reaction video funnies

now, according the dates on youtube, the famous '2 girls 1 cup' video came out around a year and a half ago - ample time to forget its grotesque nature and commentary on its realism. I've got to admit I wasn't too fond of the video though the reaction to it was phenomenal. Everyone seemed to have seem it and past it on just so they could get reaction videos of their friends gagging in discomfort. I guess you could call it new art - the reaction to something rather than the physical visual presents of particular object.

So why do I bring this up? I get a laugh out of the reaction videos like I do with those weird Japanese game shows on youtube.

I'll show a couple reaction videos. You may or may not get the same reaction I do.

Now this Joe Rogan one is my favorite:

This next one makes all the more sense - crazy is crazy everywhere.

I want one - Celebratory 2010 FIFA World Cup T-Shirt

 

need I say more?

Art Exposure I - ARTHK 10

ARTHK 10 was another fine showing of world class calibre art from something over a 100 galleries from all over the world. The writing of this particular entry comes just days after the closing, just enough time for me to digest the work and formulate some thoughts to share.

Overall, this years showing was better than the previous and probably on par with the first show I attended two years ago. I've probably biased last years show simply because I felt like the photography shown was stronger but the other work, be it drawing, painting, sculpture or video didn't stand up to the level I thought the photography stood. This year, I was particularly please with pretty much everything however the volume of work to absorb was somewhat overwhelming. I described the viewing of the show to someone, after two walkthroughs myself, as like reading 50 magazines in one sitting and trying to articulate three articles from each publication. It was that hairy for me.

Now you might ask why I'm not showing pictures here - well, its out of respect for the artist. I might be little old fashioned in that way, but if you can't remember the piece for itself, a picture is just going to influence what you think it actually looked like and what it actually made you feel. I did however take pictures of the artist names and/or the cover of their books for reference. Why? Cause it makes me do my homework. I believe that if you want to remember a piece that affected you, you should study their work. That's what annoyed me at the show was the fact that people photographed the work like it was theirs. For me that's simply disrespectful. Besides that most galleries don't allow viewers to photograph the work. But I will continue on with my analysis before really ranting.

Again, this was a strong year for the show. Its every getting more interest from bigger and better galleries which benefits viewers and buyers alike. The photography over previous years was probably the strongest. Last years highlight was probably the predictably mammoth Andreas Gursky piece. Last years low was probably vendors displaying like-Gursky scale photographs but with weaker artists. Now I will say this - the HK art community will love seeing Gursky's, Demand's, Hofer's, Struth's, but they probably won't appreciate Winogrand's, Eggleston's or Frank's. A photographer I have yet to see, one I'd really like to see in HK, a Gregory Crewdson.

The rest of the show was really good. Overall I sensed that the Chinese artists were maturing away from the Mao-communist era oppression work and into the new area of Chinese art. The Korean work was strong this new. As always the Europeans and Japanese artist always inspired. As a mentioned before the Gursky shown was brilliant but I would have liked to have seen the race track image from that series. I was happy to see a diCorcia but the picture shown wasn't something to write home about.

A couple of things annoyed me and I will rant about them now. 1) Don't copy: I saw a bunch of copies for more famous work. Some artists can pull it off, others just plain old plagiarize. If you do, its just lazy. Being influenced is one thing, copying is another. I saw Chuck Close's work, probably the second or third time I've had the opportunity, then further down the road I saw some other photorealism that resembled Close's earlier work. I was, as you can imagine, disappointed; 2) Don't touch the art: I don't care if its covered with glass or is security wrapped in lazers and alarms, you never ever touch the art; 3) Please don't photograph the work. I was there with a friend and I told her my peeve and she still photographed it. Do your research, buy their book cause the reprints in the books are a hundred times better than the picture you took on your camera; 4) If you don't know something ask someone: I am usually asked to guide friends through a gallery or a show and share some thoughts on the work. That's fine and I enjoy giving them my opinions. Art is like any other medium, be it books or movies. After you see it you have an opinion. Art is the same way. You might not know a lot about art but others do, like the gallery assistant. They should know everything under the sun about the artist's work. They are your experts. At the show I saw work from Thomas Demand and Gerhard Richter. I knew their work but for Richter's, I saw some work I wasn't familiar with - the abstracts. His retrospective I attended back in SF may have featured some of these but I didn't remember it. I flipped through his book at the show and soon enough I started questioning the gallery personnel about the work. She answered promptly and gave me the information I needed. As for the Demand photograph, the same occurred.

I hope next year the work remains as strong and perhaps reach a higher level.

Brainwaves + Star Wars = force toy?

yea, I was thinking the same thing when I came up with the title to this blog but it will start to make sense once I go into what it is.

