Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Loomis on Beauty
It is surprisingly rare to hear Beauty being discussed in books and articles about art, so it was a great pleasure to find this paragraph in the book I recently acquired.
"I cannot believe that the artist who establishes beauty as his fundamental approach to art can go very far wrong. No one denies that beauty is broad in scope, so broad that no single lifetime could encompass more than a small part of it. The great danger lies in allowing beauty to get bogged down in personal opinions, trends, and isms, in narrowing our individual understanding to the dogmas prated by the few. Beauty must be free, belonging individually to you and me, as far as we are capable of grasping it. Beauty is all around us, waiting to be discovered, and every artist interprets it on paper or canvas in his own particular way."
- Andrew Loomis, The Eye Of The Painter
"I cannot believe that the artist who establishes beauty as his fundamental approach to art can go very far wrong. No one denies that beauty is broad in scope, so broad that no single lifetime could encompass more than a small part of it. The great danger lies in allowing beauty to get bogged down in personal opinions, trends, and isms, in narrowing our individual understanding to the dogmas prated by the few. Beauty must be free, belonging individually to you and me, as far as we are capable of grasping it. Beauty is all around us, waiting to be discovered, and every artist interprets it on paper or canvas in his own particular way."
- Andrew Loomis, The Eye Of The Painter
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Artists and audiences
Here's a thought:
If an artist wants to be commercially successful, he has to learn to take the viewpoint of an audience.
For example, to a painter, a painting may be an experiment in lines and shapes. But to his customers, a painting is decoration for the home.
If he forgets his own viewpoint, he may become rich, but may also become unhappy because he feels he has never fully used his power. If he never remembers the audience's viewpoint, he may become self-satisfied, but poor and unhappy because almost nobody "understands him".
If he can successfully combine the two viewpoints, that's a great start.
If an artist wants to be commercially successful, he has to learn to take the viewpoint of an audience.
For example, to a painter, a painting may be an experiment in lines and shapes. But to his customers, a painting is decoration for the home.
If he forgets his own viewpoint, he may become rich, but may also become unhappy because he feels he has never fully used his power. If he never remembers the audience's viewpoint, he may become self-satisfied, but poor and unhappy because almost nobody "understands him".
If he can successfully combine the two viewpoints, that's a great start.
MS email woes
Adam Engst sez:
"Be careful what you put in email, my mother always said, because it could end up on the front page of the New York Times. Clearly, Microsoft wasn't listening to my mother ..."
The funny thing is, they've been through exactly the same thing before, less than ten years ago, in the monopoly court case fiasco. It seems they don't learn so fast. Encryption, dudes, if you have to write about sensitive things.
"Be careful what you put in email, my mother always said, because it could end up on the front page of the New York Times. Clearly, Microsoft wasn't listening to my mother ..."
The funny thing is, they've been through exactly the same thing before, less than ten years ago, in the monopoly court case fiasco. It seems they don't learn so fast. Encryption, dudes, if you have to write about sensitive things.
Pixar shorts, Ratatouille, and Blue-ray
I hope pixar will soon release their back catalogue in Blue-ray. I just bought a package deal of Ratatoo... taratuill.... the new one*, bundled with all the Shorts so far, and I watched the latter today. It looks great, and I was on the floor watching the newest one, "Lifted" from 2007, about a very sound sleeper and the aliens trying to abduct him. Priceless stuff. One small, cute detail: the error beep that the alien's huge computer makes is the "hero" sound on Mac OS X. :)
I'm looking forward to The Incredibles and Monsters Inc coming on Blue-ray.
*Update: the design and rendering on Ratatouille is amazing. For example, one of the human characters fall in the river, and for a while afterwards he is wet, and he is really wet. His hair, his skin, his clothes, all of it radiates wetness. It's clear they made a major study of how wet things look, and how to replicate it in CGI.
