Showing posts with label Ideas. Show all posts

Figure this Out

What are the rules you play by in your life? Of course, you have to eat, drink, and sleep. Those rules are simple. If you don’t play by them, then you won’t last long. Nearly all of us also play by society’s rules. We dress ourselves, obey traffic laws, get a job to make money, and buy things. After that we have some choices. When you log into your social media of choice to consume and post, you play by a similar, but different set of rules (X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.). When you read a post, you understand what's happening because of the rules. You know the top left shows who posted it, you know underneath is the main image or video, you know underneath that are the creators’ description or thoughts on what they posted, and finally you know under that are comments from other users. These are rules that you follow in order to play in an online game or society.

THE HAUNTING OF OUR IMAGINATIONS

the sudden appearance of liminal space

By Rubi Sanmiguel

What's wrong?

The definition of a Liminal Space is not a concrete one, but it builds off of the literal origin of the word liminal: the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage. When we apply the idea of a middle stage to a location, we get places like hallways, airports, and schools, in-between places that we pass through as we travel from place to place. The same concept can also be applied to the self and our experiences of passing through time, such as adolescence, where we’re uncomfortably between childhood and adulthood. We can assign other specific examples of these places such as homes, stores, malls, playgrounds, rural roads, gas stations, hospitals, and other places destinations where we spend small amounts of time. These places are not scary or eerie. They’re normally bustling with customers and employees, other children, people living their day-to-day lives, and it is this day-to-day context which makes them comforting.

UNBOXING THE ART OF COLLECTING

is this what we want?

By Carolyn Kim

Do you want this?

Everyone collects something; you know, each to their own and all that stuff. From art, bags, shoes, books, sports to K-pop photocards and NFTs, collections take many forms that reflect people’s diverse interests, passions, and hobbies. Collections create new subcultures in which people find joy and community. Collections serve as a way to connect with others and as your collections grow, they become part of you. It’s a deeply personal art and a rewarding pursuit that brings joy, satisfaction, and a sense of connection.

K-POP DOUBLE SUICIDE

the tragic lives of Sulli and Hara and the industry that destroyed them

By Jiyeon Park

A picture of two deaths foretold

Commercialization of celebrity in the K-pop industryIn 2019, two huge K-Pop stars committed suicide within a month of each other. Sulli was 25, and Hara was 28. They had a lot in common. Both girls began training for their careers around the age of 11 and they made their official debut as K-pop stars around the age of 16. Sulli and Hara were both talented and beautiful which made them receive a great deal of media attention and acclaim from fans. Probably because they had so much in common, the girls became close. This should have been a happy story, the story of two talented girls who trained hard, became friends and grew into superstar performers. For obvious reasons, the opposite is true.

THE RINGS OF SANTA MONICA

there are no rules to the Zen of flying

By Austin Conrad

Rings 1 by Austin Conrad

There are not many sports that have somehow managed to avoid being controlled by rules. When we think of major or even minor sports we think about a set of rules to decide how a game should be played. When considering the idea of a foul we think about whether that action is harmful, and gives an unfair advantage to a player or team. Similarly, there are some sports that ignore rules and change the very nature of how people play games.

THE IDEA OF THE UNSPOILED WILDERNESS

the image Ansel Adams created

By Laura Heywood

Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, Ansel Adams

When we think about wilderness, we think of nature untouched by man. If you plan a trip to the wilds you probably think of an uninhabited place that is unspoiled by man or woman. It’s interesting that we don’t consider our National Parks to be under the control of the federal government, but they are. I remember when I visited Yosemite in the summer of 2016 the valley was covered in shuttle buses, stores, lodges, traffic, etc. I was taken back by so much activity in the unspoiled wilderness. But don’t get me wrong, walk in the opposite direction and Yosemite still has the appearance of pristine wilderness.

THREADING COOL

in art we never lose anything

By Aaron ("M27") Ruiz

It change the world!

