eclecticism

Of the 56 geeks pictured here, I think I can lay claim to having elements of at least seven of them (obviously some are more overt than others):

All cartoons by ExtraLife, from the 56 Geeks Poster.

When I posted about the discount on tickets to tonight’s performance of Edward Scissorhands, I left out one small detail of the “very kind offer” — namely, that Prairie and I were offered (and accepted) tickets to see the show last night!

I’m still at a loss as to just how I ended up on the promotional radar for this show, but however it came about, I’m incredibly glad it did. After wrapping up at school yesterday evening, Prairie and I headed downtown and found our way to the 5th Avenue Theatre. We’d been told our tickets would be waiting at the Will Call window, so we walked up and I gave my name to the ticket girl. She flipped through her box…nothing. Could it have been misfiled under my first name? Nope. “Well,” she said, “maybe they’ve got them over at the VIP/Press table.”

blink

Apparently, Prairie and I were VIPs (perhaps press, but since I didn’t get one of the fancy press packets, we decided we must be VIPs — something that we’ve been convinced of for quite some time now, but it’s always nice to get some acknowledgment)! We were handed our tickets (quite nice seats, too: orchestra level, row W, seats 3 and 4), the doors opened just a few moments later, and we wandered our way in. After spending a few moments in the lobby waiting for the auditorium doors to open, they did, we found our seats, ogled the theater (which neither of us has been to before, and is absolutely gorgeous) and settled in to enjoy the show.

The show itself was wonderful. I don’t really know what mental processes it took to watch the film and turn it into a…well, my first impulse is still to call it modern ballet, though the production seems to prefer terming it a “musical play without words”. Whatever you call it, and whatever it took to put it together, it works. It works quite well, in fact.

With very few changes, the story is essentially the same as the film: Edward is created, but left unfinished when his creator dies, leaving him with hands constructed of razor-sharp shears. When a chance encounter brings him and the townspeople together, he is taken in by the community…until his differences begin to overshadow their acceptance. Told entirely through music and dance, the show does a remarkable job of conveying all the emotion of Edward’s struggle to belong (heartbreak and hilarity both, as the story progresses — one of my personal favorite moments was the sudden appearance of a beanbag).

We got a real kick out of the sets, which are obviously strongly inspired by Tim Burton’s design aesthetic for the original film, from the gothic lines of the mansion and graveyard to the off-kilter architecture and bright pastels of the suburban town. They were all very simplistic, too, another nod to the starkness of Burton’s sketching (which always struck me as somewhere between Edward Gorey and Jhonen Vasquez…though, given the chronology, I suppose it would be best to classify Vasquez as somewhere between Gorey and Burton, but now I’m going completely off the subject), and a nice contrast to the admittedly impressive, but often overblown and bombastic sets of productions like Les Miserables or any of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s shows.

Prairie and I both had a blast last night, and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Finding favorite moments was difficult, but in the end, Prairie’s favorite scene was the Act I closer, “Topiary Garden,” while I ended up deciding that “The Annual Christmas Ball,” towards the end of Act II, was my personal favorite.

I’m very glad that I got this opportunity to see the show. It will be playing here in Seattle though May 13th, and it’s got the official Eclecticism seal of approval (which I’m sure will be appearing on their website, just as soon as I figure out what an ‘Eclecticism seal of approval’ might be or look like…)! Set aside an evening, have a ‘date night,’ and head out to the theater. It’s worth it.

I’m exploring ImageKind, which gives Flickr members (and others) a convenient way to sell prints of their artwork. It looks interesting so far, though I’ve just spent a few minutes poking around while I’m in between classes.

I’ve set a few photos available to sell — take a look, see what you think. If there’s any particular shots of mine that you’d like to be able to buy (or that you just think should be in there), let me know and I’ll get them added.

We’ll see how this goes….

Anyone want a deal on tickets to the touring production of Edward Scissorhands, the “magical new stage adaption of the classic Tim Burton film” presented as a “musical ‘play without words’” (which I must admit, sounds a lot like something called ‘ballet’ to me, but who am I to question these things)?

Edward Scissorhands broke all Box Office records when it premiered at Sadler’s Wells in November 2005. The musical “play without words” enjoyed a tour of the UK followed by visits to Tokyo, Seoul and Paris prior to coming to North America where it opened for a 23-week run in November 2006. The North American tour will visit 12 cities, including Washington DC, St. Louis, Brooklyn, Toronto, St. Paul, Denver and Seattle.