In fact I think they now can make environments and some animals which are very hard to distinguish from live action. I am wondering how long it takes before this includes human figures. How long until they can insert at 100% CGI-created scene into a movie, and nobody notices?
(Update: in fact, when watching Ratatouille, I sometimes really feel like I'm watching live action, especially the scenery. This is the first time ever this has happened. It's very impressive.)
I also greatly admire Pixar for setting the movie in Paris. After all the survival of the company depends upon American sales, and the movie was planned about three years ago (four?), when American anti-French sentiments were high. Very gutsy move.
... OK, I looked it up, actually the genesis of the film was in 2001, but they still chose to follow through on it.
Update 19/3: Once again I have to comment on how embarrassingly immature the high-def format is, even in 2008. This morning I've spent ten minutes (so far!) trying to start up the Ratatouille disk and find the place where I left off last night. (I can't leave the player off, the danged thing shuts down after a few minutes.) Copyright warnings, Disney trailers and promotions, same for pixar, menu animations, multi-second delays before the machine reacts, buttons that sometimes work and sometimes don't, cryptic labeling, mysterious stalls with black screen, a top menu suddenly appearing without any buttons on it, multi-minute wait times for the disk to load, and then multi-minute waits again after the trailers are laboriously dismissed one at a time... Frankly, this disc/player combination have passed beyond simply Embarrassing and entered solidly into Infuriating territory.
Seriously, what the h*ll? I realize it's pretty new technology, but even ten years ago, DVD players were never this bad or slow, and high-def is basically just DVDs at four times the resolution.
If you wanna wait until 2009 to invest in Blue-ray, I won't be the one to blame you.
I'm looking forward to The Incredibles and Monsters Inc coming on Blue-ray.
*Update: the design and rendering on Ratatouille is amazing. For example, one of the human characters fall in the river, and for a while afterwards he is wet, and he is really wet. His hair, his skin, his clothes, all of it radiates wetness. It's clear they made a major study of how wet things look, and how to replicate it in CGI.
In fact I think they now can make environments and some animals which are very hard to distinguish from live action. I am wondering how long it takes before this includes human figures. How long until they can insert at 100% CGI-created scene into a movie, and nobody notices?
(Update: in fact, when watching Ratatouille, I sometimes really feel like I'm watching live action, especially the scenery. This is the first time ever this has happened. It's very impressive.)
I also greatly admire Pixar for setting the movie in Paris. After all the survival of the company depends upon American sales, and the movie was planned about three years ago (four?), when American anti-French sentiments were high. Very gutsy move.
... OK, I looked it up, actually the genesis of the film was in 2001, but they still chose to follow through on it.
Update 19/3: Once again I have to comment on how embarrassingly immature the high-def format is, even in 2008. This morning I've spent ten minutes (so far!) trying to start up the Ratatouille disk and find the place where I left off last night. (I can't leave the player off, the danged thing shuts down after a few minutes.) Copyright warnings, Disney trailers and promotions, same for pixar, menu animations, multi-second delays before the machine reacts, buttons that sometimes work and sometimes don't, cryptic labeling, mysterious stalls with black screen, a top menu suddenly appearing without any buttons on it, multi-minute wait times for the disk to load, and then multi-minute waits again after the trailers are laboriously dismissed one at a time... Frankly, this disc/player combination have passed beyond simply Embarrassing and entered solidly into Infuriating territory.
Seriously, what the h*ll? I realize it's pretty new technology, but even ten years ago, DVD players were never this bad or slow, and high-def is basically just DVDs at four times the resolution.
If you wanna wait until 2009 to invest in Blue-ray, I won't be the one to blame you.
Jade drawing
Jade and Judy are visiting today. Here is Jade drawing.
I was struck by her profile.
Again this is the little Canon Ixus 960. It is awesome. This is indoors at 1/30th second, no flash, and it's pin-sharp due to the image stabilization.
I was struck by her profile.
Again this is the little Canon Ixus 960. It is awesome. This is indoors at 1/30th second, no flash, and it's pin-sharp due to the image stabilization.
