Art

As a child I enjoyed Lego in its endless array of things I could build. Nowadays most Lego seems heavily themed, in that each kit builds something specific. This artist, Nathan Sawaya, has an enviable job in which he creates Lego sculptures that are commissioned by clients. He has a large gallery with lots of interesting themes.

Some artists use paint, others bronze – But for Nathan Sawaya he chooses to build his awe-inspiring art out of toy building blocks. LEGO® bricks to be exact.

With more than 1.5 million colored bricks in his New York studio, Sawaya’s sculptures take many forms.

Sawaya’s art is currently touring North American museums in a show titled, The Art of the Brick. It’s the only exhibition focusing exclusively on LEGO as an art medium. The creations, constructed from nearly one million pieces, were built from standard bricks beginning as early as 2002. More information on the tour, dates and locations can be found here.

A full-time freelance artist, Sawaya accepts commissions from individuals, corporations, and … well just about anyone with a good idea! He’s also available to design and build custom creations at events, photo shoots and conventions.

So let Sawaya know what you have in mind, there are literally no limits to what he can create out of LEGO.

Nathan Sawaya’s Web Site for his Lego sculptures

I found this site recently and have been transfixed. He uses long exposure times and turns human existence into ghostly motion. Visit the photographer’s web site here:

Some of my favorites:

Hands

Out at the end of your arms,
outriggers on a great sailing vessel.

Ever turning to the myriad of tasks,
painting the landscape.

Bony and raw,
forever enduring.

Fashioning the perfect world.

Michael Radford ‘08

Long exposure film combined with LED lights. Enjoy.

Tochka Japan Web Site
PikaPika Web Site

This is a fascinating story. The earliest human voice recorded by smoke blackened paper. Amazing. The recording will be presented on Friday at a conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections at Stanford University in California, Giovannoni said. It is also posted on the Web here

Listen to an Mp3 of this first recording

American researchers have pieced together a 10-second audio clip of a French folk song which they believe is the oldest recognisable recording of the human voice.

The recording appears to be of a young woman singing a couple of phrases from the 18th century folk song Au Clair de la Lune. It was made in 1860 by Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and librarian, on a Heath Robinson-style device he called a “phonautograph”.

But in successfully playing back the clip, the team from the University of California’s Berkeley Lab, may have robbed their compatriot Thomas Edison of the honour long accorded him as the first man to successfully record sound.

Edison’s recording of himself reciting ‘Mary had a little lamb’, recorded on a tinfoil cylinder and no longer playable, dates from 1877. The first playable recording is thought to be from a performance of a Handel oratorio at Crystal Palace in 1888.

Scott’s phonoautograph had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a hog’s bristle stylus which etched sound waves onto sheets of smoke-blackened paper.

The New York Times reported that Scott never intended them to be played back but saw them as merely a visual representation of sound. It said that when Edison unveiled his phonograph, which was designed to play back its recordings, the Frenchman even accused him of misusing the technology.

The recording was discovered earlier this month at the French Academy of Sciences by David Gioavannoni, an “audio historian” who led the effort to find Scott’s original “phonoautograms”.

Mr Giovannoni had found earlier recordings at a Paris patent office, dating back as early as 1857 but he told the newspaper that his “eureka moment” came when he found the immaculately preserved 1860 recording on a sheet of rag paper measuring nine inches by 29 inches.

“It was pristine,” Mr Giovannoni said. “The sound waves were remarkably clear and clean.”

Mr Giovannoni sent scans of the recording to the Berkeley Lab where they were painstakingly converted into sound by scientists using technology designed to salvage historic recordings.

That technology allows the voice of a young French woman, recorded in Paris in the months before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration as President of the United States, to be heard again.

Times of London Source Article

George knelt down and extended his rough heavy hand to help me to my feet. I stood upright and breathed in deeply, letting the thin and icy air awaken my senses. Time seemed to slow to a stop and then tentatively move forward again at half pace. Beside me, George’s breath came in abrupt gasps, in through his nose, and out through narrow pursed lips. The sun was setting and it reflected in his goggles, a soft milky orange glow, slowly fading. This was the summit of Mt. Shasta, Washington state, and my best friend and I had climbed all the way to the top, because it was still there.

I threw my arms wide to catch the last of its light, and inside I was singing at the top of my lungs.

I was 39 years old when they came to us at last. I was surprised that I was as surprised as I was, to be completely honest. I had always half expected we weren’t the only ones in the neighborhood, but it was still a powerful jolt to the nervous system when they revealed themselves to us en mass. It wasn’t so much the “invasion fleet” if that’s what they called it. The mobile phone video of their appearance in our atmosphere had spread rapidly, and we were all in shock, but that was nothing compared to the moment their friends on the ground revealed themselves to us simultaneously, in every human language, over every radio and TV station we had. That’s when we all started to realize that this was more than just an invasion; it was a coup.

