randomWalks

Public Telephone
Write down the number. Stand nearby and call it. Gesture excitedly and encourage a passerby to answer. When they do, ask them where they are, and ask them what the weather is like.

Getting lost means that between us and space there is not only a relationship of dominion, of control on the part of the subject, but also the possibility that space can dominate us. There are moments in life in which we learn how to learn from the space around us. […] We are no longer capable of giving a value, a meaning to the possibility of getting lost. To change places, to come to terms with different worlds, to be forced to continuously recreate our points of reference, is regenerating at a psychic level, but today no one would recommend such an experience. In primitive cultures, on the other hand, if someone never gets lost he never grows up. And this is done in the desert, the forest, places that are a sort of machine through which to attain other states of consciousness.

We felt as if we were moving in a strange new zone exactly halfway between randomness and order. No one could predict where the left-and-right pattern would take us, yet we weren’t wandering. The firm logic of the algorithm was constantly taking us away from the directions and destinations our whims might have chosen.

i12bent:

Sol LeWitt: Sentences on Conceptual Art (1969)

1. Conceptual Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3. Illogical judgements lead to new experience.
4. Formal Art is essentially rational.
5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
7. The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter are the components. Ideas implement the concept.
10. Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.
14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea’s chain, if they share the same concept.
15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature, numbers are not mathematics.
17. AH ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
23. One artist may mis-perceive (understand it differently than the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
24. Perception is subjective.
25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side-effects that the artist can¬not imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

(Image - poster by Angela Ferrara)

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Michal Migurski: generating repeating patterns

Keep in mind people use social tools very differently. What has worked for the very early innovators through early adopters is extremely different from the different personality types that will follow. This gap in understanding that the world is not like us has not become real to many building social tools.

The city is a behavioral device. Its shapes and systems alter how we feel, how we see each other, and how we act. This would be a terrible thought if it were not for a second truth, which is that the city is malleable. We can change it whenever we wish.

I wanted to be able to have it as a very collaborative play space, and still the web hasn’t fully provided what I wanted then in terms of being a really powerful collaborative medium.

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monkeyajb:

This is a great meme.

Oh this is glorious.

This is straight-up blogging, amateur prose written quickly and with neither guiding stricture nor sober editing. I am going to tell it like it is, right from the heart, and I am going to tell it about telephone dials, because a man has to live by a code, and my code is unary loop disconnect dialing.

Peel your potatoes. All the antinutrients (defenses plants evolved to keep critters from destroying the tubers) are contained in the skin. This is exactly the opposite of what our parents told us! Like it or not, all the good stuff is NOT in the skin.

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So um this is easily the most incredible tarot deck I’ve ever seen (via HEXEN 2.0) More on artist Suzanne Treister in this Metafilter thread.

I think the next 10 years are going to be a really interesting time where Twitter and a couple other services connect people all over the world in new ways and surprising things happen that we can’t even imagine right now. I am long on Twitter.

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Paul Benedict (via Actor, South Philly native Sherman Hemsley dies — NewsWorks)

RIP Sherman Hemsley (and dig the psychedelic life he led) but it is blowing my mind that this wacky white next-door neighbor from The Jeffersons was also The Number Painter from Sesame Street.

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(via Is non-celiac wheat sensitivity real? A new study says yes. | Melissa McEwen on food anthropology, economics, and culture)

Homo sapiens have walked the Earth for at least 130,000 years and, in this time, they learned to be human from their elders, not from their peers. Mandatory education in the U.S. is less than 150 years old. Learning to be a productive adult human by spending a third of every day with other kids might be a good idea, but it’s too soon to tell. I’m still unsure that the people best equipped to teach a 14-year-old boy how to be a man are other 14-year-old boys.

the pre-credit card internet was what facebook’s wildest peyote-sweat fever dreams can only ever hint at and it’s always just waiting for us

— sega juice (@dry_hugs) August 9, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfRWA_FukXg

monkeyajb:

Souls of Mischief - Cab Fare (by Perthx)

I can’t believe I’ve never heard this song before, I guess it isn’t on any SoM regular releases, but it is sooooooo good and that Bob James sample is gold, I can’t believe no one has ever sampled this before?

Also! This isn’t even a Domino joint, it’s produced by Adam/A-Plus which makes it even better.

EDIT: Apparently this was never released because Paramount (which owns the rights, from Taxi) won’t ever clear it, so duh. Hear the original Bob James “Angela” here.

One of my top ten hip hop songs.

You try and treat it as a journey or a pilgrimage of self-discovery where you try to improve yourself as a person and overcome your doubts and negativity.

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Microsoft Olympic Decathlon for Apple II

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"I think it’s about a car. A car that goes to Mexico, Indonesia and other places. It’s about a car that goes on all sorts of adventures. The guy on the cover is a teen, he likes to drive people places a lot. And he’s French." (via My 6-year-old Judges Books by the Covers, from No Exit to 50 Shades of Grey - Strollerderby)