sparklepires pwned

given the hysteria over the Twilight saga, i really haven’t found it that impressive – as a book, a movie, or an idea. however, once you acknowledge this, you can appreciate the amazingness that is The Hillywood Show’s mash-up parody of the movie, where they ingeniously retake and remix shot-for-shot sequences from the first Twilight movie and Katy Perry’s Hot n Cold music video:

i’ve been showing it to everyone i know (regardless of whether they have read or seen Twilight), and you should too. these two girls (Hillary & Hannah Hindy, the Hillywood sisters) are miles more creative than Stephanie Meyers, and damn do they have skill and follow-through. talk about commitment!

 

Graphic Design, Feminism, and Me – Part 1

As I’ve become more familiar with the graphic design and typography “world,” and begun to identify more of my favorite artists  and type designers (Robert Slimbach, Matthew Carter, David Carson…) I’ve started to wonder why I don’t have more female role models.

The other day I happened upon this fantastic video (I highly recommend it) of a panel discussion on the art of the book, with Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd, and Dave Eggers, moderated by Michael Beirut. I’m very familiar with all of their work, and all four of them are some of my top heroes – my idols! The coolest, savviest, most interesting designers I know! And seeing all of them together in the same room talking about book design, it was a real treat. Until the very end during a Q & A, when there was a question about why there were so few female “superstar” graphic designers – “is there a glass ceiling in graphic design?” Milton Glaser’s response:

He said that the reason there are so few female rock star graphic designers is that “women get pregnant, have children, go home and take care of their children. And those essential years that men are building their careers and becoming visible are basically denied to women who choose to be at home.” He continued: “Unless something very dramatic happens to the nature of the human experience then it’s never going to change.” About day care and nannies, he said, “None of them are good solutions.”

The crowd was silent except for a hiss or two and then Eggers piped up that he and his wife both work from home and share child care responsibilities — but added that maybe New York was different (although we don’t think Eggers really believes this). Then it was clear to everyone in the room that it was time to move on.

In Helvetica (the greatest movie ever) why are only two of the two dozen interviews with women?

Shira asked me once when the first time I was really conscious of my gender was. There are probably some times in my youth that I can’t clearly recall (other kids questioning whether I could play Huck Finn because I was a girl), I think the first time was in a class my freshman year of high school. After completing a month’s worth of assignments for an Intro to Technology class in one day, my parents and teachers realized something should be done. So I was transferred into Visual Communication, where I was the only freshman and the only girl.  I thrived on the material, but I felt really uncomfortable and out of place in that environment.

I’ve take a number of computer and technology oriented classes in both high school and college, and I’ve always been in the minority.  I think it always made me subconsciously want to work harder, to prove that I could be as good or better than the boys.

Graphic Design, Feminism, and Me – Part 2: what I’ve learned from doing design and animation on the documentary film Heretics: Stories from a Feminist Art Collective for the past two years… coming soon.

-Molly

(p.s.  if you read this, you should comment!  the more you comment on our blog, the happier we will be, and the more often we will update.  it’s nice to know when your writing is read.)

 

Food & TED inspiration

Really tasty food I’ve made for dinner over the last two days:
• hummus, cheese, garlic, lentils, in a tortilla
• quinoa with onions and black beans

SO GOOD.

If you have 20 minutes to kill, I highly recommend heading over to TED (technology, entertainment, design) talks for some über inspiration.  There are dozens and dozens of 18-22 minute talks (I hesitate to call them lectures, because they’re so engaging and dynamic)…

“We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.”

I just watched this one of Larry Lessig, about the remix culture of the internet, democratic creativity, copyright and creative commons.

 

why tube advertisement space should be like public bathroom stalls

this project by the space hijackers has a wonderful yes-men feel about it, with their tongue-in-cheek impersonation of Transport For London (TFL) and what they should be doing. amazing!

advertisements on public transport have always grated on me – corporate sponsorship fees may be subsidizing my train fare, but it’s not like there are many alternatives for getting around. (how is public transport funded, anyhow? isn’t iit also partially federal money? tabitha would know!)

anyhow, it’s nice  to see groups of people out there engaging with their surroundings. i’ve had many conversations where people say that they like both graffitti and advertisements as long as they’re of a certain ‘quality.’  i like even scribbled tags, proof that some kid had the guts to claim a bit of visual, physical sapce as her own, to leave her mark (of however little artistic merit), whereas advertisements, however clever or beautiful, always leave me with a vague gross feeling of being manipulated.

a lot of banksy’s writings are about how graffitti and other ‘illegal’ use of public space is illegal only because it is not being paid for, as advertising is. if public space is public, why can it be bought? 

subways aren’t a public space, obviously – you have to pay to get in – but the advertising is so intrusive and so built into the atmosphere that it’s nearly impossible not to look at it. i especially hate the long rows of repetitive posters up the sides of the escalators here in london. there’s something about their proximity and the motion as you pass them that makes it nearly impossible not to look at them – trying frustrates me nearly every time.

as suggested by people the space hijackers spoke to, it would be nice to replace the advertisements with art or poems, but even just blank space would be welcome. better yet, what if commuters could trade being passive receptors of massages on public transport for becoming active creators of content, marking walls, drawing pictures, and having drawn-out, scrawled conversations with each other?

other good stuff i found on their website:                                                             urban letterboxing                                                                                                        the starbucks game

the laboratory of insurectionary imagination

 

virtual calendar note

BUY NOTHING DAY is coming up!

It’s Fri Nov 28 in the US (also known as Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving when traditionally people take advantage of the day off work to go do all their Christmas shopping in one terrifying, annihilative swoop of consumerism), Sat Nov 29 internationally.

