Some thoughts and findings from a Monday morning fueled by the dulcet tones of electro’s answer to Andrew WK, LMFAO1 :
Ed Cotton posits over on Influx Insights that a key theme of 2010 will be the intersection of digital and physical devices, a point I quite intended to make on last week’s BIMA panel on The Digital State2. The crux of his post is a recently announced partnership between personal platform of choice FourSquare and the Bravo Network, aimed at providing real-world promotions for viewers of the network’s programming. I can only imagine that check-ins from Kiehls are about to skyrocket.
I quite agree with Ed’s assertion – and have since it was Faris’ assertion. Of course, when all has been said, we’re going to recall that it began with the folks at Poke and the ingenious BakerTweet.
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On a tangentially-related note, Darren Herman posts on evolving etiquette in social spaces, positing this FourSquare conundrum with which many of us are familiar:
It’s rude to have everyone check in at the table and waste the first few minutes of the meeting telling the world where they are. The issue with checking in to a venue when you are enroute is that the venue may be closed or have no available seating, and I do not have an answer on how to deal with this.
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John Pareles
My comments regarding Robert Christgau earned some mild chiding from a few friends and readers, most of whom recall a simpler time in rock journalism. These are, of course, many of the same intrepid souls who offer up as proof of the genius of the late David Foster Wallace his profile of Roger Federer for the New York Times. By way of retort, I offer this gem of a concert review from the decidedly not-yet expired Jon Pareles, whose writeup of a 1999 Olivia Tremor Control show at The Knitting Factory is proof that one need not go gently into that good night. The review, insofar as such things go, is spot on. I should know. Pareles was in my seat.3
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Via Dinosaurs and Robots comes this astounding short film highlighting the 1975 San Francisco Artists Soapbox Derby – a remarkable event that raised more than $20,000.00 for SF MOMA, and featured a dizzying array of custom vehicles, riding the streets to packed crowds.
If you’ve 25 minutes to spare4, it’s delightful and gorgeous viewing.
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My personal predilection towards system design and dynamics5 was awakened this morning by a fantastic article by Frog’s Jason Severs, who espouses a four-point process for becoming ‘active participants in roles where we have traditionally been passive recipients’.
The explosion of social networking and the proliferation of user-generated content have made us more knowledgeable and more active, but we remain largely unaware of the systems that support this dynamic consumer/user culture. I think if we better understood these resources, we could put them to better use. In fact, we could become more intentional in how we use them.
In the article, Severs makes the highly-insightful point that we scarcely consider the broader implications of our consumer behavior within the frameworks of the systems to which we commit. It’s heady, yet critical stuff, and a highly-engaging read.
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Jia Yu Guan by Yin Ziuzhen
Finally, for those living out of suitcases, springs forth artwork from the same. Space and Culture features the work of Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen, whose work involves complex cityscapes in (what at least I call) diorama form – assemblages of found textiles and materials form city skylines and ‘memories of a city’ that are at equal turns entrancing and humorous.
From Space and Culture:
Taking found fabric and clothing from the city in question (i.e. Vancouver, Berlin etc.), Yin sews together little buildings, bridges, and greenscapes inside suitcases, manufacturing transportable cities. With landmark buildings recreated on a miniaturized scale in the likes of gingham cloth, corduroy, and cotton, and recorded soundscapes of the city in question, the pieces are at once humorous, nostalgic and poignant. With their hand-crafted appeal and use of old clothing, they infuse the anonymity of city-living with the personal. While globalization and the increased openness of China has allowed the possibility for more people like Yin to travel and visit all the cities within her suitcases, ironically it has also meant that the cities themselves have incurred a certain proclivity to becoming increasingly indistinguishable.
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- seriously, any band making multiple references to ‘parties’ or ‘partying’ in song titles on the same album bears immediate comparison to rock lothario AWK, no? [↩]
- but, in my glee, forgot [↩]
- True story: Prior to this much-anticipated show, my girlfriend roped off a row of balcony seats designed to afford us an unfettered view of the proceedings – in full disclosure, she was the Olivia’s promoter. We returned from a pre-show dinner to find a gentleman in my seat, scribbling furiously. Tender and naiive at the age of 23, I moved to confront the gentleman, only to be admonished by my then-beau, ‘we are not going to ask John Pareles to move’. [↩]
- and you do – you’ve already seen that episode of The Office. I’m quite certain [↩]
- as an avocation. Vocationally, I will admit to lacking in this regard [↩]
Related posts:
- The Optimist Conspectus: Faris Yakob
- Wharton Grads, Olympic Uniformity, Eigenvalues, Heatmaps and the RGB of Cornflower Blue
- Skatemaster Tate, Uberselektor, Twitter and Cultural Relevance
- The Contextual City
- Tweenbots and Stanley Milgram