Friday Ephemera
This plane is about to crash. // What to do with a naked male model and 28 cans of shaving cream? // Adorable toy butcher’s shop, circa 1900. // The Xiying rainbow bridge, Taiwan. // Yo-yos in microgravity. // Sea dragon babies. // Fun with strobes and video capture. // Calculating machines of yore. See them calculate. // What government waste? // Why parents rarely want their children to be artists. // Designer axe. // Sound design of The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. For more, see here. // Why Superman Returns is a terrible, terrible film. Will Man of Steel be better? // Chinese bootleg Avengers subtitles leave much to be desired.
Yehey! This will be a good friday.
My own contribution, Real, Important, Science set to the Blue Danube;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFzWJ6P2iyY
Woho!
-S
She’s back, she’s black, and she is not amused: http://youtu.be/dc1xrKLlOwo
That ‘Avengers’ subtitling! “My next goal – I need a bait and eyeliner!”
*boggle*
Julia,
“My next goal – I need a bait and eyeliner!”
Eyeliner is essential for evil-doing, obviously. Rocky needs his make-up to take over the world.
I also liked the argument over who sweats the most.
And this is very… Zen.
While this speaks for itself.
Hulk smash puny subtitles.
I have a proposal for an art project. I will punch Ovidiu Anton in the face repeatedly. I will count the number of punches he takes before he is knocked unconscious. I will do this daily to see if he builds up a resistance to punches. (Art AND science!)
Shame on me.
CharlieSays,
One of Mr Anton’s earlier, um, works involved stealing a piece of timber from a construction site and changing its dimensions. (From 406 x 10cm to 285 x 14cm, since you ask.) He then returned it to the construction site. For art.
So, all things considered, I think you should use a bludgeon of some kind. Something quite substantial and possibly on fire.
Spider chases a laser pointer.
http://youtu.be/pDJ0hjxXy0w
Why parents rarely want their children to be artists.
Let me guess. Taxpayer’s money?
rjmadden,
“Let me guess. Taxpayer’s money?”
Mr Anton’s “micro-interventions in public space” have received the Styrian Funding Award for Contemporary Fine Arts and two grants from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture.
So yes.
“Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture”
So, that’s like one of those “Ministry of Truth” kind of organizational names, then.
“Spider chases a laser pointer.”
Awwww, I love videos like tha…
Wait. When you typed ‘spider’ you really meant ‘kitten’, I hope..?
Why parents rarely want their children to be artists.
“Mom, dad… thanks for spending all that money on my art degree.
It took me four years to realize I don’t have any talent so I’m going to combine my OCD with shoplifting.
I’ll call it a ‘micro-intervention in public space’.
I’m going to get it paid for with your taxes.”
“You’re proud of me, right?”
Sam,
“You’re proud of me, right?”
Heh. Actually, I’d imagine that screwing the taxpayer is widely regarded as a marker of virtue and something to be proud of. If, say, the Arts Council gives a peddler of drek £20,000 of someone else’s money, I suppose this is viewed as some kind of validation. Which is a little odd, as Arts Council funding often denotes tat of so little value no-one will pay for it directly and voluntarily.
“Actually, I’d imagine that screwing the taxpayer is widely regarded as a marker of virtue “. Has been for going on two generations now. When I was a college freshman there was a guy who lived in our dorm who was in his early 30’s. It was widely expressed how “cool” this guy was because he was scamming the system. I expressed a different point of view after which I decided it was best that I keep my sense of self-respect to my self.
WTP,
“It was widely expressed how ‘cool’ this guy was because he was scamming the system.”
A while ago, a minor member of our cultural nomenklatura paid a brief visit to this blog to denounce our mockery of an attempt to induce a seizure onstage, supposedly as an artistic performance. She told us that the coercive funding of such tat is “the joy of a democracy” – a strange claim to make, given that the public has no say at all in what gets funded or why. Nor does the public’s lack of interest in such projects have any impact on whether other, equally fatuous and uninteresting projects get commissioned at their expense. Her final argument – one she considered devastating – was that the state spends our money on winter fuel payments for the elderly and therefore – yes, therefore – talentless hustlers should be bankrolled by the taxpayer.
The notion that there is only so much tax money and so much good will – and that therefore one shouldn’t piss it away quite so frivolously – didn’t seem to figure in her thinking. Again, bankrolling the most absurd flummery was regarded as a legitimate function of the welfare state and a marker of civilisation. The assumption of entitlement to other people’s earnings, taken forcibly, was apparently unshakable. And those who took exception, even by laughing, were imagined to be scandalised by a “radical,” “important” and “transgressive” artist “pushing the boundaries” of art. And so the belief seems to be that even if one can’t defend a given work on aesthetic terms, one can still pretend that it’s shocking – or at least faintly obnoxious – and therefore, somehow, important.