Audiences of all ages have been captivated by this unique production, as well as by the humor and charm of the leading character, Edward, an innocent soul forced to find his way in a world that doesn’t accept him.

Thanks to a very kind offer from the touring company, I’m able to pass on word of a special ‘Young Professional’s Night’ discount for one show only, next Friday, April 27th…

Attend Young Professionals’ Night at the 5th Avenue Theatre on Friday, April 27 at 8 PM and see the new stage adaptation of “Edward Scissorhands”

Buy your advance tickets for this special event using promotional code: TOPIARY. This code will get you the best seats available (a regular $68 value) for only $40. You must be 39 or under to take advantage of the offer. Please have your ID ready as you enter the theater.

To buy your tickets, simply go to http://www.5thavenue.org, call 206-625-1900, or stop by the 5th Avenue Theatre Box Office in-person. Don’t forget to use the promotional code TOPIARY when ordering your tickets.

For more information, visit the 5th Avenue Theatre Website.

Many years ago, I spent a few summers participating in the Johns Hopkins University’s CTY program — a combination summer camp and summer school for top-tier students (I got in through having scored a 1300 — back when the scores topped out at 1600 — on the SAT in 7th grade). Royce and I went together for one year in Claremont, CA; the following two summers I spent in Harrisburg (?), PA.

During one of the summers in Pennsylvania, one of the TA’s was a young man named Tim, who often filled his notebooks with cartoon doodles, many of which centered around the adventures of The Masked Guy. At some point during my time there, I ended up with copies of two of Tim’s Masked Guy drawings, and have had them floating around in the (many) stacks of papers that I’ve saved over the years.

Fast-forward to 2006. Well, today. About half an hour ago, actually. I was flipping through the (large) backlog of posts that I’d been ignoring in my newsreader when a link from Mike caught my eye: Everything I Know I Learned From the Bush Administration.

“That art looks really familiar,” I thought. “I wonder….” And soon I was digging through boxes, looking for those old Masked Guy cartoons.

Sure enough, there was one with Tim the Humble T.A….and the cartoonist is one Tim Kreider. While I can’t claim to remember Tim the Humble T.A.’s last name (if I ever knew it), the similarity in drawing styles is strong enough that I’m pretty sure that the two Tims are one and the same. Apparently this whole cartooning thing has been going well for him, as in addition to his The Pain website, he has a few books of cartoons for sale through Fantagraphics.

Neat, the random stuff you run across from time to time.

It was one of the most notorious images on the ‘net when I first got online back in ‘91, one passed around in various low-resolution copies, found here and there in various directories of “naughty” images — a black-and-white drawing of many of the classic Disney characters involved in a mass orgy.

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Boing Boing just pointed to an LA Weekly story by Paul Krassner detailing the source of the infamous image, which dates back to 1966 and was drawn by Mad Magazine illustrator Wally Wood.

> When Walt Disney died, in 1966, I somehow expected Mickey and Donald Duck and all the rest of the gang to attend the funeral, with Goofy delivering the eulogy and the Seven Dwarfs serving as pallbearers. Disney was their Creator, and he repressed all his characters’ baser instincts, but now that he had departed, they could finally shed their cumulative inhibitions and participate together in an unspeakable Roman binge, to signify the crumbling of an empire. > > On behalf of my magazine, The Realist, I contacted Mad’s Wally Wood and, without mentioning any specific details, told him my general notion of a memorial orgy at Disneyland. He accepted the assignment and presented me with a magnificently degenerate montage….

The best news in the article, though, comes at the very end, when Paul reveals that he recently found a crate of posters of the image that he’d had printed back in 1967 — and they’re for sale on his website! $20 for a 14.5”x23” poster print of one of the earliest and most notorious pieces of “Disney Porn”? Oh yeah — that baby’s mine!

“This Corrosion” by Sisters of Mercy, The from the album Floodland (1987, 10:55).

As we were on our way back up the hill after running an errand downtown today, Prairie and I noticed a procession leaving Town Hall. There was a large icon-type puppet figure towards the back, an angel figure towards the front, and quite a few children in acolyte’s robes, so we figured that it was religious in nature, but didn’t know much more than that. Prairie noticed a gentleman standing near us wearing a priest’s collar and asked him what was going on.

