I was perusing the new White chapel’s new Blog area and found this post by Brandon Cyphered. Familiar territory, as friends and readers may know- I haven’t been idle (though apparently researching Prion diseases is not Politically Correct. Why? No clue. Possibly because knowledge is a dangerous thing, and who knows what I might do with my lingering scientific background).
Cannibalism has intrigued the population for ages. It’s exotic. It’s frightening. It’s intriguing. It has been done over time in many ways, and for many reasons, and movies about cannibals are pretty darn popular; take the Hannibal Lecter flicks for example. According to some, Hannibal the Cannibal is one of the most popular movie villains of all time, and cannibalism can be used as a metaphor that never ends, put to use in a variety of ways in a literary setting, more than just simple hack and slash and violence for the sake of violence.
According to NPR, Vienna’s beloved “Sisi Palm,” a 170-year-old Chinese Fan palm named after the late Austro-Hungarian Empress Elisabeth, will be chopped down next month.
The NY Times had a more in depth article here, citing some of the plant’s history. And here’s a picture of the massive tree’s silhouette from Yahoo News. According to the media, the tree must be chopped down before it breaks free of the confines of the greenhouse, thus destroying it with it’s geriatric tree might.
To my fellow artists: Just follow the link, and read it. It’s a harsh truth, but from what I’ve seen and lived so far, it’s true, especially if you live in a small town like I do.
Do artists steal or appropriate, or perhaps are they merely inspired? What is the distinction, the line from one thing to another? What are the ethical principals that should guide artists in their work, and how does one decide what’s right and wrong, especially in this internet-savvy age, where apparently, anything that can be snatched and stolen will be, and apparently with very little repercussion, and mere coincidence is often accused of being thievery and fraud for surface similarities?
According to WIRED, the renegade artist The Decapitator has been going after London ads and editing them by decapitating heads, and then posting them to his/her flicker stream here.
The artwork shows a variety of styles, from nearly realistic decapitation of models to cartoony, stylized defacings of an add for Bee-movie and the KFC man.
I don’t know why the artist does it. Is it protest against big advertising companies, a mockery of media hype? an attempt to get us to look beyond the flash and glitz and see what’s around us? - not sure.
They had dark chocolate lindt bunnies for sale at JoAnn Fabrics. These things are hollow, delicious, and not horridly overpriced, and so, I got one before work, and promptly bit its ears off, leaving it’s bunny self looking rather like it had a lobotomy. I could have left it at that, or finished it. But no, I thought, “Hey, I can do BETTER than this.”
So I added jalapeno jelly, and what we at work call ‘firecracker’ mix into the hole, and to make the whole ‘Lobotomy bunny’ as it came to be called look more scientific, blinking lights (Removed before I took the pictures, they didn’t photograph well).
The whole combination of cream cheese, Jalapenos, strawberry (or was it cherry?)-goo and dark chocolate is very, very delicious.
Editing to add a link to bread that makes my bunny look tame (ganked from WC’s thread of ‘things that should not exist’)
It’s been a few years since I graduated from college, and I’m going to say it: I loved my classes as an art major, however, for the most part they have been of hardly any use in my professional life. Contracts, Copyright, Basic Law, dealing with galleries, self-marketing? - we didn’t touch any of that, nor were we warned of the pitfalls possible. I spent 4 years and a great deal of money to be no more prepared for the ‘real world’ than my freshman year. Sure, I had more confidence, and a lot more friends, but the reality of the situation was that I was left grossly unprepared. The most of what I learned from college about arts and rights regarding art were learned from reading and teaching myself, spending a ton of money at B&N and flailing about with my peers.
This doesn’t strike me as right.
Would you send a biologist out into the field without the base knowledge needed to perform in a job- how to use equipment, write reports & papers, etc? Hell no. But Art gets the short end of the stick because it’s ‘just art’.
http://grinding.be/ is a web blog I’m rapidly becoming addicted to. It’s a wonderfully creative, bizarre land of its own. Between it and Whitechapel’s ‘market’, you’ve got where I’ve been ‘hanging out’ as of late, between work and art, or while I’ve been drawing things. I’d give you some well-worded review of both sites, but it boils down to “Squee!Pictures!Textures!Ideas!” or “Squee!IntelligentDiscussion!Ideas!”
Trying to hunt down names for the characters in a projet I’m working on. Got the character’s image in my mind, along with their personalities, and voice, but no names. Gofig; I usually work in reverse, starting with the name…Sometimes when writing I feel like it’s more of a puzzle I’m completing, an image rather than a collection of words.
I’m also trying to hunt down images of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease(CJD) and Kuru in the human brain… and rather lacking; I’ve got a few low-res MRI images, some cellular slides, but what I’m trying to hunt down right now is a side-view, hopefully with comparison to a normal brain.
Just happened to be catching up on the blogosphere, and saw THIS at posterwire; an Indiana Jones Kingdom of the Crystal Skull poster post. Mmm. Indy. Though one thing bugs me- is it just me or does the ominous skull in the background lack a propper nose?
I’ve been a fan of Indiana Jones for a while, and I’m not sure if I’m more fearful, anxious or excited about the upcomming movie. The Indiana Jones movies were a large part of my childhood, and it’ll be interesting to see how the new movie shapes up, compared to my childhood recollections.
