Good luck to Your Daily Awesome
11/22/07 Filed in: Ideas
I was sad to read that the blog Your Daily
Awesome has come to an end, as it is one
of my daily favorites. But I love that YDA's last
post was this clip "A History of Texas" from David
Byrne's movie True Stories. This movie
was my quirky introduction to living in Texas and
I knew that I had to buy the dvd when we moved to
Houston. Numerous times I have quoted moments from
True Stories to someone in passing and it
is comforting to know there are others out there
who recognize the odd brilliance of this film!
Good luck to you Mr.YDA & thanks for all the
great bits this year.
visualblogging
10/25/07 Filed in: Art
To help ease homesickness and domestic urges, I have the blog 3191 set as my homepage. Each day Stephanie and Mav post a new set of images, although they live 3191 miles apart.
blog time
05/30/07 Filed in: Ideas
Last night I was talking with a friend who innocently
asked "Who has TIME to read blogs?" Sheepishly I
thought ‘worse yet, who has TIME to post to a blog?’
Rather than sit around for too long feeling like I
lacked an action packed life, I starting to think
about how this blog, or blogging in general,
originated. Is there a link to connect the creation
of a blog to the tradition of committed
correspondence/ Pen Pals and Mail Art, perhaps by
taking a slight detour through public access/
community television?
The computer made it possible to make multiple copies of a letter, allowing the writer to create group letters and mini communities of receivers. The writer and mail artist Lex Bhagat brilliantly utilized the group letter, often to the chagrin of the recipients who wanted individually tailored missives. The CC of an email, the inclusive cousin of the BCC has replaced the printed group letter. The BCC is abused in the business world, often as a way to cover one’s own ass.
Mail Art made creative use of the Postal Service and was an "art movement" whose heyday was between the 1950s and the 1960s. This network of artists was subverting (or simply uninterested in) the commercial gallery system. These artists created a system of exchange that based on generosity, and to some degree totally self motivated and involved. The ephemera of Mail Art took the form of letters, illustrated envelopes, postcards, and friendship books amongst other forms. It could be anything, as long as you could put a stamp on it!
The group of artists most associated with Mail Art was the Fluxus movement and Ray Johnson is sometimes called the 'Father of Mail Art.' In the early 1970s the brave curator, Marcia Tucker, organized an exhibition at the Whitney Museum that was instigated by Ray Johnson. This exhibition and subsequent shows during the 70s helped create official sounding names like "The New York Correspondence School," to describe the group of mail artists communicating with Johnson.
Mail Art also created the sense of a ore interconnected "Global World" which corresponded with theories being espoused at that time by Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller. Mail art also allowed many non-Western artists to develop lasting artistic relationships with artists based in New York and European.
This type of DIY spirited networking also trickled into the publishing industry and was embraced in the creation of the 'The Whole Earth Catalog' which was distribution between 1968 and 1972. This DIY catalog was intended to provide education and 'tools' that would enable the reader to "shape his/her own environment." While obviously utopian, this catalog was deeply influential on the 'Back to the land' movement and entire counterculture of the 1960s. Steve Jobs, the entrepreneur behind Apple Computers, said this networked catalog was the conceptual forerunner of a Web search engine. "When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great ideas."
Last year the beautifully designed book 'Worldchanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century" was published and in New York Times Review of Books was called "The Whole Earth Catalog retooled for the iPod Generation." You can save some cash by just spending time on their website.
More to come... I have run out of TIME.
But for now we know just who has time to read blogs- You!
The computer made it possible to make multiple copies of a letter, allowing the writer to create group letters and mini communities of receivers. The writer and mail artist Lex Bhagat brilliantly utilized the group letter, often to the chagrin of the recipients who wanted individually tailored missives. The CC of an email, the inclusive cousin of the BCC has replaced the printed group letter. The BCC is abused in the business world, often as a way to cover one’s own ass.
Mail Art made creative use of the Postal Service and was an "art movement" whose heyday was between the 1950s and the 1960s. This network of artists was subverting (or simply uninterested in) the commercial gallery system. These artists created a system of exchange that based on generosity, and to some degree totally self motivated and involved. The ephemera of Mail Art took the form of letters, illustrated envelopes, postcards, and friendship books amongst other forms. It could be anything, as long as you could put a stamp on it!
The group of artists most associated with Mail Art was the Fluxus movement and Ray Johnson is sometimes called the 'Father of Mail Art.' In the early 1970s the brave curator, Marcia Tucker, organized an exhibition at the Whitney Museum that was instigated by Ray Johnson. This exhibition and subsequent shows during the 70s helped create official sounding names like "The New York Correspondence School," to describe the group of mail artists communicating with Johnson.
Mail Art also created the sense of a ore interconnected "Global World" which corresponded with theories being espoused at that time by Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller. Mail art also allowed many non-Western artists to develop lasting artistic relationships with artists based in New York and European.
This type of DIY spirited networking also trickled into the publishing industry and was embraced in the creation of the 'The Whole Earth Catalog' which was distribution between 1968 and 1972. This DIY catalog was intended to provide education and 'tools' that would enable the reader to "shape his/her own environment." While obviously utopian, this catalog was deeply influential on the 'Back to the land' movement and entire counterculture of the 1960s. Steve Jobs, the entrepreneur behind Apple Computers, said this networked catalog was the conceptual forerunner of a Web search engine. "When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great ideas."
Last year the beautifully designed book 'Worldchanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century" was published and in New York Times Review of Books was called "The Whole Earth Catalog retooled for the iPod Generation." You can save some cash by just spending time on their website.
More to come... I have run out of TIME.
But for now we know just who has time to read blogs- You!