I was catching up to my Monday blogs and webbing when I came across something, well something funny. Once again I was looking up the videos on Collegehumor.com, now hit or miss on the humor. Anyway, they started reviewing this Star Wars toy that involves the force. This video should clear out the 'wha' factor:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

I figure that someone from my sphere of friends will buy this thing. If they did I would like to like try it. Come on, its the force ya'll!

Internet dating has gone too far

I thought it was a joke the first time I heard about it. Then I saw a commercial on TV.

Let's go back a little. Dating is hard for some people. I'll admit, I don't date that often so this online product would ideally be good for a guy like me. I've heard of people meeting there mates/better halves online and some have enjoy great relationships through them.

Now fast forward to about 10 minutes ago. I'm sitting at the computer, writing down some ideas. I usually have the SlingBox running in the background and I guess my brother or his girlfriend left Top Chef on. Its great cooking show without all the over the top drama most other reality shows imbue themselves in. Anyway, a turn to a commercial break leads to an ad, well, its this ad:

I still thought it was a joke so I checked out the website. Its real. Its basically a site for older women to hook up with younger men. Cougars, if you don't know the term it describes attractive older women who prowl night clubs for younger men, I guess aging bachelorettes.

Bizarre.

Fandom - Star Wars Uncut

A little while back I heard about this project and since then I've heard and watched a bunch of clips from various 'filmmakers'. Its basically an indie/home movie version to scenes from Star Wars. The idea was to get hundreds even thousands of fans to remake/refilm a certain scene that reflected the original. Over the course of many months, the organizers have cut a sequence (below) that resembles the original's sequence starting from the lightsabre fight between Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobe through to the escape of Millennium Falcon fending off Tie Fighters in the wake of the Death Star. This is the fans version of that sequence. Enjoy!

 

Star Wars Uncut "The Escape" from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

Internet Gems - Party School Texts

Its everyone's responsibility to share and sharing the internet is amongst the must. I fell across an article on Huffington Post about the Best Party Schools in America. The URL they cited, http://partyschooltexts.com is pretty much what it sounds like - drunk texts only identified by their schools and not by senders. A good thing for the senders I think.

If you're interested in this kind of silliness check out http://failbook.com/, another site that posts sometimes fun (perhaps some unauthentic) facebook wall posts.

Clever photography/graphic design

Every once and a while I'll bump into some smart photography on the web and lately I've bumped into a site that's got some quality photography.

My Modern Met is interesting site reviewing and bring into view cool pictures, architecture, restaurants, etc.

Even though they have some really good fashion and sexy NSFW shots, this one series labelled 'TrustCorp Rebranding Project caught my eye. In most respects, a lot of photography in general is designed to look slick and smooth. Its bound to get, well, boring. When the visual pun is used like when a verbal pun is used in writing, it brings something new and exciting to the table. The pictures are pretty much self explanatory but if you didn't catch it its the rehashing of branding, bringing the blunt truth to what the product does or ultimately what they can make fun of.

here's some pictures

Its useless to get upset over stupid people

I like the web. I really like using it as do hundreds of people. I like that fact that I can find out about a lot of thing I'm interested in but never had the resources to indulge. One topic of interest is politics, more specifically American politics.

Before heading to college in the states, I grew up in Hong Kong. Admittedly, I wasn't interested in politics any more than I was in Baseball (now I love Baseball!). What's really impressive now is that everything, and I mean everything is available for everyone to read up on. If so and so did this or said this, its online. In the past, if was deemed newsworthy it made the evening news and the paper in the morning. The fact is there's so much news out there, it very important for the editors to filter out the gems from the junk.

So what does this have to do with my title, 'Its useless to get upset over Republicans'? Well, its to do with their whining I guess.

This morning I was reading The Huffington Post, a mainly political blog but includes interesting snippets of pretty much everything. The story that kind of got me going, then eventually made me laugh was a story about  Tanning Salons and the headline that ran was

Tanning Salon Tax Is Racist, Says Doc Thompson, Fill-In Host For Glenn Beck

Now if you don't know Glenn Beck, I suggest you should find out what this writer regards as 'dumb and ignorant commentary who's soul purpose is to berate the Democratic Party' (I'll admit it took me a little while to make that sound good). Anyway, Beck recently had a guess host recently - whom I've never heard of - Doc Thompson, said this unedited:

'For I now too feel the pain of racism.'

