The Master Speaks

I'm reading this brilliant book:
Rodin on Art and Artists "Conversations with Paul Gsell"

  Auguste Rodin by Edward J Steichen

Generally, it's an amazing book where Rodin talks about sculpture, poetry, painting, great artists, Balzac, religion and many other brilliant things.

And here-- is my favorite quote so far, from a chapter called "Thought in Art."


"Let us understand each other," Rodin said, laughing. "There are certain admirers of such complicated brain that they attribute most unexpected intentions to the artist. We are not talking of these. But you may rest assured that the masters are always conscious of what they do." And tossing his head, "If the skeptics of whom you speak only know what energy it takes for the artist to translate, even feebly, what he thinks and feels with the greatest strength, they would not doubt that all that appears shining forth from a picture or sculpture was intended." A few moments later, he continued: "In short, the purest masterpieces are those in which one finds no inexpressive waste of forms, lines and colors, but where all, absolutely all, expresses thought and soul.

"Yet it may happen that when the masters animate the Nature of their ideals, they delude themselves. It may be that it is governed by an indifferent force or by a will whose design our intelligence is incapable of penetrating. At least, the artists, in representing the universe as he imagines it, formulates his own dreams. In nature he celebrates his own soul. And so he enriches the soul of humanity. For in coloring the material world with his spirit he reveals to his delighted fellow beings a thousand unsuspected shades of feeling. He discovers to them riches in themselves until then unknown. He gives them new reasons for loving life, new inner lights to guide them.

"He is, as Dante said of Virgil, 'their guide, their master, and their friend.'"

Brussels Sprouts gone wild...

Over at NYPL, not only do they take books seriously-- but, more importantly, they take books about food seriously.

Check out the above, where Jean Strouse, director of the Cullman Center for Scholars, and former Cullman Fellow Melanie Rehak make a crazy, bacon fueled Brussels Sprouts recipe that Melanie said was "the most important thing she learned from Jean"-- and which eventually ended up in her new book, "Eating for Beginners."

Catching Up

Hello there, empty space!


This morning, I decided to use this chilly November day to plow through my twitter favorites, which I basically use as a lame version of instapaper.

Anyhow-- I had marked about a million articles "to read later" over the past several months... and, having seriously just gone through about 75-80 articles... I'm walking away with a sense of internet writing as a mostly vapid endeavor (my own attempts included, here). Everyone poses questions, but the brevity of the 'post' format doesn't seem to give anyone enough space to answer any of them.
Maybe I'm just noticing this now because of the long series of disappointing articles that did nothing but probe at subjects without dealing with them in any seriousness... but... really, right now, I'm craving immersion in the form of a Dickens novel...

But, anyhow... in a totally hypocritcal move...

Here are a few good nugets of info/pretty cool experiences:

Above everything else today-- a great and wonderful Keynote at this year's Film Indepedent Filmmaker Forum from Lionsgate's Joe Drake

Scott Macaulay's initial thoughts about Amazon Studios over at Filmmaker Mag

Interesting interview with DSLR DP Chris Marino

A Beautiful Monet Exhibit

Collapsus-- "Annotated Narrative"
(watch the intro video)

Trying to re-invent the book with MyFry

An Interactive Documentary about highrises called "Out My Window"

Selections from this year's National Geographic Photo Contest

Amazing photos from the Atom Bomb tests in the 50s

Oh... and--general absurdity in the universe.


Meanwhile, yesterday, I watched Adam's Rib which was totally worth 2 hours of undivided attention.

Two More Awesome Interactive Videos

1) Anthropologie Stop Motion Shoe Shopping:
(click on the picture to jump)

Not totally interactive-- but a fun little video that leads you to the shoes in the end. They also list all of the shoes as characters in the credits. Love.


2) Vevo-Andy Grammer's Choose Your Own Adventure Video: "Keep Your Head Up"
(the embed link was broken, but click on the photo again)

The video really does follow a "choose your own adventure" track pretty faithfully in both structure and aesthetics--but there are several things about it which are still fascinating:

a) the video has sign posts throughout where things remain the same regardless of versions. It has an over-arching structure and then little loopholes in between. So, regardless of which path you take you end up the same place about three or four times throughout.

b) they didn't just rely on the gimmick. It's well shot and there are some other cool camera tricks thrown in. Even Rainn Wilson makes an appearance (though you need to choose one path to get the most Rainn Wilson screen time... which involves two very specific choices). But--still, strip away the choosing your own thing, and it's still a fun video to watch.