As it turns out, we’d stumbled into the celebrations surrounding the return of a 15th century altar painting by Renaissance artist Neri di Bicci to St. James Cathedral after restoration work. This piqued our interest, so we followed along up to the cathedral to watch the pageant and blessing service.

While there, we found out that there’s something of a mystery surrounding this work of art — namely, how it got to St. James Cathedral in the first place.

> But the big question surrounding the Renaissance work remains unanswered: How did this 15th-century altar painting by Florentine artist Neri di Bicci end up in St. James’ basement? Did a parishioner buy it? Was it an anonymous gift? > > Art historians, church administrators and amateur sleuths have all taken their shots at solving the puzzle, but none has succeeded. > > […] > > Church officials didn’t know they had a museum-quality piece until 1991. Then, an architect weighing a bid for work at the church asked a friend, Elizabeth Darrow, to take a look at it. > > Darrow, then a UW art graduate student who had studied Renaissance art in Florence, was stunned when she saw the regal young Virgin sitting on a monumental throne. > > “This is the most important Renaissance artwork in the Northwest — and the largest,” said Darrow, now a guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. > > Darrow believes it is among the most exquisite and detailed works of the Virgin Mary by the prolific di Bicci. > > “The colors are very intense and vibrant,” she said. > > “Her face is round, with rosy, translucent skin and refined features: straight nose, delicately arched eyebrows,” she said. “It’s very beautiful.” > > […] > > Art scholars suspect the painting hung in an Italian church for most of its existence and was probably sold in the 19th century when the market for Renaissance artwork began. When it was found at St. James, it was in a 19th-century frame, Dorman said. > > How it ended up at a Seattle church is less clear. > > “It’s a great mystery,” said Darrow, who has gone so far as to track down wealthy local Catholic families for clues. She still has not given up hope of solving the puzzle; she’s even enlisted the help of art scholars in Florence. > > St. James administrators have searched all their archives at the cathedral and the archdiocese, “and there is no record, no bill of sale, no letter,” Ryan said. > > Church officials heard there was an art dealer or collector who moved a few di Bicci paintings to the United States — mostly to the Midwest — during the 1920s and 1930s, but it is unknown whether the St. James Madonna was among them. > > Church administrators have tracked down congregation members and workers from the 1950s. The best they can tell is that someone, perhaps an architect, found the painting in a crate in the lower level of the cathedral during a major renovation in 1950.

Really a fascinating little piece of local art history to stumble across on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon. The painting was still partially under wraps for today’s ceremonies, but it will be hung this week and formally dedicated during next Sunday’s 4pm vespers service.

More photos can, as usual, be found in a Flickr photoset.

Very cool: an early 1950’s pictoral map of the United States of America, apparently issued by the US Government to introduce our country to the people of Germany, most of whom knew little of us outside of what they’d picked up from GIs in their country during World War II.

Relevant commentary from the MetaFilter thread where I found this:

So the State Dept. handed out these maps to give Germans some idea of what the US looked like? I’m interested in their intentions, and the history behind this map give-away.

— thirdparty

well, smackfu suggests that the map is from around 1951.
There was only a vague image of the United States in Germany then. For many Germans Americans were huge, well-fed guys handing out chewing gums to German post-war kids. And some of these guys even were black. (I remember my grandmother telling me how amazed she was when she saw the first black G.I., the first black person she ever saw.) Now imagine what people must have thought of the United States then. Of course they knew about cowboys, the Liberty Statue and so on but that was about it. I think the map was supposed to give a somewhat more detailed look an the United States, but then again not too sophisticated. The Secretary of State probably imagined that Germans would be overwhelmed otherwise. Maybe they really would have been. I assume that’s why it’s designed like a children’s map. Then again, in the early fifties Germans started to go on holiday again. So it might be a promotional map for the American tourist industry. That’s what I can think of.

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p>— heimchen

Check out the full-size (7 Mb) map here.

“Let’s Get It On” by Gaye, Marvin from the album Rock On 1973: Diamond Girl (1973, 4:54).

This is good — an art exhibition of conceptual drawings of cartoon character skeletons.

Animation was the format of choice for children’s television in the 1960s, a decade in which children’s programming became almost entirely animated. Growing up in that period, I tended to take for granted the distortions and strange bodies of these entities.

I decided to take a select few of these popular characters and render their skeletal systems as I imagine they might resemble if one truly had eye sockets half the size of its head, or fingerless-hands, or feet comprising 60% of its body mass.

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p>Pity I’m not in Portland to see the actual show!

