Megan Geckler creates fantastic spaces and patterns using brightly colored construction flagging tape. Now that’s what I call pushing a medium. The installations are striking on their own but the amount of time involved in their creation is mind boggling.
[via Design Milk]
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When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, “Have a ball, peas [sic]?” And I’m sure you were very proud of him for using his manners. To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, “No! Looter!” right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.
What it would have been like to have Ayn Rand as a parent. Shudder.
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I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun. A famous art dealer has been accused of defrauding his A-list clients and will likely be sentenced for up to 18 years as a result.
Salander, 61, was arrested in March 2009 and pleaded guilty earlier this year to stealing $120 million from clients and investors including tennis player John McEnroe and actor Robert De Niro. The former owner of the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries has paid no restitution, his defense attorney and prosecutors said.
Secret decoder ring: If you don’t understand the pun, you should check out this
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How can you not like the Library of America? High-quality hardcover books produced by a non-profit and featuring some of the greatest writers and minds in our country’s history. I’ve been a Library of America fan ever since I was a fledgling literature major in college.
Now, I am happy to report that they’ve gone and set up a blog that I think readers of TPN might appreciate. Given the exquisite material that they have to pull from, I imagine that there is a lifetime of great posts yet to come. The most recent post regarding Walt Whitman and the Meteor of 1860 is a great place to start.
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Last week I asked “Will AT&T use their iPad and iPhone data plans to attack net neutrality?” Today, Steve Jobs stood on stage and did exactly as predicted, he showed that Apple will be a preferential media delivery partner of AT&T. This is an opening shot in what I suspect will be the unraveling of net neutrality. When a significant percentage of internet browsing devices are iOS (the new name for Apple’s iPhone OS), the internet will have been co-opted by a device and software maker – scary times indeed.
So what did Steve announce? The new iBooks app on iPad and iPhone will not incur any additional data charges against your plan on either the iPad or iPhone. Your digital books will remain synced and accessible from any Apple device, free of AT&T data limitations. If you use the Kindle app (or any other reading app), tough shnookies. The Kindle app, already playing in an unfair game (in that it has to send people from their iPhone/iPad app over to the browser for purchasing thanks to Apple’s exorbitant in-app shopping experience) now also has to contend against data caps that Apple gets to workaround. Apple and AT&T are moving quickly to lock users onto their ecosystem for all media delivery.
I still love Apple products but this is something to watch closely. At what point will this become anti-competitive monopolistic behavior? When Apple moves movies and music to the cloud and gives themselves the same preferential treatment, people will be talking about this a lot more – I guarantee it.
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I’ve had an iPad for a couple of weeks now and I love it. I’m finding new ways each day that it’s insinuating its way into my routines. While it’s an unnecessary device, it’s a seriously enjoyable one and it’s been getting better already thanks to the efforts of talented developers contributing new applications. It’s super enjoyable to lay down on my couch, fire up the Netflix app, and watch a movie. Unfortunately, thanks to AT&T and their monumental bait and switch (removing a 2-month old unlimited data plan), the product’s promise has just taken a sizeable ding.
The unlimited data plan for the iPad was a large factor in my purchase decision and I’m going to keep it for now (AT&T is allowing current users to keep using the plan with no access to tethering), but the death knell has already sounded. The impact of this decision will ripple through to every content service. Any streaming video app developers are now going to have to re-run the numbers on their apps and see if it’s worth developing or maintaining. If I were Netflix, I’d be seriously pissed at AT&T right now.
So here is where I cross the line into idle speculation about what we should all be afraid of – the Apple and AT&T domination of media delivery and the unraveling of net neutrality. It’s no secret that AT&T isn’t a huge fan of net neutrality (and neither is Verizon if you were looking for them to help bail us out of this). They’ve been searching for ways to charge people for the convenience of delivering content on their pipes. Now they have a blunt tool for doing just that. With an unlimited data plan available to any consumer willing to pay $30/month, paying users could stream as much content as they wanted, gated only by the data transmission speeds. That promise is dead after only two months. I’m not surprised at the end result, just the speed of the backtracking.
Imagine the following plausible scenario: the iPad (and iPhone) continues to sell like hotcakes reaching an even more sizable presence in the market. Now imagine that Apple announces a whole host of web-accessible media services for streaming music and video to your iPhones and iPads (and this could happen within the next month or so with iPhone OS 4 about to drop). At that announcement, Apple announces that they’ve worked out a great deal with AT&T where streams from Apple do not impact your monthly data caps. AT&T would of course make this “service” available to companies like Netflix or Skype as well – for a price. The damage will have been done. AT&T will become a toll-booth on the information superhighway, taking money from both content producers and consumers. Welcome to the unraveling of net neutrality!
Far fetched?
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Christopher Martin Hoff. Photo by Mark Albonizio.
At the downtown Seattle Art Walk this month, I was blown away by the urban landscapes of Christopher Hoff on display at the Linda Hodges Gallery. Thankfully, Christopher is as gracious as he is talented and I was able to pull him away from his art just long enough to meet up, grab some photos, and talk a bit about what he’s up to.
Christopher is a plein air painter so if you make it out and around Seattle, you may run into him on top of one of downtown’s buildings or hanging out painting in your local alleyway. He works with oil on linen, paints in multiple locations each day (for several hours at each location) and his most recent works contain inspiration from Moby Dick worked throughout. I highly recommend checking out the show this month if you get a chance. While you’re there, pick up the copy of Moby Dick on the counter with all the inspirational quotes for the paintings flagged.
The show is at Linda Hodges Gallery through May 29th, 2010 so get in there as soon as you can.
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Scrounging through local art-related posts, I came across the Seattle Times review of the Kiki Smith exhibit on display at the Henry through August 15th, 2010. The exhibit sounds like a sprawling look inside the mind of a prolific artist – subject matter that I always find engaging.
Entering “I Myself Have Seen It: Photography and Kiki Smith” is less like visiting an art exhibit than inhabiting an artist’s mind — an artist’s hectic, multifocused, densely populated mind. There are, literally, hundreds of works in the show teeming across the walls and along the baseboards of the Henry Art Gallery’s North Galleries.
There are a whole bunch of great resources about the show posted over at the official Henry website including the Exhibiting Artist Lecture by Kiki Smith prior to the show opening.
And here’s a shorter PBS profile of Kiki Smith from Art:21 that at least gives a sense of her work and style without committing you to 57 minutes:
I plan on heading over to see this exhibit soon. Have any of you already taken it in? Thoughts?
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I’ve been listening to the new CocoRosie album all day and I think it’s fantastic. The new album comes out May 11th but until then you can stream it, in high quality, using the player below.
I recommend starting with ‘Lemonade” first as it’s the most aurally accessible – it’s been getting a it of play on KEXP recently. After that, start digging down into the randomness. “Smokey Taboo” and “Grey Oceans” are both great. I can honestly say that CocoRosie is seriously unique. Let me know if you love it or hate it because I have no idea which it’ll be.
CocoRosie – Grey Oceans by subpop
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