c) They shot it in such a way that you feel as though the ending is personalized for you even though it may be generic. Each time I watched the end, I noticed different people in the crowd shots. One reason for this is because I just met different characters individually throughout the video... but also- they never focus on one person in the crowd "close-ups." So, in the group of two or three upon which they focus, I am going to notice the character that I met individually... and so I'm going to feel as though the shot was reflective of my journey, even though it will likely be the same every time you pick that choice regardless of how you got there.

d) They use jump cuts as a motif throughout the video as a seemingly stylistic choice that is common in pop-music videos... But these jump cuts also mask the substitution of the different "Reels" that you choose as you go. So they use the style of the video and editing to mask the technical mechanics of switching the options.

That's all I've got for now. Pretty cool.
(You can read more about it over at Mashable, or read more about the design firm-- Interlude-- which  works specifically with interactive video)

A (Very Short and Early) Theory of Web Video

Having worked on several videos for various blogs recently- my work has got me thinking about web video and content-- specifically: context and content.

I am going to attempt to keep this as short as I am able- but here's my general theory on making video for the web:

If the piece that you are making will live on a site with strong informational or aesthetic point of view--and not simply on youtube or in a black and gray video player-- web video should not focus on providing too much context. It is merely part of a larger whole of the site-- which includes the text above it, the photos beside it, the design behind it and, ultimately the comments below it. It becomes a piece of a larger puzzle- a piece that you need to experience in concert with everything else on the page to appreciate it.

A complication arises when the video gets embedded, or removed from the above mentioned context. But I don't believe that this encourages more contextualization in-video.

Embedding does in fact strip the video from its original context-- and it would thus seem that the video would loose it's informational and/or aesthetic value. However-- my experience with embedding is that there is always new commentary attached to the embed, because the impulse of the embed is to re-appropriate.

Often, bloggers "appropriate" things from other sites that they feel embodies the aestheic of their own space. So- when they embed a video from another site-- even though they may be stripping the video of its original content design by removing it from its page-- they are re-contextualizing it so that it becomes part of their own expression, thus gaining a new meaning and aesthetic value on their own site. The video gains new value and also new meaning-- and thus it is, again, important not to include too much "proprietary" information in the video itself. [Here- by "proprietary" -- I mean overt pieces of information or expressions-- things that will prevent a re-contextualization because they are too personal or convey too much of a sense of ownership].

Blogging is about a dual interest in personal expression and community expression. I know that I started blogging because I wanted to both express my own views on design, art, food and culture, but also because there appeared to be a strong dialogue between the community of bloggers that I read.  Embedding, borrowing photos, and other re-contextualization become a key part of that dialogue because it mutates and evolves the content itself according to the personalities of the bloggers involved.

I suppose, my frustration here is that photos and links have evolved the blogging space so that they are always a part of a whole-- see, for example-- The City Sage and how she re-appropriates and curates photos with her text into a post that is an aesthetically complete self-expression using borrowed content (expressed particularly well in "Palette Lust: Thunderstorms").

Because people are so used to watching video in a stand alone context-- they are not trained or simply refuse to see video in such a fashion-- as part of the whole. There is an expectation for it to feel like mini-television. But, hopefully, as more video appears in innovative and interesting contexts, the expectations and reception for pure web video as I describe above will become more adaptable.

Before and After

For the past several weeks I've been working with the lovely Amy Azzarito and Nightwood on the before and after of Amy's bedroom. Nightwood's furniture is really beautiful and organic looking and watching the transformation of Amy's room was incredible. Check it out:

The video is featured on Design*Sponge--which has been a favorite of mine for a long time. It's a total dream to see my work featured there and all of the ladies were really wonderful collaborators-- great ideas really just enveloped this project. Check out more in Amy's post.

Taking it to the Next Level

Anthropologie has finally done it. They've conquered video.

A few months ago I talked about Anthropologie's digital brand strategy and how much I admired the way they use various media tools to integrate their lifestyle into the everyday. And now they've taken web-video and exploited the 'reality' of the moving image to add even more contextualization to their product. ... and oh what beautiful contextualization it is.

Check out their moving display of October Outfits (or click the photo above). It really is taking 'catalogs' to the next level.




[Their ANTHRPOLOGiST exhibition this month also has so beautiful web video in it-- they visit P.E. Guerin, the nation's oldest decorative hardware firm].