(via MeFi)

“Coming In From the Cold (Remix)” by Marley, Bob and the Wailers from the album Legend: Deluxe Edition (1984, 5:42).

Yet another case of law enforcement officials going overboard, in this case of an artist being accused of being a bioterrorist.

Steve Kurtz is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the State University of New York’s University at Buffalo, and a member of the internationally-acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble.

Kurtz’s wife, Hope Kurtz, died in her sleep of cardiac arrest in the early morning hours of May 11. Police arrived, became suspicious of Kurtz’s art supplies and called the FBI. Within hours, FBI agents had “detained” Kurtz as a suspected bioterrorist and cordoned off the entire block around his house. (Kurtz walked away the next day on the advice of a lawyer, his “detention” having proved to be illegal.) Over the next few days, dozens of agents in hazmat suits, from a number of law enforcement agencies, sifted through Kurtz’s work, analyzing it on-site and impounding computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife’s body for further analysis. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Health Department condemned his house as a health risk. Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, makes art which addresses the politics of biotechnology. “Free Range Grains,” CAE’s latest project, included a mobile DNA extraction laboratory for testing food products for possible transgenic contamination. It was this equipment which triggered the Kafkaesque chain of events. FBI field and laboratory tests have shown that Kurtz’s equipment was not used for any illegal purpose. In fact, it is not even _possible_ to use this equipment for the production or weaponization of dangerous germs. Furthermore, any person in the US may legally obtain and possess such equipment. “Today, there is no legal way to stop huge corporations from putting genetically altered material in our food,” said Defense Fund spokeswoman Carla Mendes. “Yet owning the equipment required to test for the presence of ‘Frankenfood’ will get you accused of ‘terrorism.’ You can be illegally detained by shadowy government agents, lose access to your home, work, and belongings, and find that your recently deceased spouse’s body has been taken away for ‘analysis.’” Though Kurtz has finally been able to return to his home and recover his wife’s body, the FBI has still not returned any of his equipment, computers or manuscripts, nor given any indication of when they will. The case remains open.

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p>More details can be found in this article from the Washington Post.

Just ludicrous.

(via Boing Boing)

iTunes: “Shut It (Paul Raven)” by Damned, The from the album Industrial Mix Machine (1997, 4:31).

I just got back from wandering around outside in the sun (I may be feeling a bit sick, but I didn’t want to miss out on a nice, warm spring day!) when I got a quick heads-up from Phil…

Phil Ulrich: Michael!

Michael Hanscom: ‘sup bub? Phil Ulrich: Have I got some weird shit for you, if you have a moment. Michael Hanscom: sure…what’s up? Phil Ulrich: Pop open iTunes, go to the iTMS, and do a search for “Symphony #2 for Dot Matrix Printers” Phil Ulrich: I’ve heard of music using “found sounds” but this is ridiculous

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p>The album is twelve tracks long, and they’re all exactly what you might expect from a project with a name like this: ‘songs’ constructed using the sounds from a working dot matrix printer.

As it turns out, the Symphony is a music/art project by [ The User ], commissioned by the Fondation Daniel Langlois and Hull Time Based Arts, and it sounds like something I’d love to see in person.

Dot matrix printers are thus turned into musical ‘instruments’, while a computer network system, typical of a contemporary office, is employed as the ‘orchestra’ used to play them. The orchestra is ‘conducted’ by a network server which reads from a composed ‘score’. Each of the printers plays from a different ‘part’ comprised of rhythms and pitches made up of letters of the alphabet, punctuation marks and other characters. [The User] uses ASCII textfiles to compose, orchestrate, and synchronize sonorous and densely textured, rhythmically-driven music. During the half hour performance, the sounds are amplified and broadcast over a sound system. The audience is also presented with live images of the sound sources: the motions of the mechanisms, rollers and gears are captured using miniature video cameras installed inside the printers and projected onto large screens.

There’s another project by [ The User ] that sounds worth investigating (and also has an album on the iTMS): Silophone, in which they use the acoustic capabilities of an empty grain silo to produce sounds…

Silophone makes use of the incredible acoustics of Silo #5 by introducing sounds, collected from around the world using various communication technologies, into a physical space to create an instrument which blurs the boundaries between music, architecture and net art. Sounds arrive inside Silo #5 by telephone or internet. They are then broadcast into the vast concrete grain storage chambers inside the Silo. They are transformed, reverberated, and coloured by the remarkable acoustics of the structure, yielding a stunningly beautiful echo. This sound is captured by microphones and rebroadcast back to its sender, to other listeners and to a sound installation outside the building. Anyone may contribute material of their own, filling the instrument with increasingly varied sounds.

