Current Perspectives

People watching is endlessly fascinating. After talking about articles in the Sunday editions of the NY Times and Washington Post this morning the people watching article stuck out.

For the past three years I have read Postsecret, I have never read it religiously but I find the project itself to be an intriguing idea. To connect people in such an anonymous way that can still have such a large impact on so many people and in such personal ways is amazing.

Part of the people watching idea is about our desire to see people as they are when they are just able to be. It’s like the reality of watching another human being in their daily life is fascinating for us.  I think Postsecret has a similar quality to people watching.  People can read the postcards about really personal things from other people. I think that this might make some people think about how small the world is or how much people really are just people.  I feel like Postsecret might even be a variation of people watching.  When there is a secret that multiple people share or when you see someone do something that you’ve probably done a billion times it could make someone feel really connected to other people.

I think that our desire to observe ourselves is really interesting too. Animals watch each other to learn, we too learn by example and while watching people do things like theatre, TV, film, performance, and entertainment is one aspect of watching ourselves, it is interesting that we still want to see people in such an unassuming way, a way that is as real as just  observing the simple machinations that we do each day.   

Today was just a lot of working, I don’t even see my room mate anymore. It is sad that we don’t even get to talk to eachother anymore because we are so busy. This is a short blog because I don’t have a lot to say right now.

After reading the Washington Post on Sunday I looked up music mentioned in the article about the group “Matmos”.  Sadly and unusually there was no sign of the NY Times anywhere. It was nowhere to be found which upset my Sunday morning paper read. Good thing there’s next week!  Anyway, the article was interesting, what a funky music group they are! The extreme of experimental music. It would be interesting to listen to a song and be told what each new element is when it is brought in. You would hear things like, “…and here’s the bone saw”…hmmmm.  I included a video of one of thier performances. This group is actually good for Ideas in Performance becasue their music only really really works in performance. It isn’t the same at all to hear a recording.

I liked this song though. It is from their album, “The Rose has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast”.

Pangea was the supercontinent that existed about 250 Million years ago before it broke apart to form the continents that we know today.  Something that I was thinking about as I finished Geography today and something that we have been talking about lately is how much the world (”the world” according to our western perception) is changing mostly with the internet. All of this new communication that we are able to access, so instant, so immense, has shrunk our world a lot. A book by Thomas Freedman called The World is Flat basically explains how much technology has effectively changed us.

There were a lot of articles recently about things that have become more or less obsolete with our technological evolvment vinyl records and VHS tapes for examples. It is strange to wonder how much the world will change in the next decade and how we will think then. I wonder becasue people in general used to be much more aural. We listened to music differently, radio programs, theatre, there was no television. Once we got tv and film we became much more visual. It is fascinating.

Through communication we have gone back to a sort of virtual Pangea. We are all closer together with Facebook, Myspace, these blogs than ever. Pangea at our fingertips.

Photorgraphy is something I become more interested in all the time. I love the everlasting expression and information this art from allows the artist to create. I love that it is a challenge to be able to find art in through a medium that has become possible for everyone with a point n’ shoot and photoshop to do. It requires the artist to be able to look at everything really critically and specifically, very different from how most people look at the world around them. I would love to have time to do more of it.

Today’s NY times had an article about the lost negatives of Robert Capa being found. 

He was a war photographer and took photos during the Spanish Civil War. He was the one who said “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” I have heard that a lot so it is good to know who said it. I thought that was so cool that his negatives were found and that they were in a condition that they can be developed well. I wish they knew how the negatives ended up in New Mexico for sure. 

There was that other article about Jill Greenberg, another photographer. I didn’t like it as much as the Robert Capa article but she creates interesting works by munipulation photos. After I read the article about her I looked up her photos and most of what she does has to do with advertisement. She sells a lot of booze basically. Her photos are intersting though, although you could make pretty much anything look good by shining it up. I guess I feel like her photos, while artistic, are not art. They aren’t there for the sake of artistic expression but she has found a specific look and she is paying the bills with it and some of the pictures are cool regardless of why she took them. I do like the bear series she did. I like bears.

It is about 12:30 pm and I am  reading the Sunday Newspapers. I stopped when I finished reading the article about the new clear cards getting you through airports faster. First of all, what a world. It was a funny, bazaar article about what is probably one of the opitomies of our ultra fast paced, move-it-along American lifestyle.

Yet, after reading this article I couldn’t help but see myself in almost everything attributed to a “clear”. I do plan ahead in the security line, basically undressing 10 ft before most people even think to take off their shoes. I do tend to try to minimize extra work as much as possible simply to be more efficient and get things done faster.

In fact, with my family I go to the movie theatre half an hour early rather than the 20 minutes the article mentions. This is partly because I enjoy organized leisure that is just much harder if you are rushed and running around because you are about to miss the film.

Even when I run errands I have it in my head that I want to “run in and run out” no stopping or slowing down, get what you came for and go and I always hope to pick the fastest line.

I am only really  slow when ordering food simply because the entire menu usually looks good to me.

I do think they should have mentioned something about slow walkers in the article becuase I feel that a “clear” would dislike being behind slow walkers who feel the need to walk in a side by side line so that no one can walk around them. In the article it also mentioned, “clears are good at things like mass evacuation” I think that would be true and also that it would be wise to stick to a clear but true that you could get left behind.

This article really just made me laugh so I decided to write about it. Airport security is a crazy and time consuming business that I am sure most people dislike. This clear card would be good for the really frequent traveller but I think for most people the airport lines are just part of the plane travel package. Be “clear” in your planning to arrive early, pack well and be organized and it really isn’t too terrible.

In my searching today for interesting things and inspiration to begin developing this 2 minute “Where am I” digital story I happened upon this great site call culturevulture. Currently there is a really interesting article on a one man show by Danny Hoch called Taking Overat the Berkeley Rep theatre. A theatre that I visited a bit while I lived there. It looks like a good show that is actually about the gentrification of the Williamsburg section of Brookly N.Y. To me it sounds similar to Bridge & Tunnel which is a one woman show written and performed by Sarah Jones that closed last August in NY. Both of these shows are performed by people who play multiple people whose stories all come together.

Bridge &Tunnel was amazing. I was most impressed with how believable all of the characters that his one woman played from a young Korean man who performs poetry to an older woman who is a Polish-German-Lithuanian-American Jew. The performance was incredible to me, not just her performance and exceptional skill but the way it was written was fantastic I thought it said a lot about our American culture.

I would be interested to see Danny Hoch’s show in Berkeley. These shows are very interesting because it is one person having perspective for 8 or so other people who are all of different background than the actor. It is really very intersting.

I would love to create a one woman show for myself sometime and try to get it produced. It would be an experience. My digital story actually is like a one woman show about myself…..hmmmm, some inspiration? I think so!

Ok, I like that, I will spend some more time thinking about that. I really can’t wait to get back to the city. I love/miss Manhattan a lot. It is a great place to be, different from anywhere else. It is something I think that you can feel once you’ve been there for a while not as a tourist. It will feel good to be back.