Friday, January 30, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 01/30/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

It's (not really) alive!

In the spirit of Arthur Ganson (sculpture races; gesture art) and Theo Jansen (evolving mobile sculpture), here's another new star in the kinetic sculpture constellation:

Reuben Margolin

What I love about his sculpture is that not only is it beautiful and intriguing, it's deeply mathematical and mechanical. But even if you aren't familiar with the math and physics behind waves, it is still intuitive and compelling.

You really should just go to his website and check out his wave-sculptures and creative rickshaws, but if you are too lazy to do that, I'm embedding some videos.




I'm totally fascinated with how artists capture lifelike motion. People who work with still media (traditional sculpture, painting, drawing, photography) have a completely different way of approaching it than kinetic sculptors. But what I find most interesting is that the constructed motion of kinetic sculpture is still only representation. Yes, it is still moving, but it still struggles imperfectly to capture something more abstract, visceral and elusive that is inherent in things that are alive. Animation isn't the same as living motion.

And that's why Margolin's (and Ganson's and Jansen's) work is so captivating -- it's a foreign realization of a familiar gesture.

It's always like us, but always other.

I could keep watching and posting videos all day, but I'll just point you to Rueben Margolin's YouTube channel.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Why Art Spiegelman should totally teach at the j-school


I just saw Art Spiegelman speak for the second time. (The first time I was a freshman in college.) Before I tear into a description of how awesome the talk was like a mountain lion tearing into a fresh deer (sorry, sorry! gratuitous and unskillful simile), a few words about why the heck listening to a comic book artist is important, especially for a writer or journalist:

People who work in different media can learn from each other. Jim Sheeler, the Pulizter Prize-winning journalist who teaches my Magazine Writing class, talks about how he creates his articles by stitching together scenes. He learned that technique through his broadcast background. When a writer learns to think like a photographer or videographer, amazing things happen.

Spiegelman spoke about comics being more than just "movies on a page," but he also acknowledged a give-and-take between film and comics. Each medium learned from the other, and used the techniques it saw there to create new ways of telling stories.

And that's what any medium -- film, prose, comics, sculpture even -- does, is tell stories. (Another nod to Sheeler on that one.)

When Spiegelman described creating an autobiographical introduction to one of his books, he said each memory commands a different style to tell it. The same is true for all media.

And now, back to the talk...

Some money quotes:
  • "Comics work the way the brain works."
  • "Comics were the first rock and roll." (In reference to a culture that appealed directly to youth, without adult mediators.)
  • "Goethe was kind of like the Oprah Winfrey of his day. If he liked it, everyone thought it was cool."
  • "The closest America has to knighthood is getting a cameo on The Simpsons."
Some money points:
  • For Spiegelman, in comics all the interesting stuff happens on the edges, where things (panels) bump up against each other.
  • He described comics as a new word that defines the space between handwriting and drawing.
  • He likes creating a structure, or at least acknowledging or hinting at it, then breaking down that structure to convey meaning. (This is something that can totally apply to writing.)
  • Comics artists manipulate stereotyped images to make complex meanings.
  • The blank spaces in comics (the villain with no face in Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie's eyeballs, the faces of the characters in Maus) allow -- no force -- the reader to project their own ideas onto the void.
  • Comics allow for a form of witnessing and news telling that is distinct from video or photography. When you look at a scene that has been drawn, you are experiencing the implied presence of the artist, who had to see, interpret, process, and then draw.
  • He talked about Maus as a "metaphor designed to self-destruct." How Kafka-esque!
  • I know he's not the first to say it (see La Ton Beau De Marot, which I still cannot spell after all these years), but the limitations of a medium unlock creativity (i.e., people still work in wood cuts). It's always good to reiterate that as often as possible, I think.
Ok, and finally, Spiegelman said that he thought comics would perpetuate the printed book. He said that comics were "made for their bookness." If you've been following along, you know this kind of flies in the face of a guy like Scott McCloud, who says that the web has allowed comics to become more comic-like than ever before. Hmmm...Spiegelman also cited McCloud in his presentation in the "where are comics going" section. So, while I was puzzling this out, wondering how Spiegelman could both disagree with McCloud and recognize him as the future of comics, some guy with a buzzed mohawk asked that exact question during the Q&A! (This was very convenient for me, because I never get up and ask questions and huge lectures like that.)

Spiegelman's response? Every time the technology changes, a new medium emerges. Newspaper comics are not comic books are not web comics are not animation. Each time the form changes, the content and style change too, and although the media are related, there are nuanced distinctions between them. The form that he knows and loves -- the comic book and what he calls "a comic book that needs a bookmark," i.e. the graphic novel -- is thoroughly book-bound. The shape, format, type of paper, all these things are essential to what the artist is creating.

