MELISSALAND

Excellent BBC televsion series on art critic John Berger’s book, Ways of Seeing.  Definitely worth watching.

above: part I of 4

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Chad and I have tickets to the (completely sold-out for months now) Broadway musical South Pacific this Friday. I can’t wait to get all dressed up! It’s going to be an amazing night…..

Set in an island paradise during World War II, two parallel love stories are threatened by the dangers of prejudice and war. Nellie, a spunky nurse from Arkansas, falls in love with a mature French planter, Emile. Nellie learns that the mother of his children was an island native and, unable to turn her back on the prejudices with which she was raised, refuses Emile’s proposal of marriage. Meanwhile, the strapping Lt. Joe Cable denies himself the fulfillment of a future with an innocent Tonkinese girl with whom he’s fallen in love out of the same fears that haunt Nellie. When Emile is recruited to accompany Joe on a dangerous mission that claims Joe’s life, Nellie realizes that life is too short not to seize her own chance for happiness, thus confronting and conquering her prejudices.

I want a Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR.

1080 30P using the latest H264 video codec at a data rate of over 38 megabits / second.  That’s pretty hot.  The recording rate on this thing is faster than on some pro video cameras.  Actually, I’ve lied - that is not all I want for Christmas — I want that camera, and a few weeks of free time to be able to play with it. And a brand new Mac workstation 

Photographer Vincent Laforet (who I am pleased to announce will be in the upcoming exhibit I am curating, Such Great Heights) got a weekend to play with the new EOS 5D and made a small high-def commercial “Reverie” (this has been blogged and talked about a million times over by now, but fun to check out if you have not seen it yet)  The ‘making of video’ is up over at SmugMug and it makes me incredibly jealous.

The computers only make me tingle.

Here is a short video taken of Vincent talking with PDN products editor Dan Havlik about his weekend experience with the new Canon camera

For just under $4,000, one can now create high-quality short videos. My head is swimming with all the delicious possibilities…..

Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. - From “The Sheltering Sky” by Paul Bowles

(The beautiful photo above is by Stuart Franklin)

This is where I will be nightly over the long winter. Hopefully, making some very cool things. I love seeing where people work - one of the perks of working for a gallery is getting to visit all the wonderful artist studios - they are always so inspiring. One site which shows some fantastic studios and homes is Todd Selby’s The Selby. It is a voyeurs delight. Be sure to check it out!

Good ‘get-up-out-of-bed’ music by Passion Pit (even if it is called Sleepyhead)

They couldn’t think of something to say the day you burst
With all their lions and all their might and all their thirst
They crowd your bedroom like some thoughts wearing thin
Against the walls against your rules against your skin
My beard grew down to the floor and out through the doors
Of your eyes, begonia skies like a sleepyhead

To explore this website electronic-motions will take all of 2 minutes - just click on each face.

Simple.

Cute.

I need to learn some 3D 2D digital animation. *thanks Sebastien

(via: cpluv)

The beautiful Laura Dawn as captured by Barry Butterfield during her performance Saturday night in Hudson. What a great, great photo.

“Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.”

Canon Dance - A musical composition in which the voices begin one after another, at regular intervals, successively taking up the same subject. It either winds up with a coda (tailpiece), or, as each voice finishes, commences anew, thus forming a perpetual fugue or round.

(Image: Canon Dance by Robert & Shana Parkeharrison)

I’ve fallen in love. Of course, this happens countless times throughout the day - I will call them my little loves. You stumble upon something, a person, a photograph, a word - and your heart stops, however briefly - pauses long enough to fill itself for the remaining hours of the day - and these things keep you going.  Then you string these presents together, you fall sound asleep and during the night they dance freely - your collective shimmering lives.

And so I stumbled upon Bon Iver (which, is pronounced ‘bohn eevair‘ - French for ‘good winter’)

His bio explains:

it wasn’t planned. The goal was to hibernate.

Justin Vernon moved to a remote cabin in the woods of Northwestern Wisconsin at the onset of winter. Tailing from the swirling breakup of his long time band, he escaped to the property and surrounded himself with simple work, quiet, and space. He lived there alone for three months, filling his days with wood splitting and other chores around the land. This special time slowly began feeding a bold, uninhibited new musical focus…

…this slowly evolved into days filled with 12 hour recording blocks, breaking only for trips on the tractor into the pines to saw and haul firewood, or for frozen sunrises high up a deer stand. All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stock piled over the last six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song.

What a romantic idea….to be held up in a cabin in the woods for the winter with only a thick pad of paper to scribble all those wonderful thoughts onto. I dream of doing stuff like this. One day I will.

Justin Vernon will be playing December 10 & 11 at Town Hall in NYC. If you want to learn more about Justin or purchase his latest album, For Emma - click here: www.boniver.org