the tree: part 2 - art changes.

Saturday, April 18.


Tuesday, May 12.

Pixel/print

"While Amazon's Kindle is a bestseller in the United States, Europe seems still a bit slow in taking up e-readers. Producers prepare for conquering the European market. The introduction of e-book readers and their eventual effective diffusion will transform the publishing industry. An international conference organized by Florian Cramer from Rotterdam-based Piet Zwart Institute revolves around the future of publishing, paper and the transformation of reading and the book in the digital age. The program is packed with exceedingly interesting presentations by designers, publishing experts, and researchers from the cutting-edge front of media development."
http://www.mtschaefer.net/entry/printpixel/

Quite a two-day conference I must admit, and an interesting divide of presentations over the past 48 hours. The first day full of e-reading utilities, e-x, e-y, e-z .. easy? Not to mention how the screen is turning half the world's population blind. I will have to place my interest in the second day, and in Alessandro Ludovico's (of neural.it) talk - paper, paper, paper!
Maybe it's me, but I am sure more artists/designers have this: have you ever felt this obsession with any visual/text/image that you want to HAVE it, HOLD it, HUG it? I have. Yes we all have internet and I can watch my favorite image anytime, it's just a matter of going online and loading it. But it isn't quite satisfying; it's not real enough - it lacks weight, substance and the MATERIAL essence. Aren't we material beings?
I am broke and I feel sad that I can't buy books. Then I download my ever-friendly torrent, and the counter never goes above 1 of me opening that file. I am going blind, the screen hurts my eyes, I want to hold my text and sing lullaby to it.
But getting back to the conference which is about publishing. I, being an artist/designer, felt sweetly excluded. I left the conference questioning, can the Sony e-reader or print-on-demand provide me the pleasure of the romanticism an exclusive art-book lying on a walnut-wood coffee-table definitely can? Or is it the death of romanticism we are compromising? Hmm ... may I remind how we are turning into robots ... I really don't want Ray Kurzweil to be correct ... YET AGAIN!

Time-Lapse Across China

Watch in high-res here.

male 'contraceptive jab'

"Family planning campaigners welcomed the news and said they hoped an injection would give couples more choice and enable men to take a greater share of the responsibility for contraception." On one hand, one may say it is a good thing that men can share this burden of continuing/planning the cycle of life, on the other hand, I am not so excited about this either. A woman's body is created to withstand the drastic physical and chemical changes that it undergoes. I don't even want to begin thinking about the horrors it might bring of swooping distorted male behavior - as if it isn't distorted enough already!

They say, "Previous attempts to develop an effective and convenient male contraceptive have encountered problems over reliability and side effects, such as mood swings and a lowered sex drive." Well of course, and this is exactly my concern. Imagine a man, in his general parameters, of how he functions and behaves, and then superimpose him with mood swings ... pretty picture? I don't think so!

In the West there is a high risk of unwanted pregnancies precisely because of the ECP (emergency control pill); because men know they have something to fall back on, they don't care enough to use protection. And it is only repetitive to talk about the effects of constant ECP usage.

There is also a chance that men with a thing for needles may not even mind taking these injections, but the whole point is how it effects the social behavior and social growth of men within a society, rather than how useful the injection proves in that given situation of a needed contraception.

Read more here.

A few things.

2 things. I have an opinion about them - I AM DISGUSTED.

1. Shariah Law implemented in Somalia, and the first thing they do in celebration is: stone a 13 years old little girl to death after her father reported to the police of his daughter being raped by 3 men!
Bless humanity!



2. The brilliant walk-out of 30 nations from the United Nations, Geneva conference, after the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad started his speech, labeled as "hate speech". News holds that some countries boycotted the conference completely and did not attend after knowing that Ahmedinejad will be attending and speaking.
I love Ban Ki-Moon for being the secretary at this point, as he stands as a third party, and is better at position to condemn this walk-out.



And on a rather hilarious note. lol.
What do you do if you receive a stack of papers that have cost $27.55 to deliver, and then find out it's your $26K mobile bill? ahaha ...
I want to see the face of this guy! Read the story here.

Technological Singularity

All's good, but I'm still skeptical of the supercomputer part. The entire technological singularity debate is back and Google is being one of its supporters, but in order to create this supercomputer, we need a superhuman first to create that. The Great Human Being is growing intelligent as well, although I'd also like to point out that majority of them is going dumber!
I am on the side that there will always be a more intelligent human.
Visit my school's homepage to see a little mapping I did of political history vs technological advancements since the 20th century.

The Tree

Eendrachtsweg is a beautiful road in Rotterdam, somewhere between the ErasmusMC and the city center. There is some great Dutch architecture alongside the road, lush greenery, and something called a singel: a Dutch word to which I don't know the translation of, but that's what they call these lake/channel-like water features around the country. It's on the way to my school, and today I came about a rather interesting effort. I am not sure how I should define it. Create your own story.
Perhaps it was there all along, and I never noticed it, considering the button-eyes I have :D ... does that term make any sense to English-speakers? It's something my mother used to call me all the time in Urdu. It basically means to have big eyes but still not be able to see things around. And I am rather bad at this. Things right in front of me tend to disappear out of my sight!