Author: jkordy

Reggie Watts

reggie

Saw Reggie’s latest show Transition last week at the public.

Wow. I think “sasquatch in the night” my be my new fav though it’s hard to beat “F*$K,S#%T,STACK”. I gotta hand it to him, this guy really knows what he’s doing. He wraps an intellectual foray into deconstructing contemporary performance and culture into an entertaining, accessible, easily swallowable, package for the masses. It’s hard not to be entertained, but as far as I am concerned there is also a lot of depth to what he is doing. I felt there was more of a through line holding everything together and more improv in his last show disinformation, but nonetheless Transition was a very polished assault on our minds. Reggie Watts is a very compelling stage presence no matter what he is doing.

And don’t forget he is also an amazing beat boxer:


Reggie Watts: Out Of Control from Jakob Lodwick on Vimeo.

The Public
January 7-17th 2009
a really nice and more eloquent write up of disinformation here
also reggie’s website

img above from flickr, pica’s stream

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

brieflifeofoscarwao A wonderful gem of a book, in the tradition of 100 years of solitude…or any other novel where generations intertwine and the past has a great influence on the present without the knowledge of it’s current inhabitants. Destiny manifested in our parents’, grand-parents’, and even great grand-parents’ minute decisions all have a great hold on us. This is a great read.

You also learn, at least I did, a lot of previously unknown history of the Dominican Republic through long and sometimes multi-page, quite informative, footnotes. Oh yes, and not many books out there that are so un-self-conciously geeky (Sauron and Akira anyone?). What a wondrous mix!

PSD Bomb

psdstreet

You’ve been PSD’d! Interesting street art project. (Just in case you’ve forgotten how pervasive photoshopping is in our world.) Definitely enjoy the site-specific nature of this altering.

more pics and even more

Tintin

I almost forgot, Today, January 10th is Tintin’s Birthday! Happy Birthday TINTIN!

I love Tintin. Of course anybody who loves him has to be a little conflicted. I think acknowledging the not so positive parts and celebrating the rest, which are so great, is the best path.

I also heard more chatter that a movie might finally get made. Can’t wait for a movie version.

The Shipment

theshipment
Attention White People* you must see this show!
It will make you uncomfortable. There are token white people in it and Young Jean Lee secretly hates you. In fact all minorities secretly hate white people. You may think you are a special white person, who is immune to issues of race, you don’t see color. Well you will if you go see this show and you will also be uncomfortable. A little minstrel? Maybe some incest or fecal jokes will make you cringe, then. No? How about being called out on your color-blindness?

If you happen to not be white, you should also go, you will get a good laugh! Lee is simply one of the most brilliant people in this field to deal with race, and although the show seems a little unbalanced and composed of two distinct halves, in the end, hopefully you will all have learned something about yourselves and how you react when confronted with race issues head on.

* I am one. If you need help figuring out if you are one this might help.

The Kitchen
New York, NY
January 8-24, 2009.
more even more

Tumbarumba

Here’s an interesting art project from turbulence.org:

tumbarumba

“Tumbarumba is an add-on for Firefox web browsers. It quietly sits in the background, occasionally inserts a fragment of a story into a webpage that is being viewed. The result is an absurd sentence that is reminiscent of the surrealist exquisite corpse game. If the inserted fragment (we call the fragments “tumbarumbas”) is spotted and clicked upon, the entire story will emerge and eventually take over the page.”

I love projects that deal with disrupting and exposing the workings of the internet (see Mark Napier‘s Shredder or Riot projects), and I think this one is a great idea. I’m just not sure if this one is very successful. I think the digital interruption work is really great, but I think the content and the context are at odds with each other and it’s hard to relate the two.

You can get it from turbulence here.
Tumbarumba was made by Ethan Ham and Benjamin Rosenbaum.
A commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. 2008

New Blog Find

supersmart supercreative entity by the name of zefrank has started a new blog STOP it aint pretty but it sure is chock full of great advice from someone who knows what they are talking about when it comes to the digital community space STOP if you are in charge of an online “community” you should check it out for great advice STOP

Attention to Detail

I came across this article, and it made me think. In the image above the dotted line is the old MoMA logo and the solid line represents a new design. If you set the two designs side by side someone could “stare for some time before detecting the slightest distinction.” The cost for these tiny changes was in the “low five figures.”

First things first, this is not a typography rant, I am a typography noob, in the above image I have no idea what font that is, and if I was looking at the two designs, I too would probably have a hard time seeing the difference. However, I love the idea that MoMA would spend a lot of time and effort to figure something out that at first glance would seem trivial. I love the idea of people paying attention to details, little tiny, seemingly insignificant, the things other people miss, details.

Designers and artists (usually) understand the importance of details. A line off by a millimeter, a speck of dust, a smudge, something off-center by hair, all of these things make a huge difference. Creative types obsess over these things, I am one, and I understand this need intuitively.

But I am also conflicted. I’m sure a lot of people would read this article and think that is a lot of money to just adjust some lines! Are they just being super anal? Is this a huge waste of resources? Can spending money just to make something beautiful be justified? Shouldn’t you put in something ugly and cheaper, or not re-design something that looks just fine and put the difference towards charity? This is the same argument that plagues art in general: We should cut spending on the arts (what a waste!), and use it for important things.

Well, whatever happened to “God is in the details”? Little things matter and make a difference. It’s hard to quantify the impact of a more legible, less ugly font, or to quantify the inspiration that a particularly great work of art brings. The marketing department will have a hard time figuring out the ROI, but a more beautiful logo can make the brand more memorable, more familiar, and an inspiring work of art can help boost morale or productivity. And it all starts with the details, they really matter. And us creative types, will have to keep fighting, to make them important and to bring attention to them, because, inherently, we know how important the details are.