Correct Link

Apparently, the link that I posted for my new blog is not working!

Try: http://itp.nyu.edu/~ep1243/blog/

Movin' on Up

Ladies and Gents...

While it's been a pleasure talking at you here on blogspot... it just so happens that I'm moving up in the world. I recently started school at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program [ITP].

Being that ITP teaches you how to computer program... I'm thinking that I'd like to build out a blog/professional site that live together. This will take some time, so, for the time being I'm just going to start posting on a new blog (same name) that, for the time will live here. [This may or may not be mandatory at ITP].

Eventually, I hope that this will bloom out into a whole site with a more robust blog.... 

I'm also working on some other projects part-time... you can find out about those on Twitter, until the site is up and running (likely early-mid January).

Biblion: Web Version

For those of you who were unable to download Biblion when it came out for the iPad, you can now view it online!

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop  

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

... with an Italian Twist

Last weekend, when I was home in Hammonton, I visited the opening day of the Farmers Market.

Growing up in Hammonton, I had a lot of access to 'farm fresh' food... particularly because my grandfather always had a garden full of produce and then, as I got older, my best friend worked at a local farmers market.

It was really lovely to see the whole town embracing local and sustainable food -- from local fruits and veggies, to wines, to locally caught fish.

I, of course, snapped some pics.

 

For more photos of the market, check out my Flickr set...

First Photo Show

Here's a few photos from my photos at Casciano Coffee Bar and Sweetery.

Mom was psyched: 

Twelve photos are up all month (and for sale!). Go stop by and see them if you're in Hammonton. 

My little nephew will cheer if you do: 

Also, keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming post of Hammonton Farmer's Market photos. 

Food on Display

Starting tomorrow, some of my food photography will be on display in Hammonton's own at Casciano Coffee Bar and Sweetery!

It'll be there all month, but there will also be a reception from 6-8 tomorrow (6/16/11) if you want to come see me as well as my pictures!

Also, check out some of the photos that did not make the framing and printing cut below.

"A Strip of Papyrus"

I would like you all to meet Biblion: The Boundless Library...the New York Public Library's first iPad app... and a project on which I have been working (as part of an excruciatingly talented team) for the past several months.

Biblion is a digital relaunch of a retired journal of the same name. In this first digital edition... Biblion: World's Fair, the Library has included more than 700 items from the Manuscripts and Archives Division's 1939 and 1940 New York World's Fair collection... through which you can explore in a "multilinear reading experience." By navigating through "links" that appear in yellow tabs throughout the stories, essays and galleries, you can jump "from stack to stack," hopefully encountering the same thrilling and serendipitous experience as you would have rifling through the boxes and folders themselves.



You can download the app from the App Store... and look out for a web version later in the summer.


Keep your eyes peeled for some of my favorite items:
A photo of the winner of the Handsomest Ice Man in New York, interviews with candidates in the "Typical American Family" contest, Babe Ruth's signature, an oversized map of the Fairgrounds superimposed over Manhattan, a retro Fair bumper sticker, a sketch of a fabulous hat for employees, the story of the near-doomed Czechoslovakia pavilion, and oh, so so much more....


[If you are curious about the title of this post... it is an original meaning of the Greek word "biblion."]

Culture... Part I

I always mean to blog about cultural events that I see immediately after I see them. Especially the ones that I like. However, I am not nearly on top of my various charges as I should be... and thus I have been storing up performances and museum outings for the past six months... and mulling over them silently for good measure. But, I mean to change. And to start that.... I'd like to offer up the first of three posts with notable experiences from the past six months.

I plan to talk briefly about the things that I loved/I might borrow from each of these experiences... as, the more and more I think about it, the more and more I think that innovation comes from borrowing techniques from other mediums [re: video, of course]...

Though, I do warn you... I never know where I might actually go with these posts.

Anyway. Let's begin with November and December, 2010.... 

