Dirty car art

This amazing artist works with dirty cars:

So much better than "wash me"

You can see more at:
http://autos.yahoo.com/photos/dirty-car-art-slideshow/

Random thoughts

So I just have some random thoughts on technology and how things have advanced over the years. These are just very random thoughts that have come to me in the past week or so:

I just recently got my first smart phone (Im so cool now), and thought Id facetime with my dad, because I could (haha). As we were talking, I remembered as a kid thinking, "wouldnt it be so cool if in the future we could talk on the phone, and see each other too?" Well thanks to facetime and Skype, we can. Perhaps its better than the hologrammed images I had thought of as a kid. But there was this weird feeling I had as soon as I had realized it, I dont know how to describe it. It was weird and almost eerie, and of course just made me wonder what else is to come and where else could technology possibly take us.

Other random thing: My brother, who is 8 years younger than I am, is going to the boarding high school I also went to. He has lost his cell phone a few times, so when I went to see him in Spokane a few weeks ago my parents asked me to buy a corded phone (the horror!) to give to him so that they could reach him.

Days later, I asked my brother if he had plugged his phone in yet, which he said no. I asked why he was taking so long, and he said he needed to talk to the deans about installing/activating the phone. I didnt understand and said, "What? Just plug the phone into the wall and itll work" and of course he was like, OOOOHHHH, then took forever finding the wall phone plug. It was then that I realized that the technology he knows is activating cell phones, not simple things like plugging a corded phone into the wall. I never really felt that the age gap between us was that major, but apparently it is.

The last of the reading

For the section Digital Archiving as an Art Practice by Dew Harrison, I thought the idea of archiving stuff sounded great only because I think it could really showcase an artists work; how they have grown, the different ways their art has been expressed, or just how their work has evolved. Its also possible to show how certain art pieces can reflect on different time periods in the artists lives, or how certain circumstances could affect/influence their art.

Towards the end of this section it discusses personal archiving is so accessible, and closes with "It is open to the common man, as accessible as stamp-collecting and as comfortable as the older technologies of print and photography to the present-day artist" (Harrison 108). So this quote it saying digital archiving is ubiquitous and available to everyone and every genre.

In Preservation of Net Art in Museums by Anna Laforet, it talks about how they are trying to save all this info digitally. In reading this I remembered taking this class with Muhlhauser last semester, and we were talking about print and digital info, and how digital could easily be lost or damaged or whatever because of technical issues, whereas print is a hard physical copy (just have to find room and hope theres not a fire). I appreciated the statement on page 110: "Which elements of Net art works should be emphasised, described, documented and kept?" This makes me wonder how things are decided about what is kept and why. (I also just remembered that supposedly the library of congress is keeping every single tweet ever made. Is this true? And why??)

I can understand that it can be interesting, or maybe even useful to keep things from the past. It can be fun or just a great piece of history. But how do we decide whats important enough to keep? Are there regrets over things we have tossed?

Obama and Romneys Bayonet Memes

The last Presidential debate was last night, and although I did not catch it, Ive heard lots about a comment Romney made about not having as many Navy ships as before, and Obama says something along the lines of we no longer have bayonets either.

Apparently this has become so awesome online it has become a meme. Washington Post has an article as well as other funny memes posted here: (sorry there was no share button)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/romney-saddled-with-horses-and-bayonets-meme/2012/10/23/7c340d3c-1d14-11e2-b647-bb1668e64058_blog.html

Readings Oct 17

I read the article "When Presence-absence Becomes Pattern-randomness: Blast Theory's Can You See Me Now?" by Maria Chatzichristodoulou in our book Digital Visual Culture, I thought that the game Can You See Me Now sounded really interesting, but I had a hard time understanding if this is a real life game or a visual game. It appears to be real life, but I just cant understand how the whole thing works. It sounds interesting that you should somehow include people you have lost contact with and there are runners, but I guess besides that I dont understand the point of the game or how it works.

I did really enjoy the bit on the video games like Grand Theft Auto and The Sims (both of which I have played before, and still really love playing the sims). I think I liked Grand Theft Auto because I found it so ridiculous and hilarious. I remember when it came out I couldnt believe this game was actually being sold. And when I would play the Sims I remember my mom teasing me because she said I was essentially playing "house". So I found it interesting that even our text says that the Sims was "particularly popular with females"and referred to it as a "electronic doll's house" (Benthowska-Kafel, Cashen and Gardiner 95).

I think its interesting how people like to play games based on reality; what I mean is, something such as the sims was/is so popular, and some of the things sims do are based on what we do everyday from washing dishes to going to work. Who would have thought that a game such as that would be so fun and popular? Why isnt it as much fun to to the actual real life chores and other daily activities? Why is doing these activities on games so much better?

BlackBerry users are embarrassed

I came across this artile on Yahoo! today, and it caught my eye. It goes into detail about users who are embarrassed by their devices, to the point that they refuse to bring them out in public for other people to see. One person even compared it to MySpace, and several people admit to being frustrated and even feeling rejected by others for owning a BlackBerry. Apparently, the BlackBerry just doesnt hold a light to iPhones or Droids (I dont own a smartphone so I wouldnt know).

I think people who are this emotionally charged are ridiculous and shameful. I also found this article laughable. Hopefully I am not the only one.

The article can be found here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackberry-black-sheep-144804064.html

PC's dying?

I figured it would be a matter of time until this happened; with smartphones being able to do just about anything, as well as tablets and small laptops (I myself just recently got a macbook air and it is the smartest investment Ive ever made), who really needs a huge stationary desktop anymore?


Found here: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/pc-sales-collapse-personal-computer-dead-142733092.html<div><object width="576" height="324"><param name="movie" value="http://d.yimg.com/nl/techticker/site/player.swf"></param><param name="flashVars" value="vid=30841017&browseCarouselUI=show&"></param><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed width="576" height="324" allowFullScreen="true" src="http://d.yimg.com/nl/techticker/site/player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="vid=30841017&browseCarouselUI=show&"></embed></object></div>