I will definitely be working all that day, but there’s a really cool event going on here in London: TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP. The instructions read as follows: “Simply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wearing an outfit you wish to upgrade, then on the stroke of two o’clock, marvel as hundreds of fashion moguls offer to trade your clothes with you. Fancy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it? Nice skirt, fancy trading my t-shirt for it? After a hectic re-working of your look you can then walk proudly back onto the streets of London town with a new wardrobe, not having spent a single penny.” Their catchphrase is my favorite part: ‘You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.’

-Tara

 

The internet needs to know: What are you doing RIGHT now?

Okay, SO Tara and I have been horrible at blogging the last few weeks, but we’ve both been rather busy moving. To be fair, I moved only from North Amherst to Hadley, about five miles away, and Tara moved from New York to London… Here is a picture of us hugging goodbye a few weeks ago. And, here are some random scattered thoughts and article excerpts about social interaction the internet and such things.

I read an interesting article a few days ago about digital intimacy, and it had a few new media terms I liked: microblogging (posting frequent tiny updates on what you’re doing, like Twitter) and ambient awareness.

“This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.”

But: “If you’re reading daily updates from hundreds of people about whom they’re dating and whether they’re happy, it might, some critics worry, spread your emotional energy too thin, leaving less for true intimate relationships.” It’s a long article, but I recommend reading all of it, very fascinating stuff.

I also just read an article in Hampshire’s student newspaper, the Climax, about so-called “Facebook celebrities” in the incoming class – those kids who, before school even starts, go and and friend every single person they can find. So when you meet someone you’ve friended on Facebook in person for the first time, do you pretend you don’t already know where they’re from, their favorite music, relationship status, and employment history? Is it taboo to ask about an interesting picture you saw of them on a vacation?

Facebook was the new thing when I first started college, and our generation is still navigating the social do’s and don’ts of how online information is used in real life interaction. But do you suppose, in a few years, there will be a more universal, unwritten social code about how we interface with such things? OR, maybe at some point ALL of our socializing will just be digital? This virtual reality cocoon is amazing technology, but it kind of freaks me out.

We joke casually nowadays about googling or stalking someone online, but in the age of social networking, digital intimacy, ambient information, and blogging, where is the line drawn between curiosity, obsession, and straightforward stalking?

-Molly

 

magazine fun time!

Okay, so you know how there are self-publishing printing-on-demand websites like Lulu, for books? 

Now there’s one for publishing magazines!  All you have to do is upload a PDF, and they’ll print it, ship it, and manage subscribers for you!  for free!

Do you understand what this means?  I am so very excited.  I love video and animation, but I seriously miss publication design so badly.  Just wait.  I will design magazines like there’s no tomorrow and one day you’ll look in your mailbox and say “oh!  why, what is this shiny new thing?”

-Molly

 

Photoshop Follies

Now that “photoshopping” has become a commonly used term in pop culture vocabulary, even most non-digital artists can spot and laugh at a bad Photoshop job these days. But when the government is behind such an image, it becomes even more amusing and disturbing.

Evidently the Iranian government needs to hire some better photoshoppers… or better yet, STOP FIRING MISSILES. This image was printed on the front page of the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and many others before someone noticed there was a missile too many, and an identical cloud of smoke.

Oh, and did you think that the satellite photos on Google maps were surely sacred? Apparently not, as evidenced by this secret alien landing site in Holland.

It seems like everyone is manipulating reality these days, from shady foreign governments, to bitter relatives removing undesired family members from vacation photos.

Manipulating photographs has been going on long before the advent of Photoshop, but the degree to which people are digitally altered today is unsettling. Sure, as a photoshop artist, it’s very easy for me to change the color of your shirt, remove a few zits, smooth out those wrinkles, trim a few pounds… but should I? Where to draw the line between a few touch ups and a completely fabricated makeover? I would hope that most women understand the degree to which celebrities and supermodels are digitally beautified these days, but I know that’s not the case.

I guess the bottom line is: don’t trust any image you see, and either launch the proper amount of nuclear weapons or just don’t bother launching any at all.

For more about Photoshop topics, see:

the Dove “Evolution” ad, and it’s many parodies

Photoshop Disasters - blog about poorly done and often amusing photoshop jobs

You Suck at Photoshop - very entertaining serialized fictional video blog, masquerading as actually useful Photoshop tutorials

-Molly

 

Convoluted Comments on Connectivity & Computers

I’ve been thinking about the dichotomy of connectivity, communication, and new media. How “web 2.0″, social networking, cell phones, email, etc are making communication across time and space exponentially faster and easier. And yet, we are often so plugged in that we sometimes don’t take time to interact in real ways with real people around us. I am not arrogantly scolding society, I am often guilty of this too. But I am always trying to think of creative ways to start conversations between strangers, like my 11 Shirts project. Also, this was part of the instigation for my friend Tara to start the Society for the Creative REalization of a Weirder You. This is from our manifesto:

Worried about personal connections in a society of increasing isolation, SCReWY aims to be the antithesis of apathy — to challenge the public to actively engage in changing and exploring reality.

SCReWY manifests interactive interventions by using internet video and new media technologies to connect cyberspace with real space. Orchestrating flash mobs, Happenings, community art, and collaborative performances, SCReWY aims to proactively instigate community expression

There are a million other sub-topics I could take on here: crowdsourcing, social bookmarking, activism on the internet, performance art and the web, and of course… facebook. I have probably done too much critical thinking about facebook for my own good. But these will probably all come up in future blog posts. For a start, see my two videos about Friendship on the internet, and Minifeed: a Story about Facebook.

-

In other news, my SCReWY-cofounder, friend, and long time collaborator Tara will be joining me on this blog! She’s also taking next year off of Hampshire, and she’ll be in London for most of the year, playing with her new baby niece and doing circus things. Hooray for Tara!

-Molly