When the urinal got flipped upside down and tagged the moniker R. Mutt, Marcel Duchamp sent the art world and everything we knew into a new dimension. The Dadaists were the first artists to explore what it meant to be an artist in the vortex of the urban world. They found a home in cities all throughout Europe, and slipping through New York. And from New York their influence splintered all over the US into a variety of different social and artistic movements. Some of these movements might seem highly unlikely, like “The New Negro Movement”, but that’s how culture works. It slips and slides past the censors of good taste and possibility. So nothing you know is new; the past is always present and alive in the future. Since Dada burst on the scene, the young have created social and artistic movement from different cliques and racial backgrounds. These movements rely on the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next, with each generation progressively building on the previous one’s ideas. These movements rely heavily on what is literally the state of cool. But art movements require catalysts. Music, art, fashion, philosophy, aesthetics, and of course drugs, have all served as the markers for new movements; but what they really need is a real person to help drive them. Duchamp was one of these, and I’m going to key you in on a couple more.

THE EIGHT RULES OF FINE DINING

a pilgrimage to a food mecca

By Marco Pan

The Destination of our Food Pilgrimage

The first thing I do is go to the website. I want an incredible food experience, and not just a generic great food experience; I want a high-class, incredible, Japanese food experience. I had trolled around the Internet looking for a restaurant that might serve my needs, and then I came across Kusakabe. There was something about the understated quality of the design and the promise of a long meal that was irresistible. I clicked to reserve a table and immediately realized that the restaurant was booked for a month. I don’t know how to explain this, but it made the restaurant seem almost perfect, like a paradise I needed to visit. And so I learned the first rule of an incredible food experience, not everyone can have it and you have to want it real bad.

Marina Abramovic and The Politics of Experience

And it is Art or Not?

by Colin Swenson

Here She Is, Ave Maria

Marina Abramovic is aggressively frank. In much of her work, she invites audiences to break social norms and allows them to participate in simple gestures that are usually considered inappropriate or strange. In Rhythm 0, which is perhaps Abramovic’s most famous work, she simply sits and invites the audience to engage with her in whatever way they please. Timid at first, people eventually become bolder and sometimes they get aggressive and even violent. After 6 hours of this strange confrontation, she walks toward the audience. Most people run away. In Abramovic’s most recent work The Artist Is Present, she sits at a wooden table and invites viewers to sit across from her and share a silent moment. In this way, many of Abramovic’s works deal with reframing a seemingly unimportant, or simple interaction in a way that can cause the viewer to reconsider everyday moments.

FROM THE EARTH RICHES WILL COME

the awesome design and ideas of Max Lamb

By Griffin Goldsmith

Like a diamond, this came from the earth

More than a few nights ago I went to a lecture by Max Lamb at the Workshop Residence in San Francisco. At first it felt like any other lecture, but Lamb’s ideas and his experiments have stayed with me and I want to relate what I think is so important about them. The Workshop Residence is a storefront-workshop-event space where different artists craftsmen and designers are selected to live and work for a period of time. The Workshop has chosen Lamb to participate in a residency this spring, and he was visiting San Francisco to try to figure out what he was going to work on during his stay. He had been in San Francisco for five days when he gave this lecture and he had clearly been inspired by what he had seen.

FOUR VIEWS OF CHRISTIAN MARCLAY'S THE CLOCK

a roundtable of views

By Zoe Kravitz, Marcus Lee, Will Buhler & Kevin Lawrence

Time goes boom!

Zoe Kravitz
Time: 10:00 to 10: 15 (in the morning)

Having no expectations before sitting down to watch Christian Marclay’s The Clock, I was more than pleasantly surprised to find that watching time pass by in movies was exceptionally more entertaining than watching it pass by in real life. Except for the fact that to watch the entire 24-hour film, I would have to spend 24 hours of real, never getting it back, precious hours, and yet, after my brief tenure with movie living I was pretty much convinced it would be worth the sacrifice.

PUNKS IN ASIA!!!!

the incredible spread of punk rock in Asia!!!!