I love bizarre stuff like this. I’ve purchsed both of the albums from the iTMS, and have been enjoying what I’ve heard so far — in many ways, these projects remind me of some of the songs that first got me into the industrial genre, with Einstürzende Neubauten running around inside empty water towers and banging on the walls to create a rhythm track or throwing forks at an electrified shopping cart to see what noises would result, or local Anchorage industrial band Fsunjibleableje crafting an entire performance around rhythmically destroying an old abandoned car with sledgehammers.

Okay, so it’s not for everyone.

I think it’s cool, though.

iTunes: “+}}}}}}}__________}}}}-” by The User from the album Symphony #2 for Dot Matrix Printers (2002, 3:09).

Wacom is currently having a “Go Platinum / Go Pro” photo/design contest.

Go Platinum: design a cover for a stock photography CD.

Go Pro: submit a photo for inclusion in a future stock photo CD.

The winner of each contest will get a 40Gb iPod and $1000 as payments for the rights to use their submission.

Pretty cool, I think — I’ve submitted my Post Alley photograph. Worth a shot, at least!

Dalí, whose previous film experience included two short films with the Spanish master Luis Buñuel, approached Disney at a dinner party at the house of Warner Brothers head Jack Warner. Dalí, then working on Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, believed he and Disney could create what he called “the first motion picture of the Never Seen Before.” Disney agreed, and assigned director John Hench to help Dalí turn the Mexican ballad “Destino,” by Armando Dominguez, into a kind of prototypical music video. (Hench, now 95, continues to come to work every day at the Disney lot, and consulted on the new Destino.) Dalí spent his time at the Disney studio painting, drawing and discussing with Hench the challenges of adding motion to what he described as his “hand-colored photographs.” The project continued for eight months, and was abandoned in 1947 when the Disney studio ran into financial problems. Dalí died in 1989.

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p>Thanks to some of today’s Disney animators, Destino has been completed, and will likely be shown in theaters next year before a Disney film, and eventually end up on DVD. I’m really looking forward to seeing this.

My friend Holly, whom I’ve known since we both lived up in Anchorage, is going to be performing in tonight’s Pizzazz! Talent Show at Bumbershoot! She’s performing under the name ‘Holly Chernobyl’ — here’s her mini-interview from the Stranger:

Holly Chernobyl
Queen o’ burlesque

When did you first realize that you had Pizzazz!? I burst from the womb singing “Life is a cabaret” through a mouthful of Quaaludes. Who do you count as your influences/inspirations? My mother Judy Garland and my father Mae West. And drag queens. If you could have one talent besides the one you’re showcasing in Pizzazz!, what would it be? Talent, schmalent. I have mutant fucking powers. I’m a superhero. When you get to be rich and famous, what will be your biggest extravagance? I will buy an island and create “Perfect Holly World,” where the sun shines every day and you get a tiara at the door. Can art change the world, or just make it prettier? I can do both, so pooh pooh on art. J.Lo: Good or evil? Evil. But God bless that ass.

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p>Go Holly! The Pizzazz show starts at 7pm in the Bagley Wright Theatre — I’ll be there!

A couple days ago, I linked to something called 911survivor (the site is down as of this writing) in my ‘Destinations’ sidebar. The site was about an Unreal game modification that replaced the standard sci-fi battle arenas with the World Trade Center towers during the Sept. 11^th 2001 terrorist attacks. At the time, it looked to me like a surprisingly disturbing attempt to capitalize on the tragedy of the day, and I commented on the link as being tasteless.

This morning, Kirsten left a comment letting me know that while at Siggraph, she had met one of the creators of the 911survivor mod. Read the rest of this entry »

Roald Dahl’s disturbing short story, “Pig”, with illustrations.

Propaganda, anyone? This site really got my attention after it was posted over on MetaFilter today. On the one hand, on a conceptual/artistic level, I like most of what I see (though some of the posters really are just plain bad). However, on a more intellectual level, it’s just frightening, due to the strong resemblance to WWII-era Soviet propaganda posters. I was hoping that it may have been more satirical in nature, but apparently this is a real, serious attempt…though at exactly what isn’t entirely clear from the site.