Robot Monkeys

Jud Turner‘s Bio-Cycle

T4′s Moto-Terminator Concept Art

Being a child of the Cold War, I was fascinated with military; both with the weapons and the uniforms. My World Book encyclopedias would fall open to the insignia entries for the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines. My interest in medals and insignia continues to this day. I can literally spend hours browsing the Army Institute of Heraldry, or Starfleet uniforms, or Imperial rank insignias.

I was bit surprised (and taken back) by the fact that the Utah Department of Corrections issue ribbons to prison guards that participate in executions. Well, more accurately, the did, now they issue commemorative coins, just like the Super Bowl. (“The staff preferred something a little more modern than the ribbons.”)

Apparently the guards “awarded” these ribbons didn’t actually wear them. I’m thinking more out of fear of retribution rather than decorum. The ribbons weren’t issued to only the firing squad, but to anyone involved. Perhaps it’s my opposition to the death penalty talking, but I find these medals morbid. While the military awards combat ribbons, many of the actions that they’re awarded for involve rescuing someone, or at least holding out against an enemy. It’s rarely for just killing. Even if it was, at least the people being killed at least are fighting back. Shooting a man that’s tied to a chair, is just state sanctioned murder.

Even as I’m repulsed by the notion of these ribbons, I stare at them and try and deduce a schema for them. Do slants represent executions? Do diamonds represent escapes? Does squares represent administrative tasks? Its frustrating not to know. I wish the picture showed them all. I even want one for some macabre reason, just to put on a shelf, or even a Wunderkammer.

The World Cup is on. The US played its first match against England, and didn’t lose. I thought England had the “White Pelé,” must have been hurt, because I didn’t see him out there, just a pudgy bald guy. (Zing!) All I want is for the US will advance. Although, winning a game in the knock out rounds would be wonderful.

I love the idea of FIFA. They’re the anti-NCAA. (Fuck you, and go die in a fire NCAA.) I love the idea of promotion and relegation, where entire teams move up and down.¹ I love the idea of having the winners of the different national professional leagues champions play each other.³. I even love, the subject of this post, penalty cards. They just look cool, and I love how they carry over during tournament play.⁴

I was looking at the history of penalty cards, and learned that they are a relatively recent invention. They date back to only 1970, and were quickly adopted by other sports. What really surprised me though, is the iconic yellow and red, aren’t the only colors.

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When I attended the SF Fine Art Fair one the few artists that really stood out to me as Thomas Allen. His photographs, like “Epilogue” above, consist of cutouts from the covers of pulp novels arranged in such a way to tell a new story. Some of these photos are collected in his book, Thomas Allen: Uncovered.

It’s second tier art, because the real visual oomph comes from simply the wholesale appropriation of the original artists’ works. It’s a collaged diorama, while executed with much more visual skill, it’s still reminiscent of the types of collages people would hack together from magazine cut outs, and turn in for extra credit in high school English I. Still, I do enjoy his work, even if I find its originality ironic.

Previously.

The SF Fine Art Fair is this weekend at Fort Mason in SF. Tickets are $15. In all honesty, I don’t know much about this. Zer01, presenters of the 01SJ Biennial are sponsoring an entrance, so there should be something there beyond what you’d normally expect at a “fine art fair.”

UPDATE: Thu May 27 18:04:25 PDT 2010
Photos. I call special attention to Popperceptual by Patrick Hughes.

Vinyl stickers for MacBooks isn’t new. Etsy lists 1075 results. Of course many of them aren’t that good, but I do like the ones that integrate the laser cut apple in a clever way, like Moses on the Mount from above.

A while back, I thought about laser etching my laptop. I thought about placing the apple in the center of the Aztec calendar. Ultimately, I decided against it because there just isn’t enough room to really show what the motif is.

You’ve seen the show, now own the tattoo.

It looks good. It looks modern. The only problem I have with the design is that big freakin’ blue stripe down the middle.

