▲Visual Arts▼

"Our ability to conceptualize our own end creates tremendous psychic strains within us; in each man’s chest a tiny ferret of fear at this ultimate knowledge gnaws away at his ego and his sense of purpose. If man really sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. \\ The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; as a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong -- and lucky -- he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s elan. He can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining." - Adriano

Happy Birthday ! LIFE photos from the set of 2001, http://life.time.com/culture... -- "there’s something about Kubrick’s strange, insular onscreen universe that commands our attention. 2001 remains one of those exceedingly rare works of art that feels intrinsically indifferent: indifferent to the usual laws of filmmaking; indifferent to criticism (or praise)." - Adriano

Difference between chemistry and cooking? Never lick the spoon, yolo :-) - Adriano

trivia: Walter White drives a tan 2004 Pontiac Aztek. It was discontinued after the 2005 model year -- criticized by George Ouzounian as the world's second ugliest car: "pilfering the Aztecs of their last remaining treasure, their name." #BreakingBad - Adriano

LOL - Sepi ⌘ سپی

trivia2: Save Walter White, http://www.savewalterwhite.com, is a *real* site -- check it out. Donations do not go the White family, but rather to the National Cancer Coalition. \\ White's budget as infographic: http://goo.gl/URpCA - Adriano

"People say my films are dark. But like lightness, darkness stems from a reflection of the world. The thing is, I get these ideas that I truly fall in love with. And a good movie idea is often like a girl you're in love with, but you know she's not the kind of girl you bring home to your parents, because they sometimes hold some dark and troubling things." - Adriano

"Nolan’s Bruce-Batman has oscillated between seemingly opposite poles, even as he’s always come out a superhero. He is savior and destroyer, human and beast, the ultimate radical individualist and people’s protector. Yet as the series evolved, this binary opposition has grown progressively messier, less discrete. In between juggling the cool bat toys, demure kisses, hard punches and loud bangs, Nolan has layered barely veiled references to terrorism, the surveillance state and vengeance as a moral imperative. His kinetic filmmaking pulses with realism and to the primal fear that the people could at any moment, as in the French Revolution, become the mob that drags the rest of us into chaos. Nolan shifts between a multitude of characters and as many locations without losing you, his narrative thread or momentum. His playfulness with the scenes-within-scenes in his last movie, "Inception," has paid off here -- the controlled fragmentation works on a pleasurable, purely cinematic level." - Adriano

cancelling this weekend... as Baudrillard would say, "it is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody -- it's rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself." - Adriano

"No ink. No pencils. Just shadows and light on folded white paper. German artist Simon Schubert creates gorgeous images of architectural masterpieces by folding plain, white cellulose paper. As a paper sculptor, Schubert is a master of shadow and light; the depth of each fold measures just millimeters, yet each one creates just enough shade to give them the illusion of palatial quarters. The huge empty rooms in Schubert’s works convey a feeling of isolation and loneliness. Inspired by Samuel Beckett, whose image was his first paper folding project, and Edgar Allen Poe, he sticks to themes mystery to “confront the viewer with his own subconscious fears and anxieties.”" - Adriano

These are amazing ... absolutely gorgeous and so detailed! - Sepi ⌘ سپی

Very cool. If Robb sees that he'll have to try I fear. He one built an amazing 3D paper sphere (out of manually cut out paper rings) for a pop up card... Best I dont show him. - Iphigenie

"Imagine sitting still for 16-20 hours while your body is the canvas for an airbrush masterpiece. Michael Rosner is an American artist with an incredible vision who uses his airbrush to transform organic materials, including humans, into brilliant works of art: subjects are metamorphosed into strikingly beautiful trans-human entities." - Adriano

"The whole street in covered in graffiti, and that means 100% of it!! Probably unique in the world..." - Adriano

"Upon entering the gallery, one is confronted by a hanging entanglement of blue bicycles, suspended in a metallic knot from a hook in the ceiling. Entitled "My Old Friend The Blues," this sculpture is composed of chains and bicycle parts scavenged from the streets of New York City, discarded and dejected, yet here given new life. The color, an incarnation of the title and the eponymous Neil Young song, “Into the Blue”, is that of melancholy, sadness and infinity. Hung in a dark hall like an inverted candelabra, it is surrounded by a ring of candles, forming something of a ritualistic shrine—a tribute to the triumphal power of art to reclaim and revive." - Adriano

"Orozco [in dark blue shirt] has created sculptural and photographic installations from the rubble he gathered on two sites in New York and in Baja California, Mexico. The objects that are displayed in a vitrine are detritus that Gabriel Orozco gathered at a playing field in New York City. Sandstars consists of 1,200 objects that now form a monumental sculptural carpet on the gallery floor. The sculptural work is accompanied by large-scale gridded photographs of images of the individual objects. Gabriel Orozco photographed the objects under natural lighting conditions in his studio and then arranged them according to their material, color, size, etc. Asterisms is the 18th and final project in the Deutsche Guggenheim's commission program that started in 1997." - Adriano