This guy is a Caucasian. Now, this was interesting. Why would a Caucasian man say he felt the pain of racism? And how do tanning salon's fit in? Well, here the complete transcript and then I'll comment:

THOMPSON: For years I've suggested that racism was in decline and yeah, there are some, you know, incidents that still happen with regards to racism, but most of the claims I've said for years, well, they're not really real. But I realize now that I was wrong. For I now too feel the pain of racism. Racism has been dropped at my front door and the front door of all lighter-skinned Americans. The health care bill the president just singed into law includes a 10 percent tax on all indoor tanning sessions starting July 1st, and I say, who uses tanning? Is it dark-skinned people? I don't think so. I would guess that most tanning sessions are from light-skinned Americans. Why would the President of the United States of America -- a man who says he understands racism, a man who has been confronted with racism -- why would he sign such a racist law? Why would he agree to do that? Well now I feel the pain of racism.

The audio version is available here.

So he's feeling racism because he's getting taxed 10% more on his tanning salon fees because he thinks that dark skinned people don't need to? He's basically saying the recent health bill discriminates against light skinned people and he's calling that racism. Its probably the stupidest thing I've heard from a 'smart person'. Would he be more happy if African Americans we taxed for knowing how to rap, or if Asian Americans were taxed because they know to cook Asian food? I mean really. It's better not to fake bake, they mean for it to keep you from getting skin cancer.

But then I laughed and thought, 'Why am I getting upset about this?'. Its just foolish thinking. I get my laughs out of stupid cat pictures, duct tape fixes and 'fail' videos. This is just a different sort of humor.

 

politics,Huffington post,republican/conservative rants

large format for the people - Daniel Wu and Edward Huang's 'The Stage'

A little while back Edward Huang and Daniel Wu created a piece for the HK/Shenzhen Biennale named 'The Stage'. I was invited to have drinks and hang out at the site but as it turned out that night I was working and decided to visit the site when free time came along. Fast forward to Xmas eve, I felt bored and decided to take a look at the installation and take some pictures with my 4x5 to make up for not showing up that night.

Just to let you understand, I love my 4x5 gear. Its something I wish I took more advantage of back in school but my work never really allowed for a slower approach to photography that is inherent to large format picture taking. I took interest in acquiring my own 4x5 gear 3-4 years ago after I met Tony Law and saw that he was still shooting 4x5 (which he still does).

There is no doubt that digital photography became popular both professionally and personally for all and as a result the film industry has suffered a great deal. When I returned to Hong Kong back in 04' I was still shooting film. There were still a great deal of people processing color negative and transparencies in any format as well as selling all the film stock I needed. Back in school digital photography was beginning to make waves as a viable alternative to film but the prices and image quality to fall short of a 6x7 medium format frame I learned to love.

After returning to HK, the only way to make a wave in photography was to start shooting digitally. No one had the patience for film, shooting-developing-contact sheets-scans-retouching and finally to print was becoming obsolete as digitally you could shoot-edit-print. I'll admit that I love what photography has become in the digital age as it did back in my father and grandfather's generation with 35mm film. But the troubling thing now is that people aren't taking pictures anymore rather they are taking pictures and checking their results as they materialize. Yes, the speed of photography has changed for the better but I remember when I took my first pictures you had to wait for the film to process before knowing what you actually did. Mistakes made you a better photographer as you learn through them. Nowadays a picture is adjusted too easily to fit the criteria - there not must skill involved and with the addition of retouching - its not what greats like Cartier-Bresson, Avedon or Eggelston faced.

But before I rant on about photography (which I'll remind myself to save up for another blog) I tell about the original thing I was talking about - 4x5 pictures of the installation.

I hadn't shot with my gear in over a year but kept it in neutral humidity containers. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding, the camera still works great and the pictures, well, you decide for yourself.

I had a few more sheets left so I shot some other stuff.

note: These last 2 pictures were 4-8 minute exposures.

Pictures from the wild times - Xmas and NYE Party madness

I'm not accustomed to broadcasting party pictures. I usually shoot a lot of them and give them to the client directly then just let them be. And to be honest I hardily post personal pictures unless they are meant for my portfolio. Here's a look at a bunch of pictures from the Xmas and NYE bashes that nearly destroyed my liver and kidneys.

 

Now that's just a hand full of dozens of pictures. You can take a closer look at them here. Enjoy

Norman Jean Roy - still shooting film

There are few photographers I name out and I will only name out because I think they are really good. Though I do admit there are times I do name out photographers I don't like. Its like writers you like/hate, directors you like/hate, films you like hate.

Norman Jean Roy is one of the photographers I though from the start or at least the first time I saw his work thought was really good. That guy can really shoot a portrait. He possess a great understanding of light and particular with chiaroscuro. But what really got me going in a recent video I saw on the Vanity Fair website is that he shot it with film. I recently shot some architecture with film on my sturdy old 4x5 and it felt good. There is something in the quality of film which you can't get in digital. One thing I think about film especially in 4x5 is that you have to make choices. In digital you don't virtually because you have unlimited shots. with 4x5 you have to previsualize a butt load.

but more about Roy, his work is great to look at.

