MadMonk Interactive

I love film and history, so this New York Times video where reporter Caryn James covers a multimedia exhibition at Grand Central Station titled “Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies”. Based on the book by James Sanders, it’s a nice reminder that when filmed effectively, the environment can play as large a part as the actors. A bit of nostalgia, but fun.

Recently, I watched a film and upon conclusion, was asked what I thought about it. In hindsight, the film’s story lingered with me for days, provoking a variety of thoughts and debate (which speaks well for that film), but on the spot for an immediate response, the first thing that came to mind was that I loved the cinematography. It was actually in a suburban setting but the angles and visual pacing were impactful and memorable. So sure, New York City give a lot on its own, but in the hands of capable directors and cinematographers, as we can see through this exhibit, it’s incredible the canvas it offers visual artists.

“What is happening in China is what happened in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century,” said Michael Goedhuis, a collector and art dealer specializing in Asian contemporary art who has galleries in London and New York. “New ground is being broken. There’s a revolution under way.”

According to a recent New York Times article, there has been a consistent rise with capitalism in the arts in China, as evidenced by last November’s record sale of a painting for $2.7 million. This is huge when one considers how after the1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, avant-garde, experimental art was banned since it was judged as anti-authoritarian. Now such contemporary works are overshadowing the historically typical ink drawings and traditionally-themed paintings. Whether it’s warranted increased speculation or a bubble, I enjoyed the Times’ art slide show (8 slides, a quick glimpse that inspires a search for more.)

“Art-O-Meter is a device that measures the quality of an art piece. It bases its evaluation on the amount of time that people spend in front of an artwork compared to the total time of exhibition.” Of course the measurements can be skewed, like say folks happen to be in front of one piece while looking at another wall or talking with a friend. Overall, it’s a smart application…but one has to wonder how it’ll influence the business of art down the road. Once this get’s economically viable, I can see it in retail spaces to measure where people are spending their time…and ultimately, as shown in movies like Minority Report, it’ll develop into a part of public, commercial life.

If you’re at all an admirer of Pollock’s place in art history (and maybe if you aren’t), you may enjoy this 2003 Flash piece that allows you to play with digital paint. Drag around and you’ll drip, pour, etc. Click off and on again to change paint colors and other attributes. Could be a good occasional diversion to clear the mind every now and then.

The point of this though is that rediscovering this piece recently made me reflect on this art movement again and I found this page on The University of New South Wales’ School of Physics’ site about Fractal Expressionism an interesting read. It plays with the chaos theory and many of Nature’s processes. In case you don’t read it, this sums it up: ” Pollock died in 1956, before chaos and fractals were discovered. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that Pollock consciously understood the fractals he was painting. Nevertheless, his introduction of fractals was deliberate. He described Nature directly. Rather than mimicking Nature, he adopted its language – fractals – to build his own patterns.”

I caught this on CNN’s 360 tonight. Threadless is an online t-shirt competition. According to the report, folks can design their shirt, submit it (they get around 1,400 shirt submissions per week), they get rated by site visitors and top vote getters get up to $2K in cash and prizes each week. This idea came about after one of the founders won a t-shirt competition in London. According to Jacob DeHart (VP), they sold $6.2M in shirts in 2005…and for 2006, they’re looking towards $18M to $20M in shirt sales. What’s funny is that their Creative Director mentioned that they spoke at MIT last year and that a student told him that everything they’ve done is what this student was taught would fail. They also own another company called Naked & Angry where customer-designed patterns are made into items like ties and wallpaper.

Who has fond memories of their Etch-A-Sketch? I bet it’s one of those play things that indirectly inspired a number of people to steer disciplines one way or the other, whether art, architecture, etc. It’s sort of a universal toy easy to learn and time-consuming to master. And by master, I refer to work like the following. This guy’s work caught my eye and quite frankly, it puts my best sketches (ever) to shame!