By Sirat Buck

This had to be invented

You might think this an odd and stupid thing to claim, but someone actually did create, or maybe we should say dreamt up, the “Pogo” dance. It just didn't happen, but took a genius to jump up and down in one place and call it dancing. Take a bow Mr. Sid Vicious, bassist of the earthshattering punk band The Sex Pistols. In 1994, years after his infamous death at the Chelsea Hotel, Sid's pogo dance swept through Northeast Asia, and particularly Korea. Meanwhile punk has spread, slowly and powerfully, through Asia and continues to rise in popularity into the 21st century. Korea’s punk scene is fairly recent, while the Japanese punk scene is large and has been around a long time. China’s punk scene continues to thrive, though both fans and musicians alike are starting to wonder where the future of punk in China is going. Malaysian punk has been around since 1977, but didn’t begin to develop a particular Malaysian sound until 1987. Furthermore, in Indonesia, punks are fighting to keep their Mohawks and the whole of their lives from government control. I do not claim to be an expert on punk in Asia, but I will claim that punk is a way of shouting back at the world when the world doesn’t make sense. It is the raw response to injustice, when our desire for joy is denied. As we slip from country to country you can see that punk is a beacon call for political and social freedom, just as it has been in the U.S. and England and everywhere it’s raised its anarchic head.

WHO IS THAT LAUGHING WOMAN?

a few ideas about women, comedy and aspirational figures

By Jane Harrison

Is this funny?

In the middle of 30 Rock's first season, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) ends up on a fluke date with a handsome stranger nicknamed "The Hair." He seems perfect, but even then, he's too normal, good looking and nice for her. She'd rather just "go home and watch that show about midgets and eat a block of cheese," not because she doesn't want to date this guy, but because she thinks she's the kind of person who doesn't get to date a guy like that, or anyone even remotely like that. Also, it turns out he's her cousin, but that's beside the point. Lemon believes that she's the “head” or the "brunette" or the best friend who never gets the guy and by the logic of TV sitcoms is destined to stay single. And 30 Rock isn't going to strip her of that belief, but take advantage of it, humiliate her for it and get eight seasons of outrageous laughs because of it. It's part of 30 Rock’s genius that Lemon is the main character, but has all the attributes and self-loathing of a sidekick. In a world populated by physically perfect leading ladies, this inversion of character was incredibly progressive in 2006, but now, seven years later, Lemon is showing a good deal of dramatic strain. Are we still laughing? It’s hard to tell, but certainly in a different way than when the show first started out. One might even claim in the end that 30 Rock and Fey’s smart reworking of the standard leading lady is proving to be almost as limited as what it was initially rebelling against.

DON'T GET SICK ON TELEVISION, YOU'LL DIE

an attack on medical television dramas and its treatment of the sick, especially Grey's Anatomy

By Patrick Campbell

Remember, if you're a patients, they're the stars

There have been many medical dramas, some good some bad. Here’s a partial list: St. Elsewhere, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, House, Marcus Welby M.D., Doctor's Lives, Scrubs and M*A*S*H. When we think about patients and doctors, we think about them as equals or the yin and yang of a give and take relationship. The patient, sick, needs the doctor’s help; in turn, the doctor needs the patient in order to practice his art. Or to state it a little more crudely: doctors can’t be doctors without the sick. Without the sick, there’s no such thing as the heroic doctor, a lucrative and prestigious role, but one reliant on the misfortune of others. In the best of worlds this imbalance is redressed by both medical ethics and the fact that patients are more than their illnesses; that they often get better and go on to lead productive lives.

SWIMMING, ART AND THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION

a meditation on the practice of swimming and art

By Lily Williams

There are so many aspects of art in swimming. Just start with the pool: it’s the most luminous stage you could ever ask for. It commands and centers our attention. When the swimmers step up to their blocks, there is a sense of anticipation equal to any performance. We wait for something to happen and yet we know exactly what it will be: the electronic gun will go off and the swimmers will dive into the water. What follows is all about strength, endurance and form, but like a well-made story it is the minute differences that matter. Swimming focuses our attention, demands that we see form as a kind of perfection. It’s the exact opposite of Modernist experimentation or post-modern pastiche: in the water, the radicals always lose.

JOIN THE RED BULL NATION!

an examination of Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull President and Amazing Art Patron

By Luke Shalan

Drink it and live!

