Categories
Aesthetics

Geek Aesthetics 4

Mr. T pities the fool who doesn’t believe in art for art’s sake.

All your plinths are belong to us.

Damien Hirst roundhouse kicked a shark so hard that the water around it turned to glass. He sold it to Saatchi as “The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living”.

If you had an infinite number of Jake and Dinos Chapmans at easels they would eventually produce the complete works of Goya. Only they would suck.

Not art: a urinal. Art: a signed urinal. Duchamp: a signed urinal that the admissions committe for an open exhibition refuse to accept, despite saying they’ll take work form anyone who pays the admission fee.

Categories
Free Culture

Students for a Free Tibet : Google Alternatives

Students for a Free Tibet : Google Alternatives

Google don’t have to want to be evil. They just have to create resources that evil can use.

Categories
Aesthetics Generative Art

: : Speak Up > Computer = Fart, or Digital Immersion Is Not Design : :

: : Speak Up > Computer = Fart, or Digital Immersion Is Not Design : :

Whenever someone asks me what they need to know in order to go into design, I always give the same answer.

You need to be able to draw.

You don’t need to be Leonardo, God knows I’m not, you just need to be able to move a marker over a sheet of A4. Because if you can’t then you won’t be able to abstract your ideas away from the medium you will have to realise them in. And you will become a slave of the medium rather than its master, starting from a point of limitation rather than an area of potential.

Categories
Free Culture

Freedom Of Expression

Norm: Here’s a statement by the UK branch of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and five other organizations in defence of freedom of expression

Categories
Aesthetics

Pirate Vs. Ninja (1)

A ninja drops caltrops in the path of a pirate. The pirate has a peg leg, and so hops though the caltrops unaffected. He slashes at the ninja with his cutlass. But the ninja has disappeared in a puff of smoke. The pirate cleaves the smoke with his blade to no effect.

Categories
Aesthetics

An Excerpt From A Recounting Of An Adventure By Baron Munchausen

“And so, ” said the Baron “the ringing of my diving bell allowed me to lift from the ocean floor the heaviest pearl ever discovered. I later had it made into a brooch by the finest craftsmen in the land.”

“But Baron, ” interjected the host, “surely such a weighty trinket could never actually be worn. It would be worthless!”

The Baron paused but for a moment.

“My dear sir, as you know, the defining characteristic of art is its inutility. The value of art is therefore in direct and inverse proportion to its utility. Given that a pearl brooch of unwearable weight must be entirely useless, its artistic value must therefore be infinite.”

Categories
Free Culture

Free Culture UK Newsletter

Free Culture UK are starting a bi-weekly newsletter for free culture events and information of interest in the UK. We need your event announcements, article links, and news alerts. We’re getting the first one together here:

http://www.freeculture.org.uk/CategoryNewsletter

If you’re involved with something that isn’t listed then this is down to ignorance rather than malice on our part, so help us fix it! If you don’t want to hack the fc-uk wiki, email Tom Chance, email me, or email the fc-uk list and we’ll put your item in if it’s relevent.

Categories
Aesthetics

Geek Aesthetics 3

Jeff Koons doesn’t sleep. He waits.

Your dog wants relational aesthetics.

Leonardo has a posse.

I, for one, welcome our new badly painted found image overlords.

Categories
Free Culture

Free Culture Roundup

As the UK government reviews patent and copyright law to boost Britain’s creative economy, Becky Hogge says democratic access to knowledge ought to benefit too.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/free_culture_3266.jsp

Rowan Wilson of OSS Watch, fresh from the GPL v3 Launch event at MIT, will attempt to explain what is being planned, how it will be carried out, and how you can have your say in the consultation process.

Roads to Freedom: The Making of the GNU General Public License Version 3, Oxford, 17 February 2006

(OK, bit late there).

Transcription of the launch event of the GPL 3.0 draft:

http://www.ifso.ie/documents/gplv3-launch-2006-01-16.html 

Categories
Projects

Creative Block

I don’t think I really have a creative block. Just not enough time and too much real life stress.

I was going to do some image remixing this month but that is turning out to be a bigger project than I thought. I’ll have to take more time to prepare it thoroughly. I’m also very concerned that it must not be an academic or merely political exercise. If bad art comes from the best of intentions, illustrating theory makes for abject drivel.

I’d like to do more on draw-something, ahead of schedule. The colour images and the valentines hacks show how well it is coming on. But I need to know what draw-something is going to do next. Maybe better colour, maybe better composition, maybe better forms. Maybe I should just get on with it.

I think I will retreat to my sketchbook for a while. And maybe blog a little. Sitting at the Wacom staring at a blank screen isn’t helping. 🙂