Accepted

I am now officially accepted into the Department of Geography and Sociology at the University of Strathclyde to pursue a MSc in Human Ecology (now I just need some buckets of money).

The WELL

I’ve joined the grandfather of discussion groups (not quite the oldest, but it went online in 1985!). It’s called the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (the people behind the Whole Earth Catalog in the sixties and seventies originated it; it’s now run by Salon.com). This is something new for me; other than a couple e-mail lists and lurking around on a blog or two, I’m not really part of an “online community.” Eventually, I hope to set up a discussion forum on the BuildaBridge site for artists and arts therapists to discuss work and exchange ideas. This is my case study for learning how to form and moderate such things.

The Well is divided up into hundreds of discussion threads on just about everything (from poetry to philosophy to popular culture to public policy). There is a very active “writers” discussion on the shaping and use of words. Early on, the Well gave away free membership to journalists and writers, so there is an established base. I’m really looking forward to diving into the discussions and hoping for some intelligent feedback. The interface is really quirky; I access through a UNIX command line—remember back when everything was text? There is a web-based version, but it’s actually not as easy to navigate. Perhaps, for BuildaBridge, we can set up something really archaic where people must log-on with old Apple II computers or punch cards; retro is really in now.

Waste II

Though I worked for a company that sold large-format inkjet printers, I really never considered the (somewhat taboo) subject of inkjet cartridge refills. Have you ever wondered why printers are so inexpensive? It’s because the money is not made on the printer itself; it’s all in the subsequent purchase of ink!

I have an oddball Lexmark printer left behind by the previous tenants; as I was unable to find a replacement cartridge in town, I wound up in a shop that refills old ones. Somehow, and I can’t really place why, this sort of thing always seemed rather shady to me. It was like trading in your pillows when you tire of them or filling up nearly empty toothpaste tubes (wouldn’t that be a cottage industry). This is partially because I once spent a great deal of time explaining to clients how they must replace the inks in their large format printers with cartridges from the manufacturer (and this does have some merit when one is printing display art for archival purposes as some inks and papers are specifically matched; off-brand ink could also flummox up the print heads). However, I’m printing drafts of text from a clunky old printer. I’m not going to need any sort of super quality or archival stability.

Consequently, I got the cartridge refilled, popped it back in, and it prints like new. This can be done several times at a significant cost savings (less than half the price of a new cartridge; though, even at that price, the people doing this are making a significant profit. These little canisters only hold one or two-hundred ml. of ink. If I were doing a whole lot of printing, I would probably buy the ink in bulk and inject it myself). Not to mention it’s one less thing in the trash (note that most office supply stores have drop-boxes for recycling ink and toner cartridges, some even offer a credit toward purchase).

The most sensible thing, though people have a hard time thinking through this, is to spend a little more for a well-built printer with large ink capacity at the outset (that is, if you are doing a significant amount of printing). Epson’s mid-priced pro level printers will last for years (they sold the 3000 for something like a decade and it just sat there sipping ink; there are, no doubt, thousands of them sitting around still sipping ink). The $100 ink-jet on special might look tempting at first; but you will eventually end up spending far more in consumables.

These violent connexions

On Monday I went with some friends to Lidice, north of Prague. After the NAZI regime annexed Czechoslovakia and set up a “protectorate” state, the Czechs assassinated the leader of the party, Reinhard Heydrich (who, in a public speech, had openly stated that the Bohemian and Moravian lands were to be eliminated and the entire area was to become Germany. Heydrich was one of the main architects of the Holocaust).

After his assassination, the NAZI’s picked a village (essentially at random) and completely destroyed it, killing all the men, taking the women to concentration camps, and gassing the children (except those children of the proper racial stock who were eligible for Germanisation).

I have been to Nürnberg; I have seen Hiroshima. When I go to these places, I’m overwhelmed that we, as a species, are capable of such insanity. There is nothing noble or grand about the propagation of death. The men from this village were lined up by the stone wall of a farmhouse and shot; I cannot fathom the killing of children.

On the site of the village, there is now a memorial and museum. In the field is a bronze sculpture of 82 life-size children; it commemorates those murdered from the village and the children massacred in the war.

I was greatly moved by this piece; it is simple and haunting. I was saddened by the thoughts of what had taken place here. However, I was given hope that, perhaps by memorials such as this, we are encouraged to prevent such things in the future.

Unfortunately, ironically, I learned later that, as I was standing at this memorial, as I was filled with the mix of sadness and hope, a man in Virginia began the worst shooting rampage in US history. Someday there will be a memorial to the people killed there. I could go on with a clot of cautionary and melancholy words; maybe I should. Today I will not. We, the senseless and the damned, never take note of them anyway.

​

Dark pretty things

Last week, I was searching for photographers who make large format negatives and contact prints. I came across the work of lauren e. simonutti. She has an absorbing gallery posted on flickr here (this one was my favourite; follow the rabbit hole to her others though).

Though I would, of course, love to see the original prints, I’m so thankful we live in an age where one can view online the work of someone producing images through a meticulous 100 year old photographic process.

(For more information on large format contact printing and the craft behind it, see here. I remember printing 50 year old 8×10 negatives from the university archive when I was in school; outstanding.)

I'm not a platypus

I have grave difficulty thinking about more that one thing at once. I can’t use age as an excuse (31); it’s just difficult to focus clearly on multiple things simultaneously. My girlfriend is a corporate secretary, as such, she is a central “hub” for her organisation. There are always three people handing her stacks of papers while the phone is ringing and the German businessman wanted cream but the Dutch man wanted his black. (And she is doing all this in Czech and English and Dutch and German!) Thus, she is bewildered when I can’t seem to comprehend what she is saying if I am typing or reading when she says it. I can focus intensely, but I have a shallow depth of field.

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Fast Food Nation II

I saw the film version of Fast Food Nation last night (with a Czech audience of about 10). It was patently disappointing; after reading the book, I felt informed and indignant. After watching the film, I felt utterly bored (actually, boredom set in about 30 minutes into the experience). The film just didn’t bring out the strong messages of the book. Structurally, it opened up multiple storylines without satisfying resolution; also, for a topic that was covered so comprehensively in the book, the film felt very confined and contained. It was as if we were trying to view Australia looking down from two meters off the ground.
I thought Linkletter’s Waking Life was excellent; however, A Scanner Darkly was lacklustre and this third film was just forgettable. All three films consisted of people standing or sitting around talking. Which, for Waking Life worked perfectly; in Fast Food Nation it felt like a parody of old PBS documentaries (it would have been a much better use of resources if he had made a documentary that had the liberty of traversing more time and space). The dialogue was forced out upon the audience in a very “we have something important to say so let’s just have everyone exposit as much as possible” fashion. Especially bothersome was the cliché student activist group!

This was an important topic that should be opened up to public debate; however, mediocre elitist drama is not the way to accomplish any such goal. I would imagine many audiences were drawn to the film from the trailer (which erroneously leads one to believe the film is a comedy), then forced to sit through a ponderous two hour exposition on what’s wrong with everything. This, I would imagine, has not endeared many people to the cause.

(I thought it ironic though that the film was set in Cody, Wyoming. This was were I first had food poisoning.)