I'm quite pleased with this one. And I printed it out big (40cm X 60cm) for her mom.
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And by the way, if Jade ever starts a photographic career, I have her very earliest efforts: I lend her my camera today, and this is one of the results.
And here is her very first photo ever, featuring the first painting I'd made in many years, in 2006.
By the way, you'll notice that Image Stabilization works great even with a photographer of such tender age.
-------
And by the way, if Jade ever starts a photographic career, I have her very earliest efforts: I lend her my camera today, and this is one of the results.
And here is her very first photo ever, featuring the first painting I'd made in many years, in 2006.
By the way, you'll notice that Image Stabilization works great even with a photographer of such tender age.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Curse of Blondie
I was vaguely aware that one of my favorite bands from the seventies, Blondie was playing again. But I had not figured they would be doing anything really noteworthy.
Fortunately I took a chance and bought a couple of their new CDs, and it turns out that The Curse of Blondie is really good. It contains several tracks which one may consider amongst their best ever. For example Background Melody, Magic, and Rules for Living, just wonderful songs.
I warmly recommend this album, and I think it's awesome that people who have been in the music business for thirty years can rise up and create something this fresh and strong.
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By the way, thank you to those people who have told me when a post or review of mine have spurred them to get a film/book/CD, it's good to get feedback.
Living a dream
It's an old idea basically, and we may even have had it mentioned around here before, but it's in interesting idea. It boils down to: if we and the universe are not real, how could we possibly know about it? By the nature of things, since it would be a closed system, it can't be proven or disproven.
Fame and misfortune
Lindsay Lohan's 14-year-old sister wants to be famous. "I want it so bad you don't even know," she says.
She has seen the track of her sister, and yet she wants that. Sometimes I despair of the intelligence of humans.
She has seen the track of her sister, and yet she wants that. Sometimes I despair of the intelligence of humans.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Gold rush
There's a gold rush going on. Here's a comment from Hans Lysglimt. (In case you get the impression he's against gold, here's another interesting comment.)
One of the things it took me a while to learn is that there's a difference between investing and speculation. Investing is well-considered and happens over decades. Speculating is not much different than gambling. The main difference is that in gambling, the randomness factor and the rule that the house always wins is much more out in the open. And yet even in gambling you'll see lots and lots of people who think that their god-given luck or their "system" will allow them to beat the house.
Maybe sometimes they do. But do they walk away then? No, because gambling is addictive. And similarly, the ones who win in speculating are the dealers. They take a couple of percent off each trade while the speculators keep chasing the Prize around, trying to Time The Market.
It might be fun, but don't play with money you can't afford to lose, because even the best speculators in the world, who spend all their time studying markets and companies, have lost money, and big.
One of the things it took me a while to learn is that there's a difference between investing and speculation. Investing is well-considered and happens over decades. Speculating is not much different than gambling. The main difference is that in gambling, the randomness factor and the rule that the house always wins is much more out in the open. And yet even in gambling you'll see lots and lots of people who think that their god-given luck or their "system" will allow them to beat the house.
Maybe sometimes they do. But do they walk away then? No, because gambling is addictive. And similarly, the ones who win in speculating are the dealers. They take a couple of percent off each trade while the speculators keep chasing the Prize around, trying to Time The Market.
It might be fun, but don't play with money you can't afford to lose, because even the best speculators in the world, who spend all their time studying markets and companies, have lost money, and big.
Commenting
I'll just repeat the note in the header:
You don't have to log in to comment, use the "other" button.
I request using a name instead of Anonymous, and putting quoted text in quotes.
Many are confused about this, but really, you don't have to register with Google or Blogger just to make comments on blogs.
You don't have to log in to comment, use the "other" button.
I request using a name instead of Anonymous, and putting quoted text in quotes.
Many are confused about this, but really, you don't have to register with Google or Blogger just to make comments on blogs.
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