -10 minutes but highly entertaining and the ending is classic.  I think you'll appreciate it.

Pshh, hipsters

So, I'm sure many of you have seen this... I like it because it's a great example of human's voyeuristic and self-hate tendencies. Also, it's a wonderful curation of hipster photos.

Is ballet dead?

So, I am not usually a fan of ballet, or performance dances beyond so you think you can dance (and even then--not a whole episode) but for some reason I was really struck by this video. It makes me wonder, is dance, much like modern art, too historical? Videos like this make me realize that it's not that I don't like performance dance, it's just that usually those performances are elitest and antiquated. what do you guys think? Is perfomative dance on the way out? Can it be revived? Do you care?

What is cute?

Here is a video that is, yet again, another video about cute cats. I would like to think that a video like this can bring a smile (or at least the rise of one cheek) to someone in the darkest of moods. I am fascinated by the idea of cute and what makes something cute.

This video was posted on November 29 and already has 1.8 million views. When compared to the view counts of other cute videos (including kittens), the rate at which this video is accumulating views is quite impressive.

Yes, cute has saturated the internet, and there is an argument for dismantling cute, but first I ask, what about cute videos (in particular, this one) is so... captivating/attractive? Why are we drawn to them? Is it the high-pitched voices and innocent gestures of familiar creatures that comforts us from the daily drag? What do you think? What does it say about todays culture that cute is so actively sought out? I dare you to find a video that is cuter than this and make an argument for why it is more so, in hopes that the origin of cute may be revealed.

I hope that this will start a scholarly discussion and not diffuse into a comment-less post. I encourage you to really criticize/analyze/attack/defend cute.

Chickens inspired by Chickens

This video, a remake of one of my personal favorites, is quickly becoming viral with more than 44,000 views in 3 days. I find it slightly crude and mildly offensive... and thus naturally a little funny, but let me know what you think.

"Babies"

The artistic elements in this trailer are very simple, yet seem well done. I thought they were visually stimulating and the scene compositions are very well constructed. Also babies are just great fun to watch!

Let me know what you think!

Chi City response

Some of you may know of the Philip DeFranco show (sxephil) as one of the most subscribed channels on you tube, along side iJustine. Phil makes a good counter-argument in response to Chi City, who also makes a good argument. But what do you guys think? Is youtube really dying? Does it matter if it is? Good or bad? Thoughts?

Chinese news report on Tiger

The Tract House Project

Goatsilk was recently asked to participate in something called the "The Tract House Project."

The Tract House is a "spread-the-word" project that debuted at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore on May 31, 2008. The Tract House has distributed free tracts at Printed Matter, 195 Tenth Avenue, New York, New York and at Three-Walls in Chicago in 2008 and 2009.  In conjunction with the  American Philosophical Society (APS) Museum and Philagrafika, The Tract House: The Darwin Addition will be distributing tracts in Philadelphia in early 2010.

While most popular tracts are religious, The Tract House tracts can be nearly anything— manifestos, diatribes, stories, rants, poems, or lyrics. They can be about whatever the writer finds pressing, whether it be something personal, professional, political, domestic, local, or global.

We wrote a couple of short tracts over the Thanksgiving break and I thought I'd share them here on culturelovesus, since some of what we wrote has to do with things we've been talking about this semester particularly.


NOTES ON NARCISSISM

• Narcissism plus charm is talent, and can be inspirational.
• Narcissism  without charm is vulgar, and can be repulsive.
• Open confession is narcissism combined with vulnerability, and is frequently attractive.
• Refusal to join the masses in the growing network of online social exchange is usually just narcissism combined with elitism.
• Narcissism nourishes voyeurism, and voyeurism requires narcissism.  In fact, these two powerful human impulses collapse into each other almost completely.  It might even be safe to say that the endless appetite for voyeurism can devour as much narcissism as we can offer.
• There are only narcissists and ultra-narcissists, voyeurs and ultra-voyeurs.
• Narcissism is a survival mechanism for the life online.
• Narcissism isn’t new, but the current social networking environment provides new ways of revealing it. 

NEW WORLD NEWS

Museums have ceased to be stimulating to the public, while world news has become more exciting - and more widely viewed – than ever.  Similarly, Hollywood movies have ceased to be exciting, while Youtube and other forms of democratized entertainment are avidly consumed. This is because people are no longer interested in static sanctuaries for canonized trinkets, and rather turned on by the refreshing unexpectedness—and sublime qualities—of real life, real time, real consequence narrative.  Art over time has always followed this course of evolution, away from the artificial and towards the real.  Only now, with the advent of a bona fide digital revolution, and the increased speed of just about everything, we can see this more clearly than ever.  As this pace increases, the fracture between our collective consciousness and the potential realities we may be exposed to gets wider and more troubling. 

How can we restore this connection?

We propose an effective solution for the uncertain future of entertainment and art: employ high profile actors as news broadcasters, and broadcast the news each day –indoors and out- in large screen with Dolby surround at public museums.   In 10 years or less, it will be possible to hire the likes of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, or Scarlett Johansson to host the nightly news, because there will no longer be profit in the artifice of big Hollywood films.  This new mode of delivery would combine the most exciting real world information with the most famous personas of yesterday’s cinema, presented in a public format where empathy most thrives.  The resulting product is not just another Jon Stewart Daily Show, but a non-comedic delivery of world events in the most sincere fashion.  True stories, not myths.  Real people, not roles.  Actual consequences, not just fantasies.

-Goatsilk

Videos we could make in Art 180.

This is a cool video. A video like this could be made by Whitman students!

OK Go - WTF? from OK Go on Vimeo.