Categories
Truly Free Film

How We Solve Problems Today (and a whole lot more…)

Bruce Sterling has a great post in Wired on “Atemporality for the Creative Artist”.It speaks accurately of the present, and offers a great prescriptive for what comes next.  What’s “Atemporality”?  Look at how problems are dealt with these days.  I know I come fairly close to what Sterling lays out here, and it goes a long way to answering that first question:

‘Step one – write problem in a search engine, see if somebody else has solved it already.

Step two – write problem in my blog; study the commentory cross-linked to other guys.

Step three – write my problem in Twitter in a hundred and forty characters. See if I can get it that small. See if it gets retweeted.

Step four – open source the problem; supply some instructables to get me as far as I’ve been able to get, see if the community takes it any further.

Step five – start a Ning social network about my problem, name the network after my problem, see if anybody accumulates around my problem.

Step six – make a video of my problem. Youtube my video, see if it spreads virally, see if any media convergence accumulates around my problem.

Step seven – create a design fiction that pretends that my problem has already been solved. Create some gadget or application or product that has some relevance to my problem and see if anybody builds it.

Step eight – exacerbate or intensify my problem with a work of interventionist tactical media. And step nine – find some kind of pretty illustrations from the Flickr ‘Looking into the Past’ photo pool.’

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Best Places To Sled In NYC

Time Out just posted a great list of where to sled in these them hills round here.  Um. Okay, so that’s not real good English, but we liked how it sounded anyway.  But the list is good.  For all five boroughs go the list.

For Manhattan:
Cedar Hill, Central Park
Thrill-seekers need not apply: A less-crowded alternative to Pilgrim Hill, Cedar makes a good starter slide for beginners. Fifth Ave between 76th and 79th Sts. Subway: 6 to 77th St (centralparknyc.org)

East River Park
Though this long, narrow park isn’t known for its steep tundra, it’s a great option for downtown kiddos to get their sledding fix. Since it’s located right on the river, parents can enjoy the scenic view while their tots play. Montgomery St to E 12th. Subway: F, J, M, Z to Essex St—Delancy St. (nycgovparks.org)

Inwood HIll Park
While this spot is great for hiking and biking in the summertime, the expansive space and sloping terrain offer some nice sledding opportunities when the snow hits. Dyckman St at the Hudson River. Subway: A to Dyckman St. (nycgovparks.org)

Pilgrim Hill, Central Park
The grande dame of NYC sledding institutions—and rightly so, with its perfect steepness and gentle denouement (that’s sledspeak for a smooth finish). This spot gets crowded, so prepare to slalom around a few human obstacles. Enter at 72nd St and Fifth Ave. Subway: 6 to 68th St.

Morningside Park
This is where the Columbia crew hangs out, using dining hall trays, cardboard boxes and snowboards. Take a cue from the undergrads and tote along a household item to use as a makeshift (read: cheap) sled. Morningside Dr at 115th St (nycgovparks.org). Subway: B, C to 116th St.

Riverside Park
There are some gentler slopes between 92nd and 103rd Streets, but the hard-core head to Hippo Playground, where you can catch a glimpse of the Hudson as you dodge trees on your way out—er, down. Hay bales at the bottom prevent impalement on the fence beyond. Grab whatever gear you’ll need at C&S Hardware (788 Amsterdam Ave at 98th St; 212-222-8720, csgroupny.com). 91st St at Riverside Dr (nycgovparks.org). Subway: 1, 2, 3 to 96th St.

91st Street
For a quick fix, slip down 91st Street’s pedestrian-only zone. This is urban sledding in its purest form; just watch out for unsuspecting pups! 91st St between Second and Third Aves. Subway: 4, 5, 6 to 86th St.

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

How To Make Darth Vader Totally Uncool

It’s always hard to explain the definition of “cheesey”. Maybe you have to say it in French. This video shows what happens when you take one of the coolest things every conceived and mix it with bad Eurodisco, totally lame-o dance moves, and retro video fx. Even though you could it up under “bad” in the dictionary, it still has the ability to make us smile. That is a good definition of cheesey.

Categories
These Are Those Things

Enjoy Your Work

Thanks to @narcissusholmes.

Categories
These Are Those Things

John Fahey: Guitar God

He’s also been a great curator, releasing old-time recordings with wonderful packaging.  I’ve never read his short stories, but I’ve retold many times my friend’s tale of how my pal drove cross country to sell Fahey a collection of RCA acetate classical music recordings, only to find Fahey living in his car because his house had become overwhelmed with his “collections”.  Fahey paid him several thousand for the discs, and my friend felt bad because it felt like he took candy from a baby, but my friend was broke and needed the cash.  It was the early days of the internet and a few weeks passed and my friend read how Fahey had just sold a collection of RCA acetate classical music recordings for TENS of thousands of dollars.  Fahey may have seemed crazy, but he was crazy like a fox.  I woke this morning to this song and it brought a smile to my face.

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Change Your Shirt

You probably know Michel Gondry from either his Lego videos or solving Rubik’s Cubes with either his feet or nose.  He also is responsible for popularizing “swedes” — the home made lo-fi versions of popular films.  He’s been making movies and videos forever and is always great.  Here he takes a simple idea — a shirt with one pattern on the front and another on the back — and weaves a very complicated dance out of it.  Make sure to stay to the end as it gets close to glorious.

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Papercraft Bakugan

We checked out NYC’s Bakugan and had a lot of fun.  It also got us to return to some papercaraft in the AM prior.  This time without any glue.  Check it out here.