James Thiérrée's Raoul

I loved Raoul-- a one man show with James Thiérrée (clown, magician, trapeze artist and decedent of Monsieur Charles Chaplain) which was at BAM Next Wave last fall. I thought it was whimsical and magical and also thought provoking all at once. ... I also thought it was a little long.
But! My main takeaway here was from a moment towards the end. James Thiérrée "flies." Not "flying" like Peter Pan... Thiérrée glides above the audience, and then does circular flips through the air. He was dancing in the air...and the experience of watching began as such:
The background was black. Thiérrée came out and started doing collosual circles through the air-- like
hands on a clock moving at 50x speed. And this was magical.
But then...
One of the things about theater that always bothers me is when you can see the mechanics of a stunt and no one ever acknowledges that you can see the stupid trap door... or the wires holding up the man who is suspended in mid air.
So... when Thiérrée turned and  the men who were manning the crane on which he was "flying" came into the light... I knew I was watching something special. The crane-dance lasted for a few more minutes with Thiérrée gleefully acknowledging the mechanics of his trick, flying up and over the audience while the crane occasionally took the spotlight. And that's when he really had me.
Not only did I recognize how the trick was done-- but I recognized how good a trickster he was. Because in the beginning it felt like magic... and then he had the temerity to show me that, not only was it not magic... but, the entire time, he had the upper hand. And that's when I started to laugh. ...

The Hard Nut  

 

What struck me most about The Hard Nut (Mark Morris' reinterpretation of The Nutcracker set in the era of disco) was, actually, the way that the ballet played with gender. In the scene depicted above (which was astonishingly beautiful), every single member of the cast was a "sugar plum fairy." Men and women alike dressed in the same tutu. This was following upon the opening scene- the Christmas party scene, in which men were dressed as women and vice versa. While, at first, I thought this would be distracting, I think it instead forced me to focus on the dance as opposed to... everything else. The androgyny that was created by putting everyone in the same place encouraged me to look at all of the dancers simply as dancers-- and I ended up enjoying the performance more because the dancing was all that I was looking at. I suspect that the uniformity created by this masking, if you will, was a contributing factor. When everyone looked the same, I saw past the person and to the action.

Also- a note on the above scene-- the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies. Each time that the fairies would leap- the would throw 'snow' from their hands. There ended up being a constant cloud of snow in the air, which created a really magical feeling against the plain black backdrop. Even though we could see the source of the snow (from the hands of the dancers)--which would seem to demystify the scene--it felt more like a blizzard than any other movie or play I had ever seen because the snow appeared to be truly hanging and swirling organically in the air.



There will be a brief interruption... and then, tune in at the end of the week for Part II--Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera from The Brooklyn Museum and The Nightengale and Other Fables, again from BAM.

Photo 1: http://culturebot.net/tag/james-thierree/
Photo 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/arts/dance/13nut.html

Food, Film and (self) Flattery

Whoa.

It's been a while.

I have a few links for you all today... all shamelessly self-promotional:


First-- I started a new bit of fun over at food52...  Dinner and a Movie... the first installment being The Age of Innocence...

Bascially, this is just what it sounds like. ... I use the fabulous recipes from the food52 community to create a meal paired with a great movie. Keep your eyes peeled for more in the near future.

Second-- They did a profile of me a few weeks ago! In case you missed it.... Meet Me. And also be amazed at how cute I was:

Third-- This major project on which I've been working (for more than a year!) will be launching soon. More updates about that to come in May!

The Little Balerina : Shutter Speed

I woke up this morning thinking about this incredibly beautiful video from a few months ago--

Photographer David Eustace created this piece called "The Little Ballerina." I'm relatively sure it was shot with one of the Canons (5D or 7D) because of the motion blur, which I think was done with a change in the shutter speed...





"The Anthropologist," for which this video was made, says the following:
"_To capture the movement, precision and grace of ballerina Tomomi Sato, Eustace filmed her in action, revealing frame-by-frame the delicate beauty inherent in her mastery of dance.

Kind of reminds me of: 

L'etoile [La danseuse sur la scene]

Degas, 1878

Fancy, what DSLRs can do.

 

"When I was a Kid..."

So, I also started reading, "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," by Peter Biskind.

In the second chapter, titled "Before the Revolution," he tackles the making of Bonnie and Clyde. Enter Robert Towne.

Towne would go on to write that unbelievable and near perfect script: Chinatown. But, on Bonnie and Clyde (on which he is uncredited, I believe), he had the following to say.