Tabbing - the dirty desk of the browser

I'm a big fan of tabbing on my browser - tab, search imdb for the name of this actress - tab, read up on computer hardware - tab, read up on tech gadget's on Engadget - tab, research on new camera rumors - tab, catch up on gossip news - tab tab tab tab tab.

I've got 20 tabs on this Firefox browser right now and I've probably just read up on 8 of them. The rest are probably curiosities of thing that were related to, ah, umm, what was I thinking about again. Its probably related to the messy desk. But its something I can't live without now. Tab this tab that.

I checking up on icanhascheezburger.com when I noticed they had a picture on shaming (this is a fair example but really the last picture I was on), then I started to check out other fail posts, the started to look at collegehumor.com when I saw an ad of their bustedtees.com site. Then the link line breaks there to component shopping on newegg, then reading about video cards on tom's hardware then catch up on ATI video card then randomly read some other blogs about other people.

So is that how my brain really works?

From thought to paper, from paper to screen

For anyone that's really talked to me about what I really think about mediums - be it film, photography, sculpture, painting, etc - I'll usually tell them about my initial formalist impressions of the piece but if they really get to me I'll tell them I'm really interested in the process. What is the 'process'?

Simply put, its the pathways to reaching the final product - film, photograph, sculpture, painting, etc. Its no secret - all final products of mental capacity are a result from the smidgen of a simple idea. Take for example a film (not that I know how it really works): its starts as a story, in some cases turns into a book others into a script; from the script a film. Its transformation or metamorphosis from a idea to a film isn't really that simple, its probably as complex as a caterpillar to a butterfly but if you take a step back its really what it looks like.

I've always been a fan of the process ever since I was a kid taking things apart. Sometimes its that simple - A to B, B to C. Other times its more complex say like how a banker does their job or how buildings gets made.

So why am I thinking about this? For a long time now I've been reading books that became movies, usually reading the book before the movie. A fine example of this (even though its really recent) is The Da Vinci Code. Better book than the nearly three hour movie but why? Is it the choices made or the lack of choices made? What about a Tom Clancy classic, The Hunt for the Red October - definitely a better movie than the book. Or what about books that are completely different from the movie or vice versa? Say for example Stephen King's The Shining/ For any of the mentioned above I think it has something to do with the adaptability - can one medium translate to another and be seamless at the same time? Yes and no.

Take for example the most direct book into movie I've read know, Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. Its a completely good and watchable movie, definitely a good book. But its completely the same, nearly scene to scene chapter to chapter and its even in sequence. Wonderboys by Michael Chabon, was made into a near mirror image of a film starring Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire. I'm glad they removed a scene from the book in the film adaptation. But are books meant to be shown on the screen? Many will argue that its the greatest form of capitalization. I wouldn't blame them. There aren't mainly Da Vinci's in our time, renaissance men or women if you will. Writing is one part of the equation whilst film making is another. There are very few that are masters in both realm let alone masters in many field as the Da Vinci's in those times were.

Lets not too far ahead of my thoughts, I have plenty of them on these sort of transitions. Let's assume that I will write another one of these, notably in the form of From the thought.

Pet names

I came across a funny article on msn.com this morning - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28540800/

Simply put, the thing that caught my eye was the name 'Kanye East'. I couldn't stop laughing after I read that. Its funny and stupid and original at the same time.

Larry Sultan - R.I.P

A great photographer died recently. Larry Sultan, a fine art photographer died back in December due to cancer. I was reading one of my month-to-month must read photo blogs by Magnum photographer, Alec Soth.

I first came across Sultan's work during my second or third year in SFAI. A teacher of mine suggested it to me even though I've seen the work but what really kept me curious was the fact that Sultan was a former student at SFAI. As it is with most schools they like to boast the fact that certain artists, etc, came from this school. Sultan was one of those (other notables Annie Leibovitz, Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead). When I started looking at this work I was amazed - the tone of work, particularly in his Pictures from home series (the two pictures above, a series about his parents) shows a intimacy with the subject separated with a distance which is akin to the documentary style.

What is really special is that he had his show and book The Valley (cover picture for the book, same title below), a look into the pornographic film industry in California debuted at the SFMOMA while I was still in SF. A little time after that the staff at SFAI managed to get him for a talk which turned out to be a sell out crowd.

I can't say it enough but if you're given the opportunity to see work in person, do it. Be it a film or a painting or a sculpture, see it. I was amazed at the scale (most of the prints were 40"x60", the middle size 30"x40") but most of all I was pleased with the presence.

When I read this news from Alec Soth's blog, the only thing I could think was that another great photographer that has influenced me as left the building. Larry, we're still following your lead.