Oct 192011
Oct 192011
Andrew Kolb’s illustrated Space Oddity now spiced up in animated motion by Andrew Ruttan.
Oct 162011
To make the wait for your copy of 1Q84 a bit easier, here’s an article-interview with Murakami for the Guardian by Emma Brockes. Quite interesting!
All around him his friends rebelled, too. Some killed themselves, something Murakami often writes about. “They are gone,” he says. “It was a very chaotic time, and I’m still missing them. So sometimes I feel very strange to become 63 years old. I feel myself as a kind of survivor. Every time I think about them, I have some feeling that I have to live, I have to live very strong. Because I don’t want to spend years of my life… it should be the very purpose, life. Because I survived, I have obligations to give fully. So, every time I write my fiction, from time to time I think of the deceased. Friends.”
Consistency is all. “I like to read books. I like to listen to music. I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.”
Oct 122011
To promote his new book, formerly Google’s now Facebook’s creative director Ji Lee created this visually delightful video, in which the relationship between the signifier and the signified becomes a bit less arbitrary.
Via the Casual Optimist.
Oct 122011
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Joseph Heller’s groundbreaking novel Catch 22, Kevin Power wrote an interesting article for the Irish Times on the timeless effect of Hellerian humour and its widespread influence. The Simpsons are mentioned.
In retrospect, Joseph Heller appears to have schooled us in a style of humour that we now take for granted: absurdist, brash, hyperintelligent, rooted in despair.
In Heller’s hands, the conceit has a savage elegance, and the book’s tangled narrative unfurls in gorgeously modulated prose, in which even the simplest sentences end with the snap of sharp teeth.
Heller was neither the only one nor the first to use this kind of humour. The absurd goes way back. It certainly reaches a climax with him though. Why? Because he armed himself with non-sense to make sense of the most non-sensical things of all, war. And he dared to fail.
Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
Hellerious, right?
Oct 042011
Ray Bradbury’s short story turned animated film from 1962. A beauty that works like a fantastic dream.
The desert waiting. The stars waiting. A man waiting.
Sep 302011
A tiny visual delight on the work of contemporary artists Olek and Swoon from PBS Arts. Enjoy!
Sep 112011
For all lovers of books and of reading, signandsight.com‘s translated and uploaded a brilliant article by Bora Cosic on reading books no one else reads, where books in all their manifestations can be found, and on how complex and all-encompassing the act of reading is.
Personally I require many hours of reading, because I usually read tremendously thick books, and also notably boring ones; I am always convinced that at the core of an abstruse sentence lies the magnificence of a discovery just waiting to be made.
In a time of book’s wavering on the stage of the world, these confessions of an eager book-eater really soothe a bookworm’s battered heart.
I read my fill at various times, not only of printed texts, I was also a careful reader of book covers, bindings, and what is printed on the dust jacket. I would say that one finds an entire culture of the written word in abbreviated form, if one only looks at the narrow column printed on the inner flap of the book jacket, where there is a description as succinct as a dictionary entry telling what the book is about. If all the books in the world were to disappear, (as in “Fahrenheit 451″) and only the book covers remained, perhaps one could reconstruct human thought in this way.
I highly recommend reading the whole article. It’s a breath of fresh air. A subtle smile from a foggy distance, from someone who shares your peculiar convictions.
Sep 082011
From world-renowned stop motion animator Barry JC Purves comes Tchaikovky, an animated interpretation of the life and work of the great 19th century Russian composer. The film will hit the big screens later this year. While working on the set, cameraman Joe Clarke shot a mesmerising series of time-lapses of the masterminds in action – Purves and Tchaikovsky:
He’s also uploaded some gorgeous stills from the film on his website.
I am exquisitely thrilled about this one!
Sep 082011
There is something beautifully stalkerian about the work of Anton Ginzburg, a New York based photographer from St. Petersburg, currently exhibiting at the Palazzo Bollani in Venice as part of the 54th Venice Art Biennale his newest series At the Back of the North Wind.
"Hyperborea" series, (The White Sea)
In developing this project, Ginzburg embarked on a three-part journey, starting in the American North West (Astoria, Oregon), continuing to St. Petersburg and then to the White Sea, the site of the Soviet Gulag prison camps.
"Hyperborea" series, (North West, Oregon)
Something immeasurably sad, immeasurably beautiful. A sense of infinitesmal possibility? Stalker said:
Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being.
"Hyperborea" series, (The White Sea)
And what other method is there? To art, and to life?
The philosophy of Tarkovsky’s Stalker visualised via Anton Ginzburg’s photography will be open to the public in Palazzo Bollani to November 27.