"A partir de la mort de sa mère, Sophie Calle a monté une exposition au Cloître des Célestins, à Avignon. Si vous avez de la chance, vous tomberez au moment où elle lit le journal intime de sa mère, morte en 2006. A part les pages publiées dans son livre aux éditions Xavier Barral et choisies par une amie, l'artiste assure qu'elle ne l'a pas lu avant et qu'elle le découvre en même temps que le public. Elle le fait sans prévenir, et elle lit autant qu'elle veut. Avec une seule contrainte : finir le journal (16 cahiers ) avant la fin de l'exposition." http://www.festival-avignon.com - Adriano

"The Ankonian is a more aggressive version of Lamborghini's supercar, the Reventón. Being black in colour, this concept looks as if it was inspired by a stealth jet fighter. It is not certain that the Ankonian will go into production." \\ Slideshow of the provocative Lamborghini Ankonian Concept Design by Slavche Tanevski : http://youtu.be/9vEc2JLnT78 - Adriano

"Almost everything about these large scale works serves to deceive our eye into thinking that they are images of real-life: the shadows, colors, bright spots of sunlight and reflections are nearly perfect in their realism. It’s an impressive feat of skill and patient dedication to the creation process. But why make such realistic paintings when an enlarged photograph would suffice? As Walsh explains, “This space is created through drawing, which I see as fundamental in establishing a world the viewer can engage with. Drawing allows me to make human pictorial decisions instead of relying on the mechanical eye of a camera or software package. This process is open ended and changes from one painting to the next. Whilst I employ a variety of perspectival strategies, these methods are not fixed or rigid in their application.” So hidden within these exacting paintings is actually a large level of freedom and creativity in how they are represented." - Adriano

"What look like foggy landscapes from alien planets, or maybe even the moody landscapes in some Rococo era painting, are actually carefully planned images of aquariums. Kim Keever takes fishtanks and using plaster and other materials crafts landscapes within. He then fills the tanks with water, sets up lighting and photographs his aquatic set while adding in powders which form clouds and fog. The results are stunningly surreal... and sometimes even very realistic. By their nature Keever’s images are temporal, his simulated clouds and fog only lingering for a short period as it meanders through his artificial landscapes. Because of this, we are actually witnessing an image of his works in motion, flowing towards an ultimately murky future when the clouds mix throughout the aquarium." See many more images: http://kimkeever.wordpress.com - Adriano

really, when do you get to see the bottom of a sculpture? \\ "Composed of a 456-foot-long slot constructed on LACMA's campus, over which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. As with other works by the artist, such as Double Negative (1969), the monumental negative form is key to the experience of the artwork. Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history, from ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone, to modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering." http://www.lacma.org/art... - Adriano

"The 21 year-old artist from Japan creates drawings that seem to leap out of the sketchbook before your very eyes. It’s amazing to see what can be done with just a pencil and paper and the right angle for capturing a photo. The way he uses lighting, shading, and anamorphosis to create these 3D images is reminiscent of MC Escher but even more mind-blowing." - Adriano

"Breaking the Code is a 1986 play by Hugh Whitemore about British mathematician Alan TURING, who was a key player in the breaking of the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park during World War II and founder of computer science. The play thematically links Turing's cryptographic activities with his attempts to grapple with his homosexuality. The Broadway production was nominated for three Tony Awards. The play, adapted for television in a 1996 BBC production directed by Herbert Wise starring Derek Jacobi, won a Broadcasting Press Guild Award and was nominated for two BAFTA TV awards, for best single drama and best actor, and for a GLAAD Media Award. It was broadcast in the United States by PBS." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Adriano

BTW the Hodges' book is superb -- very readable, and yet highly competent in the technical details. Little known events like meetings with Wittgenstein, von Neumann, and Shannon are documented. - Adriano

Fall of a Genius: Stephen Toulmin on Alan Turing and Andrew Hodges’ book http://www.nybooks.com/article... - Amira

clearly a labor of love... really impressive details: in full-res: http://payload44.cargocollective.com/1... ... pulls out Jules Winnfield wallet to buy poster :-) ... do I need to add "SPOILER ALERT" ?? - Adriano

Clint's is a classic - Aryo

superb transfer to video, really beautiful film -- SEE it before it gets taken down. A novel in photographs... "Working on a shoestring budget," Marker said that only one short scene in La Jetée is of a moving image since he could only borrow a movie camera for one afternoon while working on the film. \\ The scenes in and around the museum are really awesome! - Adriano

moving... - Amira

aaahhh, told ya... 27 July 2012: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by The Criterion Collection." \\ Ok, some images from Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris https://www.google.com/search... - Adriano