I’m going to start off by stating the obvious. Where the Trail Ends is a Red Bull Media House production, which means two things: it has incredible financial backing and it holds the expectation of showcasing extreme action sports at a level never seen before, both physically in its execution and artistically in its filming. It also represents a new kind of hybrid in filmmaking, the corporate-sponsored documentary of a real event that wouldn't exist without the corporation, a truly odd form of real. Still, what it allows is more thrilling and human than most indie Sundance films. This brings up many questions about what we think of the documentary, reality, corporate sponsorship and extreme sports. The answers to these questions begins with Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder and president of Red Bull, the executive producer of Where the Trail Ends and the force behind much of the recent mainstreaming of extreme sports. He seems to view all this as a form of motivation for the generations to come and, most importantly, creating an ideal of the extreme.

THE ART OF PARK CLOSURE

a review and analysis of The First 70, the documentary on the closure of California's State Parks

By Haley Delany

The First 70 is a thirty minute film documenting boyfriend Jarrett Moody, girlfriend Lauren Valentino, and long time friend Cory Brown's one hundred and twenty day, biodiesel converted airport shuttle tour through seventy of California’s State Parks. The trio was motivated by last year's park closures announcement, whereby the state of California slated these seventy parks to close by July 30th, 2012. Amidst interviews with park employees, self-indulgent trail trotting hikers, and lingering shots of wide-eyed deer and fickle otters, the trio explain that while they understand the need for budget cuts they are nonetheless puzzled by the process used to evaluate which parks should remain open and which should close.

BEYONCE AND THE REMAKING OF THE DIVA

a reflection on divas, class, race and a dying cultural narrative

By Immi Hill

That's our Star!

I’m going to start with a magic trick. So read carefully and don’t blink. Before you finish this essay, I’m going to make a major cultural narrative disappear before your eyes and replace it with a new one. I’ve warned you, it’s going to happen if you read on, and you’re going to want to read on because this is going to be about race and class and perfection and something we might call diva-ism.

Hello, Beyoncé!

LET'S FACE IT IN 2012

a serious review of the candidates' faces

By Amanda Sebastiani

Face to Face

This presidential race is peculiar in that we have two fairly good-looking candidates. In the past we’ve had men like Richard Nixon and his bulbous nose, John McCain and his stoplight red cheeks, Shorty Dukakis, big faced John Kerry, Bushes 1 and 2, too preppy inbred to be handsome and Al Gore, he of the sweaty jowls and the high forehead. True, we’ve had some make-my-heart-flutter poster boys—Hollywood Ron Reagan, knee shaking John F. Kennedy, and even the big boy from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, who was kind of good looking in a hick by way of Yale way. But this year, unbelievably we have two candidates who are, well, not so hard to look at. Both President Obama and Governor Romney are good looking, attractive men, at least sevens, maybe eights on the standard ten point scale of attractiveness that the entire world is judged by. The President and Romney are visually perfect candidates for the type of voters their respective parties want to attract. So let’s start with the obvious.

AN AESTHETIC CONTROVERSY THAT DOESN'T MATTER

understanding the Arrow/Smallville casting dust up

By Alora Young

Why is this man the Green Arrow?

Here’s an aesthetic controversy that doesn’t matter. It’s not going to find its way into Artforum, The New York Times or The Village Voice, because this tiny controversy is over two shows that don’t matter: the newly premiered Arrow and the recently wrapped up Smallville. These shows are produced by television’s most marginal and aesthetically insignificant network, the CW, and so the people who care about this controversy are the kind of social misfits who lust over fictional characters and make most of their friends on the internet. Their concerns are off to the side and off the cultural map, and yet what they feel is not insignificant. They have caught something crucial about how we experience art, how it can give order and meaning to our lives and can ultimately lead us to moral and ethical choices that we might not otherwise see. We’re not used to thinking of the aesthetic and, more importantly, business decisions of minor television producers on minor networks as being subject to moral and ethical import, but that’s what happens when the true believers decide to take a stand and prove that when it comes to judging art, everything matters.

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This had to be invented