Now much has been made of their appearance in the time since the first wave revealed itself to the world 5 years ago. It was almost as if years of bad science fiction had conditioned us to expect bug eyed reptiles with hybrid bumble bee DNA, when what we got was almost exactly the same as us, only “better” somehow. Each a near perfect humanoid specimen, strong and tall, with shining blue eyes and golden hair. Their bright smiles both mesmerized and terrified me. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

I paid 75 American for this B.C. Rich “Bronze” Mockingbird style guitar. The guy who sold it to me said it had been his nephews and he had probably played it once or twice, if that. And it was a real challenge to straighten it out but with the help of my daughter we stripped it down, adjusted the bridge, plated the electronics and re-stringed it. After some tweaking, we plugged it into my new home practice rig: A Line 6 30 Watt combo and a 4 channel foot pedal system with built in volume and wah.

I have a setting I like to call post industrial titanium, and it is pretty much the heaviest metal tone I can conjure up, with a little bit of phaser and a touch of phase echo. It is spacey enough to draw you down into it, and heavy enough to give you heart palpitations until you crawl back up.

The guitar sounds great clean and dirty, roots or post industrial. It rips and slides and has great sustain. Of course, thats the downside to digital modeling; everything comes out tits up regardless of your gear. It also looks real trippy when we use the delay filter in my digital camera to shoot action shots.

It almost pains me to do what I have to next. My daughter Karianna and I are stripping this one down and doing some art on it. I can think of a few ideas for a design motif that would fit the overall shape of the Mockingbird, and really tie it in as a distinctive piece, but am open to suggestions. I am nowhere near the artist Robert James Langenwalter is but I am pretty sure we can do a halfway decent homage.

Your thoughts?

Unlike many fellow Canadians and various American friends to the south, I do not eat many donuts. This is not by choice of course, because donuts are quite tasty. Its a health thing, as a proverbial west coaster I grow strong and healthy from organic food; locally grown produce, artisanal food and tasty fruit. I estimate I might eat a dozen donuts a year. However, when I do eat a donut or two -- I like it to be a sublime experience and combine it with a nice cup of coffee.

I watched with great interest a Pacific North West episode of adventure program, No Reservations, with Anthony Bourdain -- you can see a clip of this one hour show here:

Anthony visits Voodoo Donuts in this video:

I encourage you to visit the Voodoo Donuts web site.

Famous for their girth, our doughnuts are made fresh with love and care. You can pay us more for our product which is locally made, locally owned, and an honest dream come true, or you can buy cheaper, megalacorp, machine cut, rebaked, defrozen, warehouse doughnuts and pastries.

I plan to visit this place sometime this year.

The Door……..

And so, this is the way of it.
You there in the hallway, me crouching in my room.

Suffer you not dismay, entrance into my room is forbidden to all.
Consideration for mutual saftey is the weight that bars the door.

Your ideas, hanging as coats in a closet there in the great hallway
while mine rest just behind the door upon the icy floor.

At the very beginning of time, light filled the room.
The portals have now sealed themselves.

I recall entering this room many lifetimes past,
the hallway was brightly lit as though the summer sun did rest therein.
The cold is viscious and cannot be killed here inside this cell.

Your thoughts resting there in the sun, mine imprisoned here just inside this door.

Perchance a miracle, the door would swing wide and our intellects collide
as two comets in the night.
A great shower of sparks as our views combine and tumble to the earth.

What a fabulous dream
Alas, I awake to discover there was never a door at all.

I had simply closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Michael Radford
12-12-06

SMILE

Day is long, sun hot, toil is fierce.

Moving forward the hard concrete rises up to smash into my feet.

Gravity forces me to the ground.

Then, just over there, the instant smile of a child.

It all rushes back to me.

SIDEWALKS

Looking out at everybody
ridin’ in their new soft life,

They got that look that says
I’m Gods wife.

They engineered their world
insulated from reality,

Smile on their face
got a little hint of insanity.

Deep introspection,
a pause for reflection.

No, I’m afraid not,
you see, this lane is closed.

I’m knowin’ there are some who have
traveled out too far.

I see’em in the streets when I’m
ridin’ in my car.

Shaggy clothes
vacant stare.

Gotta dog too,
one with nasty hair.

They mutter and they mumble,
wildly throwin’ up their hands.

Just keep on walkin’,
ain’t got no plans.

If you think it’s scary
when they cast a fearsome glance.

Imagine being prisoner
in their nightmare trance.

Let’s all lock our doors
and switch on the alarm.

Think of ways to distance ourselves
to escape from harm.

I don’t think you’ve noticed
there’s more of them these days.

So hide you well and scurry like a rat,
slip behind your Oakleys.

You don’t have to deal with that,