When I was a kid, I noticed four things about movies: the characters could always find parking spaces at every hour of the day and night, they never got change in restaurants, and husbands and wives never slept in the same bed. Women went to sleep with their makeup on and woke with it unmussed. I thought to myself, I'm never going to do that. In Bonnie and Clyde -- although, I don't think it was my doing -- Bonnie counts out every penny of change, and C.W. gets stuck in a parking place and has a hard time making a getaway."

And that, my friends, is the quote from my reading this week. I am sure... sure... more from this book will follow.


(Quote c/o "Easy Riders Raging Bulls" by Peter Biskind and Photo c/o artvehicle and this link).

Making Movies

Today is not a day for work.

Besides the fact that I'm wearing a red dress (I mean-- who can honestly press their nose to the grindstone [cubicle] when they are decked out in red?), I am reading the book "Making Movies" by Sideny Lumet and I am smitten.

Smitten with his writing, smitten with his movies... even though I think The Pawnbroker is the most depressing thing I've ever seen. But mostly, I am, again, just smitten with just the process.

[It doesn't help that I was on set two weeks ago while I was on vacation and I've been to some preview screenings to help friends out recently.... le sigh.]

But anyway, since I have to be content to be distantly smitten at the moment, here's something to feed into the movie-making-development-production-editing lust:



Making a movie has alwasy been about telling a story. Some movies tell a story and leave you with a feeling. Some tell as story and leave you with a feeling and give you an idea. Some tell a story, leave you with a feeling, give you an idea and reveal something about yourself and others. And surely the way you tell that story should relate somehow to what that story is. 

Because that's what style is: the way you tell a particular story. After the first critical decision ("What's this story about?") comes the second most important decisions: "Now that I know what it's about, how shall I tell it?" And this decision will affect every department involved in the movie that is about to be made. 

Let me vent my anger first, so it's out of the way. Critics talk about style as something apart from the movie because they need the style to be obvious. The reason they need it to be obvious is that they don't really see. If the movie looks like a Ford or Coca-Cola commercial, they think that's style. And it is. It's trying to sell you something you don't need and is stylistically geared to that goal. As soon as a "long lens" appears, that's "style." ... From the huzzahs that greeted Lelouch's A Man and a Woman, one would've thought that another Jean Renoir had arrived. A perfectly pleasant bit of romantic fluff was proclaimed "art," because it was so easy to identify as something other than realism. ... 

Good style, to me, is unseen style. It is style that is felt.



(quote c/o making movies, chapter 3, "style"... picture c/o imdb)

India - Analog

Final set of india pics-- taken with Holga, because I'm just that indie.

38 photos on my flickr.... enjoy.

Temple in Amravati 

Women preparing sweets for mass wedding in Amravati 

Preparing rice for mass wedding in Amravati 

Making Roti for the mass wedding 

Eggplant for the mass wedding

Prepping flowers for the mass wedding. 

Outside of Victoria Station

Gateway of India 

Choor Bazaar (The Thieves' Market)

Oranges in the Thieves' Market

I had a bit of an issue with exposure and lost one roll.... but my first time with a Holga and first time with medium format-- I think they turned out really well.



And that's it, ladies and gents, for India. See the whole collection on my flickr. 

India - Digital

Photos, set 2... taken with my Canon 1DMarkII--- thus, "India Digital."

These were taken all in Mumbai, mostly in Bandra West (Kishori's 'hood) and Colaba (the touristy 'hood).

If you'd like to see all 38 photos.... visit my Flickr. 

And keep your eye out for further adventures in India Analog (coming later this week)... in which we visit Chor Bazaar and take an overnight train to Amravati to see the largest mass wedding in India's history.

Evening in Bandra West 

A building in Colaba

 Kishori with Chaat, street food. 

Sunset on Marine Drive

 Souvenirs outside of the "Gateway of India" 

 Me, outside of the "Gateway of India" 

A pile of peppers on the street in Bandra 

 Around the corner from Kishori's place.

A Tailor in Bandra West 

 Birds flock around the Taj

Texting in Bandra 

Construction in Bandra

If you like what you see... there's more here!