In essence, he is saying that form and content are fused. Of course, this is the opposite of the web, which was designed to sever form from content (as I recently learned in Digital Newsroom). So, I'm not sure about that, if a form that is severed from its content can or ever will be art. But, that's probably one of those eternal debates that I should put off until a less sober night.

And with that, I've found myself blogging instead of doing what I came here to do (i.e., school work), so I had better wrap it up. Adios!

P.S. Spiegelman did this awesome thing using a simple squiggle as a recurring character in that autobiographical introduction I mentioned. The squiggle became whatever he needed it to become in dozens of different situations (part of a swear word, smoke from his cigarette, part of a game he played with his mom, etc.). That kind of just sums it all up, only in reverse.

P.P.S. I really really really want to hear Spiegelman's wife, Francoise Mouly, art editor of the New Yorker, speak. She sounds so awesome. She's working on a comics literacy project...yay!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 01/24/2009

  • (Btw, if you haven't checked out globalpost.com yet, do it!)

    This article (which includes an awesome poster gallery) discusses the trend-turned-cultural-value of having only one child in South Korea. It grew out of population control campaigns in previous decades and the high cost of raising and educating a child.

    The only trouble is, now Koreans aren't having enough babies. (Yeah, crazy.)

    When I lived there, I taught at a school run by Mormons, so I actually saw a lot of two- three- four- and even five-child families. That was, of course, the exception. I also observed that my students were totally up on contraception methods and sex-ed (I taught Health Class), at least in theory. In practice they would have seemed years behind American high schoolers.

    One thing I also found interesting was that in Korea you can get the birth control pill over the country at pretty much any pharmacy. That is, again, leftover from population control days.

    Just another example of how terms like "conservative" and "liberal" when it comes to social values are totally subjective. Things that seem contradictory to Americans aren't contradictory when you look at them in a different cultural context.

    tags: South Korea, birth control, population, over-population, reproduction, contraception, propoganda, globalpost

  • Antibiotic resistant strains of s. aureus in Iowan pigs? Not really a surprise. But this -- "overall MRSA prevalence in swine was 49% (147/299) and 45% (9/20) in workers" -- kind of is.

    Unfortunately (well, only for a manure-head like me, really), the researchers didn't test feces, they tested "naris" and "nares", which I know know is a "nasal cavity."

    tags: antibiotic resistance, livestock, agriculture, genes, bacteria, MRSA, pigs, swine


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Spreading out on the web

This semester I'll be posting occasionally on some blogs and websites besides this one (gasp!). I am going to do my best to cross-post or link to those pieces.

Starting now!

Finding motivation in comics - I started a blog with some fellow j-school students. Our goal is to figure out where exactly journalism is going, or at least make an attempt, gosh darnit. My first entry is a reflection on why I wound up in journalism school in the first place, and what I hope to get out of it. It starts, "I didn’t come to journalism school on purpose. But in retrospect, it was anything but an accident..."

Beasts prowl Boulder and spark gnashing of teeth
- Over at the blog for the Center for Environmental Journalism (where I work), I posted a piece about my reactions to a local hearing on mountain lion/human interactions in Boulder. You guys already know how obsessed I am with mountain lions. Here I contemplate the euphemistic language we use to describe mountain lion attacks and whether having more information is really a good thing.

Go! Click! Now!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Digital Newsroom: You share with one person, you share with the world (whether you like it or not)

If I were feeling cheeky, I might start this post by asking if you have ever sent something extremely private via cell phone or email. A secret? A nude photo, perhaps?

I won't ask, though, because then I'd be obligated to answer the question myself. (It would only be fair.)

Instead, consider the case of the Bothell High School cheerleaders. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer leads:
Parents of two Bothell High School cheerleaders have sued the Northshore School District, alleging school officials erred when they suspended the girls from the team this year after nude photos of them circulated throughout the student body via text message.

The story goes on to reveal that action was not taken to punish, or even identify, the students who sent the pictures. One of the pictures was taken three years ago, when the girl sent a topless picture of herself to her boyfriend.

Here's the story from CBS:

Plenty of sites have already discussed the moral implications. Jezebel writes:
Why did the school administration get involved with something pretty much outside their purview? According to CBS News, the girls were chastised because "The student code of the conduct does say that athletes are held to a higher standard." Then why did the myriad boys — presumably some of whom were also athletes — get off scot free for passing around the naughty photos?

Moral judgments aside, what ethical questions does the this story raise about digital media? With cell phones and computers, pictures, words and audio are infinitely reproducible, and can be shared (accidentally or purposefully) in an instant.
  • What happens when information, originally meant to be private, becomes public?
  • Are journalists obligated to use information, even if it was never intended to fall into their hands?
  • Have the rules that guide journalists changed, now that sharing information is easy, even mindless?
These questions apply to situations far more serious than nudie pics of cheerleaders. In the 2005 London subway bombings, compelling images were taken with cell phones and distributed through mainstream media. Many details of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were sent home from soldiers in personal emails, and the pictures were taken as personal items. In each case media outlets had to decide how they were going to present the information.