Compared to the $5 unveiling in 2007, the video for the new $100 bill, it’s well produced. The music. The animation. The design of the bill, all says modern, says 21st Century. It’s down right patriotic. Honestly, when I see the difference between these videos (and the 2007 video is down right embarrassingly bad) and and the change in administrations, I think it’s intentional. The government runs poorly under conservatives, because they want to say the government does a bad job. Just like how health, safety, tax, and other regulatory enforcement goes down under these “law an order” administrations, because they don’t like the law, but don’t want to be put on the spot arguing for say, more arsenic in drinking water. But I digress.

The color is tasteful. While it’s bolder than the post-2003 $20, $50, $10, and $5, it’s still predominately green, and still looks American. I really like the color shifting liberty bell in the inkwell. While the microlenses in the blue stripe are interesting, that strip is just horrible. It looks like someone forgot to take a plastic wrapper off of it or something.

I would love to see every bill similarly redesigned. And while I understand, that printing new $2 bills is somewhat sporadic due to concerns of flooding the market with them, (Last printed September 2006.) I’d still love to see a new $2 bill and a new $1 bill. It irks me to no end that, that the last time I had a wallet containing American currency with a consistent look was 1999.

What would the other bills look like? Would the color of the portrait’s face, and low-vision numerals change? Would the background image and inkwell and liberty bell to somehow reflect on the person pictured? If so, what would they be? I want all these questions answered. Damnit, bitch. Give me my money! ;)

Like many people, growing up, my family used to decorate Easter eggs, Only our eggs tended to be decorated like Ukrainian Easter eggs, or pysanky. My mom learned how to do this from a friend of hers, that truly an artist at it. Every year, we’d break out the beeswax candle, heat our styluses and attempt to draw deer or weave patterns, dots, or crosses on the eggs. Some years, we’d even bring out a hypodermic needle and a syringe and extract the yolks so we could keep the eggs for years.

I decided that I wanted to decorate eggs this year, but all we had was the crayon and dye that’s in a Paas kit, and the new dye containing cotton swabs. (Using the swabs are pretty fun.)

I pretty much resigned myself to not decorating eggs with candle wax for many many years, since I had no idea where to buy the stuff you need. Then for some unknown reason I checked out Make’s Top 10 Easter Themed Posts. In the list was a Ukrainian easter eggs. Following a couple of more links, I found out that that The Caning Shop in Berkeley sells everything. Hooray! Surprisingly, the book about how to make the designs my mom has had all my life is still in print.

MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design has acquired the @ symbol into its collection. It is a momentous, elating acquisition that makes us all proud.

Wha?

[The acquisition of @] relies on the assumption that physical possession of an object as a requirement for an acquisition is no longer necessary, and therefore it sets curators free to tag the world and acknowledge things that “cannot be had”—because they are too big (buildings, Boeing 747’s, satellites), or because they are in the air and belong to everybody and to no one, like the @—as art objects befitting MoMA’s collection. The same criteria of quality, relevance, and overall excellence shared by all objects in MoMA’s collection also apply to these entities.

No. Stop. A building, a Boeing 747, and a satellite are all physical objects. All of them can be owned. They are bought and sold everyday. In fact, not only are they bought and sold, but buildings, 747s, and yes, even satellites are currently exhibited as museum pieces. Physical objects are the traditional things museums obtain. MoMA draws a connection to their acquisition of Tino Sehgal’s The Kiss, a dance. This would be purchasing intellectual property. While I may not always agree with legalities, or even the intellectual underpinnings, of all intellectual property rules and laws, I understand them. This however, is nonsense.

MoMA says that they “have acquired the design act in itself,” which is a meaningless statement. Sure it sounds good, but what exactly does this mean? They “acquired” the moment that someone created the a-d ligature? The moment that Spanish speaker said, “Hey, this looks like both an ‘a’ and an ‘o’.” The moment Ray Tomlinson decided to use ‘@’ as a delimiter?

Fine. They want to have an exhibit about the at symbol. That’s cool. It might even be interesting. Couching your announcement in terms of purchasing and transactions is absurd. Words have meanings, and as Inigo Montoya told Vizzini, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”