art made of books - a four part post

1. a lot of people on the blogosphere have posted about brian dettmer's book autopsies, with good reason... very meticulous. some of them are boring in terms of what is revealed, but the technique is gold. also love this one.


2. also worth mentioning is georgia russell's work. the gun below is atypical of her work (UPDATE: actually the work of robert the as this page confirms! only the very shredded work on my link is hers), but i find the title/form juxtaposition really funny. robert the does a few cool pieces with books linked into chains.


3. on a more functional tip, jim rosenau takes the floating book shelf idea a step further with humorous contextual elements, and sometimes other objects, although his are more obviously shelves. he even makes some classic bookcases out of encyclopedia sets... i would build one if we had the space for that style of shelf.


4. finally, if you want to get rid of old books, but don't want to spend the time on crafting them into something else, you can trade them for books you want very easily through paperbackswap.com. just for joining, you get three free credits (at least thats how it was when we joined a couple years ago.) you can use a credit to have any book listed on the system sent to you, free of charge. you can create a wishlist, and whenever a book from your wishlist appears, you are notified, and can have it sent. you can list the books you have, and if anyone requests them, paperbackswap will print a mailing label and calculate the exact postage, so you can mail them from your mailbox... we used it to trade crappy romance novels from the trash for great books, like those featured in the art & imagination series. note: there are other sites like this, but i can endorse paperbackswap having used it...

(UPDATE: my sister had difficulties using this site because she's a minor... she recommended bookmooch)

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further obama endorsement

a few caveats before you take this endorsement the wrong way:

1. i think a lot of the clinton hate is ridiculous. she's just beholden to corporate interests, focus-grouped to death, strategic and ambitious. so is obama, he just pulls it off better, and more honestly.

2. i think the entire electoral process, from the money, to the delegates to the two-party stranglehold to be a human rights violation and preposterous. the countries founders must be vomiting in their graves.

3. i think the current incarnation of the u.s. goverment and it's neo-conservative capitalist cronies are continuing to be the best argument against (coerced) capitalism and (coerced) government.

4. i think that real change, hope or health has to come from ourselves, not elected officials. they can only facilitate our own illumination, not be the cause of it.


so for years i was a clinton supporter. i am a radical (though not "seperatist"), sex-positive, anarcho-feminist, and in a (maybe sexist way) truly wanted a woman in the white house. i felt a woman would have a much better chance than any man to address the rampant sexist heirarchy in u.s. policy, domestic and foreign. it was a good enough reason to support clinton, although there were others... she is obviously a hard-worker, erudite, and not afraid of adversity... good qualities in a leader.

also, i'm sure that she and bill have an AMAZING little black book, with at least a few shady entries that might come in handy in the oval office.

however, over time she has exhibited certain behaviors that show concerning qualities in a leader. she has dodged fairly simple questions, or given answers that insult the intelligence of the voter. she has been overstated her role in various foreign policy events, and almost certainly lied about policy stances, such as her position on NAFTA. she is also unlikely to win the pledged delegate count or the popular vote, but may win more superdelegates. however, a win like that would overturn the popular vote, and would be just as bad as bush being selected by the supreme court in my opinion.

most heinously, she has claimed the john mccain and herself have passed the commander-in-chief test, but not obama. this begs the question, does hillary really prefer john mccain as president to obama? even though he jokes (JOKES!) about bombing iran, even though he says we could be in iraq for 100 years? is that really what a commander in chief is supposed to be like? shame on you, hillary clinton.

obama catching flack for reverend wright is ridiculous. many people are doing a good job refuting these issues. he's hardly any more fringe than any republican candidate's pastor.

finally, obama has pledged to have a dialogue with cuba's new leader, where as hillary won't even meet with whoever it is. it's a little thing, but it represents a bigger idea. the u.s. has reacted unilaterally for too long, claims diplomacy as a principle, but rarely is diplomatic in practice. you have to keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. people knew that over two thousand years ago.

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i endorse this message

i'll explain in depth sometime why i'm voting and encouraging others to vote for obama, but this video should contain the gist of it.

DOWNLOAD THIS HERE...

(mp3)fosforo - cumbia de obama

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happy spring!

this is a 13cm tall crabapple tree (with at least 13 crab-apples) from a beautiful gallery of mini-bonsai trees. for more amazing bonsai, check out man lung penjing bonsai landscapes.

anyway, tonight is the vernal equinox, and as such is the beginning of spring. get your garden on! we ordered some great organic seeds and bare-root trees. if you don't have a lot of space, try the square foot garden. my friend swears by the grow wall. we're just gonna use our roof, as our new building doesn't have a yard.

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tom friedman like

a collection of someone's incredibly precise carvings of pencils. reminds me of the pencil work of tom friedman (not the new york times columnist.). i can't find a picture of it, but friedman once used a pencil sharpener to create one continuous spiral out of a pencil... beautiful. another pencil piece he made that boggles the mind is an image of a pencil in exaggerated perspective made from pressing powdered pencil on a wall! maybe someday i'll scan some of his work. if you can't wait, this is the best tom friedman book. he's one of those artists that it really helps to read the fine print next to the piece or you may miss what's so interesting about it.

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arthur c clarke... dies tommorow

it's funny. for about two weeks now i've been running into (and said) "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," a famous quote from arthur c. clarke and part of clarke's three laws of prediction (a must-click).


he dies at age 90 tommorow. seriously, because it's the 19th in sri lanka, where he is/was. he wrote "2001 : a space odyssey", which we will rip off for our new building, calling it "5001 : an odd space" (it's 5001 penn avenue.)

he also said "religion is a brain disease"... which can be true, but isn't always, so it seems less rigorous than some of his other ideas... anyway aethiests have long been viewed to be just as unquestioning in their beliefs (or "faithful") as believers. both kind of creep me out unless they can consider the alternative, or at least laugh about it. the absence of humor terrifies me most when combined with any strong opinion.

