“Sounds like running down a mountain in the rain towards a deer just killed by an arrow.”
from Pandora about a song by the Precious Fathers
Sport vs. Art
This is a list of all the Summer Olympic Sports
Archery, Athletics(or track and field), Badminton, Baseball, Basketball, Beach Volleyball, Boxing, Canoe/Kayak Flatwater,Canoe/Kayak Slalom, Cycling BMX, Cycling Mountain Bike, Cycling Road, Cycling Track, Diving, Equestrian, Fencing, Football, Gymnastics Artistic, Gymnastics Rhythmic, Trampoline, Handball, Hockey, Judo, Modern Pentathlon, Rowing, Sailing, Shooting, Softball, Swimming, Synchronized Swimming, Table, Tennis, Taekwondo, Tennis, Triathlon, Volleyball, Water Polo, Weightlifting, Wrestling
Some of these sports have judges, determining which participant did the event better, a subjective event one could say. Sports in my mind are not subjective. Well, they are subjective in that some people enjoy some sports and not other. Some people enjoy them not at all and are rather proud of that fact (like that mother on Mommy Swap or whatever it’s called. Man, was she a nut case.)
Sports are objective – who crosses the line first, who gets the ball from A to B more times, how much did this person lift. It’s not about how, but about what. I would remove – Synchronized Swimming, diving and all forms of gymnastics. This not to say that those events are not hard. They are quite hard. What those gymnasts can do is #$#@! amazing. But just because it is physical and hard does not make it a sport. I would say gymnastics and synchronized swimming are really physically challenging art forms.
Giving birth is really hard to do, why not make that a sport? Making a nice soufflé is really hard also. Why not have cooking in the Olympics? There could be a panel of judges who then taste the soufflé and give the cook points for style, presentation and taste. They could even have cook offs with special ingredients. Oh wait, that sounds like Iron Chef.
How about writing, poetry or otherwise in the Olympics?
People get 15 minutes to write something. Give them a topic and off they go. At the end, judges read it and give a grade, I mean a score. Points for difficulty of topic and points for execution.
Ridiculous, if you ask me if cooking or writing made it into the Olympics. Those are clearly not sports. But still hard to do. So is it amount of calories burned that are a requirement for an event to be considered a sport? I’m sure that training for diving takes a lot of calories, but each dive itself can’t burn many calories to do. So if it is caloric output, I vote for sumo squats.
So is it physical difficulty that makes an event a sport? Caloric output? What?
Outdoor Stop Motion Animation
A friend, V, sent me a link to this video. Don’t know much about it other than it is #@$@!! cool. Can’t imagine how much work it took. How many hours and gallons of white paint. What pigments did they use? Interesting obsession with heads opening up. How much was set beforehand and how much did the idea evolve as the film was made?
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/993998 w=400&h=300]
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Classifications
Thought of a way to classify dance companies into classical, modern, post-modern:
Classical – named after a place -> Ballet Russes, American Ballet Theater
modern – named after a person -> Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor Dance Company
post modern – named after anything else -> Lower Left, Body Cartography
Is this true for every case? No, but I think there is some truth to it. Takes us back to the question of what defines classical, modern or po mo. Is it the tool, the aesthetic or the logic? See picture below for relationship. Much work done now is still modern in terms of logic but the tools are different than the tools of traditional modern. Maybe that is what contempory work is – modern/classical logic with post modern tools.
Writing Prompt
The other day, K and I were near Counterpulse in SF. Parked in a side street off Mission between 9th and 10th, one that functions a bedroom and bathroom for some of the denizens of SOMA. On the sidewalk next to where we parked, lay a pink pair of underwear and black sweats. From the arrangement of the clothes, it looked as if they had been worn and taken off in haste. There was no bare bottomed individual in sight, so either she ( I am assuming she because the underwear is pink, but in SF you can never tell) ran away bare bottomed or put on another pair or pants. Not being in the market for used pink underwear and sweats I let sleeping dogs lie, or sitting pants lay or…
The next day we parked on that street again. The sweats were gone, but the panties still there.
Mom and…
Here are some photos and a videoclip of a performance installation K and I did on Monday the 21st of April, 2008. It took us over 14 hrs of set up time. Blowing up balloons took a lot longer than I had imagined. Especially when you only have one hand pump. I bought a second one to use in the last few hours before the piece ran. The location of the performance was the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery @ 155 Grove Street. I was asked by the group Kunsole to do something there. One of the members of Kunsole, Roddy, created a sound piece he played during our performance. He places mikes in contact with the tape wall to pick up the sounds of the balloons, which were integrated into his score. The music was then piped out to the sidewalk.
Initially I purchased 2500 balloons online, but they arrived a day late, so I had to find enough balloons in town to do the piece. Turns out I had more than enough. The limiting factor was time. And because time was limited, we had to limit the space that we could fill with balloons. Further evidence of how time and space are inextricably linked. Next time, and I hope to do this or a version of it again, we will use an electric air pump.
Popping balloons is a very satisfying sensation!
The Damned Don’t Cry
The clip above is from the noir film “The Damned Don’t Cry” starring Joan Crawford. It’s an okay flick, kept waiting for the titular line, but it never came. The clip above is from the end of the movie when the shit hits the fan. The bad guy kills the other bad guy. There’s a great roll and flip over a staircase.
Who says parkour started in France?
Hold With the Open Hand
read it here
Yahoo! gets it wrong again.
Yahoo! really has it wrong this time. Well maybe not for the first nine movies, but to call 2001 one of the most historically wrong films ever is just plain wrong. It was not made as historic fiction. It was filmed in 1968, a film about the future. To then evaluate this film on the basis of whether or not it was good historical fiction is not only unfair but silly. Who is the nincompoop who compiled that list? Yes, the future did not happen as Clarke, rest his soul, envisioned it. But he had nothing but his imagination to create his idea of the future. All those other films about the PAST were made after the events happened. The directors etc. could have done a little more research.
This is just further evidence of how stupid Yahoo! can be.
Wood Bolt Stool
First thing I have welded in a while. Overall I am happy with the design. Some of the welds are kind of manky as I haven’t welded in a while and not used to the welder. Not many settings on it. For some reason I like figuring out something to make with spare parts, more than making something with parts I have specifically chosen for that project. Maybe that is the improviser in me.