Chris MARKER :: Enigmatic Multimedia Artist . [RIP, 1921-2012] - http://ff.im/11Iirh - Adriano

whenever I hear this song, I can see those shadows... - Adriano

"We believe that some of the most innovative art you can find in Basel this week is happening on the periphery, in the many satellite events opening to complement the main fair. Read about three supporting acts worth taking a break from the main show." - Adriano

"Mythological elements include a scientific organization called the Dharma Initiative, a sequence of numbers that frequently appears in the lives of the characters in the past, present and future, and personal connections (synchronicity) between the characters they are often unaware of. That the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 are dead and in purgatory -- was specifically denied by J.J. Abrams. Damon Lindelof rejected speculation that spaceships or aliens influenced the events on the island, or that everything seen was a fictional reality taking place in someone's mind. Lindelof refuted the theory that the "Monster" was a nanobot cloud similar to the one featured in Michael Crichton's novel Prey. There are several recurring motifs: dysfunctional family situations, apocalyptic events, coincidence versus fate, conflict between science and faith." - Adriano

my favorite wallpaper this year... feels cool for the summer, too. Lost the original link to National Geographic (via Aryo) which featured it as a photo of the day. I proportionally cropped the image (to get rid of the NG logo) and also brought out the hues in the water -- love those shades of Tiffany blue! - Adriano

beautiful segment towards the end on rivers, water, and Venice. - Adriano

downloaded, thanks for the link! - Amira

Exhibition consists of 100 paintings from the Mexican surrealist painter. - Adriano

"Ridley Scott entwines the visceral, creatural dread of "Alien" with some of the quasi-mythic grandiosity of "Chariots of the Gods." Once again a vessel lumbers through the galactic void, and a diverse crew must contend with menacing weirdness outside the ship and growing paranoia within it. The Giger alien may still be out there. Something wicked lurks in subterranean tunnels, their walls etched in freaky runes. And hovering over all the scary stuff are some big, metaphysical questions about the origin and ultimate fate of humanity. Scott’s sense of visual scale achieves something like genuine grandeur. The music, by Marc Streitenfeld, soars and rumbles toward cosmic significance." - Adriano

Metacritic score: 65 http://www.metacritic.com/movie... though Roger Ebert (100) says: "A magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers." Aah, those apprentice Engineers. - Adriano

"With the help of his mentor, a slave-turned-bounty hunter sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner." \\ Is that James Brown funk in a western film? and Christof Waltz. News: https://www.google.com/search... - Adriano

"This story about an octogenarian husband and wife facing their mortality -- beautifully played by the French actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva -- had left audiences stunned with its artistry and depth of feeling. Haneke winning the Palme in 2009 for "The White Ribbon" was thought to be a factor working against him. Ms. Riva (born in 1927) was last at Cannes officially in 1959 with that classic of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais’s "Hiroshima Mon Amour." Both Ms. Riva and Mr. Trintignant spoke briefly after Haneke. The visibly frail Mr. Trintignant (born in 1930), whose astonishing career includes some of the most famous European films of the past half-century -- "A Man and a Woman," "Z," "My Night at Maud’s," "The Conformist" -- said that Haneke was the greatest director working today." http://www.nytimes.com/2012... - Adriano

"Haneke’s latest eschews his more direct, and more controversial, uses of violence: suicide, murder, rape. The themes that obsess him — suffering, trust and its failure, the bonds that love builds and destroys — still seem to be present. But also an acknowledgement that **actors bring a texture — a history — of their own** that affects what a movie, even one reshot scene for scene by the same director, ultimately means." http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012... - Adriano

"I didn't grow up wanting to make movies; what I really wanted to be was an architect. I had this drafting table with all these little instruments I would arrange carefully around the edges. I used to draw everything. When I was in fifth grade, I started to make Super 8 movies, and I liked that very much. I also got interested in George Lucas at about that time, and then, by seventh grade, I became obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock. But I still wanted to be an architect. Sometimes I thought I might also like to be a writer. I didn't settle on film until I was in college. There were two reasons I became a filmmaker instead of, say, a novelist. I have always been interested in the visual composition of things. It's part of why I liked to draw so much. But I also love to put on a show. In fact, I enjoyed that long before I even thought about making movies. I'm not essentially a camera guy; I don't take very good still photographs and I never have." - Adriano

Whether Anderson is telling the story of a family struggling with ghosts of its past and future (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited), portraying the absurdist adventures of a Cousteau-like adventurer (The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou), or, as in his new film, Moonrise Kingdom http://ff.im/SLABe , presenting a tale of twisted innocence, his work is impossible to mistake. -ibid. - Adriano