When that cheerleader chose to share information with a cell phone, was she giving up her right to privacy? When she hit send, was she agreeing to an unstated "you share with one person, you share with the world (whether you like it or not)" rule embedded in digital media?

If using the internet equates means partially giving up your privacy, then media outlets have every right to reproduce private information that falls into their hands. But the fact that different outlets reproduce images differently -- CBS, for example, blurred out the faces of the cheerleaders in the photos when some sites did not -- means that each writer, editor, and publisher still has decisions to make. Just because we can use something, doesn't mean we must.

In some situations it would be unethical not to reveal information, as with Abu Ghraib. That's simply not the case with the BHS cheerleaders. I think the ethics that dictate how to make that call have not changed from traditional journalism. However, with the ease of sharing implicit in new media, journalists may be asked to make that call more frequently. That's why I think strong ethics and clear goals are more necessary now than ever before, whether for a lone blogger or a several hundred person organization.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 01/21/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Who would you invite to your weekly bridge game?

From the Bookslut blog:

“I think a weekly magazine is a standing dinner date, or the fourth person in your bridge game,” said Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek. “Sometimes they’re the most delightful person in the world, sometimes they get drunk and throw up on you. But enough times in a year, when something happens, that’s the first place you want to go to hear what they have to say.”


So are we supposed to infer from that that we'll always need weekly magazines? At the same time, don't people outgrow standing dinner dates, or bridge game friends?

I'm not saying that I hope we outgrow weekly magazines, but I was just trying to shake out Meacham's analogy. What do you guys think?

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 01/15/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jordan, meet comics. Comics, meet Jordan.

I've never been a comics nut, but maybe that's a fluke. If that's the case, I may be about to remedy it. Here are the first three steps:

Step 1: Solanin



My brother gave me a manga (Japanese graphic novel for the uninitiated), Solanin, for Christmas, and I consumed it in about an hour. It's about an apathetic twenty-something living in Tokyo who quits her job one day because, well, why the hell not. The novel deals with ambition, dreams (or lack thereof), finding (or losing) your place in the world...topics that are generally reassuring until you realize that the author was only 24 when he published. (Le sigh.) But, I loved it.

Step 2: Scott McCloud

I wish I had enough time (and a reliable enough internet connection) to watch all of the TedTalks. Luckily, it's the first week of term and got minorly caught up, starting with this talk by Scott McCloud:



He has insights and lessons that are applicable to all media, not just comics. The main thrust (I never get tired of that figure of speech) is that a medium must mutate, while still maintaining its defining characteristics, when new technologies come along. For example, comics have been around for millenia (Egyptians writing on tombs, cave paintings), and the thing that unifies them is the link that movement in space correlates to movement in time. McCloud talks about how this was updated for the printing press, and now for the internet.

I think that writers should also take something from this. Obvious, the medium of WORDS is much different than that of pictures, but writing stories and drawing comics are both ways of conveying narrative. When the technology changes, maybe the medium needs to change, too, while still maintaining its essence.

So, what is writing's essence, and how can it be preserved in a digital age? Well, I haven't gotten that far yet. (Give me at least five minutes to digest this...I just finished watching the talk.)

Here are some other great things from McCloud:
  • His dad was a blind scientist and inventor who had "blind faith" in his son's abilities as a visual artist.

  • McCloud muses "what does a scientific mind do in the arts?" I can relate to that...

  • He's not just talking about comic books, he's talking about vision, invention, and communication.

  • He has four life principals, which are almost identical to my own:
    • Learn from everyone
    • Follow no one
    • Watch for patterns (This one is my personal mantra
    • World like hell (depends on the day, of course)

  • One of his ideas is that comics are more comic-like than they ever have been before, thanks to the "infinite canvass" of the computer. Maybe the same can be said for writing?


Step 3: UMC Art Gallery opening at CU -- Graphia! Comics Artwork


There's an opening reception today. I think I'm going to go. Yeah. I will.

I'll let you know how it is.

Step 4: ???

Ok, that's an unbearably cheesy way to end this post. Sorry. My diet is about %25 cheese (higher depending on the cycles of the moon).

Monday, January 12, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 01/12/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Fun with the Flip in Steamboat

Need I even say it? I like toys. My favorite new toy is my Flip camera. (Thanks, mom and dad!) No, I don't have the HD version -- but the videos still look rad.

Behold...



When it comes to skiing, Paul is like Bode Miller and I am like Goofy, so we decided I should stick to being videographer and he should stick to being sick video subject.

More videos to come!