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freaky video from gizmodo

freaky animal-movement like robot... fast forward in a little to see someone kick it. wow. funded by the scary folks at darpa of course.



this video is much more fun. an old-school unicycle with some heavy gyroscopic action... ican't figure out how to embed the video, so here is a picture of a similar device:


gizmodo cares about gizmos. i found it from popurls, which collects on one site popular links from several social bookmarking services like delicious, metafilter, reddit, digg and the like...

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new shackleton opus

"death is not final, it's only a misunderstanding of time..."
he's been influenced a little by all the attention from the techno world, but not to bad effect.

(mp3) shackleton feat. vengeance tenford - "death is not final" from a 12" on skull disco

the remix is hot too, you can find it on various music blogs.

we can all rejoice now that i can upload things larger than 10 mb. maybe someday i'll update all the old links to mediafire.com like the one above. the only detriment is you can't listen like on box.net. preferences, people?

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about the header

so that isn't really a gazelle, it's an antelope (a kudu bull to be specific). as far as i can tell, all gazelles are antelopes (bovidae), but not all antelopes are gazelles. it's also not veiled, per se, it just goes off the edge... peering over with knowing eyes... the face is really quite serene in the original, but the title dictated the crop.

the font is the unfortunately named "bleeding cowboys". it's free from dafont.com, which has TONS of other free fonts, some of which are quite spectacular. i think the G is beautiful and it's cool how the two Ts in "that" look like two horns.

the geometry is based on the dodecahedron, of which one view can be constructed from a pentagon fairly easily. there is a fairly thorough breakdown of the mystical significance of the dodecahedron, five-sided symmetry, and basic sacred geometry here.

i used the dodecahedron because i often describe my various interests as "various sides of the dodecahedron of existence"... which isn't to say that reality is twelve-sided specifically (although hemoglobin and chlorophyll are), but just many sided, and one must observe the facets to begin to understand the core.

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the tortoise of time...

banyan trees are truly awesome. photo comes from a small collection of things eaten by trees.

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bass pt. 3

the motherload... dubstep. don't bother listening if you don't have speakers or headphones with good bass output. you'll miss the root of the issue.


you might have heard about it. even the new york times had to talk about it. it's usually fast (150 bpm) and also slow (75 bpm) at the same time, with a mix of woofer-wrecking bass, dark textures, and diverse vocals ranging from dancehall toasting to grime rap to singing (or all of the above.) it crosses through drum n bass, twostep garage, minimal house/techno, hip hop, reggae dancehall, ambient music and world beat. a little bit of everything for the bass-lover.

(mp3) loefah - "disko rekah"
starting off real easy with a nice dubstep tune that shows the form well. sparse beats, deep bass, and basic synths and vocals (in this case a sample of busta rhymes).

(mp3) boxcutter - "glyphic"
this is sort of the other end of the spectrum, a really elaborate dubstep tune with a couple different sections, instrumental layering, great melody. this is the title track from my favorite album of 2007. the album has all kinds of different genres representing, all surrounding the amalgam that is dubstep.

(mp3) burial - "gutted"
this tune makes me misty. not sad, just nostalgic for the love of bass music. btw, burial's second album, "untrue" was universally loved by the critics. i find it boring, repetetive, and unnecessarily simple compared to his excellent self-titled debut.

(mp3) milanese - "reading you"
this comes off of planet mu's great 200th release compilation. it's a nice example of dubstep with more traditional pop vocals.

(mp3) pinch - "get up" feat. yolanda
this tune shows the link to twostep garage music, the more housey side of dubstep's origin. it's from the album "underwater dancehall", which is a close runner up for last year's best, featuring great vocal work from brooklyn-based juakali.

(mp3) kode9 & spaceape - "quantum"
spaceape's vocals remind me of mutabaraka, but more cyborg. kode9 is one of the early dubstep producers, and their combined album "memories of the future" is in my top ten dubstep albums of all time.

(mp3) benga - "combs 60"
this is the first dubstep track that really caught my attention, made me fall in love. it's really simple, even repetitive, but i give a lot of props to benga overall... check out his album "newstep".

(mp3) shackleton - "blood on my hands" (ricardo villalobos remix pt. 1)
this tune is a remix that marked the awareness of dubstep by more traditional 4-on-the-floor electronic music, in this case minimal techno royalty, ricardo villalobos. shackleton is on the more mystical side of the whole dubstep scene, deeply influenced by middle eastern instrumentation. in my opinion if he learned how to play some of those instruments instead of sampling he could rule the music world (but in the meantime i'll play them for him if he wants!) btw, i would have uploaded the original, but it's over my 10 mb space limit. there is a video here of the original with o.k. sound.

well now you can listen to dubstep. learn yerself. this is just a smattering of the many talented artists out there...

you can go listen to a bunch of others (and more full tracks of the same) at last.fm's dubstep archive. i also like pinch, skream, digital mystikz, bass clef, geeneus, d1, the bug, drop the lime, sub version, luke envoy, warrior queen, scuba, appleblim and neil landstrumm (his album, "resturaunt of the assassins" is challenging, but super-awesome...)

btw, if anyone knows who drew the image above, i'd love to credit them. it basically captures the future envisioned by dubstep. the holy war of sound, liberating the lower